THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE STATE
BY
FREDERICK ENGELS
_TRANSLATED BY ERNEST UNTERMANN_
[Illustration: Logo]
CHICAGO
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
1908
COPYRIGHT, 1902
BY CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Page.
Translator's Preface 5
Author's Prefaces 9-12
Prehistoric Stages 27
The Family 35
The Iroquois Gens 102
The Grecian Gens 120
Origin of the Attic State 131
Gens and State in Rome 145
The Gens Among Celts and Germans 158
The Rise of the State Among Germans 176
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
"An eternal being created human society as it is to-day, and submission
to 'superiors' and 'authority' is imposed on the 'lower' classes by
divine will." This suggestion, coming from pulpit, platform and press,
has hypnotized the minds of men and proves to be one of the strongest
pillars of exploitation. Scientific investigation has revealed long ago
that human society is not cast in a stereotyped mould. As organic life
on earth assumes different shapes, the result of a succession of
chemical changes, so the group life of human beings develops different
social institutions as a result of increasing control over environment,
especially of production of food, clothing and shelter. Such is the
message which the works of men like Bachofen, Morgan, Marx, Darwin, and
others, brought to the human race. But this message never reached the
great mass of humanity. In the United States the names of these men are
practically unknown. Their books are either out of print, as is the case
with the fundamental works of Morgan, or they are not translated into
English. Only a few of them are accessible to a few individuals on the
dusty shelves of some public libraries. Their message is dangerous to
the existing order, and it will not do to give it publicity at a time
when further intellectual progress of large bodies of men means the doom
of the ruling class. The capitalist system has progressed so far, that
all farther progress must bring danger to it and to those who are
supreme through it.
But the forces, which have brought about the present social order,
continue their work regardless of the wishes of a few exploiters. A
comprehensive work summarizing our present knowledge of the development
of social institutions is, therefore, a timely contribution to socialist
propaganda. In order to meet the requirements of socialists, such a
summary must be written by a socialist. All the scientists who devoted
themselves to the study of primeval society belonged to the privileged
classes, and even the most radical of them, Lewis Morgan, was prevented
by his environment from pointing out the one fact, the recognition of
which distinguishes the socialist position from all others--THE
EXISTENCE OF A CLASS STRUGGLE.
The strongest allusion to this fact is found in the following passage of
"Ancient Society": "Property and office were the foundations upon which
aristocracy planted itself. Whether this principle shall live or die has
been one of the great problems with which modern society has been
engaged.... As a question between equal rights and unequal rights,
between equal laws and unequal laws, between the rights of wealth, of
rank and of official position, and the power of justice and
intelligence, there can be little doubt of the ultimate result" (page
551).
Yet Morgan held that "several thousand years have passed away without
the overthrow of the privileged classes, excepting in the United
States." But in the days of the trusts, of government by injunction, of
sets of 400 with all the arrogance and exclusiveness of European
nobility, of aristocratic branches of the Daughters of the Revolution,
and other gifts of capitalist development, the modern American
workingman will hardly share Morgan's optimistic view that there are no
privileged classes in the United States. It must be admitted, however,
that to this day Morgan's work is the most fundamental and exhaustive
of any written on the subject of ancient social development.
Westermarck's "History of Human Marriage" treats the question mainly
from the standpoint of Ethnology and Natural History. As a scientific
treatise it is entirely inadequate, being simply a compilation of data
from all parts of the world, arranged without the understanding of
gentile organizations or of the materialistic conception of history, and
used for wild speculations. Kovalevsky's argument turns on the
proposition that the patriarchal household is a typical stage of
society, intermediate between the matriarchal and monogamic family.
None of these men could discuss the matter from the proletarian point of
view. For in order to do this, it is necessary to descend from the hills
of class assumption into the valley of proletarian class-consciousness.
This consciousness and the socialist mind are born together. The key to
the philosophy of capitalism is the philosophy of socialism. With the
rays of this searchlight, Engels exposed the pious "deceivers," property
and the state, and their "lofty" ideal, covetousness. And the monogamic
family, so far from being a divinely instituted "union of souls," is
seen to be the product of a series of material and, in the last
analysis, of the most sordid motives. But the ethics of property are
worthy of a system of production that, in its final stage, shuts the
overwhelming mass of longing humanity out from the happiness of home and
family life, from all evolution to a higher individuality, and even
drives progress back and forces millions of human beings into
irrevocable degeneration.
The desire for a higher life cannot awake in a man, until he is
thoroughly convinced that his present life is ugly, low, and capable of
improvement by himself. The present little volume is especially adapted
to assist the exploited of both sexes in recognizing the actual causes
which brought about their present condition. By opening the eyes of the
deluded throng and reducing the vaporings of their ignorant or selfish
would-be leaders in politics and education to sober reality, it will
show the way out of the darkness and mazes of slavish traditions into
the light and freedom of a fuller life on earth.
These are the reasons for introducing this little volume to English
speaking readers. Without any further apology, we leave them to its
perusal and to their own conclusions.
ERNEST UNTERMANN.
Chicago, August, 1902.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION, 1884.
The following chapters are, in a certain sense, executing a bequest. It
was no less a man than Karl Marx who had reserved to himself the
privilege of displaying the results of Morgan's investigations in
connection with his own materialistic conception of history--which I
might call ours within certain limits. He wished thus to elucidate the
full meaning of this conception. For in America, Morgan had, in a
manner, discovered anew the materialistic conception of history,
originated by Marx forty years ago. In comparing barbarism and
civilization, he had arrived, in the main, at the same results as Marx.
And just as "Capital" was zealously plagiarized and persistently passed
over in silence by the professional economists in Germany, so Morgan's
"Ancient Society"[1] was treated by the spokesmen of "prehistoric"
science in England.
My work can offer only a meager substitute for that which my departed
friend was not destined to accomplish. But in his copious extracts from
Morgan, I have critical notes which I herewith reproduce as fully as
feasible.
According to the materialistic conception, the decisive element of
history is pre-eminently the production and reproduction of life and its
material requirements. This implies, on the one hand, the production of
the means of existence (food, clothing, shelter and the necessary
tools); on the other hand, the generation of children, the propagation
of the species. The social institutions, under which the people of a
certain historical period and of a certain country are living, are
dependent on these two forms of production; partly on the development of
labor, partly on that of the family. The less labor is developed, and
the less abundant the quantity of its production and, therefore, the
wealth of society, the more society is seen to be under the domination
of sexual ties. However, under this formation based on sexual ties, the
productivity of labor is developed more and more. At the same time,
private property and exchange, distinctions of wealth, exploitation of
the labor power of others and, by this agency, the foundation of class
antagonism, are formed. These new elements of society strive in the
course of time to adapt the old state of society to the new conditions,
until the impossibility of harmonizing these two at last leads to a
complete revolution. The old form of society founded on sexual relations
is abolished in the clash with the recently developed social classes. A
new society steps into being, crystallized into the state. The units of
the latter are no longer sexual, but local groups; a society in which
family relations are entirely subordinated to property relations,
thereby freely developing those class antagonisms and class struggles
that make up the contents of all written history up to the present time.
Morgan deserves great credit for rediscovering and re-establishing in
its main outlines this foundation of our written history, and of finding
in the sexual organizations of the North American Indians the key that
opens all the unfathomable riddles of most ancient Greek, Roman and
German history. His book is not the work of a short day. For more than
forty years he grappled with the subject, until he mastered it fully.
Therefore his work is one of the few epochal publications of our time.
In the following demonstrations, the reader will, on the whole, easily
distinguish what originated with Morgan and what was added by myself. In
the historical sections on Greece and Rome, I have not limited myself to
Morgan's material, but have added as much as I could supply. The
sections on Celts and Germans essentially belong to me. Morgan had only
sources of minor quality at his disposal, and for German
conditions--aside from Tacitus--only the worthless, unbridled
falsifications of Freeman. The economic deductions, sufficient for
Morgan's purpose, but wholly inadequate for mine, were treated anew by
myself. And lastly I am, of course, responsible for all final
conclusions, unless Morgan is expressly quoted.
FREDERICK ENGELS.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION, 1891.
The first large editions of this work have been out of print for nearly
six months, and the publisher has for some time requested of me the
arrangement of a new edition. Urgent duties have hitherto prevented me.
Seven years have passed, since the first edition made its appearance;
during this time, the study of primeval forms of the family has made
considerable progress. Hence it became necessary to apply diligently the
improving and supplementing hand, more especially, as the proposed
stereotyping of the present text will make further changes impossible
for some time.
Consequently, I have subjected the whole text to a thorough revision and
made a number of additions which, I hope, will give due recognition to
the present stage of scientific progress. Furthermore, I give in the
course of this preface a short synopsis of the history of the family as
treated by various writers from Bachofen to Morgan. I am doing this
mainly because the English prehistoric school, tinged with chauvinism,
is continually doing its utmost to kill by its silence the revolution in
primeval conceptions effected by Morgan's discoveries. At the same time
this school is not at all backward in appropriating to its own use the
results of Morgan's study. In certain other circles also this English
example is unhappily followed rather extensively.
My work has been translated into different languages. First into
Italian; L'origine della famiglia, della proprietá privata e dello
stato, versione riveduta dall' autore, di Pasquale Martignetti;
Benevento, 1885. Then into Roumanian: Origina familei, proprietatei
private si a statului, traducere de Ivan Nadejde, in the Jassy
periodical "Contemporanul," September, 1885, to May, 1886. Furthermore
into Danish: Familjens, Privatejendommens og Statens Oprindelse, Dansk,
af Forfatteren gennemgaaet Udgave, besörget af Gerson Trier,
Kjoebenhavn, 1888. A French translation by Henri Ravé, founded on the
present German edition, is under the press.
Up to the beginning of the sixties, a history of the family cannot be
spoken of. This branch of historical science was then entirely under the
influence of the decalogue. The patriarchal form of the family,
described more exhaustively by Moses than by anybody else, was not only,
without further comment, considered as the most ancient, but also as
identical with the family of our times. No historical development of the
family was even recognized. At best it was admitted that a period of
sexual license might have existed in primeval times.
To be sure, aside from monogamy, oriental polygamy and Indo-Tibethan
polyandry were known; but these three forms could not be arranged in any
historical order and stood side by side without any connection. That
some nations of ancient history and some savage tribes of the present
day did not trace their descent to the father, but to the mother, hence
considered the female lineage as alone valid; that many nations of our
time prohibit intermarrying inside of certain large groups, the extent
of which was not yet ascertained and that this custom is found in all
parts of the globe--these facts were known, indeed, and more examples
were continually collected. But nobody knew how to make use of them.
Even in E. B. Taylor's "Researches into the Early History of Mankind,"
etc. (1865), they are only mentioned as "queer customs" together with
the usage of some savage tribes to prohibit the touching of burning
wood with iron tools, and similar religious absurdities.
This history of the family dates from 1861, the year of the publication
of Bachofen's "Mutterrecht" (maternal law). Here the author makes the
following propositions:
1. That in the beginning people lived in unrestricted sexual
intercourse, which he dubs, not very felicitously, hetaerism.
2. That such an intercourse excludes any absolutely certain means of
determining parentage; that consequently descent could only be traced by
the female line in compliance with maternal law--and that this was
universally practiced by all the nations of antiquity.
3. That consequently women as mothers, being the only well known parents
of younger generations, received a high tribute of respect and
deference, amounting to a complete women's rule (gynaicocracy),
according to Bachofen's idea.
4. That the transition to monogamy, reserving a certain woman
exclusively to one man, implied the violation of a primeval religious
law (i. e., practically a violation of the customary right of all other
men to the same woman), which violation had to be atoned for or its
permission purchased by the surrender of the women to the public for a
limited time.
Bachofen finds the proofs of these propositions in numerous quotations
from ancient classics, collected with unusual diligence. The transition
from "hetaerism" to monogamy and from maternal to paternal law is
accomplished according to him--especially by the Greeks--through the
evolution of religious ideas. New gods, the representatives of the new
ideas, are added to the traditional group of gods, the representatives
of old ideas; the latter are forced to the background more and more by
the former. According to Bachofen, therefore, it is not the development
of the actual conditions of life that has effected the historical
changes in the relative social positions of man and wife, but the
religious reflection of these conditions in the minds of men. Hence
Bachofen represents the Oresteia of Aeschylos as the dramatic
description of the fight between the vanishing maternal and the paternal
law, rising and victorious during the time of the heroes.
Klytaemnestra has killed her husband Agamemnon on his return from the
Trojan war for the sake of her lover Aegisthos; but Orestes, her son by
Agamemnon, avenges the death of his father by killing his mother.
Therefore he is persecuted by the Erinyes, the demonic protectors of
maternal law, according to which the murder of a mother is the most
horrible, inexpiable crime. But Apollo, who has instigated Orestes to
this act by his oracle, and Athene, who is invoked as arbitrator--the
two deities representing the new paternal order of things--protect him.
Athene gives a hearing to both parties. The whole question is summarized
in the ensuing debate between Orestes and the Erinyes. Orestes claims
that Klytemnaestra has committed a twofold crime: by killing her husband
she has killed his father. Why do the Erinyes persecute him and not her
who is far more guilty?
The reply is striking:
"She was not related by blood to the man whom she slew."
The murder of a man not consanguineous, even though he be the husband of
the murderess, is expiable, does not concern the Erinyes; it is only
their duty to prosecute the murder of consanguineous relatives.
According to maternal law, therefore, the murder of a mother is the most
heinous and inexpiable crime. Now Apollo speaks in defense of Orestes.
Athene then calls on the areopagites--the jurors of Athens--to vote;
the votes are even for acquittal and for condemnation. Thereupon Athene
as president of the jury casts her vote in favor of Orestes and acquits
him. Paternal law has gained a victory over maternal law, the deities of
the "younger generation," as the Erinyes call them, vanquish the latter.
These are finally persuaded to accept a new office under the new order
of things.
This new, but decidedly accurate interpretation of the Oresteia is one
of the most beautiful and best passages in the whole book, but it proves
at the same time that Bachofen himself believes as much in the Erinyes,
in Apollo and in Athene, as Aeschylos did in his day. He really
believes, that they performed the miracle of securing the downfall of
maternal law through paternal law during the time of the Greek heroes.
That a similar conception, representing religion as the main lever of
the world's history, must finally lead to sheer mysticism, is evident.
Therefore it is a troublesome and not always profitable task to work
your way through the big volume of Bachofen. Still, all this does not
curtail the value of his fundamental work. He was the first to replace
the assumption of an unknown primeval condition of licentious sexual
intercourse by the demonstration that ancient classical literature
points out a multitude of traces proving the actual existence among
Greeks and Asiatics of other sexual relations before monogamy. These
relations not only permitted a man to have intercourse with several
women, but also left a woman free to have sexual intercourse with
several men without violating good morals. This custom did not disappear
without leaving as a survival the form of a general surrender for a
limited time by which women had to purchase the right of monogamy. Hence
descent could originally only be traced by the female line, from mother
to mother. The sole legality of the female line was preserved far into
the time of monogamy with assured, or at least acknowledged, paternity.
Consequently, the original position of the mothers as the sole
absolutely certain parents of their children secured for them and for
all other women a higher social level than they have ever enjoyed since.
Although Bachofen, biased by his mystic conceptions, did not formulate
these propositions so clearly, still he proved their correctness. This
was equivalent to a complete revolution in 1861.
Bachofen's big volume was written in German, i. e., in the language of a
nation that cared less than any other of its time for the history of the
present family. Therefore he remained unknown. The man next succeeding
him in the same field made his appearance in 1865 without having ever
heard of Bachofen.
This successor was J. F. McLennan, the direct opposite of his
predecessor. Instead of the talented mystic, we have here the dry
jurist; in place of the rank growth of poetical imagination, we find the
plausible combinations of the pleading lawyer. McLennan finds among many
savage, barbarian and even civilized people of ancient and modern times
a type of marriage forcing the bride-groom, alone or in co-operation
with his friends, to go through the form of a mock forcible abduction of
the bride. This must needs be a survival of an earlier custom when men
of one tribe actually secured their wives by forcible abduction from
another tribe. How did this "robber marriage" originate? As long as the
men could find women enough in their own tribe, there was no occasion
for robbing. It so happens that we frequently find certain groups among
undeveloped nations (which in 1865 were often considered identical with
the tribes themselves), inside of which intermarrying was prohibited. In
consequence the men (or women) of a certain group were forced to choose
their wives (or husbands) outside of their group. Other tribes again
observe the custom of forcing their men to choose their women inside of
their own group only. McLennan calls the first exogamous, the second
endogamous, and construes forthwith a rigid contrast between exogamous
and endogamous "tribes." And though his own investigation of exogamy
makes it painfully obvious that this contrast in many, if not in most or
even in all cases, exists in his own imagination only, he nevertheless
makes it the basis of his entire theory. According to the latter,
exogamous tribes can choose their women only from other tribes. And as
in conformity with their savage state a condition of continual warfare
existed among such tribes, women could only be secured by abduction.
McLennan further asks: Whence this custom of exogamy? The idea of
consanguinity and rape could not have anything to do with it, since
these conceptions were developed much later. But it was a widely spread
custom among savages to kill female children immediately after their
birth. This produced a surplus of males in such a tribe which naturally
resulted in the condition where several men had one woman--polyandry.
The next consequence was that the mother of a child could be
ascertained, but not its father; hence: descent only traced by the
female line and exclusion of male lineage--maternal law. And a second
consequence of the scarcity of women in a certain tribe--a scarcity that
was somewhat mitigated, but not relieved by polyandry--was precisely the
forcible abduction of women from other tribes. "As exogamy and polyandry
are referable to one and the same cause--a want of balance between the
sexes--we are forced to regard all the exogamous races as having
originally been polyandrous.... Therefore we must hold it to be beyond
dispute that among exogamous races the first system of kinship was that
which recognized blood-ties through mothers only."[2]
It is the merit of McLennan to have pointed out the general extent and
the great importance of what he calls exogamy. However, he has by no
means discovered the fact of exogamous groups; neither did he understand
their presence. Aside from earlier scattered notes of many
observers--from which McLennan quoted--Latham had accurately and
correctly described this institution among the Indian Magars[3] and
stated that it was widespread and practiced in all parts of the globe.
McLennan himself quotes this passage. As early as 1847, our friend
Morgan had also pointed out and correctly described the same custom in
his letters on the Iroquois (in the American Review) and in 1851 in "The
League of the Iroquois." We shall see, how the lawyer's instinct of
McLennan has introduced more disorder into this subject than the mystic
imagination of Bachofen did into the field of maternal law.
It must be said to McLennan's credit that he recognized the custom of
tracing decent by maternal law as primeval, although Bachofen has
anticipated him in this respect. McLennan has admitted this later on.
But here again he is not clear on the subject. He always speaks of
"kinship through females only" and uses this expression, correctly
applicable to former stages, in connection with later stages of
development, when descent and heredity were still exclusively traced
along female lines, but at the same time kinship on the male side began
to be recognized and expressed. It is the narrow-mindedness of the
jurist, establishing a fixed legal expression and employing it
incessantly to denote conditions to which it should no longer be
applied.
In spite of its plausibility, McLennan's theory did not seem too well
founded even in the eyes of its author. At least he finds it remarkable
himself "that the form of capture is now most distinctly marked and
impressive just among those races which have male kinship."[4]
And again: "It is a curious fact that nowhere now, that we are aware of,
is infanticide a system where exogamy and the earliest form of kinship
co-exists."[5]
Both these facts directly disprove his method of explanation, and he can
only meet them with new and still more complicated hypotheses.
In spite of this, his theory found great approval and favor in England.
Here McLennan was generally considered as the founder of the history of
the family and as the first authority on this subject. His contrast of
exogamous and endogamous "tribes" remained the recognized foundation of
the customary views, however much single exceptions and modifications
were admitted. This antithesis became the eye-flap that rendered
impossible any free view of the field under investigation and,
therefore, any decided progress. It is our duty to confront this
overrating of McLennan, practised in England and copied elsewhere, with
the fact that he has done more harm with his ill-conceived contrast of
exogamous and endogamous tribes than he has done good by his
investigations.
Moreover, in the course of time more and more facts became known that
did not fit into his neat frame. McLennan knew only three forms of
marriage: polygamy, polyandry and monogamy. But once attention had been
directed to this point, then more and more proofs were found that among
undeveloped nations there were connubial forms in which a group of men
possessed a group of women. Lubbock in his "Origin of Civilization"
(1870) recognized this "communal marriage" as a historical fact.
Immediately after him, in 1871, Morgan appeared with fresh and, in many
respects, conclusive material. He had convinced himself that the
peculiar system of kinship in vogue among the Iroquois was common to all
the aborigines of the United States, and practised all over the
continent, although it was in direct contradiction with all the degrees
of relation arising from the connubial system in practice there. He
prevailed on the federal government to collect information on the
systems of kinship of other nations by the help of question blanks and
tables drawn up by himself. The answers brought the following results:
1. The kinship system of the American Indians is also in vogue in Asia,
and in a somewhat modified form among numerous tribes of Africa and
Australia.
2. This system finds a complete explanation in a certain form of
communal marriage now in process of decline in Hawaii and some
Australian islands.
3. By the side of this marital form, there is in practice on the same
islands a system of kinship only explicable by a still more primeval and
now extinct form of communal marriage.
The collected data and the conclusions of Morgan were published in his
"Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity," 1871, and discussion
transferred to a far more extensive field. Taking his departure from the
system of affinity he reconstructed the corresponding forms of the
family, thereby opening a new road to scientific investigation and
extending the retrospective view into prehistoric periods of human life.
Once this view gained recognition, then the frail structure of
McLennan would vanish into thin air.
McLennan defended his theory in the new edition of "Primitive Marriage"
(Studies in Ancient History, 1875). While he himself most artificially
combines into a history of the family a number of hypotheses, he not
only demands proofs from Lubbock and Morgan for every one of their
propositions, but insists on proofs of such indisputable validity as is
solely recognized in a Scotch court. And this is done by the same man
who unhesitatingly concludes that the following people practiced
polyandry: The Germans, on account of the intimate relation between
uncle and nephew (mother's brother and sister's son); the Britons,
because Cesar reports that the Britons have ten to twelve women in
common; barbarians, because all other reports of the old writers on
community of women are misinterpreted by him! One is reminded of a
prosecuting attorney who takes all possible liberty in making up his
case, but who demands the most formal and legally valid proof for every
word of the lawyer for the defense.
He asserts that communal marriage is purely the outgrowth of
imagination, and in so doing falls far behind Bachofen. He represents
Morgan's systems of affinity as mere codes of conventional politeness,
proven by the fact that Indians address also strangers, white people, as
brother or father. This is like asserting that the terms father, mother,
brother, sister are simply meaningless forms of address, because
Catholic priests and abbesses are also addressed as father and mother,
and monks and nuns, or even free-masons and members of English
professional clubs in solemn session, as brother and sister. In short,
McLennan's defense was extremely weak.
One point still remained that had not been attacked. The contrast of
exogamous and endogamous tribes, on which his whole system was founded,
was not only left unchallenged, but was even generally regarded as the
pivotal point of the entire history of the family. It was admitted that
McLennan's attempt to explain this contrast was insufficient and in
contradiction with the facts enumerated by himself. But the contrast
itself, the existence of two diametrically opposed forms of independent
and absolute groups, one of them marrying the women of its own group,
the other strictly forbidding this habit, was considered irrefutable
gospel. Compare e. g. Giraud-Teulon's "Origines de la famille" (1874)
and even Lubbock's "Origin of Civilization" (4th edition, 1882).
At this point Morgan's main work, "Ancient Society" (1877), inserts its
lever. It is this work on which the present volume is based. Here we
find clearly demonstrated what was only dimly perceived by Morgan in
1871. There is no antithesis between endogamy and exogamy; no exogamous
"tribes" have been found up to the present time. But at the time when
communal marriage still existed--and in all probability it once existed
everywhere--a tribe was subdivided into a number of
groups--"gentes"--consanguineous on the mother's side, within which
intermarrying was strictly forbidden. The men of a certain "gens,"
therefore, could choose their wives within the tribe, and did so as a
rule, but had to choose them outside of the "gens." And while thus the
"gens" was strictly exogamous, the tribe comprising an aggregate of
"gentes" was equally endogamous. This fact gave the final blow to
McLennan's artificial structure.
But Morgan did not rest here. The "gens" of the American Indians
furthermore assisted him in gaining another important step in the field
under investigation. He found that this "gens," organized in conformity
with maternal law, was the original form out of which later on the
"gens" by paternal law developed, such as we find it among the civilized
nations of antiquity. The Greek and Roman "gens," an unsolved riddle to
all historians up to our time, found its explanation in the Indian
"gens." A new foundation was discovered for the entire primeval history.
The repeated discovery that the original maternal "gens" was a
preliminary stage of the paternal "gens" of civilized nations has the
same signification for primeval history that Darwin's theory of
evolution had for biology and Marx's theory of surplus value for
political economy. Morgan was thereby enabled to sketch the outline of a
history of the family, showing in bold strokes at least the classic
stages of development, so far as the available material will at present
permit such a thing. It is clearly obvious that this marks a new epoch
in the treatment of primeval history. The maternal "gens" has become the
pivot on which this whole science revolves. Since its discovery we know
in what direction to continue our researches, what to investigate and
how to arrange the results of our studies. In consequence, progress in
this field is now much more rapid than before the publication of
Morgan's book.
The discoveries of Morgan are now universally recognized, or rather
appropriated, even by the archaeologists of England. But hardly one of
them openly admits that we owe this revolution of thought to Morgan. His
book is ignored in England as much as possible, and he himself is
dismissed with condescending praise for the excellence of his former
works. The details of his discussion are diligently criticised, but his
really great discoveries are covered up obstinately. The original
edition of "Ancient Society" is out of print; there is no paying market
for a work of this kind in America; in England, it appears, the book was
systematically suppressed, and the only edition of this epochal work
still circulating in the market is--the German translation.
Whence this reserve? We can hardly refrain from calling it a conspiracy
to kill by silence, especially in view of the numerous meaningless and
polite quotations and of other manifestations of fellowship in which the
writings of our recognized archaeologists abound. Is it because Morgan
is an American, and because it is rather hard on the English
archaeologists to be dependent on two talented foreigners like Bachofen
and Morgan for the outlines determining the arrangement and grouping of
their material, in spite of all praiseworthy diligence in accumulating
material. They could have borne with the German, but an American? In
face of an American, every Englishman becomes patriotic. I have seen
amusing illustrations of this fact in the United States. Moreover, it
must be remembered that McLennan was, so to say, the official founder
and leader of the English prehistoric school. It was almost a
requirement of good prehistoric manners to refer in terms of highest
admiration to his artificial construction of history leading from
infanticide through polyandry and abduction to maternal law. The least
doubt in the strictly independent existence of exogamous and endogamous
tribes was considered a frivolous sacrilege. According to this view,
Morgan, in reducing all these sacred dogmas to thin air, committed an
act of wanton destruction. And worse still, his mere manner of reducing
them sufficed to show their instability, so that the admirers of
McLennan, who hitherto had been stumbling about helplessly between
exogamy and endogamy, were almost forced to slap their foreheads and
exclaim: "How silly of us, not to have found that out long ago!"
Just as if Morgan had not committed crimes enough against the official
archaeologists to justify them in discarding all fair methods and
assuming an attitude of cool neglect, he persisted in filling their cup
to overflowing. Not only does he criticise civilization, the society of
production for profit, the fundamental form of human society, in a
manner savoring of Fourier, but he also speaks of a future
reorganization of society in language that Karl Marx might have used.
Consequently, he receives his just deserts, when McLennan indignantly
charges him with a profound antipathy against historical methods, and
when Professor Giraud-Teulon of Geneva endorses the same view in 1884.
For was not the same Professor Giraud-Teulon still wandering about
aimlessly in the maze of McLennan's exogamy in 1874 (Origines de la
famille)? And was it not Morgan who finally had to set him free?
It is not necessary to dwell in this preface on the other forms of
progress which primeval history owes to Morgan. Reference to them will
be found in the course of my work. During the fourteen years that have
elapsed since the publication of his main work, the material
contributing to the history of primeval society has been considerably
enriched. Anthropologists, travelers and professional historians were
joined by comparative jurists who added new matter and opened up new
points of view. Here and there, some special hypothesis of Morgan has
been shaken or even become obsolete. But in no instance has the new
material led to a weakening of his leading propositions. The order he
established in primeval history still holds good in its main outlines to
this day. We may even say that this order receives recognition in the
exact degree, in which the authorship of this great progress is
concealed.
London, June 16th, 1891.
FREDERICK ENGELS.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Ancient Society or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from
Savagery, through Barbarism, to Civilization. By Lewis H. Morgan. Henry
Holt & Co. 1877. The book, printed in America, was singularly difficult
to obtain in London. The author died a few years ago.
[2] McLennan, Studies in Ancient History, 1886. Primitive Marriage, p.
124.
[3] Latham, Descriptive Ethnology, 1859.
[4] McLennan, Studies in Ancient History, 1886. Primitive Marriage, p.
140.
[5] Ibidem, p. 146.
THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY
CHAPTER I.
PREHISTORIC STAGES.
Morgan was the first to make an attempt at introducing a logical order
into the history of primeval society. Until considerably more material
is obtained, no further changes will be necessary and his arrangement
will surely remain in force.
Of the three main epochs--savagery, barbarism and
civilization--naturally only the first two and the transition to the
third required his attention. He subdivided each of these into a lower,
middle and higher stage, according to the progress in the production of
the means of sustenance. His reason for doing so is that the degree of
human supremacy over nature is conditioned on the ability to produce the
necessities of life. For of all living beings, man alone has acquired an
almost unlimited control over food production. All great epochs of human
progress, according to Morgan, coincide more or less directly with times
of greater abundance in the means that sustain life. The evolution of
the family proceeds in the same measure without, however, offering
equally convenient marks for sub-division.
I. SAVAGERY.
1. Lower Stage. Infancy of the human race. Human beings still dwelt in
their original habitation, in tropical or subtropical forests. They
lived at least part of the time in trees, for only in this way they
could escape the attacks of large beasts of prey and survive. Fruit,
nuts, and roots served as food. The formation of articulated speech is
the principal result of this period. Not a single one of all the nations
that have become known in historic times dates back to this primeval
stage.
Although the latter may extend over thousands of years, we have no means
of proving its existence by direct evidence. But once the descent of man
from the Animal Kingdom is acknowledged, the acceptance of this stage of
transition becomes inevitable.
2. Middle Stage: Commencing with the utilization of fish (including
crabs, mollusks and other aquatic animals) and the use of fire. Both
these things belong together, because fish becomes thoroughly palatable
by the help of fire only. With this new kind of food, human beings
became completely independent of climate and locality. Following the
course of rivers and coastlines, they could spread over the greater part
of the earth even in the savage state. The so-called palaeolithic
implements of the early stone age, made of rough, unsharpened stones,
belong almost entirely to this period. Their wide distribution over all
the continents testifies to the extent of these wanderings. The
unceasing bent for discovery, together with the possession of fire
gained by friction, created new products in the lately occupied regions.
Such were farinaceous roots and tubers, baked in hot ashes or in baking
pits (ground ovens). When the first weapons, club and spear, were
invented, venison was occasionally added to the bill of fare. Nations
subsisting exclusively by hunting, such as we sometimes find mentioned
in books, have never existed; for the proceeds of hunting are too
uncertain. In consequence of continued precariousness of the sources of
sustenance, cannibalism seems to arise at this stage. It continues in
force for a long while. Even in our day, Australians and Polynesians
still remain in this middle stage of savagery.
3. Higher Stage: Coming with the invention of bow and arrow, this stage
makes venison a regular part of daily fare and hunting a normal
occupation. Bow, arrow and cord represent a rather complicated
instrument, the invention of which presupposes a long and accumulated
experience and increased mental ability; incidentally they are
conditioned on the acquaintance with a number of other inventions.
In comparing the nations that are familiar with the use of bow and
arrow, but not yet with the art of pottery (from which Morgan dates the
transition to barbarism), we find among them the beginnings of village
settlements, a control of food production, wooden vessels and utensils,
weaving of bast fibre by hand (without a loom), baskets made of bast or
reeds, and sharpened (neolithic) stone implements. Generally fire and
the stone ax have also furnished the dugout and, here and there, timbers
and boards for house-building. All these improvements are found, e. g.,
among the American Indians of the Northwest, who use bow and arrows, but
know nothing as yet about pottery. Bow and arrows were for the stage of
savagery what the iron sword was for barbarism and the fire-arm for
civilization; the weapon of supremacy.
II. BARBARISM.
1. Lower Stage. Dates from the introduction of the art of pottery. The
latter is traceable in many cases, and probably attributable in all
cases, to the custom of covering wooden or plaited vessels with clay in
order to render them fire-proof. It did not take long to find out that
moulded clay served the same purpose without a lining of other material.
Hitherto we could consider the course of evolution as being equally
characteristic, in a general way, for all the nations of a certain
period, without reference to locality. But with the beginning of
barbarism, we reach a stage where the difference in the natural
resources of the two great bodies of land makes itself felt. The salient
features of this stage of barbarism is the taming and raising of animals
and the cultivation of plants. Now the eastern body of land, the
so-called old world, contained nearly all the tamable animals and all
the cultivable species of grain but one; while the western continent,
America, possessed only one tamable mammal, the llama (even this only in
a certain part of the South), and only one, although the best, species
of grain: the corn. From now on, these different conditions of nature
lead the population of each hemisphere along divergent roads, and the
landmarks on the boundaries of the various stages differ in both cases.
2. Middle Stage. Commencing in the East with the domestication of
animals, in the West with the cultivation and irrigation of foodplants;
also with the use of adobes (bricks baked in the sun) and stones for
buildings.
We begin in the West, because there this stage was never outgrown up to
the time of the conquest by Europeans.
At the time of their discovery, the Indians in the lower stage of
barbarism (all those living east of the Mississippi) carried on
cultivation on a small scale in gardens. Corn, and perhaps also
pumpkins, melons and other garden truck were raised. A very essential
part of their sustenance was produced in this manner. They lived in
wooden houses, in fortified villages. The tribes of the Northwest,
especially those of the region along the Columbia river, were still in
the higher stage of savagery, ignorant of pottery and of any cultivation
of plants whatever. But the so-called Pueblo Indians in New Mexico, the
Mexicans, Central-Americans and Peruvians, were in the middle-stage of
barbarism. They lived in fortlike houses of adobe or stone, cultivated
corn and other plants suitable to various conditions of localities and
climate in artificially irrigated gardens that represented the main
source of nourishment, and even kept a few tamed animals--the Mexicans
the turkey and other birds, the Peruvians the llama. Furthermore they
were familiar with the use of metals--iron excepted, and for this reason
they could not get along yet without stone weapons and stone implements.
The conquest by the Spaniards cut short all further independent
development.
In the East, the middle stage of barbarism began with the taming of milk
and meat producing animals, while the cultivation of plants seems to
have remained unknown far into this period. It appears that the taming
and raising of animals and the formation of large herds gave rise to the
separation of Aryans and Semites from the rest of the barbarians. Names
of animals are still common to the languages of European and Asian
Aryans, while this is almost never the case with the names of cultivated
plants.
In suitable localities, the formation of herds led to a nomadic life, as
with the Semites in the grassy plains of the Euphrates and Tigris, the
Aryans in the plains of India, of the Oxus, Jaxartes, Don and Dnieper.
Along the borders of such pasture lands, the taming of animals must have
been accomplished first. But later generations conceived the mistaken
idea that the nomadic tribes had their origin in regions supposed to be
the cradle of humanity, while in reality their savage ancestors and even
people in the lower stage of barbarism would have found these regions
almost unfit for habitation. On the other hand, once these barbarians of
the middle stage were accustomed to nomadic life, nothing could have
induced them to return voluntarily from the grassy river plains to the
forests that had been the home of their ancestors. Even when Semites and
Aryans were forced further to the North and West, it was impossible for
them to occupy the forest regions of Western Asia and Europe, until they
were enabled by agriculture to feed their animals on this less favorable
soil and especially to maintain them during the winter. It is more than
probable that the cultivation of grain was due primarily to the demand
for stock feed, and became an important factor of human sustenance at a
later period.
The superior development of Aryans and Semites is, perhaps, attributable
to the copious meat and milk diet of both races, more especially to the
favorable influence of such food on the growth of children. As a matter
of fact, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico who live on an almost purely
vegetarian diet, have a smaller brain than the Indians in the lower
stage of barbarism who eat more meat and fish. At any rate, cannibalism
gradually disappears at this stage and is maintained only as a religious
observance or, what is here nearly identical, as a magic remedy.[6]
3. Higher Stage. Beginning with the melting of iron ore and merging into
civilization by the invention of letter script and its utilization for
writing records. This stage which is passed independently only on the
Eastern Hemisphere, is richer in improvements of production than all
preceding stages together. It is the stage of the Greek heroes, the
Italian tribes shortly before the foundation of Rome, the Germans of
Tacitus, the Norsemen of the Viking age.
We are here confronted for the first time with the iron ploughshare
drawn by animals, rendering possible agriculture on a large scale, in
fields, and hence a practically unlimited increase in the production of
food for the time being. The next consequence is the clearing of forests
and their transformation into arable land and meadows--which process,
however, could not be continued on a larger scale without the help of
the iron ax and the iron spade. Naturally, these improvements brought a
more rapid increase of population and a concentration of numbers into a
small area. Before the time of field cultivation a combination of half a
million of people under one central management could have been possible
only under exceptionally favorable conditions; most likely this was
never the case.
The greatest attainments of the higher stage of barbarism are presented
in Homer's poems, especially in the Iliad. Improved iron tools; the
bellows; the hand-mill; the potter's wheel; the preparation of oil and
wine; a well developed fashioning of metals verging on artisanship; the
wagon and chariot; ship-building with beams and boards; the beginning of
artistic architecture; towns surrounded by walls with turrets and
battlements; the Homeric epos and the entire mythology--these are the
principal bequests transmitted by the Greeks from barbarism to
civilization. In comparing these attainments with the description given
by Cesar or even Tacitus of Germans, who were in the beginning of the
same stage of evolution which the Greeks were preparing to leave for a
higher one, we perceive the wealth of productive development comprised
in the higher stage of barbarism.
The sketch which I have here produced after Morgan of the evolution of
the human race through savagery and barbarism to the beginning of
civilization is even now rich in new outlines. More still, these
outlines are incontrovertible, because traced directly from production.
Nevertheless, this sketch will appear faint and meagre in comparison to
the panorama unrolled to our view at the end of our pilgrimage. Not
until then will it be possible to show in their true light both the
transition from barbarianism to civilization and the striking contrast
between them. For the present we can summarize Morgan's arrangement in
the following manner: Savagery--time of predominating appropriation of
finished natural products; human ingenuity invents mainly tools useful
in assisting this appropriation. Barbarism--time of acquiring the
knowledge of cattle raising, of agriculture and of new methods for
increasing the productivity of nature by human agency. Civilization:
time of learning a wider utilization of natural products, of
manufacturing and of art.
FOOTNOTE:
[6] Translator's note.
Advocates of vegetarianism may, of course, challenge this statement and
show that all the testimony of anthropology is not in favor of the
meat-eaters. It must also be admitted that diet is not the only
essential factor in environment which influences the development of
races. And there is no conclusive evidence to prove the absolute
superiority of one diet over another. Neither have we any proofs that
cannibalism ever was in general practice. It rather seems to have been
confined to limited groups of people in especially ill-favored
localities or to times of great scarcity of food. Hence we can neither
refer to cannibalism as a typical stage in human history, nor are we
obliged to accept the vegetarian hypothesis of a transition from a meat
diet to a plant diet as a condition sine qua non of higher human
development.