The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

The consanguine family is extinct. Even the most primitive peoples mentioned in history provide no demonstrable example of it. Yet, we are forced to conclude that it must have existed by the Hawaiian system of consanguinity, which is still in force throughout Polynesia today. This system expresses degrees of blood relationship that could only arise under this form of family. We are further compelled to this conclusion by the entire subsequent development of the family, which necessitates that form as a foundational precursor.

2. The Punaluafamilie Punaluan family. If the first progress in social organization consisted in excluding parents and children from mutual sexual intercourse, the second was the exclusion of sister and brother. Due to the greater equality of age between those involved, this progress was infinitely more important but also more difficult than the first. It took place gradually, beginning with the exclusion of biological siblings (that is, from the maternal side) from sexual intercourse, first in individual cases, gradually becoming the rule (exceptions still occurred in Hawaii in this century), and ending with the prohibition of marriage even between collateral siblings—that is, according to our terminology, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of siblings. According to Morgan Lewis Henry Morgan, American anthropologist, this forms "an excellent illustration of how the principle of natural selection works." There is no question that tribes in which inbreeding was restricted by this progress were forced to develop more rapidly and fully than those where sibling marriage remained the rule and commandment. The magnitude of the impact of this progress is proven by the institution of the Gens kinship group/clan, which sprang directly from it and went far beyond its original intent. This institution formed the basis of the social order of most, if not all, barbarian peoples on Earth, and from it, we transition directly into civilization in Greece and Rome.

Every primitive family had to split apart after a few generations at the latest. The original communal...