Or is it like a square circle?
A society where production and distribution are fully collectivized and run according to a common plan should be pretty straightforward to imagine. I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, give it a look if you want to see how and why we can get there!
Yes, a society where everyone is equal in dignity is both conceivable and achievable, and furthermore worthwhile to pursue.
No to the title question.
Yes to the question in the body of the post.
Why?
Yup! Plenty of smart folks have written about it
Like kings and emperors? We got rid of them.
Classes are defined by their relations to the means of production and by contradictions in how society reproduces itself which lead to periodic crisis. Class societies require very complex structures to uphold hegemony of the ruling classes and manage all the crisis and move them in time and space towards other societies or to future generations. Which leads to constant war, environmental destruction, etc and is unsustainable in the long term. Like capitalism needs to expand all the time, which is just impossible on a finite planet and structurally needs to produce decisive ideologies like racism and patriarchy to survive.
A classless society, once achieved, doesn’t need all this. Getting there requires a lot of struggle because the ruling class has set up all those structures to protect their privilege. But once we’re there, society will actually be way more stable than before. No classes means that structures to uphold hegemony aren’t necessary any more. That includes the state, which is really just a weapon in class warfare. Racism and patriarchy aren’t human nature. They are constantly fabricated and upheld with huge efforts by the ruling class. Those efforts would be free to build other structures instead. Once that actual connect people instead of driving them against each other. No inherent periodic crisis means those don’t have to be managed anymore and society can actually continue to develop sustainably without exploiting to exhaustion natural resources, human minds and bodies, communities and societal bonds and care structures like families.
It’s hard for us to imagine, because we’re so used to thinking inside class societies. It even forms our anthropology, how we think of other people and our ability to emphasize with them. But future people who live it will have a hard time imagining how it could ever have been different.
Yep, I just conceived it right now!
But in reality, experience, wisdom, intelligence and strength are valuable: in the same way a parent is ‘in charge’ of a child, every tribe will almost be default have one or more leaders. That doesn’t mean everything they say has to be obeyed though.
Leadership isn’t inherently a class, though.
Is it a big enough concern to not go in that direction?
Even if it can’t be 100%, wouldn’t 99% or even 90% be good, right?
Or is it a theoretical question?
I mean if someone can conceive it then yes.
Personally I do think there will always be a “class” of some sort since even among career and financial equals I still view colleagues as a different class of human.
Like I’m a camp in the woods kinda human where my coworker is a take his car to a race track kinda human.
But that’s never the class that is being discussed.
A classless society is specifically one where someone doesn’t have power over you by some financial measure. A true meritocracy as there is no financial incentive to be in those roles since it is also a moneyless society.
Utopian? Maybe. Conceivable? Yeah I can conceive what that would be like and I want to strive for it.
Maybe its not important if its possible and its just important that there are people willing to work towards it or implement something like it in their own controllable way.
