Matriarchy and Gynocracy

       

  (Excerpts from Com. Sharad Patil's Primitive Communism, Matriarchy-Gynocracy and Modern Socialism. Chapter- Matriarchy & Gynocracy)

         Eurpean feudalism had decimated the primitives and tribals and hence Bachofen based his 'Matriarchy' on the study of ancient European literature. Morgan, as an advocate of the American primitives studied them for several decades, wrote     'Ancient Society'. Since then the term 'tribe' has been applied to all primitives. Indian adivasis, including those of the Himlyan adivasi states, are termed scheduled tribes. Ancient Indian literature, including Sanskrit grammar, has a special term for tribe: gana. All other non-gana primitives were called mrga (wild animal), vane-cara, ātavika, etc. It will be shown later that the term 'gana' originated with gynocracy. Morgan has described the Iroquois tribe in detail and after him by Engels. Though the fifty clans were matrilinear, their sachems (headmen) were males. Their basic unit was family. The clan (kula) and phratry (jnāti) councils were constituted by males and the tribal council also was made up of the fifty sachems.² Treating Greek and Roman history similarly Engels intended to show that mankind's history since the rise of gens has been of liberty, equality and fraternity and monarchy came through usurpation by military commanders.³ Hence, socialism would come automatically after socialisation of the means of production. That is why, he concluded his book triumphantly-

'... The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim, because such a career contains the elements of self- destruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knoweldge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes. (Morgan, Ancient Society, p- 552.)' ⁴

             The matrilinear origin of the gens all over the world, as will be shown in the overview of the papers presented in the '1st World Congress on Matriarchy' held at Luxemburg in 2005, came at a certain stage of the development of the means of production. Engels (and Marx) inspite of being cofounders of historical materialism, have deleted this basic factor in their subjective efforts to show the origin of primitive communism. It is the invention of food plants, mostly rice, by women that gave rise to gens everywhere in the world. Woman, due to her fertility, was equated to the Earth Mother, while the sky, due to its barrenness, was equated to the males. The primitives believed that agriculture could flourish only if it is cultivated by women and would perish if even touched by men. The primitives believed that every productive act would fructify only if it was accompanied by magical chants. Thus came into being agricultural magic, the mother of poetics, arts and sciences. The gens, their council, was constituted originaly only by women. Surveying all known accounts of the primitives of the world Frazer has established this in his monumental 'Golden Bough.' But being patrirchal he stopped at male 'kings' and did not go further.

            Engels restricted his research on Greek gens of the heroic period which ended their gynocratic epoch. That is why he concluded that kingship was usurpation.

       R. Briffault, in his IIIrd volume of 'The Mothers', assumes that mankind everywhere started with matriarchy, meaning rule of mothers and not women. He does not link it with agriculture and agricultural magic. The great British Marxist G. Thomson, who expanded his 'Aschylus and Athens' (1966) into multivolumed 'Studies in Ancient Greek Society', vacillates between traditional Marxism and gynocracy and hence leaves the relation between matriarchy and gynocracy undecided. The Luxemberg ‘World Congress on Matriarchy’ is named after matriarchy and hence the tie remains. 

            I have dwelt on the organic connection of matriarchy and gynocracy to show that gynocracy was not accidental and exceptional, but normal development of human society. Gynocracy's importance in the present context is not limited to its historical inevitability, but in the fact that the trinity of liberty, equality and democracy did not originate either in the patriacrchal tribal slave society or in the bourgecis republican society but in gynocracy, in which it was not formal but substantial. Tirbal society was based on blood kinship (sālohita). Capitalism has brought human society to extreme alienaton. Ties even in the nuclear family verge on alienation. Socialism will have to sublimate non-Kinship ties.  

Ref.:

1.      Stalin, J. ,Problems of Leninism, Moscow, 1945,p.14.

2.      F.Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Moscow, 1968, pp. 83-98.

3.      Ibid., p.161.

4.      Ibid.,p.175.

5.      Ibid.,p.161.