The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State by Frederick Engels (classic novels .txt) 📕

CHICAGO
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
1908

Copyright, 1902
By Charles H. Kerr & Company

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

"An eternal being created human society as it is to-day, and submission to 'superiors' and 'authority' is imposed on the 'lower' classes by divine will." This suggestion, coming from pulpit, platform and press, has hypnotized the minds of men and proves to be one of the strongest pillars of exploitation. Scientific investigation has revealed long ago that human society is not cast in a stereotyped mould. As organic life on earth assumes different shapes, the result of a succession of chemical changes, so the group life of human beings develops different social institutions as a result of increasing control over environment, especially of production of food, clothing and shelter. Such is the message which the works of men like Bachofen, Morgan, Marx, Darwin, and others, brought to the human race. But this message never reached the great mass of humanity. In the United States the names of these men are practically unknown. Their books are either out of print, as is the case with the fundamental works of Morgan, or they are not translated into English. Only a few of them are accessible to a few individuals on the dusty shelves of some public libraries. Their message is dangerous to the existing order, and it will not do to give it publicity at a time when further intellectual progress of large bodies of men means the doom of the ruling class. The capitalist system has progressed so far, that all farther progress must bring danger to it and to those who are supreme through it.

But the forces, which have brought about the present social order, continue their work regardless of the wishes of a few exploiters. A comprehensive work summarizing our present knowledge of the development of social institutions is, therefore, a timely contribution to socialist propaganda. In order to meet the requirements of socialists, such a summary must be written by a socialist. All the scientists who devoted themselves to the study of primeval society belonged to the privileged classes, and even the most radical of them, Lewis Morgan, was prevented by his environment from pointing out the one fact, the recognition of which distinguishes the socialist position from all others—THE EXISTENCE OF A CLASS STRUGGLE.

The strongest allusion to this fact is found in the following passage of "Ancient Society": "Property and office were the foundations upon which aristocracy planted itself. Whether this principle shall live or die has been one of the great problems with which modern society has been engaged.... As a question between equal rights and unequal rights, between equal laws and unequal laws, between the rights of wealth, of rank and of official position, and the power of justice and intelligence, there can be little doubt of the ultimate result" (page 551).

Yet Morgan held that "several thousand years have passed away without the overthrow of the privileged classes, excepting in the United States." But in the days of the trusts, of government by injunction, of sets of 400 with all the arrogance and exclusiveness of European nobility, of aristocratic branches of the Daughters of the Revolution, and other gifts of capitalist development, the modern American workingman will hardly share Morgan's optimistic view that there are no privileged classes in the United States. It must be admitted, however, that to this day Morgan's work is the most fundamental and exhaustive of any written on the subject of ancient social development. Westermarck's "History of Human Marriage" treats the question mainly from the standpoint of Ethnology and Natural History. As a scientific treatise it is entirely inadequate, being simply a compilation of data from all parts of the world, arranged without the understanding of gentile organizations or of the materialistic conception of history, and used for wild speculations. Kovalevsky's argument turns on the proposition that the patriarchal household is a typical stage of society, intermediate between the matriarchal and monogamic family.

None of these men could discuss the matter from the proletarian point of view. For in order to do this, it is necessary to descend from the hills of class assumption into the valley of proletarian class-consciousness. This consciousness and the socialist mind are born together. The key to the philosophy of capitalism is the philosophy of socialism. With the rays of this searchlight, Engels exposed the pious "deceivers," property and the state, and their "lofty" ideal, covetousness. And the monogamic family, so far from being a divinely instituted "union of souls," is seen to be the product of a series of material and, in the last analysis, of the most sordid motives. But the ethics of property are worthy of a system of production that, in its final stage, shuts the overwhelming mass of longing humanity out from the happiness of home and family life, from all evolution to a higher individuality, and even drives progress back and forces millions of human beings into irrevocable degeneration.

The desire for a higher life cannot awake in a man, until he is thoroughly convinced that his present life is ugly, low, and capable of improvement by himself. The present little volume is especially adapted to assist the exploited of both sexes in recognizing the actual causes which brought about their present condition. By opening the eyes of the deluded throng and reducing the vaporings of their ignorant or selfish would-be leaders in politics and education to sober reality, it will show the way out of the darkness and mazes of slavish traditions into the light and freedom of a fuller life on earth.

These are the reasons for introducing this little volume to English speaking readers. Without any further apology, we leave them to its perusal and to their own conclusions.

ERNEST UNTERMANN.

Chicago, August, 1902.

The following chapters are, in a certain sense, executing a bequest. It was no less a man than Karl Marx who had reserved to himself the privilege of displaying the results of Morgan's investigations in connection with his own materialistic conception of history—which I might call ours within certain limits. He wished thus to elucidate the full meaning of this conception. For in America, Morgan had, in a manner, discovered anew the materialistic conception of history, originated by Marx forty years ago. In comparing barbarism and civilization, he had arrived, in the main, at the same results as Marx. And just as "Capital" was zealously plagiarized and persistently passed over in silence by the professional economists in Germany, so Morgan's "Ancient Society"[1] was treated by the spokesmen of "prehistoric" science in England.

My work can offer only a meager substitute for that which my departed friend was not destined to accomplish. But in his copious extracts from Morgan, I have critical notes which I herewith reproduce as fully as feasible.

According to the materialistic conception, the decisive element of history is pre-eminently the production and reproduction of life and its material requirements. This implies, on the one hand, the production of the means of existence (food, clothing, shelter and the necessary tools); on the other hand, the generation of children, the propagation of the species. The social institutions, under which the people of a certain historical period and of a certain country are living, are dependent on these two forms of production; partly on the development of labor, partly on that of the family. The less labor is developed, and the less abundant the quantity of its production and, therefore, the wealth of society, the more society is seen to be under the domination of sexual ties. However, under this formation based on sexual ties, the productivity of labor is developed more and more. At the same time, private property and exchange, distinctions of wealth, exploitation of the labor power of others and, by this agency, the foundation of class antagonism, are formed. These new elements of society strive in the course of time to adapt the old state of society to the new conditions, until the impossibility of harmonizing these two at last leads to a complete revolution. The old form of society founded on sexual relations is abolished in the clash with the recently developed social classes. A new society steps into being, crystallized into the state. The units of the latter are no longer sexual, but local groups; a society in which family relations are entirely subordinated to property relations, thereby freely developing those class antagonisms and class struggles that make up the contents of all written history up to the present time.

Morgan deserves great credit for rediscovering and re-establishing in its main outlines this foundation of our written history, and of finding in the sexual organizations of the North American Indians the key that opens all the unfathomable riddles of most ancient Greek, Roman and German history. His book is not the work of a short day. For more than forty years he grappled with the subject, until he mastered it fully. Therefore his work is one of the few epochal publications of our time.

In the following demonstrations, the reader will, on the whole, easily distinguish what originated with Morgan and what was added by myself. In the historical sections on Greece and Rome, I have not limited myself to Morgan's material, but have added as much as I could supply. The sections on Celts and Germans essentially belong to me. Morgan had only sources of minor quality at his disposal, and for German conditions—aside from Tacitus—only the worthless, unbridled falsifications of Freeman. The economic deductions, sufficient for Morgan's purpose, but wholly inadequate for mine, were treated anew by myself. And lastly I am, of course, responsible for all final conclusions, unless Morgan is expressly quoted.

Frederick Engels.

The first large editions of this work have been out of print for nearly six months, and the publisher has for some time requested of me the arrangement of a new edition. Urgent duties have hitherto prevented me. Seven years have passed, since the first edition made its appearance; during this time, the study of primeval forms of the family has made considerable progress. Hence it became necessary to apply diligently the improving and supplementing hand, more especially, as the proposed stereotyping of the present text will make further changes impossible for some time.

Consequently, I have subjected the whole text to a thorough revision and made a number of additions which,