Primeval communism

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Primitive communism describes an early human form of social organization claimed in historical materialism (according to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels ) , in which common ownership ( collective ownership ) of vital resources and goods is said to have prevailed, in contrast to the later social division of labor and production of goods . According to this theory, the primordial communist conditions in the " primitive society " were predominant during a period before the formation of the nuclear family , when original groups of hunters and gatherers (hunters) organized themselves into hordes and later into tribal societies.

In primitive communism, farming should only have been done for personal use ( self-sufficiency ), without any significant additional production for trading or trading ( subsistence economy ). Durable goods are said to have been manufactured almost exclusively for their own consumption in their own group. Money and private ownership of social means of production ( tools and production facilities ) were unknown . The self-sufficient economy prevents an accumulation of goods and values ​​as a basis for social enrichment and political domination. In this sense, original communism is said to have corresponded to communism , which Marxism sees as the ultimate stage of development after current capitalism .

Engels' original communism thesis

In his essay The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Friedrich Engels defined this period of “savagery” before the emergence of private property as original communism. In these social formations he accepts neither personal property nor family , social differentiation , domination , overproduction or ideology .

According to Marxist theory, social formations change with the development of the productive forces and production relations . In early communism this meant that with increasing productive power the hunters and gatherers developed into shepherds and more local breeders and farmers. Reclaimed land, cattle and unfree people led to the formation of private property in the means of production , which was the prerequisite for slave-owning societies and later feudalism. Sedentariness and the beginning of excess and stock production, together with the means of food preservation and population growth, created the need and the possibility of trade, i.e. the exchange of initially goods for goods - and later goods for money. According to the Marxist view, Marx: “The history of mankind is a history of class struggles ”, these relations of production led to the transition to a society of slavery and feudalism . The appropriation of the production resources of man as slaves or serfs , land and cattle ended primitive communism.

Original communism thesis from 1900

Since “primitive communism” was a materially remote term, there was initially no one among Marxist scholars with the ambition to develop it beyond Engels' study. That changed in the 20th and 21st centuries when Ernest Mandel , Rosa Luxemburg , Ian Hodder , Marija Gimbutas and others took up and substantiated the theses. In the non-Marxist prehistory and early history , the term was taken little seriously, although occasionally also treated, but then often dismissed.

The psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich concluded in 1932 in his work The Breakdown of Sexual Morality on the existence of an early communism from the information in Bronisław Malinowski's work The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia . The philosopher Erich Fromm does not consider this conclusion to be compelling. On Reich's interpretations u. a. the Austrian anthropologist Ernst Bornemann in 1975 in his work Das Patriarchat .

Soviet archaeologists interpreted the Paleolithic Venus figures , many of which were found in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, as evidence of a primeval communist matriarchy . Influenced by Lewis Henry Morgan's Ancient Society and Engels' origins of the family, private property and the state , they viewed the various Paleolithic cultures as primordial communist and matriarchal.

The Marxist archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe carried out excavations in Scotland from the 1920s and concluded that there was a Neolithic classless society that reached as far as the Orkney Islands .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Friedrich Engels : The origin of the family, private property and the state . In: Karl Marx , Friedrich Engels: Works. 5th edition. Volume 21, Dietz, Berlin 1975 (first edition 1884; full text on mlwerke.de).
  2. ↑ Dieter Reinisch (ed.): Der Urkommunismus. On the trail of the egalitarian society. Promedia, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-85371-350-1 .
  3. ↑ Erich Fromm : Review of Wilhelm Reich "The break in of sexual morality". In: Erich Fromm complete edition in twelve volumes. Volume 8, Munich 1999, pp. 93-96.
  4. ↑ Compare the reception history: Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban: Marxist Reappraisal of the Matriarchate. In: Current Anthropology Volume 20, 1979, pp. 341-359.
  5. ↑ Meret Fehlmann: The speech of matriarchy. To the history of use of an argument. Chronos, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-0340-1067-2 , p. 148 (doctoral thesis 2010; abstract ),
  6. ^ Vere Gordon Childe : The Prehistory of Scotland. Paul, London 1935; and the same: Prehistoric Communities of the British Isles. Chambers, London / Edinburgh 1940.