Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/141

135 among the Indians. There the ever unchanging mode of production could at no time generate such conflicts as a distinction between rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, caused by external conditions. The Iroquois were far from controlling the forces of nature, but within the limits drawn for them by nature they dominated their own production. Apart from a failure of the crops in their little gardens, the exhaustion of the fish supply in their lakes and rivers or of the game stock in their forests, they always knew what would be the outcome of their mode of gaining a living. A more or less abundant supply of food, that would come of it. But the outcome could never be any unpremeditated social upheavals, breaking of gentile bonds or division of the gentiles against one another by conflicting class interests. Production was earned on in the most limited manner; but—the producers controlled their own product. This immense advantage of barbarian production was lost in the transition to civilization. To win it back on the basis of man's present gigantic control of nature and of the free association rendered possible by it, that will be the task of the next generations.

Not so among the Greeks. The advent of private property in herds of cattle and articles of luxury led to an exchange between individuals, to a transformation of products into commodities. Here is the root of the entire revolution that followed. When the producers did no longer consume their own product, but released their hold of it in exchange for another's product, then they lost the control of it. They did not know any more what became of it. There was a possibility that the product might be turned against the producers for the purpose of exploiting and oppressing them. No society can, therefore, retain for any length of time the control of its own