 Dear students, in this module we are going to talk about a state as system of social stratification. State is a system of social stratification based on the ownership of land and other forms of property in which different classes or groups are defined by their relationships to the means of production. So by means of production, we mean to say that they have such possibilities or such resources available through which they can produce commodities, they can hire other people, they can buy their labour. Because in the economic system, those people are at the advantageous position, who have resources, who have the possibility of investment, as compared to those who have the opportunity to sell only their labour. So in the state, your property, your ownership of different properties determines the stratification of your position. The more property you own, the higher is your position in that stratification. State is often associated with pre-modern feudal societies in which social position was based on birth or inheritance. So feudal laws in traditional society had higher social position, the main reason for that was because they had property ownership, and because of that property ownership, the rest of the people used to work as peasants, the rest of the people used to sell their labour, but potentially the feudal lords could decide what opportunities we could provide to them and what value they could determine. State is characterized by a rigid class structure in which those at the top of hierarchy have significant power and influence over the lives of those at the bottom. So this was an acute system of the Dharjabandhi, in which feudal lords whose position was dependent on their birth or inheritance, had a good fortune that they would be able to build a house of such people who already had feudal lords or who had means of production. In comparison to those, there were a lot of people who had labour class, working class, who were peasants, they used to work for them. So this system continues the modern capitalistic system. And we see that feudal class then converts into elite class, and becomes a bourgeois class for them, and the working class, the peasants, becomes a proletariat class for them. State is often associated with forms of economic exploitation such as feudal lords who extract the rents from the peasants and farmers. So the peasants, since they only had labour class, now they also need food and shelter, so all these things were provided by feudal lords, but at the expense of their complete subjugation. So in some cases, state systems have been transformed into the modern forms of social stratification such as class-based societies. In modern societies, there is a class-based system in which there is a working class and an elite class, a working class because they don't have means of production, they have lesser opportunities. So this class-based system is considered to be a historical reflection which has been derived from feudal systems. So in Pakistan, state systems have historically been important, particularly in rural areas, and in the context of larger land holdings and feudal relationships.