II. The Organization of Human Society

Let us now regard man from the standpoint of the materialist conception of history at the stage at which we left him in the last chapter, at the boundary which divided him from the rest of the animal world. What is it that raises him above it? Do there exist between him and them only gradual differences or is there also an essential difference? Neither as a thinking nor as a moral being is man essentially different from the animals. Does not perhaps the difference lie in the fact that he produces, that is, adapts material found in nature by means of change of form or of place to his purposes? This activity is, however, also found in the animal world. To leave out of account many insects, such as bees and ants we find among many warm blooded animals, nay, even among many fishes, species of productive activity, namely, the production of refuges and dwellings, with underground buildings, and so on. And, however much of this productive activity is also the product and result of inherited instincts and the positions, they are often so suitably adapted to various circumstances, that consciousness, the knowledge of causal connections, must also play a part thereby.

Or is it the use of tools which raises man above the animals? Also note that among animals we find at least the beginnings of the application of tools, of branches, of trees for defence, of stones for cracking nuts and so on. This intelligence as well as the development of the feet to hands enables the apes to do that.

Thus not the production of means of consumption and not the use of tools distinguishes man from the animals. What, however, alone distinguishes the former is the production of tools, which serve for production, for defence or attack. The animal can at the most find the tool in nature: it is not capable of inventing such. It may produce things for its immediate use, prepare dwellings, collect provisions but it does not think so far as to produce things which will not serve for direct consumption, but the production of the means of consumption.

With the production of the means of production the animal man begins to become the human man; with that he breaks away from the animal world to found his own empire, an empire with its own kind of development, which is wholly unknown in the rest of nature, in which nothing similar is to be found.

So long as the animal only produces with the organs provided by nature, or only uses tools which nature gives him, it cannot rise above the means thus provided for them by nature. His development only occurs in the manner that his own organism develops itself, his own organs unfold themselves – the brain included: a slow and unconscious process carried on by means of the struggle for life, which the animal can in no way hurry on by its conscious activity.

On the other hand the discovery and production of the tool – the word employed in the widest sense – means that man consciously and purposely gives himself new organs, or strengthens or lengthens his natural organs, so that he can still better or easier produce the same that these organs produced, but besides that he is in a position to arrive at results which were formerly quite unattainable for him. But as man is not simply an animal endowed with higher intelligence and hands – the necessary assumption of the application and production of tools, – but also must have been from the very beginning a social animal, the discovery and production of a tool by a specially gifted individual – a Marx or Kant or Aristotle inhabiting the trees of the primitive tropical forests who had found it was not lost with his death. His herd took up the invention and carried it on, won with it an advantage in the struggle for life, so that their descendants could flourish better than the other members of their kind. But further perspicacity which was to be found in the herd served the purpose from now on of rendering the discovery more complete or to invent new things.

Even if a certain degree of intelligence and the development of the hand forms the necessary condition for the discovery and production of tools, so the social character of man afforded the conditions for the continual addition of new and the improvement of old discoveries, thus leading to a continual development of the technic. The slow and unconscious process of the development of the individuals through the struggle for life, as it ruled the entire remaining organic world, gives way more and more in the human world in favour of the conscious transformation, adaptation and improvement of the organs, a development which in its beginning, measured by modern standards, is extremely slow and hard to notice, but which all the same goes much quicker than the natural selection. The technical progress forms from now on the foundation of the entire development of man. On that and not on any special divine spark rests all by which man is distinguished from the animals.

Every single step forwards on this path of technical development is a conscious and intentional. Each arises from the endeavor to increase the powers of man over the limits set by nature. But each of these technical advances brings also of necessity effects with it, which were not intended by its authors and could not be, because they were not in a position even to expect them, effects, which just as much as natural selection could be called adaptation to the surroundings, surroundings, however, which men had artificially modified. In these adaptations, however, consciousness, the knowledge of the new surroundings, and its requirements, again plays a role, this nevertheless is not that of an independent directory force.

Let us seek, in order to get a clearer idea of what has been said, to give ourselves an idea what consequences it was bound to have when primitive man arrived at the first tool, where he joined the stone and the stick, which the ape had already used, to make a hammer, an axe or a spear. Naturally the description which here follows can only be a hypothetical one, as we have no witness of the whole process. But it is not to serve as a proof, only as an illustration. We make it as simple as possible, disregarding for example the influence which the fishing could have had on primitive man.

So soon as primitive man possessed the spear, he was put in a position to hunt still bigger animals. Was his food up to then principally from tree fruits and insects, as well as probably little birds and young birds, now he could kill even bigger animals, meat became from now on more important for his food. The majority of the bigger animals, however, live on the earth, not in the trees, hunting thus drew him from his airy regions down to the earth. Still more. The animals most adapted for the chase, the ruminants, are rare in the primitive forest. The more man became a hunter, the more could he emerge from the forest in which primitive man was hid.

This account, as I have said, is purely hypothetical. The process of evolution may have been the reverse. Equally as the discovery of the tool and the weapons could have driven men out of the primitive forest to draw forth into open grass land where the trees were farther apart, just as well might forces which drove primitive man from his original abode have been the spur to the discovery of weapons and tools. Let us assume, for instance, that the number of men increased over their means of subsistence in a glacial period, say the glacier of the central Asiatic mountain range sank low down and forced the inhabitants from their forests into the grass plains which bordered it or that an increasing dryness of the climate ever more and more cleared the forest and caused more and more grass land to come up in it. In all these cases primitive man would have been obliged to give up his free life and to move about on the earth; he was obliged from now on to seek for animal food, and could no longer in the same degree feed himself from tree fruits. The new method of life induced him to use often stones and sticks and brought him nearer to the discovery of the first tools and weapons.

Whatever development we accept, the first or the second – and both could have taken place independent of each other at different points – from both of them we see clearly the close connection which exists between new means of production and new methods of life and new needs.

Each of these factors necessarily produces the other, each becomes necessarily the cause of changes, which in their turn hide new fresh changes in their bosom. Thus every discovery produces inevitable changes, which give rise to other discoveries, and therewith brings new needs and methods of life which again call forth new discoveries and so on – a chain of endless development which becomes so much quicker and complicated, the farther it proceeds and the more the possibility and facility of new discoveries grows.

Let us consider the consequences which the rise of hunting as a source of food for man and his emergence from the primitive forest was bound to draw with it.

Besides the meat, man took in place of the tree fruits, roots and fruits of the grasses, corn and maize into his bill of fare. In the primitive forest a cultivation of plants is impossible and to clear the primitive forest is beyond the power of primitive man. The latter could not, however, even arrive at this idea. He lived from tree fruits; to plant fruit trees which would first bear fruit after many years assumes that already a high degree of culture and settlement has been attained. On the other hand the planting of grasses in meadows and steppes is much easier than in the primitive forest and can be brought about with much simpler tools. The thought of planting grasses, which often bear fruits after only a few weeks, is, however, easier conceivable than that of planting trees. Cause and effect are so nearly connected in this case that their dependence is easier to see and even the unsettled primitive man might expect to be able to hope to be able to hold out the period between seed time and harvest in the neighborhood of the cultivated ground.

On the other hand man so soon as he left the primitive forest was far more at the mercy of climatic changes than in his primitive home. In the thick forest the changes of temperature between day and night are much less than on the open plain, on which during the day a burning sun rules and by night a powerful radiation and loss of heat. Storms are also less noticeable in the forest than in a woodless territory, and against rain and hail this latter offers much less protection than the almost impenetrable foliage of the forest. Thus man forced on to the plains was bound to feel a need for shelter and clothing which the primitive man in the tropical forest never felt. If the man apes had already built themselves formal nests for the night repose he was bound to go farther and build walls and roofs for protection, or to seek shelter in caves or holes. On the other hand it was no great step to clothe himself in the skins of animals, which remained over after the flesh had been taken out of them. It was certainly the need for protection against cold which allowed mankind to aspire for the possession of fire. Its technical ability he could only gradually learn after he had used it a long time. The warmth which it gave out was on the other hand at once evident. How man came to the use of fire will perhaps never be certainly known. But it is certain that man in the primitive forest had no need for it as a source of heat, and was not able amid the continual damp to maintain it. Only in a drier region, where greater quantities of dry fire material were to be found at intervals, moss, leaves, brushwood, could fires arise which made man acquainted with fire. Perhaps through lightning or more likely from the sparks of a flint, the first tool of primitive man, or from the heat which arose from boring holes in hard wood.

We see how the entire life of man, his needs, his dwelling, his means of sustenance were changed, and one discovery finally brought numerous others in its train, so soon as it was once made, so soon as the making of a spear or an axe had been achieved. In all these transformations consciousness played a great part, but the consciousness of other generations than those which had discovered the spear or the axe. And the tasks which were presented to the consciousness of the later generations, were not set by that of the former, they arose by necessity and spontaneously as soon as the discovery was made.

But with the change of dwelling, of the needs of the winning of sustenance, of the entire method of life, are the effects of the discovery not exhausted.

The division of labour among the organs in the animal organism has certain limits, since they are hide bound to the animal organism, and cannot be changed at pleasure and their number is limited. On the other hand a limit is herewith set for the variety of the functions which an animal organism is capable of performing. It is, for instance, impossible that the same limb should serve equally well for holding things, for running and for flying, not to speak of other specializations.

The tool on the other hand can be changed by man. He can adapt it to a simple definite purpose. Is this fulfilled then he puts it on one side, it does not hinder him in other work for which he requires quite other tools. If the number of his limbs is limited, his tools are innumerable.

But not simply the number of the organs of the animal organism is limited, but also the force with which any of them can be moved. It can be in no case greater than the strength of the individual himself, to whom they belong, they must always be less, since it has to nourish all its organs besides the one in motion. On the other hand, the force which moves a tool is by no means confined to one individual. So soon as it is separated from the human individual, many individuals can unite to operate it, nay, they can use other than human forces for the purpose, say the beasts of burden, again water, wind or steam.

Thus in contrast to the animal organism the development of the artificial organs of man is unlimited, at least measured by human ideas. They find their limit only in the mass of the moving forces, which Sun and Earth place at the disposal of man.

The separation of the artificial organs of man from his personality has, however, still other effects. If the organs of the animal organisms are bound up with it, that means that every individual has the same organs at his disposal. The sole exception is formed by the organs of reproduction. Only in this region is a division of labour to be found among the higher organisms. Every other division of labour in the animal organism rests simply on the fact that certain individuals take over certain functions for a certain period, for example, the sentry duty, as leader, etc., without requiring for the purpose organs which are different to those of other individuals.

The discovery of the tool on the other hand made it possible that in a society certain individuals should exclusively use certain tools or any way so much oftener that they understand its use far better than any one else. Thus we come to a form of division of labour in human society, which is of quite another kind from the modest beginnings of such in the animal societies In the latter there remains, with all the division of labour a being by itself, which possesses all the organs, which it requires for its support. In human society that is less the case, the farther the division of labour advances in it. The more developed is this, so much the greater the number of the organs which society has at its disposal for the gaining of their sustenance and the maintenance of their method of life, but so much the greater also the number of the organs, which are required, and so much more dependent the organs over which the individual commands. So much the greater the power of society over nature, but so much the more helpless the individual outside of society, so much the more dependent from it. The animal society, which arises as a natural growth, can never raise its members above nature. On the other hand human society forms for the human individual a nature which is a quite peculiar world, apart from the rest, a world which apparently interferes with its being made more than nature, with which latter it imagines itself the better able to cope the more the division of labour increases.

And the latter is practically just as unlimited as the technical progress itself; it finds its limits only in the expansion of the human race.

If we found above, that the animal society is an organism of a peculiar kind, different from the plant and animal, so we now find that the human society again forms a peculiar organism, which is not only different from the plant and animal individual, but is essentially different from the animal society.

Before all there come two distinguishing features into account. We have seen that the animal organism itself possesses all the organs which it requires for its own existence, while the human individual under the advanced division of labour cannot live by itself without society – the Robinson Crusoes, who without any means produce everything for themselves are only to be found in children’s story books and scientific works of Bourgeois economists, who believe that the best way to discover the laws of society is to completely ignore it. Man is in his whole nature dependent on society, it rules him, only through the peculiar nature of this is he to be understood.

The peculiar nature of society is, however, in a continual change, because in distinction to the animal society human society is always subject to development in consequence of the advance of their technic. Animal society develops itself probably only in the same degree as the animal species which forms it. Far faster does the process of development proceed in human society. But nothing can be falser than to conceive it according to the nature of the development of the individual, and distinguish the ways of youth, of maturity, of decay and death in it. So long as the sources of force hold out over which the earth commands, therefore so long the foundation of technical progress does not disappear, we have no decay and death of human society to expect, this will, with the advance in technic ever more and more advance and is in this sense immortal.

Every society is modeled by the technical apparatus at its command, and the people who set it going, for which purpose they enter into the complicated social relations. So long as this technical apparatus keeps on improving, and the people who move it, neither diminish in number nor in mental nor physical strength, there can be no talk of a dying out of society.

That sort of thing has never occurred as a permanent condition to any society as yet. Temporarily certainly it occurs, in consequence of peculiarities with which we will make acquaintance later on, that the social relations which sprang from social needs, get petrified and hinder the technical apparatus and the growth of the members of society in number and in intellectual and physical force, nay even give rise to a reactionary movement. That can, however, to speak historically, never last long, sooner or later these fetters of society are burst, either by internal movement, revolutions, or, and what is oftener the case, by impulse from without by wars. Again society changes from time to time a part of its members, its boundaries or its names and it can seem to the observer as if the society had shown traces of old age, and was now dead. In reality, however, if we want to take a simile from the animal organism, it has only been suffering from a disease from which it has emerged with renewed strength. Thus did for instance the society of the Roman imperial times not die but rejuvenated through German blood, they began after the migrations of the peoples with partially new people to improve and build up their technical apparatus.