Marx and Social Systems

The Family and Systems of Consanguinity

• Marx states that systems of consanguinity, like the family, undergo changes, while the systems themselves remain static.
• Cuvier's method of deducing the existence of extinct marsupial animals can be applied to understanding the historical survival of systems of consanguinity, which implies the existence of extinct forms of family.

Systems of Consanguinity and Forms of the Family

• The Hawaiian system of consanguinity, which corresponds to the Hawaiian family, differs from those of today in that every child has more than one father and mother.
• In this system, brother and sister cannot be the father and mother of the same child; however, the Hawaiian system of consanguinity presupposes a family in which this was the rule.
• Traditional views recognize only monogamy, with some polygamy on the part of individual men, and some polyandry on the part of individual women.

The Punaluan Family

• The Punaluan family, found among the peoples of Polynesia, expresses degrees of consanguinity that could only arise in this form of family.
• The development of the family presupposes the existence of the consanguine family as a necessary preparatory stage.

Exclusion of Parents and Children from Sexual Intercourse

• The first advance in organization consisted in the exclusion of parents and children from sexual intercourse with one another.
• The second advance was the exclusion of sister and brother, which was more important but also more difficult.

The Gens and Social Order

• The exclusion of brothers and sisters from marriage led to the development of the gens, which forms the basis of the social order of most barbarian peoples.
• The gens is the institution that arose directly out of the exclusion of brothers and sisters from marriage and went far beyond it.

Marriage and the Family

• In group marriage, every original family was bound to split up, and strict law rules in reality, even when wives are captured.
• Marriage by capture shows signs of the transition to monogamous marriage, at least in the form of pairing marriage.
• In pairing marriage, the man had a chief wife among his many wives, and for her, he was the most important among her husbands.