Without the level of productivity that comes from the possession of steam engines, or even that created by the technologies of the feudal era, a large part of the available social labour-time of society goes on simply the subsistence and reproduction of society itself. So, only a small proportion of society can escape that requirement to work, and be able to engage in these other activities. As Marx put it,
“... although at first the development of the capacities of the human species takes place at the cost of the majority of human individuals and even classes, in the end it breaks through this contradiction and coincides with the development of the individual; the higher development of individuality is thus only achieved by a historical process during which individuals are sacrificed for the interests of the species in the human kingdom, as in the animal and plant kingdoms, always assert themselves at the cost of the interests of individuals, because these interests of the species coincide only with the interests of certain individuals, and it is this coincidence which constitutes the strength of these privileged individuals.”
It is the available technologies in each age that both determine the level of productivity and also determine the methods of production, and productive and social relations that develop upon them. Without the technologies of modern capitalism, only feudal production or the AMP is possible; without the technology of the feudal era, only slavery is possible.
“... when he asserts that our modern wage bondage can only be explained as a somewhat transformed and mitigated heritage of slavery, and not by its own nature (that is, by the economic laws of modern society), either this means only that both wage-labour and slavery are forms of bondage and class domination, as every child knows, or it is false. For we might as well say that wage-labour can only be explained as a mitigated form of cannibalism, which, it is now universally established, was the primitive form of using defeated enemies.” (p 233-4)
A ruling class, because its power is based upon ownership of property, and the distribution that flows from that is more easily established and maintained than a ruling caste. But, as Engels notes, in both cases, this still relies on the performance of a social function.
“The role played in history by force as contrasted with economic development is therefore clear. Firstly, all political power is organically based on an economic and social function, and increases in proportion as the members of society become transformed into private producers through the dissolution of the primitive community, and thus become more and more alienated from the administrators of the common functions of society.” (p 234)
The slave owners had a social function to perform, in organising slave society, even if, at a certain point, this function became devolved to the slave masters. The feudal landlords had a social function to perform prior to the arrival of the capitalist farmer. And, the private industrial capitalist had a social function to perform prior to the development of socialised capital, and of the professional managers, drawn from the working-class, who take over the role of functioning-capitalist.
In each case, once the social function ends, those that continue to occupy the position of ruling-class, do so only on borrowed time, and by an increasing resort to the use of their control of the state, and, thereby, force, to justify what, now, amounts only to their parasitic existence. Engels also sets out the basis for Bonapartism, but, also, its limitations, as I have described, elsewhere.
“... after the political force has made itself independent as against society, and has transformed itself from its servant into its master, it can work in two different directions. Either it works in the sense and in the direction of the normal economic development. In this case no conflict arises between them, and economic development is accelerated. Or it works against economic development, in which case, with but few exceptions, force succumbs to it.” (p 234)
In other words, the state, even a Bonapartist state, resting upon force, must choose to act in the interests of one form of property or another. In the era of imperialism, it must act in the interests of large-scale, socialised industrial capital, whose dynamic leads it forward to becoming large-scale, socialised means of production, i.e. socialist property. Else, it must seek to resist that development, and to revert to some form of era of free competition, by a myriad of small, independent producers, and autarky. But, this latter is untenable. That rampant competition, once again leads to monopoly, and large-scale capital. In the meantime, the lack of efficiency of the economy itself, simply leads to the subordination of the state to other states. No amount of force, by the state can change that reality, and so the force succumbs to the historical reality of the economic development.
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