Primitive Communism Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The idea that humanity experienced a long period of primitive social equality prior to the formation of political communities and states has been a recurring theme in political philosophy since at least antiquity. Expressed most prominently in the idea of a state of nature, the notion of primitive social equality played a key role in theoretical systems of the various social contract theorists of Europe, beginning in the sixteenth century. Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean Jacques Rousseau all argued that prior to the development of the state, humanity lived in a type of anarchy in which all people were responsible for their own personal security and well-being.

Rousseau

The concept of the state of nature came closest to an idea of primitive communism for eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosopher Rousseau. In Rousseau’s theory, the state of nature was a generally positive condition for humanity, in which equality abounded and people were free from the oppressive control of others. According to Rousseau, the founding of the political community was not a progressive act, but a step backward for the human race in which some morally bankrupt individuals, interested in their own private wealth and advancement, ensnared the rest of humanity into what Rousseau considered to be the decadence of modern society. Rousseau, writing in prerevolutionary France, looked at the inequality around him—embodied by the decadent aristocracy—and harkened for a previous age of simplicity and equality.

Marx And Engels

Rousseau’s conception of the state of nature was a prime influence on the social, political, and historical ideas of the eighteenth century German revolutionaries Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Like Rousseau, Marx and Engels looked at the world around them and were disgusted by the social and economic inequality of a new burgeoning capitalist society. However, they argued that capitalism was but one transitory epoch in the historical evolution of human societies. Marx and Engels believed that capitalism was the last stage of class society in human evolution, followed by the emergence of a communist society in which class distinctions were eliminated and humanity lived according to its needs. Marx and Engels believed that capitalist society generated its own gravediggers in the proletariat—the industrial working class—who, because they had no property of their own to defend, could lead humanity towards the classless society.

However, Marx and Engels argued that the future stage of communism would not be an entirely new phenomenon. They believed that prior to the evolution of class societies in antiquity, humanity lived in a stage of what they called primitive communism. For Marx and Engels, under primitive communism humanity lived a stark existence in which small tribes were forced to battle nature, and often rival tribal groups, in order to survive. However, this daily fight for survival made it necessary for early humans to organize themselves in very tight-knit egalitarian communities, where social distinctions were absent or temporary. The theoretical idea of primitive communism allowed Marx and Engels to argue that the material and social inequality of their time was not natural or inevitable. Humans did not always divide themselves into classes or exploit one another for material gain.

For Marx and Engels, primitive communism foreshadowed the future post capitalist society of modern communism in its social equality and its lack of class antagonisms. However, as materialists, Marx and Engels did not idealize primitive communism as Rousseau did in his version of the state of nature. Instead, they argued that primitive communism was a communism of scarcity and as such was unable to provide for the full development of human potential. They argued that the long historical period of class societies was necessary in order to develop humanities’ productive forces so that a communism of abundance could emerge in the postcapitalist epoch. For Marx and Engels, primitive communism was thus the original stage of history that eventually leads to a new phase of communism in which many of the positive features of the primitive era are recreated in the context of material abundance.

The most famous reference to primitive communism in Marx and Engels’s work occurs in a footnote Engels added to the Communist Manifesto (1848), in which he corrects a passage on the opening page that reads “…the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle.” Engels’s footnote corrects this passage to acknowledge the existence of the primitive commune.

In later works, in particular Marx’s Ethnological Notebooks (1880–1882) and Engels’s famous The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), the pair expand upon the idea of primitive communism. Marx’s notebooks continue to be an important source for Marxist scholarship on non-European societies, while Engels’s book continues to inspire Marxist and feminist debates on the family and the origin of the oppression of women. Their work on the primitive commune—Engels’s work in particular—was inspired by the writings of the nineteenth-century American anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan, and his theories on kinship and relations between materialism and social structures based on studies of Native American Indians.

Legacy Of The Marxist Notion

While other approaches, such as anarchism and psychoanalysis, have taken up the issue, the Marxist idea of primitive communism—or the primitive commune—has dominated most discussion of this idea in modern political science. Political theorists have attempted to evaluate the veracity of this idea in the wake of anthropological evidence and historical experience. The idea remains the source of much controversy today. Some argue that the Marxist idea of the primitive commune does not escape the colonialist assumptions embedded in the theoretical dichotomy between primitive and modern, while others argue that it does not withstand the scrutiny of modern anthropological research.

Bibliography:

Engels, Friedrich. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. New York: International Publishers, 1972.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. New York: Hackett, 1994.
Locke, John. Two Treatises on Government. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Marx, Karl. The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx. Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1972.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Manifesto of the Communist Party. New York: International Publishers, 1962.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. New York: Hackett, 1992.
On the Social Contract. New York: Dover, 2003.

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