Economic Discontent in Medieval Western Europe

Extract

When a given population is able to produce more goods and more services than are required for its subsistence, the concentration of an economic surplus becomes possible. Such concentration has always involved the formation of a class structure. Part of the population performs the physical labor of economic production; it becomes the working class. Other segments of the population performing services other than physical labor receive portions of the economic surplus. They become the possessing and, usually, the ruling classes.