the ethnological notebooks of karl marx - Marxists Internet Archive

Notes to Introduction, pp. 59-62.excerpts, pp. 180-181). The social relations of the ancient Germans,whether for military, civil, economic, or other purposes were foundedon the familia, or rather the gens, and on propinquitas. The bond ofkinship is covered by the reference to gens; propinquitas as a socialinstitution is plainly of the communal type, in which people areclosely bound to one another either by reason of kinship or neighborhood,wherefore they are joined in the squadrons and troops.Propinquitas is here conceived to be a concrete communal institution,like the family/gens, not an abstract principle of social relationship.Aside from what we learn of Marx’s inner thought processes in thisconnection, the historical course of the denotation of propinquus hasbeen more recently given as primarily ‘proximate, nearby,’ secondarily‘kin’ (Walde-Hofmann, Lat. Etjm. Wörterbuch, v. II, 1954, p. 372).The communal institutions of ancient German life, in which the lesserarmy formations were included, were in Marx’s view the gens, thefamily, possibly the group of neighbors insofar as they were notalready comprised in the kin groups, or else nearby kinsmen asopposed to kinsmen who were more distandy located. Marx differentiatedthe army from the squadron and the wedge, hence, theofficial, public formation, from the communal life of the ancientGermans, in which he followed Tacitus. The context of Tacitus’comment emphasizes the intimacy of relations of the smaller formations(cries of the wives and children, etc.), hence the phrase,nec fortuiter conglobado: The reason for the agglomeration whichis not left to chance is that good morale, mutual trust, the incitationsof people known to each other, bound by strong and intimate communalbonds, will make for braver, more dependable conduct in war.Marx represented these Germans as transitional from the gentile tothe civil system, having aspects of each in their society. See below,Morgan excerpts, n. 189, and Morgan, op. cit., p. 371.112 Jean Jacques Rousseau, Du Contrat Social, pt. I, 1: “ L ’homme est nelibre, et partout il est dans les fers.’' Rousseau is evidently both anindividualist, and, as C. E. Vaughan has shown, a collectivist. (Seenote 123.)113 MEW i, pp. 78-79. Great play is made with the bird catcher Papagenoin Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute. Cf. also Korsch, op. cit., p. 50 n.114 Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, op. cit., para. 261-262. Marx, Kritik derHegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. MEW 1, pp. 203-207. Hegel expressedthe antithesis to this relation of the State and civil society,ib., para. 527: “Wo bürgerliche Gesellschaft und damit Staat vorhandenist, treten die Stände in ihrem Unterschiede ein__ ” Thecivil society is here presented as the leading entity, and the Statetherewith as the subordinate. The Estates in their difference areintroduced in relation to the civil society. The conception is nothistorical; within the civil society, the differentiation into classes isan atemporal development. Marx introduced the differentiation into378