the ethnological notebooks of karl marx - Marxists Internet Archive

on Morgan above and Marx, excerpts from Morgan, pp. 41-42). In theMaine excerpts (p. 178), Marx wrote that “The predominance of thesingle family over the gens is connected with the development of privateproperty in land.” This is also to be taken together with the discussion ofthe family as a miniature of the society in the primitive and civilizedconditions. (See section 1 on Morgan in Introduction, above, and Marx,Morgan excerpts, p. 8 and n. 38.)The position of Marx is that Maine’s conception of the private family,as being the basis out of which the sept and clan are developed, iscompletely wrong (Maine excerpts, p. 177). In this regard, Marx is onthe side of Morgan. The clan and clan chief are different institutionsfrom Hindu joint family and the Hindu father. Maine had the Englishprivate family in mind. The example taken from India holds rather forthe cities than for the countryside, and among the owners of ground rentrather than actual working members of a village community. ThusMaine idealized and generalized a partial and privileged situation in India.He did not understand the opposition of interests in the Indian villagecommunity, nor the opposition between city and countryside. This isboth a methodological and a substantive point and bears as much uponFourier as upon Maine. (See below, section 7, Relation of Engels toMarx and Morgan, and note 146.) On p. 177 of the Maine excerpts,Marx posited the opposition between social classes in the Indian villagecommunity; this position of Marx is to be taken in conjunction with hiscriticism of Phear who sought to found economic functions in societyand social differences in the village on the family (see Phear excerpts,P· 15 3)·The development of the conflicting interests as the society developsinto groupings of individual interests is expressed in the opposition ofpublic and private, rural and urban, rich and poor (Marx, Maine excerpts,pp. 164, 177), higher and lower estates (Stände) (Maine excerpts, p. 166).The church, in accordance with this theory of interests becomes separatedfrom secular organizations of society and joins with these as a high contractingparty in assertion of its own interest in common with and opposedto others. The society becomes divided into specializations oflabor and profession, and is separated by conflicting collectivities withinitself; these collectivities have internalized their relations to each otherand to themselves, and to the society, as their interests, and are at thesame time externalized as the expression of the same. Social propertybecomes that of the lesser collectivity, the social class, individually expressedas interests of particular human beings. In effect, the order is atthe same time reversed, the social property being distributed amongindividuals, and providing at the same time the basis for the interest ofa social class; thereby the opposition of the individual and the collectivity,that of the individual and the collective interests in the society, and be­40