the ethnological notebooks of karl marx - Marxists Internet Archive

without comment (excerpts, p. 8). The problem in this connection is thatthe word ‘miniature’ on p. 16 of Marx’s excerpts refers to a whollydifferent family and society, and the use of the same word with referenceto the Hawaiian case has been misleading to some. The family in theRoman society was not a miniature of any larger social institution; theantagonisms within it were the miniature of the antagonisms without,also those of modern civilized society, with certain relations changed.Neither the Roman nor the modern family of civilized society bears thesame relation to its social context that the traditional Hawaiian family didto the primitive social group in which it was situated.The State and Civilised SocietyThe question of the formation of the State is raised in these passages: theState is an institution of society, hence it is neither extrasocial norsupra-social. It is an institution of internally divided and opposed society,hence it is not universal in human society, since some are primitive andmore homogeneous. The State is not to be typologically separated intothe Roman State, the modern capitalist State, etc.; it is a general institutionalcategory of the type of society indicated here. The State in relationto society will be taken up below in connection with Marx’s note onMaine; it is raised in the excerpt notes from Morgan in connection withthe transition from barbarism to civilization:Morgan attributed the transition of Greek society from the gentile tothe civil (political) organization to the period between the first Olympiad(776 B.C.) and the time of the legislation of Cleisthenes (508 B.C.).39Marx (excerpts, p. 67) commented: “He should have said that politicalhere has the meaning in Aristotle = urban, and political animal = citizen.”Aristotle’s definition of man is that he is by nature, physei, apolitical animal, a creature of the polis.40 Marx commented on Aristotie’sdefinition in the Introduction to the Grundrisse: “Man is in the mostliteral sense a %oon politikon, not only a gregarious animal but one that canbecome an individual only in society.” 41 He returned to the question inC apital: “ ... Man is by nature if not a political animal as Aristotle thinks,in any case a social animal.” To this he noted: “Aristotle’s definition isactually that man is by nature a town-citizen. This definition is ascharacteristic for classical antiquity as Franklin’s definition that man isby nature a tool-making animal is for Yankeedom.” 42 The definition ofman given by Aristotle follows his discussion of social life in the family,the village, a collectivity of villages, and leads up to the discussion of thecity-state; in this connection the Greek and barbarian governmentalforms are compared.43 That man does not, in Aristode’s conception,live everywhere in cities is clear. Therefore, the political life, the life inthe city and the city-state that Aristotle attributed to the nature of manis not an aspect of his actual nature, for it touched and still touches only*9