In the early stages of western civilization, religious ideology took precedence over secular ideology.  With the rise of the bourgeoisie, secular ideology moved into the foreground, making loud religious professions, but also making sure that business-for-profit had the last word in the determination of public policy.

A third collective ideological goal of civilization has been aesthetic; the yen for symmetry and balance; the love of beauty; the desire for harmony; the quest for excellence; the lure of magnificence; the search for truth.  Out of these urges have arisen the pictorial and plastic arts, architecture, music, the dance, science, and philosophy, providing outlets, occupations and professions that have colored and shaped many aspects of civilized living.

A fourth collective goal of civilization has been the establishment and maintenance of social structure, including classes and/or caste lines based partly upon tradition, partly on function and partly upon proximity to the honey-pot, the wellspring of wealth, income, prestige and power.

Since the principle of private property has been implicit in every known civilization, the ownership of land, capital and consumer goods and services has been a prerogative of the ruling oligarchies, shared by them with their associates and dependents and used as their chief means of establishing and maintaining the “you work, I eat” principal of economic relationships.

Private property, and its derivative, unearned or property income, has enabled the ruling oligarchies of civilized communities to receive the first fruits of every enterprise.  They have also enabled the oligarchs to establish a priority scale of income distribution under which those who held property and its derivatives could have first choice among available consumer goods and services.  Second choice went to the associates, retainers and defenders of the oligarchs.  Third choice went to the preferred, professional experts who spoke for and represented the oligarchy.  Fourth choice went to the artisans—­skilled designers, builders, fabricators.  What remained went to hewers of wood and drawers of water, the workers, women and men, who provided the necessaries, comforts, luxuries upon which physical survival and social status depended.  Generally this proletarian mass, including chattel slaves, serfs, tenant farmers and war captives, were outside the pale of respectability.  In a caste-divided community they were scavengers and untouchables, living a life close to that of domestic animals.

Most civilizations have permitted gifted individuals to move vertically, from the bottom toward the top levels of the social pyramid.  Vertical movement was severely restricted, however.  Generally people lived, served and died on the class or caste level into which they were born.

Members of classes and castes are not free agents.  They have privileges and rights.  They also have obligations and duties.  Classes and castes are functioning parts of an interdependent social whole which can maintain balanced order only so long as each segment recognizes its obligations and performs its duties.