Marx examines the category of ownership. Ownership only has meaning where there is not common ownership. If a piece of land is collectively owned, by a clan, then ownership has no meaning, for each member of the clan. It could only have meaning in relation to some other clan. Ownership only has meaning in the context of property, and property involved the development private property, the family and inheritance. It requires laws to uphold the right to inheritance, and so to exclude others from claims to that property. It requires, then, a state to enforce those laws on behalf of the private property owners, against the claims of the non-property owners.
“It would, on the other hand, be correct to say that families and entire tribes exist which have as yet only possessions and not property. The simpler category appears thus as a relation of simple family or tribal communities to property. In societies which have reached a higher stage the category appears as a comparatively simple relation existing in a more advanced community. The concrete substratum underlying the relation of ownership is however always presupposed. One can conceive an individual savage who has possessions; possession in this case, however, is not a legal relation. It is incorrect that in the course of historical development possession gave rise to the family. On the contrary, possession always presupposes this “more concrete legal category.”” (p 207)
As Rousseau says, in a state of nature, each individual might be completely free, and unencumbered by laws that restrict that freedom. But, that implies that there can be no property, only possession. Without laws, there can be no legal right of possession, and so my unrestricted freedom would permit me to deny you of your current possessions, if I can take them from you, and to hold them until dispossessed myself.
If we take another simple category, money, it has existed for nearly as long as commodity production and exchange itself. It has existed under different modes of production, from slave societies through feudalism to capitalism.
“Money may exist and has existed in historical time before capital, banks, wage-labour, etc. came into being. In this respect it can be said, therefore, that the simpler category expresses relations predominating in an immature entity or subordinate relations in a more advanced entity; relations which already existed historically before the entity had developed the aspects expressed in a more concrete category. The procedure of abstract reasoning which advances from the simplest to more complex concepts to that extent conforms to actual historical development.” (p 208)
On the other hand, Marx says, there have been societies such as in Peru, where social devlopment was immature, and which did not use money, but which, nevertheless, used advanced economic forms such as cooperation and a developed division of labour. As with the Asiatic Mode of Production, it is necessary to examine the specific material and historic conditions in these societies to understand why development takes this course.
“In Slavonic communities too, money – and its pre-condition, exchange – is of little or no importance within the individual community, but is used on the borders, where commerce with other communities takes place” (p 208)
In fact, although money develops early on, its role remains very restricted. With the dominance of direct production, that is not surprising.
“Thus the full potential of this quite simple category does not emerge historically in the most advanced phases of society, and it certainly does not penetrate into all economic relations. For example, taxes in kind and deliveries in kind remained the basis of the Roman empire even at the height of its development; indeed a completely evolved monetary system existed in Rome only in the army, and it never permeated the whole complex of labour. Although the simpler category, therefore, may have existed historically before the more concrete category, its complete intensive and extensive development can nevertheless occur in a complex social formation, whereas the more concrete category may have been fully evolved in a more primitive social formation.” (p 208-9)
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