The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State by Frederick Engels (classic novels .txt) 📕

[24] Author's note.

Just as the Grecian basileus, so the Aztec military chief was misrepresented as a modern prince. Morgan was the first to submit to historical criticism the reports of the Spaniards who first misapprehended and exaggerated, and later on consciously misrepresented the functions of this office. He showed that the Mexicans were in the middle stage of barbarism, but on a higher plane than the New Mexican Pueblo Indians, and that their constitution, so far as the garbled accounts show, corresponded to this stage: a league of three tribes which had made a number of others tributary and was administered by a federal council and a federal chief of war, whom the Spaniards construed into an "emperor."

How the state gradually developed by partly transforming the organs of the gentile constitution, partly replacing them by new organs and finally installing real state authorities; how the place of the nation in arms defending itself through its gentes, phratries and tribes, was taken by an armed public power of coërcion in the hands of these authorities and available against the mass of the people; nowhere can we observe the first act of this drama so well as in ancient Athens. The essential stages of the various transformations are outlined by Morgan, but the analysis of the economic causes producing them is largely added by myself.

In the heroic period, the four tribes of the Athenians were still installed in separate parts of Attica. Even the twelve phratries composing them seem to have had separate seats in the twelve different towns of Cecrops. The constitution was in harmony with the period: a public meeting (agorâ), a council (bûlê) and a basileus.

As far back as we can trace written history we find the land divided up and in the possession of private individuals. For during the last period of the higher stage of barbarism the production of commodities and the resulting trade had well advanced. Grain, wine and oil were staple articles. The sea trade on the Aegean Sea drifted more and more out of the hands of the Phoenicians into those of the Athenians. By the purchase and sale of land, by continued division of labor between agriculture and industry, trade and navigation, the members of gentes, phratries and tribes very soon intermingled. The districts of the phratry and the tribe received inhabitants who did not belong to these bodies and, therefore, were strangers in their own homes, although they were countrymen. For during times of peace, every phratry and every tribe administered its own affairs without consulting the council of Athens or the basileus. But inhabitants not belonging to the phratry or the tribe could not take part in the administration of these bodies.

Thus the well-regulated functions of the gentile organs became so disarranged that relief was already needed during the heroic period. A constitution attributed to Theseus was introduced. The main feature of this change was the institution of central administration in Athens. A part of the affairs that had so long been conducted autonomously by the tribes was declared collective business and transferred to a general council in Athens. This step of the Athenians went farther than any ever taken by the nations of America. For the simple federation of autonomous tribes was now replaced by the conglomeration of all tribes into one single body. The next result was a common Athenian law, standing above the legal traditions of the tribes and gentes. It bestowed on the citizens of Athens certain privileges and legal protection, even in a territory that did not belong to their tribe. This meant another blow to the gentile constitution; for it opened the way to the admission of citizens who were not members of any Attic tribe and stood entirely outside of the Athenian gentile constitution.

A second institution attributed to Theseus was the division of the entire nation into three classes regardless of the gentes, phratries and tribes: eupatrides or nobles, geomoroì or farmers, and demiurgoi or tradesmen. The exclusive privilege of the nobles to fill the offices was included in this innovation. Apart from this privilege the new division remained ineffective, as it did not create any legal distinctions between the classes. But it is important, because it shows us the new social elements that had developed in secret. It shows that the habitual holding of gentile offices by certain families had already developed into a practically uncontested privilege; that these families, already powerful through their wealth, began to combine outside of their gentes into a privileged class; and that the just arising state sanctioned this assumption. It shows furthermore that the division of labor between farmers and tradesmen had grown strong enough to contest the supremacy of the old gentile and tribal division of society. And finally it proclaims the irreconcilable opposition of gentile society to the state. The first attempt to form a state broke up the gentes by dividing their members against one another and opposing a privileged class to a class of disowned belonging to two different branches of production.

The ensuing political history of Athens up to the time of Solon is only incompletely known. The office of basileus became obsolete. Archons elected from the ranks of the nobility occupied the leading position in the state. The power of the nobility increased continually, until it became unbearable about the year 600 before Christ. The principal means for stifling the liberty of the people were—money and usury. The main seat of the nobility was in and around Athens. There the sea trade and now and then a little convenient piracy enriched them and concentrated the money into their hands. From this point the gradually arising money power penetrated like corrugating acid into the traditional modes of rural existence founded on natural economy. The gentile constitution is absolutely irreconcilable with money rule. The ruin of the Attic farmers coïncided with the loosening of the old gentile bonds that protected them. The debtor's receipt and the pawning of the property—for the mortgage was also invented by the Athenians—cared neither for the gens nor for the phratry. But the old gentile constitution knew nothing of money, advance and debt. Hence the ever more virulently spreading money rule of the nobility developed a new legal custom, securing the creditor against the debtor and sanctioning the exploitation of the small farmer by the wealthy. All the rural districts of Attica were crowded with mortgage columns bearing the legend that the lot on which they stood was mortgaged to such and such for so much. The fields that were not so designated had for the most part been sold on account of overdue mortgages or interest and transferred to the aristocratic usurers. The farmer could thank his stars, if he was granted permission to live as a tenant on one-sixth of the product of his labor and to pay five-sixths to his new master in the form of rent. Worse still, if the sale of the lot did not bring sufficient returns to cover the debt, or if such a debt had been contracted without a lien, then the debtor had to sell his children into slavery abroad in order to satisfy the claim of the creditor. The sale of the children by the father—that was the first fruit of paternal law and monogamy! And if that did not satisfy the bloodsuckers, they could sell the debtor himself into slavery. Such was the pleasant dawn of civilization among the people of Attica.

Formerly, while the condition of the people was in keeping with gentile traditions, a similar downfall would have been impossible. But here it had come about, nobody knew how. Let us return for a moment to the Iroquois. The state of things that had imposed itself on the Athenians almost without their doing, so to say, and assuredly against their will, was inconceivable among the Indians. There the ever unchanging mode of production could at no time generate such conflicts as a distinction between rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, caused by external conditions. The Iroquois were far from controlling the forces of nature, but within the limits drawn for them by nature they dominated their own production. Apart from a failure of the crops in their little gardens, the exhaustion of the fish supply in their lakes and rivers or of the game stock in their forests, they always knew what would be the outcome of their mode of gaining a living. A more or less abundant supply of food, that would come of it. But the outcome could never be any unpremeditated social upheavals, breaking of gentile bonds or division of the gentiles against one another by conflicting class interests. Production was carried on in the most limited manner; but—the producers controlled their own product. This immense advantage of barbarian production was lost in the transition to civilization. To win it back on the basis of man's present gigantic control of nature and of the free association rendered possible by it, that will be the task of the next generations.

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