The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

Morgan lived among the Iroquois people of North America, whose marriages were far more flexible, and who identified familial relations more in terms of shared gender than actual blood relation: for example, girls calling uncles “uncle” but aunts “mother” (58). This system of “consanguinity” is also practiced among many peoples across Asia. Morgan cites a family structure in Hawaii that regards all cousins as brothers and sisters. For Morgan, this proves that the family “is never stationary, but advances from a lower to a higher form as society advances from a lower to a higher condition” (60). In this respect, Marx compares family structures to political and economic systems, which likewise evolve. Morgan treats monogamy as the endpoint of this teleology of the family, showing how various forms of polygamy are gradually phased out in favor of monogamous pairings. However, he does not depict this as a movement from sexual chaos to sexual order. Rather, history shows a range of different orders, including group marriage which did not proceed from a more promiscuous system before it. People want to deny the “shame” of a more promiscuous past (62), but all animals have exhibited a wide range of behaviors toward sex and partnerships, none of which closely correlate with levels of intellect or development.