Class of Slaves

The social group bound up with the slave relations of production, oppressed and exploited by the slave-owners, the first exploited class in the history of human society.

Slaves and slavery came into being as a result of the increased productive forces of labor brought about by the first great division of labor in society. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels pointed out that with its increase of the productivity of labor, and therefore of wealth, and its extension of the field of production, the first great social division of labor was bound, in the general historical conditions prevailing, to bring slavery in its train. From the first great social division of labor arose the first great cleavage of society into two classes: masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited. Lenin held that the division into slaveowners and slaves was the first important class division. Those who labored and supplied labor for others were known as slaves, and the slave-owners are the group that not only owned all the means of production but also owned people. In the slave society, slaves had no means of production, not the slightest personal freedom, were absolutely appropriated and dominated by the slave-owners; they had no independent personality and dignity, no rights and freedoms, and were not even treated as human beings; they were objects that could be enslaved, bought and sold, and massacred by the slave-owners at will.

The emergence of the class of slaves is a product of a certain historical stage; it arose on the basis of the emergence of private property and inequality of property at the end of primitive society. In the primitive society, slaves appeared when production reached the first great division of labor, i.e., the separation of agriculture and cattle-raising. With the first great social division of labor, the increase of production in all branches—cattle-raising, agriculture, domestic handicrafts—gave human labor-power the capacity to produce a larger product than was necessary for its maintenance. At the same time, it increased the daily amount of work to be done by each member of the gens, household community or single family. It was now desirable to bring in new labor forces. War provided them; prisoners of war were turned into slaves. From the first great social division of labor arose the first great cleavage of society into two classes: masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited. In the second great social division of labor, i.e., the separation of agriculture and handicraft, slaves have become the main labor-power of agriculture and handicrafts. In short, with the development of the production of material means and the emergence of family private property, the class of slaves has been formed. However, the concrete formation of slaves varied. In world history, people became slaves due to war, crime, bankruptcy, bloodline, and other reasons. While becoming tools of labor, they were also given and traded as valuable goods. Therefore, the main sources of slaves were slaves of prisoners of war and slaves of debt, followed by slaves of crime, and the descendants of slave breeding. As long as they became slaves, they were entirely the private property of the slave-owners, without the slightest personal freedom and without any rights. Engels pointed out that in Asiatic and classical antiquity, the predominant form of class oppression was slavery, that is to say, not so much the expropriation of the masses from the land as the appropriation of their persons. Lenin also held that in the slave society, the slaves were not regarded as human beings—not only were they not regarded as citizens, they were not even regarded as human beings. The class of slaves can be divided into two categories according to their field of labor: production slaves, who are mainly engaged in agriculture, animal husbandry, and handicraft labor; and domestic slaves, who are mainly engaged in the domestic work of the slave-owning family.

In the slave society, slaves were forced by whips and sticks to engage in heavy labor, and all their products belonged to the slave-owners, and they could only get a minimum amount of the means of life to maintain their life. They constituted the vast majority of the population, and were the main labor-power in agriculture and handicrafts, and have created a splendid human civilization. The class of slave was the main creator of the material and spiritual wealth of the slave society, but was subject to the most cruel exploitation and inhuman treatment. Therefore, they were tired of production and destroyed the instruments of production. At the end of the slave society, feudal relations of production arose. Faced with the cruel oppression of slave-owners, slaves continued to resist, flee and riot, class contradictions became increasingly intense, class struggle became increasingly fierce, which fundamentally shook the rule of the class of slave-owners and accelerated the collapse of slavery. With the continuous development of the productive forces of society, slavery was finally replaced by the feudal mode of production, slave society transited to feudal society, and most of the slaves were transformed into peasants or serfs.