In his “Preliminary Remarks,” Mill describes the earliest state of human society as one of profound scarcity. This was the “state of greatest poverty,” in which communities subsisted on what nature offered spontaneously: wild animals, fish, and vegetation. Life in this era was defined by a distinct and precarious set of economic realities.

• No Accumulated Wealth: The food they gathered could not be easily stored. Without the ability to save surplus resources, there was no concept of accumulated wealth or capital. Life was lived hand-to-mouth.
• Constant Privation: This inability to store food meant that tribes were “often exposed to great privations.” Survival was a constant struggle against the whims of nature, with hardship and famine as frequent companions.
• Shared Necessities: In this state of extreme poverty, with no one possessing much more than the essentials, what little existed in times of deficiency was shared among the tribe for collective survival.

Even in this simple state, the foundational requirement of production was clear: Labour. As Mill explains, labour was required not to create resources, but to find and appropriate them—the exertion of hunting an animal, catching a fish, or gathering fruit was the first essential economic act. Humanity could only escape this cycle of immediate consumption by gaining control over its food supply—an innovation that would create not just surplus, but the very concepts of wealth, inequality, and leisure.