In the middle stage of barbarism we find that the pastoral peoples had in their cattle a form of property which, with sufficiently large herds and flocks regularly provided a surplus over and above their needs; and we also find a division of labour between the pastoral peoples and backward tribes without herds, so that there were two different stages of production side by side, which created the conditions for regular exchange, says Cain Mathema in his book Why the West and its MDC stooges want Zimbabwe’s Defence and Security Forces reformed that The Patriot is serialising. WAR, once waged simply to avenge aggression or as a means of enlarging territory that had become inadequate, was now waged for the sake of plunder alone, and became a regular profession. It was not for nothing that formidable walls were reared around the new fortified towns: Their yawning moats were the graves of the gentile constitution, and their turrets already reached up into civilisation. Internal affairs underwent a similar change. The robber wars increased the power of the supreme military commander as well as of the sub-commanders. The customary election of successors from one family, especially after the introduction of father right, was gradually transformed into hereditary succession, first tolerated, then claimed and finally usurped; the foundation of hereditary royalty and hereditary nobility was laid. In this manner the organs of the gentile constitution were gradually torn from their roots in the people, in gens, phratry and tribe, and the whole gentile order was transformed into its opposite: From an organisation of tribes for the free administration of their own affairs it became an organisation for plundering and oppressing their neighbours; and correspondingly its organs were transformed from instruments of the will of the people into independent organs for ruling and oppressing their own people. This could not have happened had not the greed for wealth divided the members of the gentes into rich and poor; had not ‘property differences in a gens changed the community of interest into antagonism between members of a gens’; and had not the growth of slavery already begun to brand working for a living as slavish and more ignominious than engaging in plunder. This brings us to the threshold of civilisation. This stage is inaugurated by further progress in division of labour. In the lowest stage men produced only for their own direct needs; exchange was confined to sporadic cases when a surplus was accidentally obtained. In the middle stage of barbarism we find that the pastoral peoples had in their cattle a form of property which, with sufficiently large herds and flocks regularly provided a surplus over and above their needs; and we also find a division of labour between the pastoral peoples and backward tribes without herds, so that there were two different stages of production side by side, which created the conditions for regular exchange. The upper stage of barbarism introduced a further division of labour, between agriculture and handicrafts, resulting in the production of a continually increasing portion of commodities, especially for exchange, so that exchange between individual producers reached the point where it became a vital necessity for society. Civilisation strengthened and increased all the established divisions of labour, particularly by intensifying the contrast between town and country (either the town exercising economic supremacy over the country, as in antiquity, or the country over the town, as in the Middle Ages) and added a third division of labour, peculiar to itself and of decisive importance: it created a class that took no part in production, but engaged exclusively in exchanging products – the merchants. All previous inchoative formations of classes were exclusively connected with production; they divided those engaged in production into managers and performers, or into producers on a large scale and producers on a small scale. Here a class appears for the first time which, without taking any part in production, captures the management of production as a whole and economically subjugates the producers to its rule; a class that makes itself the indispensable intermediary between any two producers and exploits them both. On the pretext of saving the producers the trouble and risk of exchange, of finding distant markets for their products, and of thus becoming the most useful class in society, a class of parasites arises, genuine social sycophants, who, as a reward for very insignificant services, skim the cream off production at home and abroad, rapidly amass enormous wealth and corresponding social influence, and for this very reason are destined to reap ever new honours and gain increasing control over production during the period of civilisation, until they at last create a product of their own – periodic commercial crises. At the stage of development we are discussing, the young merchant class had no inkling as yet of the big things that were in store for it, but it took shape and made itself indispensable, and that was sufficient. With it, however, metal money, minted coins, came into use, and with this a new means by which the non-producer could rule the producer and his products. The commodity of commodities, which conceals within itself all other commodities, was discovered; the charm that can transform itself at will into anything desirable and desired. Whoever possessed it ruled the world of production; and who had it above all others? The merchant. In his hands the cult of money was safe. He took care to make it plain that all commodities, and hence all commodity producers, must grovel in the dust before money. He proved in practice that all other forms of wealth were mere semblances compared with this incarnation of wealth as such. Never again has the power of money revealed itself with such primitive crudity and violence as it did in this period of its youth. After the sale of commodities for money came the lending of money, entailing interest and usury. And no legislation of any later period throws the debtor so pitilessly and helplessly at the feet of the usurious creditor as that of ancient Athens and Rome – both sets of law arose spontaneously, as common law, without other than economic compulsion. Engels goes on to say that one other characteristic of civilisation is the turning of land from communal property into private property. He says, “Besides wealth in commodities and slaves, besides money wealth, wealth in the form of land came into being. “The titles of individuals to parcels of land originally assigned to them by the gens or tribe were now so well established that these parcels became their hereditary property. “The thing they had been striving for most just before that time was liberation from the claim of the gentile community to their parcels of land, a claim which became a fetter for them. “They were freed from this fetter – but soon after also from their new landed property. “The full, free ownership of land implied not only possibility of unrestricted and uncurtailed possession, but also possibility of alienating it. “As long as the land belonged to the gens there was no such possibility. But when the new landowner shook off the chains of the paramount title of the gens and tribe, he also tore the bond that had so long tied him inseverably to the soil. “What that meant was made plain to him by the money invented simultaneously with the advent of private property in land. “Land could now become a commodity which could be sold and pledged. Hardly had the private ownership of land been introduced when mortgage was discovered. “Just as hetaerism and prostitution clung to the heels of monogamy so from now on mortgage clung to the ownership of land. “You clamoured for free, full, alienable ownership of land. Well, here you have it – you wanted it!”