The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
Civil matrimony in our day is of two kinds. In Catholic countries, the parents provide a fitting spouse for their son as of old, and the natural consequence is the full development of the contradictions inherent to monogamy: voluptuous hetaerism on the man's part, voluptuous adultery of the woman. Probably the Catholic church has abolished divorce for the simple reason that it had come to the conclusion, there was as little help for adultery as for death. In Protestant countries, again, it is the custom to give the bourgeois son more or less liberty in choosing his mate. Hence a certain degree of love may be at the bottom of such a marriage and for the sake of propriety this is always assumed, quite in keeping with Protestant hypocrisy. In this case hetaerism is carried on less strenuously and adultery on the part of the woman is not so frequent. But as human beings remain under any form of marriage what they were before marrying, and as the citizens of Protestant countries are mostly philistines, this Protestant monogamy on the average of the best cases confines itself to the community of a leaden ennui, labeled wedded bliss. The best mirror of these two species of marriage is the novel, the French novel for the Catholic, the German novel for the Protestant brand. In both of these novels they "get one another:" in the German novel the man gets the girl, in the French novel the husband gets the horns. It does not always go without saying which of the two deserves the most pity. For this reason the tediousness of the German novels is abhorred as much by the French bourgeois as the "immorality" of the French novels by the German philistine. Of late, since Berlin became cosmopolitan, the German novel begins to treat somewhat timidly of the hetaerism and adultery that a long time ago became familiar features of that city.
In both cases the marriage is influenced by the class environment of the participants, and in this respect it always remains conventional. This conventionalism often enough results in the most pronounced prostitution--sometimes of both parties, more commonly of the woman. She is distinguished from a courtisane only in that she does not offer her body for money by the hour like a commodity, but sells it into slavery for once and all. Fourier's words hold good with respect to all conventional marriages: "As in grammar two negatives make one affirmative, so in matrimonial ethics, two prostitutions are considered as one virtue." Sexual love in man's relation to woman becomes and can become the rule among the oppressed classes alone, among the proletarians of our day--no matter whether this relation is officially sanctioned or not.
Here all the fundamental conditions of classic monogamy have been abolished. Here all property is missing and it was precisely for the protection and inheritance of this that monogamy and man rule were established. Hence all incentive to make this rule felt is wanting here. More still, the funds are missing. Civil law protecting male rule applies only to the possessing classes and their intercourse with proletarians. Law is expensive and therefore the poverty of the laborer makes it meaningless for his relation to his wife. Entirely different personal and social conditions decide in this case. And finally, since the great industries have removed women from the home to the labor market and to the factory, the last remnant of man rule in the proletarian home has lost its ground--except, perhaps, a part of the brutality against women that has become general since the advent of monogamy. Thus the family of the proletarian is no longer strictly monogamous, even with all the most passionate love and the most unalterable loyalty of both parties, and in spite of any possible clerical or secular sanction. Consequently the eternal companions of monogamy, hetaerism and adultery, play an almost insignificant role here. The woman has practically regained the right of separation, and if a couple cannot agree, they rather separate. In short, the proletarian marriage is monogamous in the etymological sense of the word, but by no means in a historical sense.
True, our jurists hold that the progress of legislation continually lessens all cause of complaint for women. The modern systems of civil law recognize, first that marriage, in order to be legal, must be a contract based on voluntary consent of both parties, and secondly that during marriage the relations of both parties shall be founded on equal rights and duties. These two demands logically enforced will, so they claim, give to women everything they could possibly ask.
This genuinely juridical argumentation is exactly the same as that used by the radical republican bourgeois to cut short and dismiss the proletarian. The labor contract is said to be voluntarily made by both parties. But it is considered as voluntary when the law places both parties on equal terms on paper. The power conferred on one party by the division of classes, the pressure thereby exerted on the other party, the actual economic relation of the two--all this does not concern the law. Again, during the term of the contract both parties are held to have equal rights, unless one has expressly renounced his right. That the economic situation forces the laborer to give up even the last semblance of equality, that is not the fault of the law.
In regard to marriage, even the most advanced law is completely satisfied after both parties have formally declared their willingness. What passes behind the juridical scenes where the actual process of living is going on, and how this willingness is brought about, that cannot be the business of the law and the jurist. Yet the simplest legal comparison should show to the jurist what this willingness really means. In those countries where a legitimate portion of the parental wealth is assured to children and where these cannot be disinherited--in Germany, in countries with French law, etc.--the children are bound to secure the consent of their parents for marrying. In countries with English law, where the consent of the parents is by no means a legal qualification of marriage, the parents have full liberty to bequeath their wealth to anyone and may disinherit their children at will. Hence it is clear that among classes having any property to bequeath the freedom to marry is not a particle greater in England and America than in France and Germany.
The legal equality of man and woman in marriage is by no means better founded. Their legal inequality inherited from earlier stages of society is not the cause, but the effect of the economic oppression of women. In the ancient communistic household comprising many married couples and their children, the administration of the household entrusted to women was just as much a public function, a socially necessary industry, as the procuring of food by men. In the patriarchal and still more in the monogamous family this was changed. The administration of the household lost its public character. It was no longer a concern of society. It became a private service. The woman became the first servant of the house, excluded from participation in social production. Only by the great industries of our time the access to social production was again opened for women--for proletarian women alone, however. This is done in such a manner that they remain excluded from public production and cannot earn anything, if they fulfill their duties in the private service of the family; or that they are unable to attend to their family duties, if they wish to participate in public industries and earn a living independently. As in the factory, so women are situated in all business departments up to the medical and legal professions. The modern monogamous family is founded on the open or disguised domestic slavery of women, and modern society is a mass composed of molecules in the form of monogamous families. In the great majority of cases the man has to earn a living and to support his family, at least among the possessing classes. He thereby obtains a superior position that has no need of any legal special privilege. In the family, he is the bourgeois, the woman represents the proletariat. In the industrial world, however, the specific character of the economic oppression weighing on the proletariat appears in its sharpest outlines only after all special privileges of the capitalist class are abolished and the full legal equality of both classes is established. A democratic republic does not abolish the distinction between the two classes. On the contrary, it offers the battleground on which this distinction can be fought out. Likewise the peculiar character of man's rule over woman in the modern family, the necessity and the manner of accomplishing the real social equality of the two, will appear in broad daylight only then, when both of them will enjoy complete legal equality. It will then be seen that the emancipation of women is primarily dependent on the re-introduction of the whole female sex into the public industries. To accomplish this, the monogamous family must cease to be the industrial unit of society.
* * * * *
We have, then, three main forms of the family, corresponding in general to the three main stages of human development. For savagery group marriage, for barbarism the pairing family, for civilization monogamy supplemented by adultery and prostitution. Between the pairing family and monogamy, in the higher stage of barbarism, the rule of men over female slaves and polygamy is inserted.
As we proved by our whole argument, the progress visible in this chain of phenomena is connected with the peculiarity of more and more curtailing the sexual freedom of the group marriage for women, but not for men. And group marriage is actually practised by men to this day. What is considered a crime for women and entails grave legal and social consequences for them, is considered honorable for men or in the worst case a slight moral blemish born with pleasure. But the more traditional hetaerism is changed in our day by capitalistic production and conforms to it, the more hetaerism is transformed into undisguised prostitution, the more demoralizing are its effects. And it demoralizes men far more than women. Prostitution does not degrade the whole female sex, but only the luckless women that become its victims, and even those not to the extent generally assumed. But it degrades the character of the entire male world. Especially a long engagement is in nine cases out of ten a perfect training school of adultery.
We are now approaching a social revolution, in which the old economic foundations of monogamy will disappear just as surely as those of its complement, prostitution. Monogamy arose through the concentration of considerable wealth in one hand--a man's hand--and from the endeavor to bequeath this wealth to the children of this man to the exclusion of all others. This necessitated monogamy on the woman's, but not on the man's part. Hence this monogamy of women in no way hindered open or secret polygamy of men. Now, the impending social revolution will reduce this whole care of inheritance to a minimum by changing at least the overwhelming part of permanent and inheritable wealth--the means of production--into social property. Since monogamy was caused by economic conditions, will it disappear when these causes are abolished?
One might reply, not without reason: not only will it not disappear, but it will rather be perfectly realized. For with the transformation of the means of production into collective property, wage labor will also disappear, and with it the proletariat and the necessity for a certain, statistically ascertainable number of women to surrender for money. Prostitution disappears and monogamy, instead of going out of existence, at last becomes a reality--for men also.
At all events, the situation will be very much changed for men. But also that of women, and of all women, will be considerably altered. With the transformation of the means of production into collective property the monogamous family ceases to be the economic unit of society. The private household changes to a social industry. The care and education of children becomes a public matter. Society cares equally well for all children, legal or illegal. This removes the care about the "consequences" which now forms the essential social factor--moral and economic--hindering a girl to surrender unconditionally to the beloved man. Will not this be sufficient cause for a gradual rise of a more unconventional intercourse of the sexes and a more lenient public opinion regarding virgin honor and female shame? And finally, did we not see that in the modern world monogamy and prostitution, though antitheses, are inseparable and poles of the same social condition? Can prostitution disappear without engulfing at the same time monogamy?
Here a new element becomes active, an element which at best existed only in the germ at the time when monogamy developed: individual sexlove.
Before the middle ages we cannot speak of individual sexlove. It goes without saying that personal beauty, intimate intercourse, harmony of inclinations, etc., awakened a longing for sexual intercourse in persons of different sex, and that it was not absolutely immaterial to men and women, with whom they entered into such most intimate intercourse. But from such a relation to our sexlove there is a long way yet. All through antiquity marriages were arranged for the participants by the parents, and the former quietly submitted. What little matrimonial love was known to antiquity was not subjective inclination, but objective duty; not cause, but corollary of marriage. Love affairs in a modern sense occurred in classical times only outside of official society. The shepherds whose happiness and woe in love is sung by Theocritos and Moschus, such as Daphnis and Chloe of Longos, all these were slaves who had no share in the state and in the daily sphere of the free citizen. Outside of slave circles we find love affairs only as products of disintegration of the sinking old world. Their objects are women who also are standing outside of official society, hetaerae that are either foreigners or liberated slaves: in Athens since the beginning of its decline, in Rome at the time of the emperors. If love affairs really occurred between free male and female citizens, it was only in the form of adultery. And to the classical love poet of antiquity, the old Anakreon, sexlove in our sense was so immaterial, that he did not even care a fig for the sex of the beloved being.
Our sexlove is essentially different from the simple sexual craving, the Eros, of the ancients. In the first place it presupposes mutual love. In this respect woman is the equal of man, while in the antique Eros her permission is by no means always asked. In the second place our sexlove has such a degree of intensity and duration that in the eyes of both parties lack of possession and separation appear as a great, if not the greatest, calamity. In order to possess one another they play for high stakes, even to the point of risking their lives, a thing heard of only in adultery during the classical age. And finally a new moral standard is introduced for judging sexual intercourse. We not only ask: "Was it legal or illegal?" but also: "Was it caused by mutual love or not?" Of course, this new standard meets with no better fate in feudal or bourgeois practice than all other moral standards--it is simply ignored. But neither does it fare worse. It is recognized just as much as the others--in theory, on paper. And that is all we can expect at present.
Where antiquity left off with its attempts at sexual love, there the middle ages resumed the thread: with adultery. We have already described the love of the knights that invented the day songs. From this love endeavoring to break through the bonds of marriage to the love destined to found marriage, there is a long distance which was never fully traversed by the knights. Even in passing on from the frivolous Romanic race to the virtuous Germans, we find in the Nibelungen song Kriemhild, who secretly is no less in love with Siegfried than he with her, meekly replying to Gunther's announcement that he has pledged her in troth to a certain knight whom he does not name: "You need not beg for my consent; as you will demand, so I shall ever be; whomever you, sir, will select for my husband, I shall willingly take in troth." It does not enter her head at all that her love could find any consideration. Gunther asks for Brunhild, Etzel for Kriemhild without ever having seen one another. The same is true of the suit of Gutrun Sigebant of Ireland for the Norwegian Ute and of Hetel of Hegelingen for Hilda of Ireland. When Siegfried of Morland, Hartmut of Oranien and Herwig of Sealand court Gutrun, then it happens for the first time that the lady voluntarily decides, favoring the last named knight. As a rule the bride of the young prince is selected by his parents. Only when the latter are no longer alive, he chooses his own bride with the advice of the great feudal lords who in all cases of this kind have a decisive voice. Nor could it be otherwise. For the knight and the baron as well as for the ruler of the realm himself, marriage is a political act, an opportunity for increasing their power by new federations. The interest of the house must decide, not the arbitrary inclination of the individual. How could love have a chance to decide the question of marriage in the last instance under such conditions?
The same held good for the bourgeois of the medieval towns, the members of the guilds. Precisely the privileges protecting them, the clauses and restrictions of the guild charters, the artificial lines of division separating them legally, here from the other guilds, there from their journeymen and apprentices, drew a sufficiently narrow circle for the selection of a fitting bourgeois spouse. Under such a complicated system, the question of fitness was unconditionally decided, not by individual inclination, but by family interests.
In the overwhelming majority of cases the marriage contract thus remained to the end of the middle ages what it had been from the outset: a matter that was not decided by the parties most interested. In the beginning one was already married from his birth--married to a whole group of the other sex. In the later forms of group marriage, a similar relation was probably maintained, only under a continual narrowing of the group. In the pairing family it is the rule for mothers to exchange mutual pledges for the marriage of their children. Here also the main consideration is given to new ties of relationship that will strengthen the position of the young couple in the gens and the tribe. And when with the preponderance of private property over collective property and with the interest for inheritance paternal law and monogamy assumed the supremacy, then marriage became still more dependent on economic considerations. The form of purchase marriage disappears, but the essence of the transaction is more and more intensified, so that not only the woman, but also the man have a fixed price--not according to his qualities, but to his wealth. That mutual fondness of the marrying parties should be the one factor dominating all others had always been unheard of in the practice of the ruling classes. Such a thing occurred at best in romances or--among the oppressed classes that were not counted.
This was the situation encountered by capitalist production when it began to prepare, since the epoch of geographical discoveries, for the conquest of the world by international trade and manufacture. One would think that this mode of making the marriage contract would have been extremely acceptable to capitalism, and it was. And yet--the irony of fate is inexplicable--capitalist production had to make the decisive breach through this mode. By changing all things into commodities, it dissolved all inherited and traditional relations and replaced time hallowed custom and historical right by purchase and sale, by the "free contract." And the English jurist, H. S. Maine, thought he had made a stupendous discovery by saying that our whole progress over former epochs consisted in arriving from status to contract, from inherited to voluntarily contracted conditions. So far as this is correct, it had already been mentioned in the Communist Manifesto.
But in order to make contracts, people must have full freedom over their persons, actions and possessions. They must furthermore be on terms of mutual equality. The creation of these "free" and "equal" people was precisely one of the main functions of capitalistic production. What though this was done at first in a half-conscious way and, moreover, in a religious disguise? Since the Lutheran and Calvinist reformation the thesis was accepted that a human being is fully responsible for his actions only then, when these actions were due to full freedom of will. And it was held to be a moral duty to resist any compulsion for an immoral action. How did this agree with the prevailing practice of match-making? Marriage according to bourgeois conception was a contract, a legal business affair, and the most important one at that, because it decided the weal and woe of body and spirit of two beings for life. At that time the agreement was formally voluntary; without the consent of the contracting parties nothing could be done. But it was only too well known how this consent was obtained and who were really the contracting parties. If, however, perfect freedom of decision is demanded for all other contracts, why not for this one? Did not the two young people who were to be coupled together have the right freely to dispose of themselves, of their bodies and the organs of these? Had not sexual love become the custom through the knights and was not, in opposition to knightly adultery, the love of married couples its proper bourgeois form? And if it was the duty of married couples to love one another, was it not just as much the duty of lovers to marry each other and nobody else? Stood not the right of lovers higher than the right of parents, relatives and other customary marriage brokers and matrimonial agents? If the right of free personal investigation made its way unchecked into the church and religion, how could it bear with the insupportable claims of the older generation on the body, soul, property, happiness and misfortune of the younger generation?
These questions had to be raised at a time when all the old ties of society were loosened and all traditional conceptions tottering. The size of the world had increased tenfold at a bound. Instead of one quadrant of one hemisphere, the whole globe now spread before the eyes of West Europeans who hastened to take possession of the other seven quadrants. And the thousand-year-old barriers of conventional medieval thought fell like the old narrow obstacles to marriage. An infinitely wider horizon opened out before the outer and inner eyes of humanity. What mattered the well-meaning propriety, what the honorable privilege of the guild overcome through generations to the young man tempted by the gold and silver mines of Mexico and Potosi?
It was the knight errant time of the bourgeoisie. It had its own romances and love dreams, but on a bourgeois footing and, in the last instance, with bourgeois aims.
Thus it came about that the rising bourgeoisie more and more recognized the freedom of contracting in marriage and carried it through in the manner described above, especially in Protestant countries, where existing institutions were most strongly shaken. Marriage remained class marriage, but within the class a certain freedom of choice was accorded to the contracting parties. And on paper, in moral theory as in poetical description, nothing was more unalterably established than the idea that every marriage was immoral unless founded on mutual sex-love and perfectly free agreement of husband and wife. In short, the love match was proclaimed as a human right, not only as droit de l'homme--man's right--but also for once as droit de femme--woman's right.
However, this human right differed from all other so-called human rights in one respect. While in practice other rights remained the privileges of the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, and were directly or indirectly curtailed for proletarians, the irony of history once more asserted itself in this case. The ruling class remains subject to well-known economic influences and, therefore, shows marriage by free selection only in exceptional cases. But among the oppressed class, love matches are the rule, as we have seen.
Hence the full freedom of marriage can become general only after all minor economic considerations, that still exert such a powerful influence on the choice of a mate for life, have been removed by the abolition of capitalistic production and of the property relations created by it. Then no other motive will remain but mutual fondness.
Since sexlove is exclusive by its very nature--although this exclusiveness is at present realized for women alone--marriage founded on sexlove must be monogamous. We have seen that Bachofen was perfectly right in regarding the progress from group marriage to monogamy mainly as the work of women. Only the advance from the pairing family to monogamy must be charged to the account of men. This advance implied, historically, a deterioration in the position of women and a greater opportunity for men to be faithless. Remove the economic considerations that now force women to submit to the customary disloyalty of men, and you will place women on a equal footing with men. All present experiences prove that this will tend much more strongly to make men truly monogamous, than to make women polyandrous.
However, those peculiarities that were stamped upon the face of monogamy by its rise through property relations, will decidedly vanish, namely the supremacy of men and the indissolubility of marriage. The supremacy of man in marriage is simply the consequence of his economic superiority and will fall with the abolition of the latter.
The indissolubility of marriage is partly the consequence of economic conditions, under which monogamy arose, partly tradition from the time where the connection between this economic situation and monogamy, not yet clearly understood, was carried to extremes by religion. To-day, it has been perforated a thousand times. If marriage founded on love is alone moral, then it follows that marriage is moral only as long as love lasts. The duration of an attack of individual sexlove varies considerably according to individual disposition, especially in men. A positive cessation of fondness or its replacement by a new passionate love makes a separation a blessing for both parties and for society. But humanity will be spared the useless wading through the mire of a divorce case.
What we may anticipate about the adjustment of sexual relations after the impending downfall of capitalist production is mainly of a negative nature and mostly confined to elements that will disappear. But what will be added? That will be decided after a new generation has come to maturity: a race of men who never in their lives have had any occasion for buying with money or other economic means of power the surrender of a woman; a race of women who have never had any occasion for surrendering to any man for any other reason but love, or for refusing to surrender to their lover from fear of economic consequences. Once such people are in the world, they will not give a moment's thought to what we to-day believe should be their course. They will follow their own practice and fashion their own public opinion about the individual practice of every person--only this and nothing more.
But let us return to Morgan from whom we moved away a considerable distance. The historical investigation of social institutions developed during the period of civilization exceeds the limits of his book. Hence the vicissitudes of monogamy during this epoch occupy him very briefly. He also sees in the further development of the monogamous family a progress, an approach to perfect equality of the sexes, without considering this aim fully realized. But he says: "When the fact is accepted that the family has passed through four successive forms, and is now in a fifth, the question at once arises whether this form can be permanent in the future. The only answer that can be given is that it must advance as society advances, and change as society changes, even as it has done in the past. It is the creature of the social system, and will reflect its culture. As the monogamian family has improved greatly since the commencement of civilization, and very sensibly in modern times, it is at least supposable that it is capable of still farther improvement until the equality of the sexes is attained. Should the monogamian family in the distant future fail to answer the requirements of society, assuming the continuous progress of civilization, it is impossible to predict the nature of its successor."
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Author's note.
How little Bachofen understood what he had discovered, or rather guessed, is proved by the term "hetaerism," which he applies to this primeval stage. Hetaerism designated among the Greeks an intercourse of men, single or living in monogamy, with unmarried women. It always presupposes the existence of a well defined form of marriage, outside of which this intercourse takes place, and includes the possibility of prostitution. In another sense this word was never used, and I use it in this sense with Morgan. Bachofen's very important discoveries are everywhere mystified in the extreme by his idea that the historical relations of man and wife have their source in the religious conceptions of a certain period, not in the economic conditions of life.
[8] Translator's note.
The female of the European cuckoo (cuculus canorus) keeps intercourse with several males in different districts during the same season. Still, this is far from the human polyandry, in which the men and one women all live together in the same place, the men mutually tolerating one another, which male cuckoos do not.
[9] Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage, London, 1891.
[10] Espinas, Des Societes Animales, 1877.
[11] Espinas, l. c., quoted by Giraud-Teulon, Origines du mariage et de la famille, 1884, p. 518-20.
[12] Author's note.
In the spring of 1882, Marx expressed himself in the strongest terms on the total misrepresentation of primeval times by Wagner's Nibelungen text: "Who ever heard of a brother embracing his sister as a bride?" To these lascivious Wagnerian gods who in truly modern style are rendering their love quarrels more spicy by a little incest, Marx replies: "In primeval times the sister was the wife and that was moral." (To the fourth edition.) A French friend and admirer of Wagner does not consent to this foot note, and remarks that even in the Oegisdrecka, the more ancient Edda on which Wagner built, Loki denounces Freya: "Before the gods you embraced your own brother." This, he says, proves that marriage between brother and sister was interdicted even then. But the Oegisdrecka is the expression of a time when the belief in the old myths was totally shaken; it is a truly Lucian satire on the gods. If Loki as Mephisto denounces Freya in this manner, then it is rather a point against Wagner. Loki also says, a few verses further on, to Niordhr: "With your sister you generated (such) a son" ("vidh systur thinni gatzu slikan mog"). Niordhr is not an Asa, but a Vana, and says in the Ynglinga Saga that marriages between brothers and sisters are sanctioned in Vanaland, which is not the case among the Asas. This would indicate that the Vanas are older gods than the Asas. At any rate Niordhr lived on equal terms with the Asas, and the Oegisdrecka is thus rather a proof that at the time of the origin of the Norwegian mythology the marriage of brother and sister was not yet repulsive, at least not to the gods. In trying to excuse Wagner it might be better to quote Goethe instead of the Edda. This poet commits a similar error in his ballad of the god and the bajadere in regard to the religious surrender of women and approaches modern prostitution far too closely.
[13] There is no longer any doubt that the traces of unrestricted sexual intercourse, which Bachofen alleges to have found--called "incestuous generation" by him--are traceable to group marriage. If Bachofen considers those Punaluan marriages "lawless," a man of that period would look upon most of our present marriages between near and remote cousins on the father's or mother's side as incestuous, being marriages between consanguineous relatives.--Marx.
[14] The People of India.
[15] See translator's note, p. 55.
[16] Translator's note.
According to Cunow, Kroki and Kumite are phratries. See "Die Verwandschaftsorganizationen der Australneger," by Heinrich Cunow. Stuttgart, Dietz Verlag, 1894.
[17] Translator's note.
Heinrich Cunow has given us the results of his most recent investigations in his "Verwandschaftsorganisationen der Australneger." He sums up his studies in these words: "While Morgan and Fison regard the system of marriage classes as an original organization preceding the so-called Punaluan family, I have found that the class is indeed older than the gens, having its origin in the different strata of generations characteristic of the "consanguine family" of Morgan; but the present mode of classification in force among Kamilaroi, Kabi, Yuipera, etc., cannot have arisen until a much later time, when the gentile institution had already grown out of the horde. This system of classification does not represent the first timid steps of evolution; it is not the most primitive of any known forms of social organization, but an intermediate form that takes shape together with the gentile society, a stage of transition to a pure gentile organization. In this stage, the generic classification in strata of different ages belonging to the so-called consanguine family runs parallel for a while with the gentile order....
It would have been easy for me to quote the testimony of travelers and ethnologists in support of the conclusions drawn by me from the forms of relationship among Australian negroes. But I purposely refrain from doing this, with a few exceptions, first because I do not wish to write a general history of the primitive family, and, secondly, because I consider all references of this kind as very doubtful testimony, unless they are accompanied by an analysis of the entire organization. We frequently find analogies to the institutions of a lower stage in a high stage, and yet they are founded on radically different premises and causes. The evolution of the Australian aborigines shows that. Among the Australians of the lower stage, e. g., the hordes are endogamous, among those of the middle stage they are exogamous, and in the higher stage they are again endogamous. But while in the one instance the marriage in the horde is conditioned on the fact that the more remote relatives are not yet excluded from sexual intercourse, it is founded in the other case on the difference between local and sexual organization. Furthermore, the marriage between daughter and father is permitted in the lower stage, and again in that higher stage, where the class organization of the Kamilaroi is on the verge of dissolution. But in both cases the circle of those who are regarded as fathers is entirely different. The character of an institution can only be perfectly understood, if we examine its connection with the entire organization, and, if possible, trace its metamorphoses in the preceding stages....
The characteristic feature of the class system is that by the side of the gentile order, such as is found among the North American Indians, there is always another system of four marriage classes for the purpose of limiting sexual intercourse between certain groups of relatives. Neither the phratry nor the gens of the Kamilaroi forms a distinct territorial community. Their members are scattered among different roving hordes, and they only meet occasionally, e. g., to celebrate a feast or dance....
The origin of gentile systems out of Punaluan groups has never been proven, while we see among the Australian negroes that the classes are clearly and irrefutably in existence among the first traces of gentilism....
The class system in its original form is a conclusive proof of Morgan's theory, that the first step in the formation of systems of relationship consisted in prohibiting sexual intercourse between parents and children (in a wider sense)....
It has been often disputed that the Punaluan family ever existed outside of the Sandwich Islands. But the marriage institutions of certain Australian tribes named by me prove the contrary. The Pirrauru of the Dieyerie is absolutely identical with the Punalua of the Hawaiians; and these institutions were not described by travelers who rushed through the territories of those tribes without knowing their language, but by men who lived among them for decades and fully mastered their dialects....
I have shown how far the class system corresponds to the Hawaiian system. It is and remains a fact, that it contains a long series of terms that cannot be explained by the relations in the so-called consanguine family, and the use of which creates confusion, if applied to this family. But that simply shows that Morgan was mistaken about the age and present structure of the Hawaiian system. It does not prove that it could not have grown on the basis assumed by him....
If the opponents of Morgan dispute that the so-called consanguine family is based on blood kinship, they are right, unless we wish to assign an exceptional position to the Australian strata of generations. But if they go further and declare that the subsequent restrictions of inbreeding and the gentile order have arisen independently of relationships, they commit a far greater mistake than Morgan. They block their way to an understanding of subsequent organizations and force themselves to all sorts of queer assumptions that at once appear as the fruits of imagination, when compared with the actual institutions of primitive peoples.
This explanation of the phases of development of family institutions contradicts present day views on the matter. Since the scientific investigations of the last decade have demonstrated beyond doubt that the so-called patriarchal family was preceded by the matriarchal family, it has become the custom to regard descent by females as a natural institution belonging to the very first stages of development which is explained by the modes of existence and thought among savages. Paternity being a matter of speculation, maternity of actual observation, it is supposed to follow that descent by females was always recognized. But the development of the Australian systems of relationship shows that this is not true, at least not in regard to Australians. The fact cannot be disputed away, that we find female lineage among all those higher developed tribes that have progressed to the formation of gentile organizations, but male lineage among all those that have no gentile organizations or where these are only in process of formation. Not a single tribe has been discovered so far, where female lineage was not combined with gentile organization, and I doubt that any will ever be found."
[18] The History of Human Marriage, p. 28-29.
[19] Mutterrecht, p. xix.
[20] A Journey in Brazil. Boston and New York, 1886. Page 266.
[21] Bancroft, Native Races, I., 81.
[22] Ibidem, p. 584.
[23] Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 504.
CHAPTER III.
THE IROQUOIS GENS.
We now come to another discovery of Morgan that is at least as important as the reconstruction of the primeval form of the family from the systems of kinship. It is the proof that the sex organizations within the tribe of North American Indians, designated by animal names, are essentially identical with the genea of the Greeks and the gentes of the Romans; that the American form is the original from which the Greek and Roman forms were later derived; that the whole organization of Greek and Roman society during primeval times in gens, phratry and tribe finds its faithful parallel in that of the American Indians; that the gens is an institution common to all barbarians up to the time of civilization--at least so far as our present sources of information reach. This demonstration has cleared at a single stroke the most difficult passages of remotest ancient Greek and Roman history. At the same time it has given us unexpected information concerning the fundamental outlines of the constitution of society in primeval times--before the introduction of the state. Simple as the matter is after we have once found it out, still it was only lately discovered by Morgan. In his work of 1871 he had not yet unearthed this mystery. Its revelation has completely silenced for the time being those generally so overconfident English authorities on primeval history.
The Latin word gens, used by Morgan generally for the designation of this sex organization, is derived, like the equivalent Greek word genos, from the common Aryan root gan, signifying to beget. Gens, genos, Sanskrit dschanas, Gothic kuni, ancient Norse and Anglesaxon kyn, English kin, Middle High German kuenne, all signify lineage, descent. Gens in Latin, genos in Greek, specially designate that sex organization which boasted of common descent (from a common sire) and was united into a separate community by certain social and religious institutions, but the origin and nature of which nevertheless remained obscure to all our historians.
Elsewhere, in speaking of the Punaluan family, we saw how the gens was constituted in its original form. It consisted of all individuals who by means of the Punaluan marriage and in conformity with the conceptions necessarily arising in it made up the recognized offspring of a certain ancestral mother, the founder of that gens. Since fatherhood is uncertain in this form of the family, female lineage is alone valid. And as brothers must not marry their sisters, but only women of foreign descent, the children bred from these foreign women do not belong to the gens, according to maternal law. Hence only the offspring of the daughters of every generation remain in the same sex organization. The descendants of the sons are transferred to the gentes of the new mothers. What becomes of this group of kinship when it constitutes itself a separate group, distinct from similar groups in the same tribe?
As the classical form of this original gens Morgan selects that of the Iroquois, more especially that of the Seneca tribe. This tribe has eight gentes named after animals: 1. Wolf. 2. Bear. 3. Turtle. 4. Beaver. 5. Deer. 6. Snipe. 7. Heron. 8. Hawk. Every gens observes the following customs:
1. The gens elects its sachem (official head during peace) and its chief (leader in war). The sachem must be selected within the gens and his office was in a sense hereditary. It had to be filled immediately after a vacancy occurred. The chief could be selected outside of the gens, and his office could even be temporarily vacant. The son never followed his father in the office of sachem, because the Iroquois observed maternal law, in consequence of which the son belonged to another gens. But the brother or the son of a sister was often elected as a successor. Men and women both voted in elections. The election, however, had to be confirmed by the other seven gentes, and then only the sachem-elect was solemnly invested, by the common council of the whole Iroquois federation. The significance of this will be seen later. The power of the sachem within the tribe was of a paternal, purely moral nature. He had no means of coercion at his command. He was besides by virtue of his office a member of the tribal council of the Senecas and of the federal council of the whole Iroquois nation. The Chief had the right to command only in times of war.
2. The gens can retire the sachem and the chief at will. This again is done by men and women jointly. The retired men are considered simple warriors and private persons like all others. The tribal council, by the way, can also retire the sachems, even against the will of the tribe.
3. No member is permitted to marry within the gens. This is the fundamental rule of the gens, the tie that holds it together. It is the negative expression of the very positive blood relationship, by virtue of which the individuals belonging to it become a gens. By the discovery of this simple fact Morgan for the first time revealed the nature of the gens. How little the gens had been understood before him is proven by former reports on savages and barbarians, in which the different organizations of which the gentile order is composed are jumbled together without understanding and distinction as tribe, clan, thum, etc. Sometimes it is stated that intermarrying within these organizations is forbidden. This gave rise to the hopeless confusion, in which McLennan could pose as Napoleon and establish order by the decree: All tribes are divided into those that forbid intermarrying (exogamous) and those that permit it (endogamous). And after he had thus made confusion worse confounded, he could indulge in deep meditations which of his two preposterous classes was the older: exogamy or endogamy. By the discovery of the gens founded on affinity of blood and the resulting impossibility of its members to intermarry, this nonsense found a natural end. It is self understood that the marriage interdict within the gens was strictly observed at the stage in which we find the Iroquois.
4. The property of deceased members fell to the share of the other gentiles; it had to remain in the gens. In view of the insignificance of the objects an Iroquois could leave behind, the nearest gentile relations divided the heritage. Was the deceased a man, then his natural brothers, sisters and the brothers of the mother shared in his property. Was it a woman, then her children and natural sisters shared, but not her brothers. For this reason husband and wife could not inherit from one another, nor the children from the father.
5. The gentile members owed to each other help, protection and especially assistance in revenging injury inflicted by strangers. The individual relied for his protection on the gens and could be assured of it. Whoever injured the individual, injured the whole gens. From this blood kinship arose the obligation to blood revenge that was unconditionally recognized by the Iroquois. If a stranger killed a gentile member, the whole gens of the slain man was pledged to revenge his death. First mediation was tried. The gens of the slayer deliberated and offered to the gentile council of the slain propositions for atonement, consisting generally in expressions of regret and presents of considerable value. If these were accepted, the matter was settled. In the opposite case the injured gens appointed one or more avengers who were obliged to pursue the slayer and to kill him. If they succeeded, the gens of the slayer had no right to complain. The account was squared.
6. The gens had certain distinct names or series of names, which no other gens in the whole tribe could use, so that the name of the individual indicated to what gens he belonged. A gentile name at the same time bestowed gentile rights.
7. The gens may adopt strangers who thereby are adopted into the whole tribe. The prisoners of war who were not killed became by adoption into a gens tribal members of the Senecas and thus received full gentile and tribal rights. The adoption took place on the motion of some gentile members, of men who accepted the stranger as a brother or sister, of women who accepted him as a child. The solemn introduction into the gens was necessary to confirm the adoption. Frequently certain gentes that had shrunk exceptionally were thus strengthened by mass adoptions from another gens with the consent of the latter. Among the Iroquois the solemn introduction into the gens took place in a public meeting of the tribal council, whereby it actually became a religious ceremony.
The existence of special religious celebrations among Indian gentes can hardly be demonstrated. But the religious rites of the Indians are more or less connected with the gens. At the six annual religious festivals of the Iroquois the sachems and chiefs of the different gentes were added to the "Keepers of the Faith" and had the functions of priests.
9. The gens had a common burial place. Among the Iroquois of the State of New York, who are crowded by white men all around them, the burial place has disappeared, but it existed formerly. Among other Indians it is still in existence, e. g., among the Tuscaroras, near relatives of the Iroquois, where every gens has a row by itself in the burial place, although they are Christians. The mother is buried in the same row as her children, but not the father. And among the Iroquois the whole gens of the deceased attends the funeral, prepares the grave and provides the addresses, etc.
10. The gens had a council, the democratic assembly of all male and female gentiles of adult age, all with equal suffrage. This council elected and deposed its sachems and chiefs; likewise the other "Keepers of the Faith." It deliberated on gifts of atonement or blood revenge for murdered gentiles and it adopted strangers into the gens. In short, it was the sovereign power in the gens.
The following are the rights and privileges of the typical Indian gens, according to Morgan: "All the members of an Iroquois gens were personally free, and they were bound to defend each other's freedom; they were equal in privileges and in personal rights, the sachems and chiefs claiming no superiority; and they were a brotherhood bound together by ties of kin. Liberty, equality and fraternity, though never formulated, were cardinal principles of the gens. These facts are material, because the gens was the unit of a social and governmental system, the foundation upon which Indian society was organized. A structure composed of such units would of necessity bear the impress of their character, for as the unit, so the compound. It serves to explain that sense of independence and personal dignity universally an attribute of Indian character."
At the time of the discovery the Indians of entire North America were organized in gentes by maternal law. Only "in some tribes, as among the Dakotas, the gentes had fallen out; in others as among the Ojibwas, the Omahas and the Mayas of Yucatan, descent had been changed from the female to the male line."
Among many Indian tribes with more than five or six gentes we find three, four or more gentes united into a separate group, called phratry by Morgan in accurate translation of the Indian name by its Greek equivalent. Thus the Senecas have two phratries, the first comprising gentes one to four, the second gentes five to eight. Closer investigation shows that these phratries generally represent the original gentes that formed the tribe in the beginning. For the marriage interdict necessitated the existence of at least two gentes in a tribe in order to realize its separate existence. As the tribe increased, every gens segmented into two or more new gentes, while the original gens comprising all the daughter gentes, lived on in the phratry. Among the Senecas and most of the other Indians "the gentes in the same phratry are brother gentes to each other, and cousin gentes to those of the other phratry"--terms that have a very real and expressive meaning in the American system of kinship, as we have seen. Originally no Seneca was allowed to marry within his phratry, but this custom has long become obsolete and is now confined to the gens. According to the tradition among the Senecas, the bear and the deer were the two original gentes, from which the others were formed by segmentation. After this new institution had become well established it was modified according to circumstances. If certain gentes became extinct, it sometimes happened that by mutual consent the members of one gens were transferred in a body from other phratries. Hence we find the gentes of the same name differently grouped in the phratries of the different tribes.
"The phratry, among the Iroquois, was partly for social and partly for religious objects." 1. In the ball game one phratry plays against another. Each one sends its best players, the other members, upon different sides of the field, watch the game and bet against one another on the result. 2. In the tribal council the sachems and chiefs of each phratry are seated opposite one another, every speaker addressing the representatives of each phratry as separate bodies. 3. When a murder had been committed in the tribe, the slayer and the slain belonging to different phratries, the injured gens often appealed to its brother gentes. These held a phratry council which in a body addressed itself to the other phratry, in order to prevail on the latter to assemble in council and effect a condonation of the matter. In this case the phratry re-appears in its original gentile capacity, and with a better prospect of success than the weaker gens, its daughter. 4. At the funeral of prominent persons the opposite phratry prepared the interment and the burial rites, while the phratry of the deceased attended the funeral as mourners. If a sachem died, the opposite phratry notified the central council of the Iroquois that the office of the deceased had become vacant. 5. In electing a sachem the phratry council also came into action. Endorsement by the brother gentes was generally considered a matter of fact, but the gentes of the other phratry might oppose. In such a case the council of this phratry met, and if it maintained its opposition, the election was null and void. 6. Formerly the Iroquois had special religious mysteries, called medicine lodges by the white men. These mysteries were celebrated among the Senecas by two religious societies that had a special form of initiation for new members; each phratry was represented by one of these societies. 7. If, as is almost certain, the four lineages occupying the four quarters of Tlascala at the time of the conquest were four phratries, then it is proved that the phratries were at the same time military units, as were the Greek phratries and similar sex organizations of the Germans. Each of these four lineages went into battle as a separate group with its special uniform and flag and its own leader.
Just as several genres form a phratry so in the classical form several phratries form a tribe. In some cases the middle group, the phratry, is missing in strongly decimated tribes.
What constitutes an Indian tribe in America? 1. A distinct territory and a distinct name. Every tribe had a considerable hunting and fishing ground beside the place of its actual settlement. Beyond this territory there was a wide neutral strip of land reaching over to the boundaries of the next tribe; a smaller strip between tribes of related languages, a larger between tribes of foreign languages. This corresponds to the boundary forest of the Germans, the desert created by Caesar's Suevi around their territory, the isarnholt (Danish jarnved, Latin limei Danicus) between Danes and Germans, the sachsen wald (Saxon forest) and the Slavish branibor between Slavs and Germans giving the province of Brandenburg its name. The territory thus surrounded by neutral ground was the collective property of a certain tribe, recognized as such by other tribes and defended against the invasion of others. The disadvantage of undefined boundaries became of practical importance only after the population had increased considerably.
The tribal names generally seem to be more the result of chance than of intentional selection. In course of time it frequently happened that a tribe designated a neighboring tribe by another name than that chosen by itself. In this manner the Germans received their first historical name from the Celts.
2. A distinct dialect peculiar to this tribe. As a matter of fact the tribe and the dialect are co-extensive. In America, the formation of new tribes and dialects by segmentation was in progress until quite recently, and doubtless it is still going on. Where two weak tribes amalgamated into one, there it exceptionally happened that two closely related dialects were simultaneously spoken in the same tribe. The average strength of American tribes is less than 2,000 members. The Cherokees, however, number about 26,000, the greatest number of Indians in the United States speaking the same dialect.
3. The right to solemnly invest the sachems and chiefs elected by the gentes, and
4. The right to depose them, even against the will of the gens. As these sachems and chiefs are members of the tribal council, these rights of the tribe explain themselves. Where a league of tribes had been formed and all the tribes were represented in a feudal council, the latter exercised these rights.
5. The possession of common religious conceptions (mythology) and rites. "After the fashion of barbarians the American Indians were a religious people." Their mythology has not yet been critically investigated. They materialized their religious conceptions--spirits of all sorts--in human shapes, but the lower stage of barbarism in which they lived, knows nothing as yet of so-called idols. It is a cult of nature and of the elements, in process of evolution to pantheism. The different tribes had regular festivals with prescribed forms of worship, mainly dances and games. Especially dancing was an essential part of all religious celebrations. Every tribe celebrated by itself.
6. A tribal council for public affairs. It was composed of all the sachems and chiefs of the different gentes, real representatives because they could be deposed at any moment. It deliberated in public, surrounded by the rest of the tribal members, who had a right to take part in the discussions and claim attention. The council decided. As a rule any one present gained a hearing on his demand. The women could also present their views by a speaker of their choice. Among the Iroquois the final resolution had to be passed unanimously, as was also the case in some resolutions of German mark (border) communities. It was the special duty of the tribal council to regulate the relations with foreign tribes. The council received and despatched legations, declared war and made peace. War was carried on principally by volunteers. "Theoretically, each tribe was at war with every other tribe with which it had not formed a treaty of peace."
Expeditions against such enemies were generally organized by certain prominent warriors. They started a war dance, and whoever took part in it thereby declared his intention to join the expedition. Ranks were formed and the march began immediately. The defense of the attacked tribal territory was also generally carried on by volunteers. The exodus and the return of such columns was always the occasion of public festivities. The consent of the tribal council for such expeditions was not required, and was neither asked nor given. This corresponds to the private war expeditions of German followers described by Tacitus. Only these German groups of followers had already assumed a more permanent character, forming a standing center organized during peace, around which the other volunteers gathered in case of war. Such war columns were rarely strong in numbers. The most important expeditions of the Indians, even for long distances, were undertaken by insignificant forces. If more than one group joined for a great expedition, every group obeyed its own leader. The uniformity of the campaign plan was secured as well as possible by a council of these leaders. This is the mode of warfare among the Allemani in the fourth century on the Upper Rhine, as described by Ammianus Marcellinus.
7. In some tribes we find a head chief, whose power, however, is limited. He is one of the sachems who has to take provisional measures in cases requiring immediate action, until the council can assemble and decide. He represents a feeble, but generally undeveloped prototype of an official with executive power. The latter, as we shall see, developed in most cases out of the highest war chief.
The great majority of American Indians did not go beyond the league of tribes. With a few tribes of small membership, separated by wide boundary tracts, weakened by unceasing warfare, they occupied an immense territory. Leagues were now and then formed by kindred tribes as the result of momentary necessity and dissolved again under more favorable conditions. But in certain districts, tribes of the same kin had again found their way out of disbandment into permanent federations, making the first step towards the formation of nations. In the United States we find the highest form of such a league among the Iroquois. Emigrating from their settlements west of the Mississippi, where they probably formed a branch of the great Dakota family, they settled at last after long wanderings in the present State of New York. They had five tribes: Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas and Mohawks. They lived on fish, venison, and the products of rough gardening, inhabiting villages protected by stockades. Their number never exceeded 20,000, and certain gentes were common to all five tribes. They spoke closely related dialects of the same language and occupied territories contiguous to one another. As this land was won by conquest, it was natural for these tribes to stand together against the expelled former inhabitants. This led, not later than the beginning of the fifteenth century, to a regular "eternal league," a sworn alliance that immediately assumed an aggressive character, relying on its newly won strength. About 1675, at the summit of its power, it had conquered large districts round about and partly expelled the inhabitants, partly made them tributary. The Iroquois League represented the most advanced social organization attained by Indians that had not passed the lower stage of barbarism. This excludes only the Mexicans, New Mexicans and Peruvians.
The fundamental provisions of the league were:
1. Eternal federation of the five consanguineous tribes on the basis of perfect equality and independence in all internal tribal matters. This consanguinity formed the true fundament of the league. Three of these tribes, called father tribes, were brothers to one another; the other two, also mutual brothers, were called son tribes. The three oldest gentes were represented by living members in all five tribes, and these members were all regarded as brothers. Three other gentes were still alive in three tribes, and all of their members called one another brothers. The common language, only modified by variations of dialect, was the expression and proof of their common descent.
2. The official organ of the league was a federal council of fifty sachems, all equal in rank and prominence. This council had the supreme decision in all federal matters.
3. On founding this league the fifty sachems had been assigned to the different tribes and gentes as holders of new offices created especially for federal purposes. Vacancies were filled by new elections in the gens, and the holders of these offices could be deposed at will. But the right of installation belonged to the federal council.
4. These federal sachems were at the same time sachems of their tribe and had a seat and a vote in the tribal council.
5. All decisions of the federal council had to be unanimous.
6. The votes were cast by tribes, so that every tribe and the council members of each tribe had to vote together in order to adopt a final resolution.
7. Any one of the five tribes could convoke the federal council, but the council could not convene itself.
8. Federal meetings were held publicly in the presence of the assembled people. Every Iroquois could have the word, but the final decision rested with the council.
9. The league had no official head, no executive chief.
10. It had, however, two high chiefs of war, both with equal functions and power (the two "kings" of Sparta, the two consuls of Rome).
This was the whole constitution, under which the Iroquois lived over four hundred years and still live. I have described it more fully after Morgan, because we have here an opportunity for studying the organization of a society that does not yet know a state. The state presupposes a public power of coercion separated from the aggregate body of its members. Maurer, with correct intuition, recognized the constitution of the German Mark as a purely social institution, essentially different from that of a state, though furnishing the fundament on which a state constitution could be erected later on. Hence in all of his writings, he traced the gradual rise of the public power of coercion from and by the side of primordial constitutions of marks, villages, farms and towns. The North American Indians show how an originally united tribe gradually spreads over an immense continent; how tribes by segmentation become nations, whole groups of tribes; how languages change so that they not only become unintelligible to one another, but also lose every trace of former unity; how at the same time one gens splits up into several gentes, how the old mother gentes are preserved in the phratries and how the names of these oldest gentes still remain the same in widely distant and long separated tribes. Wolf and bear still are gentile names in a majority of all Indian tribes. And the above named constitution is essentially applicable to all of them, except that many did not reach the point of forming leagues of related tribes.
But once the gens was given as a social unit, we also see how the whole constitution of gentes, phratries and tribes developed with almost unavoidable necessity--because naturally--from the gens. All three of them are groups of differentiated consanguine relations. Each is complete in itself, arranges its own local affairs and supplements the other groups. And the cycle of functions performed by them includes the aggregate of the public affairs of men in the lower stage of barbarism.
Wherever we find the gens as the social unit of a nation, we are justified in searching for a tribal organization similar to the one described above. And whenever sufficient material is at hand, as in Greek and Roman history, there we shall not only find such an organization, but we may also be assured, that the comparison with the American sex organizations will assist us in solving the most perplexing doubts and riddles in places where the material forsakes us.