How did class society emerge?

[Catmatic Leftist]

If primitive communism was run along egalitarian lines, then why did egalitarianism disappear in the transition between a hunter-gatherer society and an agricultural society?

[Broletariat]

Because in hunter-gatherer society there was a need for everyone to work, in agricultural society, a surplus was produced to sustain a class of non-workers.

[el_chavista]

Engels' classic book The origin of family, private property and the State is based on anthropological studies of the 19 century, but still would bring you a good idea about how the patriarchal family drove humanity to a class society and the State.

[ColonelCossack]

Because in hunter-gatherer society there was a need for everyone to work, in agricultural society, a surplus was produced to sustain a class of non-workers.

I thought that there were some prehistoric agricultural cities that had many primitive communistic aspects, such as communal ownership of the means of production etc, though there was still an upper class that did indeed reap the benefits of the surplus. Kind of a transition between primitive communism and the slave based social systems of antiquity.

[Broletariat]

I thought that there were some prehistoric agricultural cities that had many primitive communistic aspects, such as communal ownership of the means of production etc, though there was still an upper class that did indeed reap the benefits of the surplus. Kind of a transition between primitive communism and the slave based social systems of antiquity.

Sure, what I said only implies the possibility of class society.

[Blake's Baby]

We really don't know how the prehistoric societies became class societies, but certainly at Catal Huyuk in Turkey (about 6000BC) there is no sign of class distinction in the architecture of the first settlement. All the houses seem to be the same, there isn't any special 'elite' residence, it seems to have been an egiltarian society.

It's only a speculation, but my gut instict tells me that hunter gatherer societies don't have the same sense of 'property' as early farming communities. The landscape is something that hunter-gatherers inhabit in a way that farmers don't; hunter-gatherers hunt like other animals (like wolves) hunt, they forage and gather as other animals (like pigs, squirrels and bears) forage and gather. Humans in that society I guess see these things as gifts (from the gods, spirits, ancestors or whatever).

Farmers on the other hand control the landscape - fences, fields, to measure and limit; the planting of crops overcomes nature. Humans are now winning things from the Earth, it's a conquest-and-subjegation relationship. It's a battle. Given that that is the new means of production, my guess is that this leads to class society - not just the battle against nature, but the whole of 'alienation' I think might well stem from that first act of fencing in the landscape and saying 'we own this (and therefore you don't), we will force the earth to produce...'

Only a theory. Worth considering though.

[ColonelCossack]

Sure, what I said only implies the possibility of class society.

I wasn't contradicting you! I was just elaborating on your answer. It was kind of a weird mixture of egalitarianism and primitive classes... don't quite know how that works. And anyway, most of this is all speculation, because since it is pre history, we don't have much record of what happened.

[Broletariat]

I wasn't contradicting you! I was just elaborating on your answer. And anyway, most of this is all speculation, because since it is pre history we don't have much record of what happened.

I didn't take it as a contradiction, no fear :P

[Sixiang]

Along with what the others said, superstition could have also had a part of it. The belief in spirits and gods and whatnot could have contributed to division because some people would claim to be interpreters of the spirits, so you better listen to them or they'll sick the angry spirits on you. And they could keep passing that along to their children and soon there is a shaman class which gets food and a hut without having to work for it like the others in the village do. Of course, class division could have developed in different parts of the world in different ways due to the specific conditions of those places and times.

[Q]

I refer you to When all the crap began (part 1 (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004288) and part 2 (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004297)), which is a useful introduction in the subject.

As to the specific reason why primitive communism became unsustainable, the article suggests:

Coevolution
Lionel Sims is convinced by the “original affluent society” thesis. During the middle Palaeolithic there was, he says, “abundance”. That said, the underlying condition which sustained primitive communism was the presence of teeming herds of large animals: eg, elephant, zebra, wildebeest, buffalo, giraffe, hippo and antelope. Through coordinated, long-distance hunting expeditions they provided the meat in plenty which made primitive communism hugely advantageous ... and not only for the cohesion of the group, but for the well-being of each and every constituent individual too.

In general such animals and humans unproblematically coexisted. While hunting techniques slowly improved, there evolved a corresponding instinctive, or quickly learnt, mistrust of humans. Hence humans and megafauna not only coexisted: they coevolved. The hunting of hunters and the reproduction of the hunted proceeded in rough equilibrium.

However, as modern Homo sapiens spread out from Africa into Palestine and the Arabian peninsula around 80,000 years ago, then headed into southern Asia, south-east Asia and China, then into Australasia some 60,000 years ago, then into Europe 45,000 years ago, into the Americas 20,000 years ago, finally reaching the Tierra del Fuego tip of South America around 10,000 years after that, problems mounted up. The relationship between hunted and hunters proves unsustainable. Consumption eats into reproduction to the point of wide-ranging animal extinctions. Primitive communism therefore increasingly malfunctions.

Numerous authors have sought explanation for mass animal extinctions in climate change. Continents drift and weather patterns shift with global wobbles, sunspots, etc. Every secondary school student knows that. As a concomitant, ice sheets advance and retreat, and sea levels rise and fall. The last glacial maximum was around 20,000 years ago. There followed a global warming which 5,000 years later saw deserts once again expanding in northern Africa, central Asia and Australia. Eg, 7,000 years ago the great lakes of the Sahara were visibly drying up.[48] A to-and-fro pattern repeated over millions of years. The argument being that, as established habitats disappeared, so did associated megafauna (an animal weighing over 100lbs).

How does that thesis stand up to criticism? Even rapid climate change, despite its title, surely moves far too slowly to see off most big land animals. Why should even a sudden climate transition - one taking no more than a few decades - result in their demise? Surely they, or at least some of them, would migrate or adapt? That is what they have done over the dozen or so known ice ages that have occurred during the last two million years. And we are, after all, discussing continents with varied climate zones. Not islands such as Iceland, Britain or New Zealand. In short, climate change fails to convince when presented as the overriding explanation for the mass extinctions which happened in what were far removed times and places.

Take Australia.[49] The fossil record shows that its megafauna survived and evolved through numerous climatic shifts over 55 million years (following the Australia-Antarctica split and the break-up of the Gondwana supercontinent). However, its big animals went extinct round about the same time in the late Palaeolithic - and not only in the dry interior, but in lush zones too, such as the south-east and New Guinea (joined to Australia in the Megalania continent during the last glacial maximum). Apart from middle-sized red and grey kangaroos and crocodiles, the megafauna died out in each and every climate zone (as did a whole range of smaller animals). Ergo, in explanatory terms, climate change surely fails.

Mass extinction of megafauna is increasingly explained by a combination of human entry and animal naivety. Paul Martin presented what he called the “blitzkrieg hypothesis” in 1984. From my admittedly limited reading on the subject, I would call this the established consensus nowadays.

In Australia and the Americas megafauna are thought to have possessed no instinctive, or quickly learnt, mistrust of humans ... till for most of them it was too late. Hunters killed the unsuspecting, slower animals and on a huge scale. Easy meat. Incidentally, to this day in the Galápagos and Antarctic birds and mammals, which evolved in the absence of humans, “are still incurably tame”.[50] If conservationists had not vigorously campaigned to get governments to agree protectionist measures, doubtless they would have been annihilated too.

It appears that within a few hundred years of the estimated time of human arrival most of the megafauna were under severe pressure in Australasia and the Americas. Only those already evolved to move fast, fly or hide survived. The rest plunged into extinction. An observation not to the liking of those with a sentimental attachment to first peoples. Nevertheless, facts are facts. A whole range of animals, especially the largest - ie, those that could feed the most people with the least effort expended by hunters - died out in a remarkably short period of time.

Do not imagine that each and every individual animal was killed, butchered, cooked and eaten. Rather hunting rates overtook reproduction rates - and perhaps only by a narrow margin at that. It might be assumed that there would be nothing more threatening than lowering population densities. Overhunting can, though, tip what is often a delicate balance and bring about a sudden, crunching, headlong extinction. A phenomenon known as “critical slowing down” in the relevant literature.[51]

Computer simulations produce “serious decline” and “eventual extinction” with predation rates of no more than four or five percent.[52] Carnivores which find their natural prey disappearing through over-hunting by another species face doomsday - that is for sure. No doubt breeding patterns and other biologically determined patterns of behaviour were amongst the contributing factors. Eg, in general, the bigger the animal, the more impoverished the environment, the slower the rate of reproduction.

In Australia monotremes, the diprotodon, zygomaturus, palorchestes, euowenia, eurycoma, etc had all gone extinct by around 46,000 years ago (dates are far from certain). That is, big birds, big mammals and big reptiles. In North America a similar mass extinction was completed around 11,500-10,000 years ago. The horse, glyptotherium, musk ox, mammoth, bison antiquus, giant beaver, ground sloth, maerauchenia, mastodon, camel, etc all disappeared. In South America the horse, ground sloth, mastodon, mammoth, camel, arctodus, etc went the same way.

The best explanation joining these widely dispersed mass extinction events is human colonisation. Hunters would stroll up to an unconcerned giant herbivore, like the eight-ton megatherium ground sloth, and spear the poor beast to death. In a similar manner hungry European sailors exterminated the dodo when they landed to reprovision on Mauritius in the 17th century.

The influx of modern humans into continental northern Siberia likewise probably accounts for the extinction of the steppe bison and woolly mammoth around 12,000-10,000 years ago (a dwarf version of the mammoth survived on Wrangel Island in the Russian Artic ocean and St Paul Island in the north Pacific, which were only colonised by humans a few thousand years ago).

In Australia 93% of the larger mammals were lost with the coming of humans and this seems to have had far-reaching ecological consequences. Giant herbivores consumed vegetation on an industrial scale. The “continuous” wet and dry forests which covered thousands of miles in northern and eastern Australia were as a result variegated, full of open spaces and young growth. With the removal of the megafauna, the undergrowth thickened, fallen leaves accumulated ... till lightening struck.

What had once been light and localised seasonal burnings were transformed into raging, giant, murderous bushfires.[53] Many medium and small animals were killed as a result ... to the point of species extinction. Moreover, with much of the flora reduced to charcoal, thin, ancient, dry, mineral-poor soils were blown or washed away. Australia’s biomass underwent a severe crash. Fire-resistant eucalypts flourished and came to dominate. But they did so in an ecosystem maintained by Aboriginal fire-stick ‘farming’ ... an eco-system sent further crashing by European colonisation some 200 years ago.

If the optimal condition for primitive communism was the hunting of megafauna, their steady reduction in Eurasia and almost total elimination in Australia and the Americas was bound to trigger a profound social crisis. Exported versions of primitive communism became more and more prone to breakdown.
In summary: Primitive communism became unsustainable due to the course of human colonisation of the whole planet in the first 90 000 years of its existence. This was the reason why it was forced to accept worse living conditions by moving to sustained agriculture. There is clear evidense of this decline in living standards, which can be found in smaller skeletons due to smaller intakes of nutrition, bended backs because one hadto plough the fields with primitive means, etc.

This move to agriculture then marks the first surplus creation that others already mentioned, the basis of class society was born.

For even more reading in the subject of how humans came to be, how primitive communism began, I refer to Origins of religion and the human revolution (part 1 (http://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1002142) and part 2 (http://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1002151)).

[Zav]

I imagine it had something to do with the more experienced in a group, such as the tribal elders, becoming priests.

[Blake's Baby]

I refer you to When all the crap began (part 1 (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004288) and part 2 (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004297)), which is a useful introduction in the subject.

As to the specific reason why primitive communism became unsustainable, the article suggests:

In summary: Primitive communism became unsustainable due to the course of human colonisation of the whole planet in the first 90 000 years of its existence. This was the reason why it was forced to accept worse living conditions by moving to sustained agriculture. There is clear evidense of this decline in living standards, which can be found in smaller skeletons due to smaller intakes of nutrition, bended backs because one hadto plough the fields with primitive means, etc.

This move to agriculture then marks the first surplus creation that others already mentioned, the basis of class society was born.

For even more reading in the subject of how humans came to be, how primitive communism began, I refer to Origins of religion and the human revolution (part 1 (http://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1002142) and part 2 (http://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1002151)).


Unfortunately there are very few archaeologists, palaeontologists or historical anthropologists who accept Martin's hypothesis. There's no precision about dating (eg the Central American giant rabbit may have died out as much as 14,000 years before there were humans in the Americas), and some of Martin's 'facts' are just plain wrong (eg the idea that Clovis point technology - a particular sort of spear - was the technology that the first hunters used to wipe out the big game is demonstrably false, there were pre-Clovis groups in the Americas for at least 2,500 years) - though Martin doesn't accept the dating of any researchers that clashes with his theory. I'm sure humans contributed to megafaunal extinctions, I'm sceptical (and I think the majority of archaeologists are too, except maybe in Australia) that humans caused megafaunal extinctions.

As most of the Americas continued as the territory of hunter-gatherers into the historical period, the argument that hunter-gatherers were 'forced' to adopt agriculture is a bit dubious too. It may be that agriculture arose as a response to specific environmental problems in the Middle East, and maybe elsewhere (currently it's suspected that there are at least 10 independent 'cradles of agriculture') but its adoption by hunter-gatherer Europeans, who seem to have been living in something of a productive paradise, seems somewhat mysterious at present.

So in Europe we can be fairly certain of 'primitive communism' long after the end of the megafauna. There are no signs of class society in Europe until the Neolithic (new stone age, when agriculture, pottery and stone axes come along) but the megafauna are basically extinct about 4-7,000 years before that. So that would mean a transitional society from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Neolithic (different parts of Europe had their transition to the Neolithic at various times from about 6000-2000BC) encompasing the entire Mesolithic (the European Middle Stone Age - the period of estimated maximum productivity for hunter-gatherers, mostly based on hunting smaller fauna like deer & horse rather than Woolly Rhino & Mammoth) and 'Eneolithic/Chalcolithic' where these occur, and the whole Neolithic transition... so yeah, about 7000 years of this 'transitional' society that is a period about as long as that between the introduction of farming into central Europe and the present day.

One might just as reasonably claim that the last 7,000 years from the Mesolithic (last hunter-gatherers) to the present (sedentry industrialised society) have merely been a 'transitional society' - and write off the cultures that built Stonehenge and Carnac, the Maltese tombs Sardinian Nuraghi, the civilisations of Egypt, Crete, Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, and the whole early modern period.