the ethnological notebooks of karl marx - Marxists Internet Archive

The impersonal relation of the State has the appearance of the personalrelation of the prince in political organized society. The existence of theState is established in time after that of the primitive communities, anddevelops with its establishment the difference of appearance and reality.(See below, section 3 on Maine in this Introduction.) Both commentariesof Marx in regard to Maine bear equally upon the thesis of Morgan,for they are strictures against any theory of primitive governmentconceived as a personal relation. The individuality is expressed anddeveloped in the collective life of primitive society, the person exists assuch, albeit not in actual opposition to the social institution. On the onehand, the differentiation cf the personal and the institutional relation ispotentially that which is developed into an opposition in politicallyorganized society. On the other, the personal and the institutionalrelations are actually differentiated in either society, primitive or civilized;it is an inconsistency to think that because the number of people in aprimitive society is small, for which reason the members may relate tothe chief personally, the governmental, or judiciary or other relations arepersonal. Personal acquaintance or other relations of that sort and institutionalrelations in both primitive and civilized societies are differentiatedeven where personal acquaintance, etc., is itself institutionalized.The individual, or personal, relation exists between rulers of States andtheir citizens, or subjects, as well, but the relation of ruler to subject isnot changed by virtue of the personal relation; on the other hand, judgmentsof the tribal chief or of the ruler of the State may be equallyinfluenced by the personal relation, or want of the same. The developmentof oppositive interests of social classes does not eradicate thepersonal relation, but imposes the distinction between its reality andthe appearance of it.The system that Marx developed in this matter is the following: Thepolitical relation is the negation of the collective primitive relation, thecollective relation bearing within itself both the personal and the impersonalrelations in a more or less undifferentiated form. The differentiationbetween the personal and the impersonal relations in theprimitive collectivity becomes the greater as the amount of tribal propertyis increased, and, in keeping with this, as the office of chief becomes moreclearly delineated and less undifferentiated. It is therefore meaningless tothink of the differentiation of personal and impersonal relations inextremely primitive societies, where the amount of property is low andany such distinctive office as that of the chief is barely perceptible, if at all.The distinction between the personal and the impersonal or objective,institutional relations becomes increasingly important as the amount ofproduction and ownership of property increases, and offices as that ofthe chief become more sharply defined. At this point there is still nosharp differentiation between collective and individual property owner­10