Book: The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State

Context and Sources

Engels draws heavily on Lewis Henry Morgan's comparative ethnography and the Marxist method of historical materialism to reconstruct how kinship, economic relations, and political institutions co-evolved. He treats human societies as historically situated formations shaped by productive forces and the social relations of production, using Morgan's studies of so-called "primitive" societies as empirical grounding for broader theoretical claims. The essay intervenes in 19th-century debates about civilization, gender, and state power by linking changes in family organization directly to shifts in property relations.

Core Thesis

The central claim is that the emergence of private property and class divisions transformed previously communal social forms into structures that enforce male dominance and institutionalize inequality. Engels argues that kinship systems and sexual relations are not eternal or purely cultural artifacts but develop in tandem with modes of production. As productive capacity and surpluses expand, social relations reorganize to secure transmission of wealth, and that reorganization produces monogamous marriage, legal patriarchy, and ultimately the state as mechanisms to protect class interests.

Preclass Societies and Kinship

Engels reconstructs preclass societies as organized around communal ownership, matrilineal descent in many cases, and more fluid sexual relations than later historical periods. Kinship groups functioned as social units regulating labor, marriage, and mutual aid rather than concentrating wealth in single households. Women enjoyed more social and economic autonomy where descent and inheritance followed the maternal line, and household organization reflected collective provisioning rather than the private accumulation of assets.

Transition to Private Property and Patriarchy

With the development of agriculture, metallurgy, and increased productivity, surpluses enabled some groups to accumulate wealth and claim exclusive control over land and means of production. Engels traces how the need to ensure legitimate heirs for transmitted property created incentives for men to control women's sexuality and reproductive capacity. Monogamous marriage becomes a legal and social institution for ensuring paternity, while legal codes and practices reallocate communal wealth into patriarchal family units. The result is a systemic subordination of women and the erosion of earlier communal rights.

Origin and Role of the State

The state, for Engels, arises to manage and legitimize class antagonisms that private property creates. Rather than a neutral arbiter, the state functions as an instrument for defending the interests of propertied classes, enforcing property rights and social hierarchies through law, coercion, and ideological norms. Engels situates the state historically as a late development that coincides with economic stratification, and therefore sees its abolition as contingent upon the abolition of class society.

Political and Feminist Implications

The analysis presents women's emancipation as inseparable from broader social and economic change: political equality and the dismantling of patriarchal family forms require collective reorganization of production and property relations. Engels thus frames feminism within a socialist horizon, arguing that the liberation of women depends on restructuring social labor and abolishing private property that generates gendered domination.

Reception and Critique

The work has been influential for Marxist theory and feminist scholarship by foregrounding the material roots of gender inequality and articulating a link between property, family, and state power. Subsequent anthropology and feminist historians have both drawn on and critiqued Engels: his reliance on Morgan's ethnography and on unilinear stages of development invited challenges about accuracy and determinism, while his insistence on economic causation has been debated by those who emphasize cultural, symbolic, or intersectional factors. Despite criticisms, the argument that sexual and domestic institutions are shaped by economic structures remains a seminal contribution to social theory.