One hundred years ago, in March 1877, Morgan's final work, Ancient
Society, appeared. Morgan was not a Socialist, but his book was the
result of objective investigation into mankind and its social
institutions. If anything, he was religious. The book is dedicated to
the Rev. Mcllvaine, DD, a close friend, and describes the evolution of
society in approximately 600 pages. Marx and Engels praised the work,
and Engels, writing in the 1884 preface of his own work The Origin of
the Family, said Morgan "in his own way had discovered afresh in America
the materialist conception of history discovered by Marx forty years
ago". Marx intended to present the result of Morgan's researches in the
light of his own conclusions, but his death in 1883 prevented it. Engels
took over the task and based The Origin of the Family on Morgan, but
went far beyond Morgan by showing the political and economic
implications, the changing political systems arising from the historic
development of property, the emergence of social classes and
consequently the State.
Working independently, Morgan provided the scientific corroboration
of Marx's theories. He was the founder of the science of anthropology,
but his work was largely ignored on both sides of the Atlantic when it
was realized that his theories and discoveries clashed with the ideas
and interests of the ruling class. The established capitalist view was
that religion, property and the family are as old as man himself, and
these institutions had always existed and were unchanging elements in
society. Scientific ideas which challenged this concept were treated
with hostility. Morgan, a Republican Senator and lawyer, spent forty
years on the preparation of his book, his sole purpose being to explain
the evolutionary process, but in doing so he inadvertently committed the
cardinal sin of exposing the working of society. He showed that the
idea of property had undergone the same growth and development as had
society generally, and was far removed from being an eternal category:
"Commencing at zero in savagery the fashion for the possession of
property as the representative of accumulated subsistence has now
become dominant over the human mind in civilised races." (Ancient
Society, p.vii preface. MacMillan, 1877)
Part 4 of the book goes into greater detail and investigates the
growth of the idea. The growth of property is shown to be closely
connected with the increase of invention and discovery, and with the
improvement of social institutions, commencing with the stage defined as
Savagery. Human progress from a state of ignorance in Savagery slowly
advanced as men gained experience, as nature forced them to obtain
subsistence or perish. The procuring of the means of subsistence is
intimately associated with the idea of property in the very early stages
of man's development. The gradual accumulation of knowledge leading to
greater control over nature pushes society along through its various
stages up to Civilization: the idea of property is no longer based on
subsistence but on its social power.
"Since the advent of civilisation the outgrowth of property has
been so immense, its form so diversified, its uses so expanding, and its
management so intelligent in the interests of its owners, that it has
become on the part of the people an unmanageable power. The human mind
stands bewildered in the presence of its own creation, The time will
come nevertheless when human intelligence will rise to the mastery over
property, and define the relations of the State to the property it
protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights of its
owners. The interests of society are paramount to individual interests,
and the two must be brought in to just and harmonious relations. A mere
property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to
be the law of the future as it has been of the past." (Ancient Society,
p. 552)
Views like these, backed up by factual evidence coming from a
capitalist politician who was a rich man in his own right, shocked the
capitalist class at the time. It was just as well that Morgan secured an
audience at which he shook hands with the Pope in 1871. He certainly
would not have received one after his book was published in 1877. These
ideas attack the roots of capitalism and its claim to permanence.
But this was not all. The central theme in Morgan's work was that
mankind had gone through several successive stages in its road to
Civilization. The proposed ethnical periods described by Morgan
commenced with the three stages of Savagery — the lower status, middle
and upper. Then came the lower, middle and upper status of Barbarism,
and finally the status of Civilization. Food supply commenced with the
collecting of natural food in tropical forests and the gradual acquiring
of the knowledge of the use of fire and a fish subsistence, The
invention of the bow and arrow prepared man's entry from the upper stage
of Savagery into the lower stage of Barbarism. This began with the
invention of pottery and the domestication of animals, followed by the
cultivation of plants and the use of clay bricks in the middle status of
Barbarism. The upper stage of Barbarism commenced with the smelting of
iron ore, the use of iron tools, and the development of field
agriculture. Civilization was reached with the invention of the phonetic
alphabet and the use of writing.
These seven stages, claimed Morgan were universal as were the forms
of social organization based upon the gens which corresponded to them.
From Australia in the south, the whole of Europe including Rome and
Greece, the Eastern Mediterranean and India — all their respective
social organizations were based upon the gens. Although Morgan commenced
his researches among the American Red Indians (he was a blood-brother
of the Iroquois) he made an extensive study of the known forms of tribal
society, and studied the histories of all forms of civilization.
The point of Morgan's theories was that ethnic groups who had reached
civilization had only done so after a long development through these
seven stages, and that this general evolutionary principle governed all
social development which had taken place. The fact that backwoods tribes
discovered today in the state of savagery can be brought forward
rapidly into capitalist civilization without undergoing the long
development as postulated, does not invalidate the theory.
The materialist conception of history discovered by Marx forty years
earlier had the same principles, but with the addition that the economic
organization and social relations corresponded to the' particular stage
society had reached in the development of its productive forces. Morgan
proved the existence of a social organization which was neither
political nor economic, but purely administrative. It was based on
gentes, phratries and tribes, and he demonstrated how this form of
organization held ancient society together and prevailed throughout the
entire ancient world. The gens were founded upon kin; descent was linked
to the female line and it embraced all persons who could trace their
descent through a common female ancestor, and possessed a common gentile
name.
These gentile institutions were thoroughly democratic. Two or more
related gens organized themselves in phratries (brotherhoods), and a
number of phratries constituted a tribe. Several tribes formed a
confederacy, and eventually coalesced into a nation occupying common
territory. Because the basic unit of organization was democratic there
was no State or political society. As special social needs or objectives
arose, the form of organization was enlarged to meet them, but its
democratic function was maintained throughout. Bureaucracy could not
arise because there was no separation between administration and people,
as exists today in the form of the coercive state which has replaced
the administration of 'people by territorial government administering
and maintaining property relations in the interests of a small minority
of people.
Morgan also showed that systems of communal ownership gave rise to
and were the basis of this social organization for many thousands of
years. The State, which according to the capitalists had existed
throughout history, was a comparatively recent development, and arose
with the advent of private property.
Theories such as these could not go unchallenged. The ruling class
did what it will always do when its interests are threatened: ignore or
misrepresent the facts. Anthropology was taught in universities in
England and America, but up to very recently Morgan was ignored,
although many of his theories and methods were plagiarized. His
classification of ethnic periods was attacked, as also was his theory of
the origin of the family, and the role of women as the original
property owners. Morgan showed that the family had passed through
successive forms commencing with consanguinity, which was founded on the
marriage of brothers and sisters (own and collateral) in a group. This
was succeeded by the Punaluan (intimate friend) family founded up on the
intermarriage of several sisters with each other's husbands in a group.
Also, the intermarriage of several brothers with each other's wives in a
group. Then the pairing family founded upon single pairs, but without
exclusive co-habitation and with voluntary separation. The patriarchal
family founded upon the marriage of one man with several wives. Finally,
the present monogamous family founded upon single pairs with an
exclusive co-habitation.
The impact this information had on bourgeois Victorian society who
bad barely recovered from the shock of Darwinism, was startling. Darwin
at least dealt mainly with animals and man's biology, but the shame of
being confronted in the respectable atmosphere of Victorian society
steeped in cant about the dignity of the family and marriage, with tales
of incest, group sex and polygamy, and all the other alleged vices
(practised in secret by wealthy parasites) brought forth an avalanche of
protest led by the religious hyenas of all creeds. The
anti-evolutionary school of anthropology was founded by Dr. Franz Boas,
Professor Westermarck, Malinowski, Lowie, Ashley Montague and many
others. Their object was not so much to develop the infant science of
anthropology as to prove Morgan wrong. The Catholic "cultural
historical" school of anthropology led by Fathers Wilhelm Schmidt and
Wilhelm Sylvester, and A Sieker, SJ, set out to oppose the theories of
primitive communism. As far as the Jesuits were concerned Morgan's work
was more beneficial to Socialists like Marx and Engels than any other
section of the community. Lowie insisted that the State in various forms
had always existed, and C. H. Stark and Professor Westermarck
maintained that the present capitalist-type family had always existed.
Dr. Franz Boas of Columbia University refused to admit discussion of the
question because in his opinion there was no evidence, nor could there
be any. He described Morgan's stages as arbitrary postulations. Morgan
also upset the Jews by pointing out that Abraham married his half-sister
Sarah.
The last hundred years have produced numerous controversies about
certain aspects of Morgan's theories. For the most part these are
peripheral and largely concern questions of detail. The main body of his
work has stood up and remains the cornerstone of modem anthropology.
The section in Ancient Society dealing with the origin of early Greek
and Roman society is a classic by any standards, and brought particular
praise from Marx.
Morgan has become the Marx of anthropology, and like his famous
contemporary is always being repudiated — a periodical exercise which
usually collapses through lack of evidence being presented by the
detractors, Typical of the kind of criticism are the remarks contained
in Peter Farb's book Man's Rise to Civilisation (Paladin Books, 1971):
"He was a thoroughly conventional man, unquestioning in religious
orthodoxy, and also a staunch capitalist, but he published his theories
in Ancient Society at the same time Marx was working on the third
volume of 'Das Kapital' (p. 100).
There is no connection between the two, but the object is to
discredit Morgan by implying that if it bad not been for Marx Morgan's
theories would have had no importance. Later Farb makes his position
clear:
"That bourgeois gentleman, Morgan, is to this day enshrined in the pantheon of socialist thinking," (p, 100)
Again the innuendo being: only because of Marx and Engels's
influence. Rubbish like this is supposed to represent a criticism of
Morgan's work, but Farb carefully refrains from going into the work
itself. His other nonsensical statement that "By a strange irony the
League of the Iroquois has become a model for Marx's theory" shows his
ignorance of the subject and of Morgan's theories as well as Marx's.
The relevance of Morgan and Marx to modem Socialist thought and
propaganda is in providing the positive proof that capitalist society is
the culmination of a whole series of historical social changes. Men's
ideas change, habits of thought and conceptions of life change. The man
of today is not the man of tomorrow; the environment of today is not the
environment of tomorrow, any more than the man of yesterday and his
environment are relevant today. Capitalism is not the end of social
progression, although the capitalist class and their servile adherents
will claim it to be so, Morgan reckoned that out of an estimated 100,000
years that man bad spent on earth, at least 60,000 (three-fifths) had
been spent in a state of Savagery; 35,000 years in the various stages of
Barbarism, and 5,000 years in Civilization. Out of those five thousand
years only the last 250 years have been spent under capitalism.
The intensity of capitalism's development, with its compression of
time and space, has produced the subjective man with little sense of
history, dominated by social conditions which are not only anti-social
but obsolete and unnecessary. Man must become objective and not
dominated by his immediate conditions. We must move on to Socialism. A
Socialist society will organize itself on a democratic basis at every
level. The social form will not, nor cannot be, tied to the past, but it
will truly reflect the great contribution of the past in he form of the
accumulated knowledge and social experience so painfully acquired which
has made Socialism possible. It should not be forgotten that the
principal institutions of mankind have developed from a few germs of
thought and a few simple cells of organization. The natural form of
social man is that which equates him with his fellow man, and that great
equalizer is common ownership of the means whereby he lives.
Jim D'Arcy
