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Too little known fact: Marx and Engels’ work was significantly influenced by American anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan’s study of the practices (which he called “communist in living”) of the Iroquois.
Yet we keep giving credit for foundational leftist theory to Europeans.
Yet we keep giving credit for foundational leftist theory to Europeans.
Also, Morgan himself was a frankly embarrassing person. He was co-founder of a secret club of white settlers who called themselves the New Confederacy of the Iroquois, dressed and played at being Indigenous while they read each other shitty poetry.
The only reason that Morgan ever knew anything about the Iroquois beyond his ridiculous club is the fact that he actually, totally by accident, met an actual member of the Iroquois League, a Seneca man named Ely S. Parker.
Parker gave Morgan and his club actual information about Iroquois, thus making Morgan an anthropological pioneer, and in exchange Morgan gave Parker connections in a white dominated society and helped him gain admission into the Polytechnic Institute.
Ely S. Parker, by the way, later became the first Indigenous person in the U.S. to become Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
Morgan’s work, derived from what he learned from Parker, was a major influence for both Marx and Engels (as well as other theorists like Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud), and that influence can especially be seen in the development of Engels’ theory of dialectal materialism.
