The Ethnographical Notebooks of Karl Marx - Marxists Internet Archive

with the question of caste was raised. Marx’s comment was a hypothetical
query: can the gentes give rise to the formation of castes,
particularly if conquest is added to the gens principle ? This concerns the
manner in which the one is added to the other. The gentes were of
different rank among the Kutchin; this differentiation arose out of a
factor which is not external to the gens principle; the principle of the gens
has the caste as its opposite. Thus, the abstract principle of the gens has
as its opposition a concrete social organization, caste, on the one side,
and conquest on the other. In its transition the gens, by difference in
social rank, can petrify into its opposite, caste. The concretion, difference
in social rank, is in conflict with the abstraction, the gens principle; the
concrete gens is at the same time petrified in its opposite, the concrete
caste. The bond of kinship within the gentile principle, by its existence,
permits no perfected aristocracy to arise; the sentiment of fraternity
continues in the gens so long as the aristocracy does not come into existence.
The form of fraternity, however, can exist in a society with an
aristocracy developed.
2.a. This is the most explicitly dialectical of all of Marx’s formulations,
in the Morgan notebook, of the transition from the primitive to the
civilized condition of mankind, wherein the opposition between an
abstraction, the principle of the gens, and a series of concretions, conquest,
caste, and differentiation in social rank is posited. The transition
from the abstraction of the gens is at the same time opposed to the concrete
caste; thus the two transitions, from abstraction to concretion,
and from one concretion to the next, take place at the same time; they are
preceded by the transition of the concrete gens to its abstraction. The
concretion of conquest is added to the abstraction of the gens as it is to a
principle of the latter; the concretion of social rank differentiation is in
conflict with the abstract gens principle. But can the concrete gens by
difference in social rank concretely petrify as its opposite, the concrete
caste? Caste is opposed to a further formation arising out of the dissolution
of gentile society, the aristocracy; for the concretions, caste, frater-
nity, gentile organization, and the bond of kinship, in their petrification,
stand opposed to the development of the latter. Here a social relation
external to the gens principle must be introduced: It is not caste as such,
nor conquest as such, nor differentiation in rank, that destroys the bond
of kinship and of fraternity; the gens and gentile principle pass into
civilization, antagonistic society, and an aristocracy, subject to another
opposition than that which is delineated here; equality, fraternity, the
gens, conquest, the bond of kinship and differentiation in rank exist
together while property is not unevenly accumulated and privately
sequestered, distributed and transmitted, but for inequality in relation to
property to come about, there must have been a quantitative increase in
the amount of social property in the first place, the factor external to the
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