The origin of the family, private property, and the state

by Friedrich Engels

The communistic household, in which most or all the women belong to one and the same gens, while the husbands come from different gentes, is the cause and foundation of the general and widespread supremacy of women in primeval times. The discovery of this fact is the third merit of Bachofen.

By way of supplement I wish to state that the reports of travelers and missionaries concerning the overburdening of women among savages and barbarians do not in the least contradict the above statements. The division of labor between both sexes is caused by other reasons than the social condition of women. Nations, where women have to work much harder than is proper for them in our opinion, often respect women more highly than Europeans do. The lady of civilized countries, surrounded with sham homage and a stranger to all real work stands on a far lower social level than a hard-working barbarian woman, regarded as a real lady (frowa-lady-mistress) and having the character of such.

Whether or not the pairing family has in our time entirely supplanted group marriage in America, can be decided only by closer investigations among those nations of northwestern and especially of southern America that are still in the higher stage of savagery. About the latter so many reports of sexual license are current that the assumption of a complete cessation of the ancient group marriage is hardly warranted. Evidently all traces of it have not yet disappeared. In at least forty North American tribes the man marrying an elder sister has the right to make all her sisters his wives as soon as they are of age, a survival of the community of men for the whole series of sisters. And Bancroft relates that the Indians of the Californian peninsula celebrate certain festivities uniting several "tribes" for the purpose of unrestricted sexual intercourse. These are evidently gentes that have preserved in these festivities a vague recollection of the time when the women of one gens had for their common husbands all the men of another gens, and vice versa. The same custom is still observed in Australia. Among certain nations it sometimes happens that the older men, the chief and sorcerer-priests, exploit the community of women for their own benefits and monopolize all the women. But in their turn they must restore the old community during certain festivities and great assemblies, permitting their wives to enjoy themselves with the young men. A whole series of examples of such periodical saturnalia restoring for a short time the ancient sexual freedom is quoted by Westermarck:[18] among the Hos, the Santals, the Punjas and Kotars in India, among some African nations, etc. Curiously enough Westermarck concludes that this is a survival, not of group marriage, the existence of which he denies, but—of a rutting season which primitive man had in common with other animals.

Here we touch Bachofen's fourth great discovery: the widespread form of transition from group marriage to pairing family. What Bachofen represents as a penance for violating the old divine laws—the penalty with which a woman redeems her right to chastity, is in fact only a mystical expression for the penalty paid by a woman for becoming exempt from the ancient community of men and acquiring the right of surrendering to one man only. This penalty consists in a limited surrender: Babylonian women had to surrender once a year in the temple of Mylitta; other nations of Western Asia sent their young women for years to the temple of Anaitis, where they had to practice free love with favorites of their own choice before they were allowed to marry. Similar customs in a religious disguise are common to nearly all Asiatic nations between the Mediterranean and the Ganges. The penalty for exemption becomes gradually lighter in course of time, as Bachofen remarks: "The annually repeated surrender gives place to a single sacrifice; the hetaerism of the matrons is followed by that of the maidens, the promiscuous intercourse during marriage to that before wedding, the indiscriminate intercourse with all to that with certain individuals."[19] Among some nations the religious disguise is missing. Among others—Thracians, Celts, etc., in classic times, many primitive inhabitants of India, Malay nations, South Sea Islanders and many American Indians to this day—the girls enjoy absolute sexual freedom before marriage. This is especially true almost everywhere in South America, as everybody can confirm who penetrates a little into the interior. Agassiz, e. g., relates[20] an anecdote of a wealthy family of Indian descent. On being introduced to the daughter he asked something about her father, presuming him to be her mother's husband, who was in the war against Paraguay. But the mother replied, smiling: "Nao tem pai, he filha da fortuna"—she hasn't any father; she is the daughter of chance. "It is the way the Indian or half-breed women here always speak of their illegitimate children; and though they say it without an intonation of sadness or of blame, apparently as unconscious of any wrong or shame as if they said the father was absent or dead, it has the most melancholy significance; it seems to speak of such absolute desertion. So far is this from being an unusual case, that among the common people the opposite seems the exception. Children are frequently quite ignorant of their parentage. They know about their mother, for all the care and responsibility falls upon her, but they have no knowledge of their father; nor does it seem to occur to the woman that she or her children have any claim upon him." What seems so strange to the civilized man, is simply the rule of maternal law and group marriage.

Again, among other nations the friends and relatives of the bridegroom or the wedding guests claim their traditional right to the bride, and the bridegroom comes last. This custom prevailed in ancient times on the Baleares and among the African Augilers; it is observed to this day by the Bareas in Abyssinia. In still other cases, an official person—the chief of a tribe or a gens, the cazique, shamane, priest, prince or whatever may be his title—represents the community and exercises the right of the first night. All modern romantic whitewashing notwithstanding, this jus primae noctis, is still in force among most of the natives of Alaska,[21] among the Tahus of northern Mexico[22] and some other nations. And during the whole of the middle ages it was practiced at least in originally Celtic countries, where it was directly transmitted by group marriage, e. g. in Aragonia. While in Castilia the peasant was never a serf, the most disgraceful serfdom existed in Aragonia, until abolished by the decision of Ferdinand the Catholic in 1486. In this document we read: "We decide and declare that the aforesaid 'senyors' (barons) ... shall neither sleep the first night with the wife of a peasant, nor shall they in the first night after the wedding, when the woman has gone to bed, step over said woman or bed as a sign of their authority. Neither shall the aforesaid senyors use the daughter or the son of any peasant, with or without pay, against their will." (Quoted in the Catalonian original by Sugenheim, "Serfdom," Petersburg, 1861, page 35.)

Bachofen, furthermore, is perfectly right in contending that the transition from what he calls "hetaerism" or "incestuous generation" to monogamy was brought about mainly by women. The more in the course of economic development, undermining the old communism and increasing the density of population, the traditional sexual relations lost their innocent character suited to the primitive forest, the more debasing and oppressive they naturally appeared to women; and the more they consequently longed for relief by the right of chastity, of temporary or permanent marriage with one man. This progress could not be due to men for the simple reason that they never, even to this day, had the least intention of renouncing the pleasures of actual group marriage. Not until the women had accomplished the transition to the pairing family could the men introduce strict monogamy—true, only for women.

The pairing family arose on the boundary line between savagery and barbarism, generally in the higher stage of savagery, here and there in the lower stage of barbarism. It is the form of the family characteristic for barbarism, as group marriage is for savagery and monogamy for civilization. In order to develop it into established monogamy, other causes than those active hitherto were required. In the pairing family the group was already reduced to its last unit, its biatomic molecule: one man and one woman. Natural selection, had accomplished its purpose by a continually increasing restriction of sexual intercourse. Nothing remained to be done in this direction. Unless new social forces became active, there was no reason why a new form of the family should develop out of the pairing family. But these forces did become active.

We now leave America, the classic soil of the pairing family. No sign permits the conclusion that a higher form of the family was developed here, that any established form of monogamy ever existed anywhere in the New World before the discovery and conquest. Not so in the Old World.

In the latter, the domestication of animals and the breeding of flocks had developed a hitherto unknown source of wealth and created entirely new social conditions. Up to the lower stage of barbarism, fixed wealth was almost exclusively represented by houses, clothing, rough ornaments and the tools for obtaining and preparing food: boats, weapons and household articles of the simplest kind. Nourishment had to be secured afresh day by day. But now, with their herds of horses, camels, donkeys, cattle, sheep, goats and hogs, the advancing nomadic nations—the Aryans in the Indian Punjab, in the region of the Ganges and the steppes of the Oxus and Jaxartes, then still more rich in water-veins than now; the Semites on the Euphrates and Tigris—had acquired possessions demanding only the most crude attention and care in order to propagate themselves in ever increasing numbers and yield the most abundant store of milk and meat. All former means of obtaining food were now forced to the background. Hunting, once a necessity, now became a sport.

But who was the owner of this new wealth? Doubtless it was originally the gens. However, private ownership of flocks must have had an early beginning. It is difficult to say whether to the author of the so-called first book of Moses Father Abraham appeared as the owner of his flocks by virtue of his privilege as head of a communistic family or of his capacity as gentile chief by actual descent. So much is certain: we must not regard him as a proprietor in the modern sense of the word. It is furthermore certain that everywhere on the threshold of documentary history we find the flocks in the separate possession of chiefs of families, exactly like the productions of barbarian art, such as metal ware, articles of luxury and, finally, the human cattle—the slaves.