the ethnological notebooks of karl marx - Marxists Internet Archive

That Marx had more than one opinion regarding Darwin is shownfrom his letter to Engels, Aug. 7, 1866 (MEGA, Part III, v. 3, p. 355.Here the work of Tremaux is advanced over that of Darwin.Marx generally ignored Morgan’s organicism, both as to phraseologyand as to content in his notes and excerpts, or else he opposed it.20 On Morgan’s general hypothesis: op. cit., p. 390.On the Ganowanian cultural unity as the basis for the peopling ofthe Americas: ib., p. 156. Negative evidence on Eskimos, I.e. andp. 181.On the treatment of the Turanian and Ganowanian families in thesame terms: ib., pp. 438, 444.On the evolution of germs of thought: ib., pp. 59-60.On natural selection: ib., p. 48.21 In the pagination of the New York edition of 1877-1878, the partsare divided as follows:Part I, pp. 3-45 IntelligenceII, 49-379 GovernmentIII, 383-521 FamilyIV, 525-5 54· PropertyThe London ed. which Marx mentioned in his Table of Contents ofthe notebook (see above, note 15) may have a different pagination;we have not examined this, but as our interest is in this case theproportions of the parts, this is not important. Marx’s rearrangementof the sequence of the parts is not necessarily a criticism of Morgan’slogic; the rearrangement of the sequence and proportions of the partsconforms more closely to Marx’s own interests. Marx’s sequence andpagination in the notebook is the following:Part I ms. p. 1 Total pp. 3V2) 2o ' f u j approximatelyII 29 69% )Notes to Introduction, pp. 9 -11.98On Engels, see above, Introduction, section 7, Engels’ Relation toMarx and Morgan, and notes 147-148. Morgan’s Tables at the endof Pt. Ill, ch. II, Malayan System of Consanguinity; Pt. Ill, ch. Ill,Turanian and Ganowanian Systems; Pt. Ill, ch. V, Roman and ArabicSystems. (The Hebrew type of family is discussed in the last mentionedchapter, while the table of Arabic terms of consanguinity is appended.The anomaly is not clarified by Morgan.) Tables taken from hisSystems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family. SmithsonianInstitution, Contributions to Human Knowledge, v. 17, 1871. J. F. McLennan,Studies in Ancient History, 1876, had argued against Morgan’sexplanation of the origin of the system of the classificatory system ofconsanguinity. (Cf. Morgan, Ancient Society, note appended to35