The spine and the waste

The Europeans have a class system that embodies its honor code. 

Each of a society's centrist institutions wants a leadership to guide it and to help it maintain its code of honor. The cascade of elites that constitute the leadership of a society's centrist institutions comprise the leadership of that society. 

If those elites all belong to a single class, then the society is a class-based society. Social structure however need not necessarily be class-based. The leadership of a society's centrist institutions could be defending a code of honor embodied in something other than that society's upper class. 

The human embodiment of an honor code is the disperser and the carrier of that society's spine. The human embodiment of degeneracy and disgrace is the disperser and carrier of that society's waste. The question is, is the spine and the waste defined by the society's class system.