Unified Class System

Feature 038 integrates community-hyperedge-aware classification, dual-criteria validation, and class-differentiated lifecycle mechanics into a single coherent class system. This document explains the theoretical reasoning behind each component.

The Two-Criteria Problem

The existing class position classifier (Feature 013) assigns households to one of five ClassPosition values based on wealth percentile thresholds. This is a necessary simplification: wealth stock is the primary determinant of a household’s relationship to the means of production.

But a single criterion is insufficient for calibration. Two households at the 65th wealth percentile may have very different relationships to value production. One may produce far more value than they consume (surplus-extracting, bourgeois-relation); the other may consume more than they produce (dependent, lumpen-relation). The wealth criterion alone cannot distinguish them.

The accounting criterion resolves this by comparing value produced (\(V_{\text{produced}}\)) to value required for household reproduction (\(V_{\text{reproduction}}\)):

\[R = \frac{V_{\text{produced}}}{V_{\text{reproduction}}}\]

The ratio maps to class positions:

  • \(R \geq 1.5\) — bourgeois-relation (surplus extraction)

  • \(1.2 \leq R < 1.5\) — petit-bourgeois (simple reproduction with buffer)

  • \(0.8 \leq R < 1.2\) — proletarian (simple reproduction)

  • \(0.5 \leq R < 0.8\) — proletarian (below reproduction)

  • \(R < 0.5\) — lumpen-relation (dependent)

When both criteria agree, the classification is high-confidence. When they disagree, the disagreement magnitude signals calibration drift — either the wealth thresholds need adjustment or the accounting data is stale. This is a diagnostic tool, not a tiebreaker: the wealth criterion remains authoritative for gameplay.

Community Filtration as Structural Modification

Four community types trigger filtration predicates that modify classification inputs before the base classifier runs. These are not post-hoc “corrections” applied to a universal classification. They recognize that certain community memberships place households in structurally different relationships to property, labor markets, and the state.

FIRST_NATIONS applies a trust land discount to effective wealth. Reservation property operates under federal trust, not fee simple. It cannot be sold on the open market, used as collateral, or accumulated through appreciation in the same way as settler property. A household at the 70th wealth percentile on trust land does not have the same effective wealth as a settler household at the 70th percentile. The discount (default 0.5) reduces the effective wealth percentile before classification.

INCARCERATED overrides precarity to EXCLUDED. Incarceration severs labor market participation completely. Regardless of prior wealth or employment history, an incarcerated household member cannot sell labor-power. This is not precarity (unstable attachment to the labor market) but exclusion (no attachment at all).

UNDOCUMENTED applies both a wealth discount and a precarity floor. Legal exclusion from formal banking, property ownership protections, and labor market regulations means that documented wealth overstates effective economic power. The documentation exclusion factor (default 0.6) reduces effective wealth. The precarity floor (PRECARIOUS minimum) recognizes that undocumented workers are structurally precarious regardless of current employment stability — any interaction with the state can terminate employment.

DISABLED inflates reproduction costs. When a CommunityState has reproduction_cost_modifier > 1.0, it indicates that the community’s members face higher costs for the same standard of reproduction (accessibility requirements, medical costs, assistive technology). The effective wealth is divided by this modifier, reducing the household’s position relative to their reproduction threshold.

Composition: when multiple predicates apply (e.g., FIRST_NATIONS and DISABLED), each evaluates independently against the original inputs, and the most restrictive composite result applies. “Most restrictive” means lowest effective wealth and highest precarity severity. This prevents ordering effects: the result is the same regardless of which predicate is evaluated first.

Class-Pair Solidarity Matrix

The solidarity potential formula (Feature 022) computes how much solidarity could form between two agents based on shared community membership and imperial rent differential. The formula takes a base_solidarity parameter:

\[SP = S_{\text{base}} + \beta \cdot N_{\text{shared}} - \gamma \cdot |\Phi_a - \Phi_b|\]

where \(S_{\text{base}}\) is base class solidarity, \(N_{\text{shared}}\) is shared community count, and \(|\Phi_a - \Phi_b|\) is the rent differential.

Before Feature 038, base_solidarity was a flat constant. But solidarity potential varies by class pairing. Two proletarian households have a higher baseline for solidarity formation than a bourgeois household and a proletarian household, because their material interests align more closely.

The class-pair solidarity matrix is a symmetric 5x5 matrix stored in ClassSystemDefines.base_class_solidarity. The upper triangle (15 unique values including diagonal):

  • PROLETARIAT–PROLETARIAT: 0.80 (highest — shared exploitation)

  • BOURGEOISIE–BOURGEOISIE: 0.70 (class cohesion via shared interests)

  • LUMPENPROLETARIAT–LUMPENPROLETARIAT: 0.60 (mutual aid under exclusion)

  • LABOR_ARISTOCRACY–LABOR_ARISTOCRACY: 0.60 (shared position)

  • PETIT_BOURGEOISIE–PETIT_BOURGEOISIE: 0.50 (individualist competition)

  • LUMPENPROLETARIAT–PROLETARIAT: 0.50 (proximity, shared precarity)

  • LABOR_ARISTOCRACY–PETIT_BOURGEOISIE: 0.40 (aspirational alignment)

  • LABOR_ARISTOCRACY–PROLETARIAT: 0.30 (same class, different rent access)

  • PETIT_BOURGEOISIE–BOURGEOISIE: 0.30 (aspirational identification)

  • PETIT_BOURGEOISIE–PROLETARIAT: 0.15 (limited shared interests)

  • LABOR_ARISTOCRACY–BOURGEOISIE: 0.10 (rent-mediated alignment)

  • LABOR_ARISTOCRACY–LUMPENPROLETARIAT: 0.10 (distance)

  • PETIT_BOURGEOISIE–LUMPENPROLETARIAT: 0.05 (class contempt)

  • BOURGEOISIE–PROLETARIAT: 0.00 (antagonism)

  • BOURGEOISIE–LUMPENPROLETARIAT: 0.00 (antagonism)

The matrix feeds into bifurcation dynamics: low base solidarity between class pairs means that community overlap and rent convergence must do more work to create conditions for cross-class solidarity. When they fail, the bifurcation routes toward fascism rather than revolution.

National Rent Differential

Imperial rent theory (Feature 013, the economics pipeline) models extraction at the national level: core workers receive more value than they produce, with the difference extracted from the periphery. But within the core, rent is not distributed equally. Internally colonized populations — New Afrikan, First Nations, Chicano — receive less rent than settler workers in the same occupation at the same location.

The rent differential calculator operationalizes this by measuring wage gaps from ACS (American Community Survey) earnings data. For a given county, NAICS sector, and nation:

\[\Phi_{\text{diff}} = W_{\text{settler}} - W_{\text{nation}}\]

Positive values indicate settler advantage (the standard case). County-level aggregation weights NAICS-specific differentials by employment composition from QCEW data, producing a single employment-weighted average differential per county-nation pair.

The SETTLER nation’s self-differential is always zero (no gap with itself). Suppressed ACS data (small sample sizes below the Census disclosure threshold) propagates NoDataSentinel rather than imputing values — the absence of data is itself informative and must not be masked by synthetic values.

The Detroit validation case confirms the internal colony thesis: Wayne County (Detroit proper) shows larger rent differentials than Oakland County (suburbs), because the extractive relationship between settler capital and the New Afrikan population is more direct in the urban core where that population is concentrated.

Class Reproduction via Inheritance and Dispossession

Class position reproduces across generations through two mechanisms: inheritance (wealth transfer) and dispossession (wealth destruction). Both are class-differentiated.

Inheritance scales by class position because different classes hold wealth in different forms. Bourgeois households transfer full estates (scale 1.0). Petit-bourgeois households transfer business capital (scale 0.7). Labor aristocracy households transfer home equity — the primary vehicle of intergenerational wealth for this class (scale 0.5). Proletarian households transfer near-zero (scale 0.05): their wealth is consumed by reproduction. Lumpenproletarian households transfer nothing (scale 0.0).

Foreclosure severs the inheritance mechanism entirely. When a household is foreclosed, the home equity that would have been the inheritance vehicle is destroyed. The inheritance flow returns zero net inheritance regardless of class position. This models the 2008 crisis dynamic where Black and Latino homeowners (disproportionately labor aristocracy) lost the primary mechanism of intergenerational class reproduction.

Crisis dispossession models wealth destruction events (foreclosure, eviction) with a community-modifiable targeting multiplier. The base foreclosure rate is a crisis parameter; the community_targeting_multiplier captures racialized targeting (e.g., subprime lending concentrated in Black neighborhoods). When remaining wealth drops below 50% of original, a class position change is indicated — the LA-to-proletariat transition that destroys the household’s claim to imperial rent.

Wealth conservation is enforced: wealth_destroyed + remaining_wealth must equal the original household_wealth. Dispossession redistributes wealth upward (to creditors, banks); it does not destroy it at the system level.

Fractal Consistency

The Unified Class System must produce coherent classifications at every geographic resolution. The same ClassPosition enum, the same thresholds, and the same filtration predicates apply whether classifying a single household, a county, or a metro area. This is the fractal consistency requirement.

Concretely, fractal consistency validation checks that:

  1. Each county in a metro area has all five class positions represented (no county is so homogeneous that entire positions vanish).

  2. County-level distributions sum to approximately 1.0.

  3. The metro-level aggregate (population-weighted average across counties) is itself a valid distribution.

This ensures that the internal colony thesis holds at every zoom level: Wayne County and Oakland County each have their own class structure, and the metro-level aggregate reflects the combined structure rather than erasing county-level variation.

See Also