Origins of class?

[syzygy]

I'm looking for writings, from the perspective of the revolutionary left, on the prehistoric origins of class.

Also, have Marxists or anarchists written on the Neolithic Revolution?

[tuwix]

I think this will help you:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/

[syzygy]

Thanks. I read the first chapter, "Stages of Prehistoric Culture," and skimmed the rest. It seems very interesting, but not quite what I'm looking for. I'm especially interested in the origins of economic class, as resulting from the production of a surplus.

For example, Georges Dumézil proposed what is called the "trifunctional hypothesis" for Proto-Indo-European society, consisting of the productive class, the warrior class for defense, and the priestly class serving ideological duty. I'm attracted to this framework as a way to explain how the productive class was separated from its own surplus, made possible thanks to the Neolithic Revolution. But Dumézil was probably a fascist, at any rate his hypothesis is often dismissed on those grounds, and so I was looking for something similar from the radical left.

[Blake's Baby]

Dumezil's hypothesis conforms pretty closely with how the medieval European world theorised class - 'those who fight, those who pray, and those who work'. These corresponded to the military aristocracy, the holy orders (priests and monks) and the peasants. Interestingly, for those who consider capitalism to be an immortal system, non-productive owners don't even feature in the medieval mindset at all.

I'd be interested too on any texts that anyone could recommend. For what it's worth, while I conform generally to the framework of 'The Origins of the Family...' I think it's in some ways a flawed work, not least because the data it relies on (Morgan's anthropological work on pre-capitalist societies) has been modified somewhat by 150 years of research in anthropology.

My view is that class arose as a response to extremity of conditions - when survival is precarious, one group capable of taking control of a surplus privileges itself vis a vis other groups.

Also, particularly in Europe, where the introduction of farming was a couple-of-thousand-year process in the face of indigenous hunter-gatherers, the very act of enclosing land (for cultivation or stock-keeping) establishes a kind of 'class' relationship between the enclosing agriculturalist 'in' group and the excluded/dispossessed (nomadic?) 'out' group. Differential access to the means of production, in this case land ("we're planting our grain here, no you can't take wild grass seeds, no I don't care what you used to do, take our seeds and we'll kill you") and animals ("these cows are our cows, no you can't hunt them, if you try we'll kill you"), etc.

[Scheveningen]

Property.

[Blake's Baby]

Nice.

One-line answers, especially in the Learning forum, are frowned upon. But you have summed up in one word what is indeed the origin of class in prehistoric societies. Maybe developing the point a bit to say how you think the instigation of differential property relations, and the class relations that go along with them came about, would be a way to go?

[syzygy]

Property, yes. But it seems intuitively obvious that the ultimate root, necessary for the introduction of property, was the ability to produce a surplus which could become concentrated in the hands of a minority and made into property. As I said, Dumézil's hypothesis seems nice, but his ideological motivations may have been not so nice. Not that it matters, really. The truth is true even if uttered by fools. But I would still prefer another take on it, if there is one.

[G-Dogg]

I think this is what you're looking for:

marxists.org/archive/harman/1994/xx/engels.htm

It corrects and updates Engels based on the last 100 years of anthropological research.

[exeexe]

I think this is what you're looking for:

marxists.org/archive/harman/1994/xx/engels.htm

It corrects and updates Engels based on the last 100 years of anthropological research.


will be able to make bigger gifts than other lineages, and so gain greater prestige. And, similarly, within each lineage, certain households will be able to become wealthier than others and again earn great prestige. The very values of generosity built into such a society encourage a differentiation of status.

This is only under the assumption that the big producers gave away their stuff. They could also have traded away their stuff thus getting a wide variety of products available to them but in return wouldn't get any prestige.

[Comrade #138672]

The origin of class itself is surplus labor and the division of labor.

[bropasaran]

Malatesta gave an interesting view.

"In all the course of history, as in the present epoch, government is either brutal, violent, arbitrary domination of the few over the many, or it is an instrument devised to secure domination and privilege to those who, by force, or cunning, or inheritance, have taken to themselves all the means of life, first and foremost the soil, whereby they hold the people in servitude, making them work for their advantage.

Governments oppress mankind in two ways, either directly, by brute force, that is physical violence, or indirectly, by depriving them of the means of subsistence and thus reducing them to helplessness. Political power originated in the first method; economic privilege arose from the second. Governments can also oppress man by acting on his emotional nature, and in this way constitute religious authority. There is no reason for the propagation of religious superstitions but that they defend and consolidate political and economic privileges.

Governments oppress mankind in two ways, either directly, by brute force, that is physical violence, or indirectly, by depriving them of the means of subsistence and thus reducing them to helplessness. Political power originated in the first method; economic privilege arose from the second. Governments can also oppress man by acting on his emotional nature, and in this way constitute religious authority. There is no reason for the propagation of religious superstitions but that they defend and consolidate political and economic privileges.

In primitive society, when the world was not so densely populated as now and social relations were less complicated, if any circumstance prevented the formation of habits and customs of solidarity, or destroyed those which already existed and established the domination of man over man, the two powers, political and economic, were united in the same hands – often in those of a single individual. Those who by force had conquered and impoverished the others, constrained them to become their servants and to perform all things according to their caprice. The victors were at once proprietors, legislators, kings, judges, and executioners.

But with the increase of population, with the growth of needs, with the complication of social relationships, the prolonged continuance of such despotism became impossible. For their own security the rulers, often much against their will, were obliged to depend upon a privileged class, that is, a certain number of co-interested individuals, and were also obliged to let each of these individuals provide for his own sustenance. Nevertheless they reserved to themselves the supreme or ultimate control. In other words, the rulers reserved to themselves the right to exploit all at their own convenience, and so to satisfy their kingly vanity. Thus private wealth was developed under the shadow of the ruling power, for its protection and – often unconsciously – as its accomplice. The class of proprietors arose, and, concentrated little by little into their hands all the means of production, the very fountain of life – agriculture, industry, and exchange – ended by becoming a power in themselves. This power, by the superiority of its means of action and the great mass of interests it embraces, always ends by subjugating more or less openly the political power, that is, the government, which it makes its policeman.

This phenomenon has been repeated often in history. Every time that, by military enterprise, physical brute force has taken the upper hand in society, the conquerors have shown the tendency to concentrate government and property in their own hands. In every case, however, because the government cannot attend to the production of wealth and overlook and direct everything, it finds it necessary to conciliate a powerful class, and private property is again established. With it comes the division of the two sorts of society, and that of the persons who control the collective force of society, and that of the proprietors, upon whom these governors become essentially dependent, because the proprietors command the sources of the said collective force.

Never has this state of affairs been so accentuated as in modern times. The development of production, the immense extension of commerce, the extensive power that money has acquired, and all the economic results flowing from the discovery of America, the invention of machinery, etc., have secured the supremacy to the capitalist class that it is no longer content to trust to the support of the government and has come to wish that the government composed of members from its own class, continually under its control and specially organized to defend it against the possible revenge of the disinherited. Hence the origin of the modern parliamentary system.

Today the government is composed of proprietors, or people of their class so entirely under their influence that the richest do not find it necessary to take an active part themselves. Rothschild, for instance, does not need to be either M.P. or minister, it is enough for him to keep M.P.’s and ministers dependent upon him."


https://www.marxists.org/archive/malatesta/1891/xx/anarchy.htm

[Maraam]

Engels' Origin is pretty much critical, the actual data provided should be tempered slightly with modern research (and that research is pretty much ever changing) but it presents the basic Marxist theory of how class developed.

I haven't read all of this, but I've skimmed through it a while ago and I second Harman's work suggested by G-Dogg


I think this is what you're looking for:

marxists.org/archive/harman/1994/xx/engels.htm

It corrects and updates Engels based on the last 100 years of anthropological research.

I don't know precisely how correct the data is, but this overview in Chapter 2's last section How Class Began is a neat paragraph summary:


Classes arise out of the divisions which occur in society as a new way of advancing production emerges. A group discovers it can increase the total social wealth if it concentrates resources in is own hands, organising others to work under its direction. It comes to see the interests of society as a whole as lying in its own control over resources. It defends that control even when that means making others suffer. It comes to see social advance as embodied in itself and in the protection of its own livelihood against sudden outbreaks of scarcity (due to harvest failure, pests, wars etc) that cause enormous hardship to everybody else.