the ethnological notebooks of karl marx - Marxists Internet Archive

the family did not carry society along, but society the family: “ Germansociety was not far enough advanced at this time for the appearance of ahigh type of monogamian family.” This position is to be taken togetherwith the relation of the family to the system of consanguinity (Marx,Morgan excerpts, p. io).35That the Greek, Roman, Hebrew families were of patriarchal type andwere related to agricultural (and pastoral) services, to slavery and in theRoman case potentially to serfdom is an indication that the patriarchalfamily form was exceptional in human experience; the development ofwestern civilization in general is exceptional, as opposed to the Oriental.Civilization arose in connection with the rise of the patriarchal family inthe West, but neither wholly nor solely in connection with it, and withthe monogamous family; it follows that civilization is itself an extraordinarydevelopment. This is a line of thought opened up by Fourierwhich has its root in Gaius, and which Marx further explored (Morganexcerpts, p. 16): “Fourier characterizes the Epoch of Civilization byMonogamy and Private Property in Land. The Modern family containsthe germ not only of servitus (slavery) but also serfdom, since it containsfrom the beginning a relation to services for agriculture. It contains inminiature all the antagonisms within itself which are later broadly developedin society and its State.” Engels then put the comment on Fourierinto a note at the end of the Origin o f the Fam ily ,36 and the remainder ofMarx’s thought into his passage about the development of the ancientfamily.37The family of classical antiquity is the miniature of the society, butrests, in its monogamous form, upon social institutions which are externalto the private group of kin: slaves, domestics, (in large courts,retainers and clients), later, serfs, etc.; therefore, the antagonisms whichthe family contains in miniature are not generated by the family in theway that they are generated in society, but by the society and then borneinto the family. The family as it is here conceived is part of a societyeither on the verge of development into civilization or already in thatstatus. These relations of family and society and the family as the miniatureof the society are fundamentally different from those e.g. of thetraditional Hawaiian family and society. Morgan wrote: “It is notprobable that the actual family, among the Hawaiians, was a large as thegroup united in the marriage relation. Necessity would compel itssubdivision into smaller groups for the procurement of subsistence, andfor mutual protection; but each smaller family would be a miniature ofthe group.” 38 Morgan did not specify whether he meant that the familywould be a miniature of the larger group united in the marriage relationor the smaller group within the larger, united for subsistence and defense.The context points to the latter, that the smaller family was the miniatureof the smaller group in Hawaii. Marx reproduced Morgan’s wording18