ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the fundamental causes of stratification systems. It focuses on fundamentals prescribed by the evolutionary perspective by consideration of the forbidding variety and complexity that stratification systems have taken in time and place. The effect has been a considerable literature of "moral preachings" and "concept mongering" that has contributed little or nothing to our understanding of social stratification. The fundamentals of what sociologists term social stratification do not begin with human society; they are primeval aspects of social species in general. In short, Karl Marx's understanding of class consciousness helps to pinpoint degrees of stress in social systems. Max Weber's theory of stratification may in part be viewed as an attack on Marx's position that class struggles constitute the fundamental mechanism of post-tribal societies. The Kingsley Davis-Wilbert E. Moore assumption of unavoidable stratification is compelling from an evolutionary perspective.
