the ethnological notebooks of karl marx - Marxists Internet Archive

Notes to Introduction, p. 7.362In fact, Morgan’s schema is more complex, for he called Part I ofAncient Society, Growth of Intelligence through Inventions andDiscoveries. In the first chapter he discussed the progress of inventionsand discoveries and the unfolding of institutions from ea fewgerms of thought’ (Morgan, op. cit., p. 4). These ideas of Morganremained undeveloped; they were, moreover, unrelated by him tothe biologism mentioned previously.Morgan discussed in the same passages inventions and discoverieson the one side, and institutions on the other. The latter include:Subsistence, Government, Language, the Family, Religion, HouseLife and Architecture, Property. The ethnical periods, into whichmankind is divided, are demarcated from each other by inventionsand discoveries (Morgan, op. cit., p. 6). From this we infer thatMorgan had the idea that man’s relation to nature and to his owndevelopment are to be examined as a) the productions of his activity,and b) as his relations in society. These were not clearly distinguished;some of the relations to nature, as inventions and discoveries, areamong the institutions of subsistence, house life, property, etc. Onthe other hand, some of the institutions are not directly socialrelations, but appear as social relations in a reified form. Morgan’sidea of culture as the total product of an ethnical period was conceivedas a passivity, the result of a body of relations and activities inregard to nature and society. The culture characterizes the mode oflife of a particular ethnical period (Morgan, op. cit., pp. 9, 12-13); it isnot particularly related to a given social group, nor is it a panhumanfeature; it does not actively cultivate the human beings of that period,hence it is not an agent of anything. Again, the culture does notwork upon or through particular peoples, groups, societies; hence itsrelation to actual social interaction and production is not posited. Onthe other hand, the culture does not itself generate the transition fromone ethnical period to the next, but the forces generating the transitionare found within it; they are nowhere else extant. The culture isconservative, but at the same time the transition to the next emergesout of the culture of the foregoing ethnical period. The culture ofthe ethnical period overrides the difference between the hemispheres,thereby generating its identity despite the natural differences (pp. 16-17). The generator of the transition between the ethnical periods lieswithin the culture, or mode of life, and outside the natural differences.Marx wrote in Kapital, op. cit., v. 1, p. 476, (Eng., op. cit., pp. 561-562), “In den Kulturanfängen sind die erworbenen Produktivkräftegering— ” Here the use of the term is technical, as is that of Morgan.The period that Marx had in mind is generally that preceding civilization,a broad period without reference to a particular society. Inthe Communist Manifesto, the concept of culture is conceived as variableaccording to the social classes of modern bourgeois society, andis at the same time the product of all society; the culture is an activity