The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Friedrich Engels

On the one side, the production of the means of subsistence, of food, clothing and shelter and the tools necessary for that production on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The author died a few years ago.īut I have the critical notes which he made to his extensive extracts from Morgan, and I reproduce them here in so far as they apply to the theme.Īccording to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of immediate life. The book was printed in America and is peculiarly difficult to obtain in London. * Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, Through Barbarism to Civilization, by Lewis H. My work can offer only a meagre substitute for what my departed friend could no longer accomplish. And just as the professional economists in Germany were for years as busy in plagiarizing Capital as they were persistent in attempting to kill it by silence, so Morgan's Ancient Society * received precisely the same treatment from the spokesmen of 'prehistoric' science in England.

For Morgan in his own-way had discovered afresh in America the materialistic conception of history discovered by Marx 40 years ago, and in his comparison of barbarism and civilization it had led him, in the main points, to the same conclusions as Marx. No less a man than Karl Marx had planned to present the results of Morgan's researches in connection with the conclusions of his own - within certain limits, I may say our - materialistic examination of history, and thus to make clear their full significance. The following chapters are, in a sense, the execution of a bequest.

THE FORMATION OF THE STATE AMONG THE GERMANSĪ RECENTLY DISCOVERED CASE OF GROUP MARRIAGEĮTHNOGRAPHICAL INDEX The notes and indexes are compiled from various sources. Of the original German text in Marx and Engels, Werke, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, Vols. Tional Publishers, New York, 1942 with corrections where necessary on the basis The present English edition of Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private PropertyĪnd the State largely follows the English translation published by the Interna. Origin of the Family, Private Property and the StateĪND THE STATE In Connection with the Researches of

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Friedrich Engels