I understand the general Marxist theory about why class society arose, there was surplus production and that lead to the institution of private property and the rest follows.
All of that makes sense on a high level but what exactly happened on an individual human level? Conceivably those early civilizations could have elected to go for a more equitable and democratic distribution of the surplus value even if the result would probably not be 100% equitable and would result in some poverty due to material constraints at the time. How do you explain the first appearance of private property and class society on an individual level without delving into some evopsych nonsense about evolutionary instincts or whatever?
Yeah this is my question I guess, why exactly did this social leverage appear? Conceivably they all could have collectively chosen not to form social classes but rather distribute what they had more equitably however little that surplus was, why was it absolutely materially necessary for slaves to exist in those times for example? Couldn’t the same labor be performed by free people?
It wasn’t necessarily an intentional process. When one group gained more free time, the division of labor became critical for advancement. With the division of labor came the rise of class society. It was a gradual process, almost like boiling a frog. Some societies did choose to be more equitable to certain degrees, but ultimately the material forces behind historical development compelled the development into social classes.
Yeah I guess “choose” was the wrong word here, I understand this didn’t happen in a planned and intentional manner, what I’m asking is why didn’t they cool the frog rather than boil it, why did so many civilizations drift into hierarchy and class and not the other way around? Conceivably rather than drifting slowly into class society they could have continued nurturing a more egalitarian form of being.
The social relations generally arise from the level of material development. That’s the central point of Marx, at certain levels of productive capacity, certain social formations become more suitable. It’s also where the debates about stageism came from in the Bolshevik/Menshevik understanding. The Mensheviks vulgarized Marx’s conception of historical development, thinking the bourgeois democratic revolution needed to develop before the proletarian revolution could happen.
The abolition of private property cannot happen without developed means of production suitable for the total abolition of private property. In this way, communism rhymes with early communalism, this is the negation of the negation.