|
Max Horkheimer (Hrsg.): Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 3. Jg 1933, Heft 3 |
|
|
of origin of primitive societies. Upon the view taken concerning it depends the conception of the entire course of social history and of the factors which have been at. work throughout the process. If it be supposed that the family, in much the same form as it is now found in Christian European societies, has existed from the first, or from a very early stage of social history, it must then be postulated that all the social phenomena, relations, and institutions which are indissolubly connected with that form of social group are likewise coeval with social origins. The principle of private property giving a man individual right over his wife and children, and setting a precedent for all other forms of personal ownership must be regarded as having been fully developed from the beginning. The principle of authority, giving the male head of the family power over his wife, transferring her on marriage from her home to his, and bestowing upon him the like possessive claims over his children, must be supposed to have been established in the most primitive societies and to have been ready to blossom out into all other forms of authoritarian power. The primitive societies conceived as composed of paternal families would be in fact individualistic societies, consisting of heads of families, in which every male member had personal rights of property and authority to defend, and in which, by virtue of the principle of paternal authority, the prepotence of one or more senior patriarchs would be automatically operative. The social historian who holds the view that paternal families existed from the first and constituted the foundation of human society will not have to enquire into the origin of the above principles. He will not be concerned with tracing the evolution of marriage institutions, of systems of sexual morality, of sentiments of pudicity, which are intended to safeguard them. It will be superfluous for him to study the rise of individual economic power. He will have no difficulty in accounting for the authority of the state or its representatives. For all the elements of a fully developed individualistic economic society, similar in all essentials to those of Western civilisation, will be by his hypothesis, present ab origine. Upon that view depends therefore much more than the elucidation of the nature of the most primitive social groups. Nothing less than the whole conception of social history and of the scope, principles and methods of social science is involved. And in fact if the views and treatment of that history and that science by those who hold that human society arose out of paternal families be perused with reference to any social phenomenon, it will be found that their entire scheme of social science and the ideological principles founded upon it are determined by the initial hypothesis.
Max Horkheimer (Hrsg.): Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 3. Jg 1933, Heft 3. Librairie Felix Alcan, Paris 1933, Seite 359. Digitale Volltext-Ausgabe bei Wikisource, URL: https://de.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Seite:Zeitschrift_f%C3%BCr_Sozialforschung_Jahrgang_2_Heft_3.pdf/41&oldid=- (Version vom 31.5.2022)
