ABSTRACT
In previous chapters we have noted, in examining a wide range of ethnographic material, that a simple split between the owners and non-owners of the means of production does not often yield ‘classes’ in the Marxist sense. Yet there is systematic inequality in these societies, whether we regard it as class-based or not. So the question is, how do such inequalities arise, if not from the relations of production? In many cases, they may be generated in the distribution of the products of human labour, through what we may distinguish (from the ‘relations of production’) as ‘relations of appropriation’. Marx regarded relations of appropriation as part of the social relations of production. However, in pre-capitalist systems, this approach may lead us to overlook other, more differentiated relations of appropriation. It may also lead us into dangerous theoretical territory.
