<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="01" > preface</h1>
The clan commune is a form of social organization in primitive society that is linked by blood relations, and it is the basic unit of social economy. Clan members are generally multiplied and continued from common ancestors. They all live together, work together, and distribute the food they get together, and there is no distinction between them, rich and poor, and they follow the principle of equality for all. Clan communes are a necessary stage in the development of human society, and they have gone through two stages of development - matrilineal clan communes and patrilineal clan communes.
Matrilineal clan communes appeared around the late Paleolithic period, when the most basic unit of society was matrilineal kinship. During this period, women were mainly engaged in gathering, production and other work, and the harvest was more stable than that of men engaged in hunting, so that they occupied a dominant position in production and life. With the continuous development of social productive forces and changes in the division of labor in society, men gradually became the main force of social production, and matrilineal clan communes were gradually replaced by patrilineal clan communes. During this period, men dominated production, life and public affairs.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="02" > transition from matrilineal clan communes to patrilineal clan communes, private ownership began to sprout</h1>
During the period of matrilineal clan communes, there was a simple division of labour according to gender and age. Young and middle-aged men are mainly engaged in hunting, fishing and other power-type labor, while women are responsible for gathering, processing food, managing debris and other work, because women's collection work is more stable than men's fishing and hunting harvest, so women's collection has become the fundamental guarantee for maintaining the survival of the clan, and women play an important role in economic life.
During the period of the matrilineal clan commune, the matrilineal blood relationship was always used as the link, and the lineage and property were calculated according to the mother's side, and the matrilineal inheritance system was implemented. The form of marriage was practised in the early days with the Punaluan marriage.
That is, a woman of one blood group marries a group of men of another blood group, or a man of one blood group and a group of women of another blood group intermarry.
Women are active in matrilineal clan communes
In this form of group marriage, a very common phenomenon has emerged: brothers share wives and sisters share husbands. The child lives with his mother, knowing only his mother, not his father (there is no concept of "father"). In the late matrilineal clan, the form of marriage changed, and a new form of marriage appeared, the couple marriage.
Dual marriage: refers to a form of marriage in which a man and a woman maintain a relatively stable and relatively stable conjugal life for a period of time, that is, a woman (or man) has a main husband (or main wife) among many husbands (or wives), which is a transitional form of transition from group marriage to monogamy.
During the period of the matrilineal clan commune, the supreme authority of the matrilineal clan was the Council, which had the right to decide all major matters of the clan. The head of the clan is elected by all the members of the clan, usually by women, and the job of the clan leader is to arrange the production and life of the clan members.
With the continuous improvement and development of social productive forces, the role and status of men in agriculture, animal husbandry, handicrafts and other productive labor activities became more and more important, so matriarchy began to transition to patriarchy, and finally gradually formed a patrilineal clan commune. During this period, the means of production and subsistence were controlled by men, and the head of the clan was changed from a woman to an adult man. At this time, the social status of men is higher than that of women, and women have also retreated from dominance to subordination in economic life.
Lineage and property in patrilineal clan communes are calculated on the basis of patrilineal lineage. In terms of marriage form, the dual marriage of the matrilineal clan has also been replaced by monogamy, and the wives live and live with their husbands. The purpose of this system of marriage is to ensure that the children are from a father and that they inherit all the property of the family.
In the period of the patrilineal clan commune, due to the gradual increase of the productive forces, the fruits of people's labor began to appear surplus in addition to basic daily consumption, so that a phenomenon of rich and poor differentiation gradually arose within the clan, and private property began to sprout.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="03" > the emergence of private property and the development of the division of labor, prompting the emergence of classes</h1>
In the early days of primitive society, the level of social productivity was low, and people could only survive through mutual cooperation, joint labor, and equal distribution of the harvest. However, in the later period of primitive society, due to the rapid development of agriculture and animal husbandry and the emergence of metal tools, the production activities that originally required the cooperation of many people to complete became only a few people to complete. For example, in the past, hunting and fishing usually required many people to work together to get something, but now only a few people are needed to be competent.
private ownership
In this way, group labour, which is based on clan members, is gradually replaced by individual labour in the family unit, and the relations of social production undergo fundamental changes. We know that when clan members work together, livestock, land and other means of production belong to the clan collective, and when individual labor gradually becomes the main mode of labor, the means of production gradually transition from collective to individual family ownership, and the products of labor are also changed from the common ownership and common distribution of the clan in the past to the private property of the individual family and their own distribution.
Thus, private property emerged.
At the same time, with the development of the productive forces, the first great social division of labor occurred in the late primitive society, and the animal husbandry in the agricultural tribes was separated.
The first great social division of labor brought many major changes to the society of the time. Since the products produced by each tribe in addition to meeting the needs of their own tribes, there are often many different surplus products, they create conditions for inter-tribal exchange. With the wide application of metal tools in daily life and labor, the scale of agriculture has become larger and larger, and the types of people's operations have also increased, so the second social division of labor has begun. In this division of labour, the handicrafts in agriculture were also separated, and commodities for the purpose of direct exchange appeared. The emergence of private property and the development of the social division of labor made the emergence of classes an inevitable reality.
Commodity exchange
In the kinship clan, the labor collective embodies a sense of democracy, complete equality between people, and no exploitation or oppression. However, with the increase of the population of each clan and tribe, in order to survive, the scope of labor gradually expanded, and the boundaries began to be divided among the various clans and tribes, and after the germination of private ownership, because the material resources within the labor scope of each clan and tribe were different, the types and quantities of products created by their labor were also different, so exchange was generated. Exchange is premised on the private ownership of products, a form of reproduction for the diversity of survival needs.
In the final analysis, private property is a product of the untimely increase in the productive forces of primitive society. The invention and widespread use of new production tools such as metal tools and cattle farming further contributed to the emergence of surplus products and commodities. The unfair distribution of surplus products and commodities became the earliest form of private property. With the advent of private property, the distribution of wealth in society became more uneven, and the inequality of wealth led to the emergence of classes.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="04" > irreconcilable class contradictions that eventually led to the birth of the state</h1>
With the increasing prosperity of commodity production and commodity exchange, the gap between rich and poor between clans gradually increased. The clan chief used his power to become richer and richer, becoming a nobleman in the clan. At the same time, as a result of the great increase in the productivity of labour, the surplus products of labour became more and more abundant, so that the enslavement of others became a lucrative affair, and the clan aristocracy gradually evolved into slave owners, who forced poor clan members and war captives to work for themselves. The first form of exploitation in human history, slavery, emerged.
Slaves brutally exploited by their slave owners
As a result, classes began to form, and clan nobles increasingly occupied the property of clan collectives such as livestock and land, and gradually transformed into a slave-owning class. The poor clan members and war captives were reduced to slaves and exploited by the slave-owning class.
In the eyes of these slave owners, slaves are just a talking tool, they cruelly exploit and squeeze slaves to obtain more benefits, and slaves often use destruction of production tools, passive sabotage, flight and other ways to resist the cruel exploitation of slave owners, thus making the contradictions and struggles between slaves and slave owners increasingly fierce.
This was followed by a drastic change in the administration of the clan, with the emergence of a military democracy controlled by military chiefs, a form of management in the transition of the clan to a state apparatus. Under the military democracy, the power of military chiefs and clan aristocrats (slave owners) was constantly strengthened, and eventually they turned military democracy into a coercive organ for the oppression of the people. In order to protect the interests of their own class from slaves, they established a set of violent institutions, including the army, the police, prisons, etc., through which they strengthened the rule of slaves and suppressed slaves' resistance and struggle.
Thus, as the product of irreconcilable contradictions between two opposing classes, the state came into being.
The state has never existed, it is an instrument of class rule, an irreconcilable product of class contradictions. The emergence of the state marked the complete disintegration of clan society. The first state in human history to emerge was a slave state. The earliest slave states appeared in the Nile, Two Rivers, Indus, Yellow rivers, and the Aegean region.
Countries of the world
When classes exist in society, class contradictions are inevitable due to differences in interests and demands. When the contradictions between the two opposing classes are irreconcilable, a new type of social group emerges, and the state gives the economically dominant class "new means of suppressing and exploiting the oppressed classes." Engels pointed out that the state is the inevitable result of the development of human society. The emergence of the state also marks that the clan commune has lost its practical significance, has lost the inevitability of its existence, and that it has become obsolete in history.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="05" > concluded</h1>
Clan communes (clan societies) are based on very low productivity, and when productivity develops further, it changes. By the time of the Metal Ware Era, due to the rapid development of production, the patrilineal clans replaced the matrilineal clans, and the foundation of the clan commune of blood relations became thinner and thinner; private ownership emerged and gradually replaced the public ownership system, so that the gap between the rich and the poor gradually increased, which led to the outbreak of contradictions between the slave-owning class and the slave class. From then on, clan society began to disintegrate, and was eventually replaced by the state.
The difference between clan society and the state is that clan society is linked by blood relations, while the state divides its citizens by region; clan society has democratic management organs; and the state has set up violent organs such as armies and prisons. Although the slave state is full of barbaric exploitation and oppression, it is a historical progress compared with primitive society, because it breaks the most fundamental narrowness and limitations of clan society, and it creates a very favorable condition for the further development of the material civilization and spiritual culture of the entire human race.