As Engels notes, if we look at those examples of the AMP, they remained stagnant for millennia, including in Russia, China, India and Japan, whilst the rest of the world progressed to capitalism. But, a look at the various groups of primitive humans that were still being discovered in the 20th century, in rainforests and elsewhere, shows they had barely changed from the condition where humans separated from the rest of the animal kingdom, with all of the brutality that involves.
“Given the historical antecedents of the ancient world, and particularly of Greece, the advance to a society based on class antagonisms could only be accomplished in the form of slavery. This was an advance even for the slaves; the prisoners of war, from whom the mass of the slaves was recruited, now at least saved their lives, instead of being killed as they had been before, or even roasted, as at a still earlier period.” (p 232)
In fact, this is seen in every such new mode of production that the rise in social productivity it brings results in an overall rise in conditions for society as a whole, alongside the increased exploitation. The peasants that paid rent to feudal landlords were more exploited than were the slaves in the period of slave society. In other words, a greater proportion of what the peasant produced was appropriated by the landlord than that appropriated by the slave owner, of what the slave produced. That is because the low level of productivity of slave society meant most of what the slave produced was required for their own reproduction. Yet, the condition of the peasant is much better than that of the slave.
Similarly, the industrial worker is far more exploited than is the peasant. Whee a peasant may have required half of what they produced to sustain themselves, the other half going in rent, even in Marx's time, he calculated the rate of surplus value as over 1,000%, meaning that the worker was paid only a tenth of what they produced. Yet, the condition of the wage-labourer was far better than that of the peasant.
“So long as the effective working population were so much occupied with their necessary labour that they had no time left for looking after the common affairs of society—the direction of labour, affairs of state, legal matters, art, science, etc.— the concomitant existence of a special class, freed from actual labour, to manage these affairs was always necessary; by this means it never failed to saddle the working masses with a greater and greater burden of labour to its own advantage.” (p 233)
This is the same point made by Marx in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 9 against the moralism of Sismondi et al.
Indeed, the working-class, when it assumes power, will need to “exploit itself”, i.e. raise the rate of surplus value, massively, by raising social productivity, if it is to accumulate the means of production rapidly, so as to raise output significantly, to provide the standards of living for all, required for World Socialism.
“Only the immense increase of the productive forces attained by large-scale industry has made it possible to distribute labour among all members of society without exception, and thus to limit the labour-time of each individual member to such an extent that all have enough free time left to take part in the general affairs of society, whether theoretical or practical. It is only now, therefore, that every ruling and exploiting class has become superfluous and indeed a hindrance to social development, and it is only now, too, that it will be inexorably abolished, however much it may be in possession of “direct force”.” (p 233)
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