Золотарев А.М. Происхождение экзогамии. Summary

1. The many theories on the origin of exogamy hitherto set forth cannot be considered as satisfactory. They all repose on a worthless methodological foundation and therefore they simply contradict the main mass of facts. The theories of Mac Lennan, Lebock, Lowie, Westermark, Frazer, Atkinson Lang, Freud, Durkheim, Briffault and others cannot undergo any serious critic, both in regard to method as well as to facts.

2. They search the root of exogamy out of female infanticide, of women’s capture, of biological, psychological and sexual instincts, of man’s jealousy, of ethic repugnance to incest, finally, they try to bind it with the religious feeling. Yet, the cardinal point–the means of material production – is thereby overlooked. The origin of exogamy, deeply rooted in the economic structure of society, can be fully brought to light merely by adopting the method of dialectic materialism, which shows exogamy as a stadium phenomen, which appears at a certain degree of social development.

3. The origin of exogamy is often considered in connection with the totemic group. It is a wrong conception. Not the least faulty is to bind exogamy with family. The social development departs from the local group, or horde. The latter appears as an economic cell of the society of hunters-gatherers. Among the predominant part of hunter tribes (vedda, bushmen, semanga) marriages between members of the same local group are prohibited. In Australia local exogamy prevails in all groups, save those, which are matrilineal, and where the inheritance of possessions descending in the material line, has destroyed the local exogamy. Hence we assume, that local exogamy is to be considered as the prime form of exogamy.

4. It is not the prohibition of marriages between members of the same local group that constitutes the main point of the problem but the engagement to marry out of the group. Hence the positive, rather than the negative moment is the primary one.

5. This positive engagement derives from the custom to exchange women. The latter was based on the prominent part, which women held in the primeval household, beeing therefore highly estimated as a labour power. The local group making her women marry out of the group attempted at the same time to secure for her men women of other groups. Since a positive engagement of marriage out of the group was formed, it was then followed by the negative result – the prohibition of marriage between members of the same group.

6. Marriages between members of different groups, which brought to the exchange of women, increase with the progress of tribal economic intercommunications. The latter reflect the ₉development of the productive powers and the accumulation of contradictions in the midst of the primeval communist society. Marriages between people of different groups are giving important economic privileges, as, for example, the right of hunting on the wife’s grounds.

7. The increasing marriages out of the group are accompanied and at the same time stimulated by the growth of the system of mutual services. The latter comprises a certain amount of engagements compelling the delivery of the big part of the booty to the wife’s relations. Due to this system each member of the group, giving up his own production, is living from the production of the other. There results a peculiar form of communized labour, which is common among hunter tribes.

8. The violation of exogamous rights injures the economic interests of the whole group and therefore is severely punished.

9. The system of class marriages, to which researches payed a great attention, is but of small importance. Class marriages are no more than a system of kinsmen groups dependent on the existing form of marriage.

10. Cross cousin marriage gives birth to a four class system (Urabunna) and the eight class system comes forth by marriage, when the man marries the daughter’s daughter of the brother of his mother’s mother.

11. The cross cousin marriage is the earliest form hitherto known and is to be found each time, when a simpliest social organization is at hand: there is exchange of women between two local groups and a difference of two generations existing in each of these groups The cross cousin marriage leads to the other form, when the man marries the daughter’s daughter of the brother of his mother’s mother.

12. Rivers is in the wrong, when he thinks that the system of dual organization is the earliest institution. The sections appear later on as a production of advanced intertribal connections and take place by the fusion of conjoined hordes.