READ AND DISCUSS:

The history of humankind (Socialism Today, February 2022) ³¹

“A revolution is not, however, a single event, but a process. In the case of the transition from hunter-gatherer to class-based societies, the factors underpinning that transformation accumulated within the old societies over thousands of years. … In Mesopotamia, where class relations are first thought to have arisen, it took as long as 5,000 years before ‘overproduction’ was so large that the first cities could emerge. … But elements of the cooperative, reciprocal way of organising society continued to exist alongside the new stratified, hierarchical relations, and acted as a certain check on them, until the old relations were finally overturned, a process that in some societies was never completed. Even where the transition to class rule did take place, the ruling class often continued to lean on the customs and beliefs of communal societies in order to justify and legitimise its rule. … Initially the tasks and roles carried out by the chiefs, ‘big men’, priests etc. were done in the interests of society as a whole, on the basis of reciprocity and mutual obligations, with no personal gain for themselves. But over time, in some societies, that control eventually enabled them to dispense with these socially expected obligations and responsibilities in order to exploit and coerce the labour of others for their own and not just society’s benefit.

‘Every producer’, writes [the Dutch historian] Lucassen in relation to Mesopotamia, ‘surrenders his surplus and this is then redistributed by the temple among non-farming fellow citizens’. ‘At a certain point the system took on the character of a tax or corvée [forced labour for infrastructure, large-scale agriculture etc.] rather than the redistribution of collective production’. ‘Voluntarism also gave way to coercion’. The ruling elite did not own the means of production (land) which was still considered collective property, but through its control of the surplus became an exploiting class – controlling the labour of the producers and expropriating part of the surplus for themselves, which it was able to use to construct a state apparatus under its own control to aid in that task and maintain its privileges and wealth. … Although production was now organised on the basis of exploitative labour relations, the ruling classes initially played a progressive role in massively expanding production through more intensive agricultural methods, such as large-scale irrigation works, for example. And the non-producing classes had the leisure to further develop culture, science and technique”.

Women and the struggle for socialism (Christine Thomas) ³²

In the ‘Origin of the Family’, Engels argued that the “world historic defeat of the female sex” came about as a result of processes unleashed by revolutionary changes in methods of production. … Although Engels made some mistakes in relation to detail, anthropologists agree that hunter-gatherer societies underwent a radical transformation around 8-10,000 years ago, based on their newly discovered ability to domesticate animals and cultivate crops. … As this economic and social transformation unfolded, it was those tasks undertaken by men – organising production through irrigation and ploughing, trading, administering the surplus, etc. – which lay the basis for both class rule and the systematic oppression of women (although of course not all men formed part of the ruling class). This was a lengthy, complicated and contradictory process, however, as new social forces and structures came into conflict with the old collective and communal ways of organising society. It was as part of this process that individual households came to replace the kinship group as the main economic and social unit, with women becoming economically dependent and under the control and authority of men within the family. … So women’s oppression and class society have not developed as separate structures, but are interlinked, rooted in the same economic and social developments that took place thousands of years ago. Capitalism, the current dominant form of class society, has incorporated some of the social structures and ideology which existed in previous class societies, including the family and the second-class status of women. These have formed an essential part of the state apparatus in order to maintain the capitalists’ economic and social dominance”.

1. Reading about the ‘Neolithic Revolution’,

Explain why the division society into classes arose once “human society was able to consistently produce and store a permanent surplus – food and goods produced over and above what was needed to survive”.

2. Reading from “The History of Humankind”,

(a) Explain how, in relation to the change from classless to class society in places like Mesopotamia, “a revolution is not, however, a single event, but a process”.

(b) Explain why, even though this revolution introduced a division between ‘exploiter’ and ‘exploited’, it also allowed human society to develop the ‘means of production’ more rapidly.

3. Reading from ‘Women and the struggle for socialism’,

Explain why Marxists argue that “women’s oppression and class society have not developed as separate structures, but are interlinked, rooted in the same economic and social developments that took place thousands of years ago”.