Engels on the Iroquois constitution

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884-fam/ch03.htm

That was the whole public constitution under which the Iroquois lived
for over four hundred years and are still living today. I have
described it fully, following Morgan, because here we have the
opportunity of studying the organization of a society which still has
no state. The state presupposes a special public power separated from
the body of the people, and Maurer, who with a true instinct
recognizes that the constitution of the German mark is a purely
social institution, differing essentially from the state, though
later providing a great part of its basis, consequently investigates
in all his writings the gradual growth of the public power out of,
and side by side with, the primitive constitutions of marks,
villages, homesteads, and towns. Among the North American Indians we
see how an originally homogeneous tribe gradually spreads over a huge
continent; how through division tribes become nations, entire groups
of tribes; how the languages change until they not only become
unintelligible to other tribes, but also lose almost every trace of
their original identity; how at the same time within the tribes each
gens splits up into several gentes, how the old mother gentes are
preserved as phratries, while the names of these oldest gentes
nevertheless remain the same in widely distant tribes that have long
been separated-the Wolf and the Bear are still gentile names among a
majority of all Indian tribes. And the constitution described above
applies in the main to them all, except that many of them never
advanced as far as the confederacy of related tribes.

But once the gens is given as the social unit, we also see how the
whole constitution of gentes, phratries, and tribes is almost
necessarily bound to develop from this unit, because the development
is natural. Gens, phratry, and tribe are all groups of different
degrees of consanguinity, each self-contained and ordering its own
affairs, but each supplementing the other. And the affairs which fall
within their sphere comprise all the public affairs of barbarians of
the lower stage. When we find a people with the gens as their social
unit, we may therefore also look for an organization of the tribe
similar to that here described; and when there are adequate sources,
as in the case of the Greeks and the Romans, we shall not only find
it, but we shall also be able to convince ourselves that where the
sources fail us, comparison with the American social constitution
helps us over the most difficult doubts and riddles.

And a wonderful constitution it is, this gentile constitution, in all
its childlike simplicity! No soldiers, no gendarmes or police, no
nobles, kings, regents, prefects, or judges, no prisons, no
lawsuits-and everything takes its orderly course. All quarrels and
disputes are settled by the whole of the community affected, by the
gens or the tribe, or by the gentes among themselves; only as an
extreme and exceptional measure is blood revenge threatened-and our
capital punishment is nothing but blood revenge in a civilized form,
with all the advantages and drawbacks of civilization. Although there
were many more matters to be settled in common than today-the
household is maintained by a number of families in common, and is
communistic, the land belongs to the tribe, only the small gardens
are allotted provisionally to the households -- yet there is no need
for even a trace of our complicated administrative apparatus with all
its ramifications. The decisions are taken by those concerned, and in
most cases everything has been already settled by the custom of
centuries. There cannot be any poor or needy-the communal household
and the gens know their responsibilities towards the old, the sick,
and those disabled in war. All are equal and free-the women included.
There is no place yet for slaves, nor, as a rule, for the subjugation
of other tribes. When, about the year 1651, the Iroquois had
conquered the Eries and the "Neutral Nation," they offered to accept
them into the confederacy on equal terms; it was only after the
defeated tribes had refused that they were driven from their
territory. And what men and women such a society breeds is proved by
the admiration inspired in all white people who have come into
contact with unspoiled Indians, by the personal dignity, uprightness,
strength of character, and courage of these barbarians.


--
Louis Proyect, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx on 01/12/2002

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