[pnin]

I think it's a bit like PG Wodehouse. The world of Bertie Wooster or Clarence Threepwood, 9th Earl of Emsworth is certainly an idyll; at the same time no one would pretend it is a classless idyll.

Tolkien would not refer to that class structure as "economic exploitation" - that is part of his politics. That does not mean he did not understand that society very well, and seek to portray it in an idealized form.