RE: [Marxism] Origin of Marriage

[Christopher Carrico <ccarrico@xxxxxxxxxx>]

for whatever reason this didn't send earlier:


Some of the most interesting work to have been done in
anthropology since the 1970's has come from Marxist
feminists.  The work of Eleanor Leacock is foundational.
For a very clear consideration of what is still relevant in
Engels work and what has been superceded ethnographically
see Leacock's introduction to the International Publishers
edition of The Origin of the Family, Private, Property and
the State.

Other relavant works by Leacock include:

1978 "Women's status in egalitarian society: implications
for social evolution."  In Current Anthropology 19(2):247-
275.

1979  "Class, commodity and the status of women."  In Toward
a Marxist Anthropology, Stanley Diamond, ed.  The Hague:
Mouton.

1981 Myths of Male Dominance.  New York: Monthly Review.
(already mentioned on the list).

1983 "The origins of gender inequality: Conceptual and
historical problems."  In Dialectical Anthropology 7(4): 263-
284.

Also:  Leacock and June Nash.  1977 Ideology of Sex.
Annals, NY Academy of Sciences.

Personally, I have also found the introduction to Christine
Gailey's book 1987  Kinship to Kingship: Gender Hierarchy
and State Formation in the Tongan Islands.  Austin: UT
Press.  to contain a very helpful review of the literature.

>CB: Since the origin of the monogamous, male supremacist
>family, private property and the state occurred thousands
>of years ago, and it is difficult for archaeology to detect
>kinship and marriage rules in non-literate cultures, I
>don't know that there is a lot of direct empirical evidence
>of the origin of the monogamous, male supremacist family.

The origin of such a system occurred several thousands of
years ago in some areas of the world, did not come into
existence until recently in many others, and is still not
that important in some societies.  While many questions
about gender relations in the past will never be known, the
rise of gender hierarchies are well documented and
empircally known as an historical process in relation to
state formation.

>The important thing is that he holds that monogamous male
>supremacy is not universal in human history (nor are
>private property and the state). So, as Carrol says his
>implicit analysis for the modern world is cogent.

Yes, this is the bottom line.  In anthropology, one of the
great divides between liberal and socialist feminists was
originally the disagreement over whether gender inequality
was a universal or not.  Marxists maintain that gender
inequalities did not exist for most of human history, and
that like the state, it was an evolutionary wrong turn.
Gender hierarchy and the state were both historically
constructed, and can be historically deconstructed through
the building of communist society.

I always come back to Stanley Diamond saying the primitive
society provides the model from which we can imagine what
future communist social relations could look like.




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