Morgan, whose Ancient Society (along with Marx’s own notes on the text) formed the inspiration for Engels’s work. In the prefaces, Engels sets out a concise explanation of the materialist conception of history, moving on to discuss the evolution of thought on the history of the family, focusing on scholars such as Bachofen, Mclennan, and, finally, L.H.

Lenin, who based much of his classic work, The State and Revolution, on Engels’s text, described it as “one of the fundamental works of modern socialism.” Almost 140 years since it was written, it continues to be essential reading for anyone who wants both to understand and change the world. As Engels puts: “The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong-into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.”Įngels’s revolutionary conclusions have gone on to inspire and educate generations of Marxists.

In the text, Engels responds to many of the most groundbreaking anthropological studies of the day and goes on to explain the material basis of the oppression of women and the state, demonstrating that they are not timeless, eternal phenomena, but rather products of history that arose along with the division of society into classes, and will cease to exist with the overthrow of private property. On the basis of these notes, Morgan’s work and further extensive research, Engels would go onto produce The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: a true masterpiece of historical materialism and one of the greatest works of Marxist theory ever produced. In the course of this work he discovered Marx’s notes on Ancient Society, by the American anthropologist, Lewis Henry Morgan. We present here a reading guide to The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, which can help comrades digest the key ideas from this classic Marxist text by Friedrich Engels.Īfter the death of Karl Marx in 1883, his close friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels, took up the colossal task of preparing what would become volumes 2 and 3 of Capital using Marx’s manuscripts.

Friedrich engels the origin of family