Exploitative class society

‘Exploitative class society’ is a term that has been used to refer to the type of society defined by exploitative class relations—that is where a class or a complex of classes exploit the economically inferior classes of society. In Marxist terminology this is often referred to simply as ‘class society’. Historically, this type of social arrangement is referred to as classism.
Cockshott argues that class society evolves into labor classism—i.e. into a society of traditional class exploitation—when food surplus goes into sustaining a crystalised class who engages in no popular physical labor: "A precondition for [popular] class is food surplus, but this is not enough. A food surplus could go to simply extend the division of labor, allowing some people to specialise in non agricultural work: potters or smiths. [But,] a society with farmers, smiths and potters is not, as such a [society of classism], even if the trades become hereditary, since the relationship among the trades is one of equals." What is required for exploitative class formation is "that at least a part of the food surplus go to support a group of people that who no longer engages in physical production." [Cockshott.]