How class happens

Class is a unique phenomenon in world history. Like we could look at it as almost like a hoodoo that has been cast on humanity because it's been absolutely impossible to get rid of it. What we've seen in world history since the invention of class 10,000 years ago, is that it has become more and more dominant until the present time. So, this podcast asks, how does this happen? And what makes this social machine work? And why it's so hard to undo class society. And what kind of spanner in the works will actually make class society go away.

Transcript

Ch 21. How Class Happens 
Terry Leahy 2025

In this chapter I want to propose a more adequate explanation of how class society came about and became such a successful invention. I will outline six key ingredients which enable class society. In doing this, the chapter points to some of the key mechanisms of any class society. We can also see why class society has been so difficult to undo. When we look at class like this, we find that the mechanisms that sustain class are quite simple. But people very rarely talk about them as I will here. So here is a summary.

• Agriculture - a store-able surplus

• Ceremonies and shamans

• The invention of an army – voluntary contribution becomes tribute

• Irrigation traps the people

• States expand and take more territory

• The psychological requirements 

While this theory is a little bit speculative, it fits the evidence better than the theories that I was talking about in the last chapter. 

Agriculture - a store-able surplus

Class societies depend upon agriculture. People must be able to produce more than they can eat and store it for transport and later distribution. Agriculture, and especially a system based on cereals as staple crops, provides that potential. Class societies depend on the ruling class extracting that surplus from the subordinate class and using it to pay their retainers. Their armies and craft workers. 

Ceremonies and shamans

The second key ingredient is the institution of ceremonies and their shamans. Class societies were invented by making a slight variation in a pattern of social life that was quite common in classless societies. A social ‘institution’, as sociologists would say. This institution was a regular large ceremony, drawing people to a central place for a celebration. A harvest or cosmic event. Like an equinox. These ceremonies were organized by influential religious leaders. In the context of classless societies, it is best to think of them as shamans rather than priests. They were not like a ruling class, that could tell people what to do — and command a tribute, backed up by armed force. They were esteemed and influential, but nothing more than that. We can suppose that to make these ceremonies spectacular, shamans encouraged their followers to provide gifts for the occasion. Beer, livestock, grains, labour commitments.

My belief is that class societies arose out of cults of this type. The first site of the invention of a class society, wherever that took place, was an event like that. For example, at a place like the stone monuments at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. Here there are standing stone pillars in the shape of a ‘T’. They are up to fifteen feet high. Carved in relief on the columns are animals, both real and mythical. All of this is completely stone age technology. Archaeological findings indicate that people used to live dispersed in the countryside and come to Gobekli Tepe for ceremonies at a particular time of the year, when an abundant harvest of wild grains was possible. They used these grains to brew beer for the ceremonial celebration. As pointed out in the last chapter, celebrations of this kind are quite typical in classless societies. What makes this one notable is a monumentalism that is rare in classless societies. 

The invention of an army – voluntary contribution becomes tribute

What took place at the points of origin of class societies was a variation on this common social institution. That variation was the invention of an army. The shamans became priests. They made use of people’s voluntary contributions to pay an armed force of retainers. Doing this they turned voluntary contribution into tribute. So, some shamans invented a way of consolidating their negotiable position of influence into a power to command obedience. This is the key invention at the start of class society.

This leads to an obvious question. What on earth might have motivated these shamans to make this change? What might have induced the people who formed their army to take up their offer? As I have claimed in the previous chapter, it seems unlikely that the original ruling class were motivated by a desire to secure their food supply. Food supplies were abundant in stateless societies. It seems most likely that these shamans, and their armies, were motivated by the psychology of patriarchal masculinity. The desire to establish masculine status by defeating and controlling other men. They invented a way of consolidating a temporary position of prestige, status and influence. Turning that into a dominance that could not be challenged. Their armies had a similar motivation. To be those who would always win competitive struggles with men outside of their class. To become specialists in violence. 

Irrigation traps the people

At the time that these developments took place, there was an obvious solution for ordinary people who are becoming discontented with the way things are working out. The solution is exit. Just go somewhere else where there are not too many people and start farming in that place. In fact, exit of this kind turns out to have been a common means of resolving intractable disputes in stateless societies. Given the low density of population, a lot of land was available that was not being used. 

This is where irrigation comes in. Michael Mann, a historian, observes that all the areas where class societies first got established were irrigated agriculture sites. The Middle East. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Egypt. The Nile River. China. The Yellow River Valley. Harappan civilisation. The Indus valley. The Aztec civilisation. The edge of a lake. They created gardens by digging the silt out of the lake and piling it up on artificial islands. The Inca civilisation depended on irrigation and terrace agriculture. The Mayans sourced water from cenotes, deep holes in the limestone underneath the forest. In all these cases, the agricultural technology allowed a huge increase in productivity compared to the same site before irrigation. Along with that an increase in population density. 

As Mann points out, the effect of this irrigation agriculture is to trap the population. Once a ruling class gets a foothold, it is hard to escape their rule by just leaving and setting up farming somewhere else. The surrounding landscape is a desert. Not a place that can accommodate the vast bulk of a population fleeing ruling class control. So, in the first place, irrigation is a technology developed by stateless egalitarian villages. Donations for ceremonies become tribute. The shamans become priests. They supply an army of retainers with the tribute received from the population. Then there is no escape. 

Michael Mann backs up this account by citing examples of societies, without irrigation agriculture that came close to establishing a state. Yet, they ended up by disappearing from the archaeological record — supplanted by a return to more distributed systems of social organisation. For example, the massive social organisation required to establish Stonehenge did not lead on to the setting up of a state with a ruling class. 

States expand and take more territory

What took place following these first steps was state expansion and the consolidation of state-based class societies in whole regions of the world. It is always in the interest of a ruling class to expand their area of control. Doing that they can extract more surplus from a new peasant class. They can use that surplus to control a larger army. They need to be able to defeat rivals from their own society. To put down any rebellions from below. To defend the state against attacks from stateless people or attacks from rival states. It seems likely that the first states sparked off imitations in other nearby societies. The power and prestige of the state attracted leaders to copy their technologies of social organisation. The effect was to create rival states and further entrench the expansionist tendencies of states seeking to hang on to their power. The first irrigation states became anchor points for a process of state consolidation that went beyond the irrigated heartland. 

What made these class societies so effective in taking over more land and extending their imperium into areas that were previously stateless? One factor is population density. Stateless societies spread out into the landscape, ensuring adequate food supply in any climatic event. By contrast, early class societies had a dense population. Meaning they could recruit a small portion of their population as their army and send that out to conquer the dispersed people of neighbouring stateless societies. They could achieve an overwhelming weight of numbers in military conflicts with stateless people. The second factor is that the armed forces of a class-based society are paid professionals who do nothing else with their lives. They become military specialists while the people they are fighting are part time warriors and full-time farmers. The third factor is that the surplus extracted from the peasants is used to provide craft workers who produce the best possible weapons. More effective than the weapons of the classless societies they are fighting. 

Finally, we may look at these wars from the perspective of motivation. The aim of the ruling class in a class-based society is to take over and control more territory. There is nothing romantic about warfare as far as they are concerned. Their aim is just to expand their dominion. Even if they do things in the most cowardly way possible, they are happy so long as their army is effective. Stateless societies operate a completely different kind of warfare from that. Their traditional warfare is a means of competing for prestige. The fearless warrior who engages in individual combat and brings back a scalp or a severed head. This is the man who achieves prestige in the village. The more risky the action the better. The aim of the state’s army is to ensure that they have the highest possible chance of winning the battle. By using superior armaments which reduce risk. By cooperative strategies that mean that no individual soldier is responsible for a victory. These dynamics can be seen operating in the conflicts between the Romans and the Gauls. Later the Romans and the Britons. The Romans relied on an impenetrable phalanx of shields and on engineering constructions. They favoured set piece battles in which this kind of army could easily win. The Gauls favoured individual heroism and would attack the Roman army phalanx as a display of courage. They were lightly armoured compared to the legions. A guerilla strategy of picking off Roman soldiers as they travelled from one place to another would have been more effective. As the revolt of Arminius demonstrated. 

Broadly speaking these are the reasons why class societies have become more and more dominant in the globe in the course of history — from small beginnings in 5000 BC to the present time.

The psychological requirements 

The final factor I want to talk about as a necessity for class society is the psychological requirements for state formation. Something that I have already discussed in some depth in part B of Riddles of History. Some of these requirements were present in stateless societies and some were unique to class-based societies.

Two of these requirements are based in the patriarchy that is already present in stateless societies. I will treat these very briefly here. 

1. The family (or extended kin group) provides a model of hierarchy. Fathers have more power in the family. They avoid the more boring work, and the chores associated with childcare. This psychological model becomes the psychological model for the state taken as a whole. The ruling class presents itself as a stern, but loving father. The story of God telling Abraham to sacrifice his son comes to mind. This metaphor is quite apparent in some instances. Hitler as the father of the German people. In other cases, it is more implicit. It operates at every level of the state hierarchy. The local mayor is the father of the town. The owner of the company is the father of the company. This psychological model of subordination and deference is operationalized throughout the whole of society. It leads to a chain of command. At the top of every little pyramid, there is a small king who in turn defers to a king higher up in the next layer of the pyramid.

2. The second psychological requirement also comes out of patriarchy and is present already in stateless societies. This is the struggle between men to establish adult masculinity. Men as fathers are somewhat distant and remote figures in the early life of boys growing up. That work of early childcare is mostly handled by women. With the effect that the boy does not grow up with intimate everyday experience of adult masculinity. With experience of adult men in nurturing roles. Instead, what they have is remote figures. Their task is to become men. They are insecure, having no daily experience of what that might mean. They are urged to come to adulthood by dropping their identification with women. By shunning the qualities associated with the women who cared for them as infants. The empathy and attention to the needs of other people. They come to believe that one way to establish masculinity is to compete with and hopefully to defeat other men. To control women and children. To dominate rather than empathize. This psychological mechanism is a feature of masculine character in patriarchies. In class societies it is channelled to the maintenance of the class system. The ruling class treats the other two classes as enemies to be controlled and kept in their place. The army treats the subordinate class in the same way. The state has the same competitive vision when it comes to other states or to tribal people. 

3. The last thing I will discuss as a psychological requirement of class society is a type of punishing upbringing that I suspect is typical of class societies. This analysis owes much to some authors who have looked at the child raising practiced by stateless societies. One is Annette Hamilton, an anthropologist looking at the Anbarra of Northern Australia in the book Nature and Nurture. A somewhat less academic treatment of the same issues comes from Jean Liedloff’s The Continuum Concept, considering child raising in Amazonian society. I find these analyses confirmed by those with a background working in Pacifica communities in Australia. Also, through documentary treatments of Indigenous people in Alaska. These series follow Native American families in detail over many seasons of filming. It is hard to ignore the way in which the parents handle child raising. Everything about it is identical to what Hamilton describes for the Anbarra. Let us concentrate on Hamilton’s account and theorisation as the most worked out source on this. 

What Hamilton found with the Anbarra was a kind of child raising practice that you might characterise as ‘indulgent’, though that term has implications that do not apply. The expectation of the community was that children would on their own initiative develop a generous sociability. There was no need to ‘correct’ their behaviour to achieve this outcome. Various practices are the opposite of what was going on in Anglo-Celtic Australia at the same time. People close by would immediately pick up a crying infant and give it the breast. Usually, the mother but also other people. This would happen even if there was no milk, or the child had just been fed. Infants are usually carried about by someone or on someone’s lap. If a child wanted some item of food, they would instantly receive it. If there were several children who wanted the same toy, the older children would without hesitation hand the toy to the younger child. Groups of children, including boys, would play together cooperatively without competitive games that might upset some child. Adults never hit children or shouted at them. If an adult wanted a child to do something, they would just say what they wanted. If the child did not carry out the action as requested there were no repercussions. No punishments for disobedience. It was assumed that the child had a right to autonomy. Although the mother was usually with their infant child, other people would also provide a lot of childcare. Older children, adult relatives and friends. People placed an emphasis on explaining to a child how various people they encountered were related to them as kin. Children were not stopped from doing things that might be dangerous. Going to close to the fire, using a knife. They are expected to know how to be careful. The way in which this kind of child raising is not indulgent is like this. Children are not expected to be a nuisance. They are expected to be helpful and to want to be helpful. They feel ashamed if their behaviour is annoying an adult. Far from this kind of socialisation encouraging infants to cry, it is very rare for them to cry in the Anbarra communities. Tantrums are also very rare.

These experiences led Hamilton to think about typical Western child raising. By contrast to the Anbarra, it seems very stern and puritanical. Until recently, Western experts believed that you had to hit children to train them to obedience. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’. The basic premise of this viewpoint is still a popular view. For example, the idea that picking up a crying child just encourages them to cry more often. That such behaviour would be positive enforcement. Indeed, scheduled feeding at four-hour intervals has been the recommended practice. It is frowned upon to give a child a dummy as a substitute for the breast. There is an urgency in training children to pass milestones of child development. Giving up the breast. Toilet training. Learning to walk. Parents feel ashamed if their child is delayed and express their frustration in angry interactions. Children do not generally sleep with their parents but in a separate room and cot. It has been common in Australian hospitals until recently to separate the mother and child, after birth. To allow the mother to rest. It is rare for anyone other than the mother to have a close physical relationship with a child, except on special occasions. The isolation of the nuclear family precludes this sort of interaction. It is expected that children will avoid housework or any other useful task. Unless commanded with sanctions.
 
Hamilton’s experience of the Anbarra led her to conclude that common Western practices of child raising are very harsh. They combine to create a personality type in adulthood that is insecure. People do not expect other people to meet their needs. They compete and hoard to be sure of having enough. These psychological patterns fit with the economic structures of current capitalism. They train people to operate its economic systems. They make generosity and kindness seem an unlikely altruism, a departure from our sinful nature. My sense is that other class societies have operated in a similar fashion. The stern punishing father of Roman literature. The history of the Spartans and their training for boys. By contrast, the child raising patterns of stateless societies create adults who expect the other members of their communities to look after them. These expectations fit with an economy premised on gift exchanges and allocation according to needs. As Sahlins points out, people whose fields do not produce enough food do not go hungry. Other people who have had more success, or worked harder, will provide them with what they need. 

These experiences of early childhood in stateless societies work against the impact of the patriarchal socialisation of boys. The first is creating a layer of generosity and security while the latter is creating competitive insecurity. My view is that both these are present where men in classless societies are concerned. A key moment is an initiation that decisively separates boys from the world of women. In class societies, a punishing experience of early childhood joins the traumas of ‘becoming a man’. Leading to the cruelty and nasty competition that is so rampant in class societies. 

All three of these psychological arrangements may be seen as necessary requirements for class society to function. We can take it that the third, the pattern of punishing socialisation, comes about as class society is formed, and not before. 

Uruk in Sumer

Warka is the current name of the site in modern Iraq where Uruk was established. Uruk in Sumer was in fact the first city in the world. The original class society. Dating back to 5,000 BC. By 4,000 BC there was a population of 40,000 that later expanded to 80,000. The site of this city was the southern reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq. Part of the region archaeologists have called Mesopotamia. The history of Uruk can serve as a useful example for the theories of class formation explained in this chapter. 

The city was established as part of the Sumerian cultural area of Southern Mesopotamia. This is an area within the ‘fertile crescent’ where the first invention of agriculture took place. The agricultural revolution started in 10,000 BC. But as I have been arguing, early developments did not produce a class society with a state and cities. 

The region of Mesopotamia at that time was a rich site for hunting and gathering. It has a variety of types of soils and climate zones. With agriculture it was possible to domesticate wheat, barley, lentils, peas and flax. Wild animals that were domesticated first were sheep, goats, cows and pigs. Later, in the urban period, donkeys. The hunting and gathering groups in this region started to settle down and establish villages, living permanently from this wild abundance. The oldest large settlements, such as Jericho in 9,000 BC were stateless hunting and gathering communities. They remained large villages with an egalitarian political system probably including chiefs. 

The first developments that led to Uruk being founded took place 24 kilometres south of the site of that city. Rising sea levels meant that the Persian Gulf intruded inland to sites that are 200 kilometres north of the coastline today. This estuarine environment was a prime site for occupation with many wild sources of food. The marshlands hosted fish, shellfish and water birds. Beyond these marshes there was a flood plain, ideal for growing cereals. Out further were semi-arid areas where you could herd flocks of livestock. 

From 5,000 to 4,000 this rich abundance and a mixed system of hunting and gathering with agriculture led to very dense population and numerous village settlements. A religious centre for these villages was Eridu, a large town with a shrine constructed for the god, Enki. The shrine was on an island. Contributions to ceremonies included fish, shells and wild animals. I am taking it that this site represented a centre for a stateless village society to gather at regular festivals, making voluntary contributions to a priesthood running the temple. The site was seen as the place where the world came into being, between water and land. Enki was believed to live in an aquifer from which all life had come. Eridu was one of several such settlements with temples in this southern Sumerian area of Mesopotamia. While it is a large town, Eridu never becomes a city.

North of Eridu, the city of Uruk is established. In the mythology, the god Enki refuses to share the gifts of civilisation. The goddess Innana gets Enki drunk on beer and steals the secrets, taking this knowledge to her temple in Uruk. In Uruk, there are two temples established which are built and re-built to be ever more magnificient. One to Innana and one to the sky god Anu. In a symbolic indication that gifts have become tribute, the temples at Uruk include cylinder seals that nominate contributions and offerings. Gifts of goods as well as labour contributions. Recording and validating the extraction of the surplus. Other objects found with these temples are small clay balls. Inside each is a clay token representing a valuable or useful item — like a clay pot or a roll of cloth. These tokens represent contracts to supply some marketable commodity. When the contract is fulfilled the clay ball is smashed to represent the conclusion of the deal. Indicating that the priesthood has become a ruling class with the power to enforce order and maintain market contracts. 

At the earliest stage of the city, between 5,000 and 4,000 it grows to a population of 40,000. The biggest settlement in the world at that time. However, after 4,000 BC the sea is starting to retreat from southern Mesopotamia. The marshes dry up. The system of agriculture based on this rich wild abundance is no longer viable. What happens is the opposite of what you might expect. There is a huge expansion of Uruk, based on irrigation technologies that have already been tried out in the villages. By 3,000 the population has climbed to 80,000 and areas adjoining Uruk have lost population. In my analysis, this is the period of entrapment and the consolidation of class society.

For the first time in the world, the people of Uruk adapt their pictograms and create a system of writing using wedge shaped marks pressed into the clay. They invent the domestication of donkeys to enable the long-distance transportation of goods. An aspect of the control and distribution of the surplus product. With this the wheel, to enable carts to haul loads. All of this means that Uruk can acquire surplus from the hinterland and from northern Mesopotamia, as well as from their own agricultural production close to home. Sailing boats are another invention with a similar use. These bring in wood and metals from far away. They invent the potter’s wheel, a tool that enables the rapid production of ceramics for sale.

By 3,000 BC Uruk is a great city. There are two towering temples, gleaming in white plaster. A complex network of canals, irrigation and agriculture. Dense urban districts. 

Along with all of this, there is clear evidence of a stratified society, with a system of slavery propping up the extraction of the surplus. The cylinder seals and the writings name slaves as well as other commodities. Second only to entries referring to barley are entries referring to female slaves. Uruk developed a massive industry producing textiles and these female slaves were central to that. The categories used to nominate livestock in these accounts are the same as the categories used to describe the slaves in the accounts. For example, age, sex. Meaning that human slaves are regarded as a kind of domestic animal. Friezes show captured people in chains supervised by soldiers with weapons. 

In a development which I have characterised as typical of class societies, Uruk expands and becomes an empire, reaching into Northern Mesopotamia. There is evidence of three kinds of Uruk imperialism in the North of the Tigris Euphrates system. Colonization into areas of sparse settlement with Sumerians. Sumerian conquest of Indigenous settlement areas. Here there is a whole change in archaeological strata, with an earlier Indigenous period completely supplanted by Sumerian cultural items. Finally, trading outposts within areas still under the control of their original inhabitants. These go right into Syria and Anatolia. 

Also, in another development typical of the formation of class societies, there is an imitation of Uruk’s social technologies in new cities getting established in Northern Iraq. Ultimately, these become rival centres of power.  By 2,300 BC Sargon, the ruler of Akkad, conquers Uruk. He destroys the city walls and the temple. Establishing a new imperium joining northern Mesopotamia and most of southern Mesopotamia.

Clearly, some of this discussion is speculative. In this sense. There are various archaeological facts. Such as dates, or what is pictured on cylinder seals. What I have done with this is to insert my sociological take on how class society is formed. To make a deeper analysis of these archaeological facts. For example, the archaeology suggests that the temple to Eridu was sustained by voluntary contributions to a priesthood that had no coercive power. But the archaeology cannot establish this one way or another. So, this is a theory of the formation of class that fits with the archaeology, not just here but in other parts of the world. But it is not a theory ‘proven’ by the archaeological record. 

Conclusions

There are a number of issues raised by this chapter. The main claim of most commentators on the origin of cities and class society is the functionalist argument. In one way or another, class and the state functioned to enable people to manage society for the good of all players. 

A key counter argument has focussed on the inadequacy of these ideas in explaining the origins of class society and its persistence over millennia. For example, let us assume that it might be true that only a stratified society can handle random violence, or large populations, or make great works of art, or organize irrigation. That would not really explain why class happened in the first place. That is because the obvious downsides to class society make it a much less attractive option despite these (putative) benefits. Who wants to starve in a famine every seven years? And so on. Even if some random accident of history set up a class society, surely people would have abandoned it when the disadvantages became apparent. 

The other thing that I have looked at is whether these putative benefits are real. Let us say that the main issue might be the organisation of large-scale social cooperation by class society. I have pointed to examples of large-scale organisation in classless societies. Like the mounds constructed by the mound builders of the Mississippi. I am also questioning whether humanity needs large scale organisation to live well. As argued, a class society may well achieve large scale organisation, but people do not live well. Classless societies do better at that. Ideally, we might want to create a society that combined the benefits of classless societies with the achievements of class societies. With none of the disadvantages of either. 

But my main point at the end of this chapter would be to question whether we have any way of knowing whether an egalitarian organisation of society could achieve (very) large scale projects. We can see how agriculture and irrigation in favourable sites enabled dense centres of population and extensive networks of exchange. But clearly, the minute this large-scale organisation of society became possible, these developments were captured by ruling classes. We can think of it as a kind of cancer, opportunistically growing on developments that might have led to quite different outcomes. I have explained why developments like this have been likely. That is a combination of cereal agriculture, irrigation works and toxic masculinity, to name the most central explanation of why class happened. Leading on to this form of sociality taking over the hinterland and blocking any more positive developments for thousands of years. 

How to get out of this desperate conundrum is the topic of my other book on these issues. ‘System Change for a Liveable Future’ takes up this quest with a more detailed look at how capitalism, imperialism and patriarchy function now. Also, how we might get beyond class society to deal with the environmental collapse that it has engendered. There have been many rebellions against class society but in the long run none of them have stopped it in its tracks. Class society has always come back in some new form and taken up where it left off. What kind of spanner in the works could actually banish class society?