Lisa's Anthro, Engels' OFPPS: econ base, 'group marriage'

[Lisa Rogers <EQDOMAIN.EQWQ.LROGERS@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

My copy of Origin of Family, Private Property, State:
Engels OFPPS, Pathfinder edition 1972 with intro by Evelyn Reed and
two appendices, including his unfinished essay "The part played by
labor in the transition from ape to man" written 1876, first pub.
1896
[as I was saying...]
A general theme of the book is the inevitable logical necessity of
the whole progressive scenario, exactly in keeping with the
proletarian revolutionary inevitability concept in "orthodox marxist"
thought.  Unfortunately, that theme in OFPPS consists mainly of one
such assertion after another, rather than the explication of specific
causal links between various material factors.

Which reminds me, my own work in evolutionary ecology and
anthropology is doing exactly that, looking for the links between the
nature of the resources [food] and the various patterns of
food-transfer between acquirers/producers and consumers, for example.
 Or between patterns of resource characteristics [including
distribution in the landscape, density, processing time, etc.] and
foraging and food-transfer behaviors.

This _is_ examining the 'economic base' and its effects upon social
relations!  Last year I didn't have this marxian vocabulary to apply
to this work.  One reason I came here was to examine the relations
between my anthropology and marxian thought, and they do look
compatible to me.

Back to Engels:  Alex Trotter said:  On group or plural marriage:
Lisa holds Morgan's ideas on this subject in  disdain.

L:  Evelyn Reed's intro to the Pathfinder edition of OFPPS states
that Morgan/Engels definitely had that one wrong.  Her critique is
gentler than mine, a little off-base, but still, Morgan was wacked on
this point.

Reed says "Although far from Morgan's intent, his term has sometimes
been interpreted to give the impression that "groups" of women were
available as sexual objects for the pleasure of men."  And vice
versa, I would add!  According to Morgan/Engels, this was entirely
two-sided.  It is Reed that objects to some alleged sexist
implications, as if women would have been unwilling or uninterested,
which is just another aspect of sexism itself.  She also objects to
the claim of any reality of 'group marriage' in any known example or
as a definite stage.  In her terms, it was still 'pairing' between
the designated groups of men and women in a "punaluan [group]
marriage."

Reed continues "Actually, in matriarchal society women were the most
respected sex, who themselves arranged the connubium compacts for the
orderly and peaceful exchange of mating relations."  Humbug! say I.
The thing about people being free and able to decide for themselves
who they want to sleep with, how often, how many, is that they might
do anything!  Why would the "most respected sex", unconstrained by
economic dependence upon a "providing" ruling male, automatically
seek harmonius pairing for all?  They might have felt like doing any
damn thing!  Known examples suggest that they do a lot of things, and
some harmonius monogamous pairing is not it.

Next time: "primitive surplus/ the lack thereof"



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