This is a reproduction of a library book that was digitized

by Google as part of an ongoing effort to preserve the

information in books and make it universally accessible.

https://books.google.com
THE ORIGIN

OF THE

FAMILY

FREDERICK ENGELS
In Memory of

Lieutenant

John Henry Hunter

1922-1944

Bequest of his Father,

Basil H. Hunter, M.D.
to the

University of Michigan
Undergraduate Library
THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

PRIVATE PROPERTY

AND THE STATE

BY

FREDERICK ENGELS

TRANSLATED BY ERNEST UNTERMANN

CHICAGO
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
CO-OPERATIVE
UGL

#Q

503

1 € 57

1902

Copyright, 1902
BY CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY

3
UGL
7067720
HUNT
2.13.92
PEME

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 in-
vestigation 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 suc-
cession of chemical changes, so the group life of
human beings develops different social institutions as
a result of increasing control over environment, espe-
cially 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 ac-
cessible 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 pub-
licity 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 pres-
6 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

ent social order, continue their work regardless of the

wishes of a few exploiters . A comprehensive work
summarizing our present knowledge of the develop-
ment of social institutions is, therefore, a timely con-
tribution 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 environ-
ment from pointing out the one fact, the recognition
of which distinguishes the socialist position from all
others-THE EXISTENCE OF A CLASS STRUG-
GLE.
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 be
tween 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 or
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 capi
talist development, the modern American working.
man 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 Mor-
gan's work is the most fundamental and exhaustive of
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 7
any written on the subject of ancient social develop-
ment. Westermarck's "History of Human Marriage"
treats the question mainly from the standpoint of
Ethnology and Natural History. As a scientific treat-
ise it is entirely inadequate , being simply a compila-
tion of data from all parts of the world , arranged with-
out 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-con-
sciousness. This consciousness and the socialist mind
are born together. The key to the philosophy of capi-
talism is the philosophy of socialism . With the rays
of this searchlight, Engels exposed the pious "deceiv-
ers," 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 con-
8 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

dition. 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, exe-
cuting 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 his-
tory, originated by Marx forty years ago. In com-
paring 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" 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 accom-
plish. 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 de-
cisive element of history is pre-eminently the produc-
tion and reproduction of life and its material require-
ments. This implies, on the one hand, the production
of the means of existence (food , clothing, shelter and
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.
IO THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 his-
torical 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, there-
fore, 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 pro-
ductivity of labor is developed more and more. At the
same time, private property and exchange, distinc-
tions of wealth, exploitation of the labor power of
others and, by this agency, the foundation of class
antagonism, are formed. These new elements of so-
ciety strive in the course of time to adapt the old state
of society to the new conditions, until the impossi-
bility of harmonizing these two at last leads to a com-
plete 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 subordi-
nated 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
ve-establishing in its main outlines this foundation of
our written history, and of finding in the sexual or-
ganizations 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 mas-
AUTHOR'S PREFACE II

tered 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 his-
torical sections on Greece and Rome, I have not lim-
ited 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 Ger-
man conditions- aside from Tacitus-only the worth-
less, unbridled falsifications of Freeman. The eco-
nomic 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.
12 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDI.

TION, 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 dili-
gently 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 workhas been translated into different languages.
First into Italian ; L'origine della famiglia, della pro-
prietá privata e dello stato, versione riveduta dall'
autore, di Pasquale Martignetti ; Benevento, 1885.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 13

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, de-
scribed more exhaustively by Moses than by anybody
else, was not only, without further comment, consid-
ered 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
curtime 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. Tay-
lor's "Researches into the Early History of Mankind,"
etc. (1865), they are only mentioned as "queer cus-
toms" together with the usage of some savage tribes
14 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY .

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” (ma-
ternal law). Here the author makes the following
propositions :
1. That in the beginning people lived in unrestricted
sexual intercourse, which he dubs, not very felicitous-
ly, hetaerism.
2. That such an intercourse excludes any absolutely
certain means of determining parentage; that conse-
quently 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 an-
tiquity.
3. That consequently women as mothers, being the
only well known parents of younger generations, re-
ceived a high tribute of respect and deference, amount-
ing to a complete women's rule (gynaicocracy), accord-
ing 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 pa-
ternal law is accomplished according to him-espe
cially by the Greeks-through the evolution of relig-
ious 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. Ac-
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 15

cording to Bachofen, therefore, it is not the develop-

ment 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 rep-
resents the Oresteia of Aeschylos as the dramatic de-
scription 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 de
monic protectors of maternal law, according to which
the murder of a mother is the most horrible, inex-
piable 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 pa-
ternal order of things-protect him. Athene gives a
hearing to both parties. The whole question is sum-
marized 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 perse-
cute 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 expia-
ble, 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
16 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

vote ; the votes are even for acquittal and for con-
demnation. 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 belleves 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 re-
ligion 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 profit-
able 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 mon-
ogamy. These relations not only permitted a man
to have intercourse with several women, but also left
a woman free to have sexual intercourse with sev-
eral 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
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 17

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 op-
posite of his predecessor. Instead of the talented mys-
tic, 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 peo-
ple 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 an-
other tribe. How did this "robber marriage" origin-
ate? 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), in-
side of which intermarrying was prohibited. In con-
sequence the men (or women) of a certain group were
forced to choose their wives (or husbands) outside of
18 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 exo-
gamous, the second endogamous, and construes forth-
with a rigid contrast between exogamous and en-
dogamous "tribes." And though his own investiga-
tion 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 se-
cured 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 concep-
tions were developed much later. But it was a widely
spread custom among savages to kill female children
immediately after their birth. This produced a sur-
plus 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 cer-
tain tribe-a scarcity that was somwhat 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
-& 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
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 19

first system of kinship was that which recognized

blood-ties through mothers only."*
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 dis-
covered the fact of exogamous groups ; neither did he
understand their presence . Aside from earlier scat-
tered notes of many observers-from which McLennan
quoted-Latham had accurately and correctly de-
scribed this institution among the Indian Magars * 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 intro-
duced 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 recog-
nized 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
*McLennan, Studies in Ancient History, 1886. Primitive
Marriage, p. 124.
*Latham, Descriptive Ethnology, 1859.
20 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 au-
thor. 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."??
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. **
Both these facts directly disprove his method of ex-
planation, 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 con-
sidered 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, how-
ever 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 atten-
tion had been directed to this point, then more and
*McLennan, Studies in Ancient History, 1886. Primitive
Marriage, p. 140.
**Ibidem, p. 146.
27
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 21

more proofs were found that among undeveloped na-

tions there were connubial forms in which a group of
men possessed a group of women. Lubbock in his
"Origin of Civilization" (1870) recognized this "com-
munal 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 con-
tradiction 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 prac-
tice 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 Con-
sanguinity and Affinity," 1871, and discussion
transferred to a far more extensive field. Tak-
ing 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 recogni-
22 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

tion, 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 recog-
nized 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, be-
cause 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 assert-
ing 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 ses-
sion, 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,
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 23

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 irrefuta-
ble 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 So-
ciety" (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" -con-
sanguineous on the mother's side, within which inter-
marrying 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 gain-
ing another important step in the field under investi-
gation. He found that this "gens," organized in con-
formity with maternal law, was the original form out
24 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

of which later on the "gens" by paternal law devel-

oped, such as we find it among the civilized nations of
antiquity. The Greek and Roman "gens," an un-
solved 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 develop-
ment, 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 his-
tory. 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 rec-
ognized, or rather appropriated , even by the archaeol-
ogists 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 conde-
scending praise for the excellence of his former works.
The details of his discussion are diligently criticised,
but his really great discoveries are covered up obstin-
ately. 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
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 25

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 quota-
tions 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 man-
ners to refer in terms of highest admiration to his
artificial construction of history leading from infanti-
cide through polyandry and abduction to maternal
law. The least doubt in the strictly independent exist-
ence of exogamous and endogamous tribes was con-
sidered 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 suf-
ficed 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
26 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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. Con-
sequently, he receives his just deserts, when McLen-
nan indignantly charges him with a profound anti-
pathy 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 Mc-
Lennan'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. Anthropol.
ogists, 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.
THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

CHAPTER I.
PREHISTORIC STAGES.
Morgan was the first to make an attempt at intro-
ducing a logical order into the history of primeval
society. Until considerably more material is obtained,
no further changes will be necessary and his arrange-
ment will surely remain in force.
Of the three main epochs-savagery, barbarism and
civilization-naturally only the first two and the transi-
tion 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 con-
ditioned 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 evolu-
tion of the family proceeds in the same measure with-
out, however, offering equally convenient marks for
sub-division.

I. SAVAGERY .
1. Lower Stage. Infancy of the human race. Hu-
man 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
28 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 cli-
mate and locality. Following the course of rivers and
coast lines, 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 occasion-
ally added to the bill of fare. Nations subsisting
exclusively by hunting, such as we sometimes find
mentioned in books, have never existed ; for the pro-
ceeds 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
PREHISTORIC STAGES 29

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 ac-
quaintance 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. Gener-
ally 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
eases, 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
30 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 cultiva-
tion of plants. Now the eastern body of land, the so-
called old world, contained nearly all the tamable ani-
mals 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 land-
marks 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 culti-
vation 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 cultiva-
tion of plants whatever. But the so-called Pueblo In-
dians in New Mexico, the Mexicans, Central-Ameri-
PREHISTORIC STAGES 31

cans and Peruvians, were in the middle-stage of bar-

barism. They lived in fortlike houses of adobe or
stone, cultivated corn and other plants suitable to
various conditions of localities and climate in arti-
ficially 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 Euro-
pean 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 sav-
age 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
32 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 pri-
marily 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. *
3. Higher Stage. Beginning with the melting of
iron ore and merging into civilization by the inven-
Translator's note.
Advocates of vegetarianism may, of course, challenge
this statement and show that all the testimony of anthropol-
ogy is not in favor of the meat-eaters. It must also be ad-
mitted that diet is not the only essential factor in environ-
ment 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 especial-
ly 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 vege-
tarian hypothesis of a transition from a meat diet to a plant
diet as a condition sine qua non of higher human develop-
ment.
PREHISTORIC STAGES
333
tion of letter script and its utilization for writing
records. This stage which is passed independently
only on the Eastern Hemisphere, is richer in improve-
ments of production than all preceding stages to-
gether. 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 possi-
ble 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 com-
bination of half a million of people under one central
management could have been possible only under ex-
ceptionably favorable conditions ; most likely this was
never the case.
The greatest attainments of the higher stage of bar-
barism 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 archi.
tecture; towns surrounded by walls with turrets and
battlements ; the Homeric epos and the entire myth-
ology-these are the principal bequests transmitted
by the Greeks from barbarism to civilization. In com-
paring these attainments with the description given
by Cesar or even Tacitus of Germans, who were in
34 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 produc-
tion . 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 follow-
ing manner: Savagery-time of predominating appro-
priation of finished natural products ; human ingenuity
invents mainly tools useful in assisting this appropria-
tion. 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 utiliza-
tion of natural products, of manufacturing and of
art.
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 syndyas-
mian 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 daugh-
ters 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 sis-
ters, and so do the children of sisters. But the chil-
dren of a sister call those of her brother cousins, and
vice versa. And these are not simply meaningless
terms, but expressions of actually existing concep-
tions of proximity and remoteness, equality or inequal-
ity of consanguinity.
These conceptions serve as the fundament of a per-
fectly elaborated system of relationship, capable of
36 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 import-
ant 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 modi-
fied 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 moth-
ers, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, nephews
and nieces, as the old Indo-American system of kin-
ship. But how remarkable! The Hawaiian system
of kinship again did not agree with the family form
THE FAMILY 37

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 sis-
ters, or their father and his brothers, but of all the
brothers and sisters of their parents without distinc-
tion. While thus the American system of kinship
presupposes an obsolete primitive form of the family,
which is still actually existing in Hawaii, the Ha-
waiian 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 sys-
tems 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
Y
38 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMIL

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, fur-
thermore polygamy of one man, eventually also poly- 1
andry 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 com-
mon to all; conditions that up to their final transition
into monogamy underwent a whole series of modifica-
tions. These modifications slowly and gradually con-
tract the circle comprised by the common tie of mar-
riage until only the single couple remains which pre-
vails 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 un-
restricted 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 or
affairs since the eighteenth century, but only in gen-
eral 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 re-
ligious 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
THE FAMILY 39

expect to find direct proofs of its former existence

among these social fossils, backward savages. Bach-
ofen's merit consists in having brought this question to
the fore.*
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 in-
voked. 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 physi-
ological 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 com-
plete male and female sexual apparatus in each of its
50 to 200 sections and passes its whole lifetime in fer-
tilizing 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 mar-
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 possi-
bility 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 cer
tain period, not in the economic conditions of life.
40 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

riage, polygamy and monogamy. Only polyandry is

missing;* 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 con-
sider 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* in regard to monogamy
among anthropoid apes are far from proving anything.
In short, the information is such that honest Letour-
neau 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:* "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 conclu-
sions from such absolutely unreliable reports.
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 to-
gether in the same place, the men mutually tolerating one
another, which male cuckoos do not.
*Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage, London,
1891.
Espinas, Des Societes Animales, 1877.
THE FAMILY 41

The quotation from Espinas, however, offers a bet-

ter 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 polyg-
amy are existing, the herd appears almost spontane-
ously... . . 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 fam-
ily 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 un-
der infinitely more favorable circumstances."*
It becomes apparent from this, that animal societies
may indeed have a certain value in drawing con-
clusions in regard to human life-but only negatively.
The higher vertebrate knows, so far as we may ascer-
tain, 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
Espinas, 1. c., quoted by Giraud-Teulon. Origines du
mariage et de la famille, 1884, p. 518-20.
42 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 irre-
concilable; 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, attrib-
utes to the gorilla and the chimpanzee. Another ele-
ment 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-opera-
tion of the whole herd. The transition from beast to
man out of conditions of the sort under which the 1
anthropoid apes are living to-day would be abso-
lutely unexplainable. These apes rather give the im-
pression 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 accom-
plished. 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.
THE FAMILY 43 .

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 preced-
ing 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 inter-
course" 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 com-
paratively 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 re-
gard to the Chippeway Indians, the Coocoos in Chile,
the Caribeans, the Carens in Indo-China, not to men-
tion 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 be-
tween 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 con-
ceptions of incest-conceptions totally different from
44 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 cus-
tom did not yet exist. This in no way necessarily im-
plies 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 com-
prises 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 indi-
vidual affections" so that "prostitution is its most
genuine form." To me it rather seems that any under-
standing 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-grand-
children of the first cycle, will form a fourth. In this
form of the family, then, only ancestors and descen-
dants are excluded from what we would call the
THE FAMILY 45

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. *
The typical form of such a family would consist of
the offspring of one pair, representing again the de-
scendants of each grade as mutual brothers and sisters
and, therefore, mutual husbands and wives. The
consanguine family is extinct. Even the crudest na-
tions of history do not furnish any proofs of it. But
the Hawaiian system of kinship, in force to this day in
*Author's note. In the spring of 1882, Marx expressed him-
self 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?" Το
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 ex-
pression 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 gen-
erated (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 sanc-
tioned 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 mar-
riage 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 com-
mits 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.
46 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 com-
pels 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 sex
ual 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 con-
cerned, but also far more difficult. It was accom-
plished gradually, probably beginning with the ex-
clusion of the natural sister (i. e., on the mother's side)
from sexual intercourse, first in single cases, then be-
coming 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 , grandchil-
dren, and great-grandchildren. This progress offers,
according to Morgan, an excellent illustration how the
principle of natural selection works. Without ques-
tion, 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
THE FAMILY 47

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 chil-
dren 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 cen-
ter of one group, their natural brothers that of an-
other. In this or a similar manner that form which
Morgan styles the Punaluan family developed from
the consanguine family. According to Hawaiian cus-
tom , 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 com-
panion, associate as it were. Likewise a series of
natural or more remote brothers lived in mutual mar-
riage with a number of women, not their natural sis-
ters, and these women referred to each other as
"Punalua." This is the classical form of a family,
which later admitted of certain variations . Its funda-
mental characteristic was mutual community of hus-
bands 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 com-
plete 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
N LY
48 THE ORIGI OF THE FAMI

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 inter- I
course 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 chil-
dren 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 trans-
mitted probably by all Polynesia, if the pious mis-
sionaries, similar to the Spanish monks in America,
could have looked upon such anti-Christian relations
as being something more than simply a "horror."*
*There is no longer any doubt that the traces of unre-
stricted 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.
THE FAMILY 49

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 com-
munity of women among savage and barbarian na-
tions. This is true, furthermore, of Watson's and
Kaye's* 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 Austrialians have gentes, but not yet a
Punaluan family, only a cruder form of group mar-
riage.*
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
The People of India.
See translator's note, p. 55.
50 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY
others. it is also obvious that, as far as group mar-
riage exists, descent can only be traced on the moth-
er's side and, hence, only female lineage be acknowl-
edged. 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 hus-
bands), 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 an-
cestress, by virtue of the descent that makes the
different female generations sisters. But the hus-
bands 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 con-
sanguineous 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 rela-
tives 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 insti-
THE FAMILY 51

tutions of a social or religious character and thus dis-

tinguished 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 Puna-
luan 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 lit-
tle about the group marriages of the Australians or-
ganized in classes, and furthermore Morgan had pub-
lished 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 In-
dians, 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 pre-
ceding the pairing family and attribute general exten-
sion 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 sim-
plest 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
52 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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.* 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 any-
where on account of difference of age or special con-
sanguinity, 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, be-
ing 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 rela-
tions. Or the intercourse between parents and chil-
dren was already proscribed by custom, when the
classes were formed ; and in this case the present con-
dition points back to the consanguine family and is the
first step out of it. The latter case is the more prob-
able. 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 ma-
ternal law gens, as a rule silently presupposes that the
Translator's note.
*According to Cunow, Krok! and Kumite are phratries.
See "Die Verwandschaftsorganizationen der Australneger,"
by Heinrich Cunow. Stuttgart, Dietz ' Verlag, 1894.
THE FAMILY 53

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 ex-
cludes only marriage between brothers and sisters,
between brothers' children and between sisters' chil-
dren 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 be-
longs 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 an-
other, but their grandchildren can do so. This pecu-
liarly complicated order of things is still more entan-
gled by the inoculation-evidently at a later stage-
with maternal law gentes. But we cannot discuss
this further. Enough, the desire to prevent inbreed-
ing again and again demands recognition, but feel-
ing its way quite spontaneously, without a clear con-
ception 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
54 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY
women. A close view of this group marriage does not
offer quite such a horrible spectacle as the philistine
imagination accustomed to brothel conditions gener-
ally 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 ena-
bling 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 with-
out 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 Euro-
pean 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 assign-
ing 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
THE FAMILY 55

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 ques-
tion is only which will first disappear under the pres-
sure 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 delevop-
ment. The former seems to be corresponding to the
social stage of roving savages, the latter requires
relatively settled communistic bodies and leads di-
rectly to the next higher stage of development. Be-
tween these two, we shall no doubt find many an inter-
mediate stage. Here lies a barely opened, hardly
entered field of investigation.*
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 auch later time, when the gentile institution had
already grown out of the horde. This system of classifica-
tion 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 classi-
fication in strata of different ages belonging to the so-called
consanguine family runs parallel for a while with the gen-
tile 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 Aus-
tralian negroes . But I purposely refrain from doing this,
56 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 "sis-
ters" became who were not permitted to marry one
another. The impulse to prevent marriage of con-
sanguineous relatives started by the gens went still
further. Thus we find that among the Iroquois and
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 doubt-
ful 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 endoga-
mous. But while in the one instance the marriage in the
horde is conditioned on the fact that the more remote rela-
tives 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 en-
tirely 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 metamor-
phoses 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 I
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 terri-
THE FAMILY 57

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 chil-
dren belong to the mother alone, as formerly.

torial community. Their members are scattered among dif-

ferent 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 exist-
ence 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 inter-
course 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 con-
IN LY
58 THE ORIG OF THE FAMI

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 consan-
guineous 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 su-
premacy 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 com-
prising the whole tribe, within which marital inter-
course between both sexes was general. By the con-
sanguine family is based on blood kinship, they are right,
unless we wish to assign an exceptional position to the Aus-
tralian 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 instl-
tution 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 can-
not 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.
THE FAMILY 59

tinual 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, McLen-
nan, 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 Amer-
ican 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 un-
known to one another are thus engaged to be married
and receive no information of the closing of the bar-
gain, until the time for the marriage ceremony ap-
proaches. 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 dis-
solve the marriage at will. But among many tribes.
as, e. g., the Iroquois , public opinion has gradually be-
come averse to such separations. In case of domestic
differences the gentile relatives of both parties en-
deavor to bring about a reconciliation , and not until
60 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

they are unsuccessful a separation takes place. In

this case the woman keeps the children, and both par-
ties are free to marry again.
The pairing family, being too weak and too un-
stable 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 fam-
ilies) · • 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
THE FAMILY 61

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 re-
ports of travelers and missionaries concerning the
overburdening of women among savages and bar-
barians do not in the least contradict the above state-
ments. 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 sur-
vival of the community of men for the whole series
of sisters. And Bancroft relates that the Indians of
62 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 recollec-
tion 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 hap-
pens that the older men, the chief and sorcerer-priests,
exploit the community of women for their own bene-
fits 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 re-
storing for a short time the ancient sexual freedom is
quoted by Westermarck :* among the Hos, the Santals,
the Punjas and Kotars in India, among some African
nations, etc. Curiously enough Westermarck con-
cludes 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 mar-
riage 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 con-
sists 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

The History of Human Marriage, p. 28-29.

THE FAMILY 63
3339
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 Asi-
atic nations between the Mediterranean and the
Ganges. The penalty for exemption becomes gradu-
ally lighter in course of time, as Bachofen remarks :
"The annually repeated surrender giv s place to a
single sacrifice ; the hetaerism of the matrons is fol-
lowed by that of the maidens, the promiscuous inter-
course during marriage to that before wedding, the
indiscriminate intercourse with all to that with cer-
tain individuals."."* 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 every-
body can confirm who penetrates a little into the in-
terior. Agassiz, e. g., relates* an anecdote of a wealthy
family of Indian descent. On being introduced to the
daughter he asked something about her father, pre-
suming 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

*Mutterrecht, p. xix.
*A Journey in Brazil. Boston and New York, 1886. Page
266.
64 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

unusual case, that among the common people the oppo-

site 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 rela-
tives 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 what-
ever may be his title represents the community and
exercises the right of the first night. All modern ro-
mantic whitewashing notwithstanding , this jus primae
noctis, is still in force among most of the natives
of Alaska,* among the Tahus of northern Mexico**
and some other nations. And during the whole of the
middle ages it was practised 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
*Bancroft, Native Races, I., 81.
**Ibidem, p. 584.
THE FAMILY 65

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 con-
tending 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 popula-
tion, the traditional sexual relations lost their inno-
cent 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 perma-
nent 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 be-
tween 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 character-
istic 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 bi-
atomic molecule : one man and one woman. Natural
selection had accomplished its purpose by a continu-
ally increasing restriction of sexual intercourse. Noth-
ing remained to be done in this direction. Unless new
social forces became active, there was no reason why
66 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 pair-
ing family. No sign permits the conclusion that a
higher form of the family was developed here, that
any established form of monogamy ever existed any-
where 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 con-
ditions. 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 Ary-
ans 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 num-
bers 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? Doubt-
less 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:
THE FAMILY 67

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 barba-
rian 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 agricul-
ture wrought a change. Just as the once easily ob-
tainable 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 , be
sides, 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
68 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 ob-
jects, the property may have gone in practice to the
closest gentile relatives, i. e., the consanguine rela-
tives 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 posi-
tion 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
THE FAMILY 69

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 in-
heritance. How and when this revolution was accom-
plished 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 recent-
ly 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 mo-
tive." (Marx .) This made confusion worse con-
founded, 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
70 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

des origines et de l'évolution de la famille et de la

propriété, Stockholm, 1890.
The downfall of maternal law was the historic de-
feat 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 inter-
mediate 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 polyg-
amy, 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
THE FAMILY 71

authority and according to Roman law the right of

life and death over all of them. "The word is, there-
fore, 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 sepa-
ration 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 Zadruga (friendly bond) and Bratstvo (fra-
ternity), and in a modified form among oriental na-
tions, 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 Zadruga of southern Slavonia offers the best
still existing illustration of such a family communism.
It comprises several generations of the father's de
scendants, together with their wives, all living to
72 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

gether on the same farm, tilling their fields in common,

living and clothing themselves from the same stock,
and possessing collectively the surplus of their earn-
ings. 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 busi-
ness 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 mem-
bers of the household , decides the question of impor-
tant 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 accord-
ing to Heussler (Institutions of German law) is not
originally the single family, but the "collective house-
hold," comprising several generations or single fami-
lies 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. Simi-
THE FAMILY 73

lar communities are furthermore said to have existed

among the Celts of Ireland. In France they were pre-
served 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 acces-
sible 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 (Aus-
land, 1890, No. 42-44) has demonstrated rather clearly
that at the time of the conquest a sort of a constitu-
tion 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 Kovales-
ky'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.
5

74 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 him-
self. Russian popular songs are very eloquent on this
point.
Before taking up monogamy, which rapidly devel-
oped 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 patri-
archal 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 in-
vestigation. In its practice it seems, by the way,
much more tolerant than the jealous Harem establish-
ment 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
THE FAMILY 75

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 spe-
cialized 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 dis-
solve it and cast off his wife. The privilege of con-
jugal 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 privi-
lege 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
76 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

.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 omit-
ted. 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 re-
ceive 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 ex-
pected to put up with everything, while herself re-
maining 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 house-
keeper 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 mo-
nogamy, the existence of young and beautiful female
slaves belonging without any restriction to their mas-
ter, 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 dis-
tinction 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 FAMILY 77

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 house-
holds. About the same time King Ariston added an-
other 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 Schoe-
mann- 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
nen, especially strangers, did not easily enter and
78 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 Molos-
sian 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 accord-
ing to Wachsmuth not for barbarians alone. By Euri-
pides 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 meet-
ings, 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 denun.
ciation 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 recrea-
tion 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 FAMILY 79

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 con-
ventional 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 di-
vision 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
80 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

epoch which, reaching down to our days, takes with

all progress also a step backwards, relatively speak-
ing, 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 con-
trasts and contradictions.
The old relative freedom of sexual intercourse by
no means disappeared with the victory of the pair-
ing 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."99**
By hetaerism Morgan designates sexual intercourse
of men with unmarried women outside of the mon-
ogamous family, flourishing, as is well known, dur-
ing the whole period of civilization in many different
forms and tending more and more to open prostitu-
tion. 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 baja-
deres (derived from the Portuguese "bailadera,'
dancing girl) , were the first prostitutes. The sur-
render, originally the duty of every woman, was
later on practiced by these priestesses alone in rep-
*Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 504.
THE FAMILY 81

resentation of all others. Among other nations,

hetaerism is derived from the sexual freedom per-
mitted 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 prosti-
tution of free women by the side of the forced sur-
render of female slaves. It is the heirloom be-
queathed by group marriage to civilization, a gift as
ambiguous as everything else produced by ambigu-
ous, double-faced, schismatic and contradictory civili-
zation. 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 de-
veloped within monogamy itself. By the side of the
husband, who is making his life pleasant by hetaer-
ism , 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 charac-
ters 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 mag-
82 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY
nanimously provided the coronation. In addition to
monogamy and hetaerism, adultery became an un-
avoidable 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 contra-
diction, 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 develop-
ment and clearly express the conflict between man
and wife created by the exclusive supremacy of men,
a miniature picture of the contrasts and contradic-
tions 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 every-
where 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
THE FAMILY 83

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 prog-
ress 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 polyg-
amy 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 testi-
mony, 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. Heuce 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 Ro-
man 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 re-
spected and free than classical antiquity ever knew.
84 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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, un-
known 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 quali-
ties were limited to the simple fact that the pairing
family indeed does not create the marked moral con-
trasts of monogamy. On the contrary, the Germans,
especially those who wandered southeast among the
nomadic nations of the Black Sea, had greatly de-
generated morally. Beside the equestrian tricks of
the inhabitants of the steppe they had also acquired
some very unnatural vices. This is expressly con-
firmed 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 exclu-
sively 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 matri-
monial love, but quite the contrary. In its classic
form, among the Provencals, it heads with full sails
THE FAMILY 85

for adultery and their poets extol the latter. The

flower of Provençal love poetry, the Albas, de-
scribe 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 morn-
ing (alba) and enables him to escape unnoticed. The
poems culminate in the parting scene. Likewise the
Frenchmen of the north and also the honest Ger-
mans 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 Lis 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 con-
sequence 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 con-
clusion, there was as little help for adultery as for
death. In Protestant countries, again, it is the cus-
tom to give the bourgeois son more or less liberty
in chosing 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
86 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 re-
spect it always remains conventional. This con-
ventionalism often enough results in the most pro-
nounced prostitution-sometimes of both parties, more
commonly of the women. 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 mar-
riages: "As in grammar two negatives make one
affirmative, so in matrimonial ethics, two prostitu-
tions 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 mo
nogamy 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 miss-
ing. Civil law protecting male rule applies only to
THE FAMILY 87

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 bru-
tality 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 unal-
terable 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 separa-
tion, and if a couple cannot agree, they rather sep-
arate. In short, the proletarian marriage is monog-
amous in the etymological sense of the word, but by no
means in a historical sense.
True, our jurists hold that the progress of legisla-
tion 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 bur-
geois 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
FAMILY
ORIGIN
THE

THE
OF
888

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 compari-
son 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 mar-
rying. In countries with English law, where the
consent of the parents is by no means a legal quali-
fication 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 inequali-
Ity inherited from earlier stages of society is not the
cause, but the effect of the economic oppression of
women. In the ancient communistic household com-
prising many married couples and their children, the
THE FAMILY 89

administration of the household entrusted to women

was just as much a public function, a socially neces,
sary 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 indus-
tries and earn a living independently. As in the
factory, so women are situated in all business depart-
ments 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 charac
ter of the economic oppression weighing on the pro-
letariat appears in its sharpest outlines only after
all special privileges of the capitalist class are abol-
ished and the full legal equality of both classes is
established. A democratic republic does not abolish
the distinction between the two classes. On the con-
trary, it offers the battleground on which this 'g.
90 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

tinction can be fought out. Likewise the peculiar

character of man's rule over woman in the modern
family, the necessity and the manner of accomplish-
ing 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 depen-
dent 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 mar-
riage, for barbarism the pairing family, for civiliza-
tion monogamy supplemented by adultery and prosti-
tution. 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
THE FAMILY 97

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 concen.
tration 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 real-
ized. For with the transformation of the means of
production into collective property, wagelabor will
also disappear, and with it the proletariat and the
necessity for a certain, statistically ascertainable
number of women to surrender for money. Prostitu-
tion 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 col-
lective property the monogamous family ceases to be
the economic unit of society. The private household
changes to a social industry. The care and educa-
22

FAMILY
THE
OF
ORIGIN
THE
tion 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 uncon-
ditionally to the beloved man. Will not this be suf-
ficient cause for a gradual rise of a more uncon-
ventional 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 indi-
vidual sexlove. It goes without saying that personal
beauty, intimate intercourse, harmony of inclina-
tions, etc. , awakened a longing for sexual intercourse
in persons of different sex, and that it was not ab-
solutely 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 matri-
monial love was known to antiquity was not subjec-
tive 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
THE FAMILY 93

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 OC-
curred 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 in-
tensity 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 stan-
dards-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
94 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 Ro-
manic 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 reply-
ing 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, favor-
ing 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 me-
dieval towns, the members of the guilds. Precisely
the privileges protcting them, the clauses and restric-
tions of the guild charters, the artificial lines of di
THE FAMILY 95

vision 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 mar-
riage 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 rela-
tion 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 prepon-
derance 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 considera-
tions. 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 quali-
ties, 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
96 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 cus-
tom 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 say-
ing that our whole progress over former epochs con-
sisted in arriving from status to contract, from in-
herited 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 posses-
sions. 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 com-
pulsion for an immoral action. How did this agree
with the prevailing practice of match-making ? Mar-
riage according to bourgeois conception was a con-
tract, 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
THE FAMILY 97

done. But it was only too well known how this con-
sent was obtained and who were really the contract-
ing 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 adul-
tery, 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 tra-
ditional 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 has-
tened 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 hon-
orable privilege of the guild overcome through gen-
erations to the young man tempted by the gold and
silver mines of Mexico and Potosi ?
It was the knight errant time of the bourgeoisie.
98 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 de-
scribed 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 ac-
corded 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 aboli-
tion of capitalistic production and of the property
relations created by it. Then no other motive will
remain but mutual fondness.
THE FAMILY 99

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 monɔgamy mainly as the work of women.
Only the advance from the pairing family to mo-
nogamy 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 consider-
ations that now force women to submit to the cus-
tomary disloyalty of men, and you will place women
on a equal footing with men. All present experi-
ences 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 prop-
erty relations, will decidedly vanish, namely the
supremacy of men and the indissolubility of mar-
riage. 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 conse-
quence of economic conditions, under which monog-
amy 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 per-
forated 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 ac-
cording to individual disposition, especially in men.
A positive cessation of fondness or its replacement
by a new passionate love makes a separation a bless-
100 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

ing 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 capi-
talist 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 refus-
ing 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 opin-
ion 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 investi-
gation of social institutions developed during the pè-
riod 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 and change as society changes, even
as it has done in the past. It is the creature of the
THE FAMILY IOI

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 mo-
nogamian 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."
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, desig-
nated by animal names, are essentially identical with
the genea of the Greeks and the gentes of the Ro-
mans; that the American form is the original from
which the Greek and Roman forms were later de-
rived ; 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 civiliza-
tion-at least so far as our present sources of in-
formation reach. This demonstration has cleared at
a single stroke the most difficult passages of re-
motest ancient Greek and Roman history. At the
same time it has given us unexpected information
concerning the fundamental outlines of the constitu
tion of society in primeval times-before the intro-
duction 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 his-
tory.
The Latin word gens, used by Morgan generally for
the designation of this sex organization, is derived,
THE IROQUOIS GENS 103

like the equivalent Greek word genos, from the com-

mon 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 organiza-
tion which boasted of common descent (from a com-
mon 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 un-
certain 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 chil-
dred 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 descen-
dants 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
104 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

must be selected within the gens and his office was

in a sense hereditary. It had to be filled immedi-
ately 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 Iro-
quois 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 expres-
sion of the very positive blood relationship, by vir-
tue 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 bar-
barians, in which the different organizations of which
THE IROQUOIS GENS 105

the gentile order is composed are jumbled together

without understanding and distinction as tribe, clan,
thum , etc. Sometimes it is stated that intermarry-
ing within these organizations is forbidden. This
gave rise to the hopeless confusion, in which Mc-
Lennan could pose as Napoleon and establish order
by the decree : All tribes are divided into those that
forbid intermarrying (exogamous) and those that per-
mit 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 dis-
covery of the gens founded on affinity of blood and
the resulting impossibility of its members to inter-
marry, 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 rela-
tions 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 in-
jury 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 obli-
gation to blood revenge that was unconditionally rec-
ognized by the Iroquois. If a stranger killed a gentile
106 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY
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 oppo-
site case the injured gens appointed one or more aven-
gers 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 introduc-
tion into the gens was necessary to confirm the adop-
tion. Frequently certain gentes that had shrunk ex-
ceptionally were thus strengthened by mass adop-
tions from another gens with the consent of the lat-
ter. 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 cere-
mony.
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 IROQUOIS GENS 107

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 assem-
bly of all male and female gentiles of adult age, all
with equal suffrage. This council elected and de-
posed 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 founda-
tion 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
108 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

of independence and personal dignity universally ar

attribute of Indian character."
At the time of the discovery the Indians of entire
North America were organized in gentes by ma-
ternal law. Only "in some tribes, as among the Da-
kotas, 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, cailed 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 mar-
riage 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 seg-
mented into two or more new gentes, while the orig-
inal 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 seg-
mentation. After this new institution had become
well established it was modified according to cir-
cumstances. If certain gentes became extinct, it
THE IROQUOIS GENS 109

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 mem-
bers, 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 mur-
der 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 condona-
tion of the matter. In this case the phratry re-ap-
pears in its original gentile capacity, and with a bet-
ter 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 attend-
ed 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 rellg-
110 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

ious 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 bat-
tle as a separate group with its special uniform and
flag and its own leader.
Just as several gentes 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 ter-
ritory 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 corre-
sponds to the boundary forest of the Germans, the
desert created by Caesar's Suevi around their terri-
tory, 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 Branden-
burg its name. The territory thus surrounded by
neutral ground was the collective property of a cer-
tain tribe, recognized as such by other tribes and
defended against the invasion of others. The dis-
advantage of undefined boundaries became of prac
THE IROQUOIS GENS III

tical importance only after the population had in-

creased 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-exten-
sive. 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 ex-
ceptionally 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 mem-
bers 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 bar-
barians the American Indians were a religious peo-
ple." Their mythology has not yet been critically
investigated. They materialized their religious con-
ceptions-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
112 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

to pantheism . The different tribes had regular fes-

tivals 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 com-
posed 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) communi-
ties. 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 immedi-
ately. 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 re-
quired, and was neither asked nor given. This cor-
responds to the private war expeditions of German
followers described by Tacitus. Only these German
THE IROQUOIS GENS 113

groups of followers had already assumed a more per-

manent character, forming a standing center organ-
ized during peace, around which the other volunteers
gathered in case of war. Such war columns were
rarely strong in numbers. The most important ex-
peditions 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 cam-
paign plan was secured as well as possible by a coun-
cil 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 bas to take provisional measures in cases re-
quiring immediate action, until the council can as-
semble and decide. He represents a feeble, but gen-
erally undeveloped prototype of an official with execu-
tive 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 occu-
pied an immense territory. Leagues were now and
then formed by kindred tribes as the result of mo-
mentary necessity and dissolved again under more
favorable conditions. But in certain districts, tribes
of the same kin had again found their way out of dis-
bandment 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 prob-
ably formed a branch of the great Dakota family,
they settled at last after long wanderings in the
114 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY
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 be-
ginning 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 Pe-
ruvians.
The fundamental provisions of the league were :
1. Eternal federation of the five consanguineous
tribes on the basis of perfect equality and indepen-
dence in all internal tribal matters. This consan-
guinity 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.
THE IROQUOIS GENS 115

2. The official organ of the league was a federal

council of fifty sachems, all equal in rank and prom-
inence. 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 de-
posed 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 pres-
ence 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 organi-
zation of a society that does not yet know a state.
The state presupposes a public power of coërcion
116 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

separated from the aggregate body of its members.

Maurer, with correct intuition, recognized the con-
stitution of the German Mark as a purely social in-
stitution, 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 pub-
lic 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 be-
come 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 unavoid-
able necessity-because naturally—from the gens. All
three of them are groups of differentiated consan-
guine 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 or-
ganization similar to the one described above. And
THE IROQUOIS GENS 117

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, gensdarmes 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 them-
selves. Only in very rare cases the blood revenge is
threatened as an extreme measure. Our capital pun-
ishment is simply a civilized form of it, afflicted with
all the advantages and drawbacks of civilization.
Not a vestige of our cumbersome and intricate sys-
tem 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 gar-
dens 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 in-
cluded. 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
118 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 gen-
tile organization, did what no European army can do.
Armed only with lances and spears, without any fire-
arms, they advanced under a hail of bullets from
breechloaders up to the bayonets of the English in-
fantry-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 whip-
lash, says an English painter.
Such was human society and its members, before
the division into classes had taken place. And a com-
parison of that social condition with the condition of
the overwhelming majority of present day society
shows the enormous chasm that separates our prole-
tarian and small farmer from the free gentile of old.
That is one side of the question . We must not over-
look, 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
THE IROQUOIS GENS 119

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 incom-
prehensible riddle to him. His simple religious con-
ceptions 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 un-
conditionally 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 com-
munity.
The power of these natural and spontaneous com-
munities 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 ava-
rice, selfish robbery of common wealth. The old gen-
tile society without classes is undermined and brought
to fall by the most contemptible means : theft, vio-
lence, 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 char-
acter of the Iroquois gens. The stamp of group mar-
riage is becoming rather blurred. Maternal law had
given way to paternal lineage. Rising private property
had thus made its first opening in the gentile constitu-
tion. 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 ex-
THE GRECIAN GENS 121

clusively 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 heir-
esses.
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 re-
curred 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 ac-
cepted 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
122 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 hered-
ity 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 dis-
tinguishing 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 in-
violate during the eighteenth century, that the monog-
amous family, an institution scarcely older than civili-
zation, 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 lat-
ter together with their gods and demi-gods were cre-
ated by the gentes."
THE GRECIAN GENS 123

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 phrat-
ries."
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 ther
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 super-
human ancestor and pedigree just like the more promi-
nent gentes (how very peculiar this, Mr. Grote, in less
prominent gentes !) ; and the ground plan and the ideaï
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 pos-
sessed like other mortals-preserved the knowledge
of the mutual relation of al members of the gens.
124 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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, ex-
cept in a limited number of more recent common an-
cestors. The name itself was the proof of a common
descent and sufficed always except in cases of adop-
tion. 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 im-
aginations, therefore the brave old philistines con-
cluded and conclude that the imaginary pedigree cre-
ated 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 de-
gree 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,
THE GRECIAN GENS 125

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 juris-
diction 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 mem-
ory 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 inde-
pendence. 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 aris-
tocratic element within the old primordial democracy.
The individual little nations carried on an unceasing
warfare for the possession of the best land and also
186 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

for the sake of looting. Slavery of the prisoners

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 Poly-
nikes, however, thrown out to be devoured by the
dogs. With the rise of the state this council was trans-
formed into the senate.
2. The public meeting (agora). We saw how the
Iroquois, men and women, attended the council meet-
ings, taking an orderly part in the discussions and
influencing them. Among the Homeric Greeks, this
attendance had developed to a complete public meet-
ing. 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 Suppli-
ants," 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 ex-
isted as yet no public power apart from the people
that might have been used against them. The primon
dial democracy was still in full force, and by this
THE GRECIAN GENS 127

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, most-
ly born servants of princes, represent the basileus as
a monarch in the modern sense. The Yankee repub-
lican Morgan objects to this. Very ironically but truth-
fully 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 primo-
geniture resting on a clause of ‘ sufficient but not over-
sharp' 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 gener-
ally transmitted to the son or one of the sons, indicates
only that the probability of succession by public elec-
tion 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).
128 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 popu-
lar verse about the scepter was added later on) . Odys-
seus 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 mill-
tary leadership is its distinguishing mark, by the side
of which the council and the agora are existing),
means simply-military democracy (Marx).
The basileus had also sacerdotal and judiciary func-
tions 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 representa-
tive of the tribe or of the league of tribes. There is
never any mention of civil, administrative functions.
THE GRECIAN GENS 129

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.*
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 under-
mine 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 rudi-
ments of hereditary nobility and monarchy , slavery,
first limited to prisoners of war, but already paving
the way to the enslavement of tribal and gentile asso-
ciates ; degeneration of the old feuds between tribes a
regular mode of existing by systematic plundering on
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 tribu-
tary and was administered by a federal council and a
federal chief of war, whom the Spaniards onstrued into
an " emperor."
130 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 gen-
tile institutions are abused in order to justify the
forcible robbery of wealth. Only one thing was miss-
ing: 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.
CHAPTER V.

ORIGIN OF THE ATTIC STATE.

How the state gradually developed by partly trans-
forming 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 avail-
able 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 pri-
vate individuals. For during the last period of the
higher stage of barbarism the production of commodi-
ties 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 divis-
ion of labor between agriculture and industry, trade
132 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 attrib-
uted to Theseus was introduced. The main feature
of this change was the institution of a central admin-
istration 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 gen-
eral council in Athens. This step of the At enians
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 tradi-
tions of the tribes and gentes. It bestowed on the
citizens of Athens certain privileges and legal protec-
tion, even in a territory that did not belong to their
tribe. This meant another blow to the gentile consti-
tution ; 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 con-
stitution.
A second institution attributed to Theseus was the
division of the entire nation into three classes regard-
less of the gentes, phratries and tribes : eupatrides or
nobles, geomoroì or farmers. and demiurgoi or trades.
ORIGIN OF THE ATTIC STATE 133
men. 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 prac
tically uncontested privilege ; that these families,
already powerful through their wealth, began to com-
bine outside of their gentes into a privileged class ;
and that the just arising state sanctioned this assump-
tion. 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 con-
tinually, 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 con-
venient piracy enriched them and concentrated the
money into their hands. From this point the gradu-
ally arising money power penetrated like corrugating
acid into the traditional modes of rural existence
founded on natural economy. The gentile constitu-
tion is absolutely irreconcilable with money rule. The
134 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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
<rowded 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 trans-
ferred 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 incon-
ORIGIN OF THE ATTIC STATE 135

ceivable among the Indians. There the ever unchang-

ing mode of production could at no time generate such
conflicts as a distinction between rich and poor, ex-
ploiters 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 , break-
ing 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 transforma-
tion of products into commodities. Here is the root of
the entire revolution that followed. When the pro-
ducers 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 produc-
136 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY
tion and of the social effects of the mode of productII,
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 commodi-
ties came the tilling of the soil by individual curtiva-
tors for their own account, soon followed by indi-
vidual 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 indis-
criminate 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, com
ORIGIN OF THE ATTIC STATE 137

merce, 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 con-
stitution, 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 dis-
tressing 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 occa-
sional short expeditions and the protection of the mer-
chant vessels. At some uncertain time before Solon,
the naukrariai were instituted , little territorial dis-
tricts, 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
138 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

a public power of coërcion that did no longer abso-

lutely 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 con-
fiscation, 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 viola-
tion of private property .
But now a way had to be found to avoid the return
of such an enslavement of the free Athenians. This
ORIGIN OF THE ATTIC STATE 139

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 priv-
ileges 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. Prob-
ably 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 prop-
erty in land. Wherever the classification by property
140 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

gains ground, there the old groups of blood relation-

ship 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 citi-
zens.
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 prop-
erty in land. Commerce, trades and artisan handi-
crafts, which were carried on in an ever larger scale
as slave labor increased, became the ruling factors in
gaining a living. Public enlightenment advanced . In-
stead of exploiting their own fellow citizens in the
old brutal style, the Athenians now exploited mainly
the slaves and the customers outside. Movable prop-
erty, 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 nobil-
ity. 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 unavail-
able as political groups. A great many citizens of
Athens did not belong to any gens. They were immi-
grants who had been adopted into citizenship, but not
ORIGIN OF THE ATTIC STATE 141

into any of the old groups of kinship. Besides, there

was a steadily increasing number of foreign immi-
grants who were only protected by traditional suf-
ferance.
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 phraties. 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 demotoi. 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 mili-
tary group. It elected the phylarchos or tribal head
who commanded the horsemen, the taxiarchos com-
142 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

manding 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 institu-
tion.
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 citi-
zens, this coërcive power at first only ex-
isted 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
ORIGIN OF THE ATTIC STATE 143

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 com-
mand 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 out-
lines, 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 be-
tween slaves and freemen, aliens and citizens. At
the time of the greatest prosperity the whole number
of free Athenian citizens, women and children in-
cluded, 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 im-
poverished and had to face the choice of either com-
peting 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
144 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

schoolmasters would have us believe, but slavery

ostracizing the labor of the free citizen.
The origin of the state among the Athenians pre-
sents a very typical form of state organization. For
it took place without any marring external interfer-
ence or internal obstruction-the usurpation of Pisis-
tratos 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 Amer-
ican Indians, the same holds naturally good of the
Roman gens, and we can be more concise in its treat-
ment.
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
146 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY
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 nat-
ural 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
GENS AND STATE IN ROME 147

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 mani-
fested such superior power, that the duty of protec-
tion 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 pur-
pose 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 men-
tioned 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
148 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 dis-
cussion of the Roman gens, is shown by the following
example: In Mommsen's treatise on the Roman fam-
ily 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, as-
sumed or even invented-ancestor and united by com-
mon 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 dif
ficulty. This is indeed obviated, as long as women
were not permitted to marry any one but their gen
tiles. 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 out>
side, the gentis enuptio, was still bestowed as a per-
sonal privilege and reward during the sixth century.
But wherever such outside marriages occurred
in primeval times, the woman must have been trans-
ferred to the tribe of her husband. Nothing is more
certain than that by the old religious marriage woman
GENS AND STATE IN ROME 149

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 hus-
band, her children and his gentiles ? And if her hus-
band 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 be-
longing 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 His-
palla 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 con-
ferred 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 mis-
demeanor 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 Momm-
sen 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
150 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 con-
clusion 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 con-
tradicts 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 ab-
solutely inadmissible.
Then again : suppose a woman married a man from
another gens, but remained in her own gens. Accord-
ing 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 women, torn away
from her old gens by her marriage and adopted into
the gentile group of her husband, occupies a peculiar
GENS AND STATE IN ROME 151

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 intermar-
rying in the gens, into which she has come by mar-
riage. 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 dis-
poses 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-intro-
duced her into his gens. Therefore it seems quite nat-
ural 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 exogam-
ous 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* (the loss of family rights) would lead to a
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.
152 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 trans-
ferred 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 expe-
dition against the neighboring town of Veii. Three
hundred and six Fabians are said to have marched
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 minimą
was the loss of the status familiae (family rights). Lange,
Romische Alterthumer, Berlin, 1876, Vol. I., p. 204.
GENS AND STATE IN ROME 153

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 relig-
ious rites, sacred possessions and priests. The priests
of one curia in a body formed one of the Roman cler-
ical 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 Ro-
manus, 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 fam-
ily of the gens brought to life the first hereditary no-
bility. 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 re-
port 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 discus-
sion 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
154 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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.* 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, lib-
erty and property of the citizens, except such as re-
sulted 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 pre-
decessor, 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 Ro-
mans 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 orig-
inated and that still surrounded them on all sides.

Author's note.
*The Latin rex is equivalent to the Celtic-lish righ
(tribal chief) and the Gothic reiks. That this, like the German
Furst, 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.
GENS AND STATE IN ROME 155

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 , in-
creased partly by immigration, partly through the
inhabitants of the annexed districts, Latins most of
them. All these new members of the state (we disre-
gard 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 con-
quered 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 popu-
lus 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
THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY 156

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 espe-
cially that of Solon, created a new public assembly
including or excluding all the members of populus and
plebs according to whether they rendered military ser-
vice or not. The whole population, subject to enlist.
ment, 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
GENS AND STATE IN ROME 157

of existence, a system of four local tribes was intro-

duced. Every tribe was assigned to one quarter of the
city and received certain political rights.
Thus the old social order of blood kinship was de-
stroyed 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 mili-
tary service and general armament.
After the expulsion of the last rex, Tarquinius Su-
perbus, 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 bar-
barians,
CHAPTER VII.

THE GENS AMONG CELTS AND GERMANS.

Space forbids a consideration of the gentile institu-

tions found in a more or less pure form among the sav-
age 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 out-
lines by the man who took the greatest pains to mis-
understand it, MacLennan, who wrote of this institu-
tion among the Kalmucks, the Circassians, the
Samoyeds and three Indian nations: the Warals, the
Magars and the Munnipurs. Recently it was de-
scribed 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 popu-
lar 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 cen-
tury, 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
THE GENS AMONG CELTS AND GERMANS 159

cultivated collectively and its yield divided among

the different families. In view of Irish and Scotch
analogies it cannot be doubted that these village com-
munities 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 be-
come 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 di-
vision, 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 mar-
riage 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 de-
mand any other satisfaction, for "the same crime
160 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

shall either be atoned for or avenged, but not both."

The reasons that entitled a woman to a divorce with-
out 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 pic-
ture of the pairing family among the Celts. The mar-
riage laws of the American Indians seem strict in com-
parison 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 an-
cient 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 dis-
solved, the gentile chief (called caput cogna-
tionis 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,
THE GENS AMONG CELTS AND GERMANS 161

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 situ-
ation 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 an-
nually. The field map of such a rundale villege looks
exactly like that of a German "Gehöferschaft" (farm-
ing 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 pur-
pose of these factions is apparently to rally for the
popular sport of hammering the life out of one an-
other. They are artificial reincarnations, modern sub-
stitutes 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). *
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 land-
holder, 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
162 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 gen-
tile 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 accord-
ing 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
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.
THE GENS AMONG CELTS AND GERMANS 163

organized in gentes up to the time of the great migra-

tions. 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 migra-
tion, 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 con-
quered 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 geneal-
ogiae 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 Burgun-
dians and Langobards-a Gothic and a Herminonian
or High German tribe-designated nearly, if not ex-
actly, the same thing as the Alemanian genealogiae.
Whether this is really the gens or the household com-
munity, 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 de-
rived from the same root: Greek gynê, Slav zenâ,
Gothic qvino, Norse kona, kuna.
164 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

Among Langobards and Burgundians, Í 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 rela-
tives; the singular occurs only as the name of a god-
dess, 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 indi-
cated 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 Mexi-
cans 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 kin-
ships," is explained by the fact that at his time the
gens had long ceased to be a living body in Rome.
THE GENS AMONG CELTS AND GERMANS 165

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 be
tween 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 de
scribed as a characteristic mark of the Germans.*
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
pasage 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
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 mythol-
ogy of heroic times. According to Diodorus IV. , 34, Melea-
gros 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.
166 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

World," the Völuspâ, which is still stronger evi-

dence, because it is 800 years younger. In this "Vis-
ion of the Seeress," in which Bang and Bugge have
now demonstrated the existence of Christian ele-
ments, 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 de-
liberate climax in that systrungar, emphasizing the
maternal kinship. If the term syskina-börn, broth-
er'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 Völuspá was composed, the recollection of
maternal law was not yet blotted out.
Among the Germans with whom Tacitus was fa-
miliar maternal law had already given way to pa-
ternal 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 ad-
mission 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 Ger-
mans. 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
THE GENS AMONG CELTS AND GERMANS 169

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, Städte
verfassung, 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
168 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 displace-
ment 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 spe
cifically German institution, but it has since been
found that hundreds of nations introduced this miti-
gation of gentile blood revenge. Like the obligatory
hospitality, it is found, for instance, among the
American Indians. Tacitus' description of the man-
ner 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 cul-
tivated land of nearly all nations was tilled collec-
THE GENS AMONG CELTS AND GERMANS 169

tively by the gens and later on by communistic fam-

ily 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 peri-
odical repartition of the cultivated land was pre-
served in Germany down to our days- after such evi-
dence we need not waste any more breath on the
subject. A transition within 150 years from collec-
tive 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 gen-
tile 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 com-
munity existed nearly everywhere, perhaps even
everywhere, as the connecting link between the ma-
triarchal communistic and the modern isolated fam-
ily, 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 intermedi-
170 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

ate communistic group, or whether all three of these

groups existed at the same time as a result of dif-
ferent local conditions, may remain undecided for a
long while yet. Kovalevsky maintains that the con-
ditions 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 ter-
ritory 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 neigh-
bors. If this was the case, then the passage in Taci-
tus 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 aban-
doned. 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 in-
creased so that the collective cultivation became in-
compatible with the prevailing conditions of produc-
tion, the household communities were dissolved. The
former common fields and meadows were then di-
vided in the well-known manner among the various
individual families that had now formed. The divis-
ion 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 investiga-
tion. As for Germany and, in the second place, for
THE GENS AMONG CELTS AND GERMANS 171

other German countries, it cannot be denied that this

view affords in many instances a better interpreta-
tion of historical authorities and a readier solution of
difficulties than the idea of tracing the village com-
munity to the time of Tacitus. The oldest docu-
ments, 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 diffi-
culties 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 inter-
mediate stage of the household community. *
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 Ger-
mans lived in block houses ; their clothing was still
as primitive as their forests, consisting of rough
woolen cloaks, animal skins and linen underclothing
Translator's note.
*The household community is still a distinct stage of
production in Georgia (South Russia). The northern bound-
ary 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 fur die gesammte Staats-
wissenschaft, Erganzungsheft I., Tubingen, 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 orna-
ments. 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 them-
selves. 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."
172 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 Scot-
land 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 orna-
ments 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 indus-
try 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
THE GENS AMONG CELTS AND GERMANS 173

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 Amer-
ican Indians, it was only held by gentes, not by
tribes or leagues of tribes. The chiefs of peace (prin-
cipes) 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 Taci-
tus implicitly states. The public meeting was the
real executive. The king or chief of the tribe pre-
sided. 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
THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY 174

of the transactions and questioner. Among Ger-

mans, 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, be-
cause 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 coun-
tries. 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 pri-
vate 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 por-
tended the decay of the old gentile liberty, and the
THE GENS AMONG CELTS AND GERMANS 175

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 plunder-
ing expeditions. Robbery became their life purpose.
If the leader found nothing to do in his neighbor-
hood, he marched his troops to other countries, where
a prospect of war and booty allured him. The Ger-
man auxiliaries, many of whom fought under the
Roman standard even against Germans, had been
largely recruited among such followings . They rep-
resent the first germs of the "Landsknecht" profes-
sion, 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 con-
stitution 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.
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* members to a single nation
is considerably more than e. g. the Iroquois num-
bered 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* or 182 German geographical square
miles. ** The Germania Magna of the Romans,
reaching to the Vistula, comprised about 500,000
square kilometers . Counting an average of 100,000
Author's ncte.
*The number assumed here is confirmed by a passage of
Diodorus on the Celts of Gaul : "Many nations of unequal
strength are living in Gaui. 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 na-
tions of Gaul, being more highly developed, should be gauged
more numerous than those of Germany.
Translator's note.
*3861 square statute miles.
** 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 21.2592 square
statute miles.
RISE OF THE STATE AMONG GERMANS 177

for any single nation, the total population of Ger-

mania 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 kilo-
meter 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 Adriano-
ple. 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 Chris-
tian era.
After the final settlement in Germany, the popula
tion must have grown with increasing rapidity. The
industrial progress mentioned above would be suffi-
cient 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 Ro-
man 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
178 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 Dan-
ube 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.* 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 an-
tique Greek and Roman civilization. Now we are
standing at its grave. The equalizing plane of Ro-
man 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 na-
tionality. 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 terri-
tories, were still present and made themselves felt.
Yet there was no strength anywhere for combining
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.
RISE OF THE STATE AMONG GERMANS 179

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 enor-
mous 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 pro-
vincial 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 insupport-
able. 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 dis-
order, 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 Ro-
mans. Only in usury they had excelled all other na-
180 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

tions before and after them. What commerce had

managed to exist, had been ruined by official ex-
tortion. 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 reduc-
tion to poverty, decrease of traffic, of handicrafts, of
art, of population, decay of the towns, return of ag-
riculture 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 re-
ceived 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 trans-
ferred by sale together with their lots. Although no
RISE OF THE STATE AMONG GERMANS 181

slaves, still these colonists were not free; they could

not marry free citizens, and marriages with mem-
bers 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 de-
clining 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 dis-
missed, while on the other hand the number of colo-
nists and of beggared free men (similar to the poor
whites in the slave states of America) grew continu-
ously. Christianity is perfectly innocent of this grad-
ual 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. * 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.
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.
182 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 pro-
tectorate 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 dur-
ing 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 vehe-
mently 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 slav-
ery, 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
RISE OF THE STATE AMONG GERMANS 183

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 indi-
vidual 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 sala-
ble private property, a so-called freehold (allodium).
Forests and pastures remained undivided for collec-
tive 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 com-
mune, the members of which, however, still exhibited
traces of kinship. In the countries where mark com-
munes were still preserved-in the North of France,
in England, Germany and Scandinavia-the gentile
constitution gradually merged into a local constitu-
tion and thus acquired the capacity of being fitted
into a state. Nevertheless this local constitution re-
tained 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
184 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 gen-
tile 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 con-
quering nation was the military leader. The internal
and external security of the conquered territory de-
manded 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 ex-
tensive 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 com-
posed of his personal war followers and of the sub-
commanders 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 gen
erally conferred for the lifetime of the king. The
foundation of a new nobility was thus laid at the
expense of the people.
RISE OF THE STATE AMONG GERMANS 185

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 sub-
commanders 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-own-
ing peasants, the mass of the Frank people, were ex-
hausted 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 re-
placed by an army composed of dependents of the
new nobles. Among these servants were also vil-
leins, the descendants of the peasants who had
acknowledged no master but the king and a little
earlier not even a king. Under Charlemagne's suc-
cessors the ruin of the Frank peasantry was aggra-
vated 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” *
(district) counts who strove to make their offices
hereditary. The invasions of the Normans com-
pleted 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 pre-
Translator's note.
*The " Gau" is a larger territory than the "Mark."
Caesar and Tacitus called it pagus.
186 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

vious 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 them-
selves 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,* 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 un-
godly 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 pur.
Translator's note.
*The name given in ancient law to dependent farmers,
RISE OF THE STATE AMONG GERMANS 187

poses. 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 cen-
turies of German rule. This presupposes a low stage
of agriculture and industry. Such a general condi-
tion 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 resi-
dences that left hardly a trace. These experiments
were continued only by the convents and brought
results only for them. But the convents were ab-
normal 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
188 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 so-
cial 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, mas-
ters 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 reorgan-
ization and differentiation of West European human-
ity for the coming history. The Germans had indeed
infused a new life into Europe. Therefore the dis-
solution 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 tremen-
dous 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 Ger-
mans 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 proper-
ties, but simply by their barbarism, their gentile
constitution.
Their personal efficiency and bravery, their love
of liberty, and their democratic instinct which re-
RISE OF THE STATE AMONG GERMANS 189

garded 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 mono-
gamy, 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 coun-
tries-Germany, North of France, and England-and
thus give a local coherence and the means of resist-
ance 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, un-
less it was again their barbarism, their exclusively
barbarian mode of settling in gentes ?
And in conclusion, if they could develop and uni-
versally introduce the mild form of servitude which
they had been practicing at home, and which more
and more displaced slavery also in the Roman em-
pire--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 an-
cient 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 culti-
vateurs des moyens d'affranchissement collectif et
190 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY
1
progressif) and is therefore far superior to slavery.
which permits only the immediate enfranchisement
of the individual without any transitory stage. An-
tiquity did not know any abolition of slavery by re-
bellion, 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.
CHAPTER IX.

BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION.

Having observed the dissolution of the gentile

order in the three concrete cases of the Greek, Ro-
man, 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 ad-
vent 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 sav-
agery, 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 condi-
tions, and it was well calculated to smooth over all
internal difficulties that could arise in this social
192 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 gran-
deur 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 be-
tween 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 condi-
tions.
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 fish-
ing tackle, the women of the household goods and
utensils. The household was communistic, compris-
ing several, and often many, families. * Whatever
Author's note.
*Especially on the northwest coast of America ; see Ban-
croft. 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.
1
BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION 193

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 decep-
tive 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 mate-
rial 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 manu-
facturing weapons and tools may have led to a
transient division of labor. For example, unques-
tionable 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 collec-
tivity, as did the artisans of the Indian gentile order.
At any rate, no other exchange than that within the
194 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 estab-
lished 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 commodi-
ties were measured in exchange. In short, cattle as-
sumed 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 com-
modity developed at the very beginning of the ex-
change of commodities.
Horticulture, probably unknown to the Asiatic bar-
barians of the lower stage, arose not later than the
middle stage of barbarism, as the forerunner of agri-
culture. 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 indispensa-
ble. 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 be-
longed 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 fol
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
BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION 195

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 un-
known. Gold and silver were already used for orna-
ment 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 nec-
essary 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 slav-
ery in its wake. Out of the first great division
of social labor arose the first great division of so-
ciety into two classes : masters and servants, exploit-
ers 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 ac-
complished 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 pro-
duction 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
196 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY
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 se
cured 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 house
holds. 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 pro-
duction and restricted to domestic labor. The eman
cipation 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 participa-
tion in production, but actually call for it and, be
sides, endeavor to transform domestic work also into
a public industry.
Man's advent to practical supremacy in the house-
BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION 197

hold marked the removal of the last barrier to his

universal supremacy . His unlimited rule was em-
phasized and endowed with continuity by the down.
fall 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 bar
barism, that period in which all nations of civiliza-
tion 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 cul-
tivation. 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 disap-
peared 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 irre-
sistible, 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 as-
tounding progress of architecture, but also an in-
crease 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 produc-
198 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

tion. 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 indi-
vidual. The second great division of labor took
place : handicrafts separatea 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 spo-
radic 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, agri-
culture 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 pref-
erence 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 or 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.
BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION 199

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 ter-
ritory, was the following step. The military leader-
rex, basileus, thiudans- became an indispensable
and standing official. The public meeting was intro-
duced 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 pro-
fession. 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 consti-
tution, and their turrets already reached up into
civilization . The internal affairs underwent a sim-
ilar change. The plundering wars increased the
power of the military leader and of the subcommand-
ers. 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 founda-
tion of hereditary royalty and nobility was laid.
In this manner the organs of the gentile constitution
200 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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 organiza.vn for plun-
dering 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 plun-
dering.

We have now reached the threshold of civiliza-

tion. This stage is inaugurated by a new progress
in the division of labor. In the lower stage of bar-
barism 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 fur-
nished the conditions necessary for a regular ex-
change. The upper stage of barbarism introduced a
new division of labor between agriculture and handi-
crafts, resulting in the production of a continually
increasing amount of commodities for the special
purpose of exchange, so that exchange between in-
dividuals became a vital function of society. Civili-
zation strengthened and intensified all the established
BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION 201

divisions of labor, especially by rendering the con-

trast 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 con-
cerned with production. They divided the producers
into directors and directed, or into producers on a
more or less extensive scale. But here a class ap-
pears 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 produc-
tion. 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 becom-
ing the most useful class in society ; a class of para-
sites, genuine social ichneumons, that skim the cream
off production at home and abroad as a reward for
very insignificant services ; that rapidly amass enor-
mous 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
202 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

hiding all other commodities in its mysterious bosom

had been discovered, a charm that could be trans-
formed 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 pros-
trate 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 snow
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 Gre-
cian 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 de-
sired 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 fet-
ter-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
BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION 203

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 pros-
titution 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 * whose forced
labor formed the basis on which the whole super-
structure of society was reared.
Let us now see what became of the gentile consti-
tution 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
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.
204 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY
to be the case. Gentes and tribes were everywhere
hopelessly intermingled, slaves, clients, and foreign-
ers 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 chang-
ing 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 com-
mon 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 in-
terests 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 in-.
Icluded even strangers . Hence the new organs nec-
essarily had to form outside of the gentile constitu-
tion. 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 gen-
tiles. These strangers could become very powerful ,
as in Rome, and they were too numerous to be grad-
ually absorbed by the gentes and tribes. The gen-
tiles confronted these masses as a compact body of
privileged individuals. What had once been a nat-
BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION 205

ural democracy, had been transformed into an odious

aristocracy. The gentile constitution had grown out
of a society that did not know any internal contra-
dictions, 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 ex-
ploited 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 strug-
gling 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 con-

crete 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 gen-
tile 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 re-
mains the state which soon engulfed both gentile aris-
tocracy and plebs. Finally, among the German con-
querors of the Roman empire, the state grew as a
direct result of the conquest of large foreign terri-
tories which the gentile constitution was powerless to
control. But this conquest did not necessitate either
206 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

a serious fight with the former population or a more

advanced division of labor. Conquerors and con-
quered were almost in the same stage of economic
development, so that the economic basis of society
remained undisturbed. Hence gentilism could pre-
serve for many centuries an unchanged territorial
character in the form of mark communes, and even
rejuvenate itself in the nobility and patrician fam-
ilies of later years, or in the peasantry, as e. g. in
Dithmarsia. *
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 irrecon-
cilable contradictions which it is powerless to ban-
ish. In order that these contradictions, these classes
with conflicting economic interests, may not annihi-
late 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 supre-
macy over it and becoming more and more divorced
from it, is the state.
The state differs from gentilism in that it first di-
vides its members by territories. As we have seen,
the old bonds of blood kinship uniting the gentile
bodies had become inefficient, because they were de-
pendent on the condition, now no longer a fact, that
all gentiles should live on a certain territory. The
Author's note.
*The first historian who had at least a vague conception
of the nature of the gens was Niebuhr, thanks to his famil-
larity with the Dithmarsian families. The same source,
however, is also responsible for his errors.
BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION 207

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 com-
pared 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 co-
ërcion 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 un-
known 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 popu-
lous. 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 threat-
ens to swallow the whole society and the state itself.
208 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

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. * 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 civ-
Ilization 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 so-
ciety, 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 con-
flicts, it is as a rule the state of the most powerful
economic class that by force of its economic supre-
macy 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 hold-
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
erime is a very good case in point.
BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION 209

ing 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 inde-
pendence by posing as the mediator between them.
The absolute monarchy of the seventeenth and eight-
eenth 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 ben-
efit of the degenerate Prussian cabbage junkers. *
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 noth-
Translator's note.
"Junker" is a contemptuous term for the land-owning
nobility.
210 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

ing of property distinctions.* It is that form of the

state which under modern conditions of society be-
comes more and more an unavoidable necessity. The
last decisive struggle between proletariat and bour-
geoisie can only be fought out under this state form. *
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 classi-
cal 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 cen-
ter. The United States and the latest French re-
public are striking examples, and good old Switzer-
land has contributed its share to illustrate this point.
That a democratic republic is not necessary for this
fraternal bond between stock exchange and govern-
ment is proved by England and last, not least, Ger-
many, where it is doubtful whether Bismarck or
Bleichroeder was more favored by the introduction
of universal suffrage. * The possessing class rules
Translator's note.
*In the United States, the poll tax is an indirect property
qualification, as it strikes those who, through lack of em-
ployment, 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 quali-
fications 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.
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).
Translator's note.
*Suffrage in Germany, though universal for men is by no
BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION 211

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 capital-
ists. Universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity
of the working class. It can and will never be any-
thing 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 pos-
itive 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 re-
organize production on the basis of a free and equal
association of the producers, will transfer the ma-
chinery of state where it will then belong : into the
means equal, but founded on property qualifications. In Prus-
sia, 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.
212 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

Museum of Antiquities by the side of the spinning

wheel and the bronze ax.

Civilization is, as we have seen, that stage of so-

ciety, in which the division of labor, the resulting
exchange between individuals, and the production of
commodities combining them, reach their highest de-
velopment 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 con-
trol of production and of the products by the pro-
ducers. 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 indi-
viduals the prevailing rule, and thus introduced the
exchange between individuals, in the manner men-
tioned above. Gradually, the production of commodi-
ties 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 compli-
cated. The fate of the products becomes still more
BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION 213

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 pro-
ducers have lost the control of the aggregate
production in their sphere of life, and the mer-
chants have not yet acquired this control. Prod-
ucts 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 de-
termines 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 pro-
cesses 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 eco-
nomic laws of production are modified by the differ-
ent 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 com-
mercial crises.
We have seen that human labor power is enabled
at a very early stage of production to produce con-
siderably more than is needed to maintain the pro-
214 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY
ducer. 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
bcame 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 civiliza-
tion. Slavery is the first form of exploitation, charac-
teristic of the antique world. Then followed feudal-
ism 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 civiliza-
tion. Their invariable mark is either open or, in
modern times, disguised slavery.
The stage of commodity production introducing
civilization is marked economically by the introduc-
tion 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 mort-
gage; (4) slave labor as the prevailing form of produc-
tion. The form of the family corresponding to civili-
zation and becoming its pronounced custom is mono-
gamy, 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. Civil-
ization is furthermore characterized on one side by
BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION 215

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.* In Ger-
many 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
Author's note.
*Lassalle's "System of Acquired Rights" argues in its sec-
ond 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 concep-
tion 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.
216 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

that without them the highest emoluments of mod-

ern wealth would have been missing. Exploitation of
one class by another being the basis of civilization,
Its whole development involves a continual contradic-
tion. 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 oppres-
sion 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, civiliza-
tion 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 necessar-
ily created by it, to excuse them or to deny their
existence, in short to introduce a conventional hypoc-
risy that culminates in the declaration : The exploita-
tion of the oppressed class is carried on by the ex-
ploiting 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. *
Author's note.
*I first intended to place the brilliant critique of civiliza-
tion, 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 character
istics of civilization, and that he calls them a war of the
BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION 217

And now, in conclusion, let me add Morgan's judg

ment of civilization (Ancient Society, page 552) :
"Since the advent of civilization, the outgrowth of
property has been so immense, its forms so diversi-
fied, its uses so expanding and its management so in-
telligent in the interest of its owners that it has be-
come, 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 obli-
gations 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 ex-
istence; 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, broth-
erhood 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 fratern-
ity of the ancient gentes."
rich against the poor. We also find with him the deep
perception that the Individual families (les familles incoher-
entes) are the economic units of all faulty societies divided
by opposing interests.

THE END.
!
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

3 9015 02494 4756