L' Origine de la famille, de la propriété privée et de l'État

by Friedrich Engels

Cet ouvrage, s'appuyant sur des notes de Marx retrouves aprs la mort de celui-ci concernant les travaux de l'anthropologue progressiste amricain Morgan, dcrit les diverses tapes qui ont conduit de la tribu de l'antiquit la famille cellulaire (pour ne pas dire carcrale) d'aujourd'hui et l'asservissement de la femme.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, History, Theory, Sociology, Economics

398 pages, Paperback

First published May 26, 1884

About the author

German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.

With the help of Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867-1894).

Friedrich Engels, a philosopher, political, historian, journalist, revolutionary, and also a businessman, closest befriended his lifelong colleague.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedri...

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

I read Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State in the interest of sorting out the Marx-Engels position on the family and for background to the frequently mis-read passage in The Communist Manifesto about the “community of women.”

Engels composed Origin, published in 1884, from notes he and Marx had made from their reading of the anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery Through Barbarism to Civilization (1877). Regarding Morgan, Engels says, “in his own way [he] discovered afresh in America the materialistic conception of history discovered by Marx 40 years ago.” Morgan’s study involves analysis of the social organization of the Iroquois nation from an anthropological perspective. This analysis of “barbarian” Iroquois society (“barbarian” being a value neutral term for the stage of societal development between “savage” and “civilization”), structured upon a “gens” system (a complicated familial system to be contrasted with the bourgeois, patriarchal, “nuclear” family), is used as the basis from which to trace the emergence of “civilization” and its attendant class divisions, rise of the commodity, suppression of women, and rise of the state. After a description of the Iroquois society, Engels describes the transformation of the gens-based organizations of society in Athens, Rome, and Germany into state organizations with their attendant divisions of classes, development of slavery, etc. All of which would tend to feel like a fall from a state of egalitarianism into an oppressive “civilization.” But there is, of course, no return.

Written in 1884 Origin is clearly outdated in terms of the rigors of current anthropological data and methodologies. Oddly, though, Engels’ work feels less dated than does the editorial material provided by Leacock in this 1971 edition. I assume that this is the case due to Engels’ interest in the broader theoretical strokes and outlines than in the details of data. Certainly portions of Origin can be set aside on the basis of more modern anthropology, but data is not the reason for reading this volume. The interest in this volume is for teasing out the Marx-Engels position on the status of the family.

The first impression one always receives upon reading any anthropology is that societies are not necessarily organized in the manner in which I have experienced my society. And the same goes for the structure of the family. There is no necessity in the organization of the family as a “nuclear” family; it is contingent and changes over time according to its conditions. The Marx-Engels thesis, in a nutshell, is that the family is organized according to the needs of the modes of production of any given society. The family under capitalism is organized in the interests of private property. Period. Its purpose is to regulate the private ownership of the means of production. Inheritance laws make this a rather uncontroversial thesis. It is the fundamental unit of organization in a capitalist society. In contrast, Morgan’s study of the Iroquois describes a society without knowledge of private property, a society more or less egalitarian, and with a family structure based upon the gens, a family organization fully distinct from the patriarchal. When paternity is never certain, familial organization can only operate along matrilineal lines. When the possession by men of the means of production arises, men must assert control of the women so that they may know that their property will pass to their own heirs.

What does all this mean for the communist? That the family, as a fundamental economic unit for the organization of private property, will disappear when private ownership of the means of production is eliminated. Does this mean that women will be herded into whorehouses? By no means. But such is the practice under a system of private property, when labor is a commodity, women are commodities, and marriages take place in the interest of the transfer of property. Only under a communist organization of society for the needs of its citizens, will the pure sexual love of persons, as sung by our most romantical poets, be freed from the fetters of inheritance and economic anxieties. When the woman is not chained out of economic dependency to a man, or vice versa, or when the economic well being of children is not dependent upon two people not loving each other, only then can relationships based solely upon affection flourish. Far from the communists creating a “community of women” they would create the social and economic conditions in which relationships would only be formed and sustained upon “true love.” Thus, the patriarchal family structure, like religion, will disappear upon the elimination of private ownership of the means of production; when marriages will be made and sustained on the basis of love and not upon economic anxiety.

Engels’ own words, clearer, perhaps than mine:

“But what will quite certainly disappear from monogamy are all the features stamped upon it through its origin in property relations; these are, in the first place, supremacy of the man and secondly, the indissolubility of marriage. The supremacy of the man in marriage is the simple consequence of his economic supremacy, and with the abolition of the latter will disappear of itself. The indissolubility of marriage is partly a consequence of the economic situation in which monogamy arose, partly tradition from the period when the connection between this economic situation and monogamy was not yet fully understood and was carried to extremes under a religious form. Today it is already broken through at a thousand points. If only the marriage based on love is moral, then also only the marriage is moral in which love continues. But the intense emotion of individual sex love varies very much in duration from one individual to another, especially among men, and if affection definitely comes to an end or is supplanted by a new passionate love, separation is a benefit for both partners as well as for society--only people will then be spared having to wade through the useless mire of a divorce case.
“What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production [which is merely another word for “communism” --NR] is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman's surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences.”

This final paragraph of the quote should be kept in mind any time someone asks about what this future “communist utopia” will look like and how it will be structured. It will depend upon the will of those never having been corrupted by social relations dominated by exploitative economic relations and the commodity.

One should also note that Marx-Engels have little or no interest in your sex lives. The regulation of and preoccupation with sexual practices is a trope of the liberal bourgeois. It is their own hang ups and obsessions which they project upon the communists; their own fantasies they imagine the communists realizing. The liberal bourgeois preoccupation with correct sexual relations has little to do with love and has everything do to with the maintenance of capitalist property relations. Nor should we fall for that most treacherous of ideological traps, “Won’t someone please think of the children?” Capitalist relations are not healthy for children, not when their parents are little more than wage-slaves or relegated to the rolls of the unemployed.

Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your bourgeois morality!


___________
A note on the edition:
For those interested, there exist several editions and translations. I have made no thorough comparison. Penguin has the newer translation, but it appears to lack annotations which would be, in my opinion, very helpful in excavating the 19th century anthropology upon which Engels based his work. Contrasts with our current state of anthropological data would be a very important element of a thorough edition. Leacock’s 1971 edition, which I read, does include a number of annotations in this regard, but her notes feel even more outdated than Engels’ text. The short selection found in the Tucker Marx-Engels Reader would seem rather too little, but the full volume maybe more than the average student of Marx would require. I would recommend the chapters II, III, and IX, “The Family,” “The Iroquois Gens,” and “Barbarism and Civilization.” Leacock also includes a report from a Russian anthropologist entitled “A Recently Discovered Case of Group Marriage” and Engels’ unfinished text “The Part Played by Labor in the Transition From Ape to Man.”

Addendum: Engels’ style proved to be wittier and demonstrating a stronger ironic sense than I had anticipated. Perhaps he is still not the rhetorician that Marx is, but his prose here is not as awful as his completion of Kapital is reputed to be.

[Poncho González · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro que cambia muchas perspectivas y realmente me ha abierto la mente en muchos aspectos, lamentablemente en trayectos resulta un poco repetitivo y aburrido pero en ese camino vienen ocultas varias ideas muy poderosas que al ser detectadas son capaces de hacer pensar a cualquiera, tanto así que sin ser la intención de este libro, el capítulo dos resultaría muy importante que una feminista lo leyera ya que trae conceptos muy buenos sobre el matrimonio y la monogamia.

De las dos ideas más poderosas que rescato del texto es el origen del matrimonio y principalmente de la monogamia como una estrategia del patriarcado para asegurar sus bienes y su herencia dentro de los mismos de su sangre. Y la idea de que al vivir en una sociedad capitalista, cuando nos unimos al matrimonio intentamos cambiar a un ambiente comunista donde todo es de todos y probablemente ahí este el fallo de muchos matrimonios, en esa adaptación al cambio que no se lleva de manera correcta por haber sido criados siempre bajo el influjo capitalista e individualista de cada quien con su esfuerzo obtener sus productos y bienes.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book, written in 1884, examines controversies of the time as to the origin of the State. Research and knowledge available up to that point seem to point to common levels of human progress which the author says confirms his idea that society was once based on a communistic model. He cites information on the American Indians, the German tribes that conquered Rome (and why Rome fell), how Greek society was organized prior to a State organization. Engels says that all State structures are designed to assist the exploiters exploit the exploited. Simply put, monogamy and private property are linked in antiquity, with slavery also coming into existence because of the inability of the herd-owning man to care by himself for his livestock. Once primeval society had become more complex, including the production of excess goods for trade, there was a need for more workers and that was when raiding parties began capturing defeated enemies to turn into slaves. The State in classical antiquity was able to keep order in Greek cities that contained many times more slaves than free Greeks.

The antithesis to the State is the former communistic system of common, shared land, lack of money, and no poor, no rich, no need for police or State, no concept of private ownership of flocks or land. The author discusses in detail how these societies were organized and states that American Indian society was based along communistic concepts. The author states that tribes, if they are organized along matriarchal lines - because of group marriage/casual pairing being allowed - which the author states is the original social organization of mankind, tribal affiliation is first and foremost - he states that in the Pacific NW, sometimes entire tribes occupied one long house, while in other areas of the US, a number of families might occupy a long house, and share the use of canoes, land. There might be individual allotments of land for garden plots, but the allotments might be re-allocated, and there was no concept that the land was actually the current holder's property, or that the land could be bought/sold.

The author mentions the use of cattle as money at a certain stage of social development, and the eventual supplanting of cattle with coinage/money - which thereafter took on a life of its own. He is particularly negative toward middle-men and merchants, using various colorful phrases to describe their parasitic existence since they are not involved in production directly.

The edition I read was a wonderful edition copyright 1902 by Charles H. Kerr & Company, which included the Translator's Preface (by Ernest Untermann, written in Chicago in August 1902) as well as the Author's preface to the first edition (1884) and Author's preface to the Fourth Edition (1891).

I actually did not think this book is that well-written, nor does it seem particularly scholarly or rigorous. The author occasionally slides into polemics - but not very often. I could follow his reasoning, which was based on knowledge collected up to that point. I have no doubt that much of what he says is actually true, and is not well-publicized since it would point to various uncomfortable facts about the organization of human society and the State in general (that is, any State). One thing I did notice is the author's marked pro-German slant, which is, perhaps unsurprising considering the author was a German. The tribal German past, the theory that the German tribes invigorated Europe by conquering Rome, and the admiration for the German respect for women, work, democracy, is remarkable - he seems to think that the outpouring or migration of German tribes from Germany into Northern France and thence to England, means that these three geographic areas (Germany, France, England) received the impetus toward democracy from their Germanic tribal heritage. I suppose the US - founded by Americans of English descent - then could be said to have also benefited from the tribes. (Interestingly, it's said that the Founders may have drawn some inspiration from the political organization of the Iroquois Federation - but were they really aware of the analogies of Germanic tribes, that they also had common lands, group marriage, and so forth?)

I'm not sure the author's analysis can explain the origin of the State, as an extension of the oppression of women in a monogamous marriage, and the development of the concept of private property, with the rise of herding culture and the need for additional labor with the development of commodity production. The book is obviously key to understanding theories of communism - ideally, the State would disappear as classes disappeared with the disappearance of private property (or most private property). I think this book challenges many concepts that are deeply ingrained in human society, such as lineage traced through the father. The author claims that once the man laid claim to ownership of herds, and with it the concept of private property , and the woman was in effect locked into non-social work in the home, classes arose as it became possible to amass larger herds, masses of slaves, and so forth. The State arose because of the contradictions in society - the fact that there were many slaves (or, in the general, the exploited) or the poor free people, vs. the rich (whether or not they owned slaves). A mechanism had to be set up to keep order in a society that included vast inequality and exploitation, as well as a way to ensure women's or the wife's "subservience." The mechanism was the State, which Engels says was set up - in any form it might take - to maintain the conditions for continued exploitation, ownership of private property. He directly links the rise of the State to the rise of private property, and claims that the rise of the concept of private property occurred when the men in the former matriarchal-lineage tribes began to claim livestock as their own property, rather than held in common by the tribe. The men previously had been hunters, and made their own tools/weapons, which they owned. Once livestock was tamed, they realized it was no longer necessary to constantly hunt and much more and varied food was then available, which permitted populations to expand. Cattle became the equivalent of money. Once the man had split off from the tribe, patriarchy took hold - and the man's interest was descent, insuring his wealth (since now there was a concept of private property/wealth) would descend to his heirs on his death. Hence the need to essentially "imprison" the female - the end of group marriage or casual pairing, the end of polyandry (where it might have existed) - although adultery and prostitution simultaneously arose with monogamy/polygamy. Engels traces the entire state of affairs to covetousness - the focus on acquisition. In this, the link to the revolutionary message of Christianity is evident. On a religious side, greed is said to be wrong, there is rhetoric "The meek shall inherit the Earth" and that there will be a "Kingdom of Heaven" on Earth as opposed to the secular State, which is perhaps organized to protect private property, as Engels says. Yet, after approximately 2,000 years of Xian teaching that greed is not good, along with the example of Jesus himself, who obviously personally shunned private property, nothing has changed - other than that more and more information is amassed on social organization and development.

Engels was obviously a reformer who decried the exploitation ongoing in his time. Serfdom persisted in his time in Russia. To say that communism - no, or not much private property, thus no need for a State to protect private property - was the answer to exploitation, which is the message of Marx and the other communist thinkers, is perhaps an oversimplification. Also, it is extremely difficult to re-engineer human nature now after ?4,000+ years of private property/patriarchy. In fact, I don't think it would have worked even had communism overspread the entire Earth, as envisioned by various thinkers.

There is a lot of what Engels says that seems to make sense, such as, mankind once was organized along tribal lines, and as tribes, there was no private property (other than perhaps a few garden plots although they were not "owned" per se and could be re-allocated) other than implements (hunting implements made and owned by the males, agricultural/cooking/weaving/sewing implements made and owned individually by the females). There was little trade, and no need for money. There were no tame livestock, and cooperation was needed to hunt. The animals so hunted were then shared with the tribe. According to Engels, this was the ideal, because it was a completely flat/classless society. Democracy was in force with participation of women as well as men at council meetings. North American Indian society, since it had not tamed livestock (and no livestock had been tamed in the W. hemisphere other than the turkey in Mexico and the llama in Peru, according to the author) was therefore free of greed/private property/monogamy/patriarchy (although men were the warriors/political and war leaders). Thus, American Indian society as it was discovered/described by European settlers/scholars post-Discovery/Conquest is said to offer a glimpse into an earlier stage of human development in general.

The development of herding and private ownership of livestock is thus given as the key factor that led to the concept of society organized to protect private property, or, the State. And several thousand years of private property ownership, State structures probably in place to protect same, patriarchy, and so forth - is it possible to erase it all? Obviously, the experiments with communism in the last century didn't work out as expected, maybe because the State was still in force, and there was no democracy despite democracy being a key feature of prehistoric/early communistic/tribal society. Probably, the unplanned/random aspects of tribal life were what led to the lack of a need for private property. Remember, in those days, without herding, without much agriculture, there was "enforced" cooperation, because in order to survive, hunting/fishing/collecting seafood/gathering vegetables/fruits/wild grains needed to be done probably constantly. If there were no herds of livestock, there was no need to feed the herds. The development of organized large-scale grain agriculture is traced to the need to provide fodder for herds - grain was first grown for animals, according to Engels, and humans only later began eating the grain they were feeding to cattle.

A hunting/gathering/communistic society could not "take off" demographically because of the limited number of foods, uncertain food supply despite the vast amount of wildlife. If there was a never-ending need to hunt/fish & subsistence/rudimentary agriculture, there would have been little time/energy left for anything else.

What Engels misses is the attachment of humans to "anything else" - that is, activities that do not directly involve day-to-day existence/survival.

It is very difficult to detach humans from their affection for all the things that are uniquely human, after all, albeit they may have only been enabled by the accumulation of private property enabling leisure/study, and could have only existed as long as there was a market for these products, i.e. a great deal of extra money accumulated many times through exploitation if not slavery.

Let's say human society never did move much beyond tribal organization, with no classes, no private property, no monogamy although there might be casual pairing bonds, and no need to ensure descent along the male line, since the only "guaranteed" descent was through the female line and in any event any property was held in common by the tribe; and contrast that to the world today. You can even try to transpose the situation of several thousand years ago, or perhaps the tribal situation in North America (according to Engels) to today's world. How could you do it, and would you want to do it?

The question is: Is the bare-bones private-property less social arrangement, the communistic tribe, the only way to achieve a completely flat/non-exploiting society that contains no rich and no poor, no social classes whatsoever? Are money and the State the hallmarks of exploitation and class differences based on property? Is private property inextricably intertwined with poverty, exploitation, slavery, female "imprisonment" in the home, patriarchy?

It is truly difficult to say that the tribal arrangement is superior; I think much human development - such as inventions such as a written language probably did arise in response to questions of ownership/taxation/laws regarding the preservation of private property which may have initially consisted of livestock. Once mankind moved beyond the hunter-gatherer subsistence agriculture existence, and figured out how to tame and keep livestock, how can you undo what must have been as progress (more food available year-round, guaranteed food supply without hunting). The expansion of the population must have proved to the tribe that livestock ownership was a superior system to hunting - and at that point, it would not take long before private ownership of livestock was claimed, by those who tamed the cattle and wished to keep them around year-round (covetousness rather than sharing the livestock with the tribe as before animals that were hunted had been shared). There was an excess of cattle - more than needed to go around. The man may have wanted to ensure that his descendants only inherited his wealth (the cattle) and so patriarchy rather than group marriage/casual pairing began - including eventually the seclusion of women. At the same time, adultery, prostitution started once monogamy started. Private property - keeping livestock - which was based on covetousness (or possibly a tribal herd had become too big to manage collectively and it had to be split up among initially nominal "owners" or responsible people who eventually became actual owners) led to many social ills, in this analysis. The issue was the rise of the concept of (a) private property that could therefore be (b) inherited by an individual, such as a descendant or other kin, as opposed to tribal/collective property that cannot be inherited by any individual tribal member, but belongs instead to the tribe/collective group. Engels is saying the issue is covetousness/greed/self-interest.

How has the tribal model of human organization worked in human history vs. the private property model (whether under monarchy/democracy)?

Engels is right in that the tribe that lived collectively/communistic system probably did lack social classes/conflict, in the absence of private property. Yet that form of social organization did not result in a "critical mass" of population. In areas of sparse population, it may be that it is difficult to advance in terms of what we know as, or call, progress.

Is a population safer or more successful living in a relatively small group with no private property, no social discord, or in a much larger group? Do numbers alone signify success? Is demographic advance the indicator of success? How can success be measured? An expanded population base that can therefore become more specialized, and possibly hit upon inventions such as the wheel, or writing, or other developments? Learning is synonymous with progress, but is it synonymous with success, in discussing all of humankind.

Engels uses the terms "savagery" "barbarism" and "civilization" and divides these periods into phases, in discussing the progress of mankind. Tribalism is in the "barbarism" or higher barbarism period. For Engels, civilization, linked to the rise of the State, is therefore a problem - because of the simultaneous development of private property/monogamy/woman's loss of status/class differences. However, Engels can only make these observations as a man who is only able to perceive and comment on these issues because of civilization (having gone to school and become a scholar and so forth). If Engels were living in a tribe what would he know? The paradox is that we can only know that there are indeed problems, by living within a State (as a product of the problem).

Of course there are many problems - and individuals have come up many times over history to point out injustices. Some have lived and some have died, because the entrenched interests didn't want to see anyone upset the apple-cart of exploitation. The new ideas are then sometimes coopted by the establishment. Engels mentions how large church organization in the Middle Ages (abbeys) tricked small farmers into transferring land titles to the church, in exchange for protection, although the church itself was supposed to be carrying out a new, more fair, social schema as set forth by Jesus.

Engels decries specialization, production of commodities, the market, the merchants, middle-men - even the rise of money as a symbolic form of wealth that supplanted cattle, which was according to Engels, the first form of money. But Engels would not have been in a position to comment about all this had it not been for the society made possible by these "ills." He simply would not have known because he wouldn't have been affected by the problems, as a tribesman living in a tribe with no private property.

Certainly, human development diverged at the point when the tribal model split into individual households with private herds of livestock, as opposed to the original tribal model. I do not think Engels has thought through the paradox of how the good that arose with the branch that began keeping livestock, can be retained, in a setting of a sort of return to tribal life (no money, no classes, no private property, no State).

Was life in the tribe boring? I'm not sure Engels has addressed the question of what tribal life - possibly unchanging, or possibly satisfying - represented, as opposed to life with private property.

Also, once you have given people a materially better life - such as additional food, which might not have been possible with collective herding - it's not so easy to take it away. But, is the only way to give people a better life through the accumulation of private property/wealth/class divisions etc?

Is civilization linked to injustice, if civilization always involves the development of private property and the State? Even if that were true, how many would willingly wish to return to a more backward form of social organization in order to avoid the downsides of civilization? I do not think these thinkers thought through the implications of communism especially with respect to the State, which never did wither away. What they wanted to give to the people, had only become possible under a State system, or a system of private property (i.e. more of everything). The most important thing the people didn't have when they were exploited in pre-revolutionary days, communism couldn't give, because of the fear that covetousness would win over idealism: Democracy. Today, the culture of "more" is more prevalent than ever - arrogance/egoism/selfishness/greed is glorified. Income inequality is decried, but people still mock the opposite - sharing, selflessness, the group (vs. the individual). Engels would be dumbstruck by the exponential expansion of the world's population since the late 19th Century - what would he make of the 20th Century communist experiments? Would he still predict the imminent demise of capitalism - along with private property, the family, classes, exploitation, the State?

[Jen from Quebec :0) · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the very first IMPORTANT works that I ever read in university. This provoked discussion among my friends and felt RELEVANT despite being so very old. If Karl Marx is too 'dry' for you (or too long!) then try Engels, Marx's tag team partner in thought! --Jen from Quebec :0)

[Luís · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in two months and published in German, in October 1884, in Zurich, Switzerland, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State is one of the essential theoretical reflections of Marxism. Moreover, it is a fruitful dialogue of historical materialism with anthropology, especially Morgan's investigation.

I had to abstract myself from my essentially moderate political character of a left that takes so long to organize itself; it was a work that opened new horizons for me for what was to come.

[Mahya · Rating 5 out of 5]

"خانواده دستگاه ایدئولوژیک دولت است و برعکس"!
همانطور که از نام اثر برمی‌آید انگلس از تاریخ ابتدایی نوع بشر با استفاده از یافته‌های مورگان و داروین شروع کرده و به تاریخ پیدایش دولت ونحوه‌ی کارکرد آن می‌رسد. او توضیح می‌دهد که در تیره‌ها و قبایل ابتدایی سیستمی کمونی در جریان بوده، همگی برای منافعی مشترک در جهت مشترک عمل‌ می‌کردند و آنچه را به دست می‌آوردند به صورت مشترک استفاده می‌کردند. در این تیره‌های ابتدایی ارتباط اجتماعی و تعاملات بین فردی از ازدواج گرفته تا ارتباط با سران قبایل بسیار متفاوت با آنچه ما امروز بدیهی می‌انگاریم بوده‌است. چیزی به نام مالکیت خصوصی و تک همسری وجود نداشته. اما کم کم با گسترش جمعیت، تغییر شکل جمع‌آوری خوراک، پدید امدن کشاورزی ، دامپروری ، صنایعی برای کشت و غیره ما شاهد پدید امدن مالکیت خصوصی، پول، سوداگری و کم کم جامعه طبقاتی هستیم. از آن پس جامعه به دو گروه استثمارگر و استثمار شونده، ارباب و برده و دارا و ندار تقسیم می‌شود و یک طبقه همیشه طبقه‌ی دیگر را به استثمار می‌گیرد. طبقه‌یی که منافع بیشتری دارد، به نهادی قهری و قدرتمند برای سرکوب طبقه‌ی پایینی نیاز دارد و اینگونه دولت پدید می‌آید.
به طور کلی اطلاعات تاریخی و جغرافی کتاب زیاد است، اسامی قبایل و نژادها به گستردگی عنوان شده و بازه‌‍ی تاریخی مورد بررسی بسیار طولانی است، از همین روی ممکن است کتاب در قدم‌های اول کمی خسته کننده و البته گیج کننده به نظر برسد. اما برای خود من از قسمت پیدایش دولت، بی اندازه جذاب شد.
کتاب در برنامه‌ی مطالعه اقتصاد سیاسی بسیار مهم است و بلاخره باید خوانده شود. گرچه امروز بعد از سال‌ها اطلاعات تاریخی تازه و معتبرتری در دست است، اما نقطه نظرات انگلس و مارکس در این کتاب تکرار نشدنی می نماید.‎

[Varad Deshmukh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Friedrich Engels takes you on a tour around the evolution of the human society into the current establishment we take for granted as the ever-existing standard. No doubt there are many holes left in this study of anthropology, it provides a systematic study into the transformation of an egalitarian society of humans in their primitive stages (savagery/barbarism) to a state-controlled monogamist society (civilization).

I. What’s good about the book?

Its a great introduction to anthropology for everyone, inspite of the political inclinations of the author. Engels provides an explanation of how the economic conditions slowly influenced the social structure and changed the woman-centric group family into a monogamistic male-centric slave-owning one. Engels bases his foundations on Lewis H. Morgan’s kinship theory, the American anthropologist/social theorist. Although many aspects of Morgan’s anthropology theory have been rejected by the modern day anthropologists, Engels cannot be simply thrown away.
The matrilineal structure of a group family in the early tribes has been proven of recent [1][2]. Thus, inspite of the outdatedness of the theory built and possibly many faults with it, it is definitely worth re-assessing it again in light of recent findings.

II. Some of the let-downs/problems with the book

1. Engels has sadly not considered Indian societal structure, when he claims how exogamy amongst tribes was the norm amongst the Native American tribes. India exhibits an exact opposite norm of endogamy amongst tribes, owing to its caste system. The Indian system does have a system of “gotras” to prevent intermarriage amongst kins, but nevertheless, its a complicated system with endogamy at the top.

2. I found certain claims in the book a bit abrupt without a scientific backing, and need to dig in further to verify them.

a. The woman did not own any means of production but was more involved in household work. It seems a bit contradictory to me, given that women are known to be involved in agriculture/food gathering since antiquity. Additionally, women have been involved in many handicraft activities, its difficult to not own the means.

b. The woman was responsible for moving away from the group marriage into a pairing-family relationship which ultimately led to monogamy. Engels says that the woman found the group marriage inconvenient under growing population in a settling human community. However, why that was the case is not clearly mentioned.

3. Engels seems to show a remarkable personal hatred towards traders and middle-men, which I feel is not befitting a scientific objective thesis.

4. The flow of the book is a bit irksome. Explanations/elaborations for some of the claims in the book come much later.

III Brief Summary

1. Evolution of Economic Activity

Engels takes the example of a number of tribes which were evolving in different regions across the world -- the Iroquois Native Americans, the Athenians, Romans, Germans and Celts. Each of these start out in the form of a group marriage (everyone in group A is married to everyone in group B), arranging themselves with the “gens” as a basic unit/clan, and undergoing further super-grouping the forms of phratries and tribes. Engels describes how each of these societies ended up into become a centrally controlled state held together by capitalism and mass-production as its pillars. The society starts out as a set of individual tribes, where humans participate together in producing goods as much as is required to sustain themselves locally. Through generation of surplus, it ends up as a hierarchy, where a few capitalists control a large-scale production of goods by employing the masses in exchange for wages. The produced, as well as the means of production such as the domesticated cattle, tools and the land used for growing crops which was jointly owned by the community, ended up as contested objects for private ownership under the new capitalist system. Engels states how a central state was established (along with a police force) to keep the rules of private ownership sustained (and often in the favour of the wealthy).

2. Evolution of Marriage

More importantly than the economic activity, is the evolution of the relationship between a man and a woman, and therefore, the social positions enjoyed by them. Engels discusses the various phases of marriage society went through -- group marriage, pairing marriage, and eventually monogamy. With the origin of mass production and the private property, Engels elaborates in his thesis how a female descent based society became a male descent one, how the property rights of a woman were slowly curtailed and how that of a man grew, and how monogamy -- the ultimate result -- gave man the ultimate freedom in his sexual activities while forcing the woman to maintain her chastity. Therefore, what is understood by monogamy is essentially, monogamy only for women. The discussion explains a number of observations in history and the present -- polygamy (male), prostitution (female), dowry, lack of female ownership, etc.

Engels concludes that the household activities of the woman, that were a social activity in the stages of barbarism, were no longer so in the new model of private property. The means of production being owned by the man (as according to his activities of hunting and food-gathering in the early stages), made him much powerful than the woman. Engels further concludes that with the arrival of machine-based mass-production, the woman can find her part in the social production, and thereby regain her rights of property making her equal to man.

3. The Division of Labor : From Barbarism to Civilization

Engels concludes his thesis with a summary of the above two evolutions together with an evolution of the division of labour starting from the primitive tribes of barbarism. The 3 revolutionary stages of the division of labour, which separate barbarism from civilization are --

Division of labour between tribes which had cattle v/s those who did not. This signifies the first stage of exchange of mass-produced goods.
Division of labour between agriculture and handicraft industry. The amount of work prevented a single person to be involved in both.
Introduction of the middle-man -- the trader, and along with him, the minted currency for exchange of goods. For the first time, a class is introduced that does not concern itself with the production but with the exchange of goods.

The introduction of the trader marks the threshold of the civilization, and also, the state as described above. Engels describes civilization as :

“Civilization is, therefore, according to the above analysis, the stage of development in society at which the division of labor, the exchange between individuals arising from it, and the commodity production which combines them both, come to their full growth and revolutionizes the whole of previous society.”

Finally, Engels follows up with a number of consequences : loss of control of produce by the producer, slave labour, mortgages, and a growing hypocrisy in the society to cover up its contradictions.


IV References

[1] https://libcom.org/history/engels-was...
[2] http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.o...


(For a well formatted review (Goodreads really needs to improve their formatting), please go to : https://docs.google.com/document/d/19...)

[Xander · Rating 2 out of 5]

In 1877 an American anthropologist, Lewis Henry Morgan, published a book, Ancient Society. In this book, Morgan offered an approach, based on Darwin’s theory of evolution, to tracing the development of the family-structure in different stages of society, According to Morgan, there is a historical road of progress from savage, via barbaric, to civilized society. There are two important lines of thought in Morgan’s work. (1) Man learns to make tools, apparatus and machines, and gains every greater control over production. The savage collects fish and plants; the barbarian uses axes, knifes and bow & arrow; the civilized man sustains himself with domesticated animals and highly developed agriculture. (2) As society passes from one phase to another, the social relations, or the structure of society, changes. Savages live in matrilineal clans, with only a taboo on paternal incest; barbarians live in group marriages, with taboos on all forms of incest and with exogamy (sexual intercourse only outside the clan); civilization is characterised by patriarchal family structure, based on inheritance of accumulated property.

Morgan based his findings in evolutionary anthropology and sociology on his observations on American Indian tribes. He was a fervent student of the Indian customs, traditions and ways of life, and he thought he saw in these people the pure state of mankind. Or rather, the most purest state, since according to him, the ultimate natural state of Man was long gone and didn’t fossilize, so was untraceable.

Karl Marx, already in 1845 (The German Ideology), proclaimed that history proceeds in a dialectic fashion. Mankind inherits the past from his parents (property, knowledge, etc.) and uses this material, combined with his own conscious reflections, to build the future. In other words: economics determines politics; material determines thought. So, it doesn’t surprise us to see Marx becoming excited and happy when he read Morgan’s book. In fact, he was so happy and excited that he decided to write a book and incorporate Morgan’s sociological ideas into his own economic theories. Alas, Marx died before he could finish the book.

But then Engels picked up the manuscripts and decided to finish the work himself. Enter The Origin of the Family, Property and the State (1884). In this book, Engels extends the ideas of Morgan to fit into the dialectical materialistic framework he and Marx developed over the years. The result? A highly speculative story about how the family-structure, private property and the State arose (necessarily) out of historical developments, culminating – of course – in nineteenth century capitalism.
As man passes the stages of savagery and barbarism, and enters civilization, the family structure changes. As savages, mankind lived in groups, in which everyone had sex with everyone. People lived in clans in which every child was everyone’s child, and property wasn’t there (it would perish, since it comprised natural products) or was communal. Soon, man learns to use tools and fire (with which to process new foods), and the primitive division of labour arises: man hunts, women gathers fruits and vegetables and takes care of the kids. With this way of living, man is passing into a state of barbarism, in which clans form and sexual intercourse becomes more restricted. No incest allowed, and gradually people start to live in family groups and look for mates in other clans (i.e. exogamy). Stable pair bonding forms, and regulations to start and terminate marriage originate.
But then something peculiar happened. In the Old World (i.e. on the Eurasian continent) people found domesticable animals and cultivatable plants. So now a new division of labour developed: tribes (comprised of multiple clans) herding flocks of animals on pastures, and tribes who traded their products with these nomads for meat and milk. With this new way of production, social relations changed immediately: as animals became domesticated, it became important to own as much of them as possible and to pass them over to your offspring. Hence, private property becomes a part of the way of life.

But private property and herding animals have one precondition. If you own animals, you want to make sure that your offspring are really your offspring – you don’t want to be cheated by your wife, and pass over your property to another man’s children. This is a deep-rooted evolutionary problem: the woman is sure of her parenthood, the man isn’t. This way of living, this way of production, forced upon the clans the need for patriarchal family-structure. The man dominates the family and sexual intercourse is highly restricted; of course, the man is allowed mistresses and prostitution, but the woman is punished severely for any form of adultery. The monogamous family and private property are both a product of this new form of production.

And then things start to proceed faster. The division of labour into herdsmen and agricultural producers leads immediately to a second division of labour. As capital (cattle) starts to accumulate, ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ become concepts. The family is now the social unit within society, and property becomes a dividing force.

Now, Engels, has managed to get his foot in between the door, and he proceeds brilliantly. Population increases due to increased productivity of food and clothing (i.e. division of labour), family wealth increases, but also growing differences between have’s and have not’s, and this calls for a structural authority that can impose order on society. And when you can get some from someone else, why produce yourself? War becomes an end in itself: plunder and rape become instruments of the tribe to acquire property without producing.

Witness here the third major division of labour: working for a living becomes degrading, the use of power and force become tools, and slavery becomes an important part of social production and slave economies become widespread. Working becomes something particularly suited to the oppressed, money is to be made primarily in trading the products of slavery, or through the possession of land and cattle. It is here that civilization truly breaks through. Being a merchant becomes a profession – “parasites” or “genuine social sycophants”, as Engels calls them – and metallic money replaces cattle as the universal commodity. The commodity is now a tool for non-producers to dominate the producers and appropriate their production.

We have here, for the first time, a class society: an aristocracy (inherited wealth), workers, artisans and slaves. Slaves, money and land lead to new social relationships and create a heterogeneous society, in which class relationships cut through existing genealogical (clan) relationships. Gentile constitution consisted of elections, assemblies and appointed military commanders, but lacked coercive power; the exploitation of the many demands permanent coercion and force. This phase of society thus sees the end of the gentile (i.e. clan) constitution and its replacement by the State and its laws.

According to Engels, “the state is the product of a society that has plunged itself into self-contradictions and split itself up into class antagonisms.” A power is wanted to resolve these conflicts of economic interests. This power is the state: (1) it has a territorial basis (as opposed to bonds of kinship); (2) it possesses public force (police, army, prison system, etc.); (3) it taxes the people to finance itself – later on state debts emerge; (4) authority enters the hands of permanent officials, who are above and alienated from society (as opposed to earlier appointed temporary military leaders); (5) the rights of a citizen are based on property (as opposed to earlier family relationships) – later on, this becomes universal suffrage and the state plays off the people against each other (Engels has Bismarck in mind).

So, for Engels, there is a direct historical development to be traced by studying American Indians, ancient Greece and Rome, the Germans and Celts, and contemporary (for Engels) society. It shows multiple divisions of labour: between the sexes, between rich and poor (families), between merchants and producers, between slaves and freemen; culminating in a class society that is completely determined by the means of social production and in which the oppressed multitude becomes – due to the law of accumulation of capital – becomes ever greater, until it reaches the breaking point. Class antagonisms and self-contradictions run rampant and money is the universal commodity. The monogamous family (and adulterating husband) is the social unit of this society, and women are oppressed.
To summarize: the monogamous family (in which the woman is oppressed), private property and the state and its laws all arise from the historical development of social division of labour. Culture follows economics – new ways of production lead to new values and ways of living. Some societies remain in the stage of savagery or barbarism, while others develop, both for contingent historical reasons (like climate, availability of domesticable animals, etc.), into civilizations – of which some perish (ancient Greece and Rome) and some proceed yet further (contemporary Britain and Germany).

As always, Engels (just like Marx) ends his interesting speculations with threats and promises. Civilization, with its state, its laws, its monogamous family-structure, its private property, is a transitory historical phase – Communism will end this and herald a new time, in which class relationships are broken down, sexual freedom will reign and property will be communal. In short: a Utopian vision of how mankind should live. Engels and Marx weren’t really familiar with the naturalistic fallacy, which says that you can’t get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ – throughout their work they mix up their highly interesting and speculative theories with their own ideological values. Engels’ predictions about Communism as prophylactic to modern day civilization are nothing but ideological wishes, and have nothing to do with the theories he describes earlier in the book.

But to be fair, this doesn’t make the content of The Origin of the Family, Property and the State less interesting. Although Engels primarily uses Morgan’s findings, which are by now superseded by newer anthropological theories, there are two major issues which deserve to be remembered.

(1) Engels is one of the first to recognize human biology in the problem of sexual freedom. Why don’t communal living and free sex work? Because human beings come equipped with emotions, like jealousy, lust, uncertainty about parenthood (for men). Marriage and oppression of women can be traced to the ultimate biological dilemma: I want to know for sure that the child of my wife is mine – all cultures have found ways to tackle this question, some of which we disapprove highly (the treatment of women in Muslim societies) and some which aren’t working at all (the way Western society is functioning right now). Engels points to human sexuality as an important causal factor in family-structure, marriage regulations, property rights, etc.

(2) Engels is also the first one to clearly state the impact of contingent historical factors in the development of societies. The availability of domesticable animals, cultivatable (and eatable) plants, favourable climatic and geographical conditions, etc. True, Montesquieu and Adam Smith also pointed to things like climate and geography as causes of juridical and economic developments, but (in my opinion) they weren’t so explicit as Friedrich Engels in this book. Contemporary scholar Jared Diamond has come to the conclusion (in his Guns, Germs and Steel [1997) that the availability of domesticable animals and plants was a contingent factor in the rise of European civilization. For this, Engels deserves to be praised.

Nevertheless, he bases his own theory of dialectical materialism on evolutionary anthropological theories of Morgan, which were highly speculative. Both Marx, Engels and Morgan have a conception of history as a succession of phases – this is flawed thinking. There is no ‘ladder to civilization’, just like there is no ‘hierarchy of species’. In the times of Engels and Morgan, intellectuals still believed in Victorian Britain as the culmination of civilization and in British Man as the supreme organism – tribes in far off regions (colonies, mostly) were deemed to be brutes or savages, the Africans, for example, were regarded as a station of passage from ape to Man. The way people spoke about other cultures during these times betrays racism and supremacist/colonist thinking. For this reason, one cannot really accept the principles underlying the sociological theories of those times.

(This is, by the way, not the same as contemporary cultural relativism, which states that all cultures are equal, etc. Up to World War II, racism and racial theories were ‘mainstream’ ideas and should be treated, in my opinion, as merely historical facts - without drawing any ethical implications about those ideas or their proponents. We all know these ideas were ethically wrong, but let’s leave that outside historical analysis of past ideas.)

Anyway, this book is the second work of Friedrich Engels that I read. Engels is a much more clear and accessible writer than Marx was. And in general they adhered to the same economic theory. It’s just that Engels picked much more interesting subjects to write about and did a much better job explaining his underlying ideas. But due to the materials, theories and facts that Engels used in this book, it is possibly slightly outdated as a purely scientific work. Read The Origin of the Family, Property, and the State if you’re interested in understanding Marxism and don’t want to read through 3000+ pages of Marx.

[Hosna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very interesting work, specially considering the time when it was written. Engels, being very modern for his time, portrays how the first class antagonism in history coincides with the development of a patriarchal society, as man started to settle down and gain private properties. He also shows a parallel between the domination of the male in the household with the antagonism between social classes.

[E. G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Introduction
Note on the Text

--The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

Glossary of Some Contemporary Terms and Concordance with Engels's Usage
Index

[Salah · Rating 5 out of 5]

كما يدل العنوان يتناول الكتاب مباحث ثلاثة:

1-الحياة الاجتماعية في المجتمعات البدائية التي تكونت من العشيرة ذات الحق الأمي كوحدة بناء للمجتمع (القبيلة) وكيفية التزاوج وتطورها من الزواج الجماعي إلى الزواج الثنائي ثم بعدها الزواج الفردي، وكيف تحول هذا الوضع الاجتماعي تدريجياً إلى ما نحن عليه الآن من نظام اجتماعي يتكون من الأسرة والعائلة كأصغر وحدة لبناء المجتمع ينتسب فيها الإنسان لأبيه وليس لأمه والزواج فردي يسيطر فيه الرجل على المرآة وعلى العائلة بما يملك من قوة اقتصادية ظهرت بعد اكتشاف الزراعة

2-النظام الاقتصادي لدى البدائيين الذي يصفه ماركس وإنجلز بالشيوعية البدائية حيث كانت الملكية الخاصة في أضيق الحدود وكان الإنسان يحيا على الصيد والثمار التي كانت مشاع للجميع ولا يملكها أحد، ويظهر العمل الجماعي المنظم تنظيما تلقائياً لإدارة بيوت تحوي المئات من الأفراد يشتركون في أعمال الصيد وقطف الثمار والاعمال المنزلية واليدوية وكيف يتوزع الإنتاج بين أفراد القبيلة بشكل تلقائي عادل دون الحاجة للنقود ولا المقايضة ولا المتاجرة ولا المضاربة، التي ظهرت لاحقاً مع ظهور الزراعة حيث بدأ الفرد يخصص لنفسه قطعة أرض يزرعها ويمنع الآخرين من استخدامها، حينها ظهرت اولى أشكال الملكية الخاصة، وأولى أشكال خضوع المرأة للرجل حيث كان الأقدر على حماية الأراضي الزراعية، فكان هو المالك والمتحكم اقتصاديا في زوجته وفي الأسرة. ويتحدث عن التخصص وتقسيم العمل ودورهما في ظهور النقود ومن ثم ظهور طبقة التجار التي تعمل كوسطاء للمنتجين فيربحون بلا إنتاج، بل ويتحكمون في الطبقات المنتجة ويستعبدونهم عن طريق شراء قدرتهم على العمل.

3- النظام السياسي والهيكل الإداري والتشريعي عند البدائيين والذي يتميز بالالتحام الشديد بالمجتمع وفقا لما يراه إنجلز؛ فتتخذ القرارات في العشيرة بالإجماع ويحق للجميع الكلام في اجتماعاتها والتعبير عن رأيه بحرية وإذا كان الأمر يمثل شأنا لعموم القبيلة يرسل ممثل عن العشيرة إلى اجتماع القبيلة يعبر عن رأي العشيرة الذي توصل إليه أفرادها في اجتماعاتها، ويتخذ القرار أيضاً بالإجماع ويرسل ممثلاً عن القبيلة يتم اختياره بالانتخاب إلى اجتماع مجلس القبائل الذي يتخذ القرارات التي تخص القبائل بشكل عام. ويتحدث إنجلز عن تطور هذا النموذج السياسي ليصل بالتدريج إلى شكل الدولة البطريركية التي أصبح فيها الحاكم وصياً على الشعب وملكاً لهم.

[Adriana Scarpin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Demorei tanto a ler esse porque ao longo dos anos essa obra foi incessada por tantos trabalhos feministas que até fiquei com preguiça de ler (Gerda Lerner e Gayle Rubin estão entre as melhores), finalmente o peguei essa semana porque tive um sonho bastante significativo sobre ele.
Gosto de como Engels coloca a agência da monogamia nas mulheres e não como vítimas, para se livrarem de ficarem nas mãos de homens em homens, elas teriam reivindicado a monogamia. Gosto também como o movimento anarquista atual tem reivindicado o poliamor justamente porque as mulheres tem uma independência que na invenção da monogamia não era possível e que é discutido no posfácio da Marília Moschkovich.
Enfim, é o livraço que se anunciava mesmo, não só por ser bastante feminista para a época, mas por todo balanço que faz sobre o início da civilização, conjecturando o exato momento em que demos errado e que seria na invenção do dinheiro. Todo os dois terços finais do livro, sobre a criação da propriedade privada e do Estado, é bem interessante e rememorou-me dos tempos que estudava essas coisas para o vestibular há décadas.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

So obviously this book carries with it a ton of caveats. The modern reader absolutely must pair it with new texts based on updated anthropological data. Engels was working with the bad data he had available to him, which was unfortunately all from a racist, patriarchal, paternalistic perspective, and that is extremely evident in his sections on "savagery" and "barbarism ". So a lot of the early portions of the book are now extremely out of date.

However, there is still value to be taken from Engels' historical materialist method. His conclusion that the rise of the patriarchal state required the devaluation and oppression of women and their labor is obviously correct and a break from the scholarship of the time. Additionally, his sections in the last chapter regarding the origin of the state out of property relations based on surplus production and its unequal ownership is vital, even if the specific examples he uses may be off.

[6655321 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly it took me forever to read this (i think i started sometime last year) because outside of the fact that Engels simply *is not a good writer* (he isn't) and some of the examples in here are made up colonial anthropology (which they are) and don't really hold water as examples (you would get in trouble for citing the research although you can cite Engels conclusions frequently) for all of his proclaiming the historical materialist method as answering questions about family & private property & the state, Engels absolutely fails to interrogate sexuality (at all almost as a concept) or gender roles (appealing to a vague essentialism); this is a footnote (and it isn't though feminist marxists haven't used this as a jumping off point for much better work) but this is the sort of analysis that holds back dogmatic marxists from having any sort of intelligent conversation about gender or sexuality? On the bright side, this isn't Freud or Lacan?

[J. Moufawad-Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Obviously this is an important book, and there are significant portions in this book are the necessary for a historical materialist understanding of, well, "the family, private property and the state". Unfortunately, and as much as I recognize Engels' importance as one of the "founders" of historical materialism, this book is harmed by its reliance on colonial historiography when it comes to the Americas, allowing Engels to accept claims about all indigenous nations pre-conquest being at the mercy of nature––as if every pre-contact societies, violently underdeveloped by colonial violence, did not develop their own agrarian sciences, city-based cultures, etc.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the most important book I've ever read in my life.

[Mahnam · Rating 5 out of 5]

نظر به باور رسوخ‌کرده در ذهن بشر مبنی بر نحوه‌ی پیدایش انسان و شکل‌گیری جوامع و اهمیت نهاد خانواده که در دیدگاه‌های مذهبی ادیان ابراهیمی به اوج خود می‌رسند، به مدت قرن‌ها درخشان‌ترین ذهن‌های بشری به خطا خانواده یکتاهمسر و دولت را به عنوان نهادهایی ازلی-ابدی و هم‌چنین دارای ارزش اولی می‌دانستند و بیهوده می‌کشودند تناقضات برخاسته از این نهادها را توجیه کنند که در مواردی بسیار به واژگونی تعریف و مفهوم حق طبیعی منجر شده است و دولت را به عنوان ناجی همیشگی انسان تثبیت کرده است.
از آنجا که این دیدگاه برخاسته از تاریخ مکتوب است، تا هنگام شکوفایی دانش باستان‌شناسی، فیلسوفان و اندیشمندان هر چه بیشتر از واقعیت دور شدند و تا مدت‌ها پس از دستیابی به مدارک عینی، به طرزی ناباورانه بر بی‌خردی‌های خود پای فشردند.

انگلس در این کتاب با بهره‌گیری از اسناد مورگان و هم‌چنین تحقیقات دیگران در این زمینه تا حدی که علم عصر او اجازه می‌دهد، به توضیح تاریخی منشآ پیدایش خانواده، مالکیت خصوصی و در نهایت دولت می‌پردازد و با بررسی نمونه‌های تمدن آتن، روم و ژرمن‌ها فراز و فرود ناشی از این تغییرات غیرطبیعی در تاریخ واقعی زندگی انسان را نشان می‌دهد.

در فصول اولی این کتاب، بنابر مدارک به دست آمده‌ای که در آن دوران جدید محسوب می‌شدند، می‌بینیم که تاریخ بشر به سه دوره‌ی توحش، بربریت و تمدن تقسیم می‌شوند که هر کدام از دوران‌های توحش و بربریت را بر پایه‌ی ابزار انسان و میزان تفوقش بر طبیعت به سه مرحله‌ی پایینی، میانی و بالایی تقسیم می‌کنند. بشر بر خلاف دیدگاه متافیزیکی، همیشه به صورت جمعی می‌زیست. در مرحله‌ی پایینی توحش به جنگل‌ها و درختان محدود بود تا از دست حیوانات وحشی در امان باشد. با بهره‌گیری از آتش و استفاده از ماهی به عنوان منبع غذا به دومین مرحله‌ی توحش پا گذاشت و قادر شد با دنبال‌کردن رودها و سواحل دریایی بر قسمت اعظم کره‌ی زمین پراکنده شود. آثار این مهاجرت تقریباً بی‌استثنا در سرتاسر جهان آشکار است. در اینجا هنوز توده‌های شکارچی را نداریم (باور اشتباهی دیگر) زیرا ثمره شکار کم‌تر از آن بود که اجازه دهد انسان فقط با تکیه بر گوشت حیوانات به زندگی ادامه دهد. حتی کمبود غذا آن‌قدر بود که آدم‌خواری شروع شد و تا مدت‌ها ادامه یافت. با اختراع تیروکمان بشر به بالاترین مرحله‌ی دوران توحش رسید که حیوانات شکاری جزو غذای عادی‌اش شد.با این حال هر جا که انسان نتوانست به هنر سفال‌گری دست یابد، تکامل جامعه‌اش در بالاترین مرحله توحش متوقف شد.

در ادامه، انگلس به بررسی دوران بربریت می‌پردازد که مرحله‌ی پایینی آن با اختراع سفال‌گری شروع می‌شود. تا اینجا تکامل بشر فارغ از عنصر جغرافیا در همه جا یکسان پیش رفت اما از این نقطه‌ی تاریخ، جغرافیا شرایط خود را بر انسان تحمیل کرد. خلق‌های مختلف بنابر شرایط محیطی به اهلی‌کردن و دام‌پروری و کشت گیاهان رو آوردند. قاره اروپا و آسیا که شرایط بهتری داشتند به‌سرعتی خیلی بیشتر سیر تکاملی‌شان را طی کردند و نقاط مختلف امریکا در مراحل بالایی توحش، پایینی بربریت یا نهایتاً میانی بربریت متوقف شد.
در آسیا و اروپابه دلیل اهلی‌کردن حیوانات بیشتر و مصرف گوشت، مغز انسان حجیم‌تر شد. گله تشکیل دادند و به زندگی شبانی رو آوردند و کودکان سالم‌تری پرورش دادند که همین دلیل تکامل عالی‌تری آریایی‌ها و سامی‌هاست.
با ذوب و تصفیه سنگ‌آهن مرحله‌ی بالایی بربریت شروع شد که شخم آهنی و کشت زمین وسیع و پیدایش زراعت را در بر داشت که به نوبه‌ی خود به ازدیاد جمعیت منتهی شد و در آخر، با اختراع نوشتار الفبایی بشر به دوران تمدن پا گذاشت.

در این میان اما زندگی اجتماعی بشر هم آرام‌آرام دچار تغییروتحول می‌شد. انسان‌های اولیه در جمع‌های خودشان همه با هم آمیزش جنسی داشتند و به اصطلاح تحت آمیزش جنسی مختلط می‌زیستند که نه به معنای هم‌زمان با چندین نفر بودن که به معنای نبود هیچ‌گونه محدودیت در انتخاب زوج است. با تثبیت هر محدودیت، سبک خانواده‌ای جدید سر برمی‌آورد. خانواده‌ی هم‌خون (محدودیت آمیزش بین نسل‌های مختلف یک خانواده). سپس خانواده‌ی پونالوایی (محروم‌شدن برادران و خواهران زاده از یک مادر از آمیزش با هم)که در فرم تکامل‌یافته‌اش به محدودیت ازدواج با دیگر عمو، عمه، خاله و دایی‌زاده‌های درچه اول هم منتهی شد. قبیله‌هایی که این محدودیت‌ها را اعمال کردند سریع‌تر از قبیله‌هایی که ازدواج خواهر و برادر را مجاز می‌شمردند رشد کردند و همین امر باعث پیدایش نهاد تیره شد که تا مدت‌های دراز از اهمیت بسیاری در تاریخ بشر برخوردار بود.
با پیچیده‌شدن روزافزون ازدواج گروهی، بشر به سمت خانواده یارگیر حرکت می‌کند که در آن یک زن و مرد به مدتی که هر دو بخواهند با یکدیگر زندگی می‌کنند. اگرچه حق بی‌وفایی گه‌گدار برای مرد باقی می‌ماند ولی از زن وفاداری اکید خواسته می‌شود. منتها حرکت از ازدواج گروهی به خانواده یارگیر بیشتر بنابر خواست زنان صورت گرفت تا مردان. و هنوز تا اینجا، زن قدرت اصلی تیره است و نسب از او مشخص می‌شود و بشر تحت حق مادری زندگی می‌کند.
از دل همین خانواده‌ی یارگیر و محدودیت‌های ازدواج درون‌تیره‌ای کم‌کم رسومی مثل دزدیدن یا خرید و فروش زنان از تیره‌های دیگر بیرون می‌آیند. تمامی رسوم مذهبی که در آن زن‌ها طی روزهایی معین خود را تسلیم معابد خاصی می‌کردند یا حقوقی چون حق شب اول ازدواج (که در ابتدا حقی برای همه‌ی مردان مجاز به ازدواج با آن زن شمرده می‌شد و زن بایستی حق یکتاشویی خود را از آن‌ها می‌خرید و بعداً با ظهور مالکیت خصوصی، به حقی برای رئیس قبیله، خان‌ها و مالکین تبدیل شد) همه در اثر گذار ازدواج گروهی به ازدواج یارگیر به وجود آمدند.
در این میان، بشر در زندگی دامپروری،، با ثروت زیادی مواجه شد که برای اولین بیش از میزان نیاز خودش بود. مالکیت گله به وجود آمد که اول در اختیار تیره بود (تیره‌ای که بر مبنای حق مادری بنا بود) و کم‌کم ابزاری به وجود آمدند که بنابر تقسیم کار طبیعی(زن در خانه، مرد بیرون از خانه) ارزش و اهمیت کار بیرون از خانه نسبت به کار خانگی را تغییر دادند و از آنجا که کم‌کم خانواده‌های یارگیر به یکتاهمسر (در گذر از بربریت میانی به بربریت بالایی) بدل شده بودند و مالکیت خصوصی در شکل‌های اولیه‌اش به وجود آمده بود، مرد می‌خواست دارایی‌هایش به فرزندان خود او برسند و نه به فرزندانِ درونِ تیره‌ی مادری‌اش، حق مادری به حق پدری تبدیل شد و جامعه به سوی مردسالاری پیش رفت. این نقطه را می‌توان به عنوان شکست تاریخی جنس زن دانست که به موجب حق پدری کم‌کم از تمام حقوق و امتیازات کهن خود محروم شد(که نقطه اوج این محرومیت در عصر شکوفایی یونان دیده می‌شود.)

خانواده‌ی یکتاهمسر بر خلاف باور عامه نه از سر شکل‌گیری مفهوم عشق جنسی بلکه تماماً به خاطر شرایط اقتصادی به وجود آمد و خانواده‌ی یکتاهمسر پدرسالار بود که در نهایت به تبدیل هتاریسم (که در واقع از ازدواج گروهی منشا می‌گیرد) به فحشا به معنای امروزی (سکس در ازای پول) منجر شد. اینکه چرا یکتاهمسری فقط از سوی زن قانون بود و مردها گاهی بی‌وفایی می‌کردند یا گاهی چند همسر اختیار می‌کردند باز به شرایط اقتصادی بازمی‌گردد. مرد به موجب در اختیارداشتن ابزار تولید و زمین، به مرور صاحب بردگانی شد که مالک‌شان به حساب می‌آمد و در نتیجه می‌توانست از زنان و دختران آنان سوءاستفاده کند. اصلاً دلیل آنکه زنان در میان اسپارت‌ها نسبت به آتنی‌ها از ارج و منزلت بیشتری برخوردار بودند، یکی آزادی جنسی در میان آنان، عدم وجود بردگی و حضور سرف‌ها دور از مالکین (کم‌تر بودن وسوسه برای هم‌خوابگی با زنان و دختران آن‌ها) دانسته می‌شود.)

در ادامه انگلس جداگانه و به تفسیر بررسی می‌کند که در یونان، روم و امپراتوری ژرمن‌ها، چطور تغییرات نظام تولیدی و در نتیجه دگرگونی‌های اجتماعی راه را برای شکلگیری دولت باز کردند. نهادی که در تمامیت خود همیشه در مقابل مردم قرار دارد چرا که بر خلاف نظام تیره‌ای (که پیشتر در همه جا بر قرار بود و قانون‌ می‌گذارد و عدالت را برای هم‌تیره‌ای‌ها فراهم می‌کرد) منافع یکسانی با توده‌ی مردم ندارد و معمولاً به خاطر خاستگاه پیدایش خود (تنازعا�� و تناقض‌های درون‌جامعه‌ای میان طبقاتی که بر اساس ثروت و نه بر اساس خون و تیره شکل‌گرفته‌اند) مجبور به جانبداری از طبقه‌ی ثروتمند و قدرتمند جامعه است. انگلس با دقت زیاد به توصیف تمامی این جریانات می‌پردازد تا نشان دهد بشر نخستین نه تنها جمعی می‌زیست بلکه بی‌هیچ مشکلی و در کمال دموکراسی می‌زیست. هم‌چنین تاکید می‌کند فروپاشی امپراتوری یونان برخلاف آنچه تاریخ سعی دارد نشان دهد نه در اثر دموکراسی که در اثر برده‌داری و فساد زیاد به وقوع پیوست. او می‌گوید بنابر اتفاقات ناگزیر تاریخ که از مهم‌ترین آن به تقسیم‌کارهای بزرگ اجتماعی (نخستین تقسیم کار: در اثر ظهور دامپروری و در میان قبایلی که شبانی می‌زیستند و آن‌ها که در مرحله‌ای پایین‌تر از تکامل بودند؛ دومی: جدایی صنایع دستی از کشاورزی در عصر نیم‌خدایان و در نتیجه مبادلات کالایی و از دست‌رفتن تسلط به روی کالای تولیدی خود و تثبیت مالکیت خصوصی کامل و شکل‌گیری تمایز طبقاتی بر مبنای ثروت و در نهایت، سومین تقسیم‌کار بزرگ: شکل‌گیری بازرگانی و سر برآوردن تجار که با کار اندک و با استفاده از محصول دیگری فربه و فربه‌تر می‌شدند) باید اشاره کرد، تیره در هم شکست و منافع فردی به جای منافع خویشاوندی با منافع گروه‌های کاری گره خورد و تناقضات برآمده از تقسیم کار و نتیجه آن، یعنی تقسیم جامعه به طبقات، دولت به وجود آمد. ارگانی نوین که در تقابل با هر سازمان تیره‌ای، از منافع همه‌ی مردم حراست کند. اتفاقی که اگرچه نیفتاد و دولت از همان آغاز پیدایش خود به استثمار نیرو و ثروت انسانی همت گمارد چرا که بر مبنای حرص و ثروت‌اندوزی بنیان نهاده شده بود. بنابراین دولت به هیچ عنوان نه قدرتی است که از خارج به جامعه تحمیل شده باشد (چونان که برخی اندیشمندان باور دارند انسان‌ها ناگزیر از ناامنی‌های زندگی فردی سراغ فرزانه‌ای رفتند و با او بیعت بستند (حتی در مواردی گفته می‌شود حق خود را به خدا واگذاشتند)) و نه واقعیت ایده معنوی، تصویر و واقعیت عقل (انچنان که هگل می‌گوید). بر عکس دولت محصول جامعه‌ای است در مرحله‌ی معینی از تکامل که به دلیل تضاد حل‌ناشدنی با خود درگیر است. دولت بر خلاف نظام تیره‌ای کهن، در ابتدا اتباع خود را بر حسب سرزمین تقسیم کرد. سلاح از دست عموم مردم گرفت. و برای نگهداری از قدرت عمومی مفهوم مالیات را به وجود آورد. از آنجا که دولت از نیاز به تحت کنترل‌داشتن تناقضات طبقاتی برخاست، بنابر ضرورت، دولتِ طبقه‌ی قوی‌تر و به لحاظِ اقتصادی مسلط است. با این حال، از ازل وجود نداشته است. جوامعی بودند که بدون دولت سر کردند و هیچ تصوری از چنین نهادی نداشتند. بنابراین وقتی ضرورت این نهاد به سر رسد، دولت فرو می‌پاشد و به موزه‌ها منتقل می‌شود.

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the work outlined in this book has been disproved. It is rudimentary, a great summation of mid-19th century anthropology. I like his analysis of Iroquois tribes as compared with Far Eastern configurations of the family. Basically his argument is that pre-capitalist societies and non-western societies, notably Native American tribes have already understood basic principles of communism, and that in many ways it is more natural to have common property rights, and community based child raising, than the way the family is configured in contemporary society. He makes some arguments that have kind of become glossed over or completely forgotten by contemporary Marxists; that capitalism is inherently patriarchal, that "it takes a village to raise a child" and that we are all better of when we know how to share. Although he constantly reverts to teleological discussions (Progressivist arguments about how feudalism becomes capitalism which becomes socialism which then becomes communism). Most contemporary Marxists have abandoned this schematic for reasons I have yet to fully understand.

[Σταμάτης Καρασαββίδης · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly good at some parts and fairly bad at others. In many cases I lack the knowledge to disprove his claims and many remarks of his in native american culture especially at that part where he speaks about skull sizes seems very racist. His attitude and analysis of ancient greek culture also follows that classical and totally ignorant german model of taking ancient greece as it was only athens. Engels completely ignores every other greek city state, not giving any attention to how direct conflicts with other greek and non greek cultures shaped the athenian state and reduces everything to inner conflict.

Another really bad point of Engels is how he labels the germanic people who invaded western Rome (Engels, as any other typical ignorant German, does not take eastern rome into consideration and doesnt even consider it as "real Rome"), as 'inherently democratic and equal' and how it was this 'equality and democracy' the germanic people possessed that made their society rich and flourishing on the dying empire of western rome, also completely ignoring that a major reason that western rome was dying was also the germanic invasions, and the main reason the Germanic and Frankish empire flourished was because of their horrific imperial policies in eastern rome sacking constantinople and pillaging it, and the crusades.

Apart from these fairly bad points, the historical materialism, the method used to analyse how history works and moves forward is excellent and as an actual application of historical materialism in use I definitely suggest it and consider it a great example!

3.5/5

[Jeffwest15 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I re-read this after some 30 years after having recommended it to someone. Engels provides a materialist view of the origin and development of human social structures by linking the then-recent findings of Lewis Morgan on primitive families to the underlying means of procurring food, shelter, and tools.

He traces the origin of the modern male dominated monogamous family through early group marriage, development of the incest taboos, and gens clan structure arriving at the monogamous family with the advent of private property and the ability for a human to produce more than necessary to stay alive. With private property comes class-divided society, the relegation of women to the status of domestic slave, the need to know heirs to pass the property to, and the begining of the exploitation of man by man, in the first instance, through ancient slavery. He additionally shows that the end of the oppression of women will occur only when that family structure disappears, she is fully freed from the constraints of household drudgery and she plays a full role in productive society.

A triumph of the application of historical materialism.

A few years ago I read "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond who summarizes contemporary understanding of the transition of the hunter-gatherer to settled agricultural status. By my memory, he doesn't deal at all with social structures. Diamond decides that environmental accident governs differences between European versus other human development. It would be interesting to re-look at the Diamond book now.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

مراجعتي للكتاب:
تتمحور الرؤية النسوية اليسارية باختصار حول نظرية إنجلز المفسرة بدقة في هذا الكتاب، القائلة بأن المجتمعات كانت أمومية، أي أن نسب الأبناء يكون للأم، لأن العلاقات الجنسية –كما الحيازات- كانت على المشاع، ولم توجد "مؤسسة" الأسرة. فكانت الأمومة يقينية والأبوة ظنية، ثم انتقلت المجتمعات للنسب الأبوي مع ظهور الملكية الخاصة.
كانت النساء في العصور الوحشية و في مراحل من العصور البربرية، تقوم بكل الأعمال المنتجة ذات القيمة في المنزل كالنسيج والتطبيب والطهي، مما أدى إلى إسناد القيادة للنساء داخل أسرهن ومجتمعاتهن. ولم يكن هناك معنى لمفهوم الملكية، فكان الإنتاج للحاجة والأدوات للمشاع.
نقطة التحول في هذا الوضع كانت "مأسسة الملكية الخاصة" وهي ما يسميها إنجلز "لحظة الهزيمة التاريخية لجنس النساء". فكان الرجال هم من حركهم حب التملك فوق الحاجة، فهم قادمون من الغابة بالتنافس ومهاراته وأخلاقه، بسبب تمرسهم في الصيد والصراع مع الطبيعة و مع بعضهم البعض. ومع خوف المستحوذين من فقدان أملاكهم، تم الانتقال من حالة الطبيعة إلى حالة الدولة. فالدولة تحمي الممتلكات وحق الحيازة وذلك باختراع القانون وبآلية التنفيذ وهي الحكومة المسلحة.قبل الدولة لم يكن هناك تنظيمات قانونية أو سياسية واختار الرجال هذا الشكل لتقنين حق "اغتصاب الممتلكات" التي كانت مشاعًا و حقًا للجميع، وتحويل هذا الاغتصاب إلى حق يحميه القانون.
ومن هنا، أراد الرجال انتقال حق الملكية للنسل المنسوب لهم، فتمأسست العلاقات الجنسية الحصرية -أي الزواج- لتتحول الأبوة من غلبة الظن إلى اليقين. وتحولت المرأة من مركز الوحدة الاجتماعية ومحورها إلى المرتبة الثانية.
أدت مأسسة الملكية الخاصة إلى تكون إقطاعيات في يد قلة من الإقطاعيين، وأغلبية من المعدمين وأصبح هذا الحق محميًا بالقانون. فأصبحت هناك أقلية تملك ومن ثم تحكم وتصدر القرارات و تتسيد وأغلبية تتبع و تنفذ الأوامر، فنشأت منظومة رأسمالية أبوية. وهي تسمى أبوية من حيث وجود فئة تسود وفئة تخضع وتتبع. فالرأسمالية قرينة قيام الدولة والعقد الاجتماعي.
وبناء عليه، فالأسرة الأبوية مولودة من رحم المؤسسة الاقتصادية الأبوية الرأسمالية، بالتالي، لا يمكن أن تسمح المنظومة الرأسمالية بأي تغيير لصالح المرأة داخل الأسرة. لأن الأسرة بشكلها الأبوي تخدم المنظومة الرأسمالية.
نقطة مهمة أيضًا يجب الالتفات لها وهي أن المشكلة ليست في نوع الإنتاج الذي قامت به النساء تاريخيًا ومازالت تقوم به، ولكن في تحوله من عمل اجتماعي منتج في المجال العام ( ضمن نظام المشاعية) وامتلاكها لوسائل إنتاج هذا العمل (كالقدور والأقمشة وغيرها)، إلى عمل غير منتج إجتماعيًا داخل المجال الخاص، في مقابل عمل الرجل التقليدي في كسب العيش الذي تحول مع الزمن من وسيلة للبقاء إلى مصدر للثروة وتراكمها، ففقد العمل المنزلي أهميته وقدره وتحول إلى مساهمة تافهة.
وآخر نقطة لفهم التغير في المجتمعات، هي أن في المجتمعات المشاعية لم يكن هناك معنى للفقر أو الغنى، لعدم وجود شيء اسمه التملك أصلًا، ولم يكن هناك معنى للقهر لأنه لم يكن هناك شيء اسمه سلطة أو هرمية. وكانت هذه وفقًا لإنجلز الحالة الطبيعية للإنسان والتي تغيرت مع ظهور الملكية الخاصة وظهور الدولة بالتبعية.
تلخيص الكتاب:
(في مدونتي على تمبلر)انطلاقًا من هذه الفكرة المختصرة سألخص كتاب إنجلز الذي يتناول المراحل التاريخية الأنثروبولوجية لهذه الفكرة بالتفصيل.
الكتاب من أصعب الكتب التي قرأتها، فقد استهلكني ذهنيًا بسبب تفاصيله وتعقيداته. ومما زاد الأمر صعوبة أنني كنت أقوم بكتابة تلخيصات لكل فصل حتى أتمكن من تذكر تفاصيل الكتاب. وهي طريقة لا أعتقد أنني سأقوم بها مجددًا نظرًا للوقت المستهلك فيها والذي كان يمكن أن أستغله في قراءة ثلاثة أو أربعة كتب إضافية. ولكني أنصح المتصفحين بقراءة نهاية كل فصل، فهي تحتوي على ملخص الفصل في فقرة أو اثنتين على الأكثر.بالإضافة إلى الفص�� التاسع الذي يعتبر تجميعًا لمعظم الأفكار في الفصول الثمانية السابقة.
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[Daniele Palma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Senza alcuna sorpresa anche in questo caso Engels si dimostra un importante ed abile divulgatore, leggetelo e ne rimarrete sorpresi da quanto sia semplice il suo linguaggio, racconta i fatti per quel che sono stati e prevedendo il futuro per quel che dopo il suo tempo si sono rivelati.
Non leggetelo con l'occhio politico ma con la fame di conoscenza e il gusto di ascoltare una lezione di un grande studioso.

[Praveen SR · Rating 4 out of 5]

To discover the feminist in Engels. On the early development of social structures, on how the matrilineal clan came into existence even before the family system and how women slowly lost their dominance. Some of the theories in this book have been disputed, but it is still as important a read as the manifesto, for the perspectives that it provide

[Abdifatah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gives an account of the transition from gentile (tribal and less organized) societies to 'civilization' or what we would understand as feudalism. The approved pre-history of Marxism, everything up to the entrance of the commodity.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really nice read!! A lot of the book is based on Lewis Morgan’s research into family structures, particularly those of native American tribes and Hawaiian families. Engels outlines the stages of savagery and then barbarism, before going into detail about the matriarchal structure and family lines that were necessary for the development of ‘gens’, small family structures. He then connects the advent of the patriarchal family line with the exchange of goods and private property. He argues that the monogamous family structure perpetuates domestic slavery and the view of housework as insignificant, using examples from different societies without an emphasis on monogamy. He also proves the myth of individual sexlove, saying that it has been absent from any bourgeois conception of marriage, as most marry for economic reasons and a cheating husband is very common. The first class struggle was between wife and husband upon the advent of marriage; Engels argues that individual sexlove will always be a fantasy while we live under capitalism. A very interesting book! I wish i could get into all the nuances. And an essential marxist feminist read!

[Public_enemy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I was reading this book in opposition to it, I learned a lot. Problem is: Communists always diminish the importance of idealistic factors in history. Even the Russian communist revolution can be described primarily ideologically because in Russia, back then in 1917., there was no much of materialistic and historic (empiric) conditions for revolution. There was only an abstract idea (which was generated elsewhere, namely in Western Europe 50 years before). So, divergence between theory and practice, base and superstructure, led to the collapse of communist states 25 years ago. Things are far more complicated then they thought. I could talk for a month about idealistic / materialistic dialectics and other core problems of historicism, but I think this is enough for this review. If someone is interesting to argue more, then reply to this comment. :) Especially, if someone can analyze mistakes in "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State".

[Tilad · Rating 5 out of 5]

الكتاب غاية في الأهمية لما يحويه من دراسة شاملة لتطور الحياة البشرية مقسما اياها إلى ثلاثة مراحل تبدأ بالمرحلة الوحشية و البربرية و انتهاء بالمدنية و التي قسمت كل منها الى عدة مراحل تبعا لتطور أدوات الانتاج والتحول من الملكية العامة الى الملكية الخاصة و الانتقال من الزواج الجماعي الى الزواج الثنائي فالزواج الحديث الذي شكل العائلة على ما نعرفها اليوم و التي هي أصغر نواة في المجتمع الحديث اللذي أدت ظروف تطوره الى تشكل الدولة الحديثة مقتضيا بأهم ثلاثة أمثلة عن العصور القديمة و هي الامبراطورية الرومانية و الاغريقية و الدولة الألمانية

[μιχαέλα · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ενα πραγματικά διαφωτιστικό βιβλίο βασιζόμενο στον διαλεκτικό υλισμό. Κανει λογο για την εξελικτική πορεία της κοινωνίας με κατάληξη την γένεση του κράτους το οποιο θεμελιώνεται στην διαβάθμιση των ανθρώπων σε κοινωνικές τάξεις με αντικρουόμενα συμφέροντα. Αναφερει επίσης τις ενδιάμεσες μεταβατικές βαθμίδες της πορείας αυτής οι οποίες χαρακτηρίζονται απο μεγάλες ανατροπές οπως για παράδειγμα η ανατροπή του μητρικού δικαίου και η κυριαρχία του πατρικού που σηματοδοτεί μια νεα εποχή και εξυπηρετεί τις ανάγκες της ατομικής ιδιοκτησίας.

[Caitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book added a whole lot to my perspective on the parallels between the development of gender roles and the concept of private property. It's from a historical materialist perspective, certainly, and at least at the time I read it, prompted me to more than one "A-ha" moment. If ideas of communism or socialism offend you, you may not feel the same way, but it's still a fascinating analysis in and of itself.

[Adrian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A complicated but thorough history of family and it’s relation to class and economic systems dating back to the more primitive cultures of our past. Examined through the lens of the eternal truth of Marxism, this is a very fun book to read and get a better understanding of how today’s society has reached this point. Not a necessary Marxist read but good supplemental and enjoyable material none the less