2 Nephi 12 (Isa. 2) and 2 Nephi 13:14–15 (Isa. 3:14–15) contain similar indictments. The evidence of their unrighteousness is injustice to the poor, needy, and powerless. We live in a world that has so long been trained by the Judeo-Christian sense of morality that we may fail to understand how remarkable these ideas were for the ancient world. As agrarian societies became more complex, they tended to be accompanied by a social stratification that concentrated more and more of the production of the land in the hands of a few. As Norman Gottwald described:
Social classes may be said to exist whenever one social group is able to appropriate a part of the surplus labor product of other groups. In such a situation of exploitation, wealth and power accrue disproportionately to those who are able to claim and dispose of what others produce. Those who have this power of economic disposal tend also to have political predominance and ideological hegemony.
Isaiah’s support for egalitarianism (which is the basis for the Nephite egalitarian ideal) was a reaction to these economic inequalities that accompany social stratification. Gerhard Lenski, an anthropologist, compiled data on the economic impact of agrarian social stratification and found that “on the basis of available data, it appears that the governing classes of agrarian societies probably received at least a quarter of the national income of most agrarian states, and that the governing class and ruler together usually received not less than half.” Isaiah saw the portion of this social equation that affected the majority and condemned the upper levels of society for their exploitation.
Nephite society may be seen as an attempt to implement Isaiah’s ideas in a specific culture, built upon divinely proclaimed egalitarianism. This social/religious ideal is a source of continuing conflict for the rest of the Book of Mormon, but this theme of the unstated Nephite charter makes itself evident as an implicit presence, rather than an explicit declaration.
In the Old World, three forces created the particularly oppressed peasantry found in Palestine at the time of Christ: urbanization, monetization, and literacy. Each of those features tended to focus power in the hands of a few. Mesoamerica had two of those forces, urbanization and limited literacy. It did not, however, have the concept of monetization, which, combined with the differing ideas of land ownership, allowed the Nephite ideal of egalitarianism to survive for much longer than it did in neighboring cultures.