We now come to a further discovery of Morgan’s, which is at 
least as important as the reconstruction of the primitive form of 
the family out of the systems of consanguinity. The demonstration 
of the fact that the bodies of consanguinei within the American 
Indian tribe, designated by the names of animals, are in essence 
identical with the genea of the Greeks and the gentes of the 
Romans; that the American form was the original and the Greek 
and Roman the later, derivative; that the entire social organisation 
of the Greeks and Romans of primitive times in gens, phratry and 
tribe finds its faithful parallel in that of the American Indians; 
that (as far as our present sources of information go) the gens is 
an institution common to all barbarians up to their entry into 
civilisation, and even afterwards—this demonstration cleared up at 
one stroke the most difficult parts of the earliest Greek and 
Roman history. At the same time it has thrown unexpected light 
on the fundamental features of the social constitution of primitive 
times—before the introduction of the state. Simple as this may 
seem when one knows it—nevertheless, Morgan discovered it only 
very recently. In his previous work, published in 1871," he had not 
yet hit upon the secret, the discovery of which since reduced for a 
time* the otherwise so confident English prehistorians to a 
mouse-like silence. 

The Latin word gens, which Morgan employs as a general 
designation for this body of consanguinei, is, like its Greek 
equivalent, genos, derived from the common Aryan root gan (in 

a L. H. Morgan, Anctent Society, pp. 491-92. See also “Marx’s Excerpts...”, op. cit., 
p. 124.— Ed 

b L. H. Morgan, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family.— Ed. 

¢ The words “for a time” were added in the 1891 edition.— Ed. 

Origin of the Family, Private Property and State 191 

German, where the Aryan g is, according to rule, replaced by , it 
is kan), which means to beget. Gens, genos, the Sanscrit ganas, the 
Gothic kuni (in accordance with the above-mentioned rule), the 
Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon kyn, the English kin, the Middle 
High German kiinne, all equally signify kinship, descent. However, 
gens in the Latin and genos in the Greek are specially used for 
a body of consanguinei which boasts a common descent (in 
this case from a common male ancestor) and which, owing to certain 
social and religious institutions, forms a separate community, whose 
origin and nature have hitherto, nevertheless, remained obscure to 
all our historians. 

We have already seen above, in connection with the punaluan 
family, how a gens in its original form is constituted. It consists of 
all persons who, by virtue of punaluan marriage and in 
accordance with the conceptions necessarily predominating there- 
in, constitute the recognised descendants of a definite individual 
ancestress, the founder of the gens. Since paternity is uncertain in 
this form of the family, female lineage alone is valid. Since the 
brothers may not marry their sisters, but only women of different 
descent, the children born of such alien women fall, according to 
mother right, outside the gens. Thus, only the offspring of the 
daughters of each generation remain in the body of consanguinei, 
while the offspring of the sons go over into the gentes of their 
mothers. What, then, becomes of this consanguine group once it 
constitutes itself as a separate group as against similar groups 
within the tribe? 

Morgan takes the gens of the Iroquois, in particular that of the 
Seneca tribe, as the classical form of the original gens. They have 
eight gentes, named after the following animals: 1) Wolf; 2) Bear; 
3) Turtle; 4) Beaver; 5) Deer; 6) Snipe; 7) Heron; 8) Hawk. The 
following usages prevail in each gens: 

1. It elects its sachem (headman in times of peace) and its chief 
(leader in war). The sachem had to be elected from within the 
gens itself and his office was hereditary in the gens, in the sense 
that it had to be immediately filled whenever a vacancy occurred. 
The war chief could also be elected outside the gens and could at 
times be completely non-existent. The son of the previous sachem 
was never elected as his successor, since mother right prevailed 
among the Iroquois, and the son, therefore, belonged to a 
different gens. The brother or the sister’s son, however, was often 
elected. All voted at the election—men and women alike. The 
choice, however, had to be endorsed by the remaining seven 
gentes and only then was the elected person ceremonially installed, 

this being carried out by the general council of the entire Iroquois 
Confederacy. The significance of this will be seen later. The 
sachem’s authority within the gens was of a paternal and purely 
moral character. He had no means of coercion at his command. 
He was by virtue of his office a member also of the tribal council 
of the Senecas, as well as of the Council of the Confederacy of all 
the Iroquois. The war chief could give orders only in military 
expeditions. 

2. The gens can depose the sachem and war chief at will. This 
again is carried out jointly by the men and women. Thereafter, 
the deposed rank as simple warriors and private persons like the 
rest. The council of the tribe can also depose the sachems, even 
against the wishes of the gens. 

3. No member is permitted to marry within the gens. This is the 
fundamental rule of the gens, the bond which keeps it together; it 
is the negative expression of the very positive blood relationship 
by virtue of which the individuals included in it become a gens at 
all. By the discovery of this simple fact Morgan, for the first time, 
revealed the nature of the gens. How little the gens had been 
understood until then is proved by the earlier reports concerning 
savages and barbarians, in which the various bodies constituting 
the gentile organisation are ignorantly and_ indiscriminately 
referred to as tribe, clan, thum, etc.; and regarding these it is 
sometimes asserted that marriage within any such body is 
prohibited. This gave rise to the hopeless confusion in which 
Mr. McLennan was able to intervene as a Napoleon, creating 
order -by his fiat: All tribes are divided into those within which 
marriage is forbidden (exogamous) and those within which it is 
permitted (endogamous). And having thus thoroughly muddled 
matters, he was able to indulge in most profound investigations as 
to which of his two fatuous classes was the older, exogamy or 
endogamy. This nonsense ceased automatically with the discovery 
of the gens based oh blood relationship and the consequent 
impossibility of marriage between its members.— Obviously, at the 
stage at which we find the Iroquois, the prohibition of marriage 
within the gens is strictly observed. 

4. The property of deceased persons was distributed among the 
remaining members of the gens— it had to remain in the gens. In 
view of the insignificance of the effects which an Iroquois could 
leave, the heritage was divided among the nearest relatives in the 
gens; when a man died, among his natural brothers and sisters 
and his maternal uncle; when a woman died, then among her 
children and natural sisters, but not her brothers. That is precisely 

Origin of the Family, Private Property and State 193 

the reason why it was impossible for man and wife to inherit from 
each other, and why children could not inherit from their father. 

5. The members of the gens were bound to give one another 
assistance, protection and particularly support in avenging injuries 
inflicted by outsiders. The individual depended, and could 
depend, for his security on the protection of the gens. Whoever 
injured him injured the whole gens. From this—the blood ties of 
the gens—arose the obligation of blood revenge, which was 
recognised unconditionally by the Iroquois. If a non-member of a 
gens slew a member of the gens the whole gens to which the slain 
person belonged was bound to take blood revenge. First mediation 
was tried. A council of the slayer’s gens was held and propositions 
were made to the council of the victim’s gens for a settlement of 
the matter—mostly in the form of expressions of regret and 
presents of considerable value. If these were accepted, the affair 
was Closed. If not, the injured gens appointed one or more 
avengers, whose duty it was to pursue and slay the murderer. If 
this happened the gens of the latter had no right to complain; the 
matter was regarded as even. 

6. The gens has definite names or series of names which it 
alone, in the whole tribe, is entitled to use, so that an individual’s 
name also indicates the gens to which he belongs. A gentile name 
carries gentile rights with it as a matter of course. 

7. The gens can adopt strangers and thereby admit them into 
the tribe as a whole. Prisoners of war that were not slain became 
members of the Seneca tribe by adoption into a gens and thereby 
obtained full tribal and gentile rights. The adoption took place at 
the request of individual members of the gens—men placed the 
stranger in the relation of a brother or sister, women in that of a 
child. For confirmation of this, ceremonial acceptance into the 
gens was necessary. Individual, exceptionally depleted gentes were 
often replenished by mass adoption from another gens, with the 
latter’s consent. Among the Iroquois, the ceremony of adoption 
into the gens was performed at a public meeting of the council of 
the tribe, which turned it practically into a religious rite. 

8. It would be difficult to prove special religious rites among the 
Indian gentes—and yet the religious ceremonies of the Indians 
are more or less connected with the gentes. Among the Iroquois, 
at their six annual religious festivals, the sachems and war chiefs 
of the individual gentes were included among the “Keepers of the 
Faith” ex officio and exercised priestly functions. 

9. The gens has a common burial place. That of the Iroquois of 
New York State, who have been hemmed in by the whites, has 

now disappeared, but it did use to exist. It still survives amongst 
other Indian tribes, as, for instance, amongst the Tuscaroras, a 
tribe closely related to the Iroquois, who, although Christian, still 
retain in their cemetery a special row for each gens, so that the 
mother is buried in the same row as her children, but not the 
father. And also among the Iroquois, all the members of the gens 
are mourners at the funeral, prepare the grave, deliver funeral 
orations, etc. 

10. The gens has a council, the democratic assembly of all adult 
male and female members of the gens, all with equal voice. This 
council elected and deposed the sachems and war chiefs and, 
likewise, the remaining “Keepers of the Faith”. It decided about 
penance gifts (wergeld) or blood revenge, for murdered gentiles. 
It adopted strangers into the gens. In short, it was the sovereign 
power in the gens. 

These are the powers of a typical Indian gens. 

‘“‘All its members were personally free, and they were bound to defend each 
other’s freedom; they were equal [...] in personal rights, the sachems and chiefs 
claiming no superiority; and they were a brotherhood bound together by the ties of 
kin. Liberty, equality, and fraternity, though never formulated, were cardinal 
principles of the gens. [...] The gens was the unit for a social system, the 
foundation upon which Indian society was organised. [...] [This] serves to explain 
that sense of independence and personal dignity universally an attribute of Indian 
character.” 4 

At the time of their discovery the Indians throughout North 
America were organised in gentes in accordance with mother 
right. Only in a few tribes, as amongst the Dakotas, had the gentes 
fallen into decay, while in some others, such as the Ojibwas and 
Omahas, they were organised in accordance with father right. 

Among numerous Indian tribes having more than five or six 
gentes, we find three, four and more gentes united in a special 
group which Morgan—faithfully translating the Indian term by its 
Greek counterpart—calls the phratry (brotherhood). Thus, the 
Senecas have two phratries, the first embracing gentes 1 to 4, and 
the second gentes 5 to 8. Closer investigation shows that these 
phratries, in the main, represent those original gentes into which 
the tribe split at the outset; for with the prohibition of marriage 
within the gens, each tribe had necessarily to consist of at least two 
gentes in order to be capable of surviving on its own. As the tribe 
multiplied, each gens again subdivided into two or more gentes, 
each of which now appears as a separate gens, while the original 

a L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society, pp. 85-86. The quotation is somewhat abridged 
and slightly changed according to “Marx’s Excerpts...”, op. cit., p. 150.— Ed. 

Origin of the Family, Private Property and State 195 

gens, which embraces all the daughter gentes, lives on as the 
phratry. Among the Senecas and most other Indians, the gentes in 
one phratry are brother gentes, while those in another are their 
cousin gentes—designations which, as we have seen, have a very 
real and expressive significance in the American system of 
consanguinity. Originally, indeed, no Seneca could marry within 
his phratry; but this prohibition has long since lapsed and is 
limited only to the gens. The Senecas had a tradition that the Bear 
and the Deer were the two original gentes, of which the others 
were offshoots. Once this new institution had become firmly 
rooted, it was modified according to need. In order to maintain 
equilibrium, whole gentes out of other phratries were occasionally 
transferred to those in which gentes had died out. This explains 
why we find in different tribes gentes of the same name variously 
grouped among the phratries. 

Among the Iroquois the functions of the phratry are partly 
social and partly religious. 1) The ball game is played by phratries, 
one against the other; each phratry puts forward its best players, 
the remaining members of the phratry being spectators arranged 
according to phratry, who bet against each other on the success of 
their respective sides. 2) At the council of the tribe the sachems 
and war chiefs of each phratry sit together, the two groups facing 
each other, and each speaker addresses the representatives of each 
phratry as a separate body. 3) If a murder had been committed in 
the tribe and the slayer and the victim did not belong to the same 
phratry, the aggrieved gens often appealed to its brother gentes; 
these held a phratry council and addressed themselves to the other 
phratry as a whole, asking it also to summon a council for the 
adjustment of the matter. Here again the phratry appears as the 
original gens and with greater prospects of success than the 
weaker individual gens, its offspring. 4) On the death of persons 
of consequence, the opposite phratry undertook the arrangement 
of the funeral and the burial rites, while the phratry of the 
deceased went along as mourners. When a sachem died, the 
opposite phratry notified the federal council of the Iroquois of the 
vacant office. 5) The council of the phratry again appeared on the 
scene at the election of a sachem. Confirmation by the brother 
gentes was regarded as rather a matter of course, but the gentes 
of the other phratry might oppose. In such a case the council of 
this phratry met and, if it upheld the opposition, the election was 
null and void. 6) Previously, the Iroquois has special religious 
mysteries, which white men called “mepicine Lopces”. Among the 
Senecas they were celebrated by two religious fraternities, one for 

each phratry, with a regular initiation ritual for new members. 
7) If, as is almost certain, the four utneaces (kinship groups) that 
occupied the four quarters of Tlascala at the time of the 
Conquest were four phratries, this proves that the phratries, as 
among the Greeks, and similar bodies of consanguinet among the 
Germans, also served as military units. These four Lingaces went 
into battle, each one as a separate division, with its own uniform 
and standard, and a leader of its own. 

Just as several gentes constitute a phratry, so, in the classical 
form, several phratries constitute a tribe. In many cases the middle 
link, the phratry, is missing among greatly depleted tribes. 
What are the distinctive features of the Indian tribe in Amer- 
ica? 

1. Its own territory and its own name. In addition to the area of 
actual settlement, each tribe possessed considerable territory for 
hunting and fishing. Beyond this there was a wide stretch of 
neutral land reaching to the territory of the next tribe; the extent 
of this neutral territory was less where the two tribes were related 
linguistically, and greater where not. Such neutral ground was the 
border forest of the Germans, the wasteland which Caesar’s Suebi 
created around their territory, the isarnholt (Danish jarnved, limes 
Danicus) between the Danes and the Germans, the Saxon forest 
and the branibor (protective forest in Slavic)—from which 
Brandenburg derives its name—between Germans and Slavs. The 
territory thus marked out by imperfectly defined boundaries was 
the common land of the tribe, recognised as such by neighbouring 
tribes, and defended by the tribe against any encroachment. In 
most cases, the uncertainty of the boundaries became a practical 
inconvenience only when the population had greatly increased.— 
The tribal names appear to have been the result more of accident 
than of deliberate choice. As time passed it frequently happened 
that neighbouring tribes designated a tribe by a name different 
from, that which it itself used, like the case of the Germans, whose 
first all-embracing historical name—~Teutons—was bestowed on 
them by the Celts. 

2. A separate dialect peculiar to this tribe only. In fact, tribe and 
dialect are substantially co-extensive. The establishment of new 
tribes and dialects through subdivision was in progress in America 
until quite recently, and can hardly have ceased altogether even 
now. Where two depleted tribes have amalgamated into one, it 
happens, by way of exception, that two closely related dialects are 
spoken in the same tribe. The average strength of American tribes 
is under 2,000. The Cherokees, however, are nearly 26,000 

Origin of the Family, Private Property and State 197 

strong—being the largest number of Indians in the United States 
that speak the same dialect. 

3. The right of investing the sachems and war chiefs elected by 
the gentes, and 

4. The right to depose them again, even against the wishes of 
their gens. As these sachems and war chiefs are members of the 
tribal council, these rights of the tribe in relation to them are 
self-explanatory. Wherever a confederacy of tribes was established 
and all the tribes were represented in a federal council, the above 
rights were transferred to this latter body. 

5. The possession of common religious ideas (mythology) and 
rites of worship. 

“After the fashion of barbarians the [...] Indians were a religious people.” 2 

Their mythology has not yet been critically investigated at all. 
They already personified their religious ideas—spirits of all 
kinds—but in the lower stage of barbarism in which they lived 
there was as yet no graphic depictions, no so-called idols. It was a 
nature and element worship evolving towards polytheism. The 
various tribes had their regular festivals with definite forms of 
worship, particularly, dancing and games. Dances especially were 
an essential part of all religious ceremonies, each tribe performing 
its Own separately. 

6. A tribal council for common affairs. It consisted of all the 
sachems and war chiefs of the separate gentes—the real represent- 
atives of the latter, because they could always be deposed. The 
council sat in public, surrounded by the other members of the 
tribe, who had the right to join in the discussion and to secure a 
hearing for their opinions, and the council took the decisions. As a 
rule it was open to everyone present who desired to address it; 
even the women could express their views through a spokesman of 
their own choice. Among the Iroquois the final decisions had to be 
adopted unanimously, as was also the case with many of the 
decisions of the German Mark communities.* In particular, the 

* In Germany the “Mark” constitution is the name given to the old system of 
land ownership, handed down by custom and usufruct, in which vestiges of the old 
Germanic common ownership of land have been preserved to this day. The area of 
land belonging to a community, called the “Mark”, was divided into three parts: (1) 
the actual village, where every member of the community received a plot of equal 
size for house, farmyard and garden; (2) the divided “Mark”, that is the area 
designated for arable land and meadowland; (3) the communal or undivided 

aL. H. Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 115. See also ““Marx’s Excerpts...”, op. cit., 
p. 162.— Ed. 

15* 

regulation of relations with other tribes devolved upon the tribal 
council. It received and sent embassies, it declared war and made 
peace. When war broke out it was carried on mainly by volunteers. 
In principle each tribe was in a state of war with every other tribe 

“Mark”, that is all the remaining land—woods, grassland, heath, bog, waters, 
paths, etc. 

The divided Mark was first divided into a number of plots according to location 
and fertility, called ““gewanne”. Each “gewanne” was, in turn, divided into as 
many plots of equal size as there were members of the community, i.e. heads of 
families. These plots were then distributed by lot in such a way that each member 
of the community received his share of each ‘“gewanne’”’, in other words, as much 
land—and as good—as everyone else. House and yard became each member’s 
personal property at an early stage; the communal lands, on the other hand, were 
redistributed, annually to begin with, and later on every four, six or twelve years. 
But they, too, soon became the owner’s hereditary and disposable property. Only 
around the Rhine did the constant cycle of redistribution persist—into this century, 
in the Palatinate and the now Prussian districts south of the Mosel—and may still 
exist in a few villages under the name of “gehdferschaften”. But even where arable 
land and grassland had become private property it had to be tilled according to a 
communal plan laid down by the community (arable land was generally divided 
into winter fields, summer fields and fallow fields), and after harvest and when 
lying fallow it was open to all the members of the community as communal grazing. 

The undivided or common “Mark” was the communal property of all members 
and was used equally by all for grazing, pannage, timber felling, hay-making, 
hunting, fishing, etc. 

How it should be used, the rights of each individual, the cultivation and 
common use of the divided “Mark” and all other land matters, were discussed at 
the members’ public assembly and decided by voting, as were all disputes and 
breaches of the land law. Here all members were equal, no matter if one man was a 
serf and the other his liege lord, as was often the case in the later Middle Ages; at 
the Mark assembly no man was more worth than the next: it was democracy in its 
most perfect form. 

The original Mark communities embraced large districts (entire Gaus, or . 
hundreds), with each village owning its own common land, while alongside it there 
still existed a large amount of common land that belonged to them all. In the 
Rheingau this existed right up into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This 
was also the case in Scandinavia. The old Swedish law knew village commons, 
district commons, provincial commons and finally the King’s (that is, properly 
speaking, the people’s) commons; in other words, apart from village common land, 
common land belonging to the hundred, the province and ultimately land 
belonging to the King as the whole nation’s representative. In Germany as late as 
the fourteenth century there were six to twelve villages to a “Mark”; later as a rule 
each village had only its own “Mark”, that is to say, the large common “Mark” of 
earlier times had been stolen by the feudal lords. 

Out of the “Mark” system developed the village system, and, where the villages 
were reorganised as towns, the town system. In such towns the former “Mark” 
members naturally had sole right, initially, to participate in the management of the 
town’s business, that is, matters relating to their own land, while outsiders who had 
migrated to the towns and had no entitlement to the “Mark” were, and remained, 
without legal rights. In this way the original democracy practised in the Mark 

Origin of the Family, Private Property and State 199 

with which it had not expressly concluded a treaty of peace. Military 
expeditions against such enemies were for the most part organised 
by a few outstanding warriors. They gave a war dance; whoever 
joined in the dance thereby declared his intention to participate in 
the expedition. A detachment was immediately formed and set out 
forthwith. When the tribal territory was attacked, its defence was 
likewise conducted mainly by volunteers. The departure and 
return of such detachments always provided an occasion for public 
festivities. The sanction of the tribal council for such expeditions 
was not necessary. It was neither sought nor given. They were 
exactly like the private war expeditions of the German retainers, 
as Tacitus has described them,’ except that among the Germans 
the body of retainers had assumed a more permanent character, 
and constituted a strong nucleus, already organised in times of 
peace, around which the remaining volunteers grouped in the 
event of war. Such military detachments were seldom numerically 
strong. The most important expeditions of the Indians, even those 
covering great distances, were carried out by insignificant fighting 
forces. When several such retinues gathered for an important 
engagement, each group obeyed its own leader only. The cohesion 
of the plan of campaign was ensured, more or less, by a council of 
these leaders. It was the method of war adopted by the Alamanni 
of the Upper Rhine in the fourth century, as described by 
Ammianus Marcellinus. 

7. In some tribes we find a head chief, whose powers, however, 
are very slight. He is one of the sachems, who in cases demanding 

community became a closed aristocracy of the town’s “families”, the patricians. 
Newly arrived outsiders, artisans, etc. comprised the town’s plebs, whose struggle 
for equal rights with the privileged families fills the history of whole towns all 
through the Middle Ages. 

Where the “Mark” came under the control of a feudal lord, it was, initially, 
only transformed into a manorial system in so far as the lord became the 
permanent head of the Mark assembly and received a larger share of the 
cultivation of the common “Mark”; legislative, executive and judicial powers 
remained with the members as a whole. But early on the feudal lords encroached 
on the members’ rights, undermining them until in the end there was little or 
nothing left of them. 

The Mark system was the original system of all the Germanic tribes; it was at its 
strongest in Germany, Scandinavia, England and northern France; in all these 
countries remains of it are still to be found. But only in Germany has its history 
been studied in detail, namely by G. L. Maurer. [Engels’ note to the 1888 Danish 
edition. ] 

4a Tacitus, Germania, Vol. Il.— Ed. 

speedy action has to take provisional measures until such time as 
the council can assemble and take the final decision. This is a 
feeble but, subsequently, generally fruitless attempt to create an 
official with executive authority; actually, as will be seen, it was the 
supreme military commander who, in most cases, if not in all, 
developed into such an official. 

The great majority of American Indians never got beyond the 
stage of tribal integration. Constituting numerically small tribes, 
separated from one another by wide border-lands, and enfeebled 
by perpetual warfare, they occupied an enormous territory with 
but few people. Alliances arising out of temporary emergencies 
were concluded here and there between kindred tribes and 
dissolved when they passed. But in certain areas originally kindred 
but subsequently disunited tribes reunited in lasting confederacies, 
and so took the first step towards the formation of nations. In the 
United States we find the most advanced form of such a 
confederacy among the Iroquois. Emigrating from their original 
home west of the Mississippi, where they probably constituted a 
branch of the great Dakota family, they settled down after 
protracted wanderings in what is today the State of New York. 
They were divided into five tribes: Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, 
Oneidas and Mohawks. Subsisting on fish, game and the produce 
of crude horticulture, they lived in villages protected mostly by 
palisades. Never more than 20,000 strong, they had a number of 
gentes common to all five tribes; they spoke closely related dialects 
of the same language and occupied a continuous tract of territory 
that was divided among the five tribes. Since this area had been 
newly conquered, habitual cooperation among these tribes against 
those they displaced was only natural. No later than the beginning 
of the fifteenth century, this developed into a regular “permanent 
league”, a confederacy, which, conscious of its new-found 
strength, immediately assumed an offensive character and at the 
height of its power—about 1675—had conquered large stretches 
of the surrounding country, expelling some of the inhabitants and 
forcing others to pay tributes. The Iroquois Confederacy was the 
most advanced social organisation attained by the Indians who had 
not gone beyond the lower stage of barbarism (that is, excepting 
the Mexicans, New Mexicans °*’ and Peruvians). The main rules of 
the Confederacy were as follows: 

1. Perpetual alliance of the five consanguine tribes on the basis 
of complete equality and independence in all internal tribal affairs. 
This blood relationship constituted the true basis of the Confeder- 
acy. Of the five tribes, three were called the father tribes and were 

Origin of the Family, Private Property and State 201 

brothers one to another; the other two were called son tribes and 
were likewise brother tribes to each other. Three gentes—the 
oldest—still had living representatives in all the five tribes, while 
another three had in three tribes. The members of each of these 
gentes were all brothers throughout the five tribes. The common 
language, with mere dialectal differences, was the expression and 
the proof of common descent. 

2. The organ of the Confederacy was a Federal Council 
comprised of fifty sachems, all of equal rank and dignity; this 
council passed final decisions on all matters pertaining to the 
Confederacy. 

3. At the time the Confederacy was constituted these fifty 
sachems were distributed among the tribes and gentes as the 
bearers of new offices especially created to suit the aims of the 
Confederacy. They were elected anew by the gentes concerned 
whenever a vacancy arose, and could always be removed by them. 
The right to invest them with office belonged, however, to the 
Federal Council. 

4. These federal sachems were also sachems in their own 
respective tribes, and each had a seat and a vote in the tribal 
council. 

5. All decisions of the Federal Council had to be unanimous. 

6. Voting was by tribes, so that each tribe and all the council 
members in each tribe had to agree before a binding decision 
could be made. 

7. Each of the five tribal councils could convene the Federal 
Council, but the latter had no power to convene itself. 

8. Its meetings took place before the assembled people. Every 
Iroquois had the right to speak; the council alone decided. 

9. The Confederacy had no official head, no chief executive. 

10. It did, however, have two supreme war chiefs, enjoying 
equal authority and equal power (the two “kings” of the Spartans, 
the two consuls in Rome). 

This was the entire social constitution under which the Iroquois 
lived for over four hundred years, and still do live. I have 
described it in some detail after Morgan because it gives us the 
opportunity of studying the organisation of a society which as yet 
knows no state. The state presupposes a special public authority 
separated from the totality of those respectively concerned; 
and Maurer’s instinct is correct in recognising the German 
Mark constitution as a purely social institution, differing 
essentially from the state, although it largely served as its 
foundation later on. In all his writings, therefore, Maurer 

investigates the gradual rise of public authority out of and side by 
side with the original constitutions of the Marks, villages, manors 
and towns.’ The North American Indians show how an originally 
united tribe gradually spread over an immense continent; how 
tribes, by breaking up, became peoples, whole groups of tribes; 
how the languages changed not only until they became mutually 
unintelligible, but until nearly every trace of original unity 
disappeared; and how at the same time individual gentes within 
the tribes broke up to become several; how the old mother gentes 
persisted as phratries, and yet the names of these oldest gentes still 
remain the same among very remote and long-separated tribes— 
the Wolf and the Bear are still gentile names among a majority of 
Indian tribes. Generally speaking, the constitution described above 
can be applied to them all—except that many of them did not get 
as far as a confederation of kindred tribes. 

But we also see that once the gens existed as a social unit, the 
entire system of gentes, phratries and tribe developed with almost 
compelling necessity—because naturally—out of this unit. All 
three are groups of various degrees of consanguinity, each 
complete in itself and managing its own affairs, but each also 
complementing the rest. And the sphere of affairs devolving on 
them comprised the totality of the public affairs of the barbarians 
in the lower stage. Wherever, therefore, we find among a people 
the gens as the social unit, we may look for an organisation of the 
tribe similar to that described here; and where sufficient sources 
are available, as, for example, amongst the Greeks and the 
Romans, we shall not only find it, but also convince ourselves that, 
where the sources fail us, a comparison with the American social 
constitution will help us out of the most difficult doubts and 
enigmas. 

And this gentile constitution is wonderful in all its childlike 
simplicity! Everything runs smoothly without soldiers, gendarmes 
or police; without nobles, kings, governors, prefects or judges; 
without prisons; without trials. All quarrels and disputes are 
settled by the whole body of those concerned—the gens or the 
tribe or the individual gentes among themselves. Blood revenge is 
threatened only as an extreme, rarely applied measure, of which 
our capital punishment is only the civilised form, possessed of all 
the advantages and drawbacks of civilisation. Although there are 
many more affairs in common than at present—the household is 
run in common and communistically by a number of families, the 
land is tribal property, only the small gardens being temporarily 
assigned to the households—still, not a bit of our extensive and 

Origin of the Family, Private Property and State 203 

complicated machinery of administration is required. Those 
concerned decide, and in most cases centuries-old custom has 
already settled everything. There can be no poor and needy—the 
communistic household and gens know their obligations towards 
the aged, the sick and those disabled in war. All are free and 
equal—including the women. There is as yet no room for slaves, 
nor, as a rule, for the subjugation of alien tribes. When the 
Iroquois conquered the Eries and the “Neutral Nations” '”' about 
the year 1651, they invited them to join the Confederacy as equal 
members; only when the vanquished refused were they driven out 
of their territory. And the kind of the men and women that are 
produced by such a society is indicated by the admiration felt by 
all white men who came into contact with uncorrupted Indians, 
admiration of the personal dignity, rectitude, strength of character 
and bravery of these barbarians. 

We have witnessed quite recently examples of this bravery in 
Africa. The Zulu Kaffirs a few years ago, like the Nubians a 
couple of months ago—both tribes in which gentile institutions 
have not yet died out—did what no European army can do.'” 
Armed only with pikes and spears and without firearms, they 
advanced, under a hail of bullets from the breech loaders, right 
up to the bayonets of the English infantry —acknowledged as the 
best in the world for fighting at close formation—throwing them 
into disorder more than once and even beating them back; and 
this, despite the colossal disparity in arms and despite the fact that 
they have no such thing as military service, and do not know what 
military exercises are. Their capacity and endurance are proved by 
the complaint of the English that a Kaffir can move faster and 
cover a longer distance in twenty-four hours than a horse. As an 
English painter says, their smallest muscle stands out, hard and 
steely, like whipcord. 

This is what mankind and human society were like before class 
divisions arose. And if we compare their condition with that of the 
overwhelming majority of civilised people today, we will find an 
enormous gulf between the present-day proletarian and small 
peasant and the ancient free member of a gens. 

This is one side of the matter. Let us not forget, however, that 
this organisation was doomed to extinction. It never developed 
beyond the tribe; the confederacy of tribes already signified the 
commencement of its downfall, as we shall see later, and as the 
attempts of the Iroquois to subjugate others have shown. What 
was outside the tribe was outside the law. Where no express treaty 
of peace existed, war raged between tribe and tribe; and war was 

waged with the cruelty that distinguishes man from all other 
animals and which was abated only later in self-interest. The 
gentile constitution in full bloom, as we have seen it in America, 
presupposed extremely undeveloped production, thus an extreme- 
ly sparse population spread over a wide territory, and therefore 
the almost complete domination of man confronted by an 
alien and incomprehensible external nature, a domination 
reflected in his childish religious ideas. The tribe remained the 
boundary for man, in relation to outsider as well as himself: the 
tribe, the gens and their institutions were sacred and inviolable, a 
superior power, instituted by nature, to which the individual 
remained absolutely subject in feeling, thought and deed. Impres- 
sive as the people of this epoch may appear to us, they differ in 
no way one from another, they are still bound, as Marx says, to 
the umbilical cord of naturally evolved community. The power 
of these naturally evolved communities had to be broken, and it 
was broken. But it was broken by influences which from the outset 
appear to us as a degradation, a fall from the simple moral 
grandeur of the old gentile society. The lowest interests—base 
greed, brutal sensuality, sordid avarice, selfish plunder of common 
possessions—usher in the new, civilised society, class society; the 
most outrageous means—theft, rape, deceit and treachery— 
undermine and topple the old, classless, gentile society. And the 
new society, during all the 2,500 years of its existence, has never 
been anything but the development of the small minority at the 
expense of the exploited and oppressed great majority; and it is so 
today more than ever before. 

IV 
THE GRECIAN GENS 

Greeks, as well as Pelasgians and other peoples of the same 
tribal origin, were constituted since prehistoric times in the same 
organic series as the Americans: gens, phratry, tribe, confederacy 
of tribes. The phratry might be missing, as among the Dorians; 
the confederacy of tribes might not yet be developed everywhere, 
but in every case the gens was the unit. At the time the Greeks 
entered history, they were on the threshold of civilisation. Almost 
two entire great periods of development lie between the Greeks 
and the above-mentioned American tribes, the Greeks of the 
Heroic Age being by this much ahead of the Iroquois. For this 
reason the Grecian gens no longer bore the archaic character of 

Origin of the Family, Private Property and State 205 

the Iroquois gens; the stamp of group marriage* was becoming 
considerably blurred. Mother right had given way to father right; 
thereby rising private wealth made its first breach in the gentile 
constitution. A second breach naturally followed the first: after the 
introduction of father right, the fortune of a wealthy heiress 
would, by virtue of her marriage, fall to her husband, that is to 
say, to another gens; and so the foundation of all gentile law was 
broken, and in such cases the girl was not only permitted, but 
obliged to marry within the gens, in order that the latter might 
retain the fortune. 

According to Grote’s history of Greece,” the Athenian gens in 
particular was held together by: 

1. Common religious. ceremonies, and exclusive right of the 
priesthood in honour of a definite god, supposed to be the 
forefather of the gens, and characterised in this capacity by a 
special surname. 

2. A common burial place (cf. Demosthenes’ Eubulides 

3. Mutual rights of inheritance. 

4. Reciprocal obligation to afford help, defence and support 
against the use of force. 

5. Mutual right and obligation to intermarry within the gens in 
certain cases, especially for orphaned daughters or heiresses. 

6. Possession, in some cases at least, of common property, and 
of an archon (magistrate) and treasurer of its own. 

The phratry, binding together several gentes, was less intimate, 
but here too we find mutual rights and duties of similar character, 
especially a communion of particular religious rites and the right 
of prosecution in the event of a phrator being slain. Again, all 
the phratries of a tribe performed periodically certain common 
sacred ceremonies under the presidency of a_ phylobasileus 
(tribal magistrate), selected from among the nobles (eupatrides). 

Thus Grote. And Marx adds: “In the Grecian gens the savage 
(for example, the Iroquois) is unmistakably discerned.”* He 
becomes still more unmistakable when we investigate somewhat 
further. 

For the Grecian gens has also the following attributes: 

7. Descent according to father right. 

8. Prohibition of intermarriage within the gens except in the 
case of heiresses. This exception, and its formulation as an 

103 
ye 

a The 1884 edition has “punaluan family” instead of “group marriage” .— Ed. 
b G. Grote, A History of Greece, Vol. III, pp. 54-55.— Ed. 
¢ “Marx’s Excerpts...”, op. cit., p. 198.— Ed. 

injunction, proves the validity of the old rule. This follows also 
from the universally accepted rule that when a woman married 
she renounced the religious rites of her gens and acquired those 
of her husband, in whose phratry she was enrolled. This, and a 
famous passage in Dicaearchus,* go to prove that marriage outside 
the gens was the rule. Becker in Charikles directly assumes that. 
nobody was permitted to marry in his or her own gens.” 

9. The right of adoption into the gens; it was practised by 
adoption into the family, but with public formalities, and only in 
exceptional cases. 

10. The right to elect and depose the chiefs. We know that 
every gens had its archon; but nowhere is it stated that this office 
was hereditary in certain families. Until the end of barbarism, the 
probability is always against strict heredity, which would be totally 
incompatible with conditions where rich and poor had absolutely 
equal rights in the gens. 

Not only Grote, but also Niebuhr, Mommsen and all other 
previous historians of classical antiquity, failed with the gens. 
Although they correctly noted many of its distinguishing features, 
they always regarded it as a group of families and thus made it 
impossible for themselves to understand the nature and origin of 
the gens. Under the gentile constitution, the family was never a 
unit of organisation, nor could it be, for man and wife necessarily 
belonged to two different gentes. The gens as a whole belonged to 
the phratry, the phratry to the tribe; but in the case of the family, 
half of it belonged to the gens of the husband and half to that of 
the wife. The state, too, does not recognise the family in public 
law; to this day it exists only in civil law. Nevertheless, all our 
historiography so far takes as its point of departure the absurd 
assumption, which became inviolable particularly in the eighteenth 
century, that the monogamian individual family, which is scarcely 
older than civilisation, is the nucleus around which society and the 
state gradually crystallised. 

“Mr. Grote will also please note,” adds Marx,’ “that although 
the Greeks traced their gentes to mythology, the gentes are older 
than mythology with its gods and demigods, which they themselves 
had created.” ¢ 

Grote is quoted with preference by Morgan as a respected 

@ Cited in W. Wachsmuth’s Hellenische Alterthumskunde aus dem Gesichtspunkte des 
Staates, Part 1, Section 1, p. 312.— Ed. 

b W. A. Becker, Charikles, Bilder altgriechischer Sitte, Part 2, p. 447. Ed. 

¢ The word “strict” was added by Engels in the 1891 edition.— Ed. 

d “Marx’s Excerpts...”, op. cit., p. 200.— Ed. 

Origin of the Family, Private Property and State 207 

witness beyond suspicion. He further relates that every Athenian 
gens had a name derived from its supposed forefather; that 
before Solon’s time as a general rule, and afterwards if a man died 
intestate, his gentiles (gennétes) inherited his property; and that if a 
man was murdered, first his relatives, next his gentiles, and finally 
the phrators of the slain had the right and duty to prosecute the 
criminal in the courts: 

“All that we hear of the most ancient Athenian laws is based upon the gentile 
and phratric divisions.” @ 

The descent of the gentes from common ancestors has been a 
brain-racking puzzle to the “school-taught Philistines” (Marx).° 
Naturally, since they claim that these ancestors are purely 
mythical, they are at a loss to explain how the gentes developed 
out of separate and distinct, originally totally unrelated families; 
yet they must accomplish this somehow, if only to explain the 
existence of the gentes. So they circle round in a whirlpool of 
words and do not get beyond the phrase: the genealogy is indeed 
mythical, but the gens is real. And finally, Grote says—the 
bracketed remarks being by Marx—-: 

“We hear of this genealogy but rarely, because it is only brought before the 
public in certain cases pre-eminent and venerable. But the humbler gentes had 
their common rites” (rather peculiar, Mr. Grote!) “and common superhuman 
ancestor and genealogy, as well as the more celebrated” (how very strange this on 
the part of humbler gentes!); “the scheme and ideal (my dear Sir! Not ideal, but 
carnal— germanice© fleischlich!) basis was the same in all.”4 

Marx sums up Morgan’s reply to this as follows: “The system of 
consanguinity which pertained to the gens in its archaic form— 
and which the Greeks once possessed like other mortals— 
preserved a knowledge of the relationships of all the members of a 
gens to each other. They learned this for them decisively 
important fact by practice from early childhood. This fell into 
desuetude with the rise of the monogamian family. The gentile 
name created a pedigree beside which that of the individual family 
was insignificant. This name was now to preserve the fact of the 
common descent of those who bore it; but the lineage of the gens 
went so far back that its members could no longer prove the actual 
relationship existing between them, except in a limited number of 

a G. Grote, A History of Greece, Vol. III, p. 66. See also “Marx’s Excerpts...”, 
op. cit., p. 230.— Ed. 

b “Marx’s Excerpts...”, op. cit., p. 201.— Ed. 

¢ In plain German.— Ed. 

d Here and below see ‘“Marx’s Excerpts...”, op. cit., p. 202, and also G. Grote, 
A History of Greece, Vol. Ill, p. 60.— Ed. 

cases through recent common ancestors. The name itself was the 
evidence of a common descent, and conclusive proof, except in 
cases of adoption. The actual denial of all kinship between gentiles 
a la Grote* and Niebuhr, which transforms the gens into a purely 
fictitious, fanciful creation of the brain, is, on the other hand, 
worthy of ‘ideal’ scientists, that is, of cloistered bookworms. 
Because the concatenation of the generations, especially with the 
incipience of monogamy, is removed into the distance, and the 
reality of the past seems reflected in mythological fantasy, the 
good old Philistines concluded, and still conclude, that the fancied 
genealogy created real gentes!” '” 

As among the Americans, the phratry was a mother gens, split 
up into several daughter gentes, and uniting them, often tracing 
them all to a common ancestor. Thus, according to Grote, 

“all the contemporary members of the phratry of Hekataeus had a common 
god for their ancestor at the sixteenth degree”’.> 

Hence, all the gentes of this phratry were literally brother 
gentes. The phratry still occurs in Homer as a military unit in that 
famous passage where Nestor advises Agamemnon: Draw up 
people by tribes and by phratries so that phratry may support 
phratry, and tribe tribe.“ Moreover, the phratry has the right and 
the duty to prosecute the murderer of a phrator, indicating that at 
an earlier stage it had the duty of blood revenge. Furthermore, it 
has common shrines and festivals; for the development of all 
Greek mythology from the traditional old Aryan cult of nature 
was essentially due to the gentes and phratries and took place 
within them. The phratry also had a chief (phratriarchos) and, 
according to de Coulanges, assemblies and binding decisions, a 
tribunal and an administration.* Even the state of a later period, 
while ignoring the gens, left certain public functions to the 
phratry. 

A number of kindred phratries constituted a tribe. In Attica 
there were four tribes of three phratries each, each phratry 
consisting of thirty gentes. Such a meticulous demarcation of the 
groups presupposes a conscious and planned interference with the 
naturally evolved order of things. On how, when and why this 
happened Grecian history keeps silent, for the Greeks themselves 

a Like Morgan, Marx has “Pollux”, a 2nd-century Greek scholar, to whom Grote 
has frequent references.— Ed. 

b G. Grote, op. cit., Vol. III, pp. 58-59. See also “Marx’s Excerpts...”, op. cit., 
p. 202.— Ed. 

¢ Homer, Iliad, Canto II.— Ed. 

d Fustel de Coulanges, La cité antique, p. 146.— Ed. 

Origin of the Family, Private Property and State 209 

preserved memories reaching back no further than the Heroic 
Age. 

Closely packed in a comparatively small territory as the Greeks 
were, their dialectal differences were less developed than those in 
the extensive American forests. Nevertheless, even here we find 
only tribes of the same main dialect united in a larger whole; and 
even little Attica had its own dialect, which was later to become 
dominant as the universal language of prose. 

In the epics of Homer we mostly find the Grecian tribes already 
combined into small peoples, within which, however, the gentes, 
phratries and tribes still retained their full independence. They 
already lived in walled cities. The population increased with the 
growth of the herds, with field agriculture and the beginnings of 
the handicrafts. With this came increased differences in wealth, 
which gave rise to an aristocratic element within the old naturally 
evolved democracy. The separate small peoples engaged in 
constant warfare for the possession of the best land and also for 
the sake of loot. The enslavement of prisoners of war was already 
a recognised institution. 

The constitution of these tribes and small peoples was as 
follows: 

1. The permanent authority was the council (boulé), originally 
composed, most likely, of the chiefs of the gentes, but later on, 
when their number became too large, of a selection, which created 
the opportunity to develop and strengthen the aristocratic 
element. Dionysius definitely speaks of the council of the Heroic 
Age as being composed of notables (kratistoz).* The council had the 
final decision in important matters. In Aeschylus, the council of 
Thebes passes a decision definitive in the given case that the body of 
Eteocles be buried with full honours, and the body of Polynices be 
thrown out to be devoured by the dogs.” Later, with the rise of the 
state, this council was transformed into a senate. 

2. The popular assembly (agora). Among the Iroquois we saw that 
the people, men and women, stood in a circle around the council 
meetings, taking an orderly part in the discussions and thus 
influencing its decisions. Among the Homeric Greeks, this 
Umstand, to use an old German legal expression, had already 
developed into a plenary assembly of the people, as was also the 
case with the ancient Germans. The assembly was convened by the 

@ Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, I], 12.— Ed. 
b Aeschylus, The Seven Against Thebes, III, 2.— Ed. 
© Umstand: Those standing around.— Ed. 

council to decide important matters; every man had the right to 
speak. Decisions were taken by a show of hands (Aeschylus in The 
Suppliants), or by acclamation. They were sovereign and final, for, 
as Schoemann says in his Griechische Alterthtimer [Vol. I, p. 27], 

“whenever a matter is discussed that requires the co-operation of the people for 
its execution, Homer gives us no indication of any means by which the people 
could be forced into it against their will”. 

At this time, when every adult male member of the tribe was a 
warrior, there was as yet no public authority separated from the 
people that could have been set against it. Naturally evolved 
democracy was still in full bloom, and this must remain the point 
of departure in judging the power and status of the council and of 
the basileus. 

3. The military commander (basileus). On this point, Marx makes 
the following comment: “The European savants, most of them 
born servants of princes, represent the basileus as a monarch in 
the modern sense. The Yankee republican Morgan objects to this. 
_ Very ironically, but, truthfully, he says of the oily Gladstone and 
his Juventus Mundi: 

““Mr. Gladstone, who presents to his readers the Grecian chiefs of the Heroic 
Age as kings and princes, with the superadded qualities of gentlemen, is forced to 
admit that on the whole we seem to have the custom or law of primogeniture 
sufficiently, but not oversharply defined.” 4 

As a matter of fact, Mr. Gladstone himself must realise that such 
a contingent system of primogeniture, sufficiently but not over- 
sharply defined, is as good as none at all. 

What the position as regards heredity was in the case of the 
offices of chiefs among the Iroquois and other Indians we have 
already seen. All officials were elected, mostly within the gens, and 
were, to that extent, hereditary in the gens. Gradually, vacancies 
came to be filled preferably by the next gentile relative—the 
brother or the sister's son—unless good reasons existed for 
‘passing him over. The fact that in Greece, under father right, the 
office of basileus was generally transmitted to the son, or one of 
the sons, only indicates that the probability of succession by public 
election was in favour of the sons; but it by no means implies 
legally binding succession without public election. What we have 
here, among the Iroquois and Greeks, are the first rudiments of 
special aristocratic families within the gentes and, among the 
Greeks, also the first rudiments of a future hereditary chieftain- 

2L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 248; “Marx’s Excerpts...”, op. cit., 
p. 206.— Ed. 

Origin of the Family, Private Property and State 211 

ship or monarchy. Hence it is to be supposed that among the 
Greeks the basileus was either elected by the people or, at least, 
had to be confirmed by its recognised organs—the council or the 
agora—as was the case with the Roman “king” (rex). 

In the Iliad the ruler of men, Agamemnon, appears, not as the 
supreme king of the Greeks, but as supreme commander of a 
federal army before a besieged city. And when dissension broke 
out among the Greeks, it is to this quality of his that Odysseus 
points in the famous passage: the rule of many is not a good 
thing; let us have one commander, etc. (to which the popular 
verse about the sceptre was added later).* “Odysseus is not here 
lecturing on the form of government, but is demanding obedience 
to the supreme commander of the army in the field. For the 
Greeks, who appear before Troy only as an army, the proceedings 
in the agora are sufficiently democratic. When speaking of gifts, 
that is, the division of the spoils, Achilles never makes Agamem- 
non or some other basileus the divider, but always the ‘sons of the 
Achaeans’, i.e. the people. The attributes ‘begotten of Zeus’, 
‘nourished by Zeus’, do not prove anything because every gens is 
descended from some god, and the gens of the tribal chief from a 
‘prominent’ god, in this case Zeus. Even personally unfree, such as 
the swineherd Eumaeus and others, are ‘divine’ (diot or theiot), 
_ and this in the Odyssey, and hence in a much later period than the 
Iliad. Likewise in the Odyssey, we find the name of heros given to 
the herald Mulios as well as to the blind bard Demodocus.” In 
short, the word basileia, which the Greek writers apply to Homer’s 
so-called kingship (because military leadership is its chief distin- 
guishing mark), with the council and popular assembly alongside of 
it, means merely—military democracy.” (Marx.)‘ 

Besides military functions, the basileus also had priestly and 
judicial functions; the latter were not clearly specified, but the 
former he exercised in his capacity of supreme representative of 
the tribe, or of the confederacy of tribes. There is no reference 
anywhere to civil, administrative functions; but it seems that he 
was ex officio a member of the council. Etymologically, it is quite 
correct to translate basileus as Konig (king), because Kénig (kuning) 

a Homer, Iliad, Canto II.— Ed. 

b In “Marx’s Excerpts...” here follows the sentence omitted by Engels: “the 
term kairanos used by Odysseus along with basileus, in regard to Agamemnon, also 
means merely ‘commander in the field’”.— Ed 

¢ “Marx’s Excerpts...”, op. cit., p. 207. Marx quotes Morgan (Ancient Society, 
pp. 248-49) with some additions. Engels also makes some abridgements and changes 
here.— Ed. 

is derived from kuni, ktinne, and signifies chief of a gens. But the 
ancient Greek basileus in no way corresponds to the modern 
meaning of the word Kénig. Thucydides expressly refers to the old 
basileia as patriké, that is, derived from gentes, and states that it 
had specified, hence restricted, functions.* And Aristotle says 
that the basileia of the Heroic Age was a leadership over freemen, 
and that the basileus was a military chief, judge and high priest.° 
Hence, the basileus had no governmental power in the later 
sense.* 

Thus, in the Grecian constitution of the Heroic Age, we still 
find the old gentile system full of vigour; but we also see the 
beginning of its decay: father right and the inheritance of 
property by the children, which favoured the accumulation of 
wealth in the family and gave the latter power as against the gens; 
differentiation in wealth affecting in turn the social constitution by 
creating the first rudiments of a hereditary nobility and monarchy; 
slavery, first limited to prisoners of war, but already opening up 
the prospect of the enslavement of fellow members of the tribe 
and even of the gens; the degeneration of the old intertribal 
warfare into systematic robbery on land and sea for the purpose 
of capturing cattle, slaves and treasure, into a regular source of 
income. In short, wealth is praised and respected as the highest 
treasure, and the old gentile systems are abused in order to 
justify forcible robbery of wealth. Only one thing was missing: an 
institution that would not only safeguard the newly acquired 
wealth of individuals against the communistic traditions of the 
gentile system, would not only sanctify private property, formerly 
held in such low esteem, and pronounce this sanctification the 
supreme purpose of every human society, but would also stamp 
the successively developing new forms of acquiring property, and 
consequently, of constantly accelerating the increase in wealth, 

* Like the Grecian basileus, the Aztec military chief has been wrongly presented 
as a prince in the modern sense. Morgan was the first to subject to historical 
criticism the reports of the Spaniards, who at first misunderstood and exaggerated, 
and later deliberately misrepresented things; he showed that the Mexicans were in 
the middle stage of barbarism, but on a higher plane than the New Mexican Pueblo 
Indians,!°6 and that their constitution, so far as the garbled accounts enable us to 
judge, corresponded to the following: a confederacy of three tribes, which had 
made a number of others tributary, and which was governed by a Federal Council 
and a federal military chief, whom the Spaniards had made into an “emperor”. 
{See L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society, pp. 186-214.— Ed] 

4 Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I, Ch. 13.— Ed. 
b Aristotle, Politics, Book III, Ch. 10.— Ed. 

Origin of the Family, Private Property and State 213 

with the seal of general public recognition; an institution that 
would perpetuate, not only the arising class division of society, but 
also the right of the possessing class to exploit the non-possessing 
classes and the rule of the former over the latter. 

And this institution arrived. The state was invented. 

Vv