the ethnological notebooks of karl marx - Marxists Internet Archive

Notes to Maine, pp. 299-302.et seq., on the eyres or circuits of the Anglo-Saxon kings; ib., p. 180,a mild critique of Spenser’s view. Judge’s eyre = Herumreisen. OnAnderson, see above Marx, Maine excerpts, p. 174: Dr. James Anderson,Royal Genealogies, or the Genealogical Tables of Emperors, Kings, andPrinces, from Adam to these Times, etc. 2 parts, 1732. MacPherson,perhaps: James MacPherson, A n Introduction to the History of GreatBritain and Ireland, etc. 1771. On Marx’s relations to Maurer, seeIntroduction to this volume. On judicial circuits, see below, n. 96.31 Ms.: as32 M s.: its33 M s.: More34 Maine developed the analogy between an Irish tribe in the process oftransition to political society and an oriental village community.The analogy is not entirely inept, for both social institutions are kindsof collectivities bound by customary law. The analogy fails, however,insofar as the Indian village community had long maintained a relationto a superordinate political body, whereas this relation was in statunascendi in Ireland at the time in question. In methodology, Mainehere leaves the historical field in order to advance the synchronic orbetter, nontemporal, comparison. Both cases are ‘archaic’ (Maine’sterm), but the way they are archaic in reference to their historicalantecedence and given temporal context differs. Maine’s historismbreaks down, and the developments of the Irish land question fromthe time of the legal tracts which he had been discussing down to thenineteenth century were regarded by him as a moment. (See thefollowing Maine excerpt and comment of Marx.) Maine’s analogy isdefective not because of the defect inherent in any analogical argumentbut because Maine had abandoned his historical method and thesense of this passage is in contradiction to the general sense of hisschool of historical jurisprudence and of this work in particular. Thesubstantive point concerns the break up of the Irish tribal collectivityby the development of the system of rents, imposition of new ruleson broken men and allocation of waste land or commons to the benefitof the chiefs. The authority or tribal power and wealth now becameconcentrated in the hands of a few and the interests of the many andof the few were now opposed; the political society was formed by aninternal process. Maine had combined an institution of society whichwas in existence prior to the establishment of political society withone that exists under the regime of the State.Engels, like Maine, combined the gens, an institution of societyin existence prior to the establishment of political society and theState, and which is dissolved in the formation of political society, witha collective institution of the latter. See Engels, Ursprung, MEW 21,p. 165: Der erste Geschichtsschreiber, der wenigstens eine annäherndeVorstellung vom Wesen der Gens hatte, war Niebuhr, und das - aberauch seine ohne weiteres mit übertragnen Irrtümer - verdankt er417