the ethnological notebooks of karl marx - Marxists Internet Archive

Notes to Introduction, p. 7.of man, training him to act (in this case merely as a machine), henceit is a human agency in general; opposed to this are the bourgeoisnotions of property, freedom, law - in which culture is ranged (ch. 2,Eng. ed. of 1888). This usage of the concept of culture is wholly inkeeping with the contemporary one ; it is variable, active, interactive,as well as the product of activity. Hegel conceived culture as adevelopment of humanity, as the interrelation with nature of theactive and the passive, the abstract and the concrete moments of man’shistory. The element of the absolute essence, and its relation to thehistorically particular and relative, is the absolute which Marx rejectedin the Theses on Feuerbach, and in the Communist Manifesto. Nevertheless,the developmental side of Hegel’s formulation is central tothe thesis of the Communist Manifesto, which restates that of Hegel,without the adversion to the metaphysical side ; the entire domain ofhistory is the continuation of Hegel’s position, which Engels soughttwice to make precise.Morgan, op. cit., p. 499, likewise developed this line: the family isthe creature of the social system and reflects its culture. Accordingto this view it is not the active principle, but a passive one. The socialsystem is active, the family is its creature ; the family is doubly removedfrom the prime mover of society, for it reflects the culture of thesocial system. In the passage taken up by Engels (Origin, op. cit.,pp. 26-27, quoting Morgan, ib., p. 444) the family is the active principle,the system of consanguinity, the passive. Morgan here positeda onesided because unintegrated movement. The two halves werenever brought together; nevertheless it is the beginning of a dialecticalmoment. On Theseus as the representative of a period, or seriesof events, hence as the impersonal agency of a culture, cf. Morgan,op. cit., p. 265. On the objective process of transition from one socialplane to the next, cf. ib., pp. 561-562.17 J. J. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht. Eine Untersuchung über die Gjnaikokratieder alten Welt nach ihrer religiösen und rechtlichen Natur, 1861. N. D.Fustel de Coulanges, La cité antique, 1864 (The Ancient City, 1873).H. H. Bancroft, The Native Races of the Pacific States, 1875. Maurer’swork is cited in various places in Marx’s Kapital, Tylor’s in Kapital,v. 2 (see note 9 above). Vol. I of Bancroft was excerpted by Engelson Marx’s initiative (MEW 3 5, p. 125). On Bancroft, see Introduction,Addendum 2 and note 182 below. On Fustel de Coulanges, seeMorgan, op. cit., pp. 240-241, 247, 558; also this Introd., section 6,Community, Collectivism and Individualism, and works there cited,esp. notes 132 and 133.The work of Bachofen has a number of mystical and mystifyingpositions; it is, above all, an inquiry into religion and society, inparticular, the position of women in ancient society and law. Bachofen’swork has not been exhaustively examined in this regard; thethesis has validity in modern social anthropology, once the ethno­363