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IS THE CONCEPT OF CLASS WAR STILL VALID? 'Social stratification' is the term used to describe systematic structures of inequality. In pre-industrial or traditional societies, inequalities and thus social stratification were widely held to be natural. Aristotle stated that 'by nature' there were free men and slaves, yet if inequalities are natural, Crompton suggests there be no need to explain them. The Hindu Caste system, as with the Feudal system of western Europe, both saw inequality as natural, yet it was not until the seventeenth century that, by virtue of their humanity, all humans were thought to be born equal. From this moment the need for a sociological explanation of 'class' arose. In this essay I shall first briefly outline the history of the concept of 'class' and then evaluate this concept in modern terms with specific reference to two key papers, by Pahl (1989) and Goldthorpe and Marshall (1992). It was the social contract theorists, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, who first arrived at explanations of inequality in the eighteenth century. As traditional society gave way to the more modern forms of capitalist industrialism, rationality governed the modern economic order, and the landless labourer was created, an individu