ENGELS TO KARL'KAUTSKY 

London, 2 March 1883 

Dear Mr Kautsky, 

I have received your second article on marriage and, since this 
contains your answer to my criticism of the first one, * I shall continue 
where I left off; I happen to have an hour to spare which will not be 
the case tomorrow. 

To begin with I consider it absolutely inadmissible that, having 
contested community of wives as a primary manifestation, you should 
seek to reintroduce it as a secondary one. Wherever common owner- 
ship exists, be it of land, women or anything else, it will necessarily be 
primitive, a legacy of the animal kingdom. The subsequent process of 
development consists entirely in the gradual dissolution of this prime- 
val common ownership; in no case do we find an instance of second- 
ary common ownership evolving out of primitive private ownership. 
So irrefutable and universally valid do I consider this proposition to 
be that, even were you to produce what appeared to be exceptions — 
and however striking these might be at first sight—I would not 
regard them as an argument to the contrary, but only as a question 
yet to be solved. 

Moreover, having made jealousy the one decisive factor in the first 
article, you ought not to discard it entirely in the second. Article I 
presupposes a loose form of monogamy, and this very largely on the 
strength of jealousy for, as I have said, your other reasons carry very 
little weight with me. But if jealousy is able to overcome natural 
community of sexes—and you do after all indirectly concede the 
existence of the latter when you say: ‘Within the tribe complete sexual 
licence prevailed’ — if jealousy can relegate that natural licence to the 
confines of temporary monogamy, how much more easily must it be 
able to overcome lesser obstacles. The tribe’s common ownership of 
captives is, however, an obstacle of much less magnitude. A woman 
remains a woman, whether she is free or a slave; true, in the case of 

* See this volume, pp. 437-38. 

female slaves, a man’s jealousy is able to impose sole possession much 
more easily than in the case of free women who have a right to adul- 
tery! But the moment there is any question of marriage with captives, 
the jealousy of the husbands suddenly evaporates; the community of 
sexes which so appalled them in the primitive state, becomes accept- 
able and pleasing and, even after monogamy or polygamy has 
already been introduced, even in the case of Semitic peoples where 
harems are the rule, husbands do not object to their wives coupling 
with every Tom, Dick and Harry, either in the temple or at special 
seasons. No, my dear fellow, you can’t dismiss the thing as easily as all 
that. For you are duty-bound to stick to the point even when it be- 
comes awkward for you to do so. If primary community of sexes was 
inhibited by jealousy, then community of sexes is excluded once and 
for all, right down to and including capitalist society. Either your 
second article refutes the first or vice versa. 

Incidentally, I would contest your statement that the freedom of 
women, at your first stage, contributed to monogamy because there 
could be no question of repression. The argument that community of 
sexes is dependent on repression is itself false and a modern distortion 
arising out of the idea that common ownership in the sexual sphere 
was only of women by men and at the latter’s pleasure. This is totally fo- 
reign to the primitive state. Common ownership in this sphere was 
available to both sexes. To refute the false assumption, however, is not 
the same thing as refuting the correct facts on which the distortion is 
based. 

Again, by reducing all community of sexes and traces thereof to 
marriage by rapine with foreign women, you attribute to that form of 
marriage, qua predominant form, a really vast range. Yet you adduce 
not the slightest proof of this. 

What follows is lost in a welter of hypotheses [among them much]? 
that is undoubtedly correct [in regard to specific times and]? places. 
But you generalise at the speed of an express train, whereas questions 
of this kind do not lend themselves to such rapid despatch. And while 
the Celtic clan, the Roman gens and the German Geschlecht are, it is 
true, all sub-divisions of the tribe, they all have very marked differ- 
ences and also, surely, different origins. As do the various kinds of 
clan amongst non-Celtic peoples. 

YT am convinced that, should you pursue these studies or resume 

* Ms. damaged. 

them after a lapse of time, you will arrive at quite different conclu- 
sions and, perhaps, regret your premature endeavours in this difficult 
field. You have done some hard slogging, but you have leapt too rap- 
idly to conclusions, at the same time laying too much weight on the 
opinions of self-styled anthropologists, all of whom have what I might 
call a certain obliquity reminiscent of your armchair socialist.? 
While you may refute Bachofen’s deification and mystification of 
community of sexes, * this is not to say that community of sexes does 
not and will not continue to exist. 

Well, the dinner-bell is being rung—no offence meant, and so 
I still remain, 

Your old friend, 
F. Engels