ABSTRACT
A one-class society may appear at first sight to mean one where there is no inequality, because everyone belonged to the same class. If class were simply a matter of social status, of the various degrees of respect in which men are held by their fellows, then it could not be said that the world we have lost was a one-class society. In that society of peasants, craftsmen, labourers, husbandmen and a very few gentry and nobility, the word ‘gentleman’ meant something tangible, substantial enough, if uncertain in precise definition. According to the view the world of gentleman, parson, peasant, craftsman and pauper was already a ‘fully possessive market society’, where conflict must presumably have been due to the internal contradictions of capitalism rather than to the clash of bourgeoisie and aristocrats.
