The Underclass - Part I: Class as Birthright
The History of Class Systems (and Why They’ve Always Sucked)
Here’s a horrifying term I heard recently.
The underclass.
I didn’t hear it in a sociology lecture or an economics paper. I saw it casually dropped into a glossy investing post on Instagram, one of those breathless Silicon Valley takes about AI, productivity, and “the future.”
The context was simple and unsettling: as artificial intelligence accelerates, a permanent underclass will emerge. People who will never break through the ceiling. People locked out of opportunity. People who exist to support the system, but never benefit from it.
That was the framing. Calm. Neutral. Almost excited.
It was a strange thing to read on a quiet Saturday morning walk. So I did what I usually do when something feels off, I started digging.
It didn’t get better.
What I realised pretty quickly is that this idea isn’t new at all. It just has better branding now. Different words. Better graphics. Fancier graphs. Same structure.
So before we talk about AI, gig work, housing crises, or modern inequality, we need to go backwards. Because class systems didn’t suddenly reappear. They’ve been the default setting for most of human history.
And they’ve almost always sucked.
Birth as Destiny
For most of human existence, your class wasn’t something you earned.
It was something you were born into.
You didn’t work your way up. You didn’t pivot careers at 35. You didn’t reinvent yourself after a rough decade. If your parents were peasants, serfs, labourers, or slaves, that was your life. Full stop.
There was no ladder. No escape plan. No inspirational outlier story that got passed around to keep people hopeful. Just a rigid hierarchy and the quiet understanding that your suffering was inherited.
These systems were brutally efficient.
Kings and queens ruled. Nobles owned land. Merchants occasionally squeezed through the cracks. And everyone else existed to keep the machine running, growing food, building things, fighting wars, and dying early.
Class roles were rigid, visible, and largely immovable. Social mobility wasn’t a feature. It was a glitch.
The Escape Hatches (Not Ladders)
That said, class systems were never perfectly sealed. There were exceptions.
Not ladders, escape hatches. Narrow ones. Dangerous ones. Usually controlled by someone else.
Violence and Patronage: War as Mobility
One of the most obvious escape hatches was war.
In medieval Europe, military service could offer a path upward. A common-born soldier who proved himself in battle might be rewarded with land, a title, or marriage into a higher-status family. Knighthood, in theory, could be granted to any subject for military merit.
In practice, most knights already came from wealth or influence. Horses, armour, and training weren’t cheap. And the rare commoners who were elevated usually weren’t starting from nothing, they were already local landowners or civic figures.
Still, it mattered that it was possible. Even if exceptionally rare, war created moments where loyalty and usefulness temporarily outweighed birth.
It’s worth noting what this really means: state violence was one of the few mobility engines available.
Not exactly inspiring, but historically accurate.
Institutions and Literacy: The Church as a Side Door
Another major escape hatch came through institutions, especially the medieval Church.
Unlike feudal land ownership, the Church operated across class lines. It needed educated clergy. That created limited opportunities for talented commoners.
A peasant family with some means might ask their lord’s permission to educate a son for the priesthood. If the boy learned Latin and was ordained, he could climb the church hierarchy. There are even documented cases of peasant-born men becoming bishops, and at least one pope rising from humble origins.
Monasteries and convents also drew people from varied backgrounds. They offered education, literacy, and a degree of influence unavailable elsewhere. Nicholas Breakspear, born to a poor English family, became a monk and eventually Pope Adrian IV in the 12th century, a life trajectory almost impossible outside the Church.
This doesn’t mean the Church was egalitarian. Far from it. It had its own elitism, corruption, and power politics. High offices were often reserved for nobles. But it did allow merit, literacy, and institutional usefulness to occasionally override birth.
That mattered.
Towns, Trade, and Skill
As feudal systems slowly weakened, towns became another structural crack in the wall.
A peasant who left the countryside and apprenticed in a trade could become a skilled artisan or successful shopkeeper. Guilds regulated access, but once inside, skill mattered. Wealth could be accumulated. Status could improve.
In some cases, successful merchants eventually bought land and even titles, entering the lower nobility over generations. It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t fair. But it was a path.
This is one of the earliest examples of economic function beating birthright, a theme that will matter a lot later.
Knowledge Outside the System
There were also people who existed outside formal class hierarchies altogether.
Alchemists are a good example. In the medieval and Renaissance periods, they were proto-scientists, claiming secret knowledge of chemistry, medicine, or metal transmutation. Often operating under noble patronage, a skilled alchemist from a humble background could gain proximity to power.
In Elizabethan England, alchemists functioned almost like early-stage startup founders, pitching speculative projects to wealthy patrons desperate for gold or miracle cures. Some failed spectacularly. Some succeeded just enough to survive. A few gained wealth and influence.
Then there were healers, midwives, and so-called “cunning folk.”
These were usually commoners who practiced folk medicine or local spiritual traditions. They weren’t climbing the social ladder in any formal sense, but they held informal power, respect, influence, autonomy. Especially for women, this was often the only available form of authority.
It was also dangerous. In times of fear or instability, these same people could be denounced as witches. The line between usefulness and persecution was thin.
To be completely fair, this wasn’t mobility, it was a type of survival outside of the regular class system.
The Pattern So Far
So yes, historical class systems were rigid.
The overwhelming majority of people born into a class stayed there for life. Mobility existed, but it was rare, conditional, and usually mediated by powerful institutions: the state, the Church, or emerging markets.
If you escaped your birth class, it was because you were:
useful to power,
absorbed into an institution,
or positioned just close enough to a structural crack.
For everyone else, class was destiny.
So how did we get to a world where mobility seemed normal? Where reinvention felt possible? Where birth didn’t appear to decide everything?
That’s where things start to change.
And that’s where the story gets uncomfortable.
Come back tomorrow for Part II: A Fair Go (Until It Wasn’t)