Lewis H. Morgan, Friedrich Engels, Sir Henry J. Sumner Maine, J. F. McLennan, Edward Jenks, R. M. MacIver are some of the jurists, historians, ethnographers and sociologists who have studied and commented on various aspects of primitive social relationships, authority and evolution of the state. While Morgan, Maine, and Jenks have analysed the way authority, marriage, descent and kinship, etc., are organized amongst the primitive people and forces that worked in evolution of the state, Morgan, Engels, Maine, Bagehot and MacIver seek to show not only the evolution of the State but also its historical development. Engels offers a Marxian perspective and builds up his thesis of class nature of power and social relations drawing from Morgan’s researches.
Lewis Morgan in his Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871) and Ancient Society (1877) analysed the system of kinship, i.e., the way descent and lineage is sought, e.g. male line or female line and the basis of social organization.63 . He presented that a system of kinship prevailed among various aboriginal people. Taking the systems of kingship as the starting point, he reconstructed the forms of family corresponding to them. He stated that tribes were endogamous. Groups within tribes who were related by blood on the mother’s side (gentes, which signify kinship or descent within which marriage was strictly prohibited) were exogamous. This was based on system of consanguinity, kinship based on blood relationship and not relationships based on marriage. He further concluded that gentes organized according to the mother’s right were the original form, out of which, gentes based on the father’s right originated. This, in one way, shows that matriarchy was the earliest form of social organization. Engels analysis of Morgan’s work on Iroquois (American Indian Tribes) suggests that these gentes being part of tribes, elected a tribal chief and tribes had their confederacy. However, they represented a form of society ‘which as yet knows no state’.64 According to Engels, in the social evolution, the state developed much later when patriarchy gave way to inheritance of property by children and then hereditary nobility and finally to some form of public power.
J. F. McLennan in his Studies in Ancient History (1886), traced descent through mothers and kinship through the female line. He also suggested that initially, polyandry prevailed. He found examples of two types of marriages—marriage within the tribe (endogamous) and marriage outside the tribe (exogamous). He maintains that exogamy was due to scarcity of females within the tribe. This led to forcible acquisition/abduction of women from other tribes. Scarcity necessitated exogamy and also common possession. Thus, McLennan’s hypothesis leads us, as Engels says, to conclude ‘all the exogamous races as having originally been polyandrous’. In this situation, though the mother is known, the father is not. Kinship is taken from the female line and mother’s right prevails. This also suggests that patriarchal power must have evolved later and any concept of authority related to male descent is subsequent development.
Edwards Jenks also supported primacy of the matriarchal family and maintained that motherhood in such cases is a fact, while paternity is only an opinion’.65 According to Jenks, tribe was the earliest group from which other forms of social organizations like clan and then family came. However, both McLennan and Jenks are concerned only with the earliest form of social organization and do not at all deal with the origin and development of the state.
Henry Maine is one of the early contributors of evolutionary theory. Early History of Institutions is considered an important study in social evolution. He supported patriarchal hypothesis and suggested that the early form of social organization was the family, which was characterized by the authority of the male descendant. The eldest male descendant must have become protector and ruler of patriarchal family. He supported the idea of consanguinity/kinship-based social groups and stated that one’s status in the kin-group (father, mother, son, daughter, family head, elder and younger brother, etc.) determined their mutual relationships. As such, status was considered as the initial stage of social relationship. From the paternal authority and status-based social relationships, Maine traces further evolution of social organization. According to Maine, ‘the elementary group is family connected by common subjection to the highest male ascendant. The aggregation of families forms the Gens or House. The aggregation of Houses makes the Tribe. The aggregation of Tribes constitutes the Commonwealth.’66 Maine’s primary observation in this regard could be said to be what Engels says, that ‘entire progress in comparison with previous epochs consists in our having evolved from status to contract, from an inherited state of affairs to one voluntarily contracted …’67 Thus, social evolution from social relationship based on assigned position to one where the person, action and possessions are freely contracted becomes the path from one stage to another.
Interestingly, Maine’s proposition in terms of evolution from status to contract has implication for argument of ‘natural rights’ and individual equality in the state of nature propounded by the social contractualists. If status, in terms of an assigned role, was the primary deciding factor in social relationships, the individual’s natural rights go without historical evidence. In short, Maine’s position is that paternal power and status-based roles were the initial social forms from which higher forms like contract-based social organizations emerged. Paternal authority does not recognize individual rights, but evolution in the form of the authority of the State does recognize individual rights.
Contrary to Maine, Edward Jenks treats tribe as the earliest form of social organization, from which clan and finally the family evolved. Jenks supports the matriarchal form of authority according to which polyandry, mother right and females succession were primary features of social groups. To support his contention, he cited the examples of certain groups in Australia and Malay Archipelago.68 Matriarchal (both matrilineal and matrilocal) societies are still found in many parts of the world, including India. The female-based societies of Khasi Hills of Meghalaya and also in parts of Kerala could be few examples. For Jenks, then mother’s right-based social group was the initial stage, which later gave way to a patriarchal society.
From the survey of writers mentioned above, we may get an idea of the forces and factors that might have worked in the evolution of social forms and types of authority. But they are neither any indication as to whether the State had any seed in those days nor do they provide any account of how various factors could have worked in effecting a gradual transition from one stage of authority to another, ultimately culminating into authority of the State or state power. In fact, based on the study, African Political Systems by M. Fortes and Evans-Pritchard (1940), which provides an account of a comparative government of primitives, Lowell Field states that ‘Original human society may be presumed to have been stateless’.69 To account for the historical and evolutionary factors, we may turn to MacIver for his treatment of the subject.
Though a detailed account of Marxian theory of the State would capture Engels’s views on the state, we may briefly discuss his ideas here before giving MacIver’s views and the factors that are identified with the Historical-Evolutionary theory. Engels’ views are in class perspective and are based on historical analysis. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), presents a historical survey of evolution of state. This is in terms of evolution of the social groups—sex groups/family and the institution of private property. He used conclusions of the research of Lewis Morgan (Ancient Society, 1877) to construct what he called, ‘the materialist conception of history’.70 The materialist conception of history implies analysis of history based on ownership of property and class struggle between those who own and those who do not.
Based on Morgan’s research, Engels finds that evolution of a series of social groups could be traced before the rise of the state. These kinship-based social groups include sex-ties/family to gens (collection of family) to phratry (kin-brotherhood) to tribe (collection of gens) and to confederacy of tribe.71 Like Morgan, Engels holds that authority evolved from the stage of matriarchy to patriarchy. However, further development of the form of the family and the evolution of the State depended on the emergence of private property and division of society in classes opposed to each other. The State originated to protect the interests of the dominant propertied class. Engels’s analysis is in terms of economic factors and how class division helped in emergence of the state.
R. M. MacIver, a sociologist, has done historical and sociological analysis of origin and development of the state. He identified kinship/family, the institution of property, custom (including religion and magic)/customary law, power/conquest and citizenship that contributed to the origin and development of the state. Unlike the Marxian approach of Engels, MacIver does not treat the State as a product of mere class antagonism. For him, the state, as a part of the larger society, has to reconcile conflicting interests. As such, the State is not continuing as a mere instrument of class interest but is actually a harmonizing factor. We may see this argument of MacIver as the basis of his pluralist position and that the State as the leading agency to reconcile conflicting interests of various groups and agencies in society.
MacIver opposed the social contract theory, as it did not differentiate between society and the state. The Modern State (1926), he maintained that the State may be interpreted as ‘a contractual fabric’ but not society. And by identifying society with the state, the social contract theory never escaped this confusion.72 His sociological position tends to give primacy to society over the state. The state has not existed from eternity but the society has. In his The Modern State, he cited the example of groups of Eskimos (a society) who did not exhibit any recognizable political organization. Study of M. Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, African Political Systems (1940), lends support to MacIver’s conclusions of stateless societies.
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