IN THE Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels outlines the
successive social and economic forms which underlay the broad sweep of early human
history, as mankind gained increasing mastery over the sources of subsistence. The book
was written after Marx’s death, but was drawn from Marx’s as well as Engels’ own notes.
It was based on the work, Ancient Society, which appeared in 1877 and was written by
the anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, who, as Engels wrote in 1884, “in his own way.
. . discovered afresh in America the materialistic conception of history discovered by
Marx 40 years ago.” The contribution Marx and Engels made to Morgan’s work was to
sharpen its theoretical implications, particularly with regard to the emergence of classes
and the state. Although Engels’ book was written well before most of the now available
material on primitive and early urban society had been amassed, the fundamentals of his
outline for history have remained valid. Moreover, many issues raised by Morgan’s and
then Engels’ work are still the subjects of lively debate among anthropologists, while the
theoretical implications of these issues are still matters of concern to Marxist scholars
generally.
Morgan described the evolution of society in some 560 pages. Engels’ book is far
shorter, summarizing Morgan’s material and focusing sharply on the major differences
between primitive society and “civilization” with its fully developed classes and political
organization. The questions Engels deals with pertain to three major topics: (a) developmental
stages in mankind’s history, (b) the nature of primitive society with regard to
property, rank, family forms and descent systems, and (c) the emergence of commodity
production, economically based classes and the state. A fourth subject of importance to
contemporary anthropological research and but briefly referred to by Engels involves primate
social organization and its relevance for an insight into early man. Engels’ separate
but incomplete paper on the subject, “The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from
Ape to Man,” has been included in this volume as an appendix.