Does surplus necessarily entail an exploiting ruling class ?

[Charles Brown]

Engels' reasoning seems less than sound here - why isn't it likely 
that the irrational religious beliefs are what keep the community 
together, and make their collectivism possible? Similarly, it's 
likely that the hunter-gatherers, so revered by many, were able to 
live their peaceful collective lives precisely because they didn't 
engage in production on anything but the smallest scale. Pointing to 
these models doesn't really offer much to the present and future, 
unless we all want to become millennarians and/or don skins.

Doug

^^^^^^^

CB: Note the overall consistency of the Engels/Marx schema for world history. The agricultural revolution out of the stone age is the creation of material surpluses, still with us in the surplus value of capitalism. 

Marxism is in part having enough confidence in humans so as to believe it is possible that we can have surpluses without exploiting ruling classes, surpluses without their being privately owned.  Private property is private ownership of surpluses that are socially produced.