entary form of the state, Oriental despotism, from India to
Russia. Only where it has been dissolved has the people progressed and
the next economic step lay in the development of production by means
of slave labor. It is evident that as long as human labor was so
little productive that it afforded only a small surplus over the
necessary means of life, the development of the productive forces, the
institution of commerce, the development of the State and of law and
the foundation of art and science were only possible through an
increase in the subdivision of labor. This implied the broad division
between the mass of the workers and the directors of labor, trade,
state, state-business, and later the occupation of a few privileged
persons in art and science. The simplest and most natural form of this
subdivision of labor was slavery. In the conditions of the ancient,
and especially the Greek world, the advance to a society founded on
class distinction could only be for the slaves, the prisoners of war
from whom the majority of slaves were recruited instead of being
murdered as they would have been at an earlier date or instead of
being eaten as they would have been at a stage still earlier.

Here we add that all the historical antitheses of robbers and robbed of
master and subject classes find their explanation in the relatively
undeveloped productivity of human labor. As long as the actual working
people claim that they have no time left at the close of their necessary
labors to attend to the common business of society--the organization of
labor, the business of the government, the administration of justice,
art, science, etc., just so long will distinct classes exist which are
free from actual labor to carry on these functions. Naturally these
classes do not hesitate to lean more and more and more upon the
shoulders of the working class for their own advantage. The development
of the great industry with its enormous increase in the forces of
production for the first time permitted of the subdivision of labor in
all social grades and thus allowed of the reduction of the time
necessary for labor so that enough leisure remains for all to take part
in the actual public business--theoretical as well as practical. So that
now for the first time the dominant and exploiting classes have become
superfluous and even an obstacle to social progress, and so now for the
first time they will be unceremoniously brushed aside in spite of