The Origin of Family Private Property and the State
Author | Friedrich Engels |
---|---|
Original title | Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats |
Language | German language |
Subjects | Anthropology, sociology |
Publication date | 1884 |
Published in English language | 1902 |
Text | The Origin of the Family, Private Belongings and the State at Wikisource |
The Origin of the Family unit, Private Property and the State: in the Low-cal of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan (German: Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats) is an 1884 historical materialist treatise by Friedrich Engels. It is partially based on notes by Karl Marx to Lewis H. Morgan's book Ancient Society (1877). The book is an early on anthropological work and is regarded equally one of the kickoff major works on family economics.
Publication history [edit]
Background [edit]
Following the expiry of his friend and co-thinker Karl Marx in 1883, Friedrich Engels served every bit his literary executor, actively organizing and preparing for publication of the various writings of his scholarly friend. This activeness, while fourth dimension consuming, did non fully occupy Engels's available hours, however, and he managed to persevere reading and writing on topics of his own.
While his 1883 manuscript Dialectics of Nature faltered, remaining uncompleted and unpublished, a greater success was achieved in the spring of 1884 with the writing and publication in Zurich of Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats: Im Anschluss an Lewis H. Morgan's Forschungen (The Origin of the Family unit, Private Property, and the Country: in the Low-cal of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan).
Writing of The Origin of the Family began early in April 1884, with the projection completed on 26 May.[1] Engels began his work on the subject later reading Marx'south handwritten synopsis of a book by pioneering anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan, Aboriginal Society; or, Researches in the Lines of Human being Progress from Savagery, Through Barbarism to Civilisation, start published in London in 1877.[2] Engels believed it articulate that Marx had intended upon a disquisitional book-length handling of the ideas get-go broached past Morgan and adamant to produce such a manuscript as a means of fulfilling a literary behest of his tardily comrade.[2]
Engels was unflinching in acknowledging his motives, noting in the preface to the first edition that "Marx had reserved to himself the privilege of displaying the results of Morgan'due south investigations in connection with his own materialist conception of history", equally the latter had "in a manner discovered anew" in America the theory originated past Marx decades before.[3]
Writing process [edit]
Engels's showtime inclination was to seek publication in Germany despite passage of the first of the Anti-Socialist Laws by the government of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. On Apr 26, 1884 Engels wrote a letter to his close political associate Karl Kautsky in which he noted that he sought to "play a fox on Bismarck" past writing something "that he would exist positively unable to ban".[iv] He felt this goal unrealizable owing to Morgan's discussions of the nature of monogamy and the relationship betwixt private buying of property and class struggle, however, these making it "absolutely impossible to couch in such a way every bit to comply with the Anti-Socialist Law".[5]
Engels viewed Morgan's findings as providing a "factual basis nosotros take hitherto lacked" for a prehistory of gimmicky class struggle.[v] He believed that it would be an important supplement to the theory of historical materialism for Morgan's ideas to be "thoroughly worked on, properly weighed up, and presented as a coherent whole".[5] This was to be the political intent backside his Origin of the Family projection.
Work on the book was completed—with the exception of revisions upon the final chapter—on May 22, 1884, when the manuscript was dispatched to Eduard Bernstein in Zurich.[6] The final decision of whether to impress the book in Stuttgart "under a false mode", hiding Engels's forbidden name, or immediately without alteration in a Swiss edition, was deferred past Engels to Bernstein.[six] The latter course of action was chosen, with the book finding impress early on in October.[2]
His offset objective was to claim that matriarchy was based on promiscuity as proved by Bachofen, who really said information technology was based on monogamy[ commendation needed ].
Editions [edit]
The first edition of Der Ursprung der Familie appeared in Zurich in October 1884, with the possibility of German language publication forestalled by Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Constabulary.[ii] Two subsequent German editions, each following the commencement Zurich edition exactly, were published in Stuttgart in 1886 and 1889.[ii]
The book was translated into a number of European languages and published during the decade of the 1880s, including Polish, Romanian, Italian, Danish, and Serbian.[2]
Changes to the text were fabricated by Engels for a fourth German language edition, published in 1891, with an effort fabricated to comprise contemporary findings in the fields of anthropology and ethnography into the work.[2]
The first English language edition did not appear until 1902,[2] when Charles H. Kerr deputed Ernest Untermann to produce a translation for the "Standard Socialist Serial" of popularly priced pocket editions produced past his Charles H. Kerr & Co. of Chicago. The work was extensively reprinted throughout the 20th and into the 21st Centuries and is regarded as one of Engels' seminal works.[2]
Content [edit]
Development of human order and the family [edit]
The Origin of the Family, Private Belongings and the State begins with an extensive discussion of Aboriginal Lodge which describes the major stages of human being development as commonly understood in Engels's time. It is argued that the first domestic establishment in human history was the matrilineal association. Engels here follows Lewis H. Morgan's thesis as outlined in his major book, Aboriginal Club. Morgan was a pioneering American anthropologist and business lawyer who championed the land rights of Native Americans and became adopted as an honorary member of the Seneca Iroquois tribe. Traditionally, the Iroquois had lived in communal longhouses based on matrilineal descent and matrilocal residence, an organisation giving women much solidarity and power. Writing shortly afterward Marx's death, Engels stressed the theoretical significance of Morgan's highlighting of the matrilineal clan:
The rediscovery of the original female parent-right gens equally the stage preliminary to the father-right gens of the civilized peoples has the aforementioned significance for the history of primitive lodge as Darwin'southward theory of evolution has for biological science, and Marx'southward theory of surplus value for political economy.
— Engels, Friedrich (1884). "Preface to the Quaternary Edition". The Origin of the Family, Private Holding and the State. New York: Pathfinder Printing. pp. 27–38, the quotation is on p.36.
Primitive communism, according to both Morgan and Engels, was based in the matrilineal clan where women lived with their classificatory sisters – applying the principle that "my sis'southward child is my child". Because they lived and worked together, women in these communal households felt strong bonds of solidarity with ane another, enabling them when necessary to take activeness confronting uncooperative males. Engels cites this passage from a letter to Morgan written by a missionary who had lived for many years amongst the Seneca Iroquois,
Every bit to their family system, when occupying the old long-houses, it is probable that some 1 clan predominated, the women taking in husbands, yet, from the other clans; and sometimes, for a novelty, some of their sons bringing in their young wives until they felt dauntless enough to leave their mothers. Ordinarily, the female portion ruled the house, and were doubtless clannish enough about information technology. The stores were held in common; just woe to the luckless hubby or lover who was as well shiftless to do his share of the providing. No affair how many children, or whatever goods he might accept in the house, he might at any fourth dimension be ordered to pack up his blanket and budge; and later such orders information technology would not be healthful for him to attempt to disobey. The house would be too hot for him; and, unless saved past the intercession of some aunt or grandmother, he must retreat to his own clan; or, every bit was often washed, go and start a new matrimonial alliance in some other. The women were the keen power amidst the clans, as everywhere else. They did not hesitate, when occasion required, to "knock off the horns", as it was technically called, from the head of a chief, and send him back to the ranks of the warriors. The original nomination of the chiefs also always rested with them.
— Morgan, Lewis H. (1877). Ancient Social club. London: Macmillan. p. 455.
According to Morgan, the rise of alienable property disempowered women by triggering a switch to patrilocal residence and patrilineal descent:
It thus reversed the position of the wife and female parent in the household; she was of a different gens from her children, as well as her husband; and under monogamy was now isolated from her gentile kindred, living in the divide and exclusive house of her husband. Her new condition tended to subvert and destroy that ability and influence which descent in the female line and the joint-tenement houses had created.
— Morgan, Lewis H. (1881). Houses and house-life of the American Aborigines. Chicago and London: Academy of Chicago Press. p. 128.
Engels added political affect to all this, describing the "overthrow of mother correct" as "the world-historic defeat of the female person sex"; he attributed this defeat to the onset of farming and pastoralism. In reaction, about twentieth-century social anthropologists considered the theory of matrilineal priority untenable,[seven] [eight]
Engels emphasizes the importance of social relations of power and control over material resources rather than supposed psychological deficiencies of "primitive" people. In the eyes of both Morgan and Engels, terms such as "savagery" and "barbarism" were respectful and honorific, not negative. Engels summarises Morgan'due south 3 main stages as follows:
- Savagery – the menstruum in which man'southward appropriation of products in their natural state predominates; the products of human art are chiefly instruments which assist this cribbing.
- Barbarism – the menses during which man learns to brood domestic animals and to practice agronomics, and acquires methods of increasing the supply of natural products by human activity.
- Civilization – the menses in which man learns a more avant-garde awarding of work to the products of nature, the flow of industry proper and of fine art.
In the following affiliate on family, Engels tries to connect the transition into these stages with a change in the manner that family is defined and the rules past which information technology is governed. Much of this is nonetheless taken from Morgan, although Engels begins to intersperse his own ideas on the role of family into the text. Morgan acknowledges four stages in the family.
The consanguine family is the first stage of the family unit and as such a chief indicator of our superior nature in comparison with animals. In this state marriage groups are separated according to generations. The husband and wife relationship is immediately and communally assumed betwixt the male and female members of one generation. The but taboo is a sexual relationship between two generations (i.e. father and daughter, grandmother and grandson).
The punaluan family unit, the second stage, extends the incest taboo to include sexual intercourse between siblings, including all cousins of the same generation. This prevents most incestuous relationships. The separation of the patriarchal and matriarchal lines divided a family into gentes. Interbreeding was forbidden inside gens (anthropology), although outset cousins from separate gentes could still breed.
In the pairing family unit, the first indications of pairing are constitute in families where the husband has ane principal wife. Inbreeding is practically eradicated past the prevention of a marriage betwixt two family members who were even simply remotely related, while relationships likewise beginning to approach monogamy. Property and economic science begin to play a larger role in the family, as a pairing family had responsibility for the buying of specific goods and property. Polygamy is all the same common amongst men, but no longer amongst women since their fidelity would ensure the child'south legitimacy. Women have a superior role in the family equally keepers of the household and guardians of legitimacy. The pairing family is the course feature of the lower stages of barbarism. However, at this point, when the man died his inheritance was notwithstanding given to his gens, rather than to his offspring. Engels refers to this economical advantage for men coupled with the adult female's lack of rights to lay claim to possessions for herself or her children (who became hers later on a separation) every bit the overthrow of female parent-right which was "the world historical defeat of the female sexual activity". For Engels, buying of property created the first meaning segmentation between men and women in which the woman was inferior.
On the monogamous family, Engels writes:
Information technology develops from the pairing family, equally we take already shown, during the time of transition from the eye to the higher stage of barbarism. Its final victory is one of the signs of commencement civilization. Information technology is founded on male supremacy for the pronounced purpose of breeding children of indisputable paternal lineage. The latter is required, because these children shall later on inherit the fortune of their father. The monogamous family is distinguished from the pairing family unit by the far greater immovability of wedlock, which can no longer be dissolved at the pleasure of either party. Every bit a rule, information technology is only the man who tin can still dissolve it and bandage off his wife.
— Engels, Friedrich (1884). "Preface to the Fourth Edition". The Origin of the Family, Individual Property and the State. New York: Pathfinder Printing. p. 75.
Family and property [edit]
Engels's ideas on the function of property in the creation of the modern family and as such modernistic civilization begin to get more transparent in the latter function of Affiliate 2 as he begins to elaborate on the question of the monogamous human relationship and the freedom to enter into (or reject) such a relationship. Bourgeois law dictates the rules for relationships and inheritances. Every bit such, 2 partners, even when their spousal relationship is not bundled, will always have the preservation of inheritance in heed and as such will never be entirely free to cull their partner. Engels argues that a relationship based on property rights and forced monogamy will only lead to the proliferation of immorality and prostitution.
The merely class, co-ordinate to Engels, which is free from these restraints of property, and every bit a event from the danger of moral disuse, is the proletariat, as they lack the monetary ways that are the ground of (likewise as threat to) the bourgeois marriage. Monogamy is therefore guaranteed by the fact that theirs is a voluntary sex-love relationship.
The social revolution which Engels believed was about to happen would eliminate class differences, and therefore besides the need for prostitution and the enslavement of women. If men needed only to be concerned with sex-love and no longer with property and inheritance, then monogamy would come naturally.
Footnotes [edit]
- ^ Tatiana Andrushchenko, Prefatory note to The Origin of the Family unit, Individual Property and the State: In the Lite of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works: Volume 26: Frederick Engels, 1882-89. New York: International Publishers, 1990; pg. 130.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Andruschenko, "Prefatory note" in Marx-Engels Collected Works, vol. 26, pg. 640.
- ^ Frederick Engels, "Author'south Preface to the Kickoff Edition", in The Origin of the Family unit, Private Property and the Country. Ernest Untermann, trans. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1902; pg. ix.
- ^ Frederick Engels in London to Karl Kautsky in Zurich, April 26, 1884, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works: Volume 47: Engels, 1883-86. New York: International Publishers, 1995; pp. 131-132.
- ^ a b c Engels to Kautsky, Apr 26, 1884, pg. 132.
- ^ a b Frederick Engels in London to Eduard Bernstein in Zurich, May 22, 1884, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works: Book 47: Engels, 1883-86. New York: International Publishers, 1995; pp. 136-137.
- ^ Malinowski, B. 1956. Union: Past and Present. A debate between Robert Briffault and Bronislaw Malinowski, ed. K. F. Ashley Montagu. Boston: Porter Sargent.
- ^ Harris, M. 1969. The Rise of Anthropological Theory. London: Routledge, p. 305.
External links [edit]
- The Origin of the Family, Individual Holding and the State. Ernest Untermann, trans. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1909. —Identical to 1st English edition.
- The Origin of the Family unit, Private Holding and the Country. Alternate translation. New York: International Publishers, n.d. [c. 1933].
- High german html version.
- Soviet study booklet
fleetwooddomay1984.blogspot.com
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_the_Family,_Private_Property_and_the_State
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