p The productive forces inherited from primitive society were further developed in the slave-owning socio-economic formation. The wooden and stone implements were completely superseded at first by bronze and then iron implements. The wooden plough with a metal plough-share and then the iron plough, the metal sickle and other implements increased labour productivity in agriculture. Alongside crop growing the cultivation of fruit and vegetables arose. People built canals, dykes, water-raising devices, etc. to irrigate the land, and mills to mill grain into flour. Ore mining and smelting developed, with people employing the simplest tools such as picks and hammers for mining the ore, crushing mills or mortars for crushing the ore, and primitive furnaces for smelting the metal.

p The division of labour continued. In the crafts various branches emerged: metal smelting and forging, making of 212 weapons, clothing and footwear, weaving, tanning, pottery making, etc. More and more special tools were used by the craftsmen and a primitive lathe and bellows appeared.

p Construction, shipbuilding and weapon-making became widely developed, towns grew up and commerce spread.

p The development of the productive forces in the slaveowning formation was promoted by the corresponding production relations. These relations were based on the slave-owner’s absolute ownership of both the means of production and the slave himself and everything he produced. The owner left the slave only the bare minimum necessary to keep him from dying of starvation.

p Production relations, the economic basis of slave-ownership, gave rise to the social superstructure: the slave-owning state with diverse institutes of coercion (army, court, officialdom, etc.) and the ideology of the slave-owners. This superstructure faithfully served its basis and protected private property and exploitation.

p In the slave-owning society there existed relations of domination and subjection, cruel exploitation by the handful of slave-owners of the mass of slaves who possessed no rights at all. For a time these relations promoted the development of the productive forces, but then their potentialities were exhausted and they became an impediment to the expansion of social production. Production demanded the constant improvement of implements, higher labour productivity, but the slave had no interest in this because it would not improve his position in the least. Moreover, the slave himself—the main productive force—owing to inhuman exploitation was both physically and mentally degraded.

As time went on the contradiction between the productive forces and the production relations in the slave-owning society became extremely acute. This contradiction was manifested in slave revolts. The slaves, ruthlessly exploited and brought to sheer desperation, rose up against their enslavers. These revolts, together with raids from neighbouring tribes, undermined the foundations of the slave-owning system, and on its ruins arose a new, feudal formation.