Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy.
Amsterdam 1994. Chapter 2 The Weber's private, sex defined values.
45
The overt value statements on masculinity and femininity in Weber's political writings are
complemented by those in his scientific writings and, indirectly, in Ehefrau und Mutter. These
statements are better understood when read in the historical context of the discussion on
'the matriarchate'.
In the feminist debate of the turn of the century the concept of 'patriarchy' was central to the
analysis of the relations between women and men. Both socialists and feminists saw
'patriarchy' as a historical formation which formed the basis of all oppression and exploitation
of women by men; it was supposed to have its origin in a victory over 'matriarchy', in a
process of usurpation of power by men over women which took place at a certain point in the
evolution of society.
The theory of 'the matriarchy' or 'group marriage' as an origin of both family and society was
one of the many 19th century theories on the 'evolution of society' through a succession of
'stages': from 'primitive' by way of 'barbarian', to 'civilized'. Romantic philosophers like
Rousseau - in reaction to Hobbes who assumed an original state of war in which 'the right of
the strongest' prevailed - had pictured a 'good savage' in the first stage; 19th century
historians and 'ethnologists' tried to create a scientific base for this view by studying the
information conquerors and travellers had collected on cultures which had since disappeared
and on the small groups of people Western colonialism had left in existence. They
discovered that many 'primitive' societies were democratic and relatively peaceful and knew
no oppression of women by men, because the women ruled.
65
The most important of those investigators were Bachofen and Morgan.
66
Bachofen, who
used classical and biblical sources, in particular the reports of Herodotus on the position of
the Lycian women and inscriptions confirming these, was the first one to provide the 'family'
with a history. According to him the first stage of this history was 'hetaerism' - as he termed
total promiscuity of men and women both -, which led to kinship in the female line (as
fatherhood could not exist in such circumstances) and from there to 'gyneocracy', the rule of
women, or 'Mutterrecht'; religious ideas were supposed to have led to the development of
monogamy and patriarchy.
Morgan, however, based his views on materialist ideas on the evolution of society. He
organized an extensive inquiry into the kinship organization of the original American
population and lived a great part of his life among the Northern-American Iroquois, learning
their language and studying their relations of kinship and the names of kin. According to him
Iroquois society was in a state of transition; behind the existing relations an older system
could be traced, which had been partly retained in Polynesian kinship names.
67
This kinship
system, which he supposed to have been the social institution of many peoples everywhere
in the world and which according to him was classless and without any form of state, he
called 'group marriage'. In it no fatherhood and no marriage existed; these were still
unknown to the Iroquois when Morgan visited them. In the original system there was also no
65
See for a discussion of these theories the introduction of L. Krader to Marx (1974). Since neither Marx or
Krader are interested in the liberation of women, only the 'dialectical' development of universalist 'social relations'
from the 'clan' and the 'tribe' are investigated.
66
See for a short treatment of their ideas the Introduction of Engels (1884).
67
Later called 'classificatory kinship'; as summarized by Evelyn Reed (1975), p. 12: 'Under this system all
members of the community were categorized according to sex and age, which also defined their occupations and
social functions.'
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