Long before a new society emerges, the new economic system develops within the old economic system. Farming, which was the basis for Slavery's economic system, developed within Primitive societies.

In early Primitive hunter-gatherer societies, people only worked to provide enough for subsistence. They had plenty of free time. There was no incentive to increase productivity. Later, peoples that develop farming found that they could provide for much larger populations. But they could not then return to hunting and gathering without causing widespread starvation. So farming became the basis of the economy for many Primitive peoples. The emergence of farming created a surplus that a group in society could live off. Society began to split into two: a laboring class that created wealth and an owning class that drove productivity increases. Captives from wars and some impoverished farmers become slaves under the control of this owning class. As slave ownership became the economy's basis, the economy increasingly centralized. After slave owners took control of government and formed slave states, the slave-owning economy matured and the economy continued to centralize.