he Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State b/ Frederick氏r roduction by Evelyn Reed PATHFINDER PRESS New york·Lo
HS 197a↓ CONTENTS iNTROdUCTion by Evelyn Reed Note on the translation THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY, PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE STATE reface to the first Edition 1884 Preface to the Fourth Edition 1891 V. Prehistoric Stages of Culture III. The Iroquois Gens IV. The Grecian Gens V. The Rise of the Athenian Copyright e 1972 by Pathfinder Press VI. The Gens and the State 118 如 VIL. The Gens among the Celts and Germans ess Catalog Card No. 72-85711 TIIL.The Formation of the State Among the Germans 1 IX. Barbarism and Civilization 148 Manufactured in the United States of America Appendix(newly translated) A Recently Discovered Case of Group Marriage(by F. First edition 1972 THE PART PLAY ED BY LABOUR IN THE TRANSITION athfinder Press FROM APE TO MAN 410 West Street, New York, New York 10014 iddle East Pathfinder, 47 The Cut, London, SE1 BLL, England Subject Index 187 Leichhardt, Sydney, NSW 2040, Australia Pathfinder, P. O Box 9300, Station A, Toronto, Ont., M5W 2C7, Canada New Zealand Pilot Books, Box 8730. Aucklan amont Library
NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION human being or humanity is the meaning clearly intended are the lation and not of the original The preface to the fourth (1891)edition of Engels's Origin of the Family contains references to Urgeschichte(prehistory or primitive story)and praehistoriker (prehistorians, students of In the International Publishers 1942 translation, these terms are rendered as"anthropology"and"anthropologist"(pp. 16, 17). The terms used to describe the study of primitive peoples and prehistory diverge widely between German-Seandinavian-Russia iet usage, on the one hand, and Anglo-American usage, on the other. Engels' s background is clearly the former, and is THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY continued in this context in Soviet usage. PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE STATE In the German and Soviet usage, ethnography is the general science of the study of primitive peoples, particularly the descriptive spects, and ethnology is the same, with emphasis on long-te PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 1884 historical views. For example, the Soviet periodical in the field is ovetskaya Etnologiye Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy The following chapters constitute, in a sense, the fulfilment of Sciences. Prehistory is ethnology applied to inferential studie a bequest. It was no less a person than Karl Marx who had planne of peoples and cultures now extinct, and is covered as readily to present the results of Morgan's researches in connection with he conclusions arrived at by his own-within certain limits I might Toprosy Istorii(Problems of History) as in Sovetskaya Etnologiya Anthropology is a term restricted to the study of comparative ay our own-materialist investigation of history and thus make human and humanoid anatomy, measuring skulls, studying dis- clear for the first time their whole significance. For Morgan redis tribution of blood types, ete. In Anglo-American contexts, strongly marked by antihistorical Coweta nat had been discovered by Marx forty years ago, and in piricism and positivism, historical interests are deprecated. Pre- his comparison of barbarism and civilization was led by this con- tion to the same conchusions, in the main points, as Marx had story does not exist, outside of archaeology. Anthropology is the This is subdivided into and persistently hushed up on the part of the official economists material anthropology (study of artifacts), physical anthropology in Germany, so was Morgan's Ancient Society treated by the spokes- men of "prehistoric"science in England. My work (study of kinship systems and functional relations in society ) cultural anthropology (social anthropology of slightly broader tined to accomplish. However, I have before me, in his exten scope), economic an gy, etc. Anglo-American ethnohistory ive extracts from morgan, critical notes which I reproduce here loes not go beyond collecting documents dealing with the recen wherever this is at all possibl rimitive peoples, without drawing long-term inferences facter co histo t is,the he last resort:ptdr甲hg of primitive peoples prior to 1900, and ethnographers a term of corn. A handful of American scholars (Lowie, Kroeber J. Steward, M. Sahlins, L. White, E. Service, M. Harris, and of course L. Morgan)would qualify as ethnologists of sorts. ifficult to obtai ondon hor died a few years ago. [Note by Er published in kusai tn ksas ser mark Engels, vol. Ix. -Ed ety
ORIGIN OF FAMILY, PRIVATE PROPERTY AND STATE 27 tion of immediate life. But this itself is of a twofold character. On with Greece and Rome I have not limited myself to Morgan's data the one hand, the production of the means of subsistence, of food, but have added what I had at my disposal. The sections dealin clothing and shelter and the tools requisite therefore; on the other with the Celts and the germans are sul tially my own: here the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of Morgan had at his disposal almost exclusively secondhand sources the species. The social institutions under which men of a definite and, as far as German conditions were concerned-with the exception historical epoch and of a defini te country live are conditioned by of Tacitus-only the wretched liberal falsifications of Mr. Freeman both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labour, The economic arguments, sufficient for Morgans purpose but on the one hand, and of the family, on the other. The less the develo my own, have all been elaborated afresh ent of labour, and the more limited its volume of production 知 ly, I of course am responsible for all conclu therefore, the wealth of society, the more preponderatingly does is not expressly quoted. the social order appear to be within this structure of society based on ties of sex, the productivit of labour develops more and more; with it, private property and he fourth editi xchange, differences in wealth, the possibility of utilizing the Private P Translated from the German labour power of others, and thereby the basis of class antagonism new social elements, which strive in the course of generations to adapt the old structure of society to the new conditions, until, final- PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION The old society based on sex groups bursts asunder in the colli- on of the newly-developed social classes; in its place a new I89I ociety appears, constituted in a state, the lower units of which are no longer sex groups but territorial groups, a society in which the The previous large editions of this work have been out of prin family system entirely dominated by the property syste now for almost six months and the publisher has for some time past and in which the class antagonisms and class struggles, whi make up the content of all hitherto written history, now freely prevented me from doing so. Seven years have elapsed since the first devel edition appeared, and during this period our know ledge of the origi Morgan's great merit lies in having discovered and reconstructed this prehistoric foundation of our written history in its main feature necessary diligently to apply the hand to the work of amplification and in having found in the sex groups of the North American Indi- nd improvement, particularly in view of the fact that the proposed ins the key to the most important, hitherto. insoluble, riddles stereotyping of the present text will make further changes on my f the earliest Greek, Roman and German history. His book, how ever, was not the work of one day. He grappled with his mate- I have, therefore, submitted the whole text to a careful revision rial. for nearly forty years until he completely mastered it. That and have made a number of additions, in which, I hope, due regard is why his book is one of the few epoch-making works of our has been paid to the present state of science. Further, in the course In the following exposition the reader will, on the whole, of this preface, I give a brief review of the development of the history be able to distinguish between what has been taken from of the family from Bachofen to morgan, principally because the and what I have added myself. In the historical sections tinues to do its utmost to kill by silence the revolution Morgans Engels is here guilty of inexactitude by citing the propagation of the discoveries have made in conceptions of the history of primitive society, although it does not hesitate in the least to appropriate his results. Elsewhere, too, this English example is followed only too often roduction is the principal factor conditioning the development of s My work has been translated into variou into Italian: L'origine della famiglia, della proprietd
FREDERICK ENGELS ORIGIN OF FAMILY, PRIVATE PROPERTY AND STATE 29 to, versione rioeduta dall'autore, di Pasquale Martignetti; Bene- ty lived in a state of sexual promiscuity, which the author unhappily vento 1885. Then Rumanian: Origina familei si a statului, traducere de foan Nadejde age, therefore, could be reckoned Contemporanul, September 1885 to May I886. Further into Danish only through the female line-according to mother right-and nally this was the case among all the peoples of anti- Forfatteren gennemgaaet Agave, get af Gerson Trier, Kobenhavn only definitely ascertainable parents of the younger generatin uity; 3) that consequently women, who, as mothers, were I888. A French translation by Henri Rave based on the preser German edition is in the press were treated according to Bachofen's conception, was enhanced to the complete where the woman belongs exclusively to one man, implied the viol), rule of women (gynecocracy); 4) that the transition to monga tion of a primeval religious injunction (that is, in actual fa Until the beginning of the sixties there was no such thing as a history of the family. In this sphere historical science was still same woman), a violation which had to be atoned for, or the completely under the influence of the Five Books of Moses. The toler violation of the ancient traditional right of the other men to the tion of which had to be purchased, by surrendering the woman for a patriarchal form of the family, described there in greater detail limited period of time. form of the family, but also--after excluding polygamy- identified less passages of ancient classical literature, which he had assembled vith the present-day bourgeois family, as if the family had really ith extraordinary diligence. According to him, the evolution ndergone no historical development at all. At most it was admit from“ hetaerism” to monogamy, and fror ted that a period of promiscuous sexual relationships might have existed in primeval time the evolution of religious ideas, the intrusion of new deities Oriental polygamy and Indo-Tibetan polyandry wer representatives of the new outlook, into the old traditional pantheon presenting the old outlook, so that the latter is more and more and appeared disconnectedly alongside of sache ste existing ay driven into the background by the former. Thus, according to Bacho- fen, it is not the development of the actual conditions under which ges, the line of descent was reckoned men live but the religious reflection of these cond rom the mother and, therefore, the female lineage alone was re- the minds of men that brought about the historical changes in the garded as valid; that among many peoples of today marriage within mutual social position of man and woman. Bachofen accordingly definite larger groups-not subjected to closer investigation at that points to the Oresteia of Aeschylus as a dramatic depiction of the time-is prohibited, and that this custom is to be met with in all struggle between declining mother right and rising and victorious arts father right in the Heroic Age. Clytemnestra has slain her hus- WEm计2m band Agamemnon, just returned from the Trojan War, for the sake f her lover Aegisthus; but Orestes, her son by Agamemnon, History of Mankind, etc. (I865), they figure merely as"strange verges his father's murder by slaying his mother. For this he is customs"along with the taboo in force among some savages against pursued by the Erinyes demonic defenders of mother right, the touching of burning wood with iron tools, and similar religious according to which matricide is the most heinous and of crimes. But Apollo, who through his oracle has incited Orestes The study of the history dates from 1861, from commit this deed, and Athena, who is called in as arbiter-the the publication of Bachofen's In this work the author wo deities which here represent the new order, based on father advances the following propositions: I in the beginning humani- right-protect him. Athena hears both sides. The whole contro- ersy is briefly summarized in the debate which now ensues be- into the Early History of mankind and the De- tween Orestes and the Erinyes. Orestes declares that Clytemnestra lopment London I865 is guilty of a double outrage; for in killing her husband she also