“There was a time, back on Cybertron, in the twilight hours of the golden age, when Optimus and Megatron were not sworn enemies.
do you recall when I mentioned that Optimus wasn’t always a prime?    well, he wasn’t always Optimus either.he was once a clerk, in the iacon’s hall of records, named Orion Pax.“

the show itself never explain whether that’s a low or high position, but his close relation to alpha trion, the importance of the archives & the information he has access to suggest that it’s probably the latter and it’s definitely higher class than his original job as a dock worker 

– so while g1 had both Megatron and Optimus come from about the same low level of society, showing that a person choices are what makes them who they are rather than their upbringing – we get a lowly gladiator who obviously becomes the bad guy and an intellectual from high class – who became the good guy.
"but as he learned more about Cybertron’s past he grew increasingly concerned about the present corruption in high places and inequality among the masses.”

Ratchet is being almost disturbingly vague here – corruption &  inequality don’t really tell us much about the situation at hand – is it just that some people had to work harder to support themselves? or were there actual people starving to death in the streets just because they were created a certain way? what?

The Roman names make it quite likely that Cybertron is based on the Roman empire so it’s pretty clear Ratchet is probably referring to slavery, so we are off to a great start..(at least it’s probably not ethnic cleansings like in the idw comics…)

I want to believe the reason Ratchet doesn’t go into detail or sound very concerned about it is that he talks to children and not because he doesn’t care about the mechs who suffered at the hands of the council. 

sadly the fact that he refers to the time as “the twilight hours of the golden age” basically implying that the years of “corruption & inequality” were still part of a golden age that only ended with Megatron’s rising suggests that’s probably not the case…

part 1 – preface

sidenote