Woman under socialism. Bebel August
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sub-departments of this historical development of mankind; over many, on which already light has been shed, differences of opinion still exist among the investigators on the meaning and connection of this or that fact; nevertheless, on the whole, there is agreement and clearness. It is established that man did not, like the first human couple of the Bible, make his first appearance on earth in an advanced stage of civilization. He reached that plane only in the course of endlessly long lapses of time, after he had gradually freed himself from purely animal conditions, and had experienced long terms of development, in the course of which his social as well as his sexual relations – the relations between man and woman – had undergone a great variety of changes.
The favorite phrase – a phrase that the ignorant or impostors daily smite our ears with on the subject of the relations between man and woman, and between the poor and the rich – "it always has been so," and the conclusion drawn therefrom – "it will always be so," is in every sense of the word false, superficial and trumped-up.
For the purposes of this work a cursory presentation of the relations between the sexes, since primitive society, is of special importance. It is so because it can thereby be proved that, seeing that these relations have materially changed in the previous course of human development, and that the changes have taken place in even step with the existing systems of production, on the one hand, and of the distribution of the product of labor, on the other, it is natural and goes without saying that, along with further changes and revolutions in the system of production and distribution, the relations between the sexes are bound to change again. Nothing is "eternal," either in nature or in human life; eternal only is change and interchange.
As far back as one may go in the development of human society, the horde is found as the first human community. True enough, Honeger mentions in his "General History of Civilization" that even to-day in the little explored interior of the island of Borneo, there are wild people, living separately; and Huegel likewise maintains that, in the wild mountain regions of India, human couples have been discovered living alone, and who, ape-like, fled to the trees as soon as they were met; but there is no further knowledge on the subject. If verified, these claims would only confirm the previous superstition and hypothesis concerning the development of the human race. The probability is that, wherever human beings sprang up, there were, at first, single couples. Certain it is, however, that so soon as a larger number of beings existed, descended from a common parent stock, they held together in hordes in order that, by their joint efforts, they might, first of all, gain their still very primitive conditions of life and support, as well as to protect themselves against their common enemies, wild animals. Growing numbers and increased difficulties in securing subsistence, which originally consisted in roots, berries and fruit, first led to the splitting up or segmentation of the hordes, and to the search for new habitats.
This almost animal-like state, of which we have no further credible antiquarian proofs, undoubtedly once existed, judging from all that we have learned concerning the several grades of civilization of wild peoples still living, or known to have lived within historic times. Man did not, upon the call of a Creator, step ready-made into existence as a higher product of civilization. It was otherwise. He has had to pass through the most varied stages in an endlessly long and slow process of development. Only via ebbing and flowing periods of civilization, and in constant differentiation with his fellows in all parts of the world, and in all zones, did he gradually climb up to his present height.
Indeed, while in one section of the earth's surface great peoples and nations belong to the most advanced stages of civilization, other peoples are found in different sections standing on the greatest variety of gradations in development. They thus present to us a picture of our own past history; and they point to the road which mankind traversed in the course of its development. If but certain common and generally accepted data are established, that may serve everywhere as sign-posts to guide investigation, a mass of facts will follow, throwing a wholly new light upon the relations of man in the past and the present. A number of social phenomena – unintelligible to us to-day, and attacked by superficial judges as nonsensical, not infrequently even as "immoral" – will become clear and natural. A material lifting of the veil, formerly spread over the history of the development of our race, has been effected through the investigations made, since Bachofen, by a considerable number of scientists, like Tylor, MacLennan, Lubbock and others. Prominently among the men who joined these was Morgan, with his fundamental work, that Frederick Engels further substantiated and supplemented with a series of historical facts, economic and political in their nature, and that, more recently, has been partly confirmed and partly rectified by Cunow.1
By means of these expositions – especially as clearly and lucidly presented by Frederick Engels, in his support of Morgan's excellent and fundamental work, – a mass of light is shed upon hitherto unintelligible, partly seemingly contradictory phenomena in the life of the races and tribes of both high and low degree of culture. Only now do we gain an insight into the structure that human society raised in the course of time. According thereto, our former views of marriage, the family, the community, the State, rested upon notions that were wholly false; so false that they turn out to be no better than a fancy-picture, wholly devoid of foundation in fact.
All that is said and proved about marriage, the family, the community and the State holds good especially with regard to woman, who, in the various periods of development did likewise fill a place, that differs materially from the "eternal," imputed to her.
Morgan, whom Engels agrees with in this, divides the history of mankind into three main epochs: – savagery, barbarism and civilization. Each of the two first ones he again divides into an under, a middle and an upper period, each distinguishing itself from the other by certain innovations and improvements, predicated in each instance upon the control over subsistence. Morgan, accordingly, exactly in the sense of the materialist conception of history, as established by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, – perceives the leading characteristics in the development of society to be the changes that, in given epochs, the conditions of life are molded into; and he perceives the changes to be due to the progress made in the process of production, that is to say, in the procurement of subsistence. Summed up in a few words, the lower period of savagery constitutes the infancy of the human race, during which the race, partly living in trees, is mainly nourished by fruits and roots, and during which articulate language takes its inception. The middle period of savagery commences with the acquisition of a fish subsistence, and the use of fire. The construction of weapons begins; at first the club and spear, fashioned out of wood and stone. Thereby also begins the chase, and probably also war with contiguous hordes for the sources of food, for domiciles and hunting grounds. At this stage appears also cannibalism, still practiced to-day by some tribes and peoples of Africa, Australia and Polynesia. The upper period of savagery is characterized by the perfection of weapons to the point of the bow and arrow; finger weaving, the making of baskets out of filaments of bark, the fashioning of sharpened stone tools have here their start, and thereby begins also the preparation of wood for the building of boats and huts. The form of life has accordingly, become many-sided. The existing tools and implements, needed for the control of a plentiful food supply, make possible the subsistance of larger communities.
The lower period of barbarism Morgan starts with the invention of the art of pottery. The taming and domestication of animals, and, along with that, the production of meat and milk, and the preparation of hides, horns and hair for various purposes of use, have here their start. Hand in hand therewith begins the cultivation of plants, – in the West of maize, in the East of almost all known cereals, maize excepted. The middle period of barbarism shows us, in the East, the ever more extensive domestication of animals; in the West, the cultivation of maize and plants by irrigation. Here also begins the use of adobe-bricks and of stone for house-building. The domestication of animals promotes the rearing of herds, and leads to the pastoral life. The necessity of larger quantities of food for men and beasts leads to field agriculture. Along therewith, the people begin to be localized; food increases in quantity and diversity, and gradually cannibalism disappears.
The upper period of barbarism begins finally with the smelting of iron ore, and the discovery of the phonetic alphabet. The iron plow-share is invented, making possible agriculture on a larger scale; the iron axe and spade are brought into requisition, making easy the clearing of the forests.
Bachofen's book appeared in 1861 under the title, "Das Mutterrecht" (Mother-right) "Eine Untersuchung ueber die Gynaekokratie der Alten Welt nach ihrer religioesen und rechtlichen Natur," Stuttgart, Krais & Hoffmann. Morgan's fundamental work, "Ancient Society," appeared in a German translation in 1891, J. H. W. Dietz, Stuttgart. From the same publisher there appeared in German: "The Origin of the Family, of Private Property and the State, in support of Lewis H. Morgan's Investigations," by Frederick Engels. Fourth enlarged edition, 1892. Also "Die Verwandtschafts-Organisationen der Australneger. Ein Beitrag zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der Familie," by Heinrich Cunow, 1894.
[The perspective into which the Pleiades of distinguished names are thrown in the text just above is apt to convey an incorrect impression, and the impression is not materially corrected in the subsequent references to them. Neither Bachofen, nor yet Tylor, McLennan or Lubbock contributed to the principles that now are canons in ethnology. They were not even path-finders, valuable though their works are.
Bachofen collected, in his work entitled "Das Mutterrecht," the gleanings of vast and tireless researches among the writings of the ancients, with an eye to female authority. Subsequently, and helping themselves more particularly to the more recent contributions to archeology, that partly dealt with living aborigines, Tylor, McLennan and Lubbock produced respectively, "Early History of Mankind;" "Primitive Marriage;" and "Pre-Historic Times" and "Origin of Civilization." These works, though partly theoretic, yet are mainly descriptive. By an effort of genius – like the wood-pecker, whose instinct tells it the desired worm is beneath the bark and who pecks at and round about it – all these men, Bachofen foremost, scented sense in the seeming nonsense of ancient traditions, or surmised significance in the more recently ascertained customs of living aborigines. But again, like the wood-pecker, that has struck a bark too thick for its bill, these men could not solve the problem they were at. They lacked the information to pick, and they had not, nor were they so situated as to furnish themselves with, the key to open the lock. Morgan furnished the key.
Lewis Henry Morgan, born In Aurora, N. Y., November 21, 1818, and equipped with vast scholarship and archeological information, took up his residence among the Iroquois Indians, by whom, the Hawk gens of the Seneca tribe, he was eventually adopted. The fruit of his observations there and among other Indian tribes that he visited even west of the Mississippi, together with simultaneous information sent him by the American missionaries in the Sandwich Islands, was a series of epoch-making works, "The League of the Iroquois," "Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family," and "Ancient Society," which appeared in 1877. A last and not least valuable work was his "Houses and Houselife of the American Aborigines." A solid foundation was now laid for the science of ethnology and anthropology. The problem was substantially solved.
The robust scientific mind of Karl Marx promptly absorbed the revelations made by Morgan, and he recast his own views accordingly. A serious ethnological error had crept into his great work, "Capital," two editions of which had been previously published in German between 1863-1873. A footnote by Frederick Engels (p. 344, Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., English edition, 1886) testifies to the revolution Morgan's works had wrought on the ethnological conceptions of the founder of Socialist economics and sociology.
Subsequently, Frederick Engels, planted squarely on the principles established by Morgan, issued a series of brilliant monographs, in which, equipped with the key furnished by Morgan and which Engels' extensive economic and sociologic knowledge enabled him to wield with deftness, he explained interesting social phenomena among the ancients, and thereby greatly enriched the literature of social science.
Finally, Heinrich Cunow, though imagining to perceive some minor flaws in some secondary parts of Morgan's theory, placed himself in absolute accord with the body of Morgan's real work, as stated later in the text in a quotation from Cunow; and, following closely in Morgan's footsteps, made and published interesting independent researches on the system of consanguinity among the Austral-Negros. – The Translator.]