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and the State, by Frederick Engels

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Title: The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State

Author: Frederick Engels

Translator: Ernest Untermann

Release Date: July 8, 2010 [EBook #33111]

Language: English

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THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY
PRIVATE PROPERTY
AND THE STATE
BY
FREDERICK ENGELS

TRANSLATED BY ERNEST UNTERMANN

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.
 CHAPTER II.
THE FAMILY.
Morgan, who spent the greater part of his life among the Iroquois in the State of
New York and who had been adopted into one of their tribes, the Senecas, found
among them a system of relationship that was in contradiction with their actual
family relations. Among them existed what Morgan terms the syndyasmian or
pairing family, a monogamous state easily dissolved by either side. The offspring
of such a couple was identified and acknowledged by all the world. There could
be no doubt to whom to apply the terms father, mother, son, daughter, brother,
sister. But the actual use of these words was not in keeping with their
fundamental meaning. For the Iroquois addresses as sons and daughters not only
his own children, but also those of his brothers; and he is called father by all of
them. But the children of his sisters he calls nephews and nieces, and they call
him uncle. Vice versa, an Iroquois woman calls her own children as well as those
of her sisters sons and daughters and is addressed as mother by them. But the
children of her brothers are called nephews and nieces, and they call her aunt. In
the same way, the children of brothers call one another brothers and sisters, and
so do the children of sisters. But the children of a sister call those of her brother
cousins, and vice versa. And these are not simply meaningless terms, but
expressions of actually existing conceptions of proximity and remoteness,
equality or inequality of consanguinity.
These conceptions serve as the fundament of a perfectly elaborated system of
relationship, capable of expressing several hundred different relations of a single
individual. More still, this system is not only fully accepted by all American
Indians—no exception has been found so far—but it is also in use with hardly
any modifications among the original inhabitants of India, among the Dravidian
tribes of the Dekan and the Gaura tribes of Hindostan.
The terms of relationship used by the Tamils of Southern India and by the
Seneca-Iroquois of New York State are to this day identical for more than two
hundred different family relations. And among these East Indian tribes also, as
among all American Indians, the relations arising out of the prevailing form of
the family are not in keeping with the system of kinship.
How can this be explained? In view of the important role played by kinship in
the social order of all the savage and barbarian races, the significance of such a
widespread system cannot be obliterated by phrases.
A system that is generally accepted in America, that also exists in Asia among
people of entirely different races, that is frequently found in a more or less
modified form all over Africa and Australia, such a system requires a historical
explanation and cannot be talked down, as was attempted, e. g., by McLennan.
The terms father, child, brother, sister are more than mere honorary titles; they
carry in their wake certain well-defined and very serious obligations, the
aggregate of which comprises a very essential part of the social constitution of
those nations. And the explanation was found. In the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii)
there existed up to the first half of the nineteenth century a family form
producing just such fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts,
nephews and nieces, as the old Indo-American system of kinship. But how
remarkable! The Hawaiian system of kinship again did not agree with the family
form actually prevailing there. For there all the children of brothers and sisters,
without any exception, are considered brothers and sisters, and regarded as the
common children not only of their mother or her sisters, or their father and his
brothers, but of all the brothers and sisters of their parents without distinction.
While thus the American system of kinship presupposes an obsolete primitive
form of the family, which is still actually existing in Hawaii, the Hawaiian
system on the other hand points to a still more primitive form of the family, the
actual existence of which cannot be proved any more, but which must have
existed, because otherwise such a system of kinship could not have arisen.
According to Morgan, the family is the active element; it is never stationary, but
in progression from a lower to a higher form in the same measure in which
society develops from a lower to a higher stage. But the systems of kinship are
passive. Only in long intervals they register the progress made by the family in
course of time, and only then are they radically changed, when the family has
done so. "And," adds Marx, "it is the same with political, juridical, religious and
philosophical systems in general." While the family keeps on growing, the
system of kinship becomes ossified. The latter continues in this state and the
family grows beyond it. With the same certainty which enabled Cuvier to
conclude from some bones of Marsupialia found near Paris that extinct
marsupialia had lived there, with this same certainty may we conclude from a
system of kinship transmitted by history that the extinct form of the family
corresponding to this system was once in existence.
The systems of kinship and forms of the family just mentioned differ from the
present systems in that every child has several fathers and mothers. Under the
American system to which the Hawaiian system corresponds, brother and sister
cannot be father and mother of the same child; but the Hawaiian system
presupposes a family, in which, on the contrary, this was the rule. We are here
confronted by a series of family forms that are in direct contradiction with those
that were currently regarded as alone prevailing. The conventional conception
knows only monogamy, furthermore polygamy of one man, eventually also
polyandry of one woman. But it passes in silence, as is meet for a moralizing
philistine, that the practice silently but without compunction supersedes these
barriers sanctioned officially by society. The study of primeval history, however,
shows us conditions, where men practiced polygamy and women at the same
time polyandry, so that their children were considered common to all; conditions
that up to their final transition into monogamy underwent a whole series of
modifications. These modifications slowly and gradually contract the circle
comprised by the common tie of marriage until only the single couple remains
which prevails to-day.
In thus constructing backward the history of the family, Morgan, in harmony
with the majority of his colleagues, arrives at a primeval condition, where
unrestricted sexual intercourse existed within a tribe, so that every woman
belonged to every man, and vice versa.
Much has been said about this primeval state of affairs since the eighteenth
century, but only in general commonplaces. It is one of Bachofen's great merits
to have taken the subject seriously and to have searched for traces of this state in
historical and religious traditions. To-day we know that these traces, found by
him, do not lead back to a stage of unlimited sexual intercourse, but to a much
later form, the group marriage. The primeval stage, if it really ever existed,
belongs to so remote a period, that we can hardly expect to find direct proofs of
its former existence among these social fossils, backward savages. Bachofen's
merit consists in having brought this question to the fore.[7]
It has lately become a fashion to deny the existence of this early stage of human
sex life, in order to spare us this "shame." Apart from the absence of all direct
proof, the example of the rest of animal life is invoked. From the latter,
Letourneau (Evolution du mariage et de la famille, 1888) quoted numerous facts,
alleged to prove that among animals also an absolutely unlimited sexual
intercourse belongs to a lower stage. But I can only conclude from all these facts
that they prove absolutely nothing for man and the primeval conditions of his
life. The mating of vertebrates for a lengthy term is sufficiently explained by
physiological causes, e. g., among birds by the helplessness of the female during
brooding time. Examples of faithful monogamy among birds do not furnish any
proofs for men, for we are not descended from birds.
And if strict monogamy is the height of virtue, then the palm belongs to the
tapeworm that carries a complete male and female sexual apparatus in each of its
50 to 200 sections and passes its whole lifetime in fertilizing itself in every one
of its sections. But if we confine ourselves to mammals, we find all forms of
sexual intercourse, license, suggestions of group marriage, polygamy and
monogamy. Only polyandry is missing;[8] that could be accomplished by men
only. Even our next relations, the quadrumana, exhibit all possible differences in
the grouping of males and females. And if we draw the line still closer and
consider only the four anthropoid apes, Letourneau can only tell us, that they are
now monogamous, now polygamous; while Saussure contends according to
Giraud-Teulon that they are monogamous. The recent contentions of
Westermarck[9] in regard to monogamy among anthropoid apes are far from
proving anything. In short, the information is such that honest Letourneau
admits: "There exists no strict relation at all between the degree of intellectual
development and the form of sexual intercourse among mammals." And Espinas
says frankly:[10] "The herd is the highest social group found among animals. It
seems to be composed of families, but from the outset the family and the herd
are antagonistic; they develop in directly opposite ratio."
It is evident from the above that we know next to nothing of the family and other
social groups of anthropoid apes; the reports are directly contradictory. How full
of contradiction, how much in need of critical scrutiny and research are the
reports even on savage human tribes! But monkey tribes are far more difficult to
observe than human tribes. For the present, therefore, we must decline all final
conclusions from such absolutely unreliable reports.
The quotation from Espinas, however, offers a better clue. Among higher
animals, the herd and family are not supplements of one another, but antitheses.
Espinas demonstrates very nicely, how the jealousy of the males loosens or
temporarily dissolves every herd during mating time. "Where the family is
closely organized, herds are formed only in exceptional cases. But wherever free
sexual intercourse or polygamy are existing, the herd appears almost
spontaneously.... In order that a herd may form, family ties must be loosened and
the individual be free. For this reason we so rarely find organized herds among
birds.... Among mammals, however, we find groups organized after a fashion,
just because here the individual is not merged in the family.... The rising sense of
cohesion in a herd cannot, therefore, have a greater enemy than the
consciousness of family ties. Let us not shrink from pronouncing it: the
development of a higher form of society than the family can be due only to the
fact that it admitted families which had undergone a thorough change. This does
not exclude the possibility that these same families were thus enabled to
reorganize later on under infinitely more favorable circumstances."[11]
It becomes apparent from this, that animal societies may indeed have a certain
value in drawing conclusions in regard to human life—but only negatively. The
higher vertebrate knows, so far as we may ascertain, only two forms of the
family: polygamy or pairs. In both of them there is only one grown male, only
one husband. The jealousy of the male, at the same time tie and limit of the
family, creates an opposition between the animal family and the herd. The latter,
a higher social form, is here rendered impossible, there loosened or dissolved
during mating time, and at best hindered in its development by the jealousy of
the male. This in itself is sufficient proof that the animal family and primeval
human society are irreconcilable; that ancient man, struggling upward from the
animal stage, either had no family at all or at the most one that does not exist
among animals. A being so defenceless as evolving man might well survive in
small numbers though living in an isolated state, the highest social form of
which is that of pairs such as Westermarck, relying on hunter's reports, attributes
to the gorilla and the chimpanzee. Another element is necessary for the elevation
out of the animal stage, for the realization of the highest progress found in
nature: the replacing of the defencelessness of the single individual by the united
strength and co-operation of the whole herd. The transition from beast to man
out of conditions of the sort under which the anthropoid apes are living to-day
would be absolutely unexplainable. These apes rather give the impression of
stray sidelines gradually approaching extinction, and at all events in process of
decline. This alone is sufficient to reject all parallels between their family forms
and those of primeval man. But mutual tolerance of the grown males, freedom
from jealousy, was the first condition for the formation of such large and
permanent groups, within which alone the transformation from beast to man
could be accomplished. And indeed, what do we find to be the most ancient and
original form of the family, undeniably traceable by history and even found to-
day here and there? The group marriage, that form in which whole groups of
men and whole groups of women mutually belong to one another, leaving only
small scope for jealousy. And furthermore we find at a later stage the exceptional
form of polyandry which still more supersedes all sentiments of jealousy and
hence is unknown to animals.
But all the forms of the group marriage known to us are accompanied by such
peculiarly complicated circumstances that they of necessity point to a preceding
simpler form of sexual intercourse and, hence, in the last instance to a period of
unrestricted sexual intercourse corresponding to a transition from the animal to
man. Therefore the references to animal marriages lead us back to precisely that
point, from which they were intended to remove us forever.
What does the term "unrestricted sexual intercourse" mean? Simply, that the
restrictions in force now were not observed formerly. We have already seen the
barrier of jealousy falling. If anything is certain, it is that jealousy is developed
at a comparatively late stage. The same is true of incest. Not only brother and
sister were originally man and wife, but also the sexual intercourse between
parents and children is permitted to this day among many nations. Bancroft
testifies to the truth of this among the Kaviats of the Behring Strait, the Kadiaks
of Alaska, the Tinnehs in the interior of British North America; Letourneau
compiled reports of the same fact in regard to the Chippeway Indians, the
Coocoos in Chile, the Caribeans, the Carens in Indo-China, not to mention the
tales of ancient Greeks and Romans about the Parthians, Persians, Scythians,
Huns and so forth. Before incest was invented (and it is an invention, a really
valuable one indeed), sexual intercourse between parents and children could not
be any more repulsive than between other persons belonging to different
generations, which takes place even in our day among the most narrow-minded
nations without causing any horror. Even old "maids" of more than sixty years
sometimes, if they are rich enough, marry young men of about thirty.
Eliminating from the primeval forms of the family known to us those
conceptions of incest—conceptions totally different from ours and often enough
in direct contradiction with them—we arrive at a form of sexual intercourse that
can only be designated as unrestricted. Unrestricted in the sense that the barriers
drawn later on by custom did not yet exist. This in no way necessarily implies
for practical purposes an injudicious pell-mell intercourse. The separate
existence of pairs for a limited time is not out of the question, and even
comprises the majority of cases in the group marriage of our days. And if the
latest repudiator of such a primeval state, Westermarck, designates as marriage
every case, where both sexes remain mated until the birth of the offspring, then
this is equivalent to saying that this kind of marriage may well exist during a
stage of unrestricted intercourse without contradicting license, i. e., absence of
barriers drawn by custom for sexual intercourse. Westermarck bases himself on
the opinion that "license includes the suppression of individual affections" so
that "prostitution is its most genuine form." To me it rather seems that any
understanding of primeval conditions is impossible as long as we look at them
through brothel spectacles. We shall return to this point in the group marriage.
According to Morgan, the following forms developed from this primeval state at
an apparently early stage:

1. THE CONSANGUINE FAMILY.

The Consanguine Family is the first step toward the family. Here the marriage
groups are arranged by generations: all the grand-fathers and grand-mothers
within a certain family are mutually husbands and wives; and equally their
children, the fathers and mothers, whose children form a third cycle of mutual
mates. The children of these again, the great-grandchildren of the first cycle, will
form a fourth. In this form of the family, then, only ancestors and descendants
are excluded from what we would call the rights and duties of marriage. Brothers
and sisters, male and female cousins of the first, second and more remote grades,
are all mutually brothers and sisters and for this reason mutual husbands and
wives. The relation of brother and sister quite naturally includes at this stage the
practice of sexual intercourse.[12]
The typical form of such a family would consist of the offspring of one pair,
representing again the descendants of each grade as mutual brothers and sisters
and, therefore, mutual husbands and wives. The consanguine family is extinct.
Even the crudest nations of history do not furnish any proofs of it. But the
Hawaiian system of kinship, in force to this day in all Polynesia, compels us to
acknowledge its former existence, for it exhibits grades of kinship that could
only originate in this form of the family. And the whole subsequent development
of the family compels us to admit this form as a necessary step.

2. THE PUNALUAN FAMILY.

While the first step of organization consisted in excluding parents and children
from mutual sexual intercourse, the second was the erection of a barrier between
brother and sister. This progress was much more important on account of the
greater equality in the ages of the parties concerned, but also far more difficult. It
was accomplished gradually, probably beginning with the exclusion of the
natural sister (i. e., on the mother's side) from sexual intercourse, first in single
cases, then becoming more and more the rule (in Hawaii exceptions were still
noted during the nineteenth century), and finally ending with the prohibition of
marriage even among collateral brothers and sisters, i. e., what we now term
brother's and sister's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. This
progress offers, according to Morgan, an excellent illustration how the principle
of natural selection works. Without question, the tribes limiting inbreeding by
this progress developed faster and more completely than those retaining the
marriage between brothers and sisters as a rule and law. And how powerfully the
influence of this progress was felt, is shown by the institution of the gens,
directly attributable to it and passing far beyond the goal. The gens is the
foundation of the social order of most, if not all, barbarian nations, and in Greece
and Rome we step immediately from it to civilization.
Every primeval family necessarily had to divide after a few generations. The
originally communistic and collective household existing far into the middle
stage of barbarism, involved a certain maximum size of the family, variable
according to conditions, but still limited in a degree. As soon as the conception
of the impropriety of sexual intercourse between children of the same mother
arose, it naturally became effective on such occasions as the division of old and
the foundation of new household communities (which, however, did not
necessarily coincide with the family group). One or more series of sisters
became the center of one group, their natural brothers that of another. In this or a
similar manner that form which Morgan styles the Punaluan family developed
from the consanguine family. According to Hawaiian custom, a number of
sisters, natural or more remote (i. e., cousins of the first, second and more remote
degrees) were the mutual wives of their mutual husbands, their natural brothers
excepted. These men now no longer addressed one another as "brother"—which
they no longer had to be—but as "Punalua," i. e., intimate companion, associate
as it were. Likewise a series of natural or more remote brothers lived in mutual
marriage with a number of women, not their natural sisters, and these women
referred to each other as "Punalua." This is the classical form of a family, which
later admitted of certain variations. Its fundamental characteristic was mutual
community of husbands and wives within a given family with the exclusion of
the natural brothers (or sisters) first, and of the more remote grades later.
This form of the family, now, furnishes with complete accuracy the degrees of
kinship expressed by the American system. The children of the sisters of my
mother still are her children; likewise the children of the brothers of my father
still his children; and all of them are my brothers and sisters. But the children of
the brothers of my mother are now her nephews and nieces, the children of the
sisters of my father his nephew and nieces, and they are all my cousins. For
while the husbands of the sisters of my mother are still her husbands, and
likewise the wives of the brothers of my father still his wives—legally, if not
always in fact—the social proscription of sexual intercourse between brothers
and sisters has now divided those relatives who were formerly regarded without
distinction as brothers and sisters, into two classes. In one category are those
who remain (more remote) brothers and sisters as before; in the other the
children of the brother on one hand or the sister on the opposite, who can be
brothers and sisters no longer. The latter have mutual parents no more, neither
father nor mother nor both together. And for this reason the class of nephews and
nieces, male and female cousins, here becomes necessary for the first time.
Under the former family order this would have been absurd. The American
system of kinship, which appears absolutely paradoxical in any family form
founded on monogamy, is rationally explained and naturally confirmed in its
most minute details by the Punaluan family. Wherever this system of kinship
was in force, there the Punaluan family or at least a form akin to it must also
have existed.
This family form, the existence of which in Hawaii was actually demonstrated,
would have been transmitted probably by all Polynesia, if the pious missionaries,
similar to the Spanish monks in America, could have looked upon such anti-
Christian relations as being something more than simply a "horror."[13] Cesar's
report to the effect that the Britons, who then were in the middle stage of
barbarism, "have ten or twelve women in common, mostly brothers with
brothers and parents with children," is best explained by group marriage.
Barbarian mothers have not ten or twelve sons old enough to keep women in
common, but the American system of kinship corresponding to the Punaluan
family furnishes many brothers, because all near and remote cousins of a certain
man are his brothers. The term "parents with children" may arise from a wrong
conception of Cesar, but this system does not absolutely exclude the existence of
father and son, mother or daughter in the same group. It does exclude, however,
father and daughter or mother and son. This or a similar form of group marriage
also furnishes the easiest explanation of the reports of Herodotus and other
ancient writers concerning community of women among savage and barbarian
nations. This is true, furthermore, of Watson's and Kaye's[14] tale about the
Tikurs of Audh (north of the Ganges): "They live together (i. e., sexually) almost
indiscriminately in large communities, and though two persons may be
considered as being married, still the tie is only nominal."
The institution of the gens seems to have its origin in the majority of cases in the
Punaluan family. True, the Australian class system also offers a starting point for
it; the Australians have gentes, but not yet a Punaluan family, only a cruder form
of group marriage.[15]
In all forms of the group family it is uncertain who is the father of a child, but
certain, who is its mother. Although she calls all the children of the aggregate
family her children and has the duties of a mother toward them, still she knows
her natural children from others. It is also obvious that, as far as group marriage
exists, descent can only be traced on the mother's side and, hence, only female
lineage be acknowledged. This is actually the case among all savage tribes and
those in the lower stage of barbarism. To have discovered this first is the second
great merit of Bachofen. He designates this exclusive recognition of descent
from the female line and the hereditary relations resulting therefrom in course of
time as "maternal law." I retain this term for the sake of brevity, although it is
distorted; for at this social stage there is no sign yet of any law in the juridic
sense.
If we now take one of the two standard groups of a Punaluan family, namely that
of a series of natural and remote sisters (i. e., first, second and more remote
descendants of natural sisters), their children and their natural or remote brothers
on the mother's side (who according to our supposition are not their husbands),
we have exactly that circle of persons who later appear as members of a gens, in
the original form of this institution. They all have a common ancestress, by
virtue of the descent that makes the different female generations sisters. But the
husbands of these sisters cannot be chosen among their brothers any more, can
no longer come from the same ancestress, and do not, therefore, belong to the
consanguineous group of relatives, the gens of a later time. The children of these
same sisters, however, do belong to this group, because descent from the female
line alone is conclusive, alone is positive. As soon as the proscription of sexual
intercourse between all relatives on the mother's side, even the most remote of
them, is an accomplished fact, the above named group has become a gens, i. e.,
constitutes a definite circle of consanguineous relatives of female lineage who
are not permitted to marry one another. Henceforth this circle is more and more
fortified by other mutual institutions of a social or religious character and thus
distinguished from other gentes of the same tribe. Of this more anon.
Finding, as we do, that the gens not only necessarily, but also as a matter of
course, develops from the Punaluan family, it becomes obvious to us to assume
as almost practically demonstrated the prior existence of this family form among
all those nations where such gentes are traceable, i. e., nearly all barbarian and
civilized nations.
When Morgan wrote his book, our knowledge of group marriage was very
limited. We knew very little about the group marriages of the Australians
organized in classes, and furthermore Morgan had published as early as 1871 the
information he had received about the Punaluan family of Hawaii. This family
on one hand furnished a complete explanation of the system of kinship in force
among the American Indians, which had been the point of departure for all the
studies of Morgan. On the other hand it formed a ready means for the deduction
of the maternal law gens. And finally it represented a far higher stage of
development than the Australian classes.
It is, therefore, easy to understand how Morgan could regard this form as the
stage necessarily preceding the pairing family and attribute general extension in
former times to it. Since then we have learned of several other forms of the
group marriage, and we know that Morgan went too far in this respect. But it
was nevertheless his good fortune to encounter in his Punaluan family the
highest, the classical, form of group marriage, that form which gave the simplest
clue for the transition to a higher stage.
The most essential contribution to our knowledge of the group marriage we owe
to the English missionary, Lorimer Fison, who studied this form of the family for
years on its classical ground, Australia. He found the lowest stage of
development among the Papuans near Mount Gambier in South Australia. Here
the whole tribe is divided into two great classes, Kroki and Kumite.[16] Sexual
intercourse within each of these classes is strictly prohibited. But every man of
one class is by birth the husband of every woman of the other class, and vice
versa. Not the individuals are married to one another, but the whole groups, class
to class. And mark well, no caution is made anywhere on account of difference
of age or special consanguinity, unless it is resulting from the division into two
exogamous classes. A Kroki has for his wife every Kumite woman. And as his
own daughter, being the daughter of a Kumite woman, is also Kumite according
to maternal law, she is therefore the born wife of every Kroki, including her
father. At least, the class organization, as we know it, does not exclude this
possibility. Hence this organization either arose at a time when, in spite of all
dim endeavor to limit inbreeding, sexual intercourse between parents and
children was not yet regarded with any particular horror; in this case the class
system would be directly evolved from a condition of unrestricted sexual
relations. Or the intercourse between parents and children was already
proscribed by custom, when the classes were formed; and in this case the present
condition points back to the consanguine family and is the first step out of it. The
latter case is the more probable. So far as I know, no mention is made of any
sexual intercourse between parents and children in Australia. Even the later form
of exogamy, the maternal law gens, as a rule silently presupposes that the
prohibition of this intercourse was an accomplished fact at the time of its
institution.
The system of two classes is not only found near Mount Gambier in South
Australia, but also farther east along Darling River, and in the northeast of
Queensland. It is, consequently, widespread. It excludes only marriage between
brothers and sisters, between brothers' children and between sisters' children of
the mother's side, because these belong to the same class; but the children of a
sister can marry those of a brother and vice versa. A further step for preventing
inbreeding is found among the Kamilaroi on the Darling River in New South
Wales, where the two original classes are split into four, and every one of these is
married as a whole to a certain other class. The first two classes are husbands
and wives by birth. According to the place of the mother in the first or second
class, the children belong to the third and fourth. The children of these two
classes, who are also married to one another, again belong to the first and second
class. So that a certain generation belongs to the first and second class, the next
to the third and fourth and the following again to the first and second. Hence the
children of natural brothers and sisters (on the mother's side) cannot marry one
another, but their grandchildren can do so. This peculiarly complicated order of
things is still more entangled by the inoculation—evidently at a later stage—
with maternal law gentes. But we cannot discuss this further. Enough, the desire
to prevent inbreeding again and again demands recognition, but feeling its way
quite spontaneously, without a clear conception of the goal.
The group marriage is represented in Australia by class marriage, i. e., mass
marriage of a whole class of men frequently scattered over the whole breadth of
the continent to an equally widespread class of women. A close view of this
group marriage does not offer quite such a horrible spectacle as the philistine
imagination accustomed to brothel conditions generally pictures to itself. On the
contrary, long years passed, before its existence was even suspected, and quite
recently it is once more denied. To the casual observer it makes the impression
of a loose monogamy and in certain places of polygamy, with occasional breach
of faith. Years are required before one can discover, like Fison and Howitt, the
law regulating these marital conditions that rather appeal in their practicability to
the average European; the law enabling the strange Papuan, thousands of miles
from his home and among people whose language he does not understand, to
find frequently, from camp to camp and from tribe to tribe, women who will
without resistance and guilelessly surrender to him; the law according to which a
man with several women offers one to his guest for the night. Where the
European sees immorality and lawlessness, there in reality a strict law is
observed. The women belong to the marriage class of the stranger and, therefore,
they are his wives by birth. The same moral law assigning both to one another
forbids under penalty of proscription all sexual intercourse outside of the two
marriage classes. Even when women are abducted, as is frequently the case in
certain regions, the class law is carefully respected.
In the abduction of women, by the way, a trace of transition to monogamy is
found even here, at least in the form of the pairing family. If a young man has
abducted a girl with the help of his friends, they hold sexual intercourse with her
one after another. But after that the girl is regarded as the wife of the young man
who planned the abduction. And again, if an abducted woman deserts her
husband and is caught by another man, she becomes the wife of the latter and the
first has lost his privilege. Alongside of and within the generally existing group
marriage such exclusive relations are formed, pairing for a shorter or longer term
by the side of polygamy, so that here also group marriage is declining. The
question is only which will first disappear under the pressure of European
influence: group marriage or the Papuans addicted to it.
The marriage in whole classes, such as is in force in Australia, is no doubt a very
low and primitive form of group marriage, while the Punaluan family, so far as
we know, is its highest stage of development. The former seems to be
corresponding to the social stage of roving savages, the latter requires relatively
settled communistic bodies and leads directly to the next higher stage of
development. Between these two, we shall no doubt find many an intermediate
stage. Here lies a barely opened, hardly entered field of investigation.[17]

3. THE PAIRING FAMILY.

A certain pairing for a longer or shorter term took place even during the group
marriage or still earlier. A man had his principal wife (one can hardly call it
favorite wife as yet) among many women, and he was to her the principal
husband among others. This fact in no small degree contributed to the confusion
among missionaries, who regarded group marriage now as a disorderly
community of women, now as an arbitrary adultery. Such a habitual pairing
would gain ground the more the gens developed and the more numerous the
classes of "brothers" and "sisters" became who were not permitted to marry one
another. The impulse to prevent marriage of consanguineous relatives started by
the gens went still further. Thus we find that among the Iroquois and most of the
Indians in the lower stage of barbarism marriage is prohibited between all the
relatives of their system of kinship, and this comprises several hundred kinds. By
this increasing complication of marriage restrictions, group marriage became
more and more impossible; it was displaced by the pairing family. At this stage
one man lives with one woman, but in such a manner that polygamy, and
occasional adultery, remain privileges of men, although the former occurs rarely
for economic reasons. Women, however, are generally expected to be strictly
faithful during the time of living together, and adultery on their part is cruelly
punished. But the marriage-tie may be easily broken by either party, and the
children belong to the mother alone, as formerly.
In this ever more extending restriction of marriage between consanguineous
relations, natural selection also remains effective. As Morgan expresses it:
"Marriages between gentes that were not consanguineous produced a more
vigorous race, physically and mentally; two progressive tribes intermarried, and
the new skulls and brains naturally expanded until they comprised the faculties
of both." Thus tribes composed of gentes necessarily either gained the
supremacy over the backward ones or, by their example, carried them along in
their wake.
The development of the family, then, is founded on the continual contraction of
the circle, originally comprising the whole tribe, within which marital
intercourse between both sexes was general. By the continual, exclusion, first of
near, then of ever remoter relatives, including finally even those who were
simply related legally, all group marriage becomes practically impossible. At last
only one couple, temporarily and loosely united, remains; that molecule, the
dissolution of which absolutely puts an end to marriage. Even from this we may
infer how little the sexual love of the individual in the modern sense of the word
had to do with the origin of monogamy. The practice of all nations of that stage
still more proves this. While in the previous form of the family the men were
never embarrassed for women, but rather had more than enough of them, women
now became scarce and were sought after. With the pairing family, therefore, the
abduction and barter of women began—widespread symptoms, and nothing but
that, of a new and much more profound change. The pedantic Scot, McLennan,
however, transmuted these symptoms, mere methods of obtaining women, into
separate classes of the family under the head of "marriage by capture" and
"marriage by barter." Moreover among American Indians and other nations in
the same stage, the marriage agreement is not the business of the parties most
concerned, who often are not even asked, but of their mothers. Frequently two
persons entirely unknown to one another are thus engaged to be married and
receive no information of the closing of the bargain, until the time for the
marriage ceremony approaches. Before the wedding, the bridegroom brings gifts
to the maternal relatives of the bride (not to her father or his relatives) as an
equivalent for ceding the girl to him. Either of the married parties may dissolve
the marriage at will. But among many tribes, as, e. g., the Iroquois, public
opinion has gradually become averse to such separations. In case of domestic
differences the gentile relatives of both parties endeavor to bring about a
reconciliation, and not until they are unsuccessful a separation takes place. In
this case the woman keeps the children, and both parties are free to marry again.
The pairing family, being too weak and too unstable to make an independent
household necessary or even desirable, in no way dissolves the traditional
communistic way of housekeeping. But household communism implies
supremacy of women in the house as surely as exclusive recognition of a natural
mother and the consequent impossibility of identifying the natural father signify
high esteem for women, i. e., mothers. It is one of the most absurd notions
derived from eighteenth century enlightenment, that in the beginning of society
woman was the slave of man. Among all savages and barbarians of the lower
and middle stages, sometimes even of the higher stage, women not only have
freedom, but are held in high esteem. What they were even in the pairing family,
let Arthur Wright, for many years a missionary among the Seneca Iroquois,
testify: "As to their families, at a time when they still lived in their old long
houses (communistic households of several families) ... a certain clan (gens)
always reigned, so that the women choose their husbands from other clans
(gentes).... The female part generally ruled the house; the provisions were held in
common; but woe to the luckless husband or lover who was too indolent or too
clumsy to contribute his share to the common stock. No matter how many
children or how much private property he had in the house, he was liable at any
moment to receive a hint to gather up his belongings and get out. And he could
not dare to venture any resistance; the house was made too hot for him and he
had no other choice, but to return to his own clan (gens) or, as was mostly the
case, to look for another wife in some other clan. The women were the
dominating power in the clans (gentes) and everywhere else. Occasionally they
did not hesitate to dethrone a chief and degrade him to a common warrior."
The communistic household, in which most or all the women belong to one and
the same gens, while the husbands come from different gentes, is the cause and
foundation of the general and widespread supremacy of women in primeval
times. The discovery of this fact is the third merit of Bachofen.
By way of supplement I wish to state that the reports of travelers and
missionaries concerning the overburdening of women among savages and
barbarians do not in the least contradict the above statements. The division of
labor between both sexes is caused by other reasons than the social condition of
women. Nations, where women have to work much harder than is proper for
them in our opinion, often respect women more highly than Europeans do. The
lady of civilized countries, surrounded with sham homage and a stranger to all
real work stands on a far lower social level than a hard-working barbarian
woman, regarded as a real lady (frowa-lady-mistress) and having the character of
such.
Whether or not the pairing family has in our time entirely supplanted group
marriage in America, can be decided only by closer investigations among those
nations of northwestern and especially of southern America that are still in the
higher stage of savagery. About the latter so many reports of sexual license are
current that the assumption of a complete cessation of the ancient group
marriage is hardly warranted. Evidently all traces of it have not yet disappeared.
In at least forty North American tribes the man marrying an elder sister has the
right to make all her sisters his wives as soon as they are of age, a survival of the
community of men for the whole series of sisters. And Bancroft relates that the
Indians of the Californian peninsula celebrate certain festivities uniting several
"tribes" for the purpose of unrestricted sexual intercourse. These are evidently
gentes that have preserved in these festivities a vague recollection of the time
when the women of one gens had for their common husbands all the men of
another gens, and vice versa. The same custom is still observed in Australia.
Among certain nations it sometimes happens that the older men, the chief and
sorcerer-priests, exploit the community of women for their own benefits and
monopolize all the women. But in their turn they must restore the old community
during certain festivities and great assemblies, permitting their wives to enjoy
themselves with the young men. A whole series of examples of such periodical
saturnalia restoring for a short time the ancient sexual freedom is quoted by
Westermarck:[18] among the Hos, the Santals, the Punjas and Kotars in India,
among some African nations, etc. Curiously enough Westermarck concludes that
this is a survival, not of group marriage, the existence of which he denies, but—
of a rutting season which primitive man had in common with other animals.
Here we touch Bachofen's fourth great discovery: the widespread form of
transition from group marriage to pairing family. What Bachofen represents as a
penance for violating the old divine laws—the penalty with which a woman
redeems her right to chastity, is in fact only a mystical expression for the penalty
paid by a woman for becoming exempt from the ancient community of men and
acquiring the right of surrendering to one man only. This penalty consists in a
limited surrender: Babylonian women had to surrender once a year in the temple
of Mylitta; other nations of Western Asia sent their young women for years to
the temple of Anaitis, where they had to practice free love with favorites of their
own choice before they were allowed to marry. Similar customs in a religious
disguise are common to nearly all Asiatic nations between the Mediterranean
and the Ganges. The penalty for exemption becomes gradually lighter in course
of time, as Bachofen remarks: "The annually repeated surrender gives place to a
single sacrifice; the hetaerism of the matrons is followed by that of the maidens,
the promiscuous intercourse during marriage to that before wedding, the
indiscriminate intercourse with all to that with certain individuals."[19] Among
some nations the religious disguise is missing. Among others—Thracians, Celts,
etc., in classic times, many primitive inhabitants of India, Malay nations, South
Sea Islanders and many American Indians to this day—the girls enjoy absolute
sexual freedom before marriage. This is especially true almost everywhere in
South America, as everybody can confirm who penetrates a little into the
interior. Agassiz, e. g., relates[20] an anecdote of a wealthy family of Indian
descent. On being introduced to the daughter he asked something about her
father, presuming him to be her mother's husband, who was in the war against
Paraguay. But the mother replied, smiling: "Nao tem pai, he filha da fortuna"—
she hasn't any father; she is the daughter of chance. "It is the way the Indian or
half-breed women here always speak of their illegitimate children; and though
they say it without an intonation of sadness or of blame, apparently as
unconscious of any wrong or shame as if they said the father was absent or dead,
it has the most melancholy significance; it seems to speak of such absolute
desertion. So far is this from being an unusual case, that among the common
people the opposite seems the exception. Children are frequently quite ignorant
of their parentage. They know about their mother, for all the care and
responsibility falls upon her, but they have no knowledge of their father; nor
does it seem to occur to the woman that she or her children have any claim upon
him." What seems so strange to the civilized man, is simply the rule of maternal
law and group marriage.
Again, among other nations the friends and relatives of the bridegroom or the
wedding guests claim their traditional right to the bride, and the bridegroom
comes last. This custom prevailed in ancient times on the Baleares and among
the African Augilers; it is observed to this day by the Bareas in Abyssinia. In
still other cases, an official person—the chief of a tribe or a gens, the cazique,
shamane, priest, prince or whatever may be his title—represents the community
and exercises the right of the first night. All modern romantic whitewashing
notwithstanding, this jus primae noctis, is still in force among most of the
natives of Alaska,[21] among the Tahus of northern Mexico[22] and some other
nations. And during the whole of the middle ages it was practiced at least in
originally Celtic countries, where it was directly transmitted by group marriage,
e. g. in Aragonia. While in Castilia the peasant was never a serf, the most
disgraceful serfdom existed in Aragonia, until abolished by the decision of
Ferdinand the Catholic in 1486. In this document we read: "We decide and
declare that the aforesaid 'senyors' (barons) ... shall neither sleep the first night
with the wife of a peasant, nor shall they in the first night after the wedding,
when the woman has gone to bed, step over said woman or bed as a sign of their
authority. Neither shall the aforesaid senyors use the daughter or the son of any
peasant, with or without pay, against their will." (Quoted in the Catalonian
original by Sugenheim, "Serfdom," Petersburg, 1861, page 35.)
Bachofen, furthermore, is perfectly right in contending that the transition from
what he calls "hetaerism" or "incestuous generation" to monogamy was brought
about mainly by women. The more in the course of economic development,
undermining the old communism and increasing the density of population, the
traditional sexual relations lost their innocent character suited to the primitive
forest, the more debasing and oppressive they naturally appeared to women; and
the more they consequently longed for relief by the right of chastity, of
temporary or permanent marriage with one man. This progress could not be due
to men for the simple reason that they never, even to this day, had the least
intention of renouncing the pleasures of actual group marriage. Not until the
women had accomplished the transition to the pairing family could the men
introduce strict monogamy—true, only for women.
The pairing family arose on the boundary line between savagery and barbarism,
generally in the higher stage of savagery, here and there in the lower stage of
barbarism. It is the form of the family characteristic for barbarism, as group
marriage is for savagery and monogamy for civilization. In order to develop it
into established monogamy, other causes than those active hitherto were
required. In the pairing family the group was already reduced to its last unit, its
biatomic molecule: one man and one woman. Natural selection, had
accomplished its purpose by a continually increasing restriction of sexual
intercourse. Nothing remained to be done in this direction. Unless new social
forces became active, there was no reason why a new form of the family should
develop out of the pairing family. But these forces did become active.
We now leave America, the classic soil of the pairing family. No sign permits the
conclusion that a higher form of the family was developed here, that any
established form of monogamy ever existed anywhere in the New World before
the discovery and conquest. Not so in the Old World.
In the latter, the domestication of animals and the breeding of flocks had
developed a hitherto unknown source of wealth and created entirely new social
conditions. Up to the lower stage of barbarism, fixed wealth was almost
exclusively represented by houses, clothing, rough ornaments and the tools for
obtaining and preparing food: boats, weapons and household articles of the
simplest kind. Nourishment had to be secured afresh day by day. But now, with
their herds of horses, camels, donkeys, cattle, sheep, goats and hogs, the
advancing nomadic nations—the Aryans in the Indian Punjab, in the region of
the Ganges and the steppes of the Oxus and Jaxartes, then still more rich in
water-veins than now; the Semites on the Euphrates and Tigris—had acquired
possessions demanding only the most crude attention and care in order to
propagate themselves in ever increasing numbers and yield the most abundant
store of milk and meat. All former means of obtaining food were now forced to
the background. Hunting, once a necessity, now became a sport.
But who was the owner of this new wealth? Doubtless it was originally the gens.
However, private ownership of flocks must have had an early beginning. It is
difficult to say whether to the author of the so-called first book of Moses Father
Abraham appeared as the owner of his flocks by virtue of his privilege as head
of a communistic family or of his capacity as gentile chief by actual descent. So
much is certain: we must not regard him as a proprietor in the modern sense of
the word. It is furthermore certain that everywhere on the threshold of
documentary history we find the flocks in the separate possession of chiefs of
families, exactly like the productions of barbarian art, such as metal ware,
articles of luxury and, finally, the human cattle—the slaves.
For now slavery was also invented. To the barbarian of the lower stage a slave
was of no use. The American Indians, therefore, treated their vanquished
enemies in quite a different way from nations of a higher stage. The men were
tortured or adopted as brothers into the tribe of the victors. The women were
married or likewise adopted with their surviving children. The human labor
power at this stage does not yet produce a considerable amount over and above
its cost of subsistence. But the introduction of cattle raising, metal industry,
weaving and finally agriculture wrought a change. Just as the once easily
obtainable wives now had an exchange value and were bought, so labor power
was now procured, especially since the flocks had definitely become private
property. The family did not increase as rapidly as the cattle. More people were
needed for superintending; for this purpose the captured enemy was available
and, besides, he could be increased by breeding like the cattle.
Such riches, once they had become the private property of certain families and
augmented rapidly, gave a powerful impulse to society founded on the pairing
family and the maternal gens. The pairing family had introduced a new element.
By the side of the natural mother it had placed the authentic natural father who
probably was better authenticated than many a "father" of our day. According to
the division of labor in those times, the task of obtaining food and the tools
necessary for this purpose fell to the share of the man; hence he owned the latter
and kept them in case of a separation, as the women did the household goods.
According to the social custom of that time, the man was also the owner of the
new source of existence, the cattle, and later on of the new labor power, the
slaves. But according to the same custom, his children could not inherit his
property, for the following reasons: By maternal law, i. e., while descent was
traced only along the female line, and by the original custom of inheriting in the
gens, the gentile relatives inherited the property of their deceased gentile
relative. The wealth had to remain in the gens. In view of the insignificance of
the objects, the property may have gone in practice to the closest gentile
relatives, i. e., the consanguine relatives on the mother's side. The children of the
dead man, however, did not belong to his gens, but to that of their mother. They
inherited first together with the other consanguine relatives of the mother, later
on perhaps in preference to the others. But they could not inherit from their
father, because they did not belong to his gens, where his property had to remain.
Hence, after the death of a cattle owner, the cattle would fall to his brothers,
sisters and the children of his sisters, or to the offspring of the sisters of his
mother. His own children were disinherited.
In the measure of the increasing wealth man's position in the family became
superior to that of woman, and the desire arose to use this fortified position for
the purpose of overthrowing the traditional law of inheritance in favor of his
children. But this was not feasible as long as maternal law was valid. This law
had to be abolished, and it was. This was by no means as difficult as it appears to
us to-day. For this revolution—one of the most radical ever experienced by
humanity—did not have to touch a single living member of the gens. All its
members could remain what they had always been. The simple resolution was
sufficient, that henceforth the offspring of the male members should belong to
the gens, while the children of the female members should be excluded by
transferring them to the gens of their father. This abolished the tracing of descent
by female lineage and the maternal right of inheritance, and instituted descent by
male lineage and the paternal right of inheritance. How and when this revolution
was accomplished by the nations of the earth, we do not know. It belongs
entirely to prehistoric times. That it was accomplished is proven more than
satisfactorily by the copious traces of maternal law collected especially by
Bachofen. How easily it is accomplished we may observe in a whole series of
Indian tribes, that recently passed through or are still engaged in it, partly under
the influence of increasing wealth and changed modes of living (transfer from
forests to the prairie), partly through the moral pressure of civilization and
missionaries. Six out of eight Missouri tribes have male descent and inheritance,
while only two retain female descent and inheritance. The Shawnees, Miamis
and Delawares follow the custom of placing their children into the male gens by
giving them a gentile name belonging to the father's gens, so that they may be
entitled to inherit. "Innate casuistry of man, to change the objects by changing
their names, and to find loopholes for breaking tradition inside of tradition where
a direct interest was a sufficient motive." (Marx.) This made confusion worse
confounded, which could be and partially was remedied alone by paternal law.
"This seems to be the most natural transition." (Marx.) As to the opinion of the
comparative jurists, how this transition took place among the civilized nations of
the old world—although only in hypotheses—compare M. Kovalevsky, Tableau
des origines et de l'évolution de la famille et de la propriété, Stockholm, 1890.
The downfall of maternal law was the historic defeat of the female sex. The men
seized the reins also in the house, the women were stripped of their dignity,
enslaved, tools of men's lust and mere machines for the generation of children.
This degrading position of women, especially conspicuous among the Greeks of
heroic and still more of classic times, was gradually glossed over and disguised
or even clad in a milder form. But it is by no means obliterated.
The first effect of the established supremacy of men became now visible in the
reappearance of the intermediate form of the patriarchal family. Its most
significant feature is not polygamy, of which more anon, but "the organization of
a certain number of free and unfree persons into one family under the paternal
authority of the head of the family. In the Semitic form this head of the family
lives in polygamy, the unfree members have wife and children, and the purpose
of the whole organization is the tending of herds in a limited territory." The
essential points are the assimilation of the unfree element and the paternal
authority. Hence the ideal type of this form of the family is the Roman family.
The word familia did not originally signify the composite ideal of sentimentality
and domestic strife in the present day philistine mind. Among the Romans it did
not even apply in the beginning to the leading couple and its children, but to the
slaves alone. Famulus means domestic slave, and familia is the aggregate
number of slaves belonging to one man. At the time of Gajus, the familia, id est
patrimonium (i. e., paternal legacy), was still bequeathed by testament. The
expression was invented by the Romans in order to designate a new social
organism, the head of which had a wife, children and a number of slaves under
his paternal authority and according to Roman law the right of life and death
over all of them. "The word is, therefore, not older than the ironclad family
system of the Latin tribes, which arose after the introduction of agriculture and
of lawful slavery, and after the separation of the Aryan Itali from the Greeks."
Marx adds: "The modern family contains the germ not only of slavery (servitus),
but also of serfdom, because it has from the start a relation to agricultural
service. It comprises in miniature all those contrasts that later on develop more
broadly in society and the state."
Such a form of the family shows the transition from the pairing family to
monogamy. In order to secure the faithfulness of the wife, and hence the
reliability of paternal lineage, the women are delivered absolutely into the power
of the men; in killing his wife, the husband simply exercises his right.
With the patriarchal family we enter the domain of written history, a field in
which comparative law can render considerable assistance. And here it has
brought about considerable progress indeed. We owe to Maxim Kovalevsky
(Tableau etc. de la famille et de la propriété, Stockholm, 1890, p. 60-100) the
proof, that the patriarchal household community, found to this day among
Serbians and Bulgarians under the names of Zádruga (friendly bond) and
Bratstvo (fraternity), and in a modified form among oriental nations, formed the
stage of transition between the maternal family derived from group marriage and
the monogamous family of the modern world. This seems at least established for
the historic nations of the old world, for Aryans and Semites.
The Zádruga of southern Slavonia offers the best still existing illustration of such
a family communism. It comprises several generations of the father's
descendants, together with their wives, all living together on the same farm,
tilling their fields in common, living and clothing themselves from the same
stock, and possessing collectively the surplus of their earnings. The community
is managed by the master of the house (domácin), who acts as its representative,
may sell inferior objects, has charge of the treasury and is responsible for it as
well as for a proper business administration. He is chosen by vote and is not
necessarily the oldest man. The women and their work are directed by the
mistress of the house (domácica), who is generally the wife of the domácin. She
also has an important, and often final, voice in choosing a husband for the girls.
But the highest authority is vested in the family council, the assembly of all
grown companions, male and female. The domácin is responsible to this council.
It takes all important resolutions, sits in judgment on the members of the
household, decides the question of important purchases and sales, especially of
land, etc.
It is only about ten years since the existence of such family communism in the
Russia of to-day was proven. At present it is generally acknowledged to be
rooted in popular Russian custom quite as much as the obscina or village
community.
It is found in the oldest Russian code, the Pravda of Jaroslav, under the same
name (vervj) as in the Dalmatian code, and may also be traced in Polish and
Czech historical records.
Likewise among Germans, the economic unit according to Heussler (Institutions
of German law) is not originally the single family, but the "collective
household," comprising several generations or single families and, besides, often
enough unfree individuals. The Roman family is also traced to this type, and
hence the absolute authority of the master of the house and the defenselessness
of the other members in regard to him is strongly questioned of late. Similar
communities are furthermore said to have existed among the Celts of Ireland. In
France they were preserved up to the time of the Revolution in Nivernais under
the name of "parçonneries," and in the Franche Comté they are not quite extinct
yet. In the region of Louhans (Saône et Loire) we find large farmhouses with a
high central hall for common use reaching up to the roof and surrounded by
sleeping rooms accessible by the help of stairs with six to eight steps. Several
generations of the same family live together in such a house.
In India, the household community with collective agriculture is already
mentioned by Nearchus at the time of Alexander the Great, and it exists to this
day in the same region, in the Punjab and the whole Northwest of the country. In
the Caucasus it was located by Kovalevski himself.
In Algeria it is still found among the Kabyles. Even in America it is said to have
existed. It is supposed to be identical with the "Calpullis" described by Zurita in
ancient Mexico. In Peru, however, Cunow (Ausland, 1890, No. 42-44) has
demonstrated rather clearly that at the time of the conquest a sort of a
constitution in marks (called curiously enough marca), with a periodical
allotment of arable soil, and consequently individual tillage, was in existence.
At any rate, the patriarchal household community with collective tillage and
ownership of land now assumes an entirely different meaning than heretofore.
We can no longer doubt that it played an important role among the civilized and
some other nations of the old world in the transition from the maternal to the
single family. Later on we shall return to Kovaleski's further conclusion that it
was also the stage of transition from which developed the village or mark
community with individual tillage and first periodical, then permanent allotment
of arable and pasture lands.
In regard to the family life within these household communities it must be
remarked that at least in Russia the master of the house has the reputation of
strongly abusing his position against the younger women of the community,
especially his daughters-in-law, and of transforming them into a harem for
himself. Russian popular songs are very eloquent on this point.
Before taking up monogamy, which rapidly developed after the downfall of
maternal law, let me say a few words about polygamy and polyandry. Both forms
of the family can only be exceptions, historical products of luxury so to speak,
unless they could be found side by side in the same country, which is apparently
not the case. As the men excluded from polygamy cannot find consolation in the
women left over by polyandry, the number of men and women being hitherto
approximately equal without regard to social institutions, it becomes of itself
impossible to confer on any one of these two forms the distinction of general
preference. Indeed, the polygamy of one man was evidently the product of
slavery, confined to certain exceptional positions. In the Semitic patriarchal
family, only the patriarch himself, or at best a few of his sons, practice
polygamy, the others must be satisfied with one wife. This is the case to-day in
the whole Orient. Polygamy is a privilege of the wealthy and distinguished, and
is mainly realized by purchase of female slaves. The mass of the people live in
monogamy. Polyandry in India and Thibet is likewise an exception. Its surely not
uninteresting origin from group marriage requires still closer investigation. In its
practice it seems, by the way, much more tolerant than the jealous Harem
establishment of the Mohammedans. At least among the Nairs of India, three,
four or more men have indeed one woman in common; but every one of them
may have a second woman in common with three or more other men; and in the
same way a third, fourth, etc. It is strange that McLennan did not discover the
new class of "club marriage" in these marital clubs, in several of which one may
be a member and which he himself describes. This marriage club business is,
however, by no means actual polyandry. It is on the contrary, as Giraud-Teulon
already remarks, a specialized form of group marriage. The men live in
polygamy, the women in polyandry.
 4. THE MONOGAMOUS FAMILY.

It develops from the pairing family, as we have already shown, during the time
of transition from the middle to the higher stage of barbarism. Its final victory is
one of the signs of beginning civilization. It is founded on male supremacy for
the pronounced purpose of breeding children of indisputable paternal lineage.
The latter is required, because these children shall later on inherit the fortune of
their father. The monogamous family is distinguished from the pairing family by
the far greater durability of wedlock, which can no longer be dissolved at the
pleasure of either party. As a rule, it is only the man who can still dissolve it and
cast off his wife. The privilege of conjugal faithlessness remains sanctioned for
men at least by custom (the Code Napoleon concedes it directly to them, as long
as they do not bring their concubines into the houses of their wives). This
privilege is more and more enjoyed with the increasing development of society.
If the woman remembers the ancient sexual practices and attempts to revive
them, she is punished more severely than ever.
The whole severity of this new form of the family confronts us among the
Greeks. While, as Marx observes, the position of the female gods in mythology
shows an earlier period, when women still occupied a freer and more respected
plane, we find woman already degraded by the supremacy of man and the
competition of slaves during the time of the heroes. Read in the Odysseia how
Telemachos reproves and silences his mother. The captured young women,
according to Homer, are delivered to the sensual lust of the victors. The leaders
in the order of their rank select the most beautiful captives. The whole Iliad
notoriously revolves around the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon
about such a captured woman. In mentioning any hero of importance, the
captured girl sharing his tent and bed is never omitted. These girls are also taken
into the hero's home country and his house, as Kassandra by Agamemnon in
Aeschylos. Boys born by these female slaves receive a small share of the
paternal heirloom and are regarded as free men. Teukros is such an illegitimate
son and may use his father's name. The wife is expected to put up with
everything, while herself remaining chaste and faithful. Although the Greek
woman of heroic times is more highly respected than she of the civilized period,
still she is for her husband only the mother of his legal heirs, his first
housekeeper and the superintendent of the female slaves, whom he can and does
make his concubines at will.
It is this practice of slavery by the side of monogamy, the existence of young and
beautiful female slaves belonging without any restriction to their master, which
from the very beginning gives to monogamy the specific character of being
monogamy for women only, but not for men. And this character remains to this
day.
For the Greeks of later times we must make a distinction between Dorians and
Ionians. The former, with Sparta as their classic example, have in many respects
still more antiquated marriage customs than even Homer illustrates. In Sparta
existed a form of the pairing family modified by the contemporaneous ideas of
the state and still recalling group marriage in many ways. Sterile marriages were
dissolved. King Anaxandridas (about 650 before Christ) took another wife
besides his childless one and kept two households. About the same time King
Ariston added another wife to two childless ones, one of which he dismissed.
Furthermore, several brothers could have one wife in common; a friend who
liked his friend's wife better than his own could share her with him, and it was
not considered indecent to place a wife at the disposal of a sturdy "stallion," as
Bismarck would have said, even though he might not be a citizen. A certain
passage in Plutarch, where a Spartan matron refers a lover, who persists in
making offers to her, to her husband, seems to indicate—according to
Schoemann—even a still greater sexual freedom. Also adultery, faithlessness of
a wife behind her husband's back, was unheard of. On the other hand, domestic
slavery in Sparta, at least during the best time, was unknown, and the serf Helots
lived on separate country seats. Hence there was less temptation for a Spartan to
hold intercourse with other women. As was to be expected under such
circumstances, the women of Sparta occupied a more highly respected place than
those of other Greeks. Spartan women and the Athenian hetaerae were the only
Greek women of whom the ancients speak respectfully and whose remarks they
considered worthy of notice.
Quite a different condition among Ionians, whose representative is Athens. The
girls learned only to spin, weave and sew, at the most a little reading and writing.
They were practically shut in and had only the company of other women.
The women's room formed a separate part of the house, on the upper floor or in a
rear building, where men, especially strangers, did not easily enter and whither
the women retreated when male visitors came. The women did not leave the
house without being accompanied by a female slave. At home they were strictly
guarded. Aristophanes speaks of Molossian dogs that were kept to frighten off
adulterers. And at least in the Asiatic towns, eunuchs were kept for guarding
women. Even at Herodotus' time these eunuchs were manufactured for the trade,
and according to Wachsmuth not for barbarians alone. By Euripides woman is
designated as "oikurema," a neuter signifying an object for housekeeping, and
beside the business of breeding children she served to the Athenian for nothing
but his chief house maid. The man had his gymnastic exercises, his public
meetings, from which the women were excluded. Besides, the man very often
had female slaves at his disposal, and during the most flourishing time of Athens
an extensive prostitution which was at least patronized by the state. It was
precisely on the basis of this prostitution that the unique type of Ionic women
developed; the hetaerae. They rose by esprit and artistic taste as far above the
general level of antique womanhood as the Spartan women by their character.
But that it was necessary to become a hetaera before one could be a woman,
constitutes the severest denunciation of the Athenian family.
The Athenian family became in the course of time the model after which not
only the rest of the Ionians, but gradually all the Greeks at home and abroad
molded their domestic relations. Nevertheless, in spite of all seclusion and
watching, the Grecian ladies found sufficient opportunity for deceiving their
husbands. The latter who would have been ashamed of betraying any love for
their wives, found recreation in all kinds of love affairs with hetaerae. But the
degradation of the women was avenged in the men and degraded them also, until
they sank into the abomination of boy-love. They degraded their gods and
themselves by the myth of Ganymedes.
Such was the origin of monogamy, as far as we may trace it in the most civilized
and most highly developed nation of antiquity. It was by no means a fruit of
individual sex-love and had nothing to do with the latter, for the marriages
remained as conventional as ever. Monogamy was the first form of the family
not founded on natural, but on economic conditions, viz.: the victory of private
property over primitive and natural collectivism. Supremacy of the man in the
family and generation of children that could be his offspring alone and were
destined to be the heirs of his wealth—these were openly avowed by the Greeks
to be the sole objects of monogamy. For the rest it was a burden to them, a duty
to the gods, the state and their own ancestors, a duty to be fulfilled and no more.
In Athens the law enforced not only the marriage, but also the fulfillment of a
minimum of the so-called matrimonial duties on the man's part.
Monogamy, then, does by no means enter history as a reconciliation of man and
wife and still less as the highest form of marriage. On the contrary, it enters as
the subjugation of one sex by the other, as the proclamation of an antagonism
between the sexes unknown in all preceding history. In an old unpublished
manuscript written by Marx and myself in 1846, I find the following passage:
"The first division of labor is that of man and wife in breeding children." And to-
day I may add: The first class antagonism appearing in history coincides with the
development of the antagonism of man and wife in monogamy, and the first
class oppression with that of the female by the male sex. Monogamy was a great
historical progress. But by the side of slavery and private property it marks at the
same time that epoch which, reaching down to our days, takes with all progress
also a step backwards, relatively speaking, and develops the welfare and
advancement of one by the woe and submission of the other. It is the cellular
form of civilized society which enables us to study the nature of its now fully
developed contrasts and contradictions.
The old relative freedom of sexual intercourse by no means disappeared with the
victory of the pairing or even of the monogamous family. "The old conjugal
system, now reduced to narrower limits by the gradual disappearance of the
punaluan groups, still environed the advancing family, which it was to follow to
the verge of civilization.... It finally disappeared in the new form of hetaerism,
which still follows mankind in civilization as a dark shadow upon the family."[23]
By hetaerism Morgan designates sexual intercourse of men with unmarried
women outside of the monogamous family, flourishing, as is well known, during
the whole period of civilization in many different forms and tending more and
more to open prostitution. This hetaerism is directly derived from group
marriage, from the sacrificial surrender of women for the purpose of obtaining
the right to chastity. The surrender for money was at first a religious act; it took
place in the temple of the goddess of love and the money flowed originally into
the treasury of the temple. The hierodulae of Anaitis in Armenia, of Aphrodite in
Corinth and the religious dancing girls of India attached to the temples, the so-
called bajaderes (derived from the Portuguese "bailadera," dancing girl), were
the first prostitutes. The surrender, originally the duty of every woman, was later
on practiced by these priestesses alone in representation of all others. Among
other nations, hetaerism is derived from the sexual freedom permitted to girls
before marriage—also a survival of the group marriage, only transmitted by
another route. With the rise of different property relations, in the higher stage of
barbarism, wage labor appears sporadically by the side of slavery, and at the
same time its unavoidable companion, professional prostitution of free women
by the side of the forced surrender of female slaves. It is the heirloom
bequeathed by group marriage to civilization, a gift as ambiguous as everything
else produced by ambiguous, double-faced, schismatic and contradictory
civilization. Here monogamy, there hetaerism and its most extreme form,
prostitution. Hetaerism is as much a social institution as all others. It continues
the old sexual freedom—for the benefit of the men. In reality not only permitted,
but also assiduously practised by the ruling class, it is denounced only
nominally. Still in practice this denunciation strikes by no means the men who
indulge in it, but only the women. These are ostracised and cast out by society, in
order to proclaim once more the fundamental law of unconditional male
supremacy over the female sex.
However, a second contradiction is thereby developed within monogamy itself.
By the side of the husband, who is making his life pleasant by hetaerism, stands
the neglected wife. And you cannot have one side of the contradiction without
the other, just as you cannot have the whole apple after eating half of it.
Nevertheless this seems to have been the idea of the men, until their wives
taught them a lesson. Monogamy introduces two permanent social characters
that were formerly unknown: the standing lover of the wife and the cuckold. The
men had gained the victory over the women, but the vanquished magnanimously
provided the coronation. In addition to monogamy and hetaerism, adultery
became an unavoidable social institution—denounced, severely punished, but
irrepressible. The certainty of paternal parentage rested as of old on moral
conviction at best, and in order to solve the unreconcilable contradiction, the
code Napoléon decreed in its article 312: "L'enfant conçu pendant le mariage a
pour père le mari;" the child conceived during marriage has for its father—the
husband. This is the last result of three thousand years of monogamy.
Thus we have in the monogamous family, at least in those cases that remain true
to historical development and clearly express the conflict between man and wife
created by the exclusive supremacy of men, a miniature picture of the contrasts
and contradictions of society at large. Split by class-differences since the
beginning of civilization, society has been unable to reconcile and overcome
these antitheses. Of course, I am referring here only to those cases of monogamy,
where matrimonial life actually remains in accord with the original character of
the whole institution, but where the wife revolts against the rule of the man.
Nobody knows better than your German philistine that not all marriages follow
such a course. He does not understand how to maintain the control of his own
home any better than that of the State, and his wife is, therefore, fully entitled to
wearing the trousers, which he does not deserve. But he thinks himself far
superior to his French companion in misery, who more frequently fares far
worse.
The monogamous family, by the way, did not everywhere and always appear in
the classic severe form it had among the Greeks. Among the Romans, who as
future conquerors of the world had a sharper although less refined eye than the
Greeks, the women were freer and more respected. A Roman believed that the
conjugal faith of his wife was sufficiently safeguarded by his power over her life
and death. Moreover, the women could voluntarily dissolve the marriage as well
as the men. But the highest progress in the development of monogamy was
doubtless due to the entrance of the Germans into history, probably because on
account of their poverty their monogamy had not yet fully outgrown the pairing
family. Three facts mentioned by Tacitus favor this conclusion: In the first place,
although marriage was held very sacred—"they are satisfied with one wife, the
women are protected by chastity"—still polygamy was in use among the
distinguished and the leaders of the tribes, as was the case in the pairing families
of the American Indians. Secondly, the transition from maternal to paternal law
could have taken place only a short while before, because the mother's brother—
the next male relative in the gens by maternal law—was still considered almost a
closer relative than the natural father, also in accordance with the standpoint of
the American Indians. The latter furnished to Marx, according to his own
testimony, the key to the comprehension of German primeval history. And
thirdly, the German women were highly respected and also influenced public
affairs, a fact directly opposed to monogamic male supremacy. In all these things
the Germans almost harmonize with the Spartans, who, as we saw, also had not
fully overcome the pairing family. Hence in this respect an entirely new element
succeeded to the world's supremacy with the Germans. The new monogamy now
developing the ruins of the Roman world from the mixture of nations endowed
male rule with a milder form and accorded to women a position that was at least
outwardly far more respected and free than classical antiquity ever knew. Not
until now was there a possibility of developing from monogamy—in it, by the
side of it or against it, as the case might be—the highest ethical progress we owe
to it: the modern individual sexlove, unknown to all previous ages.
This progress doubtless arose from the fact that the Germans still lived in the
pairing family and inoculated monogamy as far as possible with the position of
women corresponding to the former. It was in no way due to the legendary and
wonderfully pure natural qualities of the Germans. These qualities were limited
to the simple fact that the pairing family indeed does not create the marked
moral contrasts of monogamy. On the contrary, the Germans, especially those
who wandered southeast among the nomadic nations of the Black Sea, had
greatly degenerated morally. Beside the equestrian tricks of the inhabitants of the
steppe they had also acquired some very unnatural vices. This is expressly
confirmed of the Thaifali by Ammianus and of the Heruli by Prokop.
Although monogamy was the only one of all known forms of the family in
which modern sexlove could develop, this does not imply that it developed
exclusively or even principally as mutual love of man and wife. The very nature
of strict monogamy under man's rule excluded this. Among all historically
active, i. e., ruling, classes matrimony remained what it had been since the days
of the pairing family—a conventional matter arranged by the parents. And the
first historical form of sexlove as a passion, as an attribute of every human being
(at least of the ruling classes), the specific character of the highest form of the
sexual impulse, this first form, the love of the knights in the middle ages, was by
no means matrimonial love, but quite the contrary. In its classic form, among the
Provençals, it heads with full sails for adultery and their poets extol the latter.
The flower of Provençal love poetry, the Albas, describe in glowing colors how
the knight sleeps with his adored—the wife of another—while the watchman
outside calls him at the first faint glow of the morning (alba) and enables him to
escape unnoticed. The poems culminate in the parting scene. Likewise the
Frenchmen of the north and also the honest Germans adopted this style of poetry
and the manner of knightly love corresponding to it. Old Wolfram von
Eschenbach has left us three wonderful "day songs" treating this same
questionable subject, and I like them better than his three heroic epics.
Civil matrimony in our day is of two kinds. In Catholic countries, the parents
provide a fitting spouse for their son as of old, and the natural consequence is the
full development of the contradictions inherent to monogamy: voluptuous
hetaerism on the man's part, voluptuous adultery of the woman. Probably the
Catholic church has abolished divorce for the simple reason that it had come to
the conclusion, there was as little help for adultery as for death. In Protestant
countries, again, it is the custom to give the bourgeois son more or less liberty in
choosing his mate. Hence a certain degree of love may be at the bottom of such a
marriage and for the sake of propriety this is always assumed, quite in keeping
with Protestant hypocrisy. In this case hetaerism is carried on less strenuously
and adultery on the part of the woman is not so frequent. But as human beings
remain under any form of marriage what they were before marrying, and as the
citizens of Protestant countries are mostly philistines, this Protestant monogamy
on the average of the best cases confines itself to the community of a leaden
ennui, labeled wedded bliss. The best mirror of these two species of marriage is
the novel, the French novel for the Catholic, the German novel for the Protestant
brand. In both of these novels they "get one another:" in the German novel the
man gets the girl, in the French novel the husband gets the horns. It does not
always go without saying which of the two deserves the most pity. For this
reason the tediousness of the German novels is abhorred as much by the French
bourgeois as the "immorality" of the French novels by the German philistine. Of
late, since Berlin became cosmopolitan, the German novel begins to treat
somewhat timidly of the hetaerism and adultery that a long time ago became
familiar features of that city.
In both cases the marriage is influenced by the class environment of the
participants, and in this respect it always remains conventional. This
conventionalism often enough results in the most pronounced prostitution—
sometimes of both parties, more commonly of the woman. She is distinguished
from a courtisane only in that she does not offer her body for money by the hour
like a commodity, but sells it into slavery for once and all. Fourier's words hold
good with respect to all conventional marriages: "As in grammar two negatives
make one affirmative, so in matrimonial ethics, two prostitutions are considered
as one virtue." Sexual love in man's relation to woman becomes and can become
the rule among the oppressed classes alone, among the proletarians of our day—
no matter whether this relation is officially sanctioned or not.
Here all the fundamental conditions of classic monogamy have been abolished.
Here all property is missing and it was precisely for the protection and
inheritance of this that monogamy and man rule were established. Hence all
incentive to make this rule felt is wanting here. More still, the funds are missing.
Civil law protecting male rule applies only to the possessing classes and their
intercourse with proletarians. Law is expensive and therefore the poverty of the
laborer makes it meaningless for his relation to his wife. Entirely different
personal and social conditions decide in this case. And finally, since the great
industries have removed women from the home to the labor market and to the
factory, the last remnant of man rule in the proletarian home has lost its ground
—except, perhaps, a part of the brutality against women that has become general
since the advent of monogamy. Thus the family of the proletarian is no longer
strictly monogamous, even with all the most passionate love and the most
unalterable loyalty of both parties, and in spite of any possible clerical or secular
sanction. Consequently the eternal companions of monogamy, hetaerism and
adultery, play an almost insignificant role here. The woman has practically
regained the right of separation, and if a couple cannot agree, they rather
separate. In short, the proletarian marriage is monogamous in the etymological
sense of the word, but by no means in a historical sense.
True, our jurists hold that the progress of legislation continually lessens all cause
of complaint for women. The modern systems of civil law recognize, first that
marriage, in order to be legal, must be a contract based on voluntary consent of
both parties, and secondly that during marriage the relations of both parties shall
be founded on equal rights and duties. These two demands logically enforced
will, so they claim, give to women everything they could possibly ask.
This genuinely juridical argumentation is exactly the same as that used by the
radical republican bourgeois to cut short and dismiss the proletarian. The labor
contract is said to be voluntarily made by both parties. But it is considered as
voluntary when the law places both parties on equal terms on paper. The power
conferred on one party by the division of classes, the pressure thereby exerted on
the other party, the actual economic relation of the two—all this does not
concern the law. Again, during the term of the contract both parties are held to
have equal rights, unless one has expressly renounced his right. That the
economic situation forces the laborer to give up even the last semblance of
equality, that is not the fault of the law.
In regard to marriage, even the most advanced law is completely satisfied after
both parties have formally declared their willingness. What passes behind the
juridical scenes where the actual process of living is going on, and how this
willingness is brought about, that cannot be the business of the law and the jurist.
Yet the simplest legal comparison should show to the jurist what this willingness
really means. In those countries where a legitimate portion of the parental wealth
is assured to children and where these cannot be disinherited—in Germany, in
countries with French law, etc.—the children are bound to secure the consent of
their parents for marrying. In countries with English law, where the consent of
the parents is by no means a legal qualification of marriage, the parents have full
liberty to bequeath their wealth to anyone and may disinherit their children at
will. Hence it is clear that among classes having any property to bequeath the
freedom to marry is not a particle greater in England and America than in France
and Germany.
The legal equality of man and woman in marriage is by no means better
founded. Their legal inequality inherited from earlier stages of society is not the
cause, but the effect of the economic oppression of women. In the ancient
communistic household comprising many married couples and their children, the
administration of the household entrusted to women was just as much a public
function, a socially necessary industry, as the procuring of food by men. In the
patriarchal and still more in the monogamous family this was changed. The
administration of the household lost its public character. It was no longer a
concern of society. It became a private service. The woman became the first
servant of the house, excluded from participation in social production. Only by
the great industries of our time the access to social production was again opened
for women—for proletarian women alone, however. This is done in such a
manner that they remain excluded from public production and cannot earn
anything, if they fulfill their duties in the private service of the family; or that
they are unable to attend to their family duties, if they wish to participate in
public industries and earn a living independently. As in the factory, so women
are situated in all business departments up to the medical and legal professions.
The modern monogamous family is founded on the open or disguised domestic
slavery of women, and modern society is a mass composed of molecules in the
form of monogamous families. In the great majority of cases the man has to earn
a living and to support his family, at least among the possessing classes. He
thereby obtains a superior position that has no need of any legal special
privilege. In the family, he is the bourgeois, the woman represents the proletariat.
In the industrial world, however, the specific character of the economic
oppression weighing on the proletariat appears in its sharpest outlines only after
all special privileges of the capitalist class are abolished and the full legal
equality of both classes is established. A democratic republic does not abolish
the distinction between the two classes. On the contrary, it offers the
battleground on which this distinction can be fought out. Likewise the peculiar
character of man's rule over woman in the modern family, the necessity and the
manner of accomplishing the real social equality of the two, will appear in broad
daylight only then, when both of them will enjoy complete legal equality. It will
then be seen that the emancipation of women is primarily dependent on the re-
introduction of the whole female sex into the public industries. To accomplish
this, the monogamous family must cease to be the industrial unit of society.
* * * * *
We have, then, three main forms of the family, corresponding in general to the
three main stages of human development. For savagery group marriage, for
barbarism the pairing family, for civilization monogamy supplemented by
adultery and prostitution. Between the pairing family and monogamy, in the
higher stage of barbarism, the rule of men over female slaves and polygamy is
inserted.
As we proved by our whole argument, the progress visible in this chain of
phenomena is connected with the peculiarity of more and more curtailing the
sexual freedom of the group marriage for women, but not for men. And group
marriage is actually practised by men to this day. What is considered a crime for
women and entails grave legal and social consequences for them, is considered
honorable for men or in the worst case a slight moral blemish born with
pleasure. But the more traditional hetaerism is changed in our day by capitalistic
production and conforms to it, the more hetaerism is transformed into
undisguised prostitution, the more demoralizing are its effects. And it
demoralizes men far more than women. Prostitution does not degrade the whole
female sex, but only the luckless women that become its victims, and even those
not to the extent generally assumed. But it degrades the character of the entire
male world. Especially a long engagement is in nine cases out of ten a perfect
training school of adultery.
We are now approaching a social revolution, in which the old economic
foundations of monogamy will disappear just as surely as those of its
complement, prostitution. Monogamy arose through the concentration of
considerable wealth in one hand—a man's hand—and from the endeavor to
bequeath this wealth to the children of this man to the exclusion of all others.
This necessitated monogamy on the woman's, but not on the man's part. Hence
this monogamy of women in no way hindered open or secret polygamy of men.
Now, the impending social revolution will reduce this whole care of inheritance
to a minimum by changing at least the overwhelming part of permanent and
inheritable wealth—the means of production—into social property. Since
monogamy was caused by economic conditions, will it disappear when these
causes are abolished?
One might reply, not without reason: not only will it not disappear, but it will
rather be perfectly realized. For with the transformation of the means of
production into collective property, wage labor will also disappear, and with it
the proletariat and the necessity for a certain, statistically ascertainable number
of women to surrender for money. Prostitution disappears and monogamy,
instead of going out of existence, at last becomes a reality—for men also.
At all events, the situation will be very much changed for men. But also that of
women, and of all women, will be considerably altered. With the transformation
of the means of production into collective property the monogamous family
ceases to be the economic unit of society. The private household changes to a
social industry. The care and education of children becomes a public matter.
Society cares equally well for all children, legal or illegal. This removes the care
about the "consequences" which now forms the essential social factor—moral
and economic—hindering a girl to surrender unconditionally to the beloved man.
Will not this be sufficient cause for a gradual rise of a more unconventional
intercourse of the sexes and a more lenient public opinion regarding virgin honor
and female shame? And finally, did we not see that in the modern world
monogamy and prostitution, though antitheses, are inseparable and poles of the
same social condition? Can prostitution disappear without engulfing at the same
time monogamy?
Here a new element becomes active, an element which at best existed only in the
germ at the time when monogamy developed: individual sexlove.
Before the middle ages we cannot speak of individual sexlove. It goes without
saying that personal beauty, intimate intercourse, harmony of inclinations, etc.,
awakened a longing for sexual intercourse in persons of different sex, and that it
was not absolutely immaterial to men and women, with whom they entered into
such most intimate intercourse. But from such a relation to our sexlove there is a
long way yet. All through antiquity marriages were arranged for the participants
by the parents, and the former quietly submitted. What little matrimonial love
was known to antiquity was not subjective inclination, but objective duty; not
cause, but corollary of marriage. Love affairs in a modern sense occurred in
classical times only outside of official society. The shepherds whose happiness
and woe in love is sung by Theocritos and Moschus, such as Daphnis and Chloë
of Longos, all these were slaves who had no share in the state and in the daily
sphere of the free citizen. Outside of slave circles we find love affairs only as
products of disintegration of the sinking old world. Their objects are women
who also are standing outside of official society, hetaerae that are either
foreigners or liberated slaves: in Athens since the beginning of its decline, in
Rome at the time of the emperors. If love affairs really occurred between free
male and female citizens, it was only in the form of adultery. And to the classical
love poet of antiquity, the old Anakreon, sexlove in our sense was so immaterial,
that he did not even care a fig for the sex of the beloved being.
Our sexlove is essentially different from the simple sexual craving, the Eros, of
the ancients. In the first place it presupposes mutual love. In this respect woman
is the equal of man, while in the antique Eros her permission is by no means
always asked. In the second place our sexlove has such a degree of intensity and
duration that in the eyes of both parties lack of possession and separation appear
as a great, if not the greatest, calamity. In order to possess one another they play
for high stakes, even to the point of risking their lives, a thing heard of only in
adultery during the classical age. And finally a new moral standard is introduced
for judging sexual intercourse. We not only ask: "Was it legal or illegal?" but
also: "Was it caused by mutual love or not?" Of course, this new standard meets
with no better fate in feudal or bourgeois practice than all other moral standards
—it is simply ignored. But neither does it fare worse. It is recognized just as
much as the others—in theory, on paper. And that is all we can expect at present.
Where antiquity left off with its attempts at sexual love, there the middle ages
resumed the thread: with adultery. We have already described the love of the
knights that invented the day songs. From this love endeavoring to break through
the bonds of marriage to the love destined to found marriage, there is a long
distance which was never fully traversed by the knights. Even in passing on from
the frivolous Romanic race to the virtuous Germans, we find in the Nibelungen
song Kriemhild, who secretly is no less in love with Siegfried than he with her,
meekly replying to Gunther's announcement that he has pledged her in troth to a
certain knight whom he does not name: "You need not beg for my consent; as
you will demand, so I shall ever be; whomever you, sir, will select for my
husband, I shall willingly take in troth." It does not enter her head at all that her
love could find any consideration. Gunther asks for Brunhild, Etzel for
Kriemhild without ever having seen one another. The same is true of the suit of
Gutrun Sigebant of Ireland for the Norwegian Ute and of Hetel of Hegelingen
for Hilda of Ireland. When Siegfried of Morland, Hartmut of Oranien and
Herwig of Sealand court Gutrun, then it happens for the first time that the lady
voluntarily decides, favoring the last named knight. As a rule the bride of the
young prince is selected by his parents. Only when the latter are no longer alive,
he chooses his own bride with the advice of the great feudal lords who in all
cases of this kind have a decisive voice. Nor could it be otherwise. For the
knight and the baron as well as for the ruler of the realm himself, marriage is a
political act, an opportunity for increasing their power by new federations. The
interest of the house must decide, not the arbitrary inclination of the individual.
How could love have a chance to decide the question of marriage in the last
instance under such conditions?
The same held good for the bourgeois of the medieval towns, the members of the
guilds. Precisely the privileges protecting them, the clauses and restrictions of
the guild charters, the artificial lines of division separating them legally, here
from the other guilds, there from their journeymen and apprentices, drew a
sufficiently narrow circle for the selection of a fitting bourgeois spouse. Under
such a complicated system, the question of fitness was unconditionally decided,
not by individual inclination, but by family interests.
In the overwhelming majority of cases the marriage contract thus remained to
the end of the middle ages what it had been from the outset: a matter that was
not decided by the parties most interested. In the beginning one was already
married from his birth—married to a whole group of the other sex. In the later
forms of group marriage, a similar relation was probably maintained, only under
a continual narrowing of the group. In the pairing family it is the rule for
mothers to exchange mutual pledges for the marriage of their children. Here also
the main consideration is given to new ties of relationship that will strengthen
the position of the young couple in the gens and the tribe. And when with the
preponderance of private property over collective property and with the interest
for inheritance paternal law and monogamy assumed the supremacy, then
marriage became still more dependent on economic considerations. The form of
purchase marriage disappears, but the essence of the transaction is more and
more intensified, so that not only the woman, but also the man have a fixed price
—not according to his qualities, but to his wealth. That mutual fondness of the
marrying parties should be the one factor dominating all others had always been
unheard of in the practice of the ruling classes. Such a thing occurred at best in
romances or—among the oppressed classes that were not counted.
This was the situation encountered by capitalist production when it began to
prepare, since the epoch of geographical discoveries, for the conquest of the
world by international trade and manufacture. One would think that this mode of
making the marriage contract would have been extremely acceptable to
capitalism, and it was. And yet—the irony of fate is inexplicable—capitalist
production had to make the decisive breach through this mode. By changing all
things into commodities, it dissolved all inherited and traditional relations and
replaced time hallowed custom and historical right by purchase and sale, by the
"free contract." And the English jurist, H. S. Maine, thought he had made a
stupendous discovery by saying that our whole progress over former epochs
consisted in arriving from status to contract, from inherited to voluntarily
contracted conditions. So far as this is correct, it had already been mentioned in
the Communist Manifesto.
But in order to make contracts, people must have full freedom over their
persons, actions and possessions. They must furthermore be on terms of mutual
equality. The creation of these "free" and "equal" people was precisely one of the
main functions of capitalistic production. What though this was done at first in a
half-conscious way and, moreover, in a religious disguise? Since the Lutheran
and Calvinist reformation the thesis was accepted that a human being is fully
responsible for his actions only then, when these actions were due to full
freedom of will. And it was held to be a moral duty to resist any compulsion for
an immoral action. How did this agree with the prevailing practice of match-
making? Marriage according to bourgeois conception was a contract, a legal
business affair, and the most important one at that, because it decided the weal
and woe of body and spirit of two beings for life. At that time the agreement was
formally voluntary; without the consent of the contracting parties nothing could
be done. But it was only too well known how this consent was obtained and who
were really the contracting parties. If, however, perfect freedom of decision is
demanded for all other contracts, why not for this one? Did not the two young
people who were to be coupled together have the right freely to dispose of
themselves, of their bodies and the organs of these? Had not sexual love become
the custom through the knights and was not, in opposition to knightly adultery,
the love of married couples its proper bourgeois form? And if it was the duty of
married couples to love one another, was it not just as much the duty of lovers to
marry each other and nobody else? Stood not the right of lovers higher than the
right of parents, relatives and other customary marriage brokers and matrimonial
agents? If the right of free personal investigation made its way unchecked into
the church and religion, how could it bear with the insupportable claims of the
older generation on the body, soul, property, happiness and misfortune of the
younger generation?
These questions had to be raised at a time when all the old ties of society were
loosened and all traditional conceptions tottering. The size of the world had
increased tenfold at a bound. Instead of one quadrant of one hemisphere, the
whole globe now spread before the eyes of West Europeans who hastened to take
possession of the other seven quadrants. And the thousand-year-old barriers of
conventional medieval thought fell like the old narrow obstacles to marriage. An
infinitely wider horizon opened out before the outer and inner eyes of humanity.
What mattered the well-meaning propriety, what the honorable privilege of the
guild overcome through generations to the young man tempted by the gold and
silver mines of Mexico and Potosi?
It was the knight errant time of the bourgeoisie. It had its own romances and love
dreams, but on a bourgeois footing and, in the last instance, with bourgeois aims.
Thus it came about that the rising bourgeoisie more and more recognized the
freedom of contracting in marriage and carried it through in the manner
described above, especially in Protestant countries, where existing institutions
were most strongly shaken. Marriage remained class marriage, but within the
class a certain freedom of choice was accorded to the contracting parties. And on
paper, in moral theory as in poetical description, nothing was more unalterably
established than the idea that every marriage was immoral unless founded on
mutual sex-love and perfectly free agreement of husband and wife. In short, the
love match was proclaimed as a human right, not only as droit de l'homme—
man's right—but also for once as droit de femme—woman's right.
However, this human right differed from all other so-called human rights in one
respect. While in practice other rights remained the privileges of the ruling class,
the bourgeoisie, and were directly or indirectly curtailed for proletarians, the
irony of history once more asserted itself in this case. The ruling class remains
subject to well-known economic influences and, therefore, shows marriage by
free selection only in exceptional cases. But among the oppressed class, love
matches are the rule, as we have seen.
Hence the full freedom of marriage can become general only after all minor
economic considerations, that still exert such a powerful influence on the choice
of a mate for life, have been removed by the abolition of capitalistic production
and of the property relations created by it. Then no other motive will remain but
mutual fondness.
Since sexlove is exclusive by its very nature—although this exclusiveness is at
present realized for women alone—marriage founded on sexlove must be
monogamous. We have seen that Bachofen was perfectly right in regarding the
progress from group marriage to monogamy mainly as the work of women. Only
the advance from the pairing family to monogamy must be charged to the
account of men. This advance implied, historically, a deterioration in the position
of women and a greater opportunity for men to be faithless. Remove the
economic considerations that now force women to submit to the customary
disloyalty of men, and you will place women on a equal footing with men. All
present experiences prove that this will tend much more strongly to make men
truly monogamous, than to make women polyandrous.
However, those peculiarities that were stamped upon the face of monogamy by
its rise through property relations, will decidedly vanish, namely the supremacy
of men and the indissolubility of marriage. The supremacy of man in marriage is
simply the consequence of his economic superiority and will fall with the
abolition of the latter.
The indissolubility of marriage is partly the consequence of economic
conditions, under which monogamy arose, partly tradition from the time where
the connection between this economic situation and monogamy, not yet clearly
understood, was carried to extremes by religion. To-day, it has been perforated a
thousand times. If marriage founded on love is alone moral, then it follows that
marriage is moral only as long as love lasts. The duration of an attack of
individual sexlove varies considerably according to individual disposition,
especially in men. A positive cessation of fondness or its replacement by a new
passionate love makes a separation a blessing for both parties and for society.
But humanity will be spared the useless wading through the mire of a divorce
case.
What we may anticipate about the adjustment of sexual relations after the
impending downfall of capitalist production is mainly of a negative nature and
mostly confined to elements that will disappear. But what will be added? That
will be decided after a new generation has come to maturity: a race of men who
never in their lives have had any occasion for buying with money or other
economic means of power the surrender of a woman; a race of women who have
never had any occasion for surrendering to any man for any other reason but
love, or for refusing to surrender to their lover from fear of economic
consequences. Once such people are in the world, they will not give a moment's
thought to what we to-day believe should be their course. They will follow their
own practice and fashion their own public opinion about the individual practice
of every person—only this and nothing more.
But let us return to Morgan from whom we moved away a considerable distance.
The historical investigation of social institutions developed during the period of
civilization exceeds the limits of his book. Hence the vicissitudes of monogamy
during this epoch occupy him very briefly. He also sees in the further
development of the monogamous family a progress, an approach to perfect
equality of the sexes, without considering this aim fully realized. But he says:
"When the fact is accepted that the family has passed through four successive
forms, and is now in a fifth, the question at once arises whether this form can be
permanent in the future. The only answer that can be given is that it must
advance as society advances, and change as society changes, even as it has done
in the past. It is the creature of the social system, and will reflect its culture. As
the monogamian family has improved greatly since the commencement of
civilization, and very sensibly in modern times, it is at least supposable that it is
capable of still farther improvement until the equality of the sexes is attained.
Should the monogamian family in the distant future fail to answer the
requirements of society, assuming the continuous progress of civilization, it is
impossible to predict the nature of its successor."
 FOOTNOTES:

[7] Author's note.

How little Bachofen understood what he had discovered, or rather guessed, is
proved by the term "hetaerism," which he applies to this primeval stage.
Hetaerism designated among the Greeks an intercourse of men, single or living
in monogamy, with unmarried women. It always presupposes the existence of a
well defined form of marriage, outside of which this intercourse takes place, and
includes the possibility of prostitution. In another sense this word was never
used, and I use it in this sense with Morgan. Bachofen's very important
discoveries are everywhere mystified in the extreme by his idea that the
historical relations of man and wife have their source in the religious
conceptions of a certain period, not in the economic conditions of life.
[8] Translator's note.
The female of the European cuckoo (cuculus canorus) keeps intercourse with
several males in different districts during the same season. Still, this is far from
the human polyandry, in which the men and one women all live together in the
same place, the men mutually tolerating one another, which male cuckoos do
not.
[9] Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage, London, 1891.
[10] Espinas, Des Societes Animales, 1877.
[11] Espinas, l. c., quoted by Giraud-Teulon, Origines du mariage et de la
famille, 1884, p. 518-20.
[12] Author's note. In the spring of 1882, Marx expressed himself in the
strongest terms on the total misrepresentation of primeval times by Wagner's
Nibelungen text: "Who ever heard of a brother embracing his sister as a bride?"
To these lascivious Wagnerian gods who in truly modern style are rendering their
love quarrels more spicy by a little incest, Marx replies: "In primeval times the
sister was the wife and that was moral." (To the fourth edition.) A French friend
and admirer of Wagner does not consent to this foot note, and remarks that even
in the Oegisdrecka, the more ancient Edda on which Wagner built, Loki
denounces Freya: "Before the gods you embraced your own brother." This, he
says, proves that marriage between brother and sister was interdicted even then.
But the Oegisdrecka is the expression of a time when the belief in the old myths
was totally shaken; it is a truly Lucian satire on the gods. If Loki as Mephisto
denounces Freya in this manner, then it is rather a point against Wagner. Loki
also says, a few verses further on, to Niordhr: "With your sister you generated
(such) a son" ("vidh systur thinni gatzu slikan mog"). Niordhr is not an Asa, but
a Vana, and says in the Ynglinga Saga that marriages between brothers and
sisters are sanctioned in Vanaland, which is not the case among the Asas. This
would indicate that the Vanas are older gods than the Asas. At any rate Niordhr
lived on equal terms with the Asas, and the Oegisdrecka is thus rather a proof
that at the time of the origin of the Norwegian mythology the marriage of brother
and sister was not yet repulsive, at least not to the gods. In trying to excuse
Wagner it might be better to quote Goethe instead of the Edda. This poet
commits a similar error in his ballad of the god and the bajadere in regard to the
religious surrender of women and approaches modern prostitution far too
closely.
[13] There is no longer any doubt that the traces of unrestricted sexual
intercourse, which Bachofen alleges to have found—called "incestuous
generation" by him—are traceable to group marriage. If Bachofen considers
those Punaluan marriages "lawless," a man of that period would look upon most
of our present marriages between near and remote cousins on the father's or
mother's side as incestuous, being marriages between consanguineous relatives.
—Marx.
[14] The People of India.
[15] See translator's note, p. 55.
[16] Translator's note.
According to Cunow, Kroki and Kumite are phratries. See "Die
Verwandschaftsorganizationen der Australneger," by Heinrich Cunow. Stuttgart,
Dietz Verlag, 1894.
[17] Translator's note.
Heinrich Cunow has given us the results of his most recent investigations in his
"Verwandschaftsorganisationen der Australneger." He sums up his studies in
these words: "While Morgan and Fison regard the system of marriage classes as
an original organization preceding the so-called Punaluan family, I have found
that the class is indeed older than the gens, having its origin in the different strata
of generations characteristic of the "consanguine family" of Morgan; but the
present mode of classification in force among Kamilaroi, Kabi, Yuipera, etc.,
cannot have arisen until a much later time, when the gentile institution had
already grown out of the horde. This system of classification does not represent
the first timid steps of evolution; it is not the most primitive of any known forms
of social organization, but an intermediate form that takes shape together with
the gentile society, a stage of transition to a pure gentile organization. In this
stage, the generic classification in strata of different ages belonging to the so-
called consanguine family runs parallel for a while with the gentile order....
It would have been easy for me to quote the testimony of travelers and
ethnologists in support of the conclusions drawn by me from the forms of
relationship among Australian negroes. But I purposely refrain from doing this,
with a few exceptions, first because I do not wish to write a general history of
the primitive family, and, secondly, because I consider all references of this kind
as very doubtful testimony, unless they are accompanied by an analysis of the
entire organization. We frequently find analogies to the institutions of a lower
stage in a high stage, and yet they are founded on radically different premises
and causes. The evolution of the Australian aborigines shows that. Among the
Australians of the lower stage, e. g., the hordes are endogamous, among those of
the middle stage they are exogamous, and in the higher stage they are again
endogamous. But while in the one instance the marriage in the horde is
conditioned on the fact that the more remote relatives are not yet excluded from
sexual intercourse, it is founded in the other case on the difference between local
and sexual organization. Furthermore, the marriage between daughter and father
is permitted in the lower stage, and again in that higher stage, where the class
organization of the Kamilaroi is on the verge of dissolution. But in both cases the
circle of those who are regarded as fathers is entirely different. The character of
an institution can only be perfectly understood, if we examine its connection
with the entire organization, and, if possible, trace its metamorphoses in the
preceding stages....
The characteristic feature of the class system is that by the side of the gentile
order, such as is found among the North American Indians, there is always
another system of four marriage classes for the purpose of limiting sexual
intercourse between certain groups of relatives. Neither the phratry nor the gens
of the Kamilaroi forms a distinct territorial community. Their members are
scattered among different roving hordes, and they only meet occasionally, e. g.,
to celebrate a feast or dance....
The origin of gentile systems out of Punaluan groups has never been proven,
while we see among the Australian negroes that the classes are clearly and
irrefutably in existence among the first traces of gentilism....
The class system in its original form is a conclusive proof of Morgan's theory,
that the first step in the formation of systems of relationship consisted in
prohibiting sexual intercourse between parents and children (in a wider sense)....
It has been often disputed that the Punaluan family ever existed outside of the
Sandwich Islands. But the marriage institutions of certain Australian tribes
named by me prove the contrary. The Pirrauru of the Dieyerie is absolutely
identical with the Punalua of the Hawaiians; and these institutions were not
described by travelers who rushed through the territories of those tribes without
knowing their language, but by men who lived among them for decades and
fully mastered their dialects....
I have shown how far the class system corresponds to the Hawaiian system. It is
and remains a fact, that it contains a long series of terms that cannot be explained
by the relations in the so-called consanguine family, and the use of which creates
confusion, if applied to this family. But that simply shows that Morgan was
mistaken about the age and present structure of the Hawaiian system. It does not
prove that it could not have grown on the basis assumed by him....
If the opponents of Morgan dispute that the so-called consanguine family is
based on blood kinship, they are right, unless we wish to assign an exceptional
position to the Australian strata of generations. But if they go further and declare
that the subsequent restrictions of inbreeding and the gentile order have arisen
independently of relationships, they commit a far greater mistake than Morgan.
They block their way to an understanding of subsequent organizations and force
themselves to all sorts of queer assumptions that at once appear as the fruits of
imagination, when compared with the actual institutions of primitive peoples.
This explanation of the phases of development of family institutions contradicts
present day views on the matter. Since the scientific investigations of the last
decade have demonstrated beyond doubt that the so-called patriarchal family
was preceded by the matriarchal family, it has become the custom to regard
descent by females as a natural institution belonging to the very first stages of
development which is explained by the modes of existence and thought among
savages. Paternity being a matter of speculation, maternity of actual observation,
it is supposed to follow that descent by females was always recognized. But the
development of the Australian systems of relationship shows that this is not true,
at least not in regard to Australians. The fact cannot be disputed away, that we
find female lineage among all those higher developed tribes that have progressed
to the formation of gentile organizations, but male lineage among all those that
have no gentile organizations or where these are only in process of formation.
Not a single tribe has been discovered so far, where female lineage was not
combined with gentile organization, and I doubt that any will ever be found."
[18] The History of Human Marriage, p. 28-29.
[19] Mutterrecht, p. xix.
[20] A Journey in Brazil. Boston and New York, 1886. Page 266.
[21] Bancroft, Native Races, I., 81.
[22] Ibidem, p. 584.
[23] Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 504.
 CHAPTER III.
THE IROQUOIS GENS.
We now come to another discovery of Morgan that is at least as important as the
reconstruction of the primeval form of the family from the systems of kinship. It
is the proof that the sex organizations within the tribe of North American
Indians, designated by animal names, are essentially identical with the genea of
the Greeks and the gentes of the Romans; that the American form is the original
from which the Greek and Roman forms were later derived; that the whole
organization of Greek and Roman society during primeval times in gens, phratry
and tribe finds its faithful parallel in that of the American Indians; that the gens
is an institution common to all barbarians up to the time of civilization—at least
so far as our present sources of information reach. This demonstration has
cleared at a single stroke the most difficult passages of remotest ancient Greek
and Roman history. At the same time it has given us unexpected information
concerning the fundamental outlines of the constitution of society in primeval
times—before the introduction of the state. Simple as the matter is after we have
once found it out, still it was only lately discovered by Morgan. In his work of
1871 he had not yet unearthed this mystery. Its revelation has completely
silenced for the time being those generally so overconfident English authorities
on primeval history.
The Latin word gens, used by Morgan generally for the designation of this sex
organization, is derived, like the equivalent Greek word genos, from the
common Aryan root gan, signifying to beget. Gens, genos, Sanskrit dschanas,
Gothic kuni, ancient Norse and Anglesaxon kyn, English kin, Middle High
German künne, all signify lineage, descent. Gens in Latin, genos in Greek,
specially designate that sex organization which boasted of common descent
(from a common sire) and was united into a separate community by certain
social and religious institutions, but the origin and nature of which nevertheless
remained obscure to all our historians.
Elsewhere, in speaking of the Punaluan family, we saw how the gens was
constituted in its original form. It consisted of all individuals who by means of
the Punaluan marriage and in conformity with the conceptions necessarily
arising in it made up the recognized offspring of a certain ancestral mother, the
founder of that gens. Since fatherhood is uncertain in this form of the family,
female lineage is alone valid. And as brothers must not marry their sisters, but
only women of foreign descent, the children bred from these foreign women do
not belong to the gens, according to maternal law. Hence only the offspring of
the daughters of every generation remain in the same sex organization. The
descendants of the sons are transferred to the gentes of the new mothers. What
becomes of this group of kinship when it constitutes itself a separate group,
distinct from similar groups in the same tribe?
As the classical form of this original gens Morgan selects that of the Iroquois,
more especially that of the Seneca tribe. This tribe has eight gentes named after
animals: 1. Wolf. 2. Bear. 3. Turtle. 4. Beaver. 5. Deer. 6. Snipe. 7. Heron. 8.
Hawk. Every gens observes the following customs:
1. The gens elects its sachem (official head during peace) and its chief (leader in
war). The sachem must be selected within the gens and his office was in a sense
hereditary. It had to be filled immediately after a vacancy occurred. The chief
could be selected outside of the gens, and his office could even be temporarily
vacant. The son never followed his father in the office of sachem, because the
Iroquois observed maternal law, in consequence of which the son belonged to
another gens. But the brother or the son of a sister was often elected as a
successor. Men and women both voted in elections. The election, however, had
to be confirmed by the other seven gentes, and then only the sachem-elect was
solemnly invested, by the common council of the whole Iroquois federation. The
significance of this will be seen later. The power of the sachem within the tribe
was of a paternal, purely moral nature. He had no means of coercion at his
command. He was besides by virtue of his office a member of the tribal council
of the Senecas and of the federal council of the whole Iroquois nation. The Chief
had the right to command only in times of war.
2. The gens can retire the sachem and the chief at will. This again is done by
men and women jointly. The retired men are considered simple warriors and
private persons like all others. The tribal council, by the way, can also retire the
sachems, even against the will of the tribe.
3. No member is permitted to marry within the gens. This is the fundamental rule
of the gens, the tie that holds it together. It is the negative expression of the very
positive blood relationship, by virtue of which the individuals belonging to it
become a gens. By the discovery of this simple fact Morgan for the first time
revealed the nature of the gens. How little the gens had been understood before
him is proven by former reports on savages and barbarians, in which the
different organizations of which the gentile order is composed are jumbled
together without understanding and distinction as tribe, clan, thum, etc.
Sometimes it is stated that intermarrying within these organizations is forbidden.
This gave rise to the hopeless confusion, in which McLennan could pose as
Napoleon and establish order by the decree: All tribes are divided into those that
forbid intermarrying (exogamous) and those that permit it (endogamous). And
after he had thus made confusion worse confounded, he could indulge in deep
meditations which of his two preposterous classes was the older: exogamy or
endogamy. By the discovery of the gens founded on affinity of blood and the
resulting impossibility of its members to intermarry, this nonsense found a
natural end. It is self understood that the marriage interdict within the gens was
strictly observed at the stage in which we find the Iroquois.
4. The property of deceased members fell to the share of the other gentiles; it had
to remain in the gens. In view of the insignificance of the objects an Iroquois
could leave behind, the nearest gentile relations divided the heritage. Was the
deceased a man, then his natural brothers, sisters and the brothers of the mother
shared in his property. Was it a woman, then her children and natural sisters
shared, but not her brothers. For this reason husband and wife could not inherit
from one another, nor the children from the father.
5. The gentile members owed to each other help, protection and especially
assistance in revenging injury inflicted by strangers. The individual relied for his
protection on the gens and could be assured of it. Whoever injured the
individual, injured the whole gens. From this blood kinship arose the obligation
to blood revenge that was unconditionally recognized by the Iroquois. If a
stranger killed a gentile member, the whole gens of the slain man was pledged to
revenge his death. First mediation was tried. The gens of the slayer deliberated
and offered to the gentile council of the slain propositions for atonement,
consisting generally in expressions of regret and presents of considerable value.
If these were accepted, the matter was settled. In the opposite case the injured
gens appointed one or more avengers who were obliged to pursue the slayer and
to kill him. If they succeeded, the gens of the slayer had no right to complain.
The account was squared.
6. The gens had certain distinct names or series of names, which no other gens in
the whole tribe could use, so that the name of the individual indicated to what
gens he belonged. A gentile name at the same time bestowed gentile rights.
7. The gens may adopt strangers who thereby are adopted into the whole tribe.
The prisoners of war who were not killed became by adoption into a gens tribal
members of the Senecas and thus received full gentile and tribal rights. The
adoption took place on the motion of some gentile members, of men who
accepted the stranger as a brother or sister, of women who accepted him as a
child. The solemn introduction into the gens was necessary to confirm the
adoption. Frequently certain gentes that had shrunk exceptionally were thus
strengthened by mass adoptions from another gens with the consent of the latter.
Among the Iroquois the solemn introduction into the gens took place in a public
meeting of the tribal council, whereby it actually became a religious ceremony.
The existence of special religious celebrations among Indian gentes can hardly
be demonstrated. But the religious rites of the Indians are more or less connected
with the gens. At the six annual religious festivals of the Iroquois the sachems
and chiefs of the different gentes were added to the "Keepers of the Faith" and
had the functions of priests.
9. The gens had a common burial place. Among the Iroquois of the State of New
York, who are crowded by white men all around them, the burial place has
disappeared, but it existed formerly. Among other Indians it is still in existence,
e. g., among the Tuscaroras, near relatives of the Iroquois, where every gens has
a row by itself in the burial place, although they are Christians. The mother is
buried in the same row as her children, but not the father. And among the
Iroquois the whole gens of the deceased attends the funeral, prepares the grave
and provides the addresses, etc.
10. The gens had a council, the democratic assembly of all male and female
gentiles of adult age, all with equal suffrage. This council elected and deposed its
sachems and chiefs; likewise the other "Keepers of the Faith." It deliberated on
gifts of atonement or blood revenge for murdered gentiles and it adopted
strangers into the gens. In short, it was the sovereign power in the gens.
The following are the rights and privileges of the typical Indian gens, according
to Morgan: "All the members of an Iroquois gens were personally free, and they
were bound to defend each other's freedom; they were equal in privileges and in
personal rights, the sachems and chiefs claiming no superiority; and they were a
brotherhood bound together by ties of kin. Liberty, equality and fraternity,
though never formulated, were cardinal principles of the gens. These facts are
material, because the gens was the unit of a social and governmental system, the
foundation upon which Indian society was organized. A structure composed of
such units would of necessity bear the impress of their character, for as the unit,
so the compound. It serves to explain that sense of independence and personal
dignity universally an attribute of Indian character."
At the time of the discovery the Indians of entire North America were organized
in gentes by maternal law. Only "in some tribes, as among the Dakotas, the
gentes had fallen out; in others as among the Ojibwas, the Omahas and the
Mayas of Yucatan, descent had been changed from the female to the male line."
Among many Indian tribes with more than five or six gentes we find three, four
or more gentes united into a separate group, called phratry by Morgan in
accurate translation of the Indian name by its Greek equivalent. Thus the
Senecas have two phratries, the first comprising gentes one to four, the second
gentes five to eight. Closer investigation shows that these phratries generally
represent the original gentes that formed the tribe in the beginning. For the
marriage interdict necessitated the existence of at least two gentes in a tribe in
order to realize its separate existence. As the tribe increased, every gens
segmented into two or more new gentes, while the original gens comprising all
the daughter gentes, lived on in the phratry. Among the Senecas and most of the
other Indians "the gentes in the same phratry are brother gentes to each other,
and cousin gentes to those of the other phratry"—terms that have a very real and
expressive meaning in the American system of kinship, as we have seen.
Originally no Seneca was allowed to marry within his phratry, but this custom
has long become obsolete and is now confined to the gens. According to the
tradition among the Senecas, the bear and the deer were the two original gentes,
from which the others were formed by segmentation. After this new institution
had become well established it was modified according to circumstances. If
certain gentes became extinct, it sometimes happened that by mutual consent the
members of one gens were transferred in a body from other phratries. Hence we
find the gentes of the same name differently grouped in the phratries of the
different tribes.
"The phratry, among the Iroquois, was partly for social and partly for religious
objects." 1. In the ball game one phratry plays against another. Each one sends
its best players, the other members, upon different sides of the field, watch the
game and bet against one another on the result. 2. In the tribal council the
sachems and chiefs of each phratry are seated opposite one another, every
speaker addressing the representatives of each phratry as separate bodies. 3.
When a murder had been committed in the tribe, the slayer and the slain
belonging to different phratries, the injured gens often appealed to its brother
gentes. These held a phratry council which in a body addressed itself to the other
phratry, in order to prevail on the latter to assemble in council and effect a
condonation of the matter. In this case the phratry re-appears in its original
gentile capacity, and with a better prospect of success than the weaker gens, its
daughter. 4. At the funeral of prominent persons the opposite phratry prepared
the interment and the burial rites, while the phratry of the deceased attended the
funeral as mourners. If a sachem died, the opposite phratry notified the central
council of the Iroquois that the office of the deceased had become vacant. 5. In
electing a sachem the phratry council also came into action. Endorsement by the
brother gentes was generally considered a matter of fact, but the gentes of the
other phratry might oppose. In such a case the council of this phratry met, and if
it maintained its opposition, the election was null and void. 6. Formerly the
Iroquois had special religious mysteries, called medicine lodges by the white
men. These mysteries were celebrated among the Senecas by two religious
societies that had a special form of initiation for new members; each phratry was
represented by one of these societies. 7. If, as is almost certain, the four lineages
occupying the four quarters of Tlascalá at the time of the conquest were four
phratries, then it is proved that the phratries were at the same time military units,
as were the Greek phratries and similar sex organizations of the Germans. Each
of these four lineages went into battle as a separate group with its special
uniform and flag and its own leader.
Just as several genres form a phratry so in the classical form several phratries
form a tribe. In some cases the middle group, the phratry, is missing in strongly
decimated tribes.
What constitutes an Indian tribe in America? 1. A distinct territory and a distinct
name. Every tribe had a considerable hunting and fishing ground beside the
place of its actual settlement. Beyond this territory there was a wide neutral strip
of land reaching over to the boundaries of the next tribe; a smaller strip between
tribes of related languages, a larger between tribes of foreign languages. This
corresponds to the boundary forest of the Germans, the desert created by
Caesar's Suevi around their territory, the isârnholt (Danish jarnved, Latin limei
Danicus) between Danes and Germans, the sachsen wald (Saxon forest) and the
Slavish branibor between Slavs and Germans giving the province of
Brandenburg its name. The territory thus surrounded by neutral ground was the
collective property of a certain tribe, recognized as such by other tribes and
defended against the invasion of others. The disadvantage of undefined
boundaries became of practical importance only after the population had
increased considerably.
The tribal names generally seem to be more the result of chance than of
intentional selection. In course of time it frequently happened that a tribe
designated a neighboring tribe by another name than that chosen by itself. In this
manner the Germans received their first historical name from the Celts.
2. A distinct dialect peculiar to this tribe. As a matter of fact the tribe and the
dialect are co-extensive. In America, the formation of new tribes and dialects by
segmentation was in progress until quite recently, and doubtless it is still going
on. Where two weak tribes amalgamated into one, there it exceptionally
happened that two closely related dialects were simultaneously spoken in the
same tribe. The average strength of American tribes is less than 2,000 members.
The Cherokees, however, number about 26,000, the greatest number of Indians
in the United States speaking the same dialect.
3. The right to solemnly invest the sachems and chiefs elected by the gentes, and
4. The right to depose them, even against the will of the gens. As these sachems
and chiefs are members of the tribal council, these rights of the tribe explain
themselves. Where a league of tribes had been formed and all the tribes were
represented in a feudal council, the latter exercised these rights.
5. The possession of common religious conceptions (mythology) and rites.
"After the fashion of barbarians the American Indians were a religious people."
Their mythology has not yet been critically investigated. They materialized their
religious conceptions—spirits of all sorts—in human shapes, but the lower stage
of barbarism in which they lived, knows nothing as yet of so-called idols. It is a
cult of nature and of the elements, in process of evolution to pantheism. The
different tribes had regular festivals with prescribed forms of worship, mainly
dances and games. Especially dancing was an essential part of all religious
celebrations. Every tribe celebrated by itself.
6. A tribal council for public affairs. It was composed of all the sachems and
chiefs of the different gentes, real representatives because they could be deposed
at any moment. It deliberated in public, surrounded by the rest of the tribal
members, who had a right to take part in the discussions and claim attention. The
council decided. As a rule any one present gained a hearing on his demand. The
women could also present their views by a speaker of their choice. Among the
Iroquois the final resolution had to be passed unanimously, as was also the case
in some resolutions of German mark (border) communities. It was the special
duty of the tribal council to regulate the relations with foreign tribes. The council
received and despatched legations, declared war and made peace. War was
carried on principally by volunteers. "Theoretically, each tribe was at war with
every other tribe with which it had not formed a treaty of peace."
Expeditions against such enemies were generally organized by certain prominent
warriors. They started a war dance, and whoever took part in it thereby declared
his intention to join the expedition. Ranks were formed and the march began
immediately. The defense of the attacked tribal territory was also generally
carried on by volunteers. The exodus and the return of such columns was always
the occasion of public festivities. The consent of the tribal council for such
expeditions was not required, and was neither asked nor given. This corresponds
to the private war expeditions of German followers described by Tacitus. Only
these German groups of followers had already assumed a more permanent
character, forming a standing center organized during peace, around which the
other volunteers gathered in case of war. Such war columns were rarely strong in
numbers. The most important expeditions of the Indians, even for long distances,
were undertaken by insignificant forces. If more than one group joined for a
great expedition, every group obeyed its own leader. The uniformity of the
campaign plan was secured as well as possible by a council of these leaders.
This is the mode of warfare among the Allemani in the fourth century on the
Upper Rhine, as described by Ammianus Marcellinus.
7. In some tribes we find a head chief, whose power, however, is limited. He is
one of the sachems who has to take provisional measures in cases requiring
immediate action, until the council can assemble and decide. He represents a
feeble, but generally undeveloped prototype of an official with executive power.
The latter, as we shall see, developed in most cases out of the highest war chief.
The great majority of American Indians did not go beyond the league of tribes.
With a few tribes of small membership, separated by wide boundary tracts,
weakened by unceasing warfare, they occupied an immense territory. Leagues
were now and then formed by kindred tribes as the result of momentary
necessity and dissolved again under more favorable conditions. But in certain
districts, tribes of the same kin had again found their way out of disbandment
into permanent federations, making the first step towards the formation of
nations. In the United States we find the highest form of such a league among
the Iroquois. Emigrating from their settlements west of the Mississippi, where
they probably formed a branch of the great Dakota family, they settled at last
after long wanderings in the present State of New York. They had five tribes:
Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas and Mohawks. They lived on fish,
venison, and the products of rough gardening, inhabiting villages protected by
stockades. Their number never exceeded 20,000, and certain gentes were
common to all five tribes. They spoke closely related dialects of the same
language and occupied territories contiguous to one another. As this land was
won by conquest, it was natural for these tribes to stand together against the
expelled former inhabitants. This led, not later than the beginning of the fifteenth
century, to a regular "eternal league," a sworn alliance that immediately assumed
an aggressive character, relying on its newly won strength. About 1675, at the
summit of its power, it had conquered large districts round about and partly
expelled the inhabitants, partly made them tributary. The Iroquois League
represented the most advanced social organization attained by Indians that had
not passed the lower stage of barbarism. This excludes only the Mexicans, New
Mexicans and Peruvians.
The fundamental provisions of the league were:
1. Eternal federation of the five consanguineous tribes on the basis of perfect
equality and independence in all internal tribal matters. This consanguinity
formed the true fundament of the league. Three of these tribes, called father
tribes, were brothers to one another; the other two, also mutual brothers, were
called son tribes. The three oldest gentes were represented by living members in
all five tribes, and these members were all regarded as brothers. Three other
gentes were still alive in three tribes, and all of their members called one another
brothers. The common language, only modified by variations of dialect, was the
expression and proof of their common descent.
2. The official organ of the league was a federal council of fifty sachems, all
equal in rank and prominence. This council had the supreme decision in all
federal matters.
3. On founding this league the fifty sachems had been assigned to the different
tribes and gentes as holders of new offices created especially for federal
purposes. Vacancies were filled by new elections in the gens, and the holders of
these offices could be deposed at will. But the right of installation belonged to
the federal council.
4. These federal sachems were at the same time sachems of their tribe and had a
seat and a vote in the tribal council.
5. All decisions of the federal council had to be unanimous.
6. The votes were cast by tribes, so that every tribe and the council members of
each tribe had to vote together in order to adopt a final resolution.
7. Any one of the five tribes could convoke the federal council, but the council
could not convene itself.
8. Federal meetings were held publicly in the presence of the assembled people.
Every Iroquois could have the word, but the final decision rested with the
council.
9. The league had no official head, no executive chief.
10. It had, however, two high chiefs of war, both with equal functions and power
(the two "kings" of Sparta, the two consuls of Rome).
This was the whole constitution, under which the Iroquois lived over four
hundred years and still live. I have described it more fully after Morgan, because
we have here an opportunity for studying the organization of a society that does
not yet know a state. The state presupposes a public power of coërcion separated
from the aggregate body of its members. Maurer, with correct intuition,
recognized the constitution of the German Mark as a purely social institution,
essentially different from that of a state, though furnishing the fundament on
which a state constitution could be erected later on. Hence in all of his writings,
he traced the gradual rise of the public power of coërcion from and by the side of
primordial constitutions of marks, villages, farms and towns. The North
American Indians show how an originally united tribe gradually spreads over an
immense continent; how tribes by segmentation become nations, whole groups
of tribes; how languages change so that they not only become unintelligible to
one another, but also lose every trace of former unity; how at the same time one
gens splits up into several gentes, how the old mother gentes are preserved in the
phratries and how the names of these oldest gentes still remain the same in
widely distant and long separated tribes. Wolf and bear still are gentile names in
a majority of all Indian tribes. And the above named constitution is essentially
applicable to all of them, except that many did not reach the point of forming
leagues of related tribes.
But once the gens was given as a social unit, we also see how the whole
constitution of gentes, phratries and tribes developed with almost unavoidable
necessity—because naturally—from the gens. All three of them are groups of
differentiated consanguine relations. Each is complete in itself, arranges its own
local affairs and supplements the other groups. And the cycle of functions
performed by them includes the aggregate of the public affairs of men in the
lower stage of barbarism.
Wherever we find the gens as the social unit of a nation, we are justified in
searching for a tribal organization similar to the one described above. And
whenever sufficient material is at hand, as in Greek and Roman history, there we
shall not only find such an organization, but we may also be assured, that the
comparison with the American sex organizations will assist us in solving the
most perplexing doubts and riddles in places where the material forsakes us.
How wonderful this gentile constitution is in all its natural simplicity! No
soldiers, gendarmes and policemen, no nobility, kings, regents, prefects or
judges, no prisons, no lawsuits, and still affairs run smoothly. All quarrels and
disputes are settled by the entire community involved in them, either the gens or
the tribe or the various gentes among themselves. Only in very rare cases the
blood revenge is threatened as an extreme measure. Our capital punishment is
simply a civilized form of it, afflicted with all the advantages and drawbacks of
civilization. Not a vestige of our cumbersome and intricate system of
administration is needed, although there are more public affairs to be settled than
nowadays: the communistic household is shared by a number of families, the
land belongs to the tribe, only the gardens are temporarily assigned to the
households. The parties involved in a question settle it and in most cases the
hundred-year-old traditions have settled everything beforehand. There cannot be
any poor and destitute—the communistic households and the gentes know their
duties toward the aged, sick and disabled. All are free and equal—the women
included. There is no room yet for slaves, nor for the subjugation of foreign
tribes. When about 1651 the Iroquois had vanquished the Eries and the "Neutral
Nation," they offered to adopt them into the league on equal terms. Only when
the vanquished declined this offer they were driven out of their territory.
What splendid men and women were produced by such a society! All the white
men who came into contact with unspoiled Indians admired the personal dignity,
straightforwardness, strength of character and bravery of these barbarians.
We lately received proofs of such bravery in Africa. A few years ago the Zulus,
and some months ago the Nubians, both of which tribes still retain the gentile
organization, did what no European army can do. Armed only with lances and
spears, without any firearms, they advanced under a hail of bullets from
breechloaders up to the bayonets of the English infantry—the best of the world
for fighting in closed ranks—and threw them into confusion more than once,
yea, even forced them to retreat in spite of the immense disparity of weapons,
and in spite of the fact that they have no military service and don't know
anything about drill. How enduring and able they are, is proved by the
complaints of the English who admit that a Kaffir can cover a longer distance in
twenty-four hours than a horse. The smallest muscle springs forth, hard and
tough like a whiplash, says an English painter.
Such was human society and its members, before the division into classes had
taken place. And a comparison of that social condition with the condition of the
overwhelming majority of present day society shows the enormous chasm that
separates our proletarian and small farmer from the free gentile of old.
That is one side of the question. We must not overlook, however, that this
organization was doomed. It did not pass beyond the tribe. The league of tribes
marked the beginning of its downfall, as we shall see, and as the attempts of the
Iroquois at subjugating others showed. Whatever went beyond the tribe, went
outside of gentilism. Where no direct peace treaty existed, there war reigned
from tribe to tribe. And this war was carried on with the particular cruelty that
distinguishes man from other animals, and that was modified later on simply by
self-interest.
The gentile constitution in its most flourishing time, such as we saw it in
America, presupposed a very undeveloped state of production, hence a
population thinly scattered over a wide area. Man was almost completely
dominated by nature, a strange and incomprehensible riddle to him. His simple
religious conceptions clearly reflect this. The tribe remained the boundary line
for man, as well in regard to himself as to strangers outside. The gens, the tribe
and their institutions were holy and inviolate. They were a superior power
instituted by nature, and the feelings, thoughts and actions of the individual
remained unconditionally subject to them. Commanding as the people of this
epoch appear to us, nothing distinguishes one from another. They are still
attached, as Marx has it, to the navel string of the primordial community.
The power of these natural and spontaneous communities had to be broken, and
it was. But it was done by influences that from the very beginning bear the mark
of degradation, of a downfall from the simple moral grandeur of the old gentile
society. The new system of classes is inaugurated by the meanest impulses:
vulgar covetousness, brutal lust, sordid avarice, selfish robbery of common
wealth. The old gentile society without classes is undermined and brought to fall
by the most contemptible means: theft, violence, cunning, treason. And during
all the thousands of years of its existence, the new society has never been
anything else but the development of the small minority at the expense of the
exploited and oppressed majority. More than ever this is true at present.
 CHAPTER IV.
THE GRECIAN GENS.
Greeks, Pelasgians and other nations of the same tribal origin were constituted
since prehistoric times on the same systematic plan as the Americans: gens,
phratry, tribe, league of tribes. The phratry might be missing, as e. g. among the
Dorians; the league of tribes might not be fully developed in every case; but the
gens was everywhere the unit. At the time of their entrance into history, the
Greeks were on the threshold of civilization. Two full periods of evolution are
stretching between the Greeks and the above named American tribes. The
Greeks of the heroic age are by so much ahead of the Iroquois. For this reason
the Grecian gens no longer retains the archaic character of the Iroquois gens. The
stamp of group marriage is becoming rather blurred. Maternal law had given
way to paternal lineage. Rising private property had thus made its first opening
in the gentile constitution. A second opening naturally followed the first:
Paternal law being now in force, the fortune of a wealthy heiress would have
fallen to her husband in the case of her marriage. That would have meant the
transfer of her wealth from her own gens to that of her husband. In order to
avoid this, the fundament of gentile law was shattered. In such a case, the girl
was not only permitted, but obliged to intermarry within the gens, in order to
retain the wealth in the latter.
According to Grote's History of Greece, the gens of Attica was held together by
the following bonds:
1. Common religious rites and priests installed exclusively in honor of a certain
divinity, the alleged gentile ancestor, who was designated by a special by-name
in this capacity.
2. A common burial ground. (See Demosthenes' Eubulides.)
3. Right of mutual inheritance.
4. Obligation to mutually help, protect and assist one another in case of violence.
5. Mutual right and duty to intermarry in the gens in certain cases, especially for
orphaned girls or heiresses.
6. Possession of common property, at least in some cases, and an archon
(supervisor) and treasurer elected for this special case.
The phratry united several gentes, but rather loosely. Still we find in it similar
rights and duties, especially common religious rites and the right of avenging the
death of a phrator. Again, all the phratries of a tribe had certain religious
festivals in common that recurred at regular intervals and were celebrated under
the guidance of a phylobasileus (tribal head) selected from the ranks of the
nobles (eupatrides).
So far Grote. And Marx adds: "The savage (e. g. the Iroquois) is still plainly
visible in the Grecian gens." On further investigation we find additional proofs
of this. For the Grecian gens has also the following attributes:
7. Paternal Lineage.
8. Prohibition of intermarrying in the gens except in the case of heiresses. This
exception formulated as a law clearly proves the validity of the old rule. This is
further substantiated by the universally accepted custom that a woman in
marrying renounced the religious rites of her gens and accepted those of her
husband's gens. She was also registered in his phratry. According to this custom
and to a famous quotation in Dikaearchos, marriage outside of the gens was the
rule. Becker in "Charikles" directly assumes that nobody was permitted to
intermarry in the gens.
9. The right to adopt strangers in the gens. It was exercised by adoption into the
family under public formalities; but it was used sparingly.
10. The right to elect and depose the archons. We know that every gens had its
archon. As to the heredity of the office, there is no reliable information. Until the
end of barbarism, the probability is always against strict heredity. For it is
absolutely incompatible with conditions where rich and poor had perfectly equal
rights in the gens.
Not alone Grote, but also Niebuhr, Mommsen and all other historians of classical
antiquity, were foiled by the gens. Though they chronicled many of its
distinguishing marks correctly, still they always regarded it as a group of
families and thus prevented their understanding the nature and origin of gentes.
Under the gentile constitution, the family never was a unit of organization, nor
could it be so, because man and wife necessarily belonged to two different
gentes. The gens was wholly comprised in the phratry, the phratry in the tribe.
But the family belonged half to the gens of the man, and half to that of the
woman. Nor does the state recognize the family in public law. To this day, the
family has only a place in private law. Yet all historical records take their
departure from the absurd supposition, which was considered almost inviolate
during the eighteenth century, that the monogamous family, an institution
scarcely older than civilization, is the nucleus around which society and state
gradually crystallized.
"Mr. Grote will also please note," throws in Marx, "that the gentes, which the
Greeks traced to their mythologies, are older than the mythologies. The latter
together with their gods and demi-gods were created by the gentes."
Grote is quoted with preference by Morgan as a prominent and quite trustworthy
witness. He relates that every Attic gens had a name derived from its alleged
ancestor; that before Solon's time, and even after, it was customary for the
gentiles (gennêtes) to inherit the fortunes of their intestate deceased; and that in
case of murder first the relatives of the victim had the duty and the right to
prosecute the criminal, after them the gentiles and finally the phrators.
"Whatever we may learn about the oldest Attic laws is founded on the
organization in gentes and phratries."
The descent of the gentes from common ancestors has caused the "schoolbred
philistines," as Marx has it, much worry. Representing this descent as purely
mythical, they are at a loss to explain how the gentes developed out of
independent and wholly unrelated families. But this explanation must be given,
if they wish to explain the existence of the gentes. They then turn around in a
circle of meaningless gibberish and do not get beyond the phrase: the pedigree is
indeed a fable, but the gens is a reality. Grote finally winds up—the parenthetical
remarks are by Marx: "We rarely hear about this pedigree, because it is used in
public only on certain very festive occasions. But the less prominent gentes had
their common religious rites (very peculiar, Mr. Grote!) and their common
superhuman ancestor and pedigree just like the more prominent gentes (how
very peculiar this, Mr. Grote, in less prominent gentes!); and the ground plan and
the ideal fundament (my dear sir! Not ideal, but carnal, anglice "fleshly") was
the same in all of them."
Marx sums up Morgan's reply to this as follows: "The system of consanguinity
corresponding to the archaic form of the gens—which the Greeks once
possessed like other mortals—preserved the knowledge of the mutual relation of
all members of the gens. They learned this important fact by practice from early
childhood. With the advent of the monogamous family this was gradually
forgotten. The gentile name created a pedigree by the side of which that of the
monogamous family seemed insignificant. This name had now the function of
preserving the memory of the common descent of its bearers. But the pedigree of
the gens went so far back that the gentiles could no longer actually ascertain
their mutual kinship, except in a limited number of more recent common
ancestors. The name itself was the proof of a common descent and sufficed
always except in cases of adoption. To actually dispute all kinship between
gentiles after the manner of Grote and Niebuhr, who thus transform the gens into
a purely hypothetical and fictitious creation of the brain, is indeed worthy of
"ideal" scientists, that is book worms. Because the relation of the generations,
especially on the advent of monogamy, is removed to the far distance, and the
reality of the past seems reflected in phantastic imaginations, therefore the brave
old philistines concluded and conclude that the imaginary pedigree created real
gentes!"
The phratry was, as among the Americans, a mother-gens comprising several
daughter gentes, and often traced them all to the same ancestor. According to
Grote "all contemporaneous members of the phratry of Hekataeos were
descendants in the sixteenth degree of one and the same divine ancestor." All the
gentes of this phratry were therefore literally brother gentes. The phratry is
mentioned by Homer as a military unit in that famous passage where Nestor
advises Agamemnon: "Arrange the men by phratries and tribes so that phratry
may assist phratry, and tribe the tribe." The phratry has the right and the duty to
prosecute the death of a phrator, hence in former times the duty of blood
revenge. It has, furthermore, common religious rites and festivals. As a matter of
fact, the development of the entire Grecian mythology from the traditional old
Aryan cult of nature was essentially due to the gentes and phratries and took
place within them. The phratry had an official head (phratriarchos) and also,
according to De Coulanges, meetings and binding resolutions, a jurisdiction and
administration. Even the state of a later period, while ignoring the gens, left
certain public functions to the phratry.
The tribe consisted of several kindred phratries. In Attica there were four tribes
of three phratries each; the number of gentes in each phratry was thirty. Such an
accurate division of groups reveals the fact of a conscious and well-planned
interference with the natural order. How, when and why this was done is not
disclosed by Grecian history. The historical memory of the Greeks themselves
does not reach beyond the heroic age.
Closely packed in a comparatively small territory as the Greeks were, their
dialectic differences were less conspicuous than those developed in the wide
American forests. Yet even here we find only tribes of the same main dialect
united in a larger organization. Little Attica had its own dialect which later on
became the prevailing language in Grecian prose.
In the epics of Homer we generally find the Greek tribes combined into small
nations, but so that their gentes, phratries and tribes retained their full
independence. They already lived in towns fortified by walls. The population
increased with the growth of the herds, with agriculture and the beginnings of
the handicrafts. At the same time the differences in wealth became more marked
and gave rise to an aristocratic element within the old primordial democracy. The
individual little nations carried on an unceasing warfare for the possession of the
best land and also for the sake of looting. Slavery of the prisoners of war was
already well established.
The constitution of these tribes and nations was as follows:
1. A permanent authority was the council (bule), originally composed of the
gentile archons, but later on, when their number became too great, recruited by
selection in such a way that the aristocratic element was developed and
strengthened. Dionysios openly speaks of the council at the time of the heroes as
being composed of nobles (kratistoi). The council had the final decision in all
important matters. In Aeschylos, e. g. the council of Thebes decides that the
body of Eteokles be buried with full honors, the body of Polynikes, however,
thrown out to be devoured by the dogs. With the rise of the state this council was
transformed into the senate.
2. The public meeting (agora). We saw how the Iroquois, men and women,
attended the council meetings, taking an orderly part in the discussions and
influencing them. Among the Homeric Greeks, this attendance had developed to
a complete public meeting. This was also the case with the Germans of the
archaic period. The meeting was called by the council. Every man could demand
the word. The final vote was taken by hand raising (Aeschylos in "The
Suppliants," 607), or by acclamation. The decision of the meeting was supreme
and final. "Whenever a matter is discussed," says Schoemann in "Antiquities of
Greece," "which requires the participation of the people for its execution, Homer
does not indicate any means by which the people could be forced to it against
their will." It is evident that at a time when every able-bodied member of the
tribe was a warrior, there existed as yet no public power apart from the people
that might have been used against them. The primordial democracy was still in
full force, and by this standard the influence and position of the council and of
the basileus must be judged.
3. The military chief (basileus). Marx makes the following comment: "The
European scientists, mostly born servants of princes, represent the basileus as a
monarch in the modern sense. The Yankee republican Morgan objects to this.
Very ironically but truthfully he says of the oily Gladstone and his "Juventus
Mundi": 'Mr. Gladstone, who presents to his readers the Grecian chiefs of the
heroic age as kings and princes, with the superadded qualities of gentlemen, is
forced to admit that, on the whole we seem to have the custom or law of
primogeniture sufficiently, but not oversharply defined.' As a matter of fact, Mr.
Gladstone himself must have perceived that a primogeniture resting on a clause
of 'sufficient but not oversharp' definition is as bad as none at all."
We saw how the law of heredity was applied to the offices of sachems and chiefs
among the Iroquois and other Indians. All offices were subject to the vote of the
gentiles and for this reason hereditary in the gens. A vacancy was filled
preferably by the next gentile relative—the brother or the sister's son—unless
good reasons existed for passing him. That in Greece, under paternal law, the
office of basileus was generally transmitted to the son or one of the sons,
indicates only that the probability of succession by public election was in favor
of the sons. It implies by no means a legal succession without a vote of the
people. We here perceive simply the first rudiments of segregated families of
aristocrats among Iroquois and Greeks, which led to a hereditary leadership or
monarchy in Greece. Hence the facts are in favor of the opinion that among
Greeks the basileus was either elected by the people or at last was subject to the
indorsement of their appointed organs, the council or agora, as was the case with
the Roman king (rex).
In the Iliad the ruler of men, Agamemnon, does not appear as the supreme king
of the Greeks, but as general in chief of a federal army besieging a city. And
when dissensions had broken out among the Greeks, it is this quality which
Odysseus points out in a famous passage: "Evil is the rule of the many; let one
be the ruler, one the chief" (to which the popular verse about the scepter was
added later on). Odysseus does not lecture on the form of government, but
demands obedience to the general in chief.
Considering that the Greeks before Troy appear only in the character of an army,
the proceedings of the agora are sufficiently democratic. In referring to presents,
that is the division of the spoils, Achilles always leaves the division, not to
Agamemnon or some other basileus, but to the "sons of the Achaeans," the
people. The attributes, descendant of Zeus, bred by Zeus, do not prove anything,
because every gens is descended from some god—the gens of the leader of the
tribe from a "prominent" god, in this case Zeus. Even those who are without
personal freedom, as the swineherd Eumaeos and others, are "divine" (dioi or
theioi), even in the Odyssey, which belongs to a much later period than the Iliad.
In the same Odyssey, the name of "heros" is given to the herald Mulios as well
as to the blind bard Demodokos. In short, the word "basileia," with which the
Greek writers designate the so-called monarchy of Homer (because the military
leadership is its distinguishing mark, by the side of which the council and the
agorâ are existing), means simply—military democracy (Marx).
The basileus had also sacerdotal and judiciary functions beside those of a
military leader. The judiciary functions are not clearly defined, but the functions
of priesthood are due to his position of chief representative of the tribe or of the
league of tribes. There is never any mention of civil, administrative functions.
But it seems that he was ex-officio a member of the council. The translation of
basileus by king is etymologically quite correct, because king (Kuning) is
derived from Kuni, Künne, and signifies chief of a gens. But the modern
meaning of the word king in no way designates the functions of the Grecian
basileus. Thucydides expressly refers to the old basileia as patrikê, that is
"derived from the gens," and states that it had well defined functions. And
Aristotle says that the basileia of heroic times was a leadership of free men and
that the basileus was a military chief, a judge and a high priest. Hence the
basileus had no governmental power in a modern sense.[24]
In the Grecian constitution of heroic times, then, we still find the old gentilism
fully alive, but we also perceive the beginnings of the elements that undermine
it; paternal law and inheritance of property by the father's children, favoring
accumulation of wealth in the family and giving to the latter a power apart from
the gens; influence of the difference of wealth on the constitution by the
formation of the first rudiments of hereditary nobility and monarchy; slavery,
first limited to prisoners of war, but already paving the way to the enslavement
of tribal and gentile associates; degeneration of the old feuds between tribes a
regular mode of existing by systematic plundering on land and sea for the
purpose of acquiring cattle, slaves, and treasures. In short, wealth is praised and
respected as the highest treasure, and the old gentile institutions are abused in
order to justify the forcible robbery of wealth. Only one thing was missing: an
institution that not only secured the newly acquired property of private
individuals against the communistic traditions of the gens, that not only declared
as sacred the formerly so despised private property and represented the
protection of this sacred property as the highest purpose of human society, but
that also stamped the gradually developing new forms of acquiring property, of
constantly increasing wealth, with the universal sanction of society. An
institution that lent the character of perpetuity not only to the newly rising
division into classes, but also to the right of the possessing classes to exploit and
rule the non-possessing classes.
And this institution was found. The state arose.
 FOOTNOTE:

[24] Author's note.

Just as the Grecian basileus, so the Aztec military chief was misrepresented as a
modern prince. Morgan was the first to submit to historical criticism the reports
of the Spaniards who first misapprehended and exaggerated, and later on
consciously misrepresented the functions of this office. He showed that the
Mexicans were in the middle stage of barbarism, but on a higher plane than the
New Mexican Pueblo Indians, and that their constitution, so far as the garbled
accounts show, corresponded to this stage: a league of three tribes which had
made a number of others tributary and was administered by a federal council and
a federal chief of war, whom the Spaniards construed into an "emperor."
 CHAPTER V.
ORIGIN OF THE ATTIC STATE.
How the state gradually developed by partly transforming the organs of the
gentile constitution, partly replacing them by new organs and finally installing
real state authorities; how the place of the nation in arms defending itself
through its gentes, phratries and tribes, was taken by an armed public power of
coërcion in the hands of these authorities and available against the mass of the
people; nowhere can we observe the first act of this drama so well as in ancient
Athens. The essential stages of the various transformations are outlined by
Morgan, but the analysis of the economic causes producing them is largely
added by myself.
In the heroic period, the four tribes of the Athenians were still installed in
separate parts of Attica. Even the twelve phratries composing them seem to have
had separate seats in the twelve different towns of Cecrops. The constitution was
in harmony with the period: a public meeting (agorâ), a council (bûlê) and a
basileus.
As far back as we can trace written history we find the land divided up and in the
possession of private individuals. For during the last period of the higher stage of
barbarism the production of commodities and the resulting trade had well
advanced. Grain, wine and oil were staple articles. The sea trade on the Aegean
Sea drifted more and more out of the hands of the Phoenicians into those of the
Athenians. By the purchase and sale of land, by continued division of labor
between agriculture and industry, trade and navigation, the members of gentes,
phratries and tribes very soon intermingled. The districts of the phratry and the
tribe received inhabitants who did not belong to these bodies and, therefore,
were strangers in their own homes, although they were countrymen. For during
times of peace, every phratry and every tribe administered its own affairs
without consulting the council of Athens or the basileus. But inhabitants not
belonging to the phratry or the tribe could not take part in the administration of
these bodies.
Thus the well-regulated functions of the gentile organs became so disarranged
that relief was already needed during the heroic period. A constitution attributed
to Theseus was introduced. The main feature of this change was the institution of
central administration in Athens. A part of the affairs that had so long been
conducted autonomously by the tribes was declared collective business and
transferred to a general council in Athens. This step of the Athenians went
farther than any ever taken by the nations of America. For the simple federation
of autonomous tribes was now replaced by the conglomeration of all tribes into
one single body. The next result was a common Athenian law, standing above
the legal traditions of the tribes and gentes. It bestowed on the citizens of Athens
certain privileges and legal protection, even in a territory that did not belong to
their tribe. This meant another blow to the gentile constitution; for it opened the
way to the admission of citizens who were not members of any Attic tribe and
stood entirely outside of the Athenian gentile constitution.
A second institution attributed to Theseus was the division of the entire nation
into three classes regardless of the gentes, phratries and tribes: eupatrides or
nobles, geomoroì or farmers, and demiurgoi or tradesmen. The exclusive
privilege of the nobles to fill the offices was included in this innovation. Apart
from this privilege the new division remained ineffective, as it did not create any
legal distinctions between the classes. But it is important, because it shows us
the new social elements that had developed in secret. It shows that the habitual
holding of gentile offices by certain families had already developed into a
practically uncontested privilege; that these families, already powerful through
their wealth, began to combine outside of their gentes into a privileged class; and
that the just arising state sanctioned this assumption. It shows furthermore that
the division of labor between farmers and tradesmen had grown strong enough to
contest the supremacy of the old gentile and tribal division of society. And
finally it proclaims the irreconcilable opposition of gentile society to the state.
The first attempt to form a state broke up the gentes by dividing their members
against one another and opposing a privileged class to a class of disowned
belonging to two different branches of production.
The ensuing political history of Athens up to the time of Solon is only
incompletely known. The office of basileus became obsolete. Archons elected
from the ranks of the nobility occupied the leading position in the state. The
power of the nobility increased continually, until it became unbearable about the
year 600 before Christ. The principal means for stifling the liberty of the people
were—money and usury. The main seat of the nobility was in and around
Athens. There the sea trade and now and then a little convenient piracy enriched
them and concentrated the money into their hands. From this point the gradually
arising money power penetrated like corrugating acid into the traditional modes
of rural existence founded on natural economy. The gentile constitution is
absolutely irreconcilable with money rule. The ruin of the Attic farmers
coïncided with the loosening of the old gentile bonds that protected them. The
debtor's receipt and the pawning of the property—for the mortgage was also
invented by the Athenians—cared neither for the gens nor for the phratry. But
the old gentile constitution knew nothing of money, advance and debt. Hence the
ever more virulently spreading money rule of the nobility developed a new legal
custom, securing the creditor against the debtor and sanctioning the exploitation
of the small farmer by the wealthy. All the rural districts of Attica were crowded
with mortgage columns bearing the legend that the lot on which they stood was
mortgaged to such and such for so much. The fields that were not so designated
had for the most part been sold on account of overdue mortgages or interest and
transferred to the aristocratic usurers. The farmer could thank his stars, if he was
granted permission to live as a tenant on one-sixth of the product of his labor and
to pay five-sixths to his new master in the form of rent. Worse still, if the sale of
the lot did not bring sufficient returns to cover the debt, or if such a debt had
been contracted without a lien, then the debtor had to sell his children into
slavery abroad in order to satisfy the claim of the creditor. The sale of the
children by the father—that was the first fruit of paternal law and monogamy!
And if that did not satisfy the bloodsuckers, they could sell the debtor himself
into slavery. Such was the pleasant dawn of civilization among the people of
Attica.
Formerly, while the condition of the people was in keeping with gentile
traditions, a similar downfall would have been impossible. But here it had come
about, nobody knew how. Let us return for a moment to the Iroquois. The state
of things that had imposed itself on the Athenians almost without their doing, so
to say, and assuredly against their will, was inconceivable among the Indians.
There the ever unchanging mode of production could at no time generate such
conflicts as a distinction between rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, caused
by external conditions. The Iroquois were far from controlling the forces of
nature, but within the limits drawn for them by nature they dominated their own
production. Apart from a failure of the crops in their little gardens, the
exhaustion of the fish supply in their lakes and rivers or of the game stock in
their forests, they always knew what would be the outcome of their mode of
gaining a living. A more or less abundant supply of food, that would come of it.
But the outcome could never be any unpremeditated social upheavals, breaking
of gentile bonds or division of the gentiles against one another by conflicting
class interests. Production was carried on in the most limited manner; but—the
producers controlled their own product. This immense advantage of barbarian
production was lost in the transition to civilization. To win it back on the basis of
man's present gigantic control of nature and of the free association rendered
possible by it, that will be the task of the next generations.
Not so among the Greeks. The advent of private property in herds of cattle and
articles of luxury led to an exchange between individuals, to a transformation of
products into commodities. Here is the root of the entire revolution that
followed. When the producers did no longer consume their own product, but
released their hold of it in exchange for another's product, then they lost the
control of it. They did not know any more what became of it. There was a
possibility that the product might be turned against the producers for the purpose
of exploiting and oppressing them. No society can, therefore, retain for any
length of time the control of its own production and of the social effects of the
mode of production, unless it abolishes exchange between individuals.
How rapidly after the establishment of individual exchange and after the
transformation of products into commodities the product manifests its rule over
the producer, the Athenians were soon to learn. Along with the production of
marketable commodities came the tilling of the soil by individual cultivators for
their own account, soon followed by individual ownership of the land. Along
came also the money, that general commodity for which all others could be
exchanged. But when men invented money they little suspected that they were
creating a new social power, that one universal power before which the whole of
society must bow down. It was this new power, suddenly sprung into existence
without the forethought and intention of its own creators, that vented its rule on
the Athenians with the full brutality of youth.
What was to be done? The old gentile organization had not only proved impotent
against the triumphant march of money: it was also absolutely incapable of
containing within its confines any such thing as money, creditors, debtors and
forcible collection of debts. But the new social power was upon them and neither
pious wishes nor a longing for the return of the good old times could drive
money and usury from the face of the earth. Moreover, gentile constitution had
suffered a number of minor defeats. The indiscriminate mingling of the gentiles
and phrators in the whole of Attica, and especially in Athens, had assumed larger
proportions from generation to generation. Still even now a citizen of Athens
was not allowed to sell his residence outside of his gens, although he could do so
with plots of land. The division of labor between the different branches of
production—agriculture, trades, numberless specialties within the trades,
commerce, navigation, etc.—had developed more fully with the progress of
industry and traffic. The population was now divided according to occupations
into rather well defined groups, everyone of which had separate interests not
guarded by the gens or phratry and therefore necessitating the creation of new
offices. The number of slaves had increased considerably and must have
surpassed by far that of the free Athenians even at this early stage. Gentile
society originally knew no slavery and was, therefore, ignorant of any means to
hold this mass of bondsmen in check. And finally, commerce had attracted a
great many strangers who settled in Athens for the sake of the easier living it
afforded. According to the old constitution, the strangers had neither civil rights
nor the protection of the law. Though tacitly admitted by tradition, they remained
a disturbing and foreign element.
In short, gentile constitution approached its doom. Society was daily growing
more and more beyond it. It was powerless to stop or allay even the most
distressing evils that had grown under its very eyes. But in the meantime the
state had secretly developed. The new groups formed by division of labor, first
between city and country, then between the various branches of city industry,
had created new organs for the care of their interests. Public offices of every
description had been instituted. And above all the young state needed its own
fighting forces. Among the seafaring Athenians this had to be at first only a
navy, for occasional short expeditions and the protection of the merchant vessels.
At some uncertain time before Solon, the naukrariai were instituted, little
territorial districts, twelve in each tribe. Every naukraria had to furnish, equip
and man a war vessel and to detail two horsemen. This arrangement was a
twofold attack on the gentile constitution. In the first place it created a public
power of coërcion that did no longer absolutely coincide with the entirety of the
armed nation. In the second place it was the first division of the people for public
purposes, not by groups of kinship, but by local residence. We shall soon see
what that signified.
As the gentile constitution could not come to the assistance of the exploited
people, they could look only to the rising state. And the state brought help in the
form of the constitution of Solon. At the same time it added to its own strength
at the expense of the old constitution. Solon opened the series of so-called
political revolutions by an infringement on private property. We pass over the
means by which this reform was accomplished in the year 594 B. C. or
thereabout. Ever since, all revolutions have been revolutions for the protection of
one kind of property against another kind of property. They cannot protect one
kind without violating another. In the great French revolution the feudal property
was sacrificed for the sake of saving bourgeois property. In Solon's revolution,
the property of the creditors had to make concessions to the property of the
debtors. The debts were simply declared illegal. We are not acquainted with the
accurate details, but Solon boasts in his poëms that he removed the mortgage
columns from the indented lots and enabled all who had fled or been sold abroad
for debts to return home. This was only feasible by an open violation of private
property. And indeed, all so-called political revolutions were started for the
protection of one kind of property by the confiscation, also called theft, of
another kind of property. It is absolutely true that for more than 2,500 years
private property could only be protected by the violation of private property.
But now a way had to be found to avoid the return of such an enslavement of the
free Athenians. This was first attempted by general measures, e. g., the
prohibition of contracts giving the person of the debtor in lien. Furthermore a
maximum limit was fixed for the amount of land any one individual could own,
in order to keep the craving of the nobility for the land of the farmers within
reasonable bounds. Constitutional amendments were next in order. The
following deserve special consideration:
The council was increased to four hundred members, one hundred from each
tribe. Here, then, the tribe still served as a basis. But this was the only remnant of
the old constitution that was transferred to the new body politic. For otherwise
Solon divided the citizens into four classes according to their property in land
and its yield. Five hundred, three hundred and one hundred and fifty medimnoi
of grain (1 medimnos equals 1.16 bushels) were the minimum yields of the first
three classes. Whoever had less land or none at all belonged to the fourth class.
Only members of the first three classes could hold office; the highest offices
were filled by the first class. The fourth class had only the right to speak and
vote in the public council. But here all officials were elected, here they had to
give account, here all the laws were made, and here the fourth class was in the
majority. The aristocratic privileges were partly renewed in the form of
privileges of wealth, but the people retained the decisive power. The four classes
also formed the basis for the reorganization of the fighting forces. The first two
classes furnished the horsemen; the third had to serve as heavy infantry; the
fourth was employed as light unarmored infantry and had to man the navy.
Probably the last class also received wages in this case.
An entirely new element is thus introduced into the constitution: private
property. The rights and duties of the citizens are graduated according to their
property in land. Wherever the classification by property gains ground, there the
old groups of blood relationship give way. Gentile constitution has suffered
another defeat.
However, the gradation of political rights according to private property was not
one of those institutions without which a state cannot exist. It may have been
ever so important in the constitutional development of some states. Still a good
many others, and the most completely developed at that, had no need of it. Even
in Athens it played only a passing role. Since the time of Aristides, all offices
were open to all the citizens.
During the next eighty years the Athenian society gradually drifted into the
course on which it further developed in the following centuries. The outrageous
land speculation of the time before Solon had been fettered, likewise the
excessive concentration of property in land. Commerce, trades and artisan
handicrafts, which were carried on in an ever larger scale as slave labor
increased, became the ruling factors in gaining a living. Public enlightenment
advanced. Instead of exploiting their own fellow citizens in the old brutal style,
the Athenians now exploited mainly the slaves and the customers outside.
Movable property, wealth in money, slaves and ships, increased more and more.
But instead of being a simple means for the purchase of land, as in the old stupid
times, it had now become an end in itself. The new class of industrial and
commercial owners of wealth now waged a victorious competition against the
old nobility. The remnants of the old gentile constitution lost their last hold. The
gentes, phratries and tribes, the members of which now were dispersed all over
Attica and completely intermixed, had thus become unavailable as political
groups. A great many citizens of Athens did not belong to any gens. They were
immigrants who had been adopted into citizenship, but not into any of the old
groups of kinship. Besides, there was a steadily increasing number of foreign
immigrants who were only protected by traditional sufferance.
Meanwhile the struggles of the parties proceeded. The nobility tried to regain
their former privileges and for a short time recovered their supremacy, until the
revolution of Kleisthenes (509 B. C.) brought their final downfall and completed
the ruin of gentile law.
In his new constitution, Kleisthenes ignored the four old tribes founded on the
gentes and phratries. Their place was taken by an entirely new organization
based on the recently attempted division of the citizens into naukrariai according
to residence. No longer was membership in a group of kindred the dominant
fact, but simply local residence. Not the nation, but the territory was now
divided; the inhabitants became mere political fixtures of the territory.
The whole of Attica was divided into one hundred communal districts, so-called
demoi, every one of which was autonomous. The citizens living in a demos
(demotoi) elected their official head (demarchos), treasurer and thirty judges
with jurisdiction in minor cases. They also received their own temple and divine
guardian or heros, whose priest they elected. The control of the demos was in the
hands of the council of demotoì. This is, as Morgan correctly remarks, the
prototype of the autonomous American township. The modern state in its highest
development ended in the same unit with which the rising state began its career
in Athens.
Ten of these units (demoi) formed a tribe, which, however, was now designated
as local tribe in order to distinguish it from the old sex tribe. The local tribe was
not only an autonomous political, but also a military group. It elected the
phylarchos or tribal head who commanded the horsemen, the taxiarchos
commanding the infantry and the strategic leader, who was in command of the
entire contingent raised in the tribal territory by conscription. The local tribe
furthermore furnished, equipped and fully manned five war vessels. It was
designated by the name of the Attic hero who was its guardian deity. It elected
fifty councilmen into the council of Athens.
Thus we arrive at the Athenian state, governed by a council of five hundred
elected by and representing the ten tribes and subject to the vote of the public
meeting, where every citizen could enter and vote. Archons and other officials
attended to the different departments of administration and justice.
By this new constitution and by the admission of a large number of aliens, partly
freed slaves, partly immigrants, the organs of gentile constitution were displaced
in public affairs. They became mere private and religious clubs. But their moral
influence, the traditional conceptions and views of the old gentile period,
survived for a long time and expired only gradually. This was evident in another
state institution.
We have seen that an essential mark of the state consists in a public power of
coërcion divorced from the mass of the people. Athens possessed at that time
only a militia and a navy equipped and manned directly by the people. These
afforded protection against external enemies and held the slaves in check, who at
that time already made up the large majority of the population. For the citizens,
this coërcive power at first only existed in the shape of the police, which is as
old as the state. The innocent Frenchmen of the 18th century, therefore, had the
habit of speaking not of civilized, but of policed nations (nations policées). The
Athenians, then, provided for a police in their new state, a veritable "force" of
bowmen on foot and horseback. This police force consisted—of slaves. The free
Athenian regarded this police duty as so degrading that he preferred being
arrested by an armed slave rather than lending himself to such an ignominious
service. That was still a sign of the old gentile spirit. The state could not exist
without a police, but as yet it was too young and did not command sufficient
moral respect to give prestige to an occupation that necessarily appeared
ignominious to the old gentiles.
How well this state, now completed in its main outlines, suited the social
condition of the Athenians was apparent by the rapid growth of wealth,
commerce and industry. The distinction of classes on which the social and
political institutions are resting was no longer between nobility and common
people, but between slaves and freemen, aliens and citizens. At the time of the
greatest prosperity the whole number of free Athenian citizens, women and
children included, amounted to about 90,000; the slaves of both sexes numbered
365,000 and the aliens—foreigners and freed slaves—45,000. Per capita of each
adult citizen there were, therefore, at least eighteen slaves and more than two
aliens. The great number of slaves is explained by the fact that many of them
worked together in large factories under supervision. The development of
commerce and industry brought about an accumulation and concentration of
wealth in a few hands. The mass of the free citizens were impoverished and had
to face the choice of either competing with their own labor against slave labor,
which was considered ignoble and vile, besides promising little success, or to be
ruined. Under the prevailing circumstances they necessarily chose the latter
course and being in the majority they ruined the whole Attic state. Not
democracy caused the downfall of Athens, as the European glorifiers of princes
and lickspittle schoolmasters would have us believe, but slavery ostracizing the
labor of the free citizen.
The origin of the state among the Athenians presents a very typical form of state
organization. For it took place without any marring external interference or
internal obstruction—the usurpation of Pisistratos left no trace of its short
duration. It shows the direct rise of a highly developed form of a state, the
democratic republic, out of gentile society. And finally, we are sufficiently
acquainted with all the essential details of the process.
 CHAPTER VI.
GENS AND STATE IN ROME.
The legend of the foundation of Rome sets forth that the first colonization was
undertaken by a number of Latin gentes (one hundred, so the legend says) united
into one tribe. A Sabellian tribe (also said to consist of one hundred gentes) soon
followed, and finally a third tribe of various elements, but again numbering one
hundred gentes, joined them. The whole tale reveals at the first glance that little
more than the gens was borrowed from reality, and that the gens itself was in
certain cases only an offshoot of an old mother gens still existing at home. The
tribes bear the mark of artificial composition on their foreheads; still they were
made up of kindred elements and after the model of the old spontaneous, not
artificial tribe. At the same time it is not impossible that a genuine old tribe
formed the nucleus of every one of these three tribes. The connecting link, the
phratry, contained ten gentes and was called curia. Hence there were thirty
curiae.
The Roman gens is recognized as an institution identical with the Grecian gens.
The Grecian gens being a continuation of the same social unit, the primordial
form of which we found among the American Indians, the same holds naturally
good of the Roman gens, and we can be more concise in its treatment.
At least during the most ancient times of the city, the Roman gens had the
following constitution:
1. Mutual right of inheritance for gentiles; the wealth remained in the gens.
Paternal law being already in force in the Roman the same as in the Grecian
gens, the offspring of female lineage were excluded. According to the law of the
twelve tablets, the oldest written law of Rome known to us, the natural children
had the first title to the estate; in case no natural children existed, the agnati (kin
of male lineage) took their place; and last in line came the gentiles. In all cases
the property remained in the gens. Here we observe the gradual introduction of
new legal provisions, caused by increased wealth and monogamy, into the
gentile practice. The originally equal right of inheritance of the gentiles was first
limited in practice to the agnati, no doubt at a very remote date, and afterwards
to the natural children and their offspring of male lineage. Of course this appears
in the reverse order on the twelve tablets.
2. Possession of a common burial ground. The patrician gens Claudia, on
immigrating into Rome from Regilli, was assigned to a separate lot of land and
received its own burial ground in the city. As late as the time of Augustus, the
head of Varus, who had been killed in the Teutoburger Wald, was brought to
Rome and interred in the gentilitius tumulus; hence his gens (Quinctilia) still had
its own tomb.
3. Common religious rites. These are well-known under the name of sacra
gentilitia.
4. Obligation not to intermarry in the gens. It seems that this was never a written
law in Rome, but the custom remained. Among the innumerable names of
Roman couples preserved for us there is not a single case, where husband and
wife had the same gentile name. The law of inheritance proves the same rule. By
marrying, a woman loses her agnatic privileges, discards her gens, and neither
she nor her children have any title to her father's estate nor to that of his brothers,
because otherwise the gens of her father would lose his property. This rule has a
meaning only then when the woman is not permitted to marry a gentile.
5. A common piece of land. In primeval days this was always obtained when the
tribal territory was first divided. Among the Latin tribes we find the land partly
in the possession of the tribe, partly of the gens, and partly of the households that
could hardly represent single families at such an early date. Romulus is credited
with being the first to assign land to single individuals, about 2.47 acres (two
jugera) per head. But later on we still find some land in the hands of the gentes,
not to mention the state land, around which turns the whole internal history of
the republic.
6. Duty of the gentiles to mutually protect and assist one another. Written history
records only remnants of this law. The Roman state from the outset manifested
such superior power, that the duty of protection against injury devolved upon it.
When Appius Claudius was arrested, his whole gens, including his personal
enemies, dressed in mourning. At the time of the second Punic war the gentes
united for the purpose of ransoming their captured gentiles. The senate vetoed
this.
7. Right to bear the gentile name. This was in force until the time of the
emperors. Freed slaves were permitted to assume the gentile name of their
former master, but this did not bestow any gentile rights on them.
8. Right of adopting strangers into the gens. This was done by adoption into the
family (the same as among the Indians) which brought with it the adoption into
the gens.
9. The right to elect and depose chiefs is not mentioned anywhere. But inasmuch
as during the first years of Rome's existence all offices were filled by election or
nomination, from the king downward, and as the curiae elected also their own
priests, we are justified in assuming the same in regard to gentile chiefs
(principes)—no matter how well established the rule of choosing the candidates
from the same family have been.
Such were the constitutional rights of a Roman gens. With the exception of the
completed transition to paternal law, they are the true image of the rights and
duties of an Iroquois gens. Here, also, "the Iroquois is still plainly visible."
How confused the ideas of our historians, even the most prominent of them, are
when it comes to a discussion of the Roman gens, is shown by the following
example: In Mommsen's treatise on the Roman family names of the Republican
and Augustinian era (Römische Forschungen, Berlin, 1864, Vol. I.) he writes:
"The gentile name was not only borne by all male gentiles including all adopted
and wards, except, of course, the slaves, but also by the women.... The tribe (so
Mommsen translates gens) is a common organization resulting from a common
—actual, assumed or even invented—ancestor and united by common rites,
burial grounds and customs of inheritance. All free individuals, hence women
also, may and must claim membership in them. But the definition of the gentile
name of the married women offers some difficulty. This is indeed obviated, as
long as women were not permitted to marry any one but their gentiles. And we
have proofs that for a long time the women found it much more difficult to
marry outside than inside of the gens. This right of marrying outside, the gentis
enuptio, was still bestowed as a personal privilege and reward during the sixth
century.... But wherever such outside marriages occurred in primeval times, the
woman must have been transferred to the tribe of her husband. Nothing is more
certain than that by the old religious marriage woman was completely adopted
into the legal and sacramental group of her husband and divorced from her own.
Who does not know that the married woman releases her active and passive right
of inheritance in favor of her gentiles, but enters the legal group of her husband,
her children and his gentiles? And if her husband adopts her as his child into his
family, how can she remain separated from his gens?" (Pages 9-11.)
Here Mommsen asserts that the Roman women belonging to a certain gens were
originally free to marry only within their gens; the Roman gens, according to
him, was therefore endogamous, not exogamous. This opinion which contradicts
the evidence of all other nations, is principally, if not exclusively, founded on a
single much disputed passage of Livy (Book xxxix, c. 19). According to this
passage, the senate decreed in the year 568 of the city, i. e., 186 B. C., (uti
Feceniae Hispallae datió, deminutio, gentis enuptio, tutoris optio idem esset
quasi ei vir testamento dedisset; utique ei ingenuo nubere liceret, neu quid ei qui
eam duxisset, ob id fraudi ignominiaeve esset)—that Fecenia Hispalla shall have
the right to dispose of her property, to diminish it, to marry outside of the gens,
to choose a guardian, just as if her (late) husband had conferred this right on her
by testament; that she shall be permitted to marry a freeman and that for the man
who marries her this shall not constitute a misdemeanor or a shame.
Without a doubt Fecenia, a freed slave, here obtains permission to marry outside
of the gens. And equally doubtless the husband here has the right to confer on
his wife by testament the right to marry outside of the gens after his death. But
outside of which gens?
If a woman had to intermarry in the gens, as Mommsen assumes, then she
remained in this gens after her marriage. But in the first place, this assertion of
an endogamous gens must be proven. And in the second place, if the women had
to intermarry in the gens, then the men had to do the same, otherwise there could
be no marriage. Then we arrive at the conclusion that the man could bequeath a
right to his wife, which he did not have for himself. This is a legal impossibility.
Mommsen feels this very well, and hence he supposes: "The marriage outside of
the gens most probably required not only the consent of the testator, but of all
gentiles." (Page 10, footnote.) This is not only a very daring assertion, but
contradicts also the clear wording of the passage. The senate gives her this right
as a proxy of her husband; they expressly give her no more and no less than her
husband could have given her, but what they do give is an absolute right,
independent of all limitations, so that, if she should make use of it, her new
husband shall not suffer in consequence. The senate even instructs the present
and future consuls and praetors to see that no inconvenience arise to her from the
use of this right. Mommsen's supposition is therefore absolutely inadmissible.
Then again: suppose a woman married a man from another gens, but remained in
her own gens. According to the passage quoted above, her husband would then
have had the right to permit his wife to marry outside of her own gens. That is,
he would have had the right to make provisions in regard to the affairs of a gens
to which he did not belong at all. The thing is so utterly unreasonable that we
need not lose any words about it.
Nothing remains but to assume that the woman in her first marriage wedded a
man from another gens and thereby became a member of her husband's gens.
Mommsen admits this for such cases. Then the whole matter at once explains
itself. The woman, torn away from her old gens by her marriage and adopted
into the gentile group of her husband, occupies a peculiar position in the new
gens. She is now a gentile, but not a kin by blood. The manner of her entrance
from the outset excludes all prohibition of intermarrying in the gens, into which
she has come by marriage. She is adopted into the family relations of the gens
and inherits some of the property of her husband when he dies, the property of a
gentile. What is more natural than that this property should remain in the gens
and that she should be obliged to marry a gentile of her husband and no other?
If, however, an exception is to be made, who is so well entitled to authorize her
as her first husband who bequeathed his property to her? At the moment when he
bequeathes on her a part of his property and simultaneously gives her permission
to transfer this property by marriage or as a result of marriage to a strange gens,
he still is the owner of this property, hence he literally disposes of his personal
property. As for the woman and her relation to the gens of her husband, it is he
who by an act of his own free will—the marriage—introduced her into his gens.
Therefore it seems quite natural that he should be the proper person to authorize
her to leave this gens by another marriage. In short, the matter appears simple
and obvious, as soon as we discard the absurd conception of an endogamous
Roman gens and accept Morgan's originally exogamous gens.
There is still another view which has probably found the greatest number of
advocates. According to them the passage in Livy only means "that freed slave
girls (libertae) cannot without special permission, e gente enubere (marry outside
of the gens) or undertake any of the steps which, together with capitis deminutio
minima[25] (the loss of family rights) would lead to a transfer of the liberta to
another gens." (Lange, Römische Alterthümer, Berlin, 1856, I, p. 185, where our
passage from Livy is explained by a reference to Huschke.) If this view is
correct, then the passage proves still less for the relations of free Roman women,
and there is so much less ground for speaking of their obligation to intermarry in
the gens.
The expression enuptio gentis (marriage outside of the gens) occurs only in this
single passage and is not found anywhere else in the entire Roman literature. The
word enubere (to marry outside) is found only three times likewise in Livy, and
not in reference to the gens. The phantastic idea that Roman women had to
intermarry in the gens owes its existence only to this single passage. But it
cannot be maintained. For either the passage refers to special restrictions for
freed slave women, in which case it proves nothing for free women (ingenuae).
Or it applies also to free women, in which case it rather proves that the women
as a rule married outside of the gens and were transferred by their marriage to
their husbands' gens. This would be a point for Morgan against Mommsen.
Almost three hundred years after the foundation of Rome the gentile bonds were
still so strong that a patrician gens, the Fabians, could obtain permission from
the senate to undertake all by itself a war expedition against the neighboring
town of Veii. Three hundred and six Fabians are said to have marched and to
have been killed from ambush. Only one boy was left behind to propagate the
gens.
Ten gentes, we said, formed a phratry, named curia. It was endowed with more
important functions than the Grecian phratry. Every curia had its own religious
rites, sacred possessions and priests. The priests of one curia in a body formed
one of the Roman clerical collegiums. Ten curiae formed a tribe which probably
had originally its own elected chief—leader in war and high priest—like the rest
of the Latin tribes. The three tribes together formed the populus Romanus, the
Roman people.
Hence nobody could belong to the Roman people, unless he was a member of a
Roman gens, and thus a member of a curia and tribe. The first constitution of the
Roman people was as follows. Public affairs were conducted by the Senate
composed, as Niebuhr was the first to state correctly, of the chiefs of the three
hundred gentes. Because they were the elders of the gentes they were called
patres, fathers, and as a body senatus, council of elders, from senex, old. Here
also the customary choice of men from the same family of the gens brought to
life the first hereditary nobility. These families were called patricians and
claimed the exclusive right to the seats in the senate and to all other offices. The
fact that in the course of time the people admitted this claim so that it became an
actual privilege is confirmed by the legendary report that Romulus bestowed the
rank of patrician and its privileges on the first senators. The senate, like the
Athenian boulê, had to make the final decision in many affairs and to undertake
the preliminary discussion of more important matters, especially of new laws.
These were settled by the public meeting, the so-called comitia curiata (assembly
of curiae.) The people met in curiae, probably grouped by gentes, and every one
of the thirty curiae had one vote. The assembly of curiae adopted or rejected all
laws, elected all higher officials including the rex (so-called king), declared war
(but the senate concluded peace), and decided as a supreme court, on appeal, all
cases involving capital punishment of Roman citizens. By the side of the senate
and the public meeting stood the rex, corresponding to the Grecian basileus, and
by no means, such an almost absolute king as Mommsen would have it.[26] The
rex was also a military leader, a high priest and a chairman of certain courts. He
had no other functions, nor any power over life, liberty and property of the
citizens, except such as resulted from his disciplinary power as military leader or
from his executive power as president of a court. The office of rex was not
hereditary. On the contrary, he was elected, probably on the suggestion of his
predecessor, by the assembly of curiae and then solemnly invested by a second
assembly. That he could also be deposed is proved by the fate of Tarquinius
Superbus.
As the Greeks at the time of the heroes, so the Romans at the time of the so-
called kings lived in a military democracy based on and developed from a
constitution of gentes, phratries and tribes. What though the curiae and tribes
were partly artificial formations, they were moulded after the genuine and
spontaneous models of a society from which they originated and that still
surrounded them on all sides. And though the sturdy patrician nobility had
already gained ground, though the reges attempted gradually to enlarge the scope
of their functions—all this does not change the elementary and fundamental
character of the constitution, and this alone is essential.
Meantime the population of the city of Rome and of the Roman territory,
enlarged by conquest, increased partly by immigration, partly through the
inhabitants of the annexed districts, Latins most of them. All these new members
of the state (we disregard here the clients) stood outside of the old gentes, curiae
and tribes and so did not form a part of the populus Romanus, the Roman people
proper. They were personally free, could own land, had to pay taxes and were
subject to military service. But they were not eligible to office and could neither
take part in the assembly of curiae nor in the distribution of conquered state
lands. They made up the mass of people excluded from all public rights, the
plebs. By their continually growing numbers, their military training and
armament they became a threat for the old populus who now closed their ranks
hermetically against all new elements. The land seems to have been about evenly
divided between populus and plebs, while the mercantile and industrial wealth,
though as yet not very considerable, may have been mainly in the hands of the
plebs.
In view of the utter darkness that enwraps the whole legendary origin of Rome's
historical beginning—a darkness that was rendered still more intense by the
rationalistic and overofficious interpretations and reports of the juristically
trained authors that wrote on the subject—it is impossible to make any definite
statements about the time, the course and the motive of the revolution that put an
end to the old gentile constitution. We are certain only that the causes arose out
of the fights between the plebs and the populus.
The new constitution, attributed to rex Servius Tullius and following the Grecian
model, more especially that of Solon, created a new public assembly including
or excluding all the members of populus and plebs according to whether they
rendered military service or not. The whole population, subject to enlistment,
was divided into six classes according to wealth. The lowest limitis in the five
highest classes were: I., 100,000 ass; II., 75,000; III., 50,000; IV., 25,000; V.,
11,000; which according to Dureau de la Malle is equal to about $3,155, $2,333,
$1,555, $800, and $388. The sixth class, the proletarians, consisted of those who
possessed less and were exempt from military service and taxes. In this new
assembly of centuriae (comitia centuriata) the citizens formed ranks after the
manner of soldiers, in companies of one hundred (centuria), and every centuria
had one vote. Now the first class placed 80 centuriae in the field; the second 22,
the third 20, the fourth 22, the fifth 30 and the sixth, for propriety's sake, one. To
this were added 18 centuriae of horsemen composed of the most wealthy. Hence,
there were 193 centuriae, giving a lowest majority vote of 97. Now the horsemen
and the first class alone had together 98 votes. Being in the majority, they had
only to agree, and they could pass any resolution without asking the consent of
the other classes.
This new assembly of centuriae assumed all the political rights of the former
assembly of curiae, a few nominal privileges excepted. The curiae and the gentes
composing them now were degraded to mere private and religious
congregations, analogous to their Attic prototypes, and as such they vegetated on
for a long time. But the assembly of curiae soon became obsolete. In order to
drive also the three old tribes out of existence, a system of four local tribes was
introduced. Every tribe was assigned to one quarter of the city and received
certain political rights.
Thus the old social order of blood kinship was destroyed also in Rome even
before the abolition of the so-called royalty. A new constitution, founded on
territorial division and difference of wealth took its place and virtually created
the state. The public power of coërcion consisted here of citizens liable to
military duty, to be used against the slaves and the so-called proletarians who
were excluded from military service and general armament.
After the expulsion of the last rex, Tarquinius Superbus, who had really usurped
royal power, the new constitution was further improved by the institution of two
military leaders (consuls) with equal powers, analogous to the custom of the
Iroquois. The whole history of the Roman republic moves inside of this
constitution: the struggles between patricians and plebs for admission to office
and participation in the allotment of state lands, the merging of the patrician
nobility in the new class of large property and money owners; the gradual
absorption by the latter of all the land of the small holders who had been ruined
by military service; the cultivation of these enormous new tracts by slaves; the
resulting depopulation of Italy which not only opened the doors to the imperial
tyrants, but also to their successors, the German barbarians.
 FOOTNOTES:

[25] Translator's note.

The term caput received the meaning of legal right of a person from the legal
status of the head of a family.... Legal science extended the meaning of the term
so that it related not alone to slaves, but also to minors and women. This legal
right, so conceived, could be curtailed in three ways: Capitis deminutio maxima
was the loss of the status libertatis (personal liberty), which included the loss of
the status civitatis and familiae (civil and family rights); the capitis deminutio
minor or media was the loss of the status civitatis (civil rights), including the
loss of the status familiae (family rights); the capitis deminutio minima was the
loss of the status familiae (family rights). Lange, Römische Alterthümer, Berlin,
1876, Vol. I., p. 204.
[26] Author's note.
The Latin rex is equivalent to the Celtic-Irish righ (tribal chief) and the Gothic
reiks. That this, like the German Fürst, English first and Danish forste, originally
signified gentile or tribal chief is evident from the fact that the Goths in the
fourth century already had a special term for the king of later times, the military
chief of a whole nation, viz., thiudans. In Ulfila's translation of the Bible
Artaxerxes and Herod are never called reiks, but thiudans, and the empire of the
emperor Tiberius not reiki, but thiudinassus. In the name of the Gothic thiudans,
or king as we inaccurately translate, Thiudareiks (Theodoric, German Dietrich),
both names flow together.
 CHAPTER VII.
THE GENS AMONG CELTS AND GERMANS.
Space forbids a consideration of the gentile institutions found in a more or less
pure form among the savage and barbarian races of the present day; or of the
traces of such institutions, discovered in the ancient history of civilized nations
in Asia. One or the other are met everywhere. A few illustrations may suffice:
Even before the gens had been recognized, it was pointed out and accurately
described in its main outlines by the man who took the greatest pains to
misunderstand it, McLennan, who wrote of this institution among the Kalmucks,
the Circassians, the Samoyeds and three Indian nations: the Warals, the Magars
and the Munnipurs. Recently it was described by M. Kovalevsky, who
discovered it among the Pshavs, Shevsurs, Svanets and other Caucasian tribes. A
few short notes about the existence of the gens among Celts and Germans may
find a place here.
The oldest Celtic laws preserved for us still show the gens in full bloom. In
Ireland, it is alive in the popular instinct to this day, after it has been forced out
of actual existence by the English. It was in full force in Scotland until the
middle of the eighteenth century, and here it also succumbed only to the
weapons, laws and courts of the English.
The old Welsh laws, written several centuries before the English invasion, not
later than the 11th century, still show collective agriculture of whole villages,
although only exceptionally and as the survival of a former universal custom.
Every family had five acres for its special use; another lot was at the same time
cultivated collectively and its yield divided among the different families. In view
of Irish and Scotch analogies it cannot be doubted that these village communities
represent gentes or subdivisions of gentes, even though a repeated investigation
of the Welsh laws, which I cannot undertake from lack of time (my notes are
from 1869), should not directly corroborate this. One thing, however, is plainly
proven by the Welsh and Irish laws, namely that the pairing family had not yet
given way to monogamy among the Celts of the 11th century. In Wales, marriage
did not become indissoluble by divorce, or rather by notification, until after
seven years. Even if no more than three nights were lacking to make up the
seven years, a married couple could still separate. Their property was divided
among them: the woman made the division, the man selected his share. The
furniture was divided according to certain very funny rules. If the marriage was
dissolved by the man, he had to return the woman's dowry and a few other
articles; if the woman wished a separation, then she received less. Of three
children the man took two, the woman one, viz., the second child. If the woman
married again after her divorce, and her first husband claimed her back, she was
obliged to follow him, even if she had one foot in her new husband's bed. But if
two had lived together for seven years, they were considered man and wife, even
without the preliminaries of a formal marriage. Chasteness of the girls before
marriage was by no means strictly observed, nor was it required. The regulations
regarding this subject are of an extremely frivolous nature and in contradiction
with civilized morals. When a woman committed adultery, her husband had a
right to beat her—this was one of three cases when he could do so without
incurring a penalty—but after that he could not demand any other satisfaction,
for "the same crime shall either be atoned for or avenged, but not both." The
reasons that entitled a woman to a divorce without curtailing her claims to a fair
settlement were of a very diverse nature: bad breath of the man was sufficient.
The ransom to be paid to the chief or king for the right of the first night (gobr
merch, hence the medieval name marcheta, French marquette) plays a
conspicuous part in the code of laws. The women had the right to vote in the
public meetings. Add to this that similar conditions are vouched for in Ireland;
that marriage on time was also quite the custom there, and that the women were
assured of liberal and well defined privileges in case of divorce, even to the
point of remuneration for domestic services; that a "first wife" existed by the
side of others, and that legal and illegal children without distinction received a
share of their deceased parent's property—and we have a picture of the pairing
family among the Celts. The marriage laws of the American Indians seem strict
in comparison to the Celtic, but this is not surprising when we remember that the
Celts were still living in group marriage at Cesar's time.
The Irish gens (Sept; the tribe was called clainne, clan) is confirmed and
described not alone by the ancient law codes, but also by the English jurists of
the 17th century who were sent across for the purpose of transforming the clan
lands into royal dominions. Up to this time, the soil had been the collective
property of the gens or the clan, except where the chiefs had already claimed it
as their private dominion. When a gentile died, and a household was thus
dissolved, the gentile chief (called caput cognationis by the English jurists) made
a new assignment of the whole gentile territory to the rest of the household. This
division of land probably took place according to such rules as were observed in
Germany. Until about fifty years ago, village marks were quite frequent, and
some of these so-called rundales may be found to this day. The farmers of a
rundale, individual tenants on the soil that once was the collective property of
the gens, but had been confiscated by the English conquerors, each pay the rent
for his respective parcel. But they all combine their lands and parcel it off
according to situation and quality. These parcels, called "Gewanne" on the
German river Mosel, are cultivated collectively and their yield is divided into
shares. Marshland and pastures are used in common. Fifty years ago, new
divisions were still made occasionally, sometimes annually. The field map of
such a rundale village looks exactly like that of a German "Gehöferschaft"
(farming commune) on the Mosel or in the Hochwald. The gens also survives in
the "factions." The Irish farmers often form parties that seem to be founded on
absolutely contradictory or senseless distinctions, quite incomprehensible to
Englishmen. The only purpose of these factions is apparently to rally for the
popular sport of hammering the life out of one another. They are artificial
reincarnations, modern substitutes for the dispersed gentes that demonstrate the
continuation of the old gentile instinct in their own peculiar manner. By the way,
in some localities the gentiles are still living together on what is practically their
old territory. During the thirties, for instance, the great majority of the
inhabitants of the old county of Monaghan had only four family names, i. e.,
they were descended from four gentes or tribes (clans).[27]
The downfall of the gentile order in Scotland dates from the suppression of the
revolt in 1745. What link of this order the Scotch clan represented remains to be
investigated; that it is a link, is beyond doubt. Walter Scott's novels bring this
Scotch highland clan vividly before our eyes. It is, as Morgan says, "an excellent
type of the gens in organization and in spirit, and an extraordinary illustration of
the power of the gentile life over its members.... We find in their feuds and blood
revenge, in their localization by gentes, in their use of lands in common, in the
fidelity of the clansman to his chief and of the members of the clan to each other,
the usual and persistent features of gentile society.... Descent was in the male
line, the children of the males remaining members of the clan, while the children
of its female members belonged to the clans of their respective fathers." The fact
that matriarchal law was formerly in force in Scotland is proved by the royal
family of the Picts, who according to Beda observed female lineage. Even a
survival of the Punaluan family had been preserved among the Scots, as among
the Welsh. For until the middle ages, the chief of the clan or king, the last
representatives of the former common husbands, had the right to claim the first
night with every bride, unless a ransom was given.
It is an indisputable fact, that the Germans were organized in gentes up to the
time of the great migrations. The territory between the Danube, the Rhine, the
Vistula and the northern seas was evidently occupied by them only a few
centuries before Christ. The Cimbri and Teutons were then still in full migration,
and the Suebi did not settle down until Cesar's time. Cesar expressly states that
they settled down in gentes and kins (gentibus cognatibusque), and in the mouth
of a Roman of the gens Julia this term gentibus has a definite meaning, that no
amount of disputation can obliterate. This holds good for all Germans. It seems
that even the provinces taken by them from the Romans were settled by
distribution to gentes. The Alemanian code of laws affirms that the people
settled in gentes (genealogiae) on the conquered land south of the Danube.
Genealogia is used in exactly the same sense as was later on Mark—or
Dorfgenossenschaft (mark or village community). Kovalevsky recently
maintained that these genealogiae were the great household communities among
which the land was divided, and from which the village communities developed
later on. The same may be true of the fara, by which term the Burgundians and
Langobards—a Gothic and a Herminonian or High German tribe—designated
nearly, if not exactly, the same thing as the Alemanian genealogiae. Whether this
is really the gens or the household community, must be settled by further
investigation.
The language records leave us in doubt, whether all the Germans had a common
expression for gens or not, and as to what this term was. Etymologically, the
Gothic, kuni, middle High German künne, corresponds to the Grecian genos and
the Latin gens, and is used in the same sense. We are led back to the time of
matriarchy by the terms for "woman" which are derived from the same root:
Greek gynê, Slav zenâ, Gothic qvino, Norse kona, kuna.
Among Langobards and Burgundians, I repeat, we find the term fara which
Grimm derives from the hypothetical root fisan, to beget. I should prefer to trace
it to the more obvious root faran, German fahren, to ride or to wander, in order to
designate a certain well defined section of the wandering corps, composed quite
naturally of relatives. As a result of centuries of wanderings from West to East
and back again, this term was gradually applied to the sex group itself.
There is furthermore the Gothic sibja, Anglosaxon sib, old High German sippia,
sippa, High German sippe. Old Norse has only the plural sifjar, the relatives; the
singular occurs only as the name of a goddess, Sif.
Finally, another expression occurs in the Hildebrand Song, where Hildebrand
asks Hadubrand "who is your father among the men of the nation ... or what is
your kin?" (eddo huêllihhes cnuosles du sîs).
If there was a common German term for gens, it was presumably the Gothic
kuni. This is not only indicated by its identity with the corresponding term in
related languages, but also by the fact that the word kuning, German König,
English king, is derived from it, all of which originally signified chief of gens or
tribe. Sibja, German Sippe (relationship), does not appear worthy of
consideration. In old Norse, at least, sifjar signifies not alone kin by blood, but
also kin through marriage; hence it comprises the members of at least two
gentes, and the term sif cannot have been applied to the gens itself.
In the order of battle, the Germans, like the Mexicans and Greeks, arranged the
horsemen as well as the wedge-like columns of the troops on foot by gentes.
Tacitus' indefinite expression, "by families and kinships," is explained by the fact
that at his time the gens had long ceased to be a living body in Rome.
Another passage of Tacitus is decisive. There he says: "The mother's brother
regards his nephew as his son; some even hold that the bond of blood between
the maternal uncle and the nephew is more sacred and close than that between
father and son, so that when persons are demanded as securities, the sister's son
is considered a better security than the natural son of the man whom they desire
to place under bonds." Here we have a living proof of the matriarchal, and hence
natural, gens, and it is described as a characteristic mark of the Germans.[28] If a
member of such a gens gave his own son as a security for the fulfillment of a
vow and this son became the victim of his father's breach of faith, that was the
concern of the father alone. But when the son of a sister was sacrificed, then the
most sacred gentile law was violated. The next relative who was bound above all
others to protect the boy or young man, was held responsible for his death; either
he should not have given the boy in bail or he should have kept the contract. If
we had no other trace of gentile law among the Germans, this one passage would
be sufficient proof of its existence.
But there is another passage in the Old Norse song of the "Dawn of the Gods"
and the "End of the World," the Völuspâ, which is still stronger evidence,
because it is 800 years younger. In this "Vision of the Seeress," in which Bang
and Bugge have now demonstrated the existence of Christian elements, also, the
description of the time of general degeneration and corruption inaugurating the
great catastrophe contains this passage:
 Broedbr munu berjask ok at bönum verdask
Munu systrungar sifjum spilla.

"Brothers will wage war against one another and become each other's murderers,
and sisters' children will break the bonds of blood." Systrungr means the son of
the mother's sister, and an abnegation of the blood kinship from that side
surpasses in the eyes of the poet even the crime of fratricide. There is a
deliberate climax in that systrungar, emphasizing the maternal kinship. If the
term syskina-börn, brother's and sister's children, or syskina-synir, brother's and
sister's sons, had been used, there would have been a weakening of the effect,
instead of a climax. That shows that even at the time of the Vikings, when the
Völuspâ was composed, the recollection of maternal law was not yet blotted out.
Among the Germans with whom Tacitus was familiar maternal law had already
given way to paternal lineage. The children were the next heirs of the father; in
the absence of children, the brothers and uncles on both sides were next in line.
The admission of the mother's brother to the inheritance is a relic of maternal
law and proves that paternal law had only recently been introduced by the
Germans. Traces of maternal law were preserved until late in the middle ages. It
seems that even at this late date people still felt certain misgivings about the
reliability of fatherhood, especially among serfs. For when a feudal lord
demanded the return of a fugitive serf from a city, it was first required, for
instance in Augsburg, Basel and Kaiserslautern, that the fact of his serfdom
should be established by the oaths of six of his next blood relations, all of whom
had to belong to his mother's kin. (Maurer, Städteverfassung, I, page 381.)
Another relic of declining matriarchy was the (from the Roman standpoint)
almost inexplicable respect of the Germans for the female sex. Young girls of
noble family were considered the safest bonds to secure the keeping of contracts
with Germans. In battle, nothing stimulated their courage so much as the horrible
thought that their wives and daughters might be captured and carried into
slavery. A woman was to them something holy and prophetical, and they listened
to her advice in the most important matters. Veleda, the Bructerian priestess on
the river Lippe, was the soul of the insurrection of the Batavians, in which
Civilis at the head of German and Belgian tribes shook the foundations of
Roman rule in Gaul. The women held undisputed sway in the house. If we may
believe Tacitus, they, together with the old men and children, had to do all the
work, for the men went hunting, drank and loafed. But as Tacitus does not say
who cultivated the fields, and as according to his explicit statement the slaves
paid only tithes, but did not work under compulsion, it seems that the adult men
would have had to do what little agricultural work was required.
The form of marriage, as stated above, was the pairing family in gradual
transition to monogamy. It was not yet strict monogamy, for polygamy was
permitted for the wealthy. Chasteness of the girls was in general carefully
maintained, different from the custom of the Celts. Tacitus speaks with special
ardor of the sacredness of the matrimonial bond among the Germans. Adultery
of the woman is alone quoted by him as a reason for a divorce. But his treatment
of this subject leaves many a flaw and besides, it too openly holds up the mirror
of virtue to the dissipated Romans. So much is certain: Granted that the Germans
were such exceptional models of virtue in their forests, it required only a short
contact with the outer world to bring them down to the level of the other average
Europeans. In the whirl of Roman life the last trace of pure morals disappeared
even faster than the German language. Just read Gregorius of Tours. It is obvious
that in the primeval forests of Germany no such hyper-refined voluptuousness
could exist as in Rome. That implies fully enough superiority of the Germans
over the Roman world, and there is no necessity for ascribing to them a
moderation and chastity that have never been the qualities of any nation as a
whole.
A result of gentile law is the obligation to inherit the enmities as well as the
friendships of one's father and relatives; so is furthermore the displacement of
blood revenge by the Wergeld, a fine to be paid in atonement of manslaughter
and injuries. A generation ago this Wergeld was considered a specifically
German institution, but it has since been found that hundreds of nations
introduced this mitigation of gentile blood revenge. Like the obligatory
hospitality, it is found, for instance, among the American Indians. Tacitus'
description of the manner in which hospitality was observed (Germania, chapt.
21) is almost identical with Morgan's.
The hot and ceaseless controversy as to whether or not the Germans had already
made a definite repartition of the cultivated land at Tacitus' time, and how the
passages relating to this question should be interpreted, is now a thing of the
past. After the following facts had been established: that the cultivated land of
nearly all nations was tilled collectively by the gens and later on by communistic
family groups, a practice which Cesar still found among the Suebi; that as a
result of this practice the land was re-apportioned periodically; and that this
periodical repartition of the cultivated land was preserved in Germany down to
our days—after such evidence we need not waste any more breath on the
subject. A transition within 150 years from collective cultivation, such as Cesar
expressly attributes to the Suebi, to individual cultivation with annual repartition
of the soil, such as Tacitus found among the Germans, is surely progress enough
for any one. The further transition from this stage to complete private ownership
of land during such a short period and without any external intervention would
involve an absolute impossibility. Hence I can only read in Tacitus what he states
in so many words: They change (or re-divide) the cultivated land every year, and
enough land is left for common use. It is the stage of agriculture and
appropriation of the soil which exactly tallies with the contemporaneous gentile
constitution of the Germans.
I leave the preceding paragraph unchanged, just as it stood in former editions.
Meantime the question has assumed another aspect. Since Kovalevsky has
demonstrated that the patriarchal household community existed nearly
everywhere, perhaps even everywhere, as the connecting link between the
matriarchal communistic and the modern isolated family, the question is no
longer "Collective property or private property?" as discussed between Maurer
and Waitz, but "What was the form of that collective property?" Not alone is
there no doubt whatever, that the Suebi were the collective owners of their land
at Cesar's time, but also that they tilled the soil collectively. The questions,
whether their economic unit was the gens, or the household, or an intermediate
communistic group, or whether all three of these groups existed at the same time
as a result of different local conditions, may remain undecided for a long while
yet. Kovalevsky maintains that the conditions described by Tacitus were not
founded on the mark or village community, but on the household community,
which developed much later into the village community by the growth of the
population.
Hence the settlements of the Germans on the territory they occupied at the time
of the Romans, and on territory later taken by them from the Romans, would not
have consisted of villages, but of large co-operative families comprising several
generations, who cultivated a sufficient piece of land and used the surrounding
wild land in common with their neighbors. If this was the case, then the passage
in Tacitus regarding the changing of the cultivated land would indeed have an
agronomic meaning, viz., that the co-operative household cultivated a different
piece of land every year, and the land cultivated during the previous year was
left untilled or entirely abandoned. The scarcity of the population would have
left enough spare wild lands to make all dispute about land unnecessary. Only
after the lapse of centuries, when the members of the family had increased so
that the collective cultivation became incompatible with the prevailing
conditions of production, the household communities were dissolved. The
former common fields and meadows were then divided in the well-known
manner among the various individual families that had now formed. The division
of farm lands was first periodical, but later final, while forest, pasture and
watercourses remained common property.
It seems that this process of development has been fully established for Russia
by historical investigation. As for Germany and, in the second place, for other
German countries, it cannot be denied that this view affords in many instances a
better interpretation of historical authorities and a readier solution of difficulties
than the idea of tracing the village community to the time of Tacitus. The oldest
documents, e. g. of the Codex Laureshamensis, are easier explained by the help
of the household than of the village community. On the other hand, new
difficulties now arise and new questions pose themselves. It will require further
investigations to arrive at definite conclusions. However, I cannot deny that the
probability is very much in favor of the intermediate stage of the household
community.[29]
While the Germans of Cesar's time had either just taken up settled abodes, or
were still looking for them, they had been settled for a full century at the time of
Tacitus. As a result there is a manifest progress in the production of necessities.
The Germans lived in block houses; their clothing was still as primitive as their
forests, consisting of rough woolen cloaks, animal skins and linen underclothing
for the women and the wealthy. They lived on milk, meat, wild fruit and, as
Pliny adds, oatmeal porridge which is the Celtic national dish in Ireland and
Scotland to-day. Their wealth consisted in cattle of an inferior race. The kine
were small, of unattractive appearance and without horns; the horses, little
ponies, were not fast runners. Money, Roman coin only, was rarely used. They
did not make ornaments of gold and silver, nor did they value these metals. Iron
was scarce and, at least among the tribes on the Rhine and the Danube, was
apparently only imported, not mined by themselves. The Runen script
(imitations of Greek and Latin letters) was only used as a cipher and exclusively
for religious sorcery. Human sacrifices were still in vogue. In short, they were a
nation just emerged out of the middle stage of barbarism into the upper stage.
But while the tribes whose immediate contact with the Romans facilitated the
import of Roman products, were thereby prevented from acquiring a metal and
textile industry of their own, there is not the least doubt that the tribes of the
Northeast, on the Baltic, developed these industries. The pieces of armor found
in the bogs of Sleswick—a long iron sword, a coat of mail, a silver helmet, etc.,
together with Roman coins from the close of the second century—, and the
German metal ware spread by the migrations represent a peculiar type of a
superior finish, even such as were modeled after Roman originals. With the
exception of England, the emigration into the civilized Roman empire
everywhere put an end to this home industry. How simultaneously this industry
arose and developed, is shown e. g. by the bronze spangles. The specimens
found in Burgundy, in Roumania and on the Sea of Asow, might have been
manufactured in the same shop with those found in England or Sweden and are
of undoubted German origin.
The German constitution was also in keeping with the upper stage of barbarism.
According to Tacitus, the council of chiefs (principes) universally decided
matters of minor importance and prepared important matters for the decision of
the public meetings. So far as we know anything of the public meeting in the
lower stage of barbarism, viz., among the American Indians, it was only held by
gentes, not by tribes or leagues of tribes. The chiefs of peace (principes) were
still sharply distinguished from the chiefs of war (duces), just as among the
Iroquois. The peace chiefs were already living in part on honorary donations of
the gentiles, such as cattle, grain, etc. They were generally elected from the same
family, analogous to America. The transition to paternal law favored, as in
Greece and Rome, the gradual transformation of office by election into
hereditary office. A "noble" family was thus gradually raised in each gens. Most
of this hereditary nobility came to grief during the migrations or shortly after.
The military leaders were elected solely on their merits. They had little power
and were obliged to rely on the force of their example. The actual disciplinary
power in the army was held by the priests, as Tacitus implicitly states. The
public meeting was the real executive. The king or chief of the tribe presided.
The people decided. A murmur signified "No," acclamation and clanging of
weapons meant "Yes." The public meeting was at the same time a court of
justice. Complaints were here brought forth and decided, and death sentences
pronounced. Only cowardice, treason and unnatural lust were capital crimes. The
gentes and other subdivisions decided in a body under the chairmanship of the
chief, who in all original German courts was only the manager of the
transactions and questioner. Among Germans, the sentence has ever and
everywhere been pronounced by the community.
Leagues of tribes came into existence since Cesar's time. Some of them already
had kings. The first chief of war began to covet the usurper's place, as among
Greeks and Romans, and sometimes succeeded in obtaining it. Such successful
usurpers were by no means absolute rulers. But still they began to break through
the bonds of the gens. While freed slaves generally occupied an inferior position,
because they could not be members of any gens, they often gained rank, wealth
and honors as favorites of the new kings. The same thing took place after the
conquest of the Roman empire by those military leaders who had now become
kings of great countries. Among the Frankons, slaves and freed slaves of the
king played a leading role first at the court, then in the state. A large part of the
new nobility were descended from them.
There was one institution that especially favored the rise of royalty: the military
following. We have already seen, how among the American redskins private war
groups were formed independently of the gens. Among the Germans, these
private groups had developed into standing bodies. The military leader who had
acquired fame, gathered around his person a host of booty loving young
warriors. They were pledged to personal faithfulness by their leader who in
return pledged himself to them. He fed them, gave them presents and organized
them on hierarchic principles: a body guard and a troop for immediate
emergencies and short expeditions, a trained corps of officers for larger
enterprises. These followings must have been rather insignificant, in fact we find
them so later under Odoaker in Italy, still they portended the decay of the old
gentile liberty, and the events during and after the migrations proved that
military retainers were heralds of evil. For in the first place, they fostered the
growth of royalty. In the second place, Tacitus affirms that they could only be
held together by continual warfare and plundering expeditions. Robbery became
their life purpose. If the leader found nothing to do in his neighborhood, he
marched his troops to other countries, where a prospect of war and booty allured
him. The German auxiliaries, many of whom fought under the Roman standard
even against Germans, had been largely recruited among such followings. They
represent the first germs of the "Landsknecht" profession, the shame and curse of
the Germans. After the conquest of the Roman empire, these retainers of kings
together with the unfree Roman courtiers formed the other half of the nobility of
later days.
In general, then, the German tribes combined into nations had the same
constitution that had developed among the Greeks of the heroic era and the
Romans at the time of the so-called kings: public meetings, councils of gentile
chiefs and military leaders who coveted actual royal power. It was the highest
constitution which the gentile order could produce; it was the standard
constitution of the higher stage of barbarism. If society passed the limits for
which this constitution sufficed, then the end of the gentile order had come. It
collapsed and the state took its place.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] Author's note to the fourth edition.

During a few days passed in Ireland, I once more became conscious to what
extent the rural population is still living in the conceptions of the gentile period.
The great landholder, whose tenant the farmer is, still enjoys a position similar to
that of a clan chief, who has to supervise the cultivation of the soil in the interest
of all, who is entitled to a tribute from the farmer in the form of rent, but who
also has to assist the farmer in cases of need. Likewise everyone in comfortable
circumstances is considered under obligation to help his poorer neighbors
whenever they are in need. Such assistance is not charity, it is simply the
prerogative of the poor gentile, which the rich gentile or the chief of the clan
must respect. This explains why the professors of political economy and the
jurists complain of the impossibility of imparting the idea of the modern private
property to the Irish farmers. Property that has only rights, but no duties, is
absolutely beyond the ken of the Irishman. No wonder that so many Irishmen
who are suddenly cast into one of the modern great cities of England and
America, among a population with entirely different moral and legal standards,
despair of all morals and justice, lose all hold and become an easy prey to
demoralization.
[28] Author's note.
The Greeks know this special sacredness of the bond between the mother's
brother and his nephew, a relic of maternal law found among many nations, only
in the mythology of heroic times. According to Diodorus IV., 34, Meleagros kills
the sons of Thestius, the brother of his mother Althaia. The latter regards this
deed as such a heinous crime that she curses the murderer, her own son, and
prays for his death. "It is said that the gods fulfilled her wish and ended the life
of Meleagros." According to the same Diordorus, IV., 44, the Argonauts under
Herakles land in Thracia and there find that Phineus, at the instigation of his
second wife, shamefully maltreats his two sons, the offspring of his first deserted
wife, the Boread Kleopatra. But among the Argonauts there are also some
Boreads, the brothers of Kleopatra, the uncles of the maltreated boys. They at
once champion their nephews, set them free and kill their guards.
[29] Translator's note.
The household community is still a distinct stage of production in Georgia
(South Russia). The northern boundary of Georgia is the Caucasus. The
Georgians, a people of high intelligence, have for centuries maintained their
independence against Persians, Arabs, Turcs and Tartars. Dr. Philipp
Gogitshayshvili gives the following interesting description of their condition in
an article, entitled "Das Gewerbe in Georgien" (Zeitschrift für die gesammte
Staatswissenschaft, Ergänzungsheft I., Tübingen, 1901). "The Swanians (a
district of Georgia is called Swania) have all the necessities of life. They weave
their own clothing, make their own weapons, powder and even silver, and gold
ornaments. There is no modern trading.... They are acquainted with exchange,
but only of products for products. Money does not circulate and there are neither
shops nor markets.... There is not a single beggar, not a single man who asks for
charity. With the exception of iron, salt and chintz, the Swanians produce all they
need themselves. They prepare their linen from hemp, their clothing from skins
of wild animals and wool, their footwear from hides and leather. They make
feltcaps, household goods, weapons, saddles, bridles and agricultural
implements."
 CHAPTER VIII.
THE RISE OF THE STATE AMONG GERMANS.
According to Tacitus the German nation was very strong in numbers. An
approximate idea of the strength of individual German nations is given by
Caesar. He states that the number of Usipetans and Tencterans who crossed over
to the left bank of the Rhine amounted to 180,000, including women and
children. About 100,000[30] members to a single nation is considerably more
than e. g. the Iroquois numbered in their prime, when 20,000 of them became the
terror of the whole country, from the Great Lakes to the Ohio and Potomac. If we
attempt to place the better known nations of the Rhine country by the help of
historical reports, we find that a single nation occupies on the map the average
area of a Prussian government district, about 10,000 square kilometers[31] or 182
German geographical square miles.[32] The Germania Magna of the Romans,
reaching to the Vistula, comprised about 500,000 square kilometers. Counting an
average of 100,000 for any single nation, the total population of Germania
Magna would have amounted to five millions. This is a rather high figure for a
barbarian group of nations, although 10 inhabitants to the square kilometer or
550 to the geographical square mile is very little when compared to present
conditions. But this does not include the whole number of Germans then living.
We know that German nations of the Gothic race, Bastarnians, Peukinians and
others, lived all along the Carpathian mountains away down to the mouth of the
Danube. They were so numerous that Pliny designated them as the fifth main
division of the Germans. As much as 180 years B. C. they were mercenaries of
the Macedonian King Perseus, and during the first years of Augustus they were
still pushing their way as far as the vicinity of Adrianople. Assuming them to
have been one million strong we find that at least six millions was the probable
population of Germany at the beginning of the Christian era.
After the final settlement in Germany, the population must have grown with
increasing rapidity. The industrial progress mentioned above would be sufficient
to prove it. The objects found in the bogs of Sleswick, to judge by the Roman
coins found with them, are from the third century. Hence at that time the metal
and textile industry was already well developed on the Baltic, a lively traffic
with the Roman empire was carried on, and the wealthier class enjoyed a certain
luxury—all of which indicates that the population had increased. But at the same
time the general war of aggression against the Romans commenced along the
whole line of the Rhine, of the Roman wall and of the Danube, a line stretching
from the North Sea to the Black Sea. This is another proof of the ever growing
outward pressure of the population. During the struggle which lasted three
centuries, the whole main body of the Gothic nations, with the exception of the
Scandinavian Goths and the Burgundians, marched to the Southeast and formed
the left wing of the long line of attack. The High Germans (Herminonians) on
the Upper Danube fought in the center, and the Iskaevonians on the Rhine, now
called Franks, advanced on the right wing. The conquest of Brittany fell to the
lot of the Ingaevonians.[33] At the end of the fifth century, the exhausted,
bloodless, and helpless Roman empire lay open to the Germans.
In former chapters we stood at the cradle of antique Greek and Roman
civilization. Now we are standing at its grave. The equalizing plane of Roman
world power had been gliding for centuries over all the Mediterranean countries.
Where the Greek language did not offer any resistance, all national idioms had
been crushed by a corrupted Latin. There were no longer any distinctions of
nationality, no more Gauls, Iberians, Ligurians, Noricans; they had all become
Romans. Roman administration and Roman law had everywhere dissolved the
old gentile bodies and thus crushed the last remnant of local and national
independence. The new type of Romans offered no compensation for this loss,
for it did not express any nationality, but only the lack of a nationality. The
elements for the formation of new nations were present everywhere. The Latin
dialects of the different provinces differentiated more and more. But the natural
boundaries that had once made Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa independent territories,
were still present and made themselves felt. Yet there was no strength anywhere
for combining these elements into new nations. Nowhere was there the least
trace of any capacity for development, nor any power of resistance, much less
any creative power. The immense human throng of that enormous territory was
held together by one bond alone: the Roman state. But this state had in time
become the worst enemy and oppressor of its subjects. The provinces had ruined
Rome. It had become a provincial town like all others, privileged, but no longer
ruling, no longer the center of the world empire, no longer even the seat of the
emperors and subregents who lived in Constantinople, Treves and Milan. The
Roman state had become an immense complicated machine, designed
exclusively for the exploitation of its subjects. Taxes, state imposts and tithes of
all sorts drove the mass of the people deeper and deeper into poverty. By the
blackmailing practices of the regents, tax collectors and soldiers, the pressure
was increased to such a point that it became insupportable. This was the outcome
of Rome's world power. The right of the state to existence was founded on the
preservation of order in the interior and the protection against the barbarians
outside. But this order was worse than the most disgusting disorder, and the
barbarians against whom the state pretended to protect its citizens, were hailed
by them as saviors.
The condition of society was no less desperate. During the last years of the
republic, the Roman rulers had already contrived the pitiless exploitation of the
conquered provinces. The emperors had not abolished, but organized this
exploitation. The more the empire fell to pieces, the higher rose the taxes and
tithes, and the more shamelessly did the officials rob and blackmail. Commerce
and industry had never been a strong point of the domineering Romans. Only in
usury they had excelled all other nations before and after them. What commerce
had managed to exist, had been ruined by official extortion. Only in the East, in
the Grecian part of the empire, some commerce still vegetated, but this is outside
of the scope of our study. Universal reduction to poverty, decrease of traffic, of
handicrafts, of art, of population, decay of the towns, return of agriculture to a
lower stage—that had been the final result of Roman world supremacy.
But now agriculture, the most prominent branch of production in the whole Old
World, was again supreme, and more than ever. In Italy, the immense estates
(latifundiae) that comprised nearly the whole country since the end of the
republic, had been utilized in two ways: either as pastures on which the
population had been replaced by sheep and oxen, the care of which required only
a few slaves; or as country seats, on which masses of slaves carried on
horticulture on a large scale, partly for the luxury of the owner, partly for sale on
the markets of the towns. The great pastures had been preserved and even
extended in certain parts. But the country seats and their horticulture had gone to
ruin through the impoverishment of their owners and the decay of the towns.
Latifundian economy based on slave labor was no longer profitable; but in its
time it had been the only possible form of agriculture on a large scale. Now,
however, small production had again become the only lucrative form. One
country seat after the other was parceled and leased in small lots to hereditary
tenants who paid a fixed rent, or to partiarii, more administrators than tenants
who received one-sixth or even only one-ninth of a year's product in
remuneration for their work. But these little lots were principally disposed of to
colonists who paid a fixed sum annually and could be transferred by sale
together with their lots. Although no slaves, still these colonists were not free;
they could not marry free citizens, and marriages with members of their own
class were not regarded as valid, but as mere concubinages like those of the
slaves. The colonists were the prototypes of the medieval serfs.
The ancient slavery had lost its vitality. Neither in the country in large scale
agriculture, nor in the manufactories of the towns did it yield any more returns—
the market for its products had disappeared. And small scale production and
artisanship, to which the gigantic production of the flourishing time of the
empire was now reduced, did not leave any room for numerous slaves. Only
house and luxury slaves of the rich were still retained by society. But this
declining slavery was as yet sufficiently strong to brand productive labor as
slave work, as below the dignity of free Romans; and everybody was now a free
Roman. An increasing number of superfluous slaves who had become a drug on
their owners were dismissed, while on the other hand the number of colonists
and of beggared free men (similar to the poor whites in the slave states of
America) grew continuously. Christianity is perfectly innocent of this gradual
decline of ancient slavery. For it had taken part in the slavery of the Roman
empire for centuries. It never prevented the slave trade of Christians later on,
neither of the Germans in the North, nor of the Venetians on the Mediterranean,
nor the negro traffic of later years.[34] Slavery died, because it did not pay any
longer. But it left behind its poisonous sting by branding as ignoble the
productive labor of free men. This brought the Roman world into a closed alley
from which it could not escape. Slave labor was economically impossible and
the labor of free men was under a moral ban. The one could exist no longer, the
other could not yet be the fundamental form of social production. There was no
other help but a complete revolution.
The provinces were not any better off. The most complete reports on this subject
are from Gaul. By the side of the colonists, free farmers still existed there. In
order to protect themselves against the brutal blackmail of the officials, judges
and usurers, they frequently placed themselves under the protectorate of a man
of influence and power. Not only single individuals did so, but whole
communities, so that the emperors of the fourth century often issued decrees
prohibiting this practice. But what good did protection do to the clients? The
patron imposed the condition that they should transfer the title of their lots to
him, and in return he assured them of the free enjoyment of their land for life—a
trick which the holy church remembered and freely imitated during the ninth and
tenth century, for the greater glory of God. In the fifth century, however, about
the year 475, Bishop Salvianus of Marseilles still vehemently denounced such
robbery and relates that the methods of the Roman officials and great landlords
became so oppressive that many "Romans" fled to the districts occupied by the
barbarians and feared nothing so much as a return under Roman rule. That poor
parents frequently sold their children into slavery, is proved by a law forbidding
this practice.
In return for liberating the Romans from their own state, the barbarians
appropriated two-thirds of the entire land and divided it among themselves. The
distribution was made by gentile rules. As the number of the conquerors was
relatively small, large tracts remained undivided in the possession of the nation,
the tribe or the gens. Every gens distributed the land for cultivation and pastures
to the individual households by drawing lots. We do not know whether repeated
divisions took place at that time. At any rate, this practice was soon discarded in
the Roman provinces, and the individual lot became salable private property, a
so-called freehold (allodium). Forests and pastures remained undivided for
collective use. This use and the mode of cultivating the divided land was
regulated by tradition and the will of the community. The longer the gens lived
in its village, and the better Germans and Romans became amalgamated in the
course of time, the more did the character of kinship lose ground before
territorial bounds. The gens disappeared in the mark commune, the members of
which, however, still exhibited traces of kinship. In the countries where mark
communes were still preserved—in the North of France, in England, Germany
and Scandinavia—the gentile constitution gradually merged into a local
constitution and thus acquired the capacity of being fitted into a state.
Nevertheless this local constitution retained some of the primeval democratic
character which distinguishes the whole gentile order, and thus preserved a piece
of gentilism even in its enforced degeneration of later times. This left a weapon
in the hands of the oppressed, ready to be wielded by them even in the present
time.
The rapid loss of the bonds of blood in the gens as a result of conquest caused
the degeneration of the tribal and national organs of gentilism. We know that the
rule over subjugated people does not agree with the gentile constitution. Here we
have an opportunity to observe this on a large scale. The German nations,
masters of the Roman provinces, had to organize their conquests. But they could
neither adopt the Romans as a body into their gentes, nor rule them by the help
of gentile organs. A substitute for them had to be placed at the head of the
Roman administrative bodies that were largely retained in local affairs, and this
substitute could only be another state. Hence the organs of the gentile
constitution had to become organs of the state, and under the pressure of the
moment this took place very rapidly. Now the first representative of the
conquering nation was the military leader. The internal and external security of
the conquered territory demanded that his power should be strengthened. The
moment had arrived for the transition from war leadership to monarchy. And the
change took place.
Take e. g. the realm of the Franks. The victorious Salians had not only come into
possession of the extensive Roman state dominions, but also of all the large
tracts that had not been assigned to the more or less small mark communities,
especially of all large forest tracts. The first thing which the king of the Franks,
now a real monarch, did was to change this national property into royal property,
to steal it from the people and to donate or give it in lien to his retainers. This
retinue, originally composed of his personal war followers and of the
subcommanders of the army, was increased by Romans, i. e., romanized Gauls
who quickly became invaluable to the king through their knowledge of writing,
their education and their familiarity with the language and laws of the country,
and with the language of Latin literature. But slaves, serfs and freed slaves also
became his courtiers. From among all these he chose his favorites. At first they
received donations of public land, and later on these benefits were generally
conferred for the lifetime of the king. The foundation of a new nobility was thus
laid at the expense of the people.
But this was not all. The wide expanse of the empire could not be governed by
means of the old gentile constitution. The council of chiefs, if it had not become
obsolete long ago, could not have held any more meetings. It was soon displaced
by the standing retinue of the king. A pretense at the old public meeting was still
kept up, but it also was more and more limited to the meeting of the
subcommanders of the army and the rising nobles.
Just as formerly, the Roman farmers during the last period of the republic, so
now the free land-owning peasants, the mass of the Frank people, were
exhausted and reduced to penury by continual civil feuds and wars of conquest.
They who once had formed the whole army and, after the conquest of France, its
picked body, were so impoverished at the end of the ninth century that hardly
more than every fifth man could go to war. The former army of free peasants,
convoked directly by the king, was replaced by an army composed of
dependents of the new nobles. Among these servants were also villeins, the
descendants of the peasants who had acknowledged no master but the king and a
little earlier not even a king. Under Charlemagne's successors the ruin of the
Frank peasantry was aggravated by internal wars, weakness of the royal power
and corresponding overbearance of the nobles. The latter had received another
addition to their ranks through the installation by Charlemagne of "Gau"[35]
(district) counts who strove to make their offices hereditary. The invasions of the
Normans completed the wreck of the peasantry. Fifty years after the death of
Charlemagne, France lay as resistless at the feet of the Normans, as four hundred
years previous the Roman empire had lain at the feet of the Franks.
Not only was the external impotence almost the same, but also the internal order
or rather disorder of society. The free Frank peasants found themselves in a
similar position as their predecessors, the Roman colonists. Ruined by wars and
robberies, they had been forced to seek the protection of the nobles or the
church, because the royal power was too weak to shield them. But they had to
pay dearly for this protection. Like the Gallic farmers, they had to transfer the
titles of their land to their patrons, and received it back from them as tenants in
different and varying forms, but always only in consideration of services and
tithes. Once driven into this form of dependence, they gradually lost their
individual liberty. After a few generations most of them became serfs. How
rapidly the free peasants sank from their level is shown by the land records of
the abbey Saint Germain des Prés, then near, now in, Paris. On the vast holdings
of this abbey in the surrounding country 2788 households, nearly all of them
Franks with German names, were living at Charlemagne's time; 2080 of them
were colonists, 35 lites,[36] 220 slaves and only 8 freeholders. The practice of the
patrons to demand the transfer of the land titles to themselves and give the
former owners the use of the land for life, denounced as ungodly by Salvianus,
was now universally practiced by the Church in its dealings with the peasants.
The compulsory labor that now came more and more into vogue, had been
moulded as much after the Roman angariae, compulsory service for the state, as
after the services of the German mark men in bridge and road building and other
work for common purposes. By all appearances, then, the mass of the population
had arrived at the same old goal after four hundred years.
That proved two things: Firstly, that the social differentiation and the division of
property in the sinking Roman empire corresponded perfectly to the
contemporaneous stage of production in agriculture and industry, and hence was
unavoidable; secondly, that this stage of production had not been essentially
altered for better or worse during four hundred years, and therefore had
necessarily produced the same division of property and the same classes of
population. The town had lost its supremacy over the country during the last
centuries of the Roman empire, and had not regained it during the first centuries
of German rule. This presupposes a low stage of agriculture and industry. Such a
general condition produces of necessity the domination of great proprietors and
the dependence of small farmers. How impossible it was to graft either the slave
labor of Roman latifundian economy or the compulsory labor of the new large
scale production into such a society, is proved by Charlemagne's very extensive
experiments with his famous imperial country residences that left hardly a trace.
These experiments were continued only by the convents and brought results only
for them. But the convents were abnormal social institutions, founded on
celibacy. They could do exceptional work, but they had to remain exceptions
themselves for this very reason.
Yet some progress had been made during these four hundred years. Although in
the end we find the same main classes as in the beginning, still the human beings
that made up these classes had changed. The ancient slavery had disappeared;
gone were also the beggared freemen who had despised work as slavish.
Between the Roman colonist and the new serf, there had been the free Frank
peasant. The "useless remembrance and the vain feud" of the decaying Roman
nation was dead and gone. The social classes of the ninth century had been
formed during the travail of a new civilization, not in the demoralization of a
sinking one. The new race, masters and servants, were a race of men as
compared to their Roman predecessors. The relation of powerful landlords to
serving peasants, which had been the unavoidable result of collapse in the
antique world, was for the Franks the point of departure on a new line of
development. Moreover, unproductive as these four hundred years may appear,
they left behind one great product: the modern nationalities, the reorganization
and differentiation of West European humanity for the coming history. The
Germans had indeed infused a new life into Europe. Therefore the dissolution of
the states in the German period did not end in a subjugation after the Norse-
Saracene plan, but in a continued development of the estate of the royal
beneficiaries and an increasing submission (commendatio) to feudalism, and in
such a tremendous increase of the population, that no more than two centuries
later the bloody drain of the crusades could be sustained without injury.
What was the mysterious charm by which the Germans infused a new life into
decrepit Europe? Was it an innate magic power of the German race, as our jingo
historians would have it? By no means. Of course, the Germans were a highly
gifted Aryan branch and, especially at that time, in full process of vigorous
development. They did not, however, rejuvenate Europe by their specific
national properties, but simply by their barbarism, their gentile constitution.
Their personal efficiency and bravery, their love of liberty, and their democratic
instinct which regarded all public affairs as its own affairs, in short all those
properties which the Romans had lost and which were alone capable of forming
new states and raising new nationalities out of the muck of the Roman world—
what were they but characteristic marks of the barbarians in the upper stage,
fruits of the gentile constitution?
If they transformed the antique form of monogamy, mitigated the male rule in
the family and gave a higher position to women than the classic world had ever
known, what enabled them to do so, unless it was their barbarism, their gentile
customs, their living inheritance of the time of maternal law?
If they could safely transmit a trace of the genuine gentile order, the mark
communes, to the feudal states of at least three of the most important countries—
Germany, North of France, and England—and thus give a local coherence and
the means of resistance to the oppressed class, the peasants, even under the
hardest medieval serfdom; means which neither the slaves of antiquity nor the
modern proletarian found ready at hand—to whom did they owe this, unless it
was again their barbarism, their exclusively barbarian mode of settling in gentes?
And in conclusion, if they could develop and universally introduce the mild form
of servitude which they had been practicing at home, and which more and more
displaced slavery also in the Roman empire—to whom was it due, unless it was
again their barbarism, thanks to which they had not yet arrived at complete
slavery, neither in the form of the ancient labor slaves, nor in that of the oriental
house slaves?
This milder form of servitude, as Fourier first stated, gave to the oppressed the
means of their gradual emancipation as a class (fournit aux cultivateurs des
moyens d'affranchissement collectif et progressif) and is therefore far superior to
slavery, which permits only the immediate enfranchisement of the individual
without any transitory stage. Antiquity did not know any abolition of slavery by
rebellion, but the serfs of the middle ages gradually enforced their liberation as a
class.
Every vital and productive germ with which the Germans inoculated the Roman
world, was due to barbarism. Indeed, only barbarians are capable of rejuvenating
a world laboring under the death throes of unnerved civilization. And the higher
stage of barbarism, to which and in which the Germans worked their way up
previous to the migrations, was best calculated to prepare them for this work.
That explains everything.
 FOOTNOTES:

[30] Author's note.

The number assumed here is confirmed by a passage of Diodorus on the Celts of
Gaul: "Many nations of unequal strength are living in Gaul. The strongest of
them numbers about 200,000, the weakest 50,000." (Diodorus Siculus, V., 25.)
That gives an average of 125,000. The individual nations of Gaul, being more
highly developed, should be gauged more numerous than those of Germany.
[31] Translator's note.
3861 square statute miles.
[32] A German geographical mile contains 7,420.44 meters, or 7.42044
kilometers; hence a German geographical square mile contains 55.0629 square
kilometers, equal to 21.2598 square statute miles.
[33] Translator's note.
The Ingaevonians comprised the Friesians, the Saxons, the Jutes and the Angles,
living on the coast of the North Sea from the Zuider Zee to Denmark.
[34] Author's note.
According to Bishop Liutprand of Cremona, the main industry of Verdun in the
tenth century, in the so-called Holy German Empire, was the manufacture of
eunuchs, who were exported with great profit to Spain for the harems of the
Moors.
[35] Translator's note.
The "Gau" is a larger territory than the "Mark." Caesar and Tacitus called it
pagus.
[36] Translator's note.
The name given in ancient law to dependent farmers.
 CHAPTER IX.
BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION.
Having observed the dissolution of the gentile order in the three concrete cases
of the Greek, Roman, and German nations, we may now investigate in
conclusion the general economic conditions that began by undermining the
gentile organization of society during the upper stage of barbarism and ended by
doing away with it entirely at the advent of civilization. Marx's "Capital" will be
as necessary for the successful completion of this task as Morgan's "Ancient
Society."
A growth of the middle stage and a product of further development during the
upper stage of savagery, the gens reached its prime, as near as we can judge from
our sources of information, in the lower stage of barbarism. With this stage, then,
we begin our investigation.
In our standard example, the American redskins of that time, we find the gentile
constitution fully developed. A tribe had differentiated into several gentes,
generally two. Through the increase of the population, these original gentes
again divided into several daughter gentes, making the mother gens a phratry.
The tribe itself split up into several tribes, in each of which we again meet a
large number of representatives of the old gentes. In certain cases a federation
united the related tribes. This simple organization fully sufficed for the social
conditions out of which it had grown. It was nothing else than the innate,
spontaneous expression of those conditions, and it was well calculated to smooth
over all internal difficulties that could arise in this social organization. External
difficulties were settled by war. Such a war could end in the annihilation of a
tribe, but never in its subjugation. It is the grandeur and at the same time the
limitation of the gentile order that it has no room either for masters or servants.
There were as yet no distinctions between rights and duties. The question
whether he had a right to take part in public affairs, to practice blood revenge or
to demand atonement for injuries would have appeared as absurd to an Indian, as
the question whether it was his duty to eat, sleep, and hunt. Nor could any
division of a tribe or gens into different classes take place. This leads us to the
investigation of the economic basis of those conditions.
The population was very small in numbers. It was collected only on the territory
of the tribe. Next to this territory was the hunting ground surrounding it in a
wide circle. A neutral forest formed the line of demarcation from other tribes.
The division of labor was quite primitive. The work was simply divided between
the two sexes. The men went to war, hunted, fished, provided the raw material
for food and the tools necessary for these pursuits. The women cared for the
house, and prepared food and clothing; they cooked, weaved and sewed. Each
sex was master of its own field of activity; the men in the forest, the women in
the house. Each sex also owned the tools made and used by it; the men were the
owners of the weapons, of the hunting and fishing tackle, the women of the
household goods and utensils. The household was communistic, comprising
several, and often many, families.[37] Whatever was produced and used
collectively, was regarded as common property: the house, the garden, the long
boat. Here, and only here, then, do we find the "self-earned property" which
jurists and economists have falsely attributed to civilized society, the last
deceptive pretext of legality on which modern capitalist property is leaning.
But humanity did not everywhere remain in this stage. In Asia they found
animals that could be tamed and propagated in captivity. The wild buffalo cow
had to be hunted down; the tame cow gave birth to a calf once a year, and also
furnished milk. Some of the most advanced tribes—Aryans, Semites, perhaps
also Turanians—devoted themselves mainly to taming, and later to raising and
tending, domestic animals. The segregation of cattle raising tribes from the rest
of the barbarians constitutes the first great division of social labor. These stock
raising tribes did not only produce more articles of food than the rest of the
barbarians, but also different kinds of products. They were ahead of the others by
having at their disposal not alone milk, milk products, and a greater abundance
of meat, but also skins, wool, goat's hair, and the spun and woven goods which
the growing abundance of the raw material brought into common use. This for
the first time made a regular exchange of products possible. In former stages,
exchange could only take place occasionally, and an exceptional ability in
manufacturing weapons and tools may have led to a transient division of labor.
For example, unquestionable remains of workshops for stone implements of the
neolithic period have been found in many places. The artists who developed
their ability in those shops, most probably worked for the collectivity, as did the
artisans of the Indian gentile order. At any rate, no other exchange than that
within the tribe could exist in that stage, and even that was an exception. But
after the segregation of the stock raising tribes we find all the conditions
favorable to an exchange between groups of different tribes, and to a further
development of this mode of trading into a fixed institution. Originally, tribe
exchanged with tribe through the agency of their tribal heads. But when the
herds drifted into the hands of private individuals, then the exchange between
individuals prevailed more and more, until it became the established form. The
principal article of exchange which the stock raising tribes offered to their
neighbors was in the form of domestic animals. Cattle became the favorite
commodity by which all other commodities were measured in exchange. In
short, cattle assumed the functions of money and served in this capacity as early
as that stage. With such necessity and rapidity was the demand for a money
commodity developed at the very beginning of the exchange of commodities.
Horticulture, probably unknown to the Asiatic barbarians of the lower stage,
arose not later than the middle stage of barbarism, as the forerunner of
agriculture. The climate of the Turanian Highland does not admit of a nomadic
life without a supply of stock feed for the long and hard winter. Hence the
cultivation of meadows and grain was indispensable. The same is true of the
steppes north of the Black Sea. Once grain had been grown for cattle, it soon
became human food. The cultivated land belonged as yet to the tribe and was
assigned first to the gens, which in its turn distributed it to the households, and
finally to individuals; always for use only, not for possession. The users may
have had certain claims to the land, but that was all.
Two of the industrial acquisitions of this stage are especially important. The first
is the weaving loom, the second the melting of metal ore and the use of metals in
manufacture. Copper, tin, and their alloy, bronze, were the most essential of
them. Bronze furnished tools and weapons, but could not displace stone
implements. Only iron could have done that, but the production of iron was as
yet unknown. Gold and silver were already used for ornament and decoration,
and must have been far more precious than copper and bronze.
The increase of production in all branches—stock raising, agriculture, domestic
handicrafts—enabled human labor power to produce more than was necessary
for its maintenance. It increased at the same time the amount of daily work that
fell to the lot of every member of a gens, a household, or a single family. The
addition of more labor power became desirable. It was furnished by war; the
captured enemies were transformed into slaves. Under the given historical
conditions, the first great division of social labor, by increasing the productivity
of labor, adding to the wealth, and enlarging the field of productive activity,
necessarily carried slavery in its wake. Out of the first great division of social
labor arose the first great division of society into two classes: masters and
servants, exploiters and exploited.
How and when the herds were transferred from the collective ownership of the
tribe or gens to the proprietorship of the heads of the families, is not known to
us. But it must have been practically accomplished in this stage. The herds and
the other new objects of wealth brought about a revolution in the family.
Procuring the means of existence had always been the man's business. The tools
of production were manufactured and owned by him. The herds were the new
tools of production, and their taming and tending was his work. Hence he owned
the cattle and the commodities and slaves obtained in exchange for them. All the
surplus now resulting from production fell to the share of the man. The woman
shared in its fruition, but she could not claim its ownership. The "savage"
warrior and hunter had been content to occupy the second place in the house, to
give precedence to the woman. The "gentler" shepherd, standing on his wealth,
assumed the first place and forced the woman back into the second place. And
she had no occasion to complain. The division of labor in the family had
regulated the distribution of property between man and wife. This division of
labor remained unchanged. Yet the former domestic relation was now reversed,
simply because the division of labor outside of the family had been altered. The
same cause that once had secured the supremacy in the house for women, viz.,
the confining of women's activity to domestic labor, now assured the supremacy
of the men in the households. The domestic labor of women was considered
insignificant in comparison to men's work for a living. The latter was everything,
the former a negligible quantity. At this early stage we can already see that the
emancipation of women and their equality with men are impossible and remain
so, as long as women are excluded from social production and restricted to
domestic labor. The emancipation of women becomes feasible only then when
women are enabled to take part extensively in social production, and when
domestic duties require their attention in a minor degree. This state of things was
brought about by the modern great industries, which not only admit of women's
liberal participation in production, but actually call for it and, besides, endeavor
to transform domestic work also into a public industry.
Man's advent to practical supremacy in the household marked the removal of the
last barrier to his universal supremacy. His unlimited rule was emphasized and
endowed with continuity by the downfall of matriarchy, the introduction of
patriarchy, and the gradual transition from the pairing family to the monogamic
family. This made a breach in the old gentile order. The monogamic family
became a power and lifted a threatening hand against the gens.
The next step brings us to the upper stage of barbarism, that period in which all
nations of civilization go through their heroic era. It is the time of the iron
sword, but also of the iron plow share and axe. The iron had become the servant
of man. It is the last and most important of all raw products that play a
revolutionary role in history; the last—if we except the potato.
Iron brought about agriculture on a larger scale and the clearing of extensive
forest tracts for cultivation. It gave to the craftsman a tool of such hardness and
sharpness that no stone, no other known metal, could withstand it. All this came
about gradually. The first iron was often softer than bronze. Therefore stone
implements disappeared very slowly. Not only in the Hildebrand Song, but also
at Hastings in 1066, stone axes were still used in fighting. But progress was now
irresistible, less interrupted and more rapid. The town, inclosing houses of stone
or tiles within its turreted and crested stone walls, became the central seat of the
tribe or federation of tribes. It showed an astounding progress of architecture, but
also an increase of danger and of the demand for protection. Wealth increased
rapidly, but it was the wealth of private individuals. Weaving, metal work and
other more and more differentiating industries developed an increasing variety
and display of art in production. Agriculture furnished not alone grain, peas,
beans and fruit, but also oil and wine, the preparation of which had now been
learned. Such a diversity of action could not be displayed by any single
individual. The second great division of labor took place: handicrafts separated
from agriculture. The growing intensity of production and the increased
productivity enhanced the value of human labor power. Slavery, which had been
a rising and sporadic factor in the preceding stage, now became an essential part
of the social system. The slaves ceased to be simple assistants. They were now
driven in scores to the work in the fields and shops. The division of production
into two great branches, agriculture and handicrafts, gave rise to production for
exchange, the production of commodities. Trade arose at the same time, not only
in the interior and on the tribal boundaries, but also in the form of maritime
exchange. All this was as yet in a very undeveloped state. The precious metals
gained preference as a universal money commodity, but still uncoined and
exchanged merely by dead weight.
The distinction between rich and poor was added to that between free men and
slaves. This and the new division of labor constitute a new division of society
into classes. The differences in the amount of property belonging to the several
family heads broke up the old communistic households one by one, wherever
they might have been preserved thus far. This made an end to the collective
cultivation of the soil for the account of the community. The cultivated land was
assigned for use to the several families, first for a limited time, later for once and
all. The transition to full private property was accomplished gradually and
simultaneously with the transition from the pairing family to monogamy. The
monogamous family began to be the economic unit of society.
The increase of population necessitated a closer consolidation against internal
and external foes. The federation of related tribes became unavoidable. Their
amalgamation, and thence the amalgamation of the separate tribal territories to
one national territory, was the following step. The military leader—rex, basileus,
thiudans—became an indispensable and standing official. The public meeting
was introduced wherever it did not yet exist. The military leader, the council of
chiefs, and the public meeting formed the organs of the military democracy that
had grown out of the gentile constitution. Military democracy—for now war and
organization for war were regular functions of social life. The wealth of the
neighbors excited the greed of nations that began to regard the acquisition of
wealth as one of the main purposes of their life. They were barbarians: robbing
appeared to them easier and more honorable than producing. War, once simply a
revenge for transgressions or a means for enlarging a territory that had become
too narrow, was now waged for the sake of plunder alone and became a regular
profession. Not in vain did threatening walls cast a rigid stare all around the new
fortified towns: their yawning ditches were the tomb of the gentile constitution,
and their turrets already reached up into civilization. The internal affairs
underwent a similar change. The plundering wars increased the power of the
military leader and of the subcommanders. The habitual election of the
successors from the same family was gradually transformed into hereditary
succession, first by sufferance, then by claim, and finally by usurpation. Thus the
foundation of hereditary royalty and nobility was laid. In this manner the organs
of the gentile constitution were gradually torn away from their roots in the
nation, tribe, phratry and gens, and the whole gentile order reversed into its
antithesis. The organization of tribes for the purpose of the free administration of
affairs was turned into an organization for plundering and oppressing their
neighbors. The organs of gentilism changed from servants of the public will to
independent organs of rule oppressing their own people. This could not have
happened, if the greed for wealth had not divided the gentiles into rich and poor;
if the "difference of property in a gens had not changed the community of
interest into antagonism of the gentiles" (Karl Marx); and if the extension of
slavery had not begun by branding work for a living as slavish and more
ignominious than plundering.
We have now reached the threshold of civilization. This stage is inaugurated by a
new progress in the division of labor. In the lower stage of barbarism production
was carried on for use only; any acts of exchange were confined to single cases
when a surplus was accidentally realized. In the middle stage of barbarism we
find that the possession of cattle gave a regular surplus to the nomadic nations
with sufficiently large herds. At the same time there was a division of labor
between nomadic nations and backward nations without herds. The existence of
two different stages of production side by side furnished the conditions
necessary for a regular exchange. The upper stage of barbarism introduced a new
division of labor between agriculture and handicrafts, resulting in the production
of a continually increasing amount of commodities for the special purpose of
exchange, so that exchange between individuals became a vital function of
society. Civilization strengthened and intensified all the established divisions of
labor, especially by rendering the contrast between city and country more
pronounced. Either the town may have the economic control over the country, as
during antiquity, or vice versa, as in the middle ages. A third division of labor
was added by civilization: it created a class that did not take part in production,
but occupied itself merely with the exchange of products—the merchants. All
former attempts at class formation were exclusively concerned with production.
They divided the producers into directors and directed, or into producers on a
more or less extensive scale. But here a class appears for the first time that
captures the control of production in general and subjugates the producers to its
rule, without taking the least part in production. A class that makes itself the
indispensable mediator between two producers and exploits them both under the
pretext of saving them the trouble and risk of exchange, of extending the markets
for their products to distant regions, and of thus becoming the most useful class
in society; a class of parasites, genuine social ichneumons, that skim the cream
off production at home and abroad as a reward for very insignificant services;
that rapidly amass enormous wealth and gain social influence accordingly; that
for this reason reap ever new honors and ever greater control of production
during the period of civilization, until they at last bring to light a product of their
own—periodical crises in industry.
At the stage of production under discussion, our young merchant class had no
inkling as yet of the great future that was in store for them. But they continued to
organize, to make themselves invaluable, and that was sufficient for the moment.
At the same time metal coins came into use, and through them a new device for
controlling the producers and their products. The commodity of commodities
that was hiding all other commodities in its mysterious bosom had been
discovered, a charm that could be transformed at will into any desirable or
coveted thing. Whoever held it in his possession had the world of production at
his command. And who had it above all others? The merchant. In his hands the
cult of money was safe. He took care to make it plain that all commodities, and
hence all producers, must prostrate themselves in adoration before money. He
proved by practice that all other forms of wealth are reduced to thin wraiths
before this personification of riches. Never again did the power of money show
itself in such primordial brutality and violence as in its youthful days. After the
sale of commodities for money came the borrowing of money, resulting in
interest and usury. And no legislation of any later period stretches the debtor so
mercilessly at the feet of the speculating creditor as the antique Grecian and
Roman codes—both of them spontaneous products of habit, without any other
than economic pressure.
The wealth in commodities and slaves was now further increased by large
holdings in land. The titles of the individuals to the lots of land formerly
assigned to them by the gens or tribe had become so well established, that these
lots were now owned and inherited. What the individuals had most desired of
late was the liberation from the claim of the gentiles to their lots, a claim which
had become a veritable fetter for them. They were rid of this fetter—but soon
after they were also rid of their lots. The full, free ownership of the soil implied
not only the possibility of uncurtailed possession, but also of selling the soil. As
long as the soil belonged to the gens, this was impossible. But when the new
land owner shook off the chains of the priority claim of the gens and tribe, he
also tore the bond that had so long tied him indissolubly to the soil. What that
meant was impressed on him by the money invented simultaneously with the
advent of private property in land. The soil could now become a commodity to
be bought and sold. Hardly had private ownership of land been introduced, when
the mortgage put in its appearance (see Athens). As hetaerism and prostitution
clung to the heels of monogamy, so does from now on the mortgage to private
ownership in land. You have clamored for free, full, saleable land. Well, then,
there you have it—tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin; it was your own wish, George
Dandin.
Industrial expansion, money, usury, private land, and mortgage thus progressed
with the concentration and centralization of wealth in the hands of a small class,
accompanied by the increasing impoverishment of the masses and the increasing
mass of paupers. The new aristocracy of wealth, so far as it did not coincide with
the old tribal nobility, forced the latter permanently into the background (in
Athens, in Rome, among the Germans). And this division of free men into
classes according to their wealth was accompanied, especially in Greece, by an
enormous increase in the number of slaves[38] whose forced labor formed the
basis on which the whole superstructure of society was reared.
Let us now see what became of the gentile constitution through this revolution of
society. Gentilism stood powerless in the face of the new elements that had
grown without its assistance. It was dependent on the condition that the members
of a gens, or of a tribe, should live together in the same territory and be its
exclusive inhabitants. That had long ceased to be the case. Gentes and tribes
were everywhere hopelessly intermingled, slaves, clients, and foreigners lived
among citizens. The capacity for settling down permanently which had only
been acquired near the end of the middle stage of barbarism, was time and again
sidetracked by the necessity of changing the abode according to the dictates of
commerce, different occupations and the transfer of land. The members of the
gentile organizations could no longer meet for the purpose of taking care of their
common interests. Only matters of little importance, such as religious festivals,
were still observed in an indifferent way. Beside the wants and interests for the
care of which the gentile organs were appointed and fitted, new wants and
interests had arisen from the revolution of the conditions of existence and the
resulting change in social classification. These new wants and interests were not
only alien to the old gentile order, but thwarted it in every way. The interests of
the craftsmen created by division of labor, and the special necessities of a town
differing from those of the country, required new organs. But every one of these
groups was composed of people from different gentes, phratries, and tribes; they
included even strangers. Hence the new organs necessarily had to form outside
of the gentile constitution. But by the side of it meant against it. And again, in
every gentile organization the conflict of interests made itself felt and reached its
climax by combining rich and poor, usurers and debtors, in the same gens and
tribe. There was furthermore the mass of inhabitants who were strangers to the
gentiles. These strangers could become very powerful, as in Rome, and they
were too numerous to be gradually absorbed by the gentes and tribes. The
gentiles confronted these masses as a compact body of privileged individuals.
What had once been a natural democracy, had been transformed into an odious
aristocracy. The gentile constitution had grown out of a society that did not know
any internal contradictions, and it was only adapted to such a society. It had no
coërcive power except public opinion. But now a society had developed that by
force of all its economic conditions of existence divided humanity into freemen
and slaves, and exploiting rich and exploited poor. A society that not only could
never reconcile these contradictions, but drove them ever more to a climax. Such
a society could only exist by a continual open struggle of all classes against one
another, or under the supremacy of a third power that under a pretense of
standing above the struggling classes stifled their open conflict and permitted a
class struggle only on the economic field, in a so-called "legal" form. Gentilism
had ceased to live. It was crushed by the division of labor and by its result, the
division of society into classes. It was replaced by the State.

In preceding chapters we have shown by three concrete examples the three main
forms in which the state was built up on the ruins of gentilism. Athens
represented the simplest, the classic type: the state grew directly and mainly out
of class divisions that developed within gentile society. In Rome the gentile
organization became an exclusive aristocracy amid a numerous plebs of
outsiders who had only duties, but no rights. The victory of the plebs burst the
old gentile order asunder and erected on its remains the state which soon
engulfed both gentile aristocracy and plebs. Finally, among the German
conquerors of the Roman empire, the state grew as a direct result of the conquest
of large foreign territories which the gentile constitution was powerless to
control. But this conquest did not necessitate either a serious fight with the
former population or a more advanced division of labor. Conquerors and
conquered were almost in the same stage of economic development, so that the
economic basis of society remained undisturbed. Hence gentilism could preserve
for many centuries an unchanged territorial character in the form of mark
communes, and even rejuvenate itself in the nobility and patrician families of
later years, or in the peasantry, as e. g. in Dithmarsia.[39]
The state, then, is by no means a power forced on society from outside; neither is
it the "realization of the ethical idea," "the image and the realization of reason,"
as Hegel maintains. It is simply a product of society at a certain stage of
evolution. It is the confession that this society has become hopelessly divided
against itself, has entangled itself in irreconcilable contradictions which it is
powerless to banish. In order that these contradictions, these classes with
conflicting economic interests, may not annihilate themselves and society in a
useless struggle, a power becomes necessary that stands apparently above
society and has the function of keeping down the conflicts and maintaining
"order." And this power, the outgrowth of society, but assuming supremacy over
it and becoming more and more divorced from it, is the state.
The state differs from gentilism in that it first divides its members by territories.
As we have seen, the old bonds of blood kinship uniting the gentile bodies had
become inefficient, because they were dependent on the condition, now no
longer a fact, that all gentiles should live on a certain territory. The territory was
the same; but the human beings had changed. Hence the division by territories
was chosen as the point of departure, and citizens had to exercise their rights and
duties wherever they chose their abode without regard to gens and tribe. This
organization of inhabitants by localities is a common feature of all states. It
seems natural to us now. But we have seen what long and hard fighting was
required before it could take, in Athens and Rome, the place of the old
organization by blood kinship.
In the second place, the state created a public power of coërcion that did no
longer coincide with the old self-organized and armed population. This special
power of coërcion is necessary, because a self-organized army of the people has
become impossible since the division of society into classes took place. For the
slaves belonged also to society. The 90,000 citizens of Athens formed only a
privileged class compared to the 365,000 slaves. The popular army of the
Athenian democracy was an aristocratic public power designed to keep the
slaves down. But we have seen that a police force became also necessary to
maintain order among the citizens. This public power of coërcion exists in every
state. It is not composed of armed men alone, but has also such objects as
prisons and correction houses attached to it, that were unknown to gentilism. It
may be very small, almost infinitesimal, in societies with feebly developed class
antagonisms and in out of the way places, as was once the case in certain regions
of the United States. But it increases in the same ratio in which the class
antagonisms become more pronounced, and in which neighboring states become
larger and more populous. A conspicuous example is modern Europe, where the
class struggles and wars of conquest have nursed the public power to such a size
that it threatens to swallow the whole society and the state itself.
In order to maintain this public power, contributions of the citizens become
necessary—the taxes. These were absolutely unknown in gentile society. But to-
day we get our full measure of them. As civilization makes further progress,
these taxes are no longer sufficient to cover public expenses. The state makes
drafts on the future, contracts loans, public debts. Old Europe can tell a story of
them.
In possession of the public power and of the right of taxation, the officials in
their capacity as state organs are now exalted above society. The free and
voluntary respect that was accorded to the organs of gentilism does not satisfy
them any more, even if they might have it. Representatives of a power that is
divorced from society, they must enforce respect by exceptional laws that render
them specially sacred and inviolable.[40] The lowest police employee of the
civilized state has more "authority" than all the organs of gentilism combined.
But the mightiest prince and the greatest statesman or general of civilization may
look with envy on the spontaneous and undisputed esteem that was the privilege
of the least gentile sachem. The one stands in the middle of society, the other is
forced to assume a position outside and above it.
The state is the result of the desire to keep down class conflicts. But having
arisen amid these conflicts, it is as a rule the state of the most powerful economic
class that by force of its economic supremacy becomes also the ruling political
class and thus acquires new means of subduing and exploiting the oppressed
masses. The antique state was, therefore, the state of the slave owners for the
purpose of holding the slaves in check. The feudal state was the organ of the
nobility for the oppression of the serfs and dependent farmers. The modern
representative state is the tool of the capitalist exploiters of wage labor. At
certain periods it occurs exceptionally that the struggling classes balance each
other so nearly that the public power gains a certain degree of independence by
posing as the mediator between them. The absolute monarchy of the seventeenth
and eighteenth century was in such a position, balancing the nobles and the
burghers against one another. So was the Bonapartism of the first, and still more
of the second, empire, playing the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and vice
versa. The latest performance of this kind, in which ruler and ruled appear
equally ridiculous, is the new German empire of Bismarckian make, in which
capitalists and laborers are balanced against one another and equally cheated for
the benefit of the degenerate Prussian cabbage junkers.[41]
In most of the historical states, the rights of the citizens are differentiated
according to their wealth. This is a direct confirmation of the fact that the state is
organized for the protection of the possessing against the non-possessing classes.
The Athenian and Roman classification by incomes shows this. It is also seen in
the medieval state of feudalism in which the political power depended on the
quantity of real estate. It is again seen in the electoral qualifications of the
modern representative state. The political recognition of the differences in
wealth is by no means essential. On the contrary, it marks a low stage of state
development. The highest form of the state, the democratic republic, knows
officially nothing of property distinctions.[42] It is that form of the state which
under modern conditions of society becomes more and more an unavoidable
necessity. The last decisive struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie can only
be fought out under this state form.[43] In such a state, wealth exerts its power
indirectly, but all the more safely. This is done partly in the form of direct
corruption of officials, after the classical type of the United States, or in the form
of an alliance between government and bankers which is established all the more
easily when the public debt increases and when corporations concentrate in their
hands not only the means of transportation, but also production itself, using the
stock exchange as a center. The United States and the latest French republic are
striking examples, and good old Switzerland has contributed its share to
illustrate this point. That a democratic republic is not necessary for this fraternal
bond between stock exchange and government is proved by England and last,
not least, Germany, where it is doubtful whether Bismarck or Bleichroeder was
more favored by the introduction of universal suffrage.[44] The possessing class
rules directly through universal suffrage. For as long as the oppressed class, in
this case the proletariat, is not ripe for its economic emancipation, just so long
will its majority regard the existing order of society as the only one possible, and
form the tail, the extreme left wing, of the capitalist class. But the more the
proletariat matures toward its self-emancipation, the more does it constitute itself
as a separate class and elect its own representatives in place of the capitalists.
Universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It can and
will never be anything else but that in the modern state. But that is sufficient. On
the day when the thermometer of universal suffrage reaches its boiling point
among the laborers, they as well as the capitalists will know what to do.
The state, then, did not exist from all eternity. There have been societies without
it, that had no idea of any state or public power. At a certain stage of economic
development, which was of necessity accompanied by a division of society into
classes, the state became the inevitable result of this division. We are now
rapidly approaching a stage of evolution in production, in which the existence of
classes has not only ceased to be a necessity, but becomes a positive fetter on
production. Hence these classes must fall as inevitably as they once arose. The
state must irrevocably fall with them. The society that is to reorganize
production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will
transfer the machinery of state where it will then belong: into the Museum of
Antiquities by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze ax.
Civilization is, as we have seen, that stage of society, in which the division of
labor, the resulting exchange between individuals, and the production of
commodities combining them, reach their highest development and revolutionize
the whole society.
The production of all former stages of society was mainly collective, and
consumption was carried on by direct division of products within more or less
small communes. This collective production was confined within the narrowest
limits. But it implied the control of production and of the products by the
producers. They knew what became of their product: it did not leave their hands
until it was consumed by them. As long as production moved on this basis, it
could not grow beyond the control of the producers, and it could not create any
strange ghostly forces against them. Under civilization, however, this is the
inevitable rule.
Into the simple process of production, the division of labor was gradually
interpolated. It undermined the communism of production and consumption, it
made the appropriation of products by single individuals the prevailing rule, and
thus introduced the exchange between individuals, in the manner mentioned
above. Gradually, the production of commodities became the rule.
This mode of production for exchange, not for home consumption, necessarily
passes the products on from hand to hand. The producer gives his product away
in exchange. He does no longer know what becomes of it. With the advent of
money and of the trader who steps in as a middleman between the producers, the
process of exchange becomes still more complicated. The fate of the products
becomes still more uncertain. The number of merchants is great and one does not
know what the other is doing. The products now pass not only from hand to
hand, but also from market to market. The producers have lost the control of the
aggregate production in their sphere of life, and the merchants have not yet
acquired this control. Products and production become the victims of chance.
But chance is only one pole of an interrelation, the other pole of which is called
necessity. In nature, where chance seems to reign also, we have long ago
demonstrated the innate necessity and law that determines the course of chance
on every line. But what is true of nature, holds also good of society. Whenever a
social function or a series of social processes become too powerful for the
control of man, whenever they grow beyond the grasp of man and seem to be left
to mere chance, then the peculiar and innate laws of such processes shape the
course of chance with increased elementary necessity. Such laws also control the
vicissitudes of the production and exchange of commodities. For the individual
producer and exchanger, these laws are strange, and often unknown, forces, the
nature of which must be laboriously investigated and ascertained. These
economic laws of production are modified by the different stages of this form of
production. But generally speaking, the entire period of civilization is dominated
by these laws. To this day, the product controls the producer. To this day, the
aggregate production of society is managed, not on a uniform plan, but by blind
laws, that rule with elementary force and find their final expression in the storms
of periodical commercial crises.
We have seen that human labor power is enabled at a very early stage of
production to produce considerably more than is needed to maintain the
producer. We have found that this stage coïncided in general with the first
appearance of the division of labor and of exchange between individuals. Now, it
was not long before the great truth was discovered that man may himself be a
commodity, and that human labor power may be exchanged and exploited by
transforming a man into a slave. Hardly had exchange between men been
established, when men themselves were also exchanged. The active asset
became a passive liability, whether man wanted it or not.
Slavery, which reaches its highest development in civilization, introduced the
first great division of an exploited and an exploiting class into society. This
division continued during the whole period of civilization. Slavery is the first
form of exploitation, characteristic of the antique world. Then followed
feudalism in the middle ages, and wage labor in recent times. These are the three
great forms of servitude, characteristic of the three great epochs of civilization.
Their invariable mark is either open or, in modern times, disguised slavery.
The stage of commodity production introducing civilization is marked
economically by the introduction of (1) metal coins and, thus, of money as
capital, of interest, and of usury; (2) merchants as middlemen between
producers; (3) private property and mortgage; (4) slave labor as the prevailing
form of production. The form of the family corresponding to civilization and
becoming its pronounced custom is monogamy, the supremacy of man over
woman, and the monogamous family as the economic unit of society. The
aggregation of civilized society is the state, which throughout all typical periods
is the state of the ruling class, and in all cases mainly a machine for controlling
the oppressed and exploited class. Civilization is furthermore characterized on
one side by the permanent introduction of the contrast between city and country
as the basis of the entire division of social labor; on the other side by the
introduction of the testament by which the property holder is enabled to dispose
of his property beyond the hour of his death. This institution is a direct blow at
the gentile constitution, and was unknown in Athens until the time of Solon. In
Rome it was introduced very early, but we do not know when.[45] In Germany it
was originated by the priests in order that the honest German might bequeath his
property to the church without any interference.
With this fundamental constitution, civilization had accomplished things for
which the old gentile society was no match whatever. But these exploits were
accomplished by playing on the most sordid passions and instincts of man, and
by developing them at the expense of all his other gifts. Barefaced covetousness
was the moving spirit of civilization from its first dawn to the present day;
wealth, and again wealth, and for the third time wealth; wealth, not of society,
but of the puny individual, was its only and final aim. If nevertheless the
advanced development of science, and at repeated times the highest flower of
art, fell into its lap, this was only due to the fact that without them the highest
emoluments of modern wealth would have been missing. Exploitation of one
class by another being the basis of civilization, its whole development involves a
continual contradiction. Every progress of production is at the same time a
retrogression in the condition of the oppressed class, that is of the great majority.
Every benefit for one class is necessarily an evil for the other, every new
emancipation of one class a new oppression for the other. The most drastic proof
of this is furnished by the introduction of machinery, the effects of which are
well known to-day. And while there is hardly any distinction between rights and
duties among barbarians, as we have seen, civilization makes the difference
between these two plain even to the dullest mind. For now one class has nearly
all the rights, the other class nearly all the duties.
But this is not admitted. What is good for the ruling class, is alleged to be good
for the whole of society with which the ruling class identifies itself. The more
civilization advances, the more it is found to cover with the cloak of charity the
evils necessarily created by it, to excuse them or to deny their existence, in short
to introduce a conventional hypocrisy that culminates in the declaration: The
exploitation of the oppressed class is carried on by the exploiting class solely in
the interest of the exploited class itself. And if the latter does not recognize this,
but even becomes rebellious, it is simply the worst ingratitude to its benefactors,
the exploiters.[46]
And now, in conclusion, let me add Morgan's judgment of civilization (Ancient
Society, page 552):
"Since the advent of civilization, the outgrowth of property has been so
immense, its forms so diversified, its uses so expanding and its management so
intelligent in the interest of its owners that it has become, on the part of the
people, an unmanageable power. The human mind stands bewildered in the
presence of its own creation. The time will come, nevertheless, when human
intelligence will rise to the mastery over property, and define the relations of the
state to the property it protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the
rights of its owners. The interests of society are paramount to individual
interests, and the two must be brought into just and harmonious relations. A
mere property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to be the
law of the future as it has been of the past. The time which has passed away
since civilization began is but a fragment of the past duration of man's existence;
and but a fragment of the ages yet to come. The dissolution of society bids fair to
become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim,
because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy in
government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and
universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which
experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival,
in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes."

THE END.
 FOOTNOTES:

[37] Author's note.

Especially on the northwest coast of America; see Bancroft. Among the Haidahs
of the Queen Charlotte Islands some households gather as many as 700 members
under one roof. Among the Nootkas whole tribes lived under one roof.
[38] Author's note.
The number of slaves in Athens was 365,000. In Corinth it was 460,000 at the
most flourishing time, and 470,000 in Aegina; in both cases ten times the
number of free citizens.
[39] Author's note.
The first historian who had at least a vague conception of the nature of the gens
was Niebuhr, thanks to his familiarity with the Dithmarsian families. The same
source, however, is also responsible for his errors.
[40] Translator's note.
The recent demand for a law declaring the person of the U. S. President sacred
above all other representatives of the public power and making an assault on him
an exceptional crime is a very good case in point.
[41] Translator's note.
"Junker" is a contemptuous term for the land-owning nobility.
[42] Translator's note.
In the United States, the poll tax is an indirect property qualification, as it strikes
those who, through lack of employment, sickness or invalidity, are unable to
spare the amount, however small, of this tax. Furthermore, the laws requiring a
continuous residence in the precinct, the town, the county, and the State as a
qualification for voters have the effect of disqualifying a great number of
workingmen who are forced to change their abode according to their
opportunities for employment. And the educational qualifications which
especially the Southern States are rigidly enforcing tend to disfranchise the great
mass of the negroes, who form the main body of the working class in those
States.
[43] Translator's note.
In Belgium, where the proletariat is now on the verge of gaining political
supremacy, the battle cry is: "S. U. et R. P." (Suffrage Universelle et
Representation Proportionelle).
[44] Translator's note.
Suffrage in Germany, though universal for men is by no means equal, but
founded on property qualifications. In Prussia, e. g., a three class system of
voting is in force which is best illustrated by the following figures: In 1898 there
were 6,447,253 voters; 3.26 per cent belonged to the first class, 11.51 per cent to
the second class, and 85.35 per cent to the third class. But the 947,218 voters of
the first and second classes had twice as many votes as the five and a half
millions of the third class.
[45] Author's note.
Lassalle's "System of Acquired Rights" argues in its second part mainly the
proposition that the Roman testament is as old as Rome itself, and that there has
never been in Roman history "a time without a testament." According to him, the
testament had its origin in pre-Roman times in the cult of the departed. Lassalle,
as a convinced Hegelian of the old school, derives the provisions of the Roman
law, not from the social condition of the Romans, but from the "speculative
conception" of will, and thus arrives at this totally anti-historic conclusion. This
is not to be wondered at in a book that draws from the same speculative
conception the conclusion that the transfer of property was purely a side issue in
Roman inheritance. Lassalle not only believed in the illusions of Roman jurists,
especially of the earlier ones, but he outstripped their fancy.
[46] Author's note.
I first intended to place the brilliant critique of civilization, scattered through the
works of Fourier, by the side of Morgan's and of my own. Unluckily I cannot
spare the time. I only wish to remark that Fourier already considers monogamy
and private property in land the main characteristics of civilization, and that he
calls them a war of the rich against the poor. We also find with him the deep
perception that the individual families (les families incoherentes) are the
economic units of all faulty societies divided by opposing interests.
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Property and the State, by Frederick Engels

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