Oliver’s Reviews > The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: > Status Update

We now see the gradual decline of the Roman empire, spurred on by the contradictions and complexity of the Roman system. We also see the Germanic Barbarians invade the bordering Roman provinces and, requiring a leader of these more complex Roman cities, installed the first true Kings, derived from Germanic military leaders with a thirst for power... etc etc etc and we arrive at feudalism.

The best chapter so far!

A longer and more complicated chapter, but I believe I understood his points

He talks of the traces of matriarchy in the patriarchal Germans (pulled from Roman accounts). He uses these traces to prove the universality of societal development; how all our societies seem to follow the same steps as we "progress", by pointing out the similarities with the Germans of Roman times and the late 1800's American Indians.

A rather short chapter, this one. It shows how the early Roman Republic had a major, historically important shift in its class structure: Previously, your class was largely determined by blood relations or membership of a tribe, but now ( roughly 500bc) it changed; Wealth gradually became the most defining trait of an individual and dictated his class position.

Short, but important

Finally, we arrive at the early forms of the state.

Engels (and Marx), through Morgans work, use the Greek heroic tales in a wonderful way to illustrate how the shift from the rather (primitive) communistic systems to monarchy occurred. Showing how early democracy, shifting to military-democracy under the foundations of the nation, paved the path rather efficiently to the system of hereditary power.

Amazing chapter

Slowly progressing towards the modern day. I had no idea there was this much information on ancient and indigenous societies.