Cheat sheet: About the work of K. Marx and F. Engels “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Analysis of the work of Friedrich Engels “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State The Origin of the Family of Private Property

Until the 60sThe 19th century was dominated by religious views and the patriarchal family was considered the most ancient. Family forms that exist among other peoples were not built historically and were not connected in any way. It was a time of accumulation of information about different forms of the family, especially among peoples who were lagging behind in development. The first to study the family was Bahoven (1861 "Mother's Right"). According to Bahoven, it was not the improvement of living conditions, but the people's perception of these changes that caused a change in the social status of men and women.. Bahoven's closest receiver is J. McLennan. McLennan suggested, based on the existence of similar traditions among modern peoples, that in ancient times there was a custom to kidnap wives on the side of other tribes. Lennan also defined exogamy and endogamy.. He also pointed out the wide spread of exogamy and recognized the order of descent by maternal law. initial. McLennan singled out only three types of marriage: polyandry, polygamy and monogamy.

Morgan appeared on the scientific scene in 1871. He pointed out that endogamy and exogamy should not be opposed at all. In his opinion, in case of group marriage, the tribe was divided into clans, in which sexual relations were forbidden. Morgan discovered the original genus, based on the maternal right, which preceded the paternal right of the civilized peoples.

There are two types of production: means of subsistence (food items, clothing, housing) and the person himself (procreation). Social orders depend on both types of production (on labor and on the family).

Morgan and Engels believed: exogamy and endogamy are not opposites; in group marriage, the tribe was divided into groups connected by maternal line within which marriage was prohibited. This refutes McLennan's theories. That. the maternal genus, based on maternal right as a stage, which preceded the genus of civilized peoples based on paternal right, is of great importance for primitive history.

Prehistoric stages of culture: savagery, barbarism, civilization. Savagery and barbarism are divided into three levels (lower, middle, highest).

In primitive society, sexual relations were not limited. Proof of Existence: Modern Underdeveloped Tribes. When trying to refute, they refer to the animal world. We know almost nothing about the family and other cohabiting groups of monkeys. In the animal kingdom, only two forms of the family are known: polygamy and cohabitation by separate couples; only one spouse is allowed at a time. The jealousy of the male, which at the same time binds and limits the family of animals, brings it into conflict with the herd; because of this jealousy, the herd can suffer greatly; this is proof that the primitive and animal families are incompatible. To get out of the primitive state, it was necessary to unite the herd for joint actions. Group marriage, which left little room for jealousy, is replaced by polyandry, which also excludes jealousy, and therefore unknown to animals. According to Morgan, from a primitive state of disordered relations, very early developed:

1.consanguineous family(marital rights and obligations are excluded only between ancestors and descendants).

2. Punalual family(excluded sexual relations between brothers and sisters, between parents and descendants). With the P. family, a genus appears- the basis of social order in ancient society. A clan or several clans of sisters became the core of one community, their uterine brothers became the core of another - this is how the P. family came about.

Because in group marriage, descent can only be established from the maternal side, only the female line is recognized. Therefore, the recognition of origin is called maternal right. Group marriage is a marriage between classes, a mass marriage of a whole class of men, often scattered throughout the mainland, with an equally scattered class of women. The moral law that assigns them to each other forbids, under the threat of shameful punishment, any sexual intercourse outside the marriage classes that belong to each other. With the appearance of the custom of kidnapping women, there are signs of a transition to monogamy in the form of pair marriage. Marriage by whole classes is the original form of group marriage, while the punaluan family is the highest stage of its development.

3. couple family- a man had a chief wife among many wives, and he was her chief husband among other husbands. The bonds of marriage can be easily dissolved by either side, and the children, as before, belong only to the mother. The paired family is too weak and unstable to force a household. The communist household, in which the majority of women belong to the same genus while the men belong to different gens, is the basis of woman's dominance. A widespread form of transition from group marriage to pair marriage was ransom by which a woman acquired the right to belong to only one man. The transition to monogamy was mainly due to women. Only after the transition to pair marriage was made for women, men were able to introduce strict monogamy (only for women). With the introduction of cattle breeding, metalworking, weaving and crop farming, as wealth grew, they gave the husband a more powerful position in the family than the woman, on the one hand, and on the other gave rise to a desire to use this established position in order to change the traditional order. inheritance for children. This led to the abolition of maternal rights. The right of male descent and the right of paternal inheritance were introduced. The overthrow of motherhood was a world-historic defeat for the female sex.

4. Monogamous family - arises from a paired family, at the turn between the middle and highest stages of barbarism, based on the dominance of the husband, with the express purpose of producing children whose descent from a certain father is unquestionable. It differs from pair marriage in much greater strength (only the husband has the right to reject his wife). New form the Greeks had families. The Greek woman is for a man only the mother of his heirs, his chief housekeeper and overseer of his slaves. It was the existence of slavery, the presence of slaves at the complete disposal of men, that made monogamy only for women. Monogamy was the first form of family based not on natural, but on economic conditions. Thus, monogamy appears in history as the enslavement of one sex by another, the proclamation of a contradiction between the sexes.

By hetaerism, Morgan understands, along with monogamy, non-marital sexual relations of men with unmarried women. For the first time, a premise was created on the basis of which individual sexual love could develop from monogamy, which was unknown to the entire ancient world.

Marriage, in order to be valid, must be a contract entered into voluntarily by both parties, and both parties must have equal rights and obligations towards each other. With the legal equality of men and women in marriage, the introduction of the household has lost its public character, it has become a private occupation; the wife became the chief servant, was removed from participation in social production.

Three main forms of marriage corresponding to the three main stages of human development: savagery corresponds to group marriage, barbarism - double marriage, civilization - monogamy. The peculiarity of the progress that appears in this succession of forms is that women are deprived of sexual freedom, but not men.

We are heading towards a social upheaval when the existing foundations of monogamy disappear. like prostitution. The forthcoming social upheaval will transform the means of production into public ownership. Then monogamy will become a reality for men as well. The economy will turn into a social branch of labor, the care of children and their upbringing will become public. A new moment comes into play - individual sexual love. Modern sexual love presupposes mutual love in the beloved being. A criterion of reciprocity appears, which could not have existed in the ancient world. With the triumph of private property, marriage became entirely dependent on considerations of an economic nature. According to the bourgeois understanding, marriage was a legal transaction. The rising bourgeoisie began to recognize the freedom to conclude a contract also in relation to marriage. Marriage remained a class marriage, but within the class there was a certain freedom of choice. Marriage based on sexual love is, by its very nature, monogamy.. The equality of women will be infinitely more conducive to the monogamy of men than to the polyandry of women. Monogamy will lose those characteristics which its emergence from property relations imposes on it, namely the dominance of men and the indissolubility of marriage.

Morgan proved that the genus is an institution common to all peoples.

The gens consists of all persons who, by means of a punaluan marriage and in accordance with the ideas inevitably prevailing in this marriage, form the recognized offspring of one particular ancestor. (among the Iroquois): 1. gens elect their sachem and chief 2. gens depose sachem and war chief at will. 3. none of the members of the clan can marry within the clan. 4. The property of the dead passed to the rest of the members of the clan, it had to remain within the clan. 5. members of the clan were obliged to provide assistance to each other, and especially assistance in avenging damage caused by strangers. 6. The genus has certain names or groups of names. Generic rights are also associated with a family name. 7. A clan may adopt outsiders and in this way accept them as members of its tribe. 8. During religious festivals, sachems and military leaders of individual clans performed priestly functions. 9. The clan has a common burial place. The 10th clan has a council - a meeting of all adult members of the clan. The council was the supreme authority in the city. An Indian tribe in America is characterized by: 1. its own territory and its own name, 2. a special dialect peculiar only to this tribe. 3. the right to solemnly install sachems and military leaders elected by clans, 4. the right to remove them even against the desire of their clan, 5. general religious ideas and cult rites, 6. regulation of relations with other tribes, 7. among some tribes we meet the supreme leader, whose powers, however, are small. Most of the American tribes did not go further than uniting into a tribe. The main features of the few unions of tribes: 1. the eternal union of tribes related by blood on the basis of complete equality and independence in all internal affairs tribe. 2. the organ of the union was the allied council, which consisted of sachems 3. places for sachems were distributed among the tribes and clans. 4. The allied sachems were likewise sachems in their own tribes. 5. All resolutions of the Union Council were to be adopted unanimously. 6. Voting was carried out by tribes.7. an allied council could be convened by each of the tribal councils. 8. Jamming took place in the presence of the assembled people. 9. there was no single head in the union. 10 Union had two top military leaders with equal powers.

The main social unit is the clan, from which the system of clans, phratries and tribes develops. The later class society presented a picture of the development of a small minority at the expense of the exploitation of the majority.

The Greeks already in prehistoric times were organized according to the Americans. But the race of the Greeks is not the archaic race of the Iroquois. Mother's right gave way to father's. Private wealth made the first breach. The second gap is the obligation for a girl to marry within her family.

Many families had their own common religious rites. The system of consanguinity corresponding to the genus in its original

the initial form provided knowledge of the relationship of all members of the clan to each other. The phratry, like that of the Americans, was divided into several daughter clans and united by their original clan.

The formation of various dialects among the Greeks, crowded in a relatively small area, was less developed than in the vast American forests. Management organization: 1. council of elders 2. people's assembly 3. military leader. Sons could count on inheritance by virtue of popular election, which by no means speaks of the recognition of inheritance other than such election as legal. In the Greek system of the heroic era, there was an ancient tribal organization as early as full strength, but at the same time, its destruction began. The right to exploitation and division into classes was approved by the state. The office of basile had judicial and judicial powers.

The change was that a central government was established in Athens. There was a merger into a single nation of neighboring tribes. The office of basile has lost its significance; at the head of the state stood elected from among the nobles - the archons. Production was carried out within the narrowest limits, but the product was entirely at the mercy of the producers. As a consequence of paternal law and monogamy, the phenomenon of the sale of children by the father appears. Each community group had a number of new common interests. New bodies were created to protect their interests and new positions were established. Such institutions created public authority, and for the first time in history divided the people for public purposes not according to kindred groups, but according to residence in one territory. The maximum size of landed property that an individual could own was established. The old consanguine associations began to be forced out. A new element is introduced into the management organization - private property. Dominant occupations: trade, craft (based on slave labor) and artistic craft. Movable property accumulated. With the introduction of a new organization of government and with the admission of a large number of slaves, the organs of the tribal system were pushed aside from public affairs; they have degenerated into private unions and religious brotherhoods.

It is generally accepted that the Roman race was the same institution as the Greek race. The device: paternal law prevailed, there were common religious festivals, a common place of burial, a woman loses her agnatic rights when she gets married, leaves her family; there was a common ownership of land, members of the clan were obliged to provide each other with protection and assistance, there was a right to bear a family name, the right to accept outsiders into the clan, the right to elect and dismiss an elder. Roman women belonging to a genus could initially marry only within their genus, i.e. the Roman genus was exogamous (according to Mommsen). Ten genera united in a phratry, which in Rome was called curia and had more important social functions than the Greek phratry. Only one who was a member of the gens, and through his gens, a member of the curia and the tribe, could belong to the Roman people. Management organization: public affairs were in charge of the senate (consisted of the elders of three hundred clans). The Senate had the right to make final decisions on many issues and preliminarily discuss the most important of them. The people gathered in curiae, in curiae - by birth. In making decisions, each of the thirty curiae had one vote. The assembly of the curias had enormous political power (including appointing the rexa - the king). The position of rexa was not hereditary, but was chosen at the suggestion of his predecessor. The Romans during the period of the kings had a military democracy based on clans, phratries and tribes. The population grew by immigration and by conquered peoples. All the inhabitants of the newly conquered peoples were personally free people. According to the new organization of management, a new people's assembly was created, in which they participated, or from which they were excludedpopulus and plebeians. The conscripted male population was divided according to their property into six classes. In the people's assembly of centuries, citizens were placed according to the military model. All the political rights of the former assembly of curiae passed to this new assembly of centuries. A new state structure was created, based on territorial division and property differences.

In the 11th century, there is cultivation of the land by villages; pair marriage has by no means been supplanted by monogamy. Women enjoyed the right to vote in popular assemblies. Irish peasants are often divided into parties - this is an artificial revival of the destroyed clans. However, in some areas, members of the genus still live together in the old territory. The Germans, up to the resettlement of peoples, were formed into clans. The mother's brother considered his nephew to be his son, a remnant of the family, organized in accordance with maternal law. Traces of maternal right are also found in the Middle Ages: they see a woman as sacred and prophetic, at home the dominance of the wife is indisputable. The form of marriage was a pair marriage, gradually approaching monogamy, polygamy of nobles was allowed, while the chastity of girls was generally strictly observed. From the tribal system followed the obligation to inherit the wergeld - an expiatory fine paid instead of blood feud for murder or damage. The settlements of the Germans did not consist of villages, but of large family communities that spanned several generations, occupied an appropriate piece of land for cultivation and used the surrounding wastelands together with their neighbors as a common brand. When the number of members of the communities increased greatly, these communities broke up, the meadows began to be divided by individual households. Everywhere there was a council of elders. The elders live partly on honorary offerings from members of the tribe in cattle, grain, and so on. The elective principle is replaced by hereditary law. There is a noble family in every kind. Military commanders were elected regardless of origin, power was concentrated in the people's assembly. The court is decided by all together, under the chairmanship of the elder, when the verdict was pronounced by the whole team. Tribal alliances formed from which most of the new nobility originate. The institution of the squad contributed to the emergence of royal power. A military leader who gained fame gathered around him a detachment of young people thirsty for prey. The appearance of squads led to the decline of the ancient people's freedom. The system of military mercenaries made it possible to create the second of the main parts of the later nobility.

The Germans were very numerous. By the 3rd century, metal processing and textile products were widespread, and there were active relations with Rome. The Germans were advancing along the entire line of the Rhine - the population was growing. In the fifth century, the way was opened to the weakened Roman Empire. Roman rule was based on the merciless exploitation of the occupied lands, all big role agriculture acquired, small farming spread. Slavery ceased to pay for itself and therefore died out. In the provinces, small peasants, in order to protect themselves from the arbitrariness of officials and judges, sought protection for themselves. The Germans took two-thirds of all the land from the Romans and divided it among themselves. With the mixing of the German population with the Roman, the kinship nature of the connection receded into the background before the territorial one. The blood connection in the city soon lost its importance as a result of the conquest. The organs of the tribal system have become the organs of the state. The moment has come for the transformation of the power of the military leader into royal power. The social stratification and distribution of property in the Roman Empire during the period of decline fully corresponded to the then level of production in agriculture and industry; the level of production during the next four hundred years again gave rise to the same distribution of property and the same classes of population, the city lost its dominance over the countryside.

On the lowest rung of barbarism there is no place for domination and enslavement. Man and woman are each master in their own area: woman in the house, man in the forest. The first major social division of labor occurred when the pastoral tribes separated themselves from the general mass of barbarians. This spawned a regular exchange. livestock acquired the function of money. Money begins to actively improve. Important achievements were the loom and the smelting of metal ores. A free (surplus) product appeared. With the increase in the need for daily labor costs, slavery appeared. There were exploiters and slaves. The division of labor in the family determined the distribution of property between men and women. Male autocracy develops. The family begins to oppose the clan. With the second major division of labor, handicrafts separated from agriculture. The union of kindred tribes becomes a necessity everywhere, and soon their merging becomes necessary, and thus the merging of individual tribal territories into one common territory of the whole people. The military leader appears as the head, because. an active aggressive policy is being pursued (hence the name of military democracy). Robbery becomes a permanent occupation. Predatory wars strengthen the power of the supreme commander. the foundations of hereditary royalty and hereditary nobility are being laid. The organs are transformed from instruments of the people's will into independent organs of domination and oppression. This is the frontier of civilization.

Civilization opens up with a new step forward in the division of labor and strengthens all the divisions of labor that existed before, especially by sharpening the antithesis between town and country. With the advent of civilization comes a class merchants. This new class takes control of production. Together with the merchant class, metal money appears. Following the purchase of commodities with money, there is a loan, and with the loan interest and usury. Land wealth appears. The right of individuals to own parcels of land, originally granted to them by their gens or tribes, has now been strengthened to such an extent that these parcels now belong to them on the basis of hereditary property rights. Full free ownership of land meant not only the possibility of free and unlimited possession of it, but also the possibility of alienating it. There was a mortgage. There was a concentration and centralization of wealth in the hands of a small class, and at the same time the impoverishment of the masses grew. The tribal nobility was pushed aside. As a result of the revolution in the conditions of production and the changes it caused in the social structure, new needs and interests arose not only alien to the ancient tribal system, but in all respects opposite to it. The tribal system was destroyed by the division of labor and division into classes, it was replaced by the state.

Athens represents the most classical form of the development of statehood: the state arises from class opposites that develop within the tribal society itself.

The state is a product of society at a certain stage of development.; the state is the recognition that this society is confused. The state distinguishes from the tribal organization the territorial division of its subjects, the establishment of public power, which no longer coincides directly with the population, organizing itself as an armed force and taxes necessary to maintain public power. Possessing public power and the right to levy taxes, officials become like an organ of society over society. The state arose from the need to hold the opposites of classes, and therefore it is the instrument of the most powerful of these classes. In most states known to history, the rights granted to citizens are commensurate with their property status. The highest form of state is a democratic republic.

The state does not exist forever, there were peoples who did without it, who had no idea about the state and state power. At a certain stage of development, the state becomes a necessity.

We are approaching the stage when the existence of classes becomes a hindrance to the development of production. Civilization is that stage of social development at which the division of labor, the exchange between individuals resulting from it, and the commodity production that combines both these processes, reach their full flowering and bring about a revolution in the whole of the former society. Production at all previous stages of social development was essentially collective, likewise, consumption was reduced to the direct distribution of products within larger or smaller communist communities.. Gradually, commodity production becomes the dominant form. In commodity production, products change hands. The manufacturer gives away his product. Money appears as an intermediary, merchant. The process of exchange becomes even more confusing, the ultimate fate of products even more incomprehensible. With the advent of slavery comes the exploiting and exploited classes.

The stage of commodity production from which civilization begins is economically characterized by the introduction of metal money, the appearance of merchants, the emergence of private ownership of land and mortgages, the emergence of slave labor as the dominant form of production. Civilization corresponds to monogamy. The binding force is the state. Civilization is characterized by the contradiction between the city and the countryside, the introduction of wills. Since the basis of civilization is the exploitation of one class by another, every step forward in production means a step back in the position of the oppressed class. The most striking example of this is driving, the consequences of which are well known.

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Summary

The first edition of this work appeared in 1884 under the authorship of Friedrich Engels. His work "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State" is based on the factual material contained in the work of L. Morgan "Ancient Society".

Then, in 1891, F. Engels publishes a new edition of his work, with some additions, because seven years have passed since the first edition was published, and during these years great success has been achieved in the study of the primitive forms of the family.

In his work, Engels revised the data of Morgan and other scientists on this topic, made additions and expressed his point of view and his theory. Thus, F. Engels, in Morgan's study, made critical remarks that relate to this topic and wrote them down in the first preface of 1884: “According to the materialistic understanding, the defining moment in history is, ultimately, the production and reproduction of immediate life. But it is itself of two kinds. On the one hand, the production of means of subsistence: food, clothing, housing and the tools necessary for this; on the other hand, the production of man himself, the continuation of the race. The social order in which people of a certain historical epoch of a certain country live is determined by both types of production: the stage of development, on the one hand, of labor, on the other, of the family. The less developed labor is, the more limited the quantity of its products, and consequently the wealth of society, the more stronger than the dependence of the social system on tribal ties is more pronounced. Meanwhile, within the framework of this gentile structure of society, the productivity of labor is developing more and more, and with it - private property exchange, property differences, the ability to use someone else's labor force and thus the basis of class contradictions: new social elements that, for generations, try to to adapt the old social system to the new conditions, until finally the incompatibility of both leads to a complete overturn. The old society, resting on ancestral icings, explodes as a result of the collision of the newly formed social classes; its place is taken by a new society, organized into a state, the lower links of which are no longer tribal, but territorial associations - a society in which the family system is completely subordinated to property relations and in which class contradictions and class struggle, which form the content of all written history, are now freely developing. up to our time."

This work reveals the patterns of development of the primitive communal system, the main stages of its development and the reasons for its inevitable death. Here, in a dialectical connection, the processes of development and the emergence of the family, private property and the state are shown, which led to the emergence of a class society.

The first chapter is called "Prehistoric stages of culture" and is divided into 3 main eras: savagery, barbarism, civilization. But this work describes only the first two epochs, which within themselves are still divided into 3 stages of development - lower, middle and higher.

Let us briefly characterize these 2 epochs.

The lowest step. Childhood of the human race. People were still in their original places of residence, in tropical forests. Their food was fruits, nuts, roots; the main achievement of this period is the emergence of articulate speech.

Middle step. It begins with the introduction of fish food and the use of fire. But with this new food they people became independent of climate and locality; they could have settled at a great distance. The settlement of new places and the constant striving to search, combined with possession with fire, obtained by friction, provided new means of nutrition.

The highest level. It begins with the invention of the bow and arrow, thanks to which game became a permanent food, and hunting became one of the usual branches of labor. Comparing with each other peoples who already know the bow and arrow, but are not yet familiar with the art of pottery, one can find some rudiments of settlement in villages, a certain stage in mastering the production of means of subsistence: wooden vessels and utensils, hand-weaving stone tools. Fire and a stone ax already make it possible to make boats and make logs and planks for building a dwelling.

Barbarism

The lowest step. Begins with the introduction of pottery. It owed its origin to the coating of wicker vessels with clay in order to make them fireproof.

A characteristic feature of this period is the domestication and breeding of animals and the cultivation of plants. The eastern mainland, the so-called Old World, possessed almost all kinds of animals suitable for breeding and kinds of cereals, except for one; the western mainland, America, of all tameable animals, only llama, and of cultivated cereals, only one - maize. As a result of this difference in natural conditions and conditions, the population of each hemisphere develops according to its own scenario, and the landmarks at the boundaries of individual stages of development become different for each of the hemispheres.

The middle stage, in the east begins with the domestication of domestic animals, in the west with the cultivation of edible plants by means of irrigation and the use of buildings made of adobes (raw bricks dried in the sun) and stone. The domestication of herds and the formation of large herds led to a pastoral life. The cultivation of cereals was caused, first of all, by the need for fodder for livestock, and only later became an important source of food for people.

The highest level. It begins with the smelting of iron ore and passes into civilization as a result of letter writing and the application of its writing to verbal creativity. This stage, traversed by itself only in the Eastern Hemisphere, is richer in production success than all the previous stages. The Greeks of the heroic era, the Italian tribes shortly before the founding of Rome, the Germans of Tacitus, the Normans of the Vikings belong to it.

There was an invention of an iron plow, an ax, a shovel; thanks to this, agriculture became on a large scale, field cultivation, an increase in subsistence supplies. The rapid growth of the population also began, which became denser in small spaces, the makings of a central government appear. Iron tools appeared, metalworking, turning into an artistic craft, the beginnings of architecture as an art, cities surrounded by battlements with towers, the Homeric era, all mythology - this is the main legacy that the Greeks transferred from barbarism to civilization.

The second chapter is called "Family", in which, based on the analysis of a huge amount of factual material, it is concluded that in primitive human society there was such a state when every woman belonged to every man and equally every man belonged to every woman. This was the period of the so-called group marriage, in which there was very little room for jealousy. This marriage can be called disordered.

And According to Morgan, from this primitive state of disordered relations, it probably developed quite early:

The consanguineous family is the first step of the family. Here the marriage groups are divided into generations: all grandparents within the family are husbands and wives to each other, as well as their children, i.e. fathers and mothers; likewise, the children of the latter form the third circle common spouses, and their children, great-grandchildren of the first, are the fourth circle.

This type of family is already extinct. Even among the most savage peoples of which history tells, one cannot find a single indisputable example of it. But that such a family must exist, we are forced to admit by the Hawaiian system of kinship, which remains in force even to this day throughout Polynesia, and expresses such degrees of consanguinity as can arise only with this form of family; All further development of the family, which presupposes the existence of this form as a necessary initial stage, forces us to recognize this.

Punal family. In it, parents and children, as well as brothers and sisters, are excluded from sexual intercourse. The institution of the genus arose from the punaluan family. Genus is understood as a community of relatives who have one woman - an ancestor. In group marriage, of course, kinship could only be established through the female line.

According to Hawaiian custom, a certain number of sisters, of the same uterine or more distant degrees of relationship (cousins, second cousins, etc.), were common wives of their common husbands, from which, however, their brothers were excluded; these husbands no longer called each other brother, they were no longer supposed to be brothers, but “punalua”, that is, a close comrade. Likewise, a number of brothers, of the same uterine or more distant degrees of relationship, were married to a certain number of women, but not their sisters, and these women called each other punalua.

Paired family. In it, a man lives with one woman, but polygamy takes place, although rarely. From a woman for the entire time of cohabitation, the strictest fidelity is required. The prohibition of marriages between relatives leads to the strengthening of the vitality and the development of the mental abilities of people.

“A woman among all savages and among all tribes standing on the lower, middle, and partly even the highest level of barbarism, not only enjoys freedom, but also occupies a very honorable position.” The era of barbarism is distinguished by the presence of matriarchy. This is explained by the fact that the women who run the communist household belong to the same clan, while the men belong to different ones.

During the era of barbarism, herds of horses, camels, donkeys, cattle, sheep, goats and pigs appeared. This property multiplied and delivered plentiful dairy and meat food. The hunt has receded into the background. Slaves appeared. The emergence of slavery is due to the fact that the human labor force began to provide a significant income that prevails over the cost of its maintenance. The husband thus became the owner of cattle and slaves.

Gradually, tribal wealth becomes the property of the heads of families (herds, metal utensils, luxury items and slaves). “Thus, as wealth grew, it gave the husband a more powerful position in the family than the wife, and gave rise, on the one hand, to using this established position in order to change the usual order of inheritance in favor of children.” But this could not be, as long as the origin was considered by maternal right. It had to be cancelled, and it was cancelled. At the same time, the origin began to be determined not by the maternal, but by the male line, and the right to inherit from the father was introduced.

“The overthrow of motherhood was a world-historic defeat for the female sex. The husband seized the reins of government in the house, and the woman lost her honorable position, was turned into a servant, into a slave to his lust, into a simple instrument of procreation.

monogamous family. “She arises from a paired family, as explained above, at the turn between the middle and highest stages of barbarism; its final victory is one of the signs of the beginning of civilization. It is based on the dominion of the husband, with the express purpose of producing children whose descent from the father is unquestionable, and this indisputable descent is necessary because the children must eventually come into possession of the father's property as direct heirs. It differs from pair marriage in a much greater strength of marriage bonds, which are no longer terminated at the request of either party.

The emerging monogamy is nothing but the enslavement of one sex by the other. F. Engels writes: "The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of antagonism between husband and wife in monogamy, and the first class oppression coincides with the enslavement of the female sex by the male."

So, we have three main forms of marriage, in general, corresponding to the three main stages of human development. Savagery corresponds to group marriage, barbarism - pair marriage, civilization - monogamy, complemented by adultery and prostitution. Between pair marriage and monogamy at the highest level of barbarism wedged the domination of men over slaves and polygamy.

“Monogamy arose as a result of the concentration of great wealth in one hand, namely, in the hands of a man, and from the need to transfer these wealth by inheritance to the children of this man, and not another.”

Before the Middle Ages there could be no question of individual sexual love. It goes without saying that physical beauty, friendships, the same inclinations, etc. aroused in people of different sexes a desire for sexual intercourse, that it was not completely indifferent for both men and women with whom they entered into these most intimate relationships. . But from this to modern sexual love is still infinitely far away. Throughout antiquity, marriages were arranged by the parents of the parties to be married, who quietly put up with it.

Modern sexual love is essentially different from simple sexual desire, from the eros of the ancients. Firstly, it presupposes mutual love in a beloved being, in this respect a woman is on an equal footing with a man. Secondly, the strength and duration of sexual love are such that the impossibility of possession and separation appear to both parties as a great, if not the greatest misfortune, they take great risks, even put their lives at stake, just to belong to each other, which happened in ancient times. except in cases of adultery. And, finally, a new moral criterion appears for condemning and justifying sexual intercourse, asking not only whether it was married or extramarital, but also whether it arose out of mutual love or not.

At the end of the second section, F. Engels makes a prediction: “since the monogamous family has noticeably improved since the beginning of civilization, and is especially noticeable in modern times, then it can at least be assumed that it is capable of further improvement until gender equality is achieved. If the monogamous family proves in the distant future unable to fulfill the requirements of society, then it is impossible to predict in advance what character its successor will have.

The third chapter is called "The Iroquois clan", which describes the composition of the Iroquois clan, the specifics this kind. For example, Morgan noticed an interesting fact, in the Iroquois clan, the Seneca tribe has eight genera bearing the names of animals 1) Wolf, 2) Bear, 3) Turtle, 4) Beaver, 5) Deer, 6) Sandpiper, 7) Heron, 8) Falcon . Each clan has its own specific customs.

Several more genera form a phratry, so several phratries, if we take the classical form, form a tribe. The vast majority did not go further than uniting into a tribe. Their few tribes, separated from each other by vast border strips, weakened by eternal wars, occupied a huge space by a small number of people. Alliances between kindred tribes were concluded here and there in case of temporary necessity and disintegrated with its disappearance.

However, in some localities, originally related, but subsequently separated tribes again rallied into permanent alliances, thus taking the first step towards the formation of nations. In the United States, the most developed form of such an alliance is found among the Iroquois.

Thus, we see that the main cell is the genus, and various clan associations already come from it: a phratry, a tribe, or even a union.

In the next, fourth chapter, we will learn a lot about the Greek gender.

The Greeks, like the Pelasgians and other tribal peoples, already in prehistoric times were organized according to the same organic series as the Americans: clan, phratry, tribe, union of tribes. Phratries might not have existed, like the Dorians, the union of tribes might not have formed everywhere, but in all cases the clan was the main unit. By the time they entered the historical arena, the Greeks were on the threshold of civilization; between them and the American tribes discussed above lie almost two whole periods of development, by which the Greeks of the heroic era outstripped the Iroquois. The race of the Greeks, therefore, is no longer the archaic race of the Iroquois, the stamp of group marriage begins to noticeably fade. Maternal law gave way to paternal law, the property of a wealthy heiress would have to pass to her husband upon her marriage, therefore, to another clan, the basis of all tribal law was undermined, due to this they began to allow a girl to marry within her clan in the interests of preserving her family. last of this property.

In the fifth chapter, Engels considers The Rise of the Athenian State. Which developed, partly transforming the organs of the tribal system, partly displacing them by introducing new bodies, and, in the end, completely replacing them with real state authorities. In the historical course of the development of events in Athens, the tribal system collapsed before our eyes, lost its authority, thereby imperceptibly developing the state. Thanks to the division of labor, new groups and industries were formed, new bodies for the protection of interests were created, a public authority appeared, against which the tribal system could no longer resist, or rather, the tribal system in this new society could no longer help society, in connection with their new needs. And the state came to replace him.

The extent to which the state, which had developed in its main features, corresponded to the new social position of the Athenians, is evidenced by the rapid flowering of wealth, trade and industry. The class antagonism on which social and political institutions now rested was no longer an antagonism between the nobility and the common people, but an antagonism between slaves and free, between protected and full citizens.

The emergence of the state among the Athenians is an extremely typical example of the formation of the state in general, because, on the one hand, it occurs in its pure form, without any forcible intervention, external or internal, - the short-term usurpation of power by Peisistratus left no traces, - on the other hand , because in this case a very highly developed form of the state, a democratic republic, arises directly from a tribal society, and, finally, because we are sufficiently aware of all the essential details of the formation of this state.

Chapters: the sixth, seventh and eighth tell us about the kind and origin of the state in Rome, among the Celts and Germans. These chapters tell us about their structure, about the family, about the laws by which they lived from generation to generation, and that when the state was formed, the life of society changed. Which is understandable and inevitable in the transition from one system to another. Unfortunately, not all states arose in the same way as Athens, i.e. without any violent intervention. Suppose in Scotland the death of the tribal system coincides with the suppression of the uprising of 1745. And the Roman state turned into a gigantic complex machine exclusively for sucking the juices out of its subjects. Taxes, state duties and all sorts of exactions plunged the mass of the population into ever deeper poverty, this oppression was intensified and made unbearable by the extortion of governors, tax collectors, soldiers. This is what the Roman state came to with its world domination, it based its right to existence on maintaining order inside and on protection from barbarians from outside, but its order was worse than the worst disorder, and the barbarians, from whom it undertook to protect citizens, were expected by the latter as saviors. . It follows from this that each nation has its own history, and its own transition to state power.

Summing up, F. Engels writes:

“Above, we examined separately the three main forms in which the state rises from the ruins of the tribal system. Athens represents the purest, most classical form: here the state arises directly and predominantly from the class antagonisms that develop within the tribal society itself. In Rome, the tribal society turns into a closed aristocracy among the numerous, standing outside it, disenfranchised, but bearing the duties of the plebs; the victory of the plebs explodes the old tribal system and erects a state on its ruins, in which both the tribal aristocracy and the plebs soon disappear. Finally, among the German conquerors of the Roman Empire, the state arises as a direct product of the conquest of vast foreign territories, for the domination of which the tribal system does not provide any means.

The ninth section is called "Barbarism and Civilization". This final section is a generalization of the above, and is devoted to the general economic conditions that undermined the tribal organization of society and, with the advent of civilization, completely eliminated it. Here we cannot do without extensive quotations from the work of F. Engels, since they formulate in a generalized form the results of what has been stated in the work.

The clan, notes F. Engels, "reaches its heyday at the lowest stage of barbarism." “The greatness of the tribal system, but at the same time its limitations, is manifested in the fact that there is no place for domination and enslavement. Within the tribal system, there is still no distinction between rights and duties ... ".

Later, among a number of advanced tribes, the main branch of labor was not hunting and fishing, but taming, and then raising livestock. "... it was the first major division of labor." An exchange of livestock began between the tribes. Cattle became a commodity through which all commodities were valued, it acquired the functions of money. The loom was invented and metal smelting began. The tools of production and weapons were rapidly improved.

The first major division of labor, together with the increase in the productivity of labor, and consequently also in wealth, and with the expansion of the field of productive activity, under the totality of these historical conditions, necessarily entailed slavery. Out of the first major social division of labor arose the first major division of society into two classes - masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited.

The “wild” warrior and hunter was content in the house with the second place after the woman, the “more meek” shepherd, boasting of his wealth, moved to the first place, and pushed the woman to the second. And she couldn't complain. The division of labor in the family served as the basis for the distribution of property between a man and a woman ... ".

Wealth increased rapidly, it was the wealth of individuals. The production activities of people have expanded and become differentiated. “... A second major division of labor took place: craft separated from agriculture. “With the division of production into two main branches, agriculture and handicraft, production arises directly for exchange - commodity production, and with it trade not only within the tribe and on its borders, but already overseas.” "The difference between rich and poor appears along with the difference between free and slave, with a new division of labor - a new division of society into classes." Exchange between individual producers becomes a vital necessity for society. There is a third most important division of labor - there is a "class, which is no longer engaged in production, but only in the exchange of products." A class of merchants is created.

Along with the emergence of merchants, metallic money also appeared. This was a new means of domination, the commodity of commodities was discovered, which in a latent form contains all other commodities. "Following the purchase of goods with money, there was a money loan, and with it - interest and usury." In the same period, new land relations arise. Previously, the land was the property of the family. Now it began to belong to individuals with the right to inherit, that is, private property. The land was sold and mortgaged.

“Thus, along with the expansion of trade, along with money and monetary usury, landed property and mortgages, the concentration and centralization of wealth in the hands of a small class quickly took place, and along with this, the impoverishment of the masses grew and the mass of the poor increased.” The tribal system turned out to be powerless in the face of new elements that grew up without assistance from it. “The tribal system has outlived its time. It was blown up by the division of labor and its consequence, the division of society into classes. It has been replaced by the state.

Thus, “the state is a product of society at a certain stage of development; the state is the recognition that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, has split into irreconcilable opposites, which it is powerless to get rid of. And so that these opposites, classes with conflicting economic interests, do not devour each other and society in a fruitless struggle, a force became necessary for this, which would moderate the collision, keep it within the boundaries of "order". This force is the state.

The distinctive features of the state are the territorial division of subjects and public authority. Taxes are introduced to maintain public power, the state incurs public debts. As a result of this, officials, as organs of society, stand above society.

Making a forecast for the future, F. Engels concludes by writing the following.

“So, the state does not exist forever. There were societies that did without it, that had no idea about the state and state power. At a certain stage of economic development, which was necessarily connected with the division of society into classes, the state became a necessity because of this division. We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes has not only ceased to be a necessity, but has become a direct hindrance to production.

Classes will disappear just as inevitably as they inevitably arose in the past. With the disappearance of classes, the state will inevitably disappear. A society that organizes production in a new way on the basis of a free and equal association of producers will send the entire state machine to where it will then be its proper place: to the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.

primitive communal system property state

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…According to materialistic understanding, the defining moment in history is ultimately the production and reproduction of immediate life. But it itself, again, is of two kinds. On the one hand - the production of means of subsistence: food, clothing, housing and tools necessary for this; on the other hand, the production of man himself, the continuation of the family. The social order in which people of a certain historical epoch and a certain country live is determined by both types of production: the stage of development, on the one hand, labor, on the other, the family. The less developed labor is, the more limited the quantity of its products, and consequently the wealth of society, the stronger the dependence of the social system on tribal ties is manifested. Meanwhile, within the framework of this gentile structure of society, the productivity of labor develops more and more, and with it private property and exchange, property differences, the possibility of using other people's labor power and thus the basis of class contradictions: new social elements that for generations they try to adapt the old social system to new conditions, until, finally, the incompatibility of both leads to a complete overturn. The old society, based on tribal associations, explodes as a result of the collision of the newly formed social classes; its place is taken by a new society, organized into a state, the lowest links of which are no longer tribal, but territorial associations - a society in which the family system is completely subordinated to property relations and in which class contradictions and class struggle are now freely unfolding, which constitute the content of all written history. up to our time...

... We see ... in the Greek system of the heroic era, the ancient tribal organization is still in full force, but, at the same time, the beginning of its destruction is already beginning: paternal law with the inheritance of property by children, which favored the accumulation of wealth in the family and made the family a force that opposes the clan; the reverse influence of property differences on the organization of government through the formation of the first embryos of hereditary nobility and royal power; slavery at first only of prisoners of war, but already opening up the prospect of enslaving one's own tribesmen and even members of one's own kind; the degeneration of the ancient war of tribe against tribe into systematic robbery on land and at sea in order to seize cattle, slaves and treasures, the transformation of this war into a regular trade, in a word, the praise and veneration of wealth as the highest good and the abuse of ancient tribal orders in order to justify violent robbery of wealth. Only one thing was still lacking: an institution that would not only protect the newly acquired wealth of individuals from the communist traditions of the tribal system, which would not only make private property, previously so little valued, sacred and would declare this sanctification the highest goal of any human society, but would also apply the stamp of universal public recognition of the new forms of property acquisition developing one after another, and hence the continuously accelerating accumulation of wealth; what was lacking was an institution that would perpetuate not only the beginning division of society into classes, but also the right of the propertied class to exploit the propertyless and the domination of the former over the latter.

And such an institution appeared. The state was invented.

Current page: 1 (total book has 13 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 8 pages]

Friedrich Engels
THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY, PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE STATE

Content

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION 1891

Chapter I. PREHISTORIC STAGES OF CULTURE

Chapter II. A FAMILY

Chapter III. IROquois GENUS

Chapter IV. GREEK ROD

Chapter V. THE Rise of the State of Athens

Chapter VI. GENUS AND STATE IN ROME

Chapter VII. GENUS OF THE CELTICS AND GERMANS

Chapter VIII. GERMAN STATE FORMATION

Chapter IX. BARBARITY AND CIVILIZATION

Notes

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF 1884

The following chapters represent, to a certain extent, the execution of the testament. None other than Karl Marx was going to present the results of Morgan's research in connection with the data of his - within certain limits, I can say our - materialistic study of history, and only in this way to clarify their full significance. After all, Morgan in America, in his own way, rediscovered the materialistic conception of history, discovered by Marx forty years ago, and, guided by him, in comparing barbarism and civilization, in the main points, he arrived at the same results as Marx. And just as the sworn economists in Germany for years were as eager to write off Capital as they obstinately hushed it up, so the representatives of "prehistoric" science in England did with Morgan's Ancient Society. 1
"Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization". By Lewis H. Morgan. London, Macmillan and Co., 1877. Lewis G. Morgan. "Ancient Society, or an Inquiry into the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization". London, Macmillan & C., 1877. The book was printed in America and is extremely difficult to obtain in London. The author died a few years ago.

My work can only to a small extent replace what my late friend was not destined to do. But in my possession are among his detailed extracts from Morgan 2
See: K. Marx. Synopsis of Lewis G. Morgan's Ancient Society (K. Marx, F. Engels, Soch. 2nd ed., vol. 45, pp. 227–372). - Red.

Criticisms, which I, insofar as it relates to the topic, reproduce here.

According to the materialist understanding, the defining moment in history is ultimately the production and reproduction of immediate life. But it itself, again, is of two kinds. On the one hand, the production of means of subsistence: food, clothing, housing, and the tools necessary for this; on the other hand, the production of man himself, the continuation of the family. The social order in which people of a certain historical epoch and a certain country live is determined by both types of production: the stage of development, on the one hand, of labor, on the other, of the family. The less developed labor is, the more limited the quantity of its products, and consequently the wealth of society, the stronger the dependence of the social system on tribal ties is manifested. Meanwhile, within the framework of this gentile structure of society, the productivity of labor develops more and more, and with it private property and exchange, property differences, the possibility of using other people's labor power and thus the basis of class contradictions: new social elements that for generations they try to adapt the old social system to new conditions, until, finally, the incompatibility of both leads to a complete overturn. The old society, based on tribal associations, explodes as a result of the collision of the newly formed social classes; its place is taken by a new society, organized into a state, the lowest links of which are no longer tribal, but territorial associations - a society in which the family system is completely subordinated to property relations and in which class contradictions and class struggle are now freely unfolding, which constitute the content of all written history. up to our time.

Morgan's great merit lies in the fact that he discovered and restored in its main features this prehistoric basis of our written history and found the key to the most important, hitherto insoluble riddles of ancient Greek, Roman and German history in the ancestral ties of the North American Indians. His writing is the work of more than one day. For about forty years he worked on his material until he completely mastered it. But on the other hand, his book is one of the few works of our time that make up an era.

In the following exposition, the reader will by and large easily distinguish between what belongs to Morgan and what I have added. In the historical sections on Greece and Rome, I went beyond Morgan's data and added what was at my disposal. The sections on Celts and Germans are mostly mine; Morgan had almost only second-hand materials here, and about the Germans - except for Tacitus - only the base liberal falsifications of Mr. Firman. The business cases, which were sufficient for Morgan's goals, but wholly inadequate for my purposes, have all been revised by me. Finally, it goes without saying that I am responsible for all those conclusions that are made without direct reference to Morgan.

Printed in the book: F. Engels. "Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats". Hottingen Zurich, 1884

FOREWORD TO THE FOURTH GERMAN EDITION OF 1891 TO THE HISTORY OF THE PRIMARY FAMILY (BAHOFEN, MCLENNAN, MORGAN)

Previous editions of this book, which were published in large numbers, sold out in their entirety almost six months ago, and the publisher 3
- I. Dietz. - Red.

It has long been asking me to prepare a new one. More urgent work has so far prevented me from doing so. Seven years have passed since the publication of the first edition, and during these years great progress has been made in the study of the primitive forms of the family. Therefore, it was necessary to make careful corrections and additions here, especially since the proposed printing of this text from a stereotype will deprive me for some time of the opportunity to make further changes. 4
In a text published in the journal Die Neue Zeit, the end of this phrase after the words "especially since" is given in the following edition: "the new edition should come out in a large circulation, now common in German socialist literature, but still extremely rare for German publishing houses". - Red.

So, I have carefully revised the entire text and made a number of additions, which, I hope, have adequately taken into account the current state of science. Further I give below in this preface short review development of views on family history from Bachofen to Morgan; I am doing this mainly because the chauvinistic English school of primitive history is still doing its best to silence the revolution in views of primitive history brought about by Morgan's discoveries, without any hesitation, however, in taking credit for Morgan's results. Yes, and in other countries, in some places too zealously follow this English example.

My work has been translated into various foreign languages. First of all into Italian: "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", translated by Pasquale Martinetti, Benevento, 1885. Then into Romanian: "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", translated by Ion Nadezhde; published in the Iasian journal "Contemporanul" from September 1885 to May 1886. Further in Danish: "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", an edition prepared by Gerson Trier. Copenhagen, 1888; a French translation by Henri Ravet, taken from the present German edition, is in press.

* * *

Until the early sixties, the history of the family was out of the question. Historical science in this area was still entirely under the influence of the Pentateuch of Moses. The patriarchal form of the family, depicted there in more detail than anywhere else, was not only unconditionally considered the most ancient form, but also identified - with the exception of polygamy - with the modern bourgeois family, so that the family, in fact, did not experience at all, supposedly, no historical development; at most it was admitted that in primitive times there might have been a period of disordered sexual relations. - True, in addition to monogamy, Eastern polygamy and Indian-Tibetan polyandry were also known; but these three forms could not be arranged in historical sequence, and they figured side by side without any mutual connection. That among certain peoples of the ancient world, as well as among some still existing savages, descent was considered not through the father, but through the mother, so that the female line was recognized as the only one of importance; that among many modern peoples marriages are forbidden within certain, more or less large, groups, which at that time were not yet studied in detail, and that this custom is found in all parts of the world - these facts were, it is true, known, and such examples accumulated all more. But how to approach them, no one knew, and even in the "Studies in the primitive history of mankind, etc." E. B. Taylor (1865), they figure simply as "strange customs," along with some savages' prohibition against touching a burning tree with an iron tool, and similar religious trifles.

The study of family history begins in 1861, when Bachofen's work "Mother's Right" was published. The author put forward the following propositions in this work:

1) people originally had unrestricted sexual relations, which he denotes by the unfortunate expression "hetaerism";

2) such relations exclude any possibility of reliably establishing the father, and therefore the origin could only be determined along the female line - according to maternal law - as it was originally among all peoples of antiquity;

3) as a result, women as mothers, as the only reliably known parents of the younger generation, enjoyed a high degree of respect and honor, which, according to Bachofen, reached the complete domination of women (gynecocracy);

4) the transition to monogamy, in which a woman belonged exclusively to one man, was fraught with a violation of the most ancient religious commandment (that is, in fact, a violation of the primordial right of other men to this woman), a violation that required redemption or was allowed under the condition of a ransom, which consisted in that a woman had to be given to strangers for a certain time.

Bachofen finds proof of these propositions in numerous quotations collected with exceptional care from the classical literature of antiquity. The development from "hetaerism" to monogamy and from maternal to paternal law occurs, in his opinion, - in particular among the Greeks - as a result of the further development of religious ideas, as a result of the installation of new deities, representatives of new views, in the traditional group of gods, personifying the old views, so that the latter are pushed more and more into the background by the former. Thus, according to Bachofen, it was not the development of the actual conditions of people's lives, but the religious reflection of these conditions in the minds of the same people that caused historical changes in the mutual social position of men and women. In accordance with this, Bachofen interprets Aeschylus's "Oresteia" as a dramatic depiction of the struggle between dying maternal right and emerging in the heroic era and victorious paternal right. For the sake of her lover, Aegisthus, Clytemnestra killed her husband Agamemnon, who returned from the Trojan War; but Orestes, the son of her and Agamemnon, avenges the murder of his father by killing his mother. For this, he is pursued by the Erinyes, the demonic guardians of maternal rights, according to which the murder of a mother is the gravest, inexcusable crime. But Apollo, who, through his oracle, urged Orestes to do this deed, and Athena, who is invoked as a judge, both deities representing here a new order based on paternal right, defend Orestes; Athena listens to both sides. The whole subject of the dispute is succinctly expressed in the debate taking place between Orestes and Erinyes. Orestes refers to the fact that Clytemnestra committed a double crime, killing her husband and at the same time his father. Why are the Erinyes persecuting him, and not persecuting her, much more guilty? The answer is amazing:

“With her husband, who was killed by her, she was not related by blood” 5
Aeschylus. Oresteia. Eumenides. - Red.

The murder of a man who is not related by blood, even when he is the husband of the woman who killed him, can be atoned for, it does not concern Eriny at all; their business is to pursue murder only among relatives by blood, and here, according to maternal law, the murder of the mother is the gravest and in no way expiable. But Apollo acts as the protector of Orestes; Athena puts the question to the vote of the members of the Areopagus - the Athenian jury; votes are divided equally - for justification and for condemnation; then Athena, as chairman, gives her vote for Orestes and declares him acquitted. The father's right won over the mother's, the "gods of the younger generation", as the Erinyes themselves call them, defeat the Erinyes, and in the end the latter also agree to take on new responsibilities, moving to the service of the new order.

This new but perfectly correct interpretation of the Oresteia is one of the most beautiful and best passages in Bachofen's entire book, but it also proves that Bachofen believes in Erinyes, Apollo and Athena at least as much as he did in his time. Aeschylus; namely, he believes that they performed a miracle in the Greek heroic era: they overthrew the mother's right, replacing it with the father's. It is clear that such a view, according to which religion has the significance of a decisive lever of world history, ultimately comes down to the purest mysticism. Therefore, to study Bachofen's book - a thick volume of a large format - is a difficult and far from always rewarding job. But all this does not detract from his merits as a researcher who paved a new path; instead of phrases about an unknown primitive state with disordered sexual relations, he was the first to present evidence of the presence in the classical literature of antiquity of many confirmations that the Greeks and Asian peoples really existed before monogamy such a state when, without violating the custom in the least, not only a man entered into sexual intercourse. relations with several women, but also a woman with several men; he proved that when this custom disappeared, it left a trace in the form of the need for a woman to redeem the right to monogamy at the cost of a limited obligation to give herself to strangers; that, therefore, descent could originally be considered only along the female line - from mother to mother; that this exclusive significance of the female line was preserved for a long time even in the period of monogamy, when paternity became reliable, or at least began to be recognized; that, finally, this original position of mothers as the only reliable parents of their children ensured them, and with it women in general, such a high social position as they have never since occupied. Bachofen, however, did not formulate these provisions with such clarity - this was prevented by his mystical worldview. But he proved them, and in 1861 this meant a whole revolution.

Bachofen's thick volume was written in German, that is, in the language of a nation that at that time was least interested in the background of the modern family. Therefore, the book remained unknown. Bachofen's closest successor in the same field, who appeared in 1865, had not even heard of him.

That successor was J. F. McLennan, the exact opposite of his predecessor. Instead of a brilliant mystic, here we have a dry lawyer; instead of violent poetic fantasy - carefully weighed constructions of a lawyer speaking in court. McLennan finds among many wild, barbarous and even civilized peoples of ancient and modern times such a form of marriage, in which the groom, alone or with his friends, must, as it were, forcibly kidnap the bride from her relatives. This custom is, apparently, a relic of an earlier custom, when the men of one tribe really forcibly kidnapped their wives on the side, from other tribes. How did this “marriage-abduction” come about? As long as men could find enough wives in their own tribe, there was no reason for such a marriage. But just as often we find that among undeveloped peoples there are certain groups (in 1865 they were still often identified with the tribes themselves) within which marriage is forbidden, so that men are forced to take wives for themselves, and women husbands outside this group; while others have the custom of requiring men of a certain group to take wives only within their own group. McLennan calls the former groups exogamous, the latter endogamous, and immediately, without further elaboration, constructs a sharp contrast between exogamous and endogamous "tribes." And although his own study of exogamy directly brings him to the nose with the fact that this opposition in many cases, if not in most or even in all cases, exists only in his imagination, he nevertheless puts it at the basis of his whole theory. Exogamous tribes can, according to this, take wives for themselves only from other tribes, and this, with the continuous state of war between tribes characteristic of the period of savagery, can only be done by kidnapping.

McLennan asks further: where did this custom of exogamy come from? The ideas of consanguinity and incest have nothing to do with this: these are phenomena that develop only much later. Another thing is the widespread custom among savages to kill female children immediately after birth. As a result, in each individual tribe there is an excess of men, the immediate consequence of which was inevitably to be the joint possession of several men by one wife - polyandry. From this, in his opinion, it follows that it was known who the mother of the child was, but it is not known who his father is, and therefore the relationship was counted only along the female line, and not along the male line. It was mother's right. The second consequence of the lack of women within the tribe - a lack weakened, but not eliminated by polyandry - was precisely the systematic forcible removal of women from foreign tribes.

“Since exogamy and polyandry arise from the same cause, the numerical inequality of both sexes, we must admit that polyandry originally existed among all exogamous races ... And therefore we must consider it indisputable that among the exogamous races the first system of kinship was one who knew blood ties only from the maternal side ”(McLennan“ Essays on ancient history", 1886 "Primitive Marriage" p. 124)

The merit of McLennan is that he pointed out the ubiquity and great importance of what he calls exogamy. He did not at all discover the fact of the existence of exogamous groups, and in any case did not understand it. Not to mention the earlier separate indications of many observers - they were McLennan's sources - Leitham (Descriptive Ethnology, 1859) accurately and correctly described this institution among the Indian Magars and expressed the opinion that it is widespread and occurs in all parts of the world, McLennan himself cites this passage. And our Morgan, back in 1847, in his letters on the Iroquois (published in the American Review) and in 1851 in The League of the Iroquois, proved the existence of a similar institution in this group of tribes and gave a correct description of it, while McLennan's lawyer mind, as we shall see, has brought much more confusion here than Bachofen's mystical fantasy in the field of mother law. McLennan's further merit is that he recognized the order of descent by mother right as original, although in this respect, as he himself later admitted, Bachofen was ahead of him. But even here he has ambiguities; he constantly speaks of "kinship through females only", all the time applying this expression, correct for an earlier stage, also to later stages of development, when the origin and right of inheritance, however, are still considered exclusively by the female lines, but kinship is recognized and determined from the male side as well. This is the limitation of a lawyer who, having created a firm legal term for himself, continues to apply it unchanged and to conditions in which it has already become inapplicable.

However, for all its solidity, McLennan's theory and its author himself seemed, apparently, not firmly substantiated. At least he pays attention to

"that remarkable fact that the most distinctly expressed form" (imaginary)

"the abduction of women is widespread precisely among those peoples in which male kinship" (that is, descent through the male line) "dominates" (p. 140).

“It is strange that infanticide, as far as we know, is never systematically practiced where exogamy and the most ancient form of kinship exist side by side” (p. 146).

Both these facts are in clear contradiction with his way of explaining, and he can only oppose them with new, even more intricate hypotheses.

Nevertheless, his theory received warm approval and a wide response in England; Everyone here considered McLennan the founder of family history and the first authority in this field. His opposition of exogamous "tribes" to endogamous ones, despite the fact that individual exceptions and modifications were established, nevertheless remained the universally recognized basis of the prevailing views and turned into blinkers that made impossible any unbiased consideration of the area under study, and thereby any decisive step forward. In contrast to the overestimation of McLennan's merits common in England, and following the English example in other countries, it should be emphasized that by his opposition of exogamous and endogamous "tribes", which is a pure misunderstanding, he did more harm than he did good with his research.

Meanwhile, soon more and more facts began to be discovered that did not fit in the elegant framework of his theory. McLennan knew only three forms of marriage: polygamy, polyandry and monogamy. But once attention was directed to this point, more and more evidence began to be found that among undeveloped peoples such forms of marriage existed when several men possessed several women in common; and Lubbock (The Origin of Civilization, 1870) recognized this communal marriage as a historical fact.

Following this, in 1871, Morgan came forward with new and in many respects decisive material. He became convinced that the peculiar system of kinship operating among the Iroquois was characteristic of all the native inhabitants of the United States and, therefore, is widespread on the whole continent, although it directly contradicts the degrees of kinship that actually follow from the system of marriage adopted there. He prompted the American federal government to collect, on the basis of a questionnaire and tables he himself compiled, information on kinship systems among other peoples and from the answers he saw: 1) that the kinship system adopted among the Indians of America also exists among numerous tribes in Asia, and in a slightly modified form - Africa and Australia 2) that this system finds its full explanation in that form of group marriage, which is just in the process of dying out in the Hawaiian and other Australian islands, and 3) that along with this form of marriage, however, there is such a system of kinship in the same islands, which can only be explained by an even older, now extinct form of group marriage. He published the collected information, together with his conclusions from them, in his work "Systems of kinship and properties", 1871, and thereby transferred the dispute to an incomparably wider area. Starting from kinship systems, he restored the corresponding family forms and thus opened a new path for research and an opportunity to look deeper into the prehistory of mankind. If this method had triumphed, McLennan's graceful constructions would have crumbled to dust.

McLennan defended his theory in a new edition of Primitive Marriage (Essays in Ancient History, 1876). While he himself constructs the history of the family in the highest degree artificially, relying on mere hypotheses, he requires from Lubbock and Morgan not just evidence for each of their statements, but irrefutable evidence, such as is only allowed in a Scottish court. And so does the same person who, on the basis of the close relationship between the mother's brother and the sister's son among the Germans (Tacitus, "Germany", ch. 20), on the basis of Caesar's story that among the Britons every ten or twelve men have in common wives, and all other stories of ancient writers about the community of wives among the barbarians, without hesitation, concludes that polyandry prevailed among all these peoples! It seems that you are listening to the prosecutor, who is ready to take any liberties in bringing charges, and from the defense counsel requires the strictest, legally binding evidence for every word.

Group marriage is pure fiction, he argues, thus placing himself far behind Bachofen. Morgan's system of kinship is, in his opinion, simple rules of social politeness, and this is proved by the fact that Indians also address strangers - whites - with the word: brother or father. It's the same as if you thought of asserting that the designations father, mother, brother, sister are simply meaningless forms of address, because Catholic clergy and abbesses are also called fathers and mothers, and monks and nuns and even Freemasons and members of the English shop unions at solemn meetings turn to each other with the words: brother and sister. In a word, McLennan's defense was extremely weak.

But there was one more point in which he was invulnerable. The antithesis between exogamous and endogamous "tribes", on which his whole system rested, not only was not shaken, but was even universally recognized as the cornerstone of the whole history of the family. It was admitted that the explanation that McLennan tried to give to this opposition was not convincing enough and contradicted the facts cited by himself. However, this opposition itself, the existence of two mutually exclusive species of separate and independent tribes, from which tribes of one species took wives for themselves within the tribe, while the tribes of another species were absolutely forbidden, was considered as an irrefutable gospel. Compare, for example, Giraud-Tlon, The Origin of the Family (1874) and even Lubbock, The Origin of Civilization (4th edition, 1882).

Morgan's main work, Ancient Society (1877), is directed against this point, a work that forms the basis of this work. What Morgan in 1871 only vaguely guessed is here developed with complete clarity. Endogamy and exogamy are not at all opposites; the existence of exogamous "tribes" has not yet been proven anywhere. But at a time when group marriage still dominated - and it, in all probability, once dominated everywhere - the tribe was divided into a number of groups connected by blood relationship on the maternal side, clans, within which there was a strict prohibition of marriages, so that the men who belonged to one clan, although they could take wives for themselves within the tribe and, as a rule, did so, they had to take them outside their own clan. Thus, if the clan was strictly exogamous, then the tribe, covering the totality of genera, was also strictly endogamous. This finally refuted the last remnant of McLennan's artificial constructions.

But Morgan did not stop there. The American Indian race further gave him grounds for taking a second decisive step forward in the field he was investigating. In this genus, organized according to maternal right, he discovered the primary form from which developed the later genus, organized according to paternal right, the same genus as we find among the cultured peoples of antiquity. The Greek and Roman race, which until then was a mystery to all historians, received its explanation in the Indian race, and thus a new basis was found for the whole primitive history.

This rediscovery of the original genus, based on maternal right as a stage preceding the paternal genus of civilized peoples, has for primitive history the same significance as Darwin's theory of development for biology, and as Marx's theory of surplus value for political economy. It enabled Morgan, for the first time, to sketch the history of the family, in which, so far as the hitherto known material allowed, at least the classical stages of development were preliminarily established in general terms. It is clear to everyone that this opens up a new epoch in the elaboration of primitive history. The genus, based on maternal right, has become the pivot around which all this science revolves; since its discovery, it has become clear in which direction and what should be studied and how the results should be grouped. And in accordance with this, much more rapid progress is now being made in this area than before the appearance of Morgan's book.

Morgan's discoveries are now recognized, or rather appropriated, by all historians of primitive society in England as well. But in almost none of them we will find an open recognition that it is to Morgan that we owe this revolution in views. In England, his book is hushed up as completely as possible, and he himself is dismissed with only condescending praise for his former works; diligently delve into the individual details of his presentation, and stubbornly keep silent about his really great discoveries. The first edition of The Ancient Society sold out; in America there is no proper market for such things; in England this book seems to have been systematically ignored, and the only edition of this period piece still commercially available is a German translation.

What is the reason for this restraint, in which it is difficult not to see a conspiracy of silence, especially if one bears in mind the numerous quotations cited simply out of politeness and other evidence of respect for colleagues with which the writings of our recognized experts in primitive history are full of? Is it not that Morgan is an American, and it is very unpleasant for the English historians of primitive society that, with all their diligence in collecting material that deserves all recognition, they, when it came to the general assumptions necessary for systematizing and grouping this material, in short, the ideas they need, are forced to turn to two brilliant foreigners - to Bachofen and Morgan? One could still reconcile with a German, but with an American! In relation to an American, every Englishman becomes a patriot, and in the United States I have seen amusing examples of this. And besides, McLennan was, so to speak, the officially recognized founder and head of the English school of primitive history; in this area has become a kind good tone to speak with nothing less than the greatest reverence of his artificial historical construct leading from infanticide, through polyandry and abduction marriage, to the family based on maternal right; the slightest doubt about the existence of absolutely mutually exclusive exogamous and endogamous "tribes" was considered audacious heresy; thus Morgan, in dispelling all these hallowed dogmas like smoke, committed a kind of sacrilege. Moreover, he dispelled them with such arguments, which it was enough only to express, so that they immediately became obvious to everyone; so that McLennan's admirers, still powerless to get out of the contradictions between exogamy and endogamy, should have almost hit themselves on the forehead and exclaimed: how could we be so stupid that we ourselves did not discover this long ago!

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