the ethnological notebooks of karl marx - Marxists Internet Archive

Notes to Introduction, p. 72.beclouded the writings on both sides. J. Kulischer, Allgemeine Wirtschaftsgeschichte.,2 v., 1928 (repr. 1958) defended the theory of communallandownership among European peoples of the protohistoricand early historic periods in the form of the Markgenossenschaft.Alfons Dopsch, Wirtschaftliche und Soziale Grundlagen der EuropäischenKulturentwicklung, 2 v. 1923-1924, had been controverted by Kulischer,but the English translation of Dopsch, The Economic and Social Foundationsof European Civilisation, 1937, published under his supervision,contracted the ‘theoretical’ part of the work and did not answer him.R. Koebner in ch. 1 of the Cambridge Economic History of Europe,M. Postan, ed., (1941) 1966, set forth the facts pertaining to Tacitusin his relation to Caesar, and defending the individualistic side againstthe collectivists. Koebner affirmed that the Germans acquired landby conquest, held it collectively until it was divided individuallyaccording to higher or lower degree, held in perpetuity. The landthereafter, according to Koebner, was held by the ancient Germansprivately in perpetuity. The mode o f . Koebner’s presentation istherefore a mixture of the collectivist and the individualist approachin regard to the interpretation of the passage of Tacitus in question,but it implies not an individualist past but a collectivist one; this is notantipathetic to the viewpoint of Kulischer, nor, once the polemic isstripped away, that of Dopsch (see following note). Yet it is opposedto the viewpoint of Fustel de Coulanges.The factor of conquest introduced by Koebner in reference toacquisition of land by the collectivity is not supported by the passagetaken from Tacitus. J. E. Thorold Rogers, Agriculture and Prices inEngland... 7 vols., 1866-1902, had made out a case for the plentifulnessof land in the Middle Ages in Europe. This was interpreted by Maine,Lectures, op. cit., pp. 141-142 and 150, to apply to the Roman periodas well. For this reason, not land but capital = catde was the chiefnecessity, wherefore conquest of spoil was not in land but in catde;until the propositions of these two are overcome, land cannot betaken as the sole or even chief object of conquest, contrary to Koebner.Marx concurred in the view which was advanced by ThoroldRogers and Maine (Marx, Maine excerpts, pp. 167-168); he rejectedKovalevsky’s unqualified introduction of the factor of conquest aswell, for he wrote, “That the community of kin necessarily settles onforeign, conquered territory is an arbitrary assumption of Kovalevsky.”(See above, note 16.) It is the generally held opinion of themodern writers that by the time of Tacitus the continental Germanicpeoples had moved away from a collectivist past; the implication isthat in the earlier antiquity, or protohistoric period, they had beencollectivist in their undertakings (property-sharing, movement, settlement,etc.) C. Stephenson had grasped only the individualist end ofthis line of thought, following Dopsch’s line in this connection (TheCommon Man in Early Medieval Europe, American Historical Review,383