Backroom Errata

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I insisted that there is only one whole number between 1 and 3: that number is 2. There is nothing precious about an ability to convince yourself otherwise.

It's not a scale between one and three, it's a scale between something like one and seven.

You have the nobility, broken down into the Royal family, containing the Cyning and the Æthelings, his sons, brothers, nephews etc., then the mass of the þeȝns from whom the king selected his Æorldormon and from which class came most of the non-monastic bishops. Then, below them, you have the mass of the ceorles, who were themselves subdivided into a, the geneats - the "peasant aristocracy" distinguished from the lower Þeȝns by being primarily landholders and farmers as opposed to warriors, the mass of men - the kotsetlas - and the bottom rung, just hanging on, the geburs who were tenant farmers often economically tied to a given estate.

Then you have slaves, mostly non-Saxons.

You'r just engaging in reductio ad absurdem - a geneat would be indistinguishable from a less affluent Þeȝn in the street or in the shieldwall - both mean "follower" or "retainer", the distinction is not one of wealth or even necessarily practical function, both could serve as landlords, the distinction is that one has access to the royal family in a direct way (in theory) and the other does not.In Anglo-Saxon England its all about personal relationship - status is defined (formally) by who you owe your loyalty to and in what context. Þeȝns are warriors first and foremost and it is from this that they derive their status and their privileged access to the royal court, not wealth, not even necessarily birth. Oh, I know you're going to mention Huscarls next - so let me preempt you by pointing out that huscarls are not self-supporting, they're professional paid soldiers as opposed to simply being retainers. Þeȝns were also farmers with their own lands who equipped themselves out of their own pockets. Incidentally, both þeȝns and ceorles fought in the Fyrd together as mounted infantry, in addition to weapons and armour they had to provide their own horses. That's why the property qualification for a þeȝn was five hides, or the equivalent of five small-holdings, because every hundred was required to provide one man for every five hides - þeȝns were that man for their own landholdings, ceorles might send someone else.

Beside the point, but to be accurate none of the sources I quoted describes a legal definition of "gebur". Building Anglo-Saxon England speculates that the group known as geburs in Wessex possibly arose out of freed slaves (as opposed to free men sinking into subjection).

The fact they're described in a charter regarding a manor owned by the king indicates a certain legal status. The problem is we can't be certain what that status is, something life slaves, like serfs? We don't know, exactly, what we do know is that they represented a different kind of status to that enjoyed by other ceorles.

The historiography reinforces the intermediate status of churls between slaves and nobility, which you don't contest. I don't know of what character assassination you speak with regard to churls, but since you engaged in character assassination to troll me I can't respect this whinging.

"You've lost credibility" was what you said.

You don't like it when people call you out for your bad behaviour, well suck it up - you once told Furnunculus his "caution [was] not respectable."

It has nothing to do about whether the wealthy form an "aristocratic" class. The analogy is valid whether or not that word applies. You have been hung up on the historical definitions of classes (e.g. stratified legal standing vs. theoretical equality under the law) rather than observing the cross-sectional relationship in practice, which latter is the point.

Outside the US class is inherited regardless of wealth. Go re-watch Downton Abbey, it's a study in class relationships, right down to the perpetually awkward position of the Early's American wife and brother-in-law.

What does it mean for a class to be cohesive?

It means they form a cohesive group with similar social standards, goals, tastes, etc. - a community with an in-group and out-group.

If by this you mean that most super-wealthy individuals were not born into wealth, you are correct - especially as concerns people outside the US or Europe. But the growth opportunities of the globalizing age have always been vanishingly few and predicated on criminality and political access at that level, and the good times have given way to secular stagnation. Below the masters, the petite bourgeois are much better at staying affluent or getting more so than those below are at breaking into their ranks.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

But this has always been so. Most wealth is inherited, and what is inherited is mostly passed between the upper ramparts of society. in America this is especially a foundational racial problem, where as we see black families pass on almost no accumulated wealth whatsoever, even compared to middle class whites.

So you acknowledge that the most wealthy in America, those "holding the reigns" so to speak were not born into it. Do you understand how different this is to a class-system where people are born into a certain class and that defines their social standing? Do you understand that the only was to access a higher class in those circumstances is through personal patronage of the person at the top of that class (the monarch) and no amount of money will ever get you in?

You are making two mistakes:

First, modern oligarchs and plutocrats, and their families, do have special access despite a lack of formally-specified status. This is still called privilege.

Privilege of wealth is not privilege of class. They aren't the same and your insistence on trying to equate them demonstrates that a refusal to believe that class works differently outside a Republic like the US. Compare the Anglo-Saxons and the Romans.

Second, even if the above were not the case it would not be relevant to instigating analogy, which is explicitly about the substantive inherent capacities of common people, and implicitly of their relationship to the ruling classes.

Again, this is the point. Your contrarian posture here is as misguided as if you said we cannot refer to modern military servicepeople as soldiers because they do not form in blocks or carry spears.

And this is the part you refuse to accept, Anglo-Saxon society doesn't work like that'. Status is conferred by access to the King, he decides if you're a þeȝn or a ceorl - and then everyone else agrees with him. So how do you make the change? Pretty simple really, you demonstrate loyalty to the king and an ability to kill his enemies. Anglo-Saxon society is totally militarised, all free men serve, and even priests and bishops can be found in the shield wall. If you don't have the requisite five hides, well, the king will just give you land.

In this society deeds grant access and access grants wealth. Wealth does not, by itself, grant access.

You're engaging in Marxist historiography again, insisting on seeing other times and places in the context of your own society. In this case you're comparing an absolute monarchy with a completely militarised (free) population against a largely demilitarised republic. Apples and oranges.