The Nexus Archive
Socialism and Political Economy · Treatise
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
by Engels · The Organizer of Class Struggle · Industrial Modernity, 1820-1895
Engels links kinship, property, class, and the state in a historical-materialist reconstruction of social development.
- Advanced
- ~4 hr 30 min read
- 2 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the II. BARBARISM. guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
Before the State Looked Permanent
Who owns the herd, who inherits it, and who does the work at home? For Friedrich Engels, these questions reach into the foundations of political power. In his account, family life and government have histories, and arrangements that seem fixed can change when people find new ways to produce and hold wealth.
Engels wrote after Marx’s death, using Marx’s notes on the American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan. His book combines a reconstruction of early societies with a socialist argument about property and dependence. Kinship terms, marriage customs and ancient laws become evidence in a dispute over how people came to live under unequal authority.
The argument carries the assumptions of nineteenth-century anthropology. Its account of human stages also contains disagreements and revisions; Ernest Untermann, the translator, sometimes challenges it in his notes. Beneath the wide historical sweep lies an intimate question: how much freedom can a person have when someone else controls the means of living?
The opening pages
CHAPTER I. PREHISTORIC STAGES.
THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY
Morgan was the first to make an attempt at introducing a logical order into the history of primeval society. Until considerably more material is obtained, no further changes will be necessary and his arrangement will surely remain in force.
Of the three main epochs—savagery, barbarism and civilization—naturally only the first two and the transition to the third required his attention. He subdivided each of these into a lower, middle and higher stage, according to the progress in the production of the means of sustenance. His reason for doing so is that the degree of human supremacy over nature is conditioned on the ability to produce the necessities of life. For of all living beings, man alone has acquired an almost unlimited control over food production. All great epochs of human progress, according to Morgan, coincide more or less directly with times of greater abundance in the means that sustain life. The evolution of the family proceeds in the same measure without, however, offering equally convenient marks for sub-division.
I. SAVAGERY.
1. Lower Stage. Infancy of the human race. Human beings still dwelt in their original habitation, in tropical or subtropical forests. They lived at least part of the time in trees, for only in this way they could escape the attacks of large beasts of prey and survive. Fruit, nuts, and roots served as food. The formation of articulated speech is the principal result of this period. Not a single one of all the nations that have become known in historic times dates back to this primeval stage.
Although the latter may extend over thousands of years, we have no means of proving its existence by direct evidence. But once the descent of man from the Animal Kingdom is acknowledged, the acceptance of this stage of transition becomes inevitable.
2. Middle Stage: Commencing with the utilization of fish (including crabs, mollusks and other aquatic animals) and the use of fire. Both these things belong together, because fish becomes thoroughly palatable by the help of fire only. With this new kind of food, human beings became completely independent of climate and locality. Following the course of rivers and coastlines, they could spread over the greater part of the earth even in the savage state. The so-called palaeolithic implements of the early stone age, made of rough, unsharpened stones, belong almost entirely to this period. Their wide distribution over all the continents testifies to the extent of these wanderings. The unceasing bent for discovery, together with the possession of fire gained by friction, created new products in the lately occupied regions. Such were farinaceous roots and tubers, baked in hot ashes or in baking pits (ground ovens). When the first weapons, club and spear, were invented, venison was occasionally added to the bill of fare. Nations subsisting exclusively by hunting, such as we sometimes find mentioned in books, have never existed; for the proceeds of hunting are too uncertain. In consequence of continued precariousness of the sources of sustenance, cannibalism seems to arise at this stage. It continues in force for a long while. Even in our day, Australians and Polynesians still remain in this middle stage of savagery.
Chapter guides · 2
II. BARBARISM.
Production as a Measure of History
Engels links changing social institutions to the production of necessities and the organization of family life. His account adopts Morgan’s stages of early society while revisiting the disputes behind them.
A history open to change
The book's wager is that institutions presented as timeless can be understood—and contested—as products of material history. Untermann’s preface makes that challenge explicitly political, attacking the claim that existing authority was divinely fixed. Engels distinguishes the work of providing food, clothing and shelter from the generation of children; his materialist account makes social institutions depend on both.
What kinship can explain
In his later preface, Engels credits Bachofen with making the family a subject of history but objects to his reliance on religious explanations. He also rejects McLennan’s rigid opposition between groups that marry within themselves and those that marry outside. Morgan’s distinction between a gens and a tribe makes both practices possible together: marriage can take place outside the kin group and within the tribe.
Stages and their limits
Morgan’s stages turn on changes in subsistence and tools: fishing and fire, the bow, pottery, animal husbandry, agriculture and iron. Engels also distinguishes the resources available in the eastern and western hemispheres, so the stages do not follow identical landmarks everywhere. The edition contains disagreement within this scheme: Untermann’s note challenges conclusions about diet and rejects treating cannibalism as a general stage of human history. In the higher stage of barbarism come iron tools, the plough drawn by animals, field farming and walled towns; Engels finds its fullest picture in Homer’s poems. He ends by summing up Morgan’s periods: savagery is mainly the taking of what nature already provides, barbarism adds cattle raising and agriculture, and civilization brings the further working of natural products, manufacture and art.
CHAPTER III. THE IROQUOIS GENS.
Kinship, Inheritance and Power
Engels links changes in the family to wealth and inheritance. He then describes Iroquois government through kin groups, before a separate state exists.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State?
- About 4 hr 30 min in total.
- How difficult is The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State?
- Advanced. A long treatise; about 5 hours of reading.
- Which translation is this?
- The Ernest Untermann translation from the German, first published in 1884. The text follows The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1908).
- Can I read The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State for free?
- The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and one chapter guide on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 2 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. One opens in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German writer, political theorist, and collaborator of Karl Marx. He coauthored The Communist Manifesto and helped shape socialist analysis of industrial capitalism, class conflict, and historical change.
“What does industrial society reveal when seen from the side of labor?”
Engels matters in Nexus because The Communist Manifesto is a coauthored source and because his industrial analysis helped define the Marxist critique of modern society.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.