Frederick Engels wrote this book between March and May
1884. Originally written in German, appearing in book form first in 1884, the
English translation of this got published in 1891. Based on nine interesting chapters,
the author has starts from ancient stages of prehistoric culture and ends with
the critique of civilization.
Engels believes Morgan was the first person who attempted
to introduce a definite order into the prehistory of human kind. This order
includes savagery, barbarism and civilization. Engels mentions Morgan dividing savagery
and barbarism into lower, middle and upper stages according to the progress
made in food production. During the
lower stages of savagery human race depended on fruits, nuts and roots. Crabs,
mussels and aquatic animals came in the next stage. This became possible with the use of fire. The
upper stage of savagery began with the invention of bow and arrow. In this
stage game became a regular source of food. Bow and arrow was for savagery what
the iron sword was for barbarism and fire-arms for civilization- the decisive
weapon.
Moreover in chapter two Engels again refers to Morgan. He
explains Morgan reference to unrestricted sexual relations. This unrestricted
sexual relation prevailed within every tribe, every woman belonging equally to
every man and very man to very woman. According to Morgan the primitive state
of unregulated sexual intercourse developed very early. Engels discusses
consanguine family, Punaluan family and the pairing family. The increase in prohibitions
made group marriages more and more impossible and they were displaced by the
pairing family. The author writes about the overthrow of mother right with the
decision that in the future offspring of male members should remain within that
genes.
In addition to that Engels believes: “Modern individual family is founded on the open or concealed domestic
slavery of women, and modern society is a mass composed of these individual
families as its molecules.” During the three principal stages of human
development the forms of marriages developed. In the first stage of savagery group
marriage developed. In the second stage of Barbarism pairing marriage came into
place. In the last stage of civilization monogamy supplemented by adultery and
prostitution developed. The writer views monogamy to have arisen from the
concentration of large wealth in the hands of single individual-man.
With private property gaining ascendency over communal
property and with the father right getting more prominent the dependency of
marriages on economic considerations became even greater. Furthermore Engels
suggests that supremacy of man in marriage is only due to his economic
supremacy. The abolition would disappear once the economic supremacy ends.
In chapter three Engels addresses the Iroquois Gens of
Americas. He writes about their prevalent hierarchy. Each tribe has a
particular dialect, tribal council for common affair is present and war chiefs
are elected. The Iroquois Confederacy had no powerful head and no chief with
executive power. Outside the tribe was considered outside the law.
Chapter number four focuses on the Greek Gens. Engels
quotes Grote’s A History of Greece. The Greeks had a common burial place. Right
of adoption into the gens, right to elect chiefs and to depose them were
present. The fifth chapter is about the rise of the Athenian state. The
Athenian people fused into a single people. A common Athenian Civil law arose
above the legal customs of tribes and gentes. The entire people were divided
into three classes. This included tillers of land, artisans and nobility.
Nobility only had the right hold office. In Athens there was no supreme
official with executive power.
The author covers The Gens and the State in Rome in chapter
six. The first constitution of the Roman people mentioned that public affairs
were managed by the Senate. The Senate composed of the Chiefs of the 300
gentes. The Romans in the age of the so-called kings lived in a military
democracy founded on gentes, phratries and tribes and developed out of them.
Chapter seven focuses on The Gens among the Celts and
Germans. Among the Germans respect for female sex was very firmly in place. The
thought of the wives and daughters taken captive or into slavery was terrible
to them. Chastity for girls was maintained unlike the Celts. Among the Germans
private associates had already become permanent. A military leader who had made
himself a name gathered around him a band of young men eager for booty who he
pledged to personal loyalty, giving the same pledge to them. Under the chapter
formation of the state among the Germans the author emphasizes that “all that
was vigorous and life-giving which the Germans infused into the Roman world was
barbarian.”
In the last chapter Engels considers separation of
pastoral tribes from the mass of the rest of barbarians as the first great
social division of labor. Cattle-the chief article acquired a money function
and already at this stage did the work of money. For the first great social
division of labor arose the first great cleavage of society into two classes:
masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited.
Engels believes that emancipation of woman becomes
possible only when woman take part in production on a larger scale. Engels
considers merchants as the class which without any participation in production
subjugates the producers. This is a class of middleman which exploits any two
producers.
Engels writes about how private land property, money,
trade expansion and usury played a role in economies. Furthermore the arising
of the state is described. Athens is considered as the purist example. Here the
state sprang directly and mainly out of the class antagonisms which develop
within gentile society itself. Hegel’s definition of state is also provided.
Hegel believed that state would moderate conflict between classes with
conflicting economic interests. State distinguishes itself from the old gentile
organization on territorial basis, public power, taxes, and national debts.
Furthermore civilization is elaborated by Engels. “It is
the stage of development in society at which the division of labor, the
resulting exchange between individuals, and commodity production which combines
them both, come to their full growth and revolutionizes the whole of previous
society. Slavery is the first form of exploitation, the form peculiar to the
ancient world, it is succeeded by serfdom in the Middle Ages, and wage labor in
modern times.
Engels criticizes
civilization: “From the first day to this, sheer greed has been the driving
spirit of civilization; wealth and gain wealth and once more wealth, wealth,
not of society but of this single-party individual- here was its one and final
aim.” The more civilization advances it would introduce a conventional
hypocrisy unknown to earlier forms of society.
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