>>395643Classes are large groups of people that are differentiated by a) their place in the historically determined system of social production b) their relation (in large part defined by law) to the means of production c) their role in the social organization of labour and hence d) from the ways in which they appropriate part of the wealth produced by society and the magnitude of this part.
Humanity was for the largest part of its life as a spiecies NOT fragmented in such a way. This is a historical development whose first traces only appeared about 12000 years ago with the agricultural revolution, whereas the human race existed for approximately 200.000 years.
Thanks to labour, men emerged from the animal world and human society arose. The distinctive feature of human labour is the making of implements of production, which was a slow and arduous proces that took thousands of years. he productive forces of primitive society were on an exceedingly low level, the implements of production were extremely primitive. This necessitated collective labour, social property in the means of production and equal distribution. In the primitive community there was no property inequality or private property in the means of production; there were no classes or exploitation of man by man. Social ownership of the means of production was confined within a narrow framework; it was the property of small communities more or less isolated from one another. In Africa men would easily find their means of subsistance and vibe for the rest of the time, however, tribes that migrated to say Messopotamia, had to develop agriculture, in that way developing also the surplus product, i.e. producing more than what is immediatly required for the subsistence of the tribe.
The basic economic law of the primitive community consists in the securing of man"s vitally necessary means of subsistence with the help of primitive implements of production, on the basis of communal property in the means of production, by means of common labour and the equal distribution of the products.Working together, men for a long time performed uniform labour. The gradual improvement of implements of production promoted the rise of a natural division of labour, depending on sex and age. Further perfecting of the implements of production and the mode of obtaining the means of life, the development of cattle-breeding and. agriculture led to the appearance of the social division of labour and exchange, of private property and property inequality, to the division of society into classes and to the exploitation of man by man. Thus the growing forces of production entered into contradiction with the relations of production, as a. result of which primitive communal society gave way to another type of relations of production-the slave-owning system. The so called natural division of labour, i.e. the differentiation of hunter-gatherers, men bread-winners/women child nutrurers, only came about because humans with reproductive organs realised it was in their intrests to stay back and not risk a miscarriage for they realised a new child would mean extra working hands that would help the whole tribe. Engels in the Origin of the Family notes that the historical defeat of the female genus, the transition to patriarchical societies, is corelated to the historic emergence of class society. Men of nomadic tribes started going on an advanced kind of hunt. Finding other tribes that knew how to develop the land. They realised that they had more intrest, instead of just eating them, in enslaving them and having them work for them. Thus people without reproductive organs became more productive. This coincided with the first social dision of labour, traces of which had started to appear before as the historical and material preconditions for its actual appearance. This is also related to the advent of religion: one member of the tribe was stronger, so they had him lift stuff, the other had a better eye, so they made him a tracker, the elder of the tribe, once agriculture was developed or prior, in leading the tribe, started looking at the sky, noticing the patters in the movement of the stars and the sun, even personafying them. Soon, with the further development of the social division of labour, i.e. the division of mental and manual labour they started having a more managerial role. This led to a detechment of thought from material reality and practice. In that way the historical conditions for the appropriation of the surplus product of the primitive societies has been met: there appeared for the first time such groups of people that one can appropriate the work of the other, thanks to the difference in position it holds within a defined system of the social economy.