Criminality and economic conditions

by Willem Adriaan Bonger

The position of the wife is rather better when, instead of following her husband, he comes to live at her father’s house. This happens sometimes when the man cannot pay the whole purchase price, sometimes when the father-in-law is much richer than he. In this latter case the son-in-law prefers to profit by the wealth and power of his wife’s father, who, for his part, asks nothing better than to keep his daughter at home, since, in this manner, instead of losing a worker from the household he gains one by the coming of the husband.

We come now to the “pastoral peoples”, living principally in Asia and Africa. Just as hunting is not the sole resource of the preceding groups, so the raising of cattle is not the exclusive occupation of this group, but simply the principal one; hence their name. The raising of cattle is naturally the work of the men, seeing that it proceeds genetically from hunting, while the women in this class, as in the preceding, gather fruits and herbs and attend to the work of the household. Although the land is held in common, there are great diversities of wealth, since cattle, the principal form of possession, are individual property, and since war and pillage are also frequent sources of wealth.

Polygyny is permitted, and nomads take as many wives as they can pay for and support. Only the rich, however, can afford to purchase more than one wife, for the fathers demand a good price. [[295]]Once purchased the woman becomes the absolute property of the man, who can exploit her in any manner, or abandon her, and when he comes to die can leave her to his heirs with the rest of his possessions. Adultery on the part of the woman is severely punished, while the man is free. Often under polygyny only one of the women is considered the legitimate wife and her children have the sole right to inherit, while the other women are considered only as concubines. The position of the legitimate wife towards her husband does not prevent her being as much of a slave as the other women. Nowhere else has the woman as humble a place as among these pastoral peoples, and nowhere else is the rôle of the man as important as here.

Let us next examine the “lower agriculturists” (among whom are to be found the greater number of the North American Indians, and a great number of the peoples of Africa and the East Indies). When hunting peoples, through chance circumstances (wealth of game for example), have ceased to wander continually, they may easily pass into agriculturists.[37] Agriculture in its turn brings it about that those who practice it become more and more sedentary.

The cultivation of the soil developed in connection with the gathering of fruit and roots, so that it originally formed part of woman’s sphere of labor; hence the economic importance of women increased, and a father became less and less disposed to give his daughter in marriage for a small equivalent. The future husband is obliged to acquire his wife at a considerable price, perhaps may have to win her by serving his father-in-law temporarily. Thus, although polygyny is permitted it is only the rich and the chiefs who can procure more than one wife.

Since agriculture requires many hands, the parents try to keep their children with them as long as possible.[38] Thus the custom grows up of several families living in the same house, and the husband comes to live with his wife’s family when he is unable to pay the purchase price. Even if this is not the case, a close relationship exists between the wife and her family, so that she returns to it with her children when her husband dies. The more important the position of the woman in the family becomes, the more it comes to pass that the married woman remains in her own family and the husband in his, and that the union consists only in more or less frequent visits paid by the man to his wife.

It is easy to see why the position of woman at this stage is in general [[296]]better than at those which preceded. Ordinarily it is the woman who tills the soil and cares for the household, while the man hunts and prepares the necessary tools; and since agriculture gives a more regular and surer production than hunting, it follows that the position of woman is improved. The woman becomes less dependent upon the man, to such a point that, for example, she is able to break the marriage, a condition very different from those in which the wife was the property of her husband. (The somewhat numerous exceptions are explained by the fact that in those cases the man takes part in the cultivation of the soil.) This is especially the case when a domestic community is formed in which the women govern (matriarchate).[39] Thus a situation is developed at times in which the women have an important position even outside of the family (gynecocracy).

As the preceding considerations show it is not the family which, at this stage of development, takes the first place. During the periods which I have examined before this the clan (in Latin “gens”, in German “Sippe”), a group of persons descended from a common ancestor, is of importance only inasmuch as members of the clan are forbidden to marry among themselves. Among the lower agriculturists, however, the clan is developed into a consanguineous group living in a community, and in most cases the clan is maternal—that is, descent and the right of succession are reckoned in the maternal line.

However as soon as agriculture increased greatly in importance, especially when the raising of cattle, commerce, and industry grew up beside it, the relation between the sexes became considerably modified. The man gave up hunting, always a less important resource at this stage, and applied himself more and more to agriculture and other branches, and the woman only seconded him in these occupations. In consequence of the continually increasing productivity of labor, the man could produce more than he needed for consumption. The possession of slaves then became advantageous, slavery took on greater and greater proportions, and in this way the woman’s part in the economic life became less important. Thus the man becomes anew the principal factor and his authority resumes the force it had in the earlier periods. It is no longer the man who lives with the woman and her family but she lives with him. We have seen above [[297]]that among the lower agriculturists it is the clan, and especially the maternal clan, that holds the first place. Through the economic development the maternal clan is made to give place to the paternal clan. In the clan there was equality, since the soil, the most important means of production, and the dwelling were possessed in common; but the disappearance of this equality followed the development of commerce and industry, for the products of these were, from the first, private property. This inequality was increased still more because private property in land began to grow up side by side with property in common. In the second place, the booty in war was not the same for all warriors, and furthermore war brought about the existence of a class of persons (slaves) whose interests were opposed to those of the conquerors. This development of private property leads necessarily to a gradual change from the maternal clan to the paternal. For in the first case a father had to leave his property to the members of his clan (we have seen that it was the man who became the possessor of private wealth); and since his children belonged always to another clan than his own, the clan of their mother, the children did not inherit from their father. Hence the change to the paternal clan.[40]

But this was not all. Through the great modifications in the mode of production of which I have already spoken, the importance of the clan diminished more and more, and at length disappeared entirely. As long as there was equality among the members of the clan, as long as the social relationships were little complicated, the clan and the organizations that sprang from it (mere combinations of clans) sufficed for the purposes of social organization. But such an organization, being purely democratic in its nature, was no longer adapted to a society in which there were rich and poor, freemen and slaves, in which, therefore, there was a large group of persons oppressed and a small group of oppressors.