The Origin of The Family, Private 

Property, and the State 

A Summary

The origin, written by Friedrich Engels, is significantly based on Karl Marx’s notes from the book Ancient Society: Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization by Lewis Henry Morgan, an American anthropologist.  After his death, Marx’s notes were picked up by Engels who transformed them into The Origin.  It is important to remember that The Origin is composed of the thoughts of many people as Engels was influenced by many.  Engels was influenced by Marx and Morgan as mentioned before, but he’s also influenced by Bachofen, who wrote Mother Right and believed in the historical change of the sexes to monogamy.  Engels was also influenced by J.F. McLennan who was regarded as the pioneer of developing a history of the family.

 

Engels’ Origin of the Family, like Morgan’s Ancient Society, subdivides human history into three stages: savagery, barbarism, and civilization.  These stages are divided according to the progress made in food production: namely hunter gatherer societies under savagery, horticultural societies under barbarism, and commodity production under civilization.  The progress made in food production led to changes in the social organization of society; this is a materialistic explanation of society where society’s production (the production of the means of existence: food, shelter, tools) & society’s reproduction (the propagation of the species) determines society’s social organization.  Increases in food production over the three stages of human history led to changes in the social organization of kinship arrangements which are built upon differing arrangements of marriage.  Increases in food production over the stages also led to different social organizations of the division of labor, the rise of surplus production, and the gentile constitution giving way to the state.  Another important aspect of these stages are the gens, which was a kinship organization based on blood relation with descent recognized from the female line.  The gens was also bound together through religious and social institutions between whom marriage was prohibited.  The gens is based on matrilineal descent due to the fact that women are more easily identified as the biological mother as they literally carry the next generation.

The economic base of society (production) determines the superstructure of society (the family); this is a materialistic explanation of society.  As the economic base of society increased in wealth due to the increase of production, the family is transformed into the monogamous family.  In other words the amassing of property or surplus (the mode of production or the economic base of society) broke up the gens, replacing it with the modern single monogamous family (the superstructure of society) dominated by private property, social classes, and the state.

The three stages of human history begins with Savagery.  Savagery, or what modern anthropology refers to as hunter gatherer society, was dominated by group marriage, the gens with matrilineal kinship, and equality between women and men where the sexes had a ‘natural’ division of labor.  According to Engels, this ‘natural’ division of labor is a sexual division of labor which proclaims that women naturally own the household, having real supremacy over her own labor within the household.  Men, on the other hand, naturally own the instruments of productive labor which are responsible for the ‘productive work’ of obtaining and producing food.  The stage of savagery experienced two types of group marriage: the consanguine family and the punaluan family.  Both the consanguine family and punaluan family had prearranged marriages decided before birth where whole groups of men and women mutually possess one another in marriage.  The first stage of the family is the consanguine family, which excludes marriage between parents and children (i.e. exclusion of marriage between generations) but not among brothers, sisters and cousins who are all held together in group marriage.  The consanguine family gives way to the punaluan family, which is the second stage of the family and prevents brothers, sisters, and cousins from marrying.  Due to this exclusion of marriage among sisters, brothers, and cousins within the punaluan family, the gens develops where descent is recognized through the mother.  The gens separates brothers and sisters into different families.

The second stage of human history is Barbarism, which is comparable to horticultural or pastoral societies.  The third stage of the family, the pairing family, comes to fruition under Barbarism where marriage is decided by the parents and prohibits marriage among all relatives, ending group marriage for good.  The pairing marriage is between one unrelated woman with one unrelated man, giving men a better warrant of paternity but still not passing down inheritance to the man’s children.  While group marriage comes to a close under Barbarism and ends group marriage as the pairing marriage rises, the gens with matrilineal descent still lives on becoming common to all, leaves men with better paternity, and is characterized by the supremacy of women since women were all from the same gens under one family while men were separated into the different families of the women.

Barbarism is also the beginning of animal domestication and the origin of agriculture, which coincides with the transition from the pairing family to the monogamous family as they are connected through a materialist explanation where increases in production lead to changes in the superstructure, the family.  In the eastern hemisphere of the world animal domestication becomes prominent, while the western hemisphere is dominated by agriculture.  This is where the two hemispheres of the world split from each other into different stages of human history.  The eastern hemisphere marched on through Barbarism and on into Civilization, while the western hemisphere becomes inert, remaining in Barbarism until the eastern hemisphere conquered the west.  This stagnation of the west is due to the lack of animals capable of being domesticated.  In the east, however, animal domestication flourished, increasing production as domesticated herds aided in the process of crop production.  This increase in production included all branches, i.e. cattle raising, agriculture, domestic handicrafts.  This increase in production lead to a crop surplus and created a regular exchange system.  This crop surplus of the east resulted in the first great social division of labor where pastoral societies separated from the rest of the barbarians or from the Barbarism Stage and transitioned into Civilization.  As an increase in production due to the labor of domesticated animals lead to an increase in surplus, new labor forces were needed to maintain this growth in production.  Slavery became the answer to maintaining growth in production and became functional within society unlike never before.  Before, slavery was worthless as human labor power couldn’t before produce a surplus.  As slavery became functional within society, it produced the first great cleavage of society into classes where there were masters and there were slaves; one group was composed of exploiters while the other was exploited for their surplus producing labor.  Also, for the first time, wars were waged as a regular industry for the sole purpose of plunder to gain their property for wealth.  Domesticated animals were passed out of the common ownership of the gens and into the ownership of individual heads of families as a cleavage of society into classes can’t maintain a harmonized or coherent society like the gens.

Barbarism began with the pairing family where men and women were still relatively equal, but, with a surplus in production, a transition to monogamy ensued.  Therefore, this is a materialistic explanation where a change in the production with the beginning of a surplus (the material basis for the change) affected the superstructure of society: the family.  The family began the transition to monogamy due to the economic changes in production.  This revolution of the family to monogamy only occurred in the east, not the west until eastern intervention.  This revolution of the family is constructed from the first ‘natural’ division of labor between the sexes.  In other words, the already-in-place ‘natural’ division of labor guided how the family was constructed.  Men have always acquired the necessities of life owning and producing the means of production, while women utilize the products produced by men in order to run the household which they own.  The ‘natural’ division of labor doesn’t cause the transition to monogamy (a surplus owned by the men does) but it sets the stage for an altered form of the family.  As men have always owned the means of production, they inherited the domesticated animals and slaves as they are both tool of production.  Women don’t own the domesticated animals and slaves; their realm of ownership is within the household, which was at first considered as equally important as owning the means of production.  As stated before, domesticated animals and slaves produced a surplus, which became the property of men, not women.  Women still enjoyed the surplus created from animal production by men, but they didn’t own it.  In other words, the ‘natural’ division of labor between men and women stayed the same, but it structured the division of property between women and men as men solely owned the new property of the cattle and slaves which produced a surplus.  Therefore, men alone owned the surplus, giving men an advantage over women as they had more wealth which created unequal power between men and women.  With this advantage, men overthrew the matriarchal gens and replaced it with the single monogamous family based on male inheritance as we now know today.  This was done by men in order to put in place a system of male lineage where their male children inherited the surplus and the surplus producing property of domesticated animals and slaves.  The transition to monogamy and the abolition of the gens was a step taken by men due to their exploitive position.  The surplus they gained through slaves and domesticated animals increased their wealth and amplified their position over women within the family.  With this leverage over women, men overthrew the gens in order to secure inheritance rights for their children, passing inheritance on through the male line instead of the female line.  Ever since the overthrow of the gens, women have been degraded to the servitude of men, becoming instruments of reproduction to ensure the paternity and inheritance rights of his children.

During the ending of Barbarism the second social division of labor occurs where handicraft production is separated from agricultural production.  This leads to commodity production where production is no longer for use by producers but is directly exchanged for money or cattle which acts in the place of money.  In other words, production becomes no longer used by the producer, but is now exchanged for cattle and later money.  Slavery now becomes essential to society where freemen and slaves become the new cleavage of class society.  Since there are inequalities in property ownership among the men in individual heads of families, it breaks up communities, leading to the erosion of kinship and the movement of people no longer bound to their territory.  The transition to private property due to a surplus in production (the economic base) leads to changes to the single monogamous family (the superstructure).

This now brings us to the stage of civilization: the current stage of human history.  Civilization is characterized by the monogamous single family, commodity production with exchange between individuals, and the state which overthrew the gentile constitution of previous times.  Civilization only developed in the eastern hemisphere, until it was brought into the west during colonization.  Civilization is dominated by the monogamous family, the fourth stage of the family.  Under the monogamous family, marriage is decided by economics as the single family is the economic unit in society.  The monogamous family is based on male supremacy as monogamy is used to subjugate women who are used to produce children with undisputable paternity in order to pass down the property of domesticated animals and slaves through the male line.  Before both women and men’s tasks were social and public (women upheld the communistic household while men produced food communistically), but, under the monogamous family, the household lost its public character, moving into the private sector where women were excluded from public production.  While the term monogamy implies sex with only one other person, the ‘monogamous’ family is actually supplemented by adultery and prostitution.  This is because marriage is predominately decided by economics, which makes it a matter of convenience and not a matter of love.  The monogamous family didn’t develop due to matters of sex love but due to economic reasons where men could pass down private property through the male line.  

Civilization also leads to the third great social division of labor where the merchants were born.  The merchants became the mediators between the producers, creating a division between those who direct production (the merchants) and those who execute production (the producers).  The merchants’ primary concern is with exchanging products for profit, not with production.  This third social division of labor led to periodical trade crises; metallic money as an instrument of domination of the non-producer over the producer; loans leading to interest; wealth in commodities, increases in slaves, money, and land; the concentration and centralization of wealth increasing mass impoverishment; and the breaking up of the settled conditions of life from the repeated shifting and changing of residence due to the pressure of trade, alteration of occupation, and changes in ownership of land.

As stated previously, the state comes to dominate society with the birth of civilization replacing the old gentile constitution of previous stages of human history.  The gentile constitution was a social institution that divided society based on the gens and was for the will of the people requiring members to be settled in the same territory.  Division of labor under the gentile constitution is based on the ‘natural’ division of labor where only the sexes are divided, each the master in their own sphere and owning the instruments of their labor.  Under this system, there are no poor or slaves, no ruler reigning over the people, and no complicated administrative apparatus.  All are equal and free with no difference between rights and duties among people.  As the state took over society due to the sale and purchase of land and the progressive division of labor, the gentile constitution sank to the level of private associations and religious bodies.  The state came from the material need to support and maintain the new system of the monogamous family where men owned private property (i.e. the surplus producing slaves and domesticated animals, the money, etc.).

The state is a machine for the plundering, oppression, and domination of others in order to protect the possessing class against the non-possessing class to secure riches and sanctify the private property of men, classes, and male privilege.  The state requires many features in order to function.  First, it requires people be grouped on the basis of territory where traditional kinship is eroded in order to break people apart into classes.  Territory becomes heterogeneous where slaves, citizens, and foreigners all coincide in the same territory.  The state also requires an armed public force consisting of an army, prisons, a police force, and other coercive institutions.  This armed public force is separated from the masses of the people, serving state authorities not the people as it’s impossible to have a people’s army because of the cleavage of society into classes.  Third, the state needs class opposition and division where the privileged have the rights and the unprivileged have the duties of society, setting people against each other in classes.  Fourth, the state necessitates an alienating power standing above the warring classes of society in order to suppress open conflict and keep it within the bounds of ‘order’ letting the classes fight it out on an economic level.  Fifth, the state needs taxes to maintain the armed public force, which inevitably leads to state debt as it’s never enough.

Engels proposes society is moving towards a fifth stage of the family which I’ve termed the egalitarian family where marriage is decided by ‘sex love.’  Previously, marriage was decided before birth under group marriages, by parents under the pairing family, and by economics under the monogamous family of civilization.  The monogamous family still holds true even today as marriage is still linked with material economic wellbeing (i.e. women still marry men as a security measure where our culture is pervaded by the idea that women need men in order to survive economically).  Engels argues that society’s production, the economic base of society, will eventually lead to the development of social property instead of private property.  Private property with its ownership over land, animals, slaves, and money is the economic foundations of the monogamous family and the material conditions for the existence of patriarchy.   Engels argues that with a social revolution of society’s production into social property, monogamy will be truly realized.  This social revolution will transform the means of production into social property where women can prosper economically without the security of men.  The labor of women will leave the private sector of society and will no longer be excluded from social production; this will lead to the destruction of the monogamous family where patriarchy rules under private property.