II

So long as the savage hordes, composed of 30 or 40 members, are nomadic, they wander on the face of the earth, and fix wherever they find the means of sustenance. It is, probably, in following the seashores and the course of the rivers which supplied them with food that the savages peopled the continents. Such was the opinion of Morgan. The Bushmen and the Veddahs of Ceylon, who live in this state of savagery, do not dream of vindicating the right of property even in the territories of the chase – the most archaic form of landed property.

Primitive man, who does not till the soil, and who supports himself by hunting and fishing, and lives on a diet of wild fruits, eked out by milk, must have access to vast territories for his own sustenance and that of his herds: it has been computed, I know not with what accuracy, that each savage, for his subsistence, requires three square miles of land. Hence, when a country begins to be populous, it becomes necessary to divide the land among the tribes.

The earliest distribution of the land was into pasture and territories of chase common to the tribe, for the idea of individual ownership of the land is of ulterior and tardier growth. “The earth is like fire and water, that cannot be sold,” say the Omahas. The Maoris are so far from conceiving that the land is vendible, that, “although the whole tribe might have consented to a sale, they would still claim with every new-born child among them an additional payment, on the ground that they had only parted with their own rights, and could not sell those of the unborn. The government of New Zealand could settle the difficulty only by buying land for a tribal annuity, in which every child that is born acquired a share.” Among the Jews and Semitic peoples there was no private property in land. “The land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.” (Leviticus xxv., 23.) Christians set the commandment of their God at defiance. Full of reverence as they are for Jehovah and His laws, still greater is their veneration for almighty Capital.

Mankind underwent a long and painful process of development before arriving at private property in land.

Among the Fuegians vast tracts of unoccupied land circumscribe the territories of chase belonging to the tribe. Cæsar relates that the Suevi and Germans founded their pride upon having vast solitudes round their frontiers. (De Bello Gallico iv., 3.) Savage and barbarian peoples limit their territories by neutral zones, because an alien found upon the lands of any tribe is hunted like a wild beast, and mutilated or put to death if taken. Heckewelder reports that the Redskins cut off the noses and ears of every individual found on their territory, and sent him back to inform his chief that on the next occasion they would scalp him. The feudal saying, Qui terre a, guerre a, held good in primitive times; the violations of the territories of chase are among the chief causes of dispute and warfare between neighbouring tribes. The unoccupied areas, established to prevent incursions, came, at a later period, to serve as market places where the tribes met to exchange their belongings. Harold, in 1063, defeated the Cambrians, who made perpetual inroads on the territories of the Saxons; he made a covenant with them that every man of their nation found in arms east of the intrenchment of Offa should have his right hand cut off. The Saxons, on their side, raised parallel trenches, and the space enclosed by the two walls became neutral ground for the merchants of both nations. Anthropologists have noted with a feeling of surprise that the sexes among savage peoples are isolated and live apart; there is reason for supposing that this separation of the sexes was introduced when it was sought to put a stop to the primitive promiscuity and prevent the sexual intercourse that was the rule between brother and sister. This separation of the sexes within the limits of the tribe, necessary in the interests of morality, was upheld and promoted by a differentiation of pursuits and by property. The man is habitually charged with the defence and the procuring of food, while on the woman devolves the culinary preparation of the food, the fabrication of the clothes or household utensils, and the management of the house once it has sprung into existence. It is, as Marx observes, the division of labour which begins and which is based on sex: property, in its origin, was confined to a single sex.

The man is a hunter and a warrior; he possesses the horses and arms; to the woman belong the household utensils and other objects appropriate to her pursuits; these belongings she is obliged to transport on her head or back, in the same way that she carries her child, which belongs to her and not to the father, generally unknown.

The introduction of agriculture enhanced the separation of the sexes, while it was the determinant cause of the parcelling of the lands, the common property of the tribe. The man continues a warrior and a hunter; he resigns to his wife the labour of the fields consenting, on occasion, to assist at harvest time; among pastoral peoples he reserves to himself the care of the flocks and herds, which comes to be looked on as a nobler pursuit than agriculture; it is, in truth, the less arduous of the two. The Kaffirs consider the tending of the herds as an aristocratic occupation; they call the cow the black pearl. The earliest laws of the Aryans forbade agriculture, thought degrading, to the two highest classes, the Brahmins and the Kshattryas, or warriors.

“For a Brahmin and a Kshattryas agriculture is blamed by the virtuous, as the plough with the iron point injures the earth and the beings in it.”

As the use of a thing constitutes the sole condition of its ownership, landed property, on its first establishment among primitive nations, was allotted to the women. In all societies in which the matriarchal form of the family has maintained itself, we find landed property held by the woman; such was the case among the Egyptians, the Nairs, the Touaregs of the African desert, and the Basques of the Pyrenees; in the time of Aristotle two-thirds of the territory of Sparta belonged to the women.

Landed property, which was ultimately to constitute for its owner a means of emancipation and of social supremacy, was, at its origin, a cause of subjection; the women were condemned to the rude labour of the fields, from which they were emancipated only by the introduction of servile labour.

Agriculture, which led to private property in land, introduced the servile labour, which in the course of centuries has borne the names of slave-labour, bond-labour, and wage-labour.