The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

A work of historical materialism by Engels on the development of ancient society and the doctrine of the state. Written between the end of March and the end of May 1884. It was published in Zurich in early-October 1884, and several editions were subsequently released. In 1920, some parts were translated by Yun Daiying and published in the Shanghai Oriental Magazine, Vol. 17, Nos. 19–20.

After the death of Marx in March 1883, Engels laid down other tasks and took on the heavy task of sorting out his posthumous manuscripts. In this process, Engels examined Marx’s extracts and comments on many works on ancient society, including Morgan’s Ancient Society. After conducting an in-depth study, Engels found it necessary to write a monograph based on Marx’s criticism as well as on some of Morgan’s viewpoints and materials to elaborate on the ancient society and perfect the materialist conception of history.

The main text of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State is divided into 9 chapters. In Chapter I. Stages of Prehistoric Culture, Engels divided this stage into three periods: the age of savagery, the age of barbarism and the age of civilization. The age of savagery was the period in which man’s appropriation of products in their natural state predominates; the products of human art were chiefly instruments which assisted this. The age of barbarism was the period during which man learned to breed domestic animals and to practice agriculture, and acquired methods of increasing the supply of natural products by human activity. The age of civilization was the period in which man learned a more advanced application of work to the products of nature, the period of industry proper and of art. Chapter II. The Family specifically inquired into the origin of the single family. Engels affirmed Morgan’s method of inquiry of examining family form on the basis of kinship and marriage ties. Accordingly, Engels divided the development sequence of the human marriage and family into four forms—consanguine family, Punaluan family, pairing family and monogamous family. The consanguine family is the beginning of the history of the development of the family, which excludes intermarriage between parents and children and practises the system of intermarriage between brother and sister. And subsequently, with the development of productive forces and the role of natural selection, the scope of marriage prohibition within the family gradually expanded. When intermarriage was completely excluded from the consanguine system, the consanguine family evolved into the Punaluan family and gave rise to the gentile constitution. As marriage prohibitions became more complex, group marriage was gradually displaced by the pairing family. In the stage pairing family, one man lived with one woman, but polygamy and occasional infidelity remained the right of the men and marriage ties were not stable. The instability of the pairing family itself at this stage did not destroy the communistic household inherited from earlier times. It was not until society reached the middle and upper stages of barbarism, the productive forces developed significantly, men began to become owners of the means of production, and a shift from matriarchy (mother-right) to patriarchy (father-right) took place in the pairing family that the pairing family began to be truly stabilized. At this point, mankind began to transform itself into a higher level of family—the monogamous family. This marriage tie could no longer be dissolved at either partner’s wish. It is based on the supremacy of the man, the purpose being to produce children of undisputed paternity in order to inherit their father’s property. Chapters III to VIIII expounded on the origin of the state. On the basis of materials of the Iroquois, the Greeks, the Romans, the Celts, the Germans, etc., Engels clarified the whole process of the development from the gens and tribe to the State. From the gens, phratry and tribe gradually developed into various patrilineal gens and local tribes, forming confederacies of tribes, and as the confederacies of tribes were unified and expanded, states and nations began to take shape. Meanwhile, Engels also presented three types of European state origins: the Athenian state; the Roman state; and the Germanic state. But the state, whatever type it originated from, is a product of private property and class antagonisms, and the nature of the state is that it is a tool of class rule. Chapter IX. Barbarism and Civilization expounded on the origin of private property and the emergence of classes. In the middle stage of barbarism, a tendency towards private ownership of property began to take place in the communal economy within the gentile society; chiefly expressed in the private ownership of the means of subsistence, the emergence of the domestication of animals, the private ownership of arable land and the emergence and expansion of exchange. With the continuous development of the productive forces, what was regarded as private property gradually increased and expanded from usage (rights) to ownership (rights), and private property began to develop in all respects. Inheritance played a crucial role in the formation of private property. Engels held that the introduction of the patrilineal inheritance was “one of the most decisive revolutions ever experienced by humanity”. The patriarchy (father-right) of inheritance of property by children led to the further consolidation of private property and its continuation from generation to generation. The establishment of private property also initiated the history of class antagonisms.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State occupies a particularly important place in the history of the development of Marxism. In the work, making use of the findings of Marx’s research during his lifetime and from the standpoint of historical materialism, Engels conducted a profound inquiry into the early stages of human society, and on the basis of analyzing the features of the stages of prehistoric culture and the origin, evolution, and development process of the different types of marriage and family, he comprehensively elaborated on the emergence of the family, the private property, and the State, thus for the first time scientifically analyzed and studied the history of the primitive society, and perfected the materialist conception of history by making it founded on the systematic study of all history, which had a great impact on eliminating all kinds of erroneous notions that existed in the international communist movement.