ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY, PRIVATE PROPERTY, AND THE STATE.

FRIEDRICH ENGELS
ISBN 1876646357 PUBLISHED BY RESISTANCE BOOKS, 23 ABERCROMBIE ST,
CHIPPENDALE NSW 2008, AUSTRALIA PRINTED BY EL FARO PRINTING, 79 KING
ST, NEWTOWN NSW 2042, AUSTRALIA
215 PAGES
Since the advent of civilization, the outgrowth of property has been so immense, its forms so
diversified, its uses so expanding and its management so intelligent in the interests of its owners,
that it has become, on the part of the people, an unmanageable power. The human mind stands
bewildered in the presence of its own creation. The time will come, nevertheless, when human
intelligence will rise to the mastery over property, and define the relations of the state to the
property it protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights of its owners. The
interests of society are paramount to individual interests, and the two must be brought into just
and harmonious relations. A mere property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress
is to be the law of the future as it has been of the past. The time which has passed away since
civilization began is but a fragment of the past duration of man’s existence; and but a fragment
of the ages yet to come. 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 knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the
liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient Gentes.

[Ancient Society -Lewis Henry Morgan]

Introduction
The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Engels was guided by Marx’ detailed
summary of Ancient Society, a book by the American ethnologist and historian L. H. Morgan
(1877). Following Marx, Engels placed a very high estimation on Morgan’s discovery of the clan
organization in primitive society and made extensive use of Morgan’s findings, especially the
vast factual material he had gathered. Engels used this to substantiate and develop the materialist
conception of history and Marx’ economic theory. Engels cited a number of other sources,
significantly broadening the range of questions considered by Morgan and drawing upon his own
findings, based on studies of Greek, Roman, ancient Irish, and ancient German history.

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Engels made substantial changes and additions; this is especially true of the chapter on the
family, a picture based on the development of productive relations in that society and not only on
the development of its material culture, as was the case in Morgan’s work. But the more precise
information about the history of the primitive age, particularly concerning some forms of the
primitive family and the mechanism of class formation, does not affect the basic conclusions of
Engels’ work.

According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is,

in the final instance, the production and reproduction of the immediate
essentials of life. This, again, is of a twofold character. On the one side, the
production of the means of existence, of articles of food and clothing,
dwellings, and of the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the
production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The
social organization under which the people of a particular historical epoch
and a particular country live is determined by both kinds of production: by the
stage of development of labour on the one hand and of the family on the other.

In Chapters 3 through 9, Engels examines the particular features of the clan form of social
organization as the basic structural cell of pre-class society and describes primitive tribal
“communism.” In following the decomposition process of the clan system, Engels investigates
the economic conditions that undermined the clan form of social organization at its highest stage
of development and later, with the transition to civilization, completely swept it away. He shows
that the development of productive forces, the division of labor, and the increased productivity of
labor made it possible for the products of one person’s labor to be appropriated by another. The
exploitation of one man by another began, and society was divided into hostile classes, resulting
in the emergence of the state as the instrument of the exploiting class to hold down the class of
the oppressed.

As he examines the various specific forms of the state, Engels discloses their class character and
analyzes the tendencies in the further development of the bourgeois state. Although he notes that
democratic freedoms alone cannot lead to the emancipation of the workers as long as capitalism
is preserved, he emphasizes that the proletariat has an objective material interest in preserving

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and extending democratic rights to the maximum, since these freedoms create conditions
favorable to the struggle for the revolutionary transformation of society.

In The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Engels showed that the
disintegration of primitive society takes place in dissimilar forms under different natural and
historical conditions; the basic content of the disintegration the transformation of pre-class
society into class society is the same for all countries and peoples, however. This analysis was a
vivid confirmation of the dialectical materialist proposition concerning the historical unity,
progressive development, and logical succession of the forms of social life. Engels’ book
represented an important stage in the development of Marxist doctrine on the state and society.
This doctrine was developed further in its application to new historical conditions by Lenin,
primarily in his State and Revolution.

Engels’ book is directed against bourgeois conceptions of the state as a force standing above
classes and having the supposed purpose of defending the interests of all citizens to an equal
extent.

The book became the foundations for all subsequent research on the history of early human
society, despite many factual and interpretative errors, it offer more methodical mechanism about
the historical development of family and human society.

Conclusion
The social organization of the most primitive people is based simply on broadly define classes of
persons permitted to marry and other.
it gives us an insight into the lasting importance of Engels’ influential work on ‘the woman
question’ on the one hand, while providing us with the complex and sophisticated late 1980s
feminist analyses of said work, on the other. The Origin of the family. In sum, constitutes a
valuable resource both for the study of Engels’ classical work, and for an increased
understanding of the role it has played in the development of feminism and portray how state and
society develop thought more generally. With the reissue of this book, students and scholars
interested in Engels and/or feminism will fortunately be able to avail themselves of the insights
found in these chapters for many years to come. The book became the foundation for all

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subsequent research on the history of early human society, despite many factual and
interpretative errors.
The brief overview proffered above, the range of topics covered in this collection is impressive.
Several wide-ranging themes, such as production/reproduction, the family, sexual relationships,
the division of labour, and Engels’ historical materialism, are explored within an inter-
disciplinary setting, which certainly contributes to the versatility and appeal of this book
(contributors draw upon anthropology, political science, psychology, sociology and economics).
Each chapter provides an in-depth discussion on Engels’ theoretical failings or successes, as the
case may be, often utilizing empirical evidence from state socialist countries.

Lawal Abdulmuthalib