Appropriation of the social product and production relations in hunter-gatherer societies

Abstract

In classless societies that are exempt of exploitation, the social relations of production cannot be said to regulate access to the means of production, nor do they serve to divide men up among those various means of production. Even less can these relations be said to take on a collective form in which a non-existent surplus might be appropriated. Indeed, one can only describe these relations a non-exploitative. In societies without exploitation, the social relation of production is one of non-exploitation. Though this statement may appear to be tautological, it is no more so than saying that in societies where exploitation exists the production relation is one of exploitation [1], Beyond their apparent superficiality, these two statements contain two important notions: 1) the production relation is the socially fundamental one that links individuals to each other in production and 2) what is fundamental in a society is the presence or absence of exploitation. That the fundamental social relationships concerning production are exploitative in capitalist societies is amply demonstrated by Marx throughout Capital, this amounts to little more than extorting surplus value and reflects the specific form taken by surplus labor in the capitalist mode of production. What is then to be understood by the non