Institution of property and emergence of social classes

Primitive social groups may not have been conducive to the idea of personalized property. Means of livelihood and instruments for generating livelihood must have been rudimentary (food gathering, hunting, collecting fire woods for cooking, warmth and protection and animal skins for clothing). Given the scarcity of resources, foods and other material items, life could be thought of as communal. According to MacIver, property was nothing but family possession for the sake of the family. Engels, in tracing the emergence of social classes based on property relation, feels that initially there was neither development of labour nor volume of production, as life was of subsistence type (hunt, gather, produce for self-consumption and survive). Subsequently, productivity of labour developed; one produced more than what one could consume. The possibilities of utilizing labour of others and its exchange also emerged. This would have been possible due to increase in the number of members of the social groups and also adoption of more productive instruments, which might have helped in harvesting or food gathering. As such, possession of property and stability of family life might have got precedence resulting in reduced importance of communal subsistence.

For Engels, emergence of property led to emergence of classes and some form of public power (or state power) to support the privilege of the propertied and dominant class. MacIver, however, feels that property meant increasing social dominance of male authority in the family.⁷⁷ Possession of property linked with its inheritance in a patriarchal family gave patriarchal authority a dominant role. This might have led to the emergence of a more powerful authority of the chief. R. G. Gettell also supports the importance of economic factors, property and emergence of social classes in evolution of the state. For him, the economic activities by which men secured food and shelter and later accumulated property and wealth contributed to the need for laws for its protection, arbitration of property disputes, social classes, etc.

Both Engels and MacIver support the view that accumulation of property necessitated some form of centralized authority and regulation. Though for MacIver, this was in the form of power of the chief, for Engels it led to emergence of public power to protect the interests of dominant social class.