Slave-Owning Mode of Production, the first mode of social production in history based on class antagonisms (see Classes, Social) and the exploitation of man by man. The main antagonistic classes under the slave-owning mode of production were slave-owners and slaves. Besides these, there were free peasants, artisans, and merchants. The prerequisites for the advent of slavery were rooted in the development of the productive forces in primitive society: these were the increase of labour productivity to the extent that a surplus product was created, and the consolidation of private ownership of the means of production and material inequality. The slave-owning mode of production came into being when slaves were used in production as the basic productive force, society was divided into the classes of slave-owners and slaves, and state evolved as the organ of slave-owner power. The slave-owning mode of prodrction reached its acme in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Many peoples did not experience this formation and arrived at feudalism directly following primitive communal society. The production relations of the slave-owning system operated through the ownership of the means of production and slaves as the main work force by the slave-owners. Slaves were the property of either one master or a collective master such as the community, temple, or state. They were flagrantly exploited through non-economic coercion. The slave-owners were masters of the lives of slaves and appropriated part of the necessary product as well as the surplus product. The number of slaves was replenished primarily by taking prisoners in war, and partly by impoverished peasants and artisans. The economy was chiefly non-commodity and subsistence, but the developing division of labour and exchange resulted in commodity production. The surplus product of the individual slave was insignificant, but the total amount of surplus product obtained by exploiting huge numbers of slaves whose cost of labour was extremely low was relatively large. The slave-owners were not engaged in productive work and led parasitic lives. Some of them conducted mathematical, astronomical, and other research, whose application helped to some extent expand production. In comparison with the primitive communal mode of production, the slave-owning mode was a progressive step in social development. It ’ensured a measure of progress in the tools of labour; under it, cooperation of labour expanded, productive forces developed, and science and art began to emerge as specific activities. At a later stage the slave-owning system hindered the progress of society. The slaves were not interested in improving the productive forces; their exploitation often failed to ensure even simple reproduction. Slave-owning society was infested with deep antagonistic contradictions which eventually brought about its ruin. The most important of these contradictions was that between slaves and slave-owners, 324 and the ensuing contradictions between large-scale production under slave-owners and the small-scale production under the free peasants and artisans, between the intellectual and manual labour, and between town and country as manifested in the class struggle between slave-owners and slaves, the exploited and exploiters. This struggle shook the slave-owning system. Invasions from the outside facilitated its end. It was replaced by the feudal mode of production.