The origins of class society

Marxist Theory · 2026-05-13

Core Argument¶

The central thesis is that class society is not a natural or eternal condition of human existence but a historically specific and relatively recent development, arising necessarily out of the development of the productive forces. The article argues that for the vast majority of human history—hundreds of thousands of years—people lived in egalitarian, communist hunter-gatherer bands without private property, classes, or states. The emergence of class society was not the result of an unchanging "human nature" asserting itself, but rather the product of a specific sequence of material transformations: the Neolithic Revolution, the growth of a surplus product, the emergence of a social division between mental and manual labour, and ultimately the concentration of control over that surplus in the hands of a priestly bureaucracy that transformed itself into a ruling class. The article claims that just as class society arose historically, it will inevitably be overthrown, and that capitalism has now reached the stage where it is a fetter on further development, making socialism both possible and necessary.

Theoretical Grounding¶

The analysis is firmly rooted in the classical Marxist tradition, drawing primarily on Engels's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State and Marx's Capital. The article deploys historical materialism as its core method, tracing the dialectical relationship between the development of the productive forces (tools, techniques, organisation of labour) and the social relations of production. Key concepts include:

The metabolism between man and nature: Labour as the mediating activity that shapes both the environment and human beings themselves, following Marx's formulation in Capital.
The primacy of the productive forces: The article argues that changes in the instruments of labour define different economic epochs, and that the Neolithic Revolution represents a qualitative leap in humanity's productive capacity.
The growth of the surplus product: The emergence of a regular surplus beyond subsistence is identified as the necessary material precondition for class division, allowing a section of society to live on the labour of others.
The division between mental and manual labour: The liberation of priests and scribes from direct production is presented as the crucial social development that crystallises into class rule.
Combined and uneven development: Drawing on Trotsky, the article argues that later class societies (like Greece and Rome) developed more rapidly and in different forms than the "pristine" states of Mesopotamia, precisely because they could borrow from earlier achievements.
The role of force: Following Marx's dictum that "force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one," the article argues that the state emerges as a specialised body of armed men necessary to maintain class rule once the old communal relations have broken down.

The article positions itself against both bourgeois idealist accounts (which attribute social development to religion or "the human mind") and anarchist theories (which see the state as the origin of class exploitation rather than its product).

Conjunctural Relevance¶

While the article is primarily historical, its conjunctural relevance is made explicit in the conclusion. The argument connects the origins of class society to the present crisis of capitalism in several ways:

The obsolescence of class society: The article argues that just as primitive communism became a fetter on development and was overthrown, capitalism has now become a fetter on the productive forces. The regular economic crises, imperialist wars, and climate change are presented as evidence that "under capitalism, no further progress is possible for humanity."
The state as a historical category: By demonstrating that the state arose at a specific historical moment to manage class antagonisms, the article argues that it will "fall as inevitably as they once arose." This directly challenges the naturalisation of the state in bourgeois political thought.
The question of progress: The article defends a Marxist conception of progress as the development of the productive forces, rejecting both liberal myths of continuous improvement and romanticised views of pre-class society. This is directly relevant to contemporary debates about whether human development has been positive or negative.
Women's oppression: The article uses the archaeological evidence to defend Engels's thesis that women's oppression is historically contingent, not natural, and therefore can be ended. This connects to contemporary feminist debates and the Marxist position that women's liberation requires the abolition of class society.

Where the Argument Continues¶

The article leaves several areas open for further development:

The detailed mechanisms of class formation in other regions: The article focuses on Mesopotamia as the "classical" case but acknowledges that Egypt, China, the Indus Valley, and the Americas followed different paths. The application of the same method to these cases is implied but not developed.
The transition from slavery to feudalism: The article stops at the birth of the first class societies. The subsequent development of class society through slavery, feudalism, and capitalism is referenced only in passing.
The specific dynamics of capitalist crisis: While the conclusion asserts that capitalism is now a fetter, the article does not provide a detailed economic analysis of contemporary capitalism's contradictions (overaccumulation, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, etc.).
The question of the transition to socialism: The article ends with Engels's prediction that the state will be "put into the museum of antiquities," but does not elaborate on the concrete political strategy for achieving this.

These themes are developed in other IDOM articles on historical materialism, the state, and the crisis of capitalism, as well as in broader Marxist texts such as Engels's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (the direct source), Marx's Capital, and Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed (on the nature of the state under socialism).

Connections¶

Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: The foundational text that the article both defends and updates with modern archaeological evidence.
V. Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself and What Happened in History: The Marxist archaeologist whose concept of the "Neolithic Revolution" and "Urban Revolution" provides the framework for the article's periodisation.
Marx, Capital, Volume I: Particularly the chapters on the labour process, the fetishism of commodities, and primitive accumulation, which provide the theoretical categories deployed in the article.
Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution: The source for the concept of combined and uneven development, which the article applies to ancient state formation.
George Plekhanov, The Role of the Individual in History: Referenced directly in the article's discussion of the role of "great men" like Narmer.
Mario Liverani, The Ancient Near East: The primary archaeological source for the Mesopotamian case study.
James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States: A contemporary work that engages with similar questions from a more anarchist perspective, which the article implicitly critiques.

Key Quotes¶

"For hundreds of thousands of years human beings inhabited the Earth without private property, classes, states, or any of the other elements that make up class society as we know it. And yet we are taught that class division is a natural and universal condition of human existence."
"The inevitability of class society lies in the fact that the development of Neolithic production itself prepared the very conditions upon which the rise of class society was based: the increasingly complex division of labour in society, and most important of all, the growth of the surplus product."
"The state is therefore by no means a power imposed on society from without; just as little is it 'the reality of the moral idea'... Rather, it is a product of society at a particular stage of development; it is the admission that this society has involved itself in insoluble self-contradiction and is cleft into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to exorcise."
"Every conquest won in our struggle for existence necessarily brings forth its own obstacles and threats, against which the struggle for further progress must take place. This is especially the case under class society, in which 'every step forward is also relatively a step backward, in which prosperity and development for some is won through the misery and frustration of others.'"
"We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes has not only ceased to be a necessity, but becomes a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as inevitably as they once arose. The state inevitably falls with them."
"The real content of progress, the development of the social productive forces of humanity, is thus realised in a succession of limited and contradictory forms. If we find those forms objectionable today, all that tells us is that they have become obsolete."