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

neighbors was in the form of domestic animals. Cattle became the favorite commodity by which all other commodities were measured in exchange. In short, cattle assumed the functions of money and served in this capacity as early as that stage. With such necessity and rapidity was the demand for a money commodity developed at the very beginning of the exchange of commodities.

Horticulture, probably unknown to the Asiatic barbarians of the lower stage, arose not later than the middle stage of barbarism, as the forerunner of agriculture. The climate of the Turanian Highland does not admit of a nomadic life without a supply of stock feed for the long and hard winter. Hence the cultivation of meadows and grain was indispensable. The same is true of the steppes north of the Black Sea. Once grain had been grown for cattle, it soon became human food. The cultivated land belonged as yet to the tribe and was assigned first to the gens, which in its turn distributed it to the households, and finally to individuals; always for use only, not for possession. The users may have had certain claims to the land, but that was all.

Two of the industrial acquisitions of this stage are especially important. The first is the weaving loom, the second the melting of metal ore and the use of metals in manufacture. Copper, tin, and their alloy, bronze, were the most essential of them. Bronze furnished tools and weapons, but could not displace stone implements. Only iron could have done that, but the production of iron was as yet unknown. Gold and silver were already used for ornament and decoration, and must have been far more precious than copper and bronze.

The increase of production in all branches—stock raising, agriculture, domestic handicrafts—enabled human labor power to produce more than was necessary for its maintenance. It increased at the same time the amount of daily work that fell to the lot of every member of a gens, a household, or a single family. The addition of more labor power became desirable. It was furnished by war; the captured enemies were transformed into slaves. Under the given historical conditions, the first great division of social labor, by increasing the productivity of labor, adding to the wealth, and enlarging the field of productive activity, necessarily carried slavery in its wake. Out of the first great division of social labor arose the first great division of society into two classes: masters and servants, exploiters and exploited.

How and when the herds were transferred from the collective ownership of the tribe or gens to the proprietorship of the heads of the families, is not known to us. But it must have been practically accomplished in this stage. The herds and the other new objects of wealth brought about a revolution in the family. Procuring the means of existence had always been the man's business. The tools of production were manufactured and owned by him. The herds were the new tools of production, and their taming and tending was his work. Hence he owned the cattle and the commodities and slaves obtained in exchange for them. All the surplus now resulting from production fell to the share of the man. The woman shared in its fruition, but she could not claim its ownership. The "savage" warrior and hunter had been content to occupy the second place in the house, to give precedence to the woman. The "gentler" shepherd, standing on his wealth, assumed the first place and forced the woman back into the second place. And she had no occasion to complain. The division of labor in the family had regulated the distribution of property between man and wife. This division of labor remained unchanged. Yet the former domestic relation was now reversed, simply because the division of labor outside of the family had been altered. The same cause that once had secured the supremacy in the house for women, viz., the confining of women's activity to domestic labor, now assured the supremacy of the men in the households. The domestic labor of women was considered insignificant in comparison to men's work for a living. The latter was everything, the former a negligible quantity. At this early stage we can already see that the emancipation of women and their equality with men are impossible and remain so, as long as women are excluded from social production and restricted to domestic labor. The emancipation of women becomes feasible only then when women are enabled to take part extensively in social production, and when domestic duties require their attention in a minor degree. This state of things was brought about by the modern great industries, which not only admit of women's liberal participation in production, but actually call for it and, besides, endeavor to transform domestic work also into a public industry.

Man's advent to practical supremacy in the household marked the removal of the last barrier to his universal supremacy. His unlimited rule was emphasized and endowed with continuity by the downfall of matriarchy, the introduction of patriarchy, and the gradual transition from the pairing family to the monogamic family. This made a breach in the old gentile order. The monogamic family became a power and lifted a threatening hand against the gens.

The next step brings us to the upper stage of barbarism, that period in which all nations of civilization go through their heroic era. It is the time of the iron sword, but also of the iron plow share and axe. The iron had become the servant of man. It is the last and most important of all raw products that play a revolutionary role in history; the last—if we except the potato.

Iron brought about agriculture on a larger scale and the clearing of extensive forest tracts for cultivation. It gave to the craftsman a tool of such hardness and sharpness that no stone, no other known metal, could withstand it. All this came about gradually. The first iron was often softer than bronze. Therefore stone implements disappeared very slowly. Not only in the Hildebrand Song, but also at Hastings in 1066, stone axes were still used in fighting. But progress was now irresistible, less interrupted and more rapid. The town, inclosing houses of stone or tiles within its turreted and crested stone walls, became the central seat of the tribe or federation of tribes. It showed an astounding progress of architecture, but also an increase of danger and of the demand for protection. Wealth increased rapidly, but it was the wealth of private individuals. Weaving, metal work and other more and more differentiating industries developed an increasing variety and display of art in production. Agriculture furnished not alone grain, peas, beans and fruit, but also oil and wine, the preparation of which had now been learned. Such a diversity of action could not be displayed by any single individual. The second great division of labor took place: handicrafts separated from agriculture. The growing intensity of production and the increased productivity enhanced the value of human labor power. Slavery, which had been a rising and sporadic factor in the preceding stage, now became an essential part of the social system. The slaves ceased to be simple assistants. They were now driven in scores to the work in the fields and shops. The division of production into two great branches, agriculture and handicrafts, gave rise to production for exchange, the production of commodities. Trade arose at the same time, not only in the interior and on the tribal boundaries, but also in the form of maritime exchange. All this was as yet in a very undeveloped state. The precious metals gained preference as a universal money commodity, but still uncoined and exchanged merely by dead weight.

The distinction between rich and poor was added to that between free men and slaves. This and the new division of labor constitute a new division of society into classes. The differences in the amount of property belonging to the several family heads broke up the old communistic households one by one, wherever they might have been preserved thus far. This made an end to the collective cultivation of the soil for the account of the community. The cultivated land was assigned for use to the several families, first for a limited time, later for once and all. The transition to full private property was accomplished gradually and simultaneously with the transition from the pairing family to monogamy. The monogamous family began to be the economic unit of society.

The increase of population necessitated a closer consolidation against internal and external foes. The federation of related tribes became unavoidable. Their amalgamation, and thence the amalgamation of the separate tribal territories to one national territory, was the following step. The military leader—rex, basileus, thiudans—became an indispensable and standing official. The public meeting was introduced wherever it did not yet exist. The military leader, the council of chiefs, and the public meeting formed the organs of the military democracy that had grown out of the gentile constitution. Military democracy—for now war and organization for war were regular functions of social life. The wealth of the neighbors excited the greed of nations that began to regard the acquisition of wealth as one of the main purposes of their life. They were barbarians: robbing appeared to them easier and more honorable than producing. War, once simply a revenge for transgressions or a means for enlarging a territory that had become too narrow, was now waged for the sake of plunder alone and became a regular profession. Not in vain did threatening walls cast a rigid stare all around the new fortified towns: their yawning ditches were the tomb of the gentile constitution, and their turrets already reached up into civilization. The internal affairs underwent a similar change. The plundering wars increased the power of the military leader and of the subcommanders. The habitual election of the successors from the same family was gradually transformed into hereditary succession, first by sufferance, then by claim, and finally by usurpation. Thus the foundation of hereditary royalty and nobility was laid. In this manner the organs of the gentile constitution were gradually torn away from their roots in the nation, tribe, phratry and gens, and the whole gentile order reversed into its antithesis. The organization of tribes for the purpose of the free administration of affairs was turned into an organization for plundering and oppressing their neighbors. The organs of gentilism changed from servants of the public will to independent organs of rule oppressing their own people. This could not have happened, if the greed for wealth had not divided the gentiles into rich and poor; if the "difference of property in a gens had not changed the community of interest into antagonism of the gentiles" (Karl Marx); and if the extension of slavery had not begun by branding work for a living as slavish and more ignominious than plundering.

We have now reached the threshold of civilization. This stage is inaugurated by a new progress in the division of labor. In the lower stage of barbarism production was carried on for use only; any acts of exchange were confined to single cases when a surplus was accidentally realized. In the middle stage of barbarism we find that the possession of cattle gave a regular surplus to the nomadic nations with sufficiently large herds. At the same time there was a division of labor between nomadic nations and backward nations without herds. The existence of two different stages of production side by side furnished the conditions necessary for a regular exchange. The upper stage of barbarism introduced a new division of labor between agriculture and handicrafts, resulting in the production of a continually increasing amount of commodities for the special purpose of exchange, so that exchange between individuals became a vital function of society. Civilization strengthened and intensified all the established