The origin of the family, private property, and the state · Friedrich Engels
BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION.
Having observed the dissolution of the gentile order in the three concrete cases of the Greek, Roman, and German nations, we may now investigate in conclusion the general economic conditions that began by undermining the gentile organization of society during the upper stage of barbarism and ended by doing away with it entirely at the advent of civilization. Marx's "Capital" will be as necessary for the successful completion of this task as Morgan's "Ancient Society." A growth of the middle stage and a product of further development during the upper stage of savagery, the gens reached its prime, as near as we can judge from our sources of information, in the lower stage of barbarism. With this stage, then, we begin our investigation.
In our standard example, the American redskins of that time, we find the gentile constitution fully developed. A tribe had differentiated into several gentes, generally two. Through the increase of the population, these original gentes again divided into several daughter gentes, making the mother gens a phratry. The tribe itself split up into several tribes, in each of which we again meet a large number of representatives of the old gentes. In certain cases a federation united the related tribes. This simple organization fully sufficed for the social conditions out of which it had grown. It was nothing else than the innate, spontaneous expression of those conditions, and it was well calculated to smooth over all internal difficulties that could arise in this social organization. External difficulties were settled by war. Such a war could end in the annihilation of a tribe, but never in its subjugation. It is the grandeur and at the same time the limitation of the gentile order that it has no room either for masters or servants. There were as yet no distinctions between rights and duties. The question whether he had a right to take part in public affairs, to practice blood revenge or to demand atonement for injuries would have appeared as absurd to an Indian, as the question whether it was his duty to eat, sleep, and hunt. Nor could any division of a tribe or gens into different classes take place. This leads us to the investigation of the economic basis of those conditions.
The population was very small in numbers. It was collected only on the territory of the tribe. Next to this territory was the hunting ground surrounding it in a wide circle. A neutral forest formed the line of demarcation from other tribes. The division of labor was quite primitive. The work was simply divided between the two sexes. The men went to war, hunted, fished, provided the raw material for food and the tools necessary for these pursuits. The women cared for the house, and prepared food and clothing; they cooked, weaved and sewed. Each sex was master of its own field of activity; the men in the forest, the women in the house. Each sex also owned the tools made and used by it; the men were the owners of the weapons, of the hunting and fishing tackle, the women of the household goods and utensils. The household was communistic, comprising several, and often many, families.[37] Whatever was produced and used collectively, was regarded as common property: the house, the garden, the long boat. Here, and only here, then, do we find the "self-earned property" which jurists and economists have falsely attributed to civilized society, the last deceptive pretext of legality on which modern capitalist property is leaning.
But humanity did not everywhere remain in this stage. In Asia they found animals that could be tamed and propagated in captivity. The wild buffalo cow had to be hunted down; the tame cow gave birth to a calf once a year, and also furnished milk. Some of the most advanced tribes--Aryans, Semites, perhaps also Turanians--devoted themselves mainly to taming, and later to raising and tending, domestic animals. The segregation of cattle raising tribes from the rest of the barbarians constitutes the first great division of social labor. These stock raising tribes did not only produce more articles of food than the rest of the barbarians, but also different kinds of products. They were ahead of the others by having at their disposal not alone milk, milk products, and a greater abundance of meat, but also skins, wool, goat's hair, and the spun and woven goods which the growing abundance of the raw material brought into common use. This for the first time made a regular exchange of products possible. In former stages, exchange could only take place occasionally, and an exceptional ability in manufacturing weapons and tools may have led to a transient division of labor. For example, unquestionable remains of workshops for stone implements of the neolithic period have been found in many places.
The artists who developed their ability in those shops, most probably worked for the collectivity, as did the artisans of the Indian gentile order. At any rate, no other exchange than that within the tribe could exist in that stage, and even that was an exception. But after the segregation of the stock raising tribes we find all the conditions favorable to an exchange between groups of different tribes, and to a further development of this mode of trading into a fixed institution. Originally, tribe exchanged with tribe through the agency of their tribal heads. But when the herds drifted into the hands of private individuals, then the exchange between individuals prevailed more and more, until it became the established form. The principal article of exchange which the stock raising tribes offered to their neighbors was in the form of domestic animals. Cattle became the favorite commodity by which all other commodities were measured in exchange. In short, cattle assumed the functions of money and served in this capacity as early as that stage. With such necessity and rapidity was the demand for a money commodity developed at the very beginning of the exchange of commodities.
Horticulture, probably unknown to the Asiatic barbarians of the lower stage, arose not later than the middle stage of barbarism, as the forerunner of agriculture. The climate of the Turanian Highland does not admit of a nomadic life without a supply of stock feed for the long and hard winter. Hence the cultivation of meadows and grain was indispensable. The same is true of the steppes north of the Black Sea. Once grain had been grown for cattle, it soon became human food. The cultivated land belonged as yet to the tribe and was assigned first to the gens, which in its turn distributed it to the households, and finally to individuals; always for use only, not for possession. The users may have had certain claims to the land, but that was all. Two of the industrial acquisitions of this stage are especially important. The first is the weaving loom, the second the melting of metal ore and the use of metals in manufacture. Copper, tin, and their alloy, bronze, were the most essential of them. Bronze furnished tools and weapons, but could not displace stone implements. Only iron could have done that, but the production of iron was as yet unknown. Gold and silver were already used for ornament and decoration, and must have been far more precious than copper and bronze.
The increase of production in all branches--stock raising, agriculture, domestic handicrafts--enabled human labor power to produce more than was necessary for its maintenance. It increased at the same time the amount of daily work that fell to the lot of every member of a gens, a household, or a single family. The addition of more labor power became desirable. It was furnished by war; the captured enemies were transformed into slaves. Under the given historical conditions, the first great division of social labor, by increasing the productivity of labor, adding to the wealth, and enlarging the field of productive activity, necessarily carried slavery in its wake. Out of the first great division of social labor arose the first great division of society into two classes: masters and servants, exploiters and exploited.
How and when the herds were transferred from the collective ownership of the tribe or gens to the proprietorship of the heads of the families, is not known to us. But it must have been practically accomplished in this stage. The herds and the other new objects of wealth brought about a revolution in the family. Procuring the means of existence had always been the man's business. The tools of production were manufactured and owned by him. The herds were the new tools of production, and their taming and tending was his work. Hence he owned the cattle and the commodities and slaves obtained in exchange for them. All the surplus now resulting from production fell to the share of the man. The woman shared in its fruition, but she could not claim its ownership. The "savage" warrior and hunter had been content to occupy the second place in the house, to give precedence to the woman. The "gentler" shepherd, standing on his wealth, assumed the first place and forced the woman back into the second place. And she had no occasion to complain. The division of labor in the family had regulated the distribution of property between man and wife. This division of labor remained unchanged.
Yet the former domestic relation was now reversed, simply because the division of labor outside of the family had been altered. The same cause that once had secured the supremacy in the house for women, viz., the confining of women's activity to domestic labor, now assured the supremacy of the men in the households. The domestic labor of women was considered insignificant in comparison to men's work for a living. The latter was everything, the former a negligible quantity. At this early stage we can already see that the emancipation of women and their equality with men are impossible and remain so, as long as women are excluded from social production and restricted to domestic labor. The emancipation of women becomes feasible only then when women are enabled to take part extensively in social production, and when domestic duties require their attention in a minor degree. This state of things was brought about by the modern great industries, which not only admit of women's liberal participation in production, but actually call for it and, besides, endeavor to transform domestic work also into a public industry. Man's advent to practical supremacy in the household marked the removal of the last barrier to his universal supremacy. His unlimited rule was emphasized and endowed with continuity by the downfall of matriarchy, the introduction of patriarchy, and the gradual transition from the pairing family to the monogamic family. This made a breach in the old gentile order. The monogamic family became a power and lifted a threatening hand against the gens.
The next step brings us to the upper stage of barbarism, that period in which all nations of civilization go through their heroic era. It is the time of the iron sword, but also of the iron plow share and axe. The iron had become the servant of man. It is the last and most important of all raw products that play a revolutionary role in history; the last--if we except the potato. Iron brought about agriculture on a larger scale and the clearing of extensive forest tracts for cultivation. It gave to the craftsman a tool of such hardness and sharpness that no stone, no other known metal, could withstand it. All this came about gradually. The first iron was often softer than bronze. Therefore stone implements disappeared very slowly. Not only in the Hildebrand Song, but also at Hastings in 1066, stone axes were still used in fighting. But progress was now irresistible, less interrupted and more rapid. The town, inclosing houses of stone or tiles within its turreted and crested stone walls, became the central seat of the tribe or federation of tribes. It showed an astounding progress of architecture, but also an increase of danger and of the demand for protection. Wealth increased rapidly, but it was the wealth of private individuals. Weaving, metal work and other more and more differentiating industries developed an increasing variety and display of art in production. Agriculture furnished not alone grain, peas, beans and fruit, but also oil and wine, the preparation of which had now been learned. Such a diversity of action could not be displayed by any single individual. The second great division of labor took place: handicrafts separated from agriculture. The growing intensity of production and the increased productivity enhanced the value of human labor power. Slavery, which had been a rising and sporadic factor in the preceding stage, now became an essential part of the social system. The slaves ceased to be simple assistants. They were now driven in scores to the work in the fields and shops. The division of production into two great branches, agriculture and handicrafts, gave rise to production for exchange, the production of commodities. Trade arose at the same time, not only in the interior and on the tribal boundaries, but also in the form of maritime exchange. All this was as yet in a very undeveloped state. The precious metals gained preference as a universal money commodity, but still uncoined and exchanged merely by dead weight.
The distinction between rich and poor was added to that between free men and slaves. This and the new division of labor constitute a new division of society into classes. The differences in the amount of property belonging to the several family heads broke up the old communistic households one by one, wherever they might have been preserved thus far. This made an end to the collective cultivation of the soil for the account of the community. The cultivated land was assigned for use to the several families, first for a limited time, later for once and all. The transition to full private property was accomplished gradually and simultaneously with the transition from the pairing family to monogamy. The monogamous family began to be the economic unit of society.
The increase of population necessitated a closer consolidation against internal and external foes. The federation of related tribes became unavoidable. Their amalgamation, and thence the amalgamation of the separate tribal territories to one national territory, was the following step. The military leader--rex, basileus, thiudans--became an indispensable and standing official. The public meeting was introduced wherever it did not yet exist. The military leader, the council of chiefs, and the public meeting formed the organs of the military democracy that had grown out of the gentile constitution. Military democracy--for now war and organization for war were regular functions of social life. The wealth of the neighbors excited the greed of nations that began to regard the acquisition of wealth as one of the main purposes of their life. They were barbarians: robbing appeared to them easier and more honorable than producing. War, once simply a revenge for transgressions or a means for enlarging a territory that had become too narrow, was now waged for the sake of plunder alone and became a regular profession. Not in vain did threatening walls cast a rigid stare all around the new fortified towns: their yawning ditches were the tomb of the gentile constitution, and their turrets already reached up into civilization. The internal affairs underwent a similar change.
We have now reached the threshold of civilization. This stage is inaugurated by a new progress in the division of labor. In the lower stage of barbarism production was carried on for use only; any acts of exchange were confined to single cases when a surplus was accidentally realized. In the middle stage of barbarism we find that the possession of cattle gave a regular surplus to the nomadic nations with sufficiently large herds. At the same time there was a division of labor between nomadic nations and backward nations without herds. The existence of two different stages of production side by side furnished the conditions necessary for a regular exchange. The upper stage of barbarism introduced a new division of labor between agriculture and handicrafts, resulting in the production of a continually increasing amount of commodities for the special purpose of exchange, so that exchange between individuals became a vital function of society. Civilization strengthened and intensified all the established divisions of labor, especially by rendering the contrast between city and country more pronounced. Either the town may have the economic control over the country, as during antiquity, or vice versa, as in the middle ages.
A third division of labor was added by civilization: it created a class that did not take part in production, but occupied itself merely with the exchange of products--the merchants. All former attempts at class formation were exclusively concerned with production. They divided the producers into directors and directed, or into producers on a more or less extensive scale. But here a class appears for the first time that captures the control of production in general and subjugates the producers to its rule, without taking the least part in production. A class that makes itself the indispensable mediator between two producers and exploits them both under the pretext of saving them the trouble and risk of exchange, of extending the markets for their products to distant regions, and of thus becoming the most useful class in society; a class of parasites, genuine social ichneumons, that skim the cream off production at home and abroad as a reward for very insignificant services; that rapidly amass enormous wealth and gain social influence accordingly; that for this reason reap ever new honors and ever greater control of production during the period of civilization, until they at last bring to light a product of their own--periodical crises in industry.
At the stage of production under discussion, our young merchant class had no inkling as yet of the great future that was in store for them. But they continued to organize, to make themselves invaluable, and that was sufficient for the moment. At the same time metal coins came into use, and through them a new device for controlling the producers and their products. The commodity of commodities that was hiding all other commodities in its mysterious bosom had been discovered, a charm that could be transformed at will into any desirable or coveted thing. Whoever held it in his possession had the world of production at his command. And who had it above all others? The merchant. In his hands the cult of money was safe. He took care to make it plain that all commodities, and hence all producers, must prostrate themselves in adoration before money. He proved by practice that all other forms of wealth are reduced to thin wraiths before this personification of riches. Never again did the power of money show itself in such primordial brutality and violence as in its youthful days. After the sale of commodities for money came the borrowing of money, resulting in interest and usury. And no legislation of any later period stretches the debtor so mercilessly at the feet of the speculating creditor as the antique Grecian and Roman codes--both of them spontaneous products of habit, without any other than economic pressure.
The wealth in commodities and slaves was now further increased by large holdings in land. The titles of the individuals to the lots of land formerly assigned to them by the gens or tribe had become so well established, that these lots were now owned and inherited. What the individuals had most desired of late was the liberation from the claim of the gentiles to their lots, a claim which had become a veritable fetter for them. They were rid of this fetter--but soon after they were also rid of their lots. The full, free ownership of the soil implied not only the possibility of uncurtailed possession, but also of selling the soil. As long as the soil belonged to the gens, this was impossible. But when the new land owner shook off the chains of the priority claim of the gens and tribe, he also tore the bond that had so long tied him indissolubly to the soil. What that meant was impressed on him by the money invented simultaneously with the advent of private property in land. The soil could now become a commodity to be bought and sold. Hardly had private ownership of land been introduced, when the mortgage put in its appearance (see Athens). As hetaerism and prostitution clung to the heels of monogamy, so does from now on the mortgage to private ownership in land. You have clamored for free, full, saleable land. Well, then, there you have it--tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin; it was your own wish, George Dandin.
Industrial expansion, money, usury, private land, and mortgage thus progressed with the concentration and centralization of wealth in the hands of a small class, accompanied by the increasing impoverishment of the masses and the increasing mass of paupers. The new aristocracy of wealth, so far as it did not coincide with the old tribal nobility, forced the latter permanently into the background (in Athens, in Rome, among the Germans). And this division of free men into classes according to their wealth was accompanied, especially in Greece, by an enormous increase in the number of slaves[38] whose forced labor formed the basis on which the whole superstructure of society was reared. Let us now see what became of the gentile constitution through this revolution of society. Gentilism stood powerless in the face of the new elements that had grown without its assistance. It was dependent on the condition that the members of a gens, or of a tribe, should live together in the same territory and be its exclusive inhabitants. That had long ceased to be the case. Gentes and tribes were everywhere hopelessly intermingled, slaves, clients, and foreigners lived among citizens. The capacity for settling down permanently which had only been acquired near the end of the middle stage of barbarism, was time and again sidetracked by the necessity of changing the abode according to the dictates of commerce, different occupations and the transfer of land. The members of the gentile organizations could no longer meet for the purpose of taking care of their common interests. Only matters of little importance, such as religious festivals, were still observed in an indifferent way. Beside the wants and interests for the care of which the gentile organs were appointed and fitted, new wants and interests had arisen from the revolution of the conditions of existence and the resulting change in social classification. These new wants and interests were not only alien to the old gentile order, but thwarted it in every way.
The interests of the craftsmen created by division of labor, and the special necessities of a town differing from those of the country, required new organs. But every one of these groups was composed of people from different gentes, phratries, and tribes; they included even strangers. Hence the new organs necessarily had to form outside of the gentile constitution. But by the side of it meant against it. And again, in every gentile organization the conflict of interests made itself felt and reached its climax by combining rich and poor, usurers and debtors, in the same gens and tribe. There was furthermore the mass of inhabitants who were strangers to the gentiles. These strangers could become very powerful, as in Rome, and they were too numerous to be gradually absorbed by the gentes and tribes. The gentiles confronted these masses as a compact body of privileged individuals. What had once been a natural democracy, had been transformed into an odious aristocracy. The gentile constitution had grown out of a society that did not know any internal contradictions, and it was only adapted to such a society. It had no coërcive power except public opinion.
In preceding chapters we have shown by three concrete examples the three main forms in which the state was built up on the ruins of gentilism. Athens represented the simplest, the classic type: the state grew directly and mainly out of class divisions that developed within gentile society. In Rome the gentile organization became an exclusive aristocracy amid a numerous plebs of outsiders who had only duties, but no rights. The victory of the plebs burst the old gentile order asunder and erected on its remains the state which soon engulfed both gentile aristocracy and plebs. Finally, among the German conquerors of the Roman empire, the state grew as a direct result of the conquest of large foreign territories which the gentile constitution was powerless to control. But this conquest did not necessitate either a serious fight with the former population or a more advanced division of labor. Conquerors and conquered were almost in the same stage of economic development, so that the economic basis of society remained undisturbed. Hence gentilism could preserve for many centuries an unchanged territorial character in the form of mark communes, and even rejuvenate itself in the nobility and patrician families of later years, or in the peasantry, as e. g. in Dithmarsia.[39]
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.