Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
7th out of 233 books
—
78 voters
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
This work first tried (perhaps in rivalry with the Owens utopian movement) to set the fall of matriarchy as the origin of all class society. Engels' work follows Marx's lead in the study of Lewis H. Morgan's Ancient Society Or Researches In The Lines Of Hum an Progress From Savagery, Through Barbarism To Civilization, (New York, 1877), considering societies based on class...more
paper, 220 pages
Published
July 19th 2001
by University Press of the Pacific
(first published 1884)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
1,838)
I read Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State in the interest of sorting out the Marx-Engels position on the family and for background to the frequently mis-read passage in The Communist Manifesto about the “community of women.”
Engels composed Origin, published in 1884, from notes he and Marx had made from their reading of the anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery Through Barbarism to Civilizatio...more
Engels composed Origin, published in 1884, from notes he and Marx had made from their reading of the anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery Through Barbarism to Civilizatio...more
7 likes · like · see review
view all 3 comments
Most of the work outlined in this book has been disproved. It is rudimentary, a great summation of mid-19th century anthropology. I like his analysis of Iroquois tribes as compared with Far Eastern configurations of the family. Basically his argument is that pre-capitalist societies and non-western societies, notably Native American tribes have already understood basic principles of communism, and that in many ways it is more natural to have common property rights, and community based child rais...more
Giving a synopsis of this is turning out to be a struggle. As I read Friedrich Engels' book about the anthropology of family I found myself taking copious amount of notes. And not notes that I care to share in a review of the text it was more as if I was reading this text for a class. I have become increasingly more interested in Socialism over the past few years. I can remember being a Socialist punk teenager, reading the works of Marx and saying F the system. But the truth is I never really re...more
This book added a whole lot to my perspective on the parallels between the development of gender roles and the concept of private property. It's from a historical materialist perspective, certainly, and at least at the time I read it, prompted me to more than one "A-ha" moment. If ideas of communism or socialism offend you, you may not feel the same way, but it's still a fascinating analysis in and of itself.
One of the more impressive works I have set myself to reading. Engels maps out, in a compelling and convincing manner, the process which has brought the human race from a state of nature in which exploitation was not a thought to our current system, in which exploitation is 'good business'. He ties in how the family has changed in this process and, in turn, how the changes in the family have led to the advent of private property. Also makes a great argument against the position in which capitali...more
This work first tried (perhaps in rivalry with the Owens utopian movement) to set the fall of matriarchy as the origin of all class society. Engels' work follows Marx's lead in the study of Lewis H. Morgan's Ancient Society Or Researches In The Lines Of Hum an Progress From Savagery, Through Barbarism To Civilization, (New York, 1877), considering societies based on class and property as developing materialistically from origins based on sexual ties and the inevitable disharmony of the two socia...more
كما يدل العنوان يتناول الكتاب مباحث ثلاثة:
1-الحياة الاجتماعية في المجتمعات البدائية التي تكونت من العشيرة ذات الحق الأمي كوحدة بناء للمجتمع (القبيلة) وكيفية التزاوج وتطورها من الزواج الجماعي إلى الزواج الثنائي ثم بعدها الزواج الفردي، وكيف تحول هذا الوضع الاجتماعي تدريجياً إلى ما نحن عليه الآن من نظام اجتماعي يتكون من الأسرة والعائلة كأصغر وحدة لبناء المجتمع ينتسب فيها الإنسان لأبيه وليس لأمه والزواج فردي يسيطر فيه الرجل على المرآة وعلى العائلة بما يملك من قوة اقتصادية ظهرت بعد اكتشاف الزراعة
2-ال...more
1-الحياة الاجتماعية في المجتمعات البدائية التي تكونت من العشيرة ذات الحق الأمي كوحدة بناء للمجتمع (القبيلة) وكيفية التزاوج وتطورها من الزواج الجماعي إلى الزواج الثنائي ثم بعدها الزواج الفردي، وكيف تحول هذا الوضع الاجتماعي تدريجياً إلى ما نحن عليه الآن من نظام اجتماعي يتكون من الأسرة والعائلة كأصغر وحدة لبناء المجتمع ينتسب فيها الإنسان لأبيه وليس لأمه والزواج فردي يسيطر فيه الرجل على المرآة وعلى العائلة بما يملك من قوة اقتصادية ظهرت بعد اكتشاف الزراعة
2-ال...more
That society has not always been based on money, which is to say, on private property, should be uncontroversial, but it is more often, for many people, perhaps, unthinkable. In what is surely Engels' most profound description of how civilization got 'this way', the reader is guided, with the aid of the anthropologist Morgan's schematic outline for the study of historical stages found in his book, Ancient Society, through the historical permutations and evolutions of such seemingly immovable cat...more
Jan 03, 2011
Joe
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
reviewed,
religion,
marxism,
dialectic,
christianity,
collection,
essays,
history-of-religion
Review:
May, 2009
Marxism and Religion, Yesterday and Today
Militant Atheism has recently gone on the offensive (again) in the recent works of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. And all our soi-disant radicals are rallying to the cause. But contemporary Marxists have seemed to hold back; indeed, some seem to even admire bits and pieces of l'Infâme. I looked to this volume as a corrective to the current fashionable atheism and also for a deeper understanding of the original Marxi...more
May, 2009
Marxism and Religion, Yesterday and Today
Militant Atheism has recently gone on the offensive (again) in the recent works of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. And all our soi-disant radicals are rallying to the cause. But contemporary Marxists have seemed to hold back; indeed, some seem to even admire bits and pieces of l'Infâme. I looked to this volume as a corrective to the current fashionable atheism and also for a deeper understanding of the original Marxi...more
I re-read this after some 30 years after having recommended it to someone. Engels provides a materialist view of the origin and development of human social structures by linking the then-recent findings of Lewis Morgan on primitive families to the underlying means of procurring food, shelter, and tools.
He traces the origin of the modern male dominated monogamous family through early group marriage, development of the incest taboos, and gens clan structure arriving at the monogamous family with...more
He traces the origin of the modern male dominated monogamous family through early group marriage, development of the incest taboos, and gens clan structure arriving at the monogamous family with...more
Nov 03, 2012
Public_enemy
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
historicists
Shelves:
philosophy
Although I was reading this book in opposition to it, I learned a lot. Problem is: Communists always diminish the importance of idealistic factors in history. Even the Russian communist revolution can be described primarily ideologically because in Russia, back then in 1917., there was no much of materialistic and historic (empiric) conditions for revolution. There was only an abstract idea (which was generated elsewhere, namely in Western Europe 50 years before). So, divergence between theory a...more
This is a very interesting work, specially considering the time when it was written. Engels, being very modern for his time, portrays how the first class antagonism in history coincides with the development of a patriarchal society, as man started to settle down and gain private properties. He also shows a parallel between the domination of the male in the household with the antagonism between social classes.
Apr 26, 2009
Erik Graff
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
historians of Marxism or of anthropology
Recommended to Erik by:
no one
Shelves:
political-social-science
This, the first book I ever read by Engels, formed the basis of what I would come to think I knew about early humans and the evolution of their forms of social organization. It is short. It is simple. It explains everything. And it is based on the work of a nineteenth century student of Amerindian peoples.
Read this book and I think than Engels is not a proper historian here. He claims a lot of statements without linking them to culture, religion etc. The book is also impossible to understand without major knowledges of ancient history - Engels reveals only their's very little part.
Ofcourse he lived hundred years ago and you need to filter carefully the information that is fiction nowadays.
Ofcourse he lived hundred years ago and you need to filter carefully the information that is fiction nowadays.
نمیدونم شاید به این دلیل باشه که کمتر مطلبی در این زمینه به فارسی نوشته شده از این رو باید گفت که کتاب واقعا جذابی است
Along the lines of De Tocqueville and Marx (of course), Engels is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand more about modern society and the way it has evolved in the face of modernity.
Энгельс оказался идиотом, всё, что есть в его книге ценного — это цитаты из Моргана.
Jan 02, 2010
Matt Westbrook
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
sociology-of-religion-classics
Even if it is a product of the bourgeoisie-legitimating intellectual class, the atheism--it's tone, presentation and argument--in Marx's works sometimes is unbearable, occasionally laughable. This isn't to say that his analysis of what he calls a "materialist reading of history" and of religion's historical role in oppression isn't trenchant--it is. It is applicable to today as well. It's just that the atheism makes it read like a political tract, a polemic designed to score points and humiliate...more
Very interesting look at the origin of the family. Makes me want to read the books of Lewis Henry Morgan.
Thank you, Nathan. I'll read this and revise my CM review after i have done so. Much obliged.
A somewhat difficult but important read on the development of society (focusing on the development of the family as we know it today, social structure, and the system of private acquisition).
The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State by Frederick Engels (1973)
AİLENİN, ÖZEL MÜLKİYETİN VE DEVLETİN KÖKENİ (ENGELS)
Öğrencilik yıllarımdan...
Öğrencilik yıllarımdan...
أصل العائلة, والدولة, والملكية الخاصة,,, التوصيف الأنثروبولجي لحركة التاريخ.
Nov 19, 2010
Joel
marked it as harry-and-gloria
1942
inscribed 4/19/53 by Harry to Gloria
inscribed 4/19/53 by Harry to Gloria
Feb 03, 2010
Carl Webb
added it
Best feminist book I ever read.
Oct 12, 2011
aldozirsov
marked it as to-read
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
indonesia-terjemahan,
social-culture
akan dibaca kembali..
One of the first works I read by Engels or Marx; an illuminating, if controversial look at the family as an economic institution.
This was a hard book to read. Definetly, you don't read it for enjoyment but information. I did find it interesting and thought provoking.
Being a book from the romanticism, shows the very strong tendencies of Friedrich Engels to abandon property an follow a philosophy that is close to Rousseau's. It gives one a great introduction to he communistic manifesto where he is listed as they coauthor with Karl Marx but in actuality he was more responsible for the financial aspect. Can't go wrong with a classic.l
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Friedrich Engels was a German social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of communist theory, alongside Karl Marx. Together they produced The Communist Manifesto in 1848. Engels also edited the second and third volumes of Das Kapital after Marx's death.
More about Friedrich Engels...
Share This Book
7 trivia questions
More quizzes & trivia...
“No soldiers, no gendarmes or police, no nobles, kings, regents, prefects, or judges, no prisons, no lawsuits - and everything takes its orderly course. All quarrels and disputes are settled by the whole of the community affected, by the gens or the tribe, or by the gentes among themselves; only as an extreme and exceptional measure is blood revenge threatened-and our capital punishment is nothing but blood revenge in a civilized form, with all the advantages and drawbacks of civilization. Although there were many more matters to be settled in common than today - the household is maintained by a number of families in common, and is communistic, the land belongs to the tribe, only the small gardens are allotted provisionally to the households - yet there is no need for even a trace of our complicated administrative apparatus with all its ramifications. The decisions are taken by those concerned, and in most cases everything has been already settled by the custom of centuries. There cannot be any poor or needy - the communal household and the gens know their responsibilities towards the old, the sick, and those disabled in war. All are equal and free - the women included. There is no place yet for slaves, nor, as a rule, for the subjugation of other tribes.”
—
10 people liked it
“Women can be emancipated only when she can take part on a large social scale in production and is engaged in domestic workk only to an insignificant degree.”
—
5 people liked it
More quotes…
