One civilization after another has begun with a predominantly rural economy that has become increasingly urban as it matured.  Food gathering, pastoral life and small scale agriculture were rural.  Trade, commerce, manufacturing and finance, concentrated populations, increased division of labor, specialization, inter-communication and interdependence produced the trade center, the commercial metropolis and the general purpose city.

Herdsmen and land workers, dependent on grass and rainfall, lived close to the subsistence margin and were at the mercy of forces they could not control.  Traders and money changers, with an eye for business in a growing marketplace made a more ample living.  At the same time the more successful among them accumulated capital which they loaned or invested in stocks of goods, shops, warehouses, caravans, ships.  By hiring labor-power they multiplied their own limited physical capacities.  By investing in varied enterprises they assured themselves against possible loss in any one of them.  They also multiplied the possibilities of profit.

Trade, finance and commerce, by producing a regular flow of abundant income, brought into existence a new field of occupations and a new class—­business and the businessmen.  Herdsmen and farmers depended for their livelihood on nature, her niggardliness or generosity.  The businessmen required only the presence of a group large enough to purchase goods and services, pay rent and interest, work for wages and leave the profits to the enterpriser.  Each profit beyond the subsistence level enabled the businessmen to expand, buying more goods, hiring more labor, making still greater profits.

Communities of businessmen pooled their profits, extended their markets, built fleets, enlarged cities.  Through joint action they engaged in plundering expeditions and collected tribute from their victims.  Organized fabrication turned out the goods and services which were marketed for profits.  The resulting wealth enabled the successful businessmen to build houses, stock them with consumer goods and art treasures, hire servants, live sumptuously.  Productivity, wealth, prosperity filled their honey pot to overflowing.

Honey pots provide the “good things” of life for their owners.  They also tempt outsiders.  Honey-pot owners fear pilfering by their servants; fear sponging by their relatives, friends, neighbors; fear robbers and kidnappers; fear migrating hordes on the lookout for plunder.  Defense is a necessary aspect of each rich household, neighborhood, city, nation, empire, civilization.

The sequence from productivity, through prosperity, wealth accumulation, abundance and the measures needed to defend and safeguard the accumulations, leads to an affluent community or society.  It also calls into being new and distinctive class forces.