Engels On The Family

Guilford Press
Engels on the Family

Author(s): Bernhard J. Stern
Source: Science & Society, Vol. 12, No. 1, A Centenary of Marxism (Winter, 1948), pp. 42-
64
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ENGELS ON THE FAMILY
BERNHARD J. STERN
major work in Marxian literature on the family, Engels*

Origin of tre Family, Private Property and the State,1 appeared
thirty-six years after the Communist Manifesto. There are several
anticipations of its points of view, however, in the Manifesto and in other
writings of Marx and Engels prior to it, which throw light on the genesis
and development of their later judgments.
The discussion of the family in the Communist Manifesto is not
extensive. In developing upon the theme that the bourgeoisie cannot
exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production
and thereby the relations of production and with them all social relations,
is asserts that "The bourgeoisie has torn from the family its sentimental
veil and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation."2 On
the other hand, because "the proletarian is without property, his relation
with his wife and children has no longer anything in common with bour-
geoisie family relations."3
The Manifesto pours scorn upon those who contend that Communists
advocate the abolition of the family. Its authors plead guilty only to the
charge that they seek the end of the form of the family founded on private
gain, that they aim to prevent the exploitation of children by their par-
ents, that they advocate the substitution of social education for home
education which their opponents then declared was "a destruction of the
most hallowed of relations." Marx and Engels stated vigorously that
1 Frederick Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats.
Im Anschluss an Lewis H. Morgan's Forschungen (ist ed. Zurich, 1884; 5th ed.,
Stuttgart, 1892). Between the appearance of the first and fifth editions, the book had
been translated into Italian, Roumanian, and Danish and it has since been published
in many languages. The most recent English translation is The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State, In the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan.
(New York, International Publishers, 1942). All references to the book in this article
will be to this edition. August Bebel's Die Frau in der Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und
Zukunft (Zurich, 1884), later editions of which were published under the title, Die
Frau und der Sozialismus, was also translated into many languages and did much to
extend the influence of Engels' book.
2 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "The Communist Manifesto," Selected Works,
2 vols. (New York, 1935), 1, p. 208.
ZIbid., p. 216.
42
ENGELS ON THE FAMILY 43
"Bourgeois claptrap about the family and education,

correlation of parent and child, becomes all the more
by the action of modern industry, all family ties am
are torn asunder, and their children transformed int
commerce and instruments of labor." To the charge
want to make women common property they retort
bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of produ
the instruments of production are to be exploited in
urally, can come to no other conclusion than that th
mon to all will likewise fall to the women. He has n
that the real point aimed at is to do away with the
mere instruments of production."4 Marx and Engels a
charge of "communization of women" against the Com
ill grace from a class maintaining public prostitutio
tion of the wives of others is not infrequent. They
abolition of the present system of production would
pearance of both public and private prostitution.
The comments on the family in the Communist M
their antecedents in the earlier writings of Marx an
1845 had warned against considering the family abs
its specific historical setting. In his criticism of the a
he wrote: "We make a mistake when we speak of 'th
qualification. Historically, the bourgeoisie endows th
characteristics of the bourgeois family, whose tie
money." Marx then contended that in the eighteenth
had already been in process of dissolution: "The inner
the individual parts out of which the concept of fam
such as obedience, affection, conjugal fidelity, etc., h
real body of the family, property relations, an exclus
other families, an enforced life in common-the con
determined by the existence of children, by the str
towns, by the development of capital, etc.- these per
siderable modifications."5
In The Holy Family, written in 1845, Marx and Engels first made the
observation that the degree of the emancipation of woman could be used
as a standard by which to measure general emancipation. This was
restated by Marx in 1868 in a letter to the surgeon, Dr. L. Kugelmann,
4 Citations ibid., p. 223-25.

5 Quoted in D. Ryazanoff, ed., The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels (New York, 1930), p. 162.
44 SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
in which he wrote: "Social progress can be measur

position of the fair sex," and then added banteri
included)."*
The impact of the technological changes of the
on the family was also discussed at some length b
appearance of the Communist Manifesto in his T
Working Class in England, published in 1845.7 Th
findings on this subject and also those of Marx w
problem further in Capital8 will be analyzed later
II
Most of the recent discussion in the United States of Engels* Origin

of the Family, Private Property and the State has focused upon criticism
of Morgan's data on the evolution of the family upon which Engels based
his work and which later anthropologists have found to be invalid. What
has not been noted is the productive use to which Morgan's findings were
put by Engels in what is without doubt one of the most influential docu-
ments on behalf of the emancipation of women in the world's literature.
Engels' discussion of the position of women under a suppositious
group marriage, and his reconstruction of the rise of monogamy, are
merely prefatory to his major thesis of the subjection of women in modern
capitalist society. The book transcends the limitations of the anthropo-
logical materials utilized. Morgan's work is but a springboard for a bold
and trenchant indictment of male dominance over women, marked by
biting satire and sophisticated humor. Engels has written a humanistic
tract that uses the mature scholarship of many fields to pour scorn upon
conventional hypocrisies debasing women in modern society. Its barbs
are most stinging on subjects that were then, and still are to a large extent,
tabu. As a document aimed at freedom for womankind, it is vigorously
frank and plain spoken. It is more than popular polemics, however. It
abounds in insights and establishes many fundamental principles of
sociological analysis of the family that are of great value.
The number of positive and valid general propositions that emerge
Karl Marx, Letters to Dr. Kugelmann (New York, 1934), p. 83.

7 Frederick Engels, Die Lage der Arbeitenden Klasse in England (Leipzig, 1845),
English translation, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844
(London, 1892).
8 Karl Marx, Capital, translated from 41 ed. by Eden and Cedar Paul (New York,
1929) P- 5*7*9-
from Engels* work is impressive. Not always formulat

Engels, they lay the basis of his approach to the famil
his method of analysis. They are presented here in categ
out the corroborating data and supporting argument g
-The family is a dynamic, ever changing cultural his
not a divinely ordained natural institution;
-Its forms and functions vary widely from period to per
try to country, and from class to class, and tend to respond
which each society places upon it. It must not therefore
from its social content, but rather in its economic, te
and religious settings;
-Changes in methods of production lead to changes i
of production and consequently they modify the total
tions, including the family.
-Patterns of family relationships are tenacious, and th
the adjustment of attitudes and practices to changing
tions, with customs of previous periods persisting
behavior;
-Division of labor between the sexes in the family h
teristic of all societies;
-Authority, power and property relationships betwe
the family are determined by the role which men and w
productive process, which is in turn determined by the n
ship of the instruments of production;
-When in simpler societies women's work is socially
that of men, there is an approximate equality between th
-The patriarchal family which developed in Old
involving exclusive supremacy of the men was an ou
domestication of animals and the breeding of herds.
developed a hitherto unsuspected source of wealth and c
relations. Because of the division of labor within the f
became the owners of the new source of subsistence, th
of the new instruments of labor, the slaves. This greatl
position in the family and subordinated the women;
-Individual sex love, in the modern sense of the wor
part in the rise of the patriarchal monogamy, which wa
upon the economic purpose of making man supreme in
of propagating as future heirs to his wealth, children
own;
-Polygyny and polyandry are only exceptional "historical luxur

products";
-Under the patriarchal family, woman's exclusi

duction," that is from employment outside the hom
to her economic disadvantage but has involved
crimination as well. Prostitution, adultery and
indissolubility of marriage are by-products of su
-Under these circumstances, co-existent with m
there has been "hetaerism," i.e., sexual interco
women outside of marriage, which sometimes dev
tution. There also has developed the neglected
attendant lover and the cuckold husband;
-Sexual (i.e., romantic) love between mates is a modern concept
depending for its realization upon the degree of equality of rights of the
sexes. Such love can only develop fully when marriage is no longer a
marriage of convenience, for the preservation and inheritance of
property;
-Family law is a reflection of past and present property relations;
-The legal concept of freedom of contract under Protestant capital-
ism affected the family through the introduction of the right of choice
of mates on the basis of mutual love, but property relations rendered this
right largely theoretical since they still left power in the hands of the
parents to choose mates for their children;
-The lady of civilization surrounded by false homage and estranged
from all real work, has an infinitely lower status than the hard-working
woman of primitive societies;
-The emancipation of women is possible only when women take part
in production outside the home on a large scale, and work in the house-
hold no longer claims anything but an insignificant amount of their time.
This has become feasible because modern large-scale industry not merely
permits the extensive employments of female labor but demands it, while
it also tends toward ending private domestic labor by the development
of service industries;
-Under capitalism, however, if the wife carries out her family duties,
she is denied the opportunity to engage in production outside of the
home and is unable to earn; while if she wants to earn independently by
outside work, she cannot carry out family duties. For this reason, the
individual family in capitalist society is in Engels' words "founded on the
open or concealed domestic slavery of the wife, and modern society is a
mass composed of these individual families as its molecules";
-When the family ceases to be the major economic unit of society
through the introduction of large-scale production and social ownership,
the care and education of the children become increasingly a social
responsibility, relieving the wife, now socially employ

home burdens and permitting real affectional relations
-The socialization of the means of production, En
would make freedom to choose a mate a reality by reduc
the anxiety about bequesting and inheriting; it wo
supremacy, established for the preservation and inherit
and would make love rather than money the basis of c
-Marriage based on sexual love is by its nature exc
individual, so that if economic conditions disappear wh
put up with the habitual infidelity of their husbands (i.e
their own means of livelihood and that of their childr
of women will tend to make men really monogamous rat
women polyandrous.
This list of generalizations is imposing because of th
ideas it contains. Many of them anticipated by years a
the research findings of later social scientists. Later stu
might have profited considerably if they had followed
leads instead of disdainfully repudiating Engels' total c
the basis of some of his book's manifest weaknesses in the use of data on
primitive societies.
Ill
Engels' relation to Morgan in the discussion of the family in primi-

tive societies merits brief treatment. Morgan's views were hailed by him
as far in advance of those prevalent among his contemporaries in the in-
fant science of anthropology. Engels cited Morgan's data and theories
profusely, and based many of his own judgments upon them. Yet Engels
cautioned as to the tentative nature of Morgan's scientific generalizations
and of his own conclusions. In the preface to the fourth edition of the
Origin of the Family, he wrote in 1891: "The fourteen years which have
elapsed since the publication of his (Morgan's) chief work have greatly
enriched the material available for the study of the history of primitive
societies. ... As a result some of Morgan's minor hypotheses have been
shaken or even disproved. But not one of the great leading ideas of his
work has been ousted by this new material." 9 Since Engels wrote these
words, anthropological research has made significant strides and it can
now no longer be said that anthropology sustains all of Morgan's basic
0 Engels, Origin of the Family, p. 17 f.
generalizations on the family, although it is recogn

favorably with the views of Morgan's contemporaries
Today anthropologists do not support the hypo
that group marriage was the earliest form of fam
upon which Engels relied heavily. Engels himself
Morgan's discussion of group marriage and dec
newly discovered field of research which is alm
plored/'11 He stated:
At the time Morgan wrote his book, our know

riage was still limited. . . . The punaluan family [
Hawaiian family, which he designated a group mar
one hand, the complete explanation of the system
force among the American Indians, which had bee
all Morgan's researches; on the other hand, the or
gens could be derived directly from the punaluan
punaluan family represented a much higher stag
classificatory system. It is therefore comprehensi
have regarded it as the necessary stage of develo
marriage and should believe it to have been ge
Since then we have become acquainted with a num
group marriage, and we know now that Morgan h
Engels then goes on, however, to claim as eviden

of group marriage" the exogamous classes or moie
io For a critical approach of Morgan's work see Bernha

Morgan, Social Evolutionist (Chicago, University of Chic
was written when the attack upon the weaknesses of ea
at its height. It contains what I now recognize to be some
tation. The position taken in the book on Morgan's view
remains essentially correct. See also Bernhard J. Stern, "L
science and society, x (1946), p. 172-76, and Melville Jac
Outline of Anthropology (New York, 1947), p. 146-72.
Engels' statement in the preface to the first edition wr
period preceding civilization, the social structure is de
production of material goods but also by the family as the
has recently been sharply criticized in the Soviet Union. S
"Political Economy in the Soviet Union," science and so
An attempt to recast Morgan's general evolutionary sta
Tolstoi, "On the Question of the Periodization of the Hist
Sovetskaia Etnografia, 1 (1946), p. 25 f. Marx' original n
Society which, Engels asserts, stimulated him to prepar
have recently been published in his Collected Works in
11 Engels, op. cit., p. 40.
12 Ibid., p. 37 f.
mer Fison and A. W. Howitt for Australia. Their dat

later descriptions of Australian marital relationships
contention that a functioning and stable marital un
males with a group of females ever existed.13 In fa
states that such a stable group family prevailed, alth
interpreted because of his ambiguity. He declare
which in these instances from Australia is still marr
marriage of an entire section of men, often scattered
tinent, with an equally widely distributed section o
marriage, seen close at hand, does not look quite so t
tines, whose minds cannot get beyond brothels, ima
Australian aborigine, wandering hundreds of miles fr
people whose language he does not understand, neve
in every camp and every tribe women who give them
out resistance and without resentment; . . . the ma
gives one up for the night to his guest/'14 These pas
the nature of the sexual prerogatives found in this
scribe a stable marriage relationship of a group of m
women.
In an article he published in Die neue Zeit in 1892,15 Enge

how loosely he applied the term "group marriage." He her
as evidence for "a newly discovered case of group marriage,
findings among the Gilyaks on the island of Sakhalin. Stern
ported that:
The Gilyak addresses as father, not only his own natural father, but
also all the brothers of his father, all the wives of these brothers, as well
as all the sisters of his mother, he addresses as his mothers; the children
of all these "fathers" and "mothers" he addresses as his brothers and sis-
ters . . . every Gilyak has the rights of a husband in regard to the wives
of his brothers and to the sisters of his wife; at any rate the exercise of
these rights is not regarded as unpermissible.16
In his deductions from this, Engels seems to confuse the kinship terms
of the clan system and the potential rights subsumed under them with ac-
13 The letters of Lorimer Fison and A. W. Howitt to Lewis Henry Morgan throw
light on this controversy. See "Selections from the Letters of Lorimer Fison and A. W.
Howitt to Lewis H. Morgan," edited by Bernhard J. Stern, American Anthropologist,
xxxii (1930), p. 257-79 and 419-53. See also Stern, Lewis Henry Morgan: Social Evolu-
tionist, p. 158-69.
15 Die neue Zeit, xi (1892), p. 373-75. This article has been translated and published
as an Appendix to Engels, op. cit., p. 164-67.
16 Engels, ibid., p. 165.
tual functional family relationships. He seems to sen

evidence is, for in the same passage he comments: "th
at least in the instances still known to occur today, diff
a loose pairing marriage or from polygamy only in t
permits sexual intercourse in a number of cases wher
be severely punished. That the actual exercise of the
dying out only proves that this form of marriage is
out which is further confirmed by its infrequency."
The primary error underlying Engels' entire discu
lem is the assumption that clan terminology and the
and sororate could be explained only by postulating
group marriage of which they are thought to be su
planation is, however, unnecessary, for they are ex
their social function.17 Such of Engels* generalizatio
upon the premise of an initial group marriage in pr
for example, that the incest tabu came late in human
revaluated in terms of present knowledge of anthro
recognized that bilateral families usually but not al
are found among simple hunting, food-gathering so
Andamanese, the Fuegians, the Bushman and the Sem
the simpler tribes of North America. In these prim
our own, kinship is reckoned both through the fat
and upon marriage the newly formed social unit of
to have somewhat greater autonomy than is charac
where the clan is the important unit. In simple food
the size of the groups is so small that few have clan
tion being the clan-like divisions of the Australi
hunting and food-gathering societies of the Nor
United States, clans are found in some communities
Clan societies are most characteristic of agricultura
While it is not known how early clans developed in
now appears quite certain, contrary to Morgan, tha
unit, the extended bilateral family, the work party of e
and the small community or village, developed muc
the clan. The development of clan institutions, e
patrilineal, does not mean a catastrophic change in
Clans represent a formal naming and classification
everywhere previously functioned in the economic
17 Sec below, p. 53.
unformalized.18 After the clan has been formalized, the

relationship, though weakened considerably, does not ent
Secondary distinctions are usually made, for example, b
brothers and sisters and cousins although they may be cl
kinship term. Engels in his discussion of group marriag
is often obscure in his differentiation between the famil
This is readily explicable, for the relationship between th
defined by the scientists of his day. It was not understo
afterward, and there is no unanimity on the subject today
IV
A fruitful approach to an analysis of the changes in relations be-

tween the family and the clan in primitive societies is to be found through
the application of one of Engels* important generalizations that changes
in the instruments of production influence the division of labor between
the sexes and determine property surpluses which, in turn, lead to marked
changes in the position of women in society and in the family. The divi-
sion of labor between the sexes was a necessary condition of survival
among hunting and food-gathering peoples. While women's occupations
were different from those of men, they were of equal importance. Be-
cause the bearing and nursing of children impeded their movements in
the hunting of animals, women usually performed the more sedentary
but none the less essential and arduous tasks. There were significant
exceptions, but generally men occupied themselves with the chase of
large and swift animals, while women gathered vegetable products and
slow-moving animals such as grubs, shellfish and small fish that were
within the reach of the camp. Fish traps and fish hooks were often
tended by women, but such fishing as required continuous labor and
prolonged movement was man's work. Men usually prepared the uten-
sils for the chase, and since the principal materials utilized by the hunter
were made of stone and wood, he used the hammer, knife and drill as he
manufactured the required tools. Normally in these societies women
worked on meat, skins and fibres; they cooked, preserved food, prepared
skins, sewed and weaved baskets and cloth. Since the welfare of the com-
munity depended equally upon the labor of both sexes, there was a
rough and ready equality between them. Engels was thus right, and
18 See Julian H. Steward, "The Economic and Social Basis of Primitive Bands," in
Essays in Anthropology Presented to A. L. Kroeber (Berkeley, Cal., 1936), p. 331-47.
helped correct a widespread misapprehension, when he

the most absurd notions taken over from eighteenth-cen
ment is that in the beginning of society, woman was the sla
The relationship of the families to one another is also
by the nature of the economy. Because of the limitations
simple hunting and fishing communities were sparsely
usually consisted of bands of less than forty and not m
persons. Individual families never lived alone. Their
out on food-collecting parties in season. During the wint
assembled for ceremonies that bound various families t
and politically and served the purpose of mutual defense
ing of meagre food supplies. Because of the absence of
was no significant exchange possible and hence no chanc
family or other group specialization along lines of specif
terests. These developed along with other changes in the
ciety, whenever property surpluses developed, whet
hunting, food-gathering societies (as in the case of the
peoples of the Northwest Coast of the United States), o
and agricultural-pastoral societies.
The decisive factor which determined the structure a
of the family was, in Engels' opinion, the manner in wh
inherited. He rightly observed that there was a differe
of inheritance of property in primitive societies and in
His formulation of these differences must, however, be mo
of what is now known. Recent studies have shown that
guish between the right to the use of property which t
family share, and the right to control of property over
heritance.30 In primitive societies, with few exceptions
a common domicile, and their children remain with th
periods. Food, shelter and household paraphernalia are t
in common. Within the family, both parents generally c
mutual support and to that of the children without con
value of the goods. In general, when exchanging go
presents to outsiders, individual ownership manifests it
the family breaks up, the man and woman claim the p
collected or made. There is in other words common
within the family, but individual property rights are m

20 Ruth Benedict, "Marital Property Rights in Bilateral Society,"
pologist, xxxviii (1936), p. 368-73.
ENGELS ON THE FAMILY S3
In contrast to our society, the right to shared property

does not extend to inheritance. Among us, both spou
inherit from their separate family estates, and the pro
spouses legally descends to their children or to the living
each has the right to will the property as desired. In our
words, the members of the family have prior claims to prop
one member holds individually during his lifetime, and this
rides any right of the dead spouse's consanguinai kin (i.e.,
brothers, sisters) to claim this property. That is, the m
marital group now possess a joint right to economic goods
derives property by inheritance from both spouses.
Such recognition of the duality of parenthood in rela
nence of property rights is not found in primitive socie
both from primitive societies organized into small family
which trace kinship bilaterally) and from those societie
laterally (i.e., in patrilineal or matrilineal clans). Ex
special cases, the small family in primitive societies doe
the legal unit for the pooling of permanent rights over
This means that the husband does not inherit from the wife nor the wife
from the husband, nor do the children have prior rights to property
drawn from the father's and the mother's line. In such bilateral primitive
societies just as in those that have a formal clan system, property is trans-
mitted to the consanguinai relatives excluding the spouse. Commonly
none of the children are given priority, but instead property goes to the
brothers of the deceased. The wife and the children have no claims,
and are left destitute as far as the economic goods of the husband and
father are concerned. The functional significance of the widespread prac-
tice of the levirate (the marriage of the deceased husband's brother by the
widow) is clarified in the light of this rule of inheritance, for in this way
the widow and her children continue to have use of the deceased's prop-
erty which his brother takes over. If the widow returns to her kin, the
children have no claim on the property whatsoever. In the matrilineal
and patrilineal clan societies, unilateral inheritance of the property re-
ceives greater emphasis.
In simple food-gathering societies, authority in the men's sphere of ac-
tivity centers around the father and in the women's sphere around the
mother. If authority tends to be superficially patriarchal in character,
this may be attributed to the relative backwardness of women's knowl-
edge and skills as compared to those of men, and hence their lesser eco-
nomic importance'. The elaboration of mother-right seems to be a de-
velopment especially characteristic of agricultural peoples. The do-
mestication of plants was a product of women's wor

their food-gathering activities. As a consequence of w
of agriculture, economic power and hence social i
relatively in favor of women, so that many, although
peoples are matrilineal. The domestication of animal
men as an outgrowth of their hunting activities. W
of animals was combined with agriculture by the use
plow, and in some areas with pastoralism as well, ev
were possible. Woman's economic importance the
to man's, and patrilineal descent became predominant
Clans developed from the earlier bilateral famil
of residence and inheritance of property. Newly ma
either with the husband's or wife's parents, and patri
to develop into patrilineal lineage, matrilocal residen
lineage. The inheritance of property unilaterally inc
tance of the clan grouping as property surpluses
cause there is a continuity in the clan that does not e
The family is inevitably a loose unit, not only becaus
of divorce, separation or death of either of the spou
the children grow up, they leave to found new fami
of the extended families in the agricultural comm
World, composed of blood brothers with their wive
the girls leave the family upon marriage. The clan,
on the principle that once a member always a m
capable of providing a greater sense of security to it
While it appears clear that both matrilineal and p
be direct offshoots of prior bilateral families, there
controversy over whether or not the matrilineal clan wa
lineal. Engels felt this to be Morgan's great contribu
"The rediscovery of the primitive matriarchal gens
of the patriarchal gens of civilized peoples has the s
anthropology as Darwin's theory of evolution has for
theory of surplus value has for political economy."
stress on the fact that the domestication of cattle was the crucial factor
in modifying the balance of power between the sexes in favor of man by
creating significant surpluses through men's work. V. Gordon Childe
recently supported this hypothesis when he declared:
Among the pure cultivators, owing to the role of the women's con-
tributions to the collective economy, kinship is naturally reckoned in the
female line, and the system of "mother right" prevails. W

ing, on the contrary, economic and social influence pass
and kinship is patrilineal.22
American anthropologists, particularly Swanton,23 Low

ber,25 emphatically assailed the generalization that the
preceded the patrilineal and contended for the priority
eate. Murdock's careful appraisal of the evidence26 shows
to be inescapable that the simpler cultures tend to be ma
more advanced ones patrilineal. There is not, however, u
lineal priority. The type of clan organization that prevail
directly correlated with economic aspects of culture, as
tended. Murdock concluded that:
the patrilineate and matrilineate represent adjustments to special elabora-

tions respectively in the male and female realms of economic activity.
. . . Social organization under primitive conditions tends to be matri-
lineal only partially and in an incipient sense, and is elaborated into a
full-fledged and consistent matrilineal system only after cultural ad-
vances favorable to the retention and the expansion of the principle,
e.g., the adoption of agriculture. Typical mother-right, or the full matri-
lineal complex, would then be, not primitive, but a special adjustment
to a somewhat exceptional set of social and economic circumstances on a
relatively advanced level of cultural development.
"Patrilineal forms," he further declares, "show an especially high correla-

tion with animal domestication, metal-working and general occupational
specialization, all of which fall mainly within the masculine sphere of
economic activity."27 Linton makes a comparable generalization: "there
does seem to be a very rough and general correlation beween the line of
descent selected by a particular group and the sex which is of preponder-
22 V. Gordon Childe, What Happened in History (New York, 1946), p. 58 f.

23 J. R. Swanton, "A Reconstruction of the Theory of Social rganization," Boas
Anniversary Volume (New York, 1906), p. 166-178; also his "The Social Organization
of American Tribes," American Anthropologist, n.s., vu (1905), p. 663-73.
24 R. H. Lowie, "Social Organization," American Journal of Sociology xx (1914),
p. 72 f.; Primitive Society (New York, 1920), p. 148-58, 177, 182. In the latter work
Lowie declared: "I am not aware of a single student in this field who has failed to
accept his [Swanton's] position" (p. 150).
25 Alfred Kroeber, Anthropology (New York, 1923), p. 355-57.
26 George Peter Murdock, "Correlations of Matrilineal and Patrilineal Institutions,"
Studies in the Science of Society (New Haven, 1937), p. 445-70. This has been sub-
stantiated by the studies in comparative cultures made by Leo W. Simmons, The
Role of the Aged in Primitive Society (New Haven, 1945), p. 207-16.
27 Murdock, loc. cit., p. 468 f.
ant economic importance. Male-supported societies ten

female supported ones matrilineal." 28 Thus while Mor
ceiving the matrilineal clan to be the earliest form of
he was more nearly correct than were his later Amer
he contended that the matrilineal clan preceded the pa
In historical times, the bilateral family superseded
primary unit for the inheritance of property, and bo
became subordinate to the state. This development
economies in which surplus commodities are exchang
mediacy of money. In such societies there are familie
what may be called industrial food production, tha
enough food to feed not merely their own members,
which are engaged in industry other than food produ
industrial production, with its large surpluses, develop
ture becomes possible. With it comes an emphasis on
and exchange, with consequent differences in wealth a
the possibility of utilizing the labor of others, and hen
development of classes. In the course of time, the socie
groups is broken up. Control is exercised through the
ate units of which are not unilateral kinship groups b
associations. Such cultures arose in the Mediterranean
cient world. In Greece, for example, the importance
clan or gens was undermined by the edict of Cleist
which reorganized the society into demes or township
territorial lines in order to break up the power of th
Within the territorial group the bilateral family remains
ent forms and to serve diverse functions in different
The impact of a change in the methods of production upon the family

is effectively illustrated in the case of the shift from locally self-suffi-
cient agricultural economies with domestic handicraft production to
large-scale factory production under commercial and industrial capital-
ism. In this process the home became separated from the place of work
and joint labor by family members gave way to the sale of individual
labor to employers who owned the instruments of production and util-
28 Ralph Linton, The Study of Man (New York, 1936), p. 169.
ized them for profit. Men and women, husbands and w

peted for the same jobs as individuals on the labor mark
Marx were not alone in stressing the revolutionary signi
sulting transformation that occurred not only in the eco
of the family, but in the authority relationships betw
wife and parents and children. The Victorian reformer
social themes,30 the aristocratic critics of rising capital
others who upheld rural values against urban values
changes in the family occasioned by the employmen
children as factory wage earners.
Official government reports laid bare not only the e
women and children in the factories but the changing
29 There has been considerable literature on the effects of these ch

See, for example, Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Ind
(London, 1930); J. B. and Barbara Hammond, The Rise of Modern
1926), and The Town Laborer 1760-1832 (London, 1925); E. Lips
the Woolen and Worsted Industries (London, 1921); G. W. Mor
The Golden Fleece (Oxford, 1922); Paul Mantoux, The Industria
Eighteenth Century (New York, 1927). Comparable effects in
are discussed in selections by Arthur W. Calhoun, Willys tine
D. Lumpkin and Dorothy W. Douglas, William F. Ogburn and
published in Bernhard J. Stern, The Family: Past and Present
p. 212-29 and 243-55, and in Andrew G. Truxal and Francis E. M
in American Culture (New York, 1947), p. 325-47. For China see
Family and Society (New Haven, 1946), p. 102-17, 333-41.
30 These are discussed in Wanda F. Neff, Victorian Working
1929)-
31 Engels says of the philanthropic Tories who had constituted themselves a group
called "Young England": "The hope of Young England is the restoration of the old
'Merry England' with its brilliant features and romantic feudalism. This hope is of
course unattainable and ridiculous, a satire upon all historic development; but the
good intention, the courage to resist the existing state of things and prevalent preju-
dices, and to recognize the vileness of our present condition, is worth something
anyhow." See Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, p. 294,
footnote. Marx later wrote: "There is an old English proverb to the effect that when
thieves fall out, honest men come to their own. In actual fact, the clamorous and
passionate dispute between the two sections of* the ruling classes as to which of them
was exploiting the workers most shamefully, helped on either side, to bring the truth
to light, Lord Shaftesbury, at that time Lord Ashley, was commander-in-chief in the
aristocratic campaign against the factory owners," Capital, translated from the 4th ed.
by Eden and Cedar Paul (New York, 1929), p. 747. The role of Lord Shaftesbury as a
reformer is described in J. L. and Barbara Hammond, Lord Shaftesbury (London,
1932)-
and family disruption.82 Engels made full use of these of

in his Condition of the Working Class in England (first p
man in 1845), as Marx did later in Capital In his early w
other contemporary writers, stressed primarily the disin
family brought about by capitalism. While describing t
working and living conditions prevailing in factory town
The employment of the wife dissolves the family utterl

sity, and this dissolution, in our present society, which is
family, brings the most demoralizing consequences for p
children. A mother who has no time to trouble herself ab
to perform the most ordinary loving services for it durin
who scarcely indeed sees it, can be no real mother to the
evitably grow indifferent to it, treat it unlovingly like
children who grow up under such conditions are utterly
family life, can never feel at home in the family which
found, because they have always been accustomed to iso
contribute therefore to the already general undermining
the working-class. A similar dissolution of the family i
by the employment of the children ... . the children em
selves, and regard the paternal dwelling as a lodging-ho
often exchange for another, as suits them.
In many cases the family is not wholly dissolved by th
of the wife, but turned upside down. The wife supports
husband sits at home, tends the children, sweeps the room
It is easy to imagine the wrath aroused among the working-m
versal of all relations within the family, while the other
remain unchanged.33
Engels then also expressed strong views on the conseq
tinuous factory employment of children and unmarried
preparation for marriage:
It is self-evident that a girl who has worked in a mill f

year is in no position to understand domestic work, wh
that female operatives prove wholly inexperienced and
keepers. They cannot knit or sew, cook or wash, are un
the most ordinary duties of a housekeeper, and when th
children to take care of, have not the vaguest idea how t
Engels does not in this book indicate his belief that the
82 See especially the Reports of the Inspectors of Factories, and dat

Commissioners for Inquiring into the State of Large Towns and
(London, 1844-45). A summary of official records is given in Cha
the Factory System Demonstrated by Parliamentary Evidence (Lon
S3 Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, p
M Ibid,, p. 147.
of the feudal family was laying the basis for a higher form
Not that he or Marx ever glorified the feudal family, a
ously charged.85 For example, after he described the re
tion then frequently found, in which the women bec
viders because of male unemployment, he wrote:
If the wife can now base her supremacy upon the f

plies the greater part, nay, the whole of the common poss
sary inference is that this community of possession is no t
one, since one member of the family boasts offensively of
greater share. If the family of our present society is be
this dissolution merely shows that, at bottom, the bi
family was not family affection, but private interest
cloak of a pretended community of possessions.86
Yet Engels' account of the influence of women's employm
production is here wholly negativistic. It does not e
positive trends actual or potential in the new situation
In his Capital (published in 1867) Marx corrected
without weakening the indictment of capitalism's use
nology. He wrote in the chapter on "Machinery
Industry;"
However terrible, however repulsive, the breakup of the old family

system within the organism of capitalist society may seem; none the less,
large-scale industry by assigning to women, and to young persons and
children of both sexes, a decisive role in the socially organized process of
production, and a role which has to be fulfilled outside the home, is
building the new economic foundations for a higher form of the family
and the relations between the sexes. I need hardly say that it is just as
stupid to regard the Christo-Teutonic form of the family as absolute, as
it is to take the same view of the classical Roman form, or of the classical
Greek form, or of the Oriental form- which by the way constitute a
historically interconnected developmental series. It is plain, moreover,
that the composition of the combined labor personnel out of the indi-
as John Ise, for example, took a passage of the Manifesto out of context and declared
that "his ((Marx's) discussion of the beauties of medieval religion, family and
chivalry verges on Utopian sentimentalism," American Economic Review, xxvin (1938),
p. 19-
87 Engels in 1892 indicated that he was aware of the limitations of many of the
interpretations of this early work. He wrote in the preface to the British publication
of the English edition: "It will be hardly necessary to point out that the general
theoretical standpoint of the book - philosophical, economical, and political - does not
exactly coincide with my standpoint today." Engels, Condition of the Working Class,
p. x.
viduals of both sexes and various ages- althoug

developed and brutal form (wherein the worker e
of production instead of the process of production ex
is a pestilential source of corruption and slavery-
tions cannot fail to be transformed into a source of h
Engels later took a like position in the Origin o

When Marx and Engels stressed the construc
industrialism, they dissociated themselves from t
changing family. They differentiated sharply
changes and their use for profit under capitalism.
cent effects of women's employment outside the
from the insularity of the restricted environmen
limited social contacts, and from the dependence
their husbands. They observed that outside employ
means for the fulfillment of their personalities,
full economic, psychological, cultural and lega
spouses. These potentialities they declared could n
capitalism. Marx and Engels understood fully the
women were confronted under capitalism, and the
who carry the double responsibilities of being wo
Marx and Engels visualized the full solution o
under socialism. They did not underestimate, how
role played by trade unionism and political activit
the improvement of working and living condition
more effective participation of women in econom
life. Collective bargaining, the struggle for legislation
day and for more healthful factory environments, an
mpvement have achieved significant results altho
has been necessary to sustain gains. Historically,
in society and in the home has generally reflecte
toward human rights. As the rights of the masses
their conditions improved, women have benefited
On the other hand, in periods of reaction and coun
tions against women in economic life and their d
have been intensified.40 Yet even in recent period
the Nazi government in Germany, where there we
ized efforts to subordinate women and to confin
38 Karl Marx, Capital, Paul transi., p. 528 f.
39 See especially Eneris, Origin of the Family, p. 148.
40 Bernhard J. Stern, "Women: Position in Society," E
Sciences (New York, 1930-35) xv, p. 442-46; idem, "The Fam
American Sociological Review, iv (1939), p. 199-208.
and domestic work under the indisputable authority of

of the family, women could not be completely restore
status. Modern capitalist productive techniques demand
of women, as Engels noted, and in spite of its announ
Nazi regime was unable to eliminate women from indu
were, however, able to prevent the employment of wom
in the professions and in skilled trades, to institute low
women than for men, and to reinstitute many of the c
the patriarchal family that had been eliminated in pre
In the United States there are sociologists who contras
they regard as the stability of the families of the Ozark
mountaineers with the looser structure of the modern
the authors, who attacks modern progressive trends in t
ily predicts that "unless some unforeseen renaissance o
system will continue headlong its present trend towar
prevent this, he advocates that powerful educationa
agencies be used "to bring about a revision and more o
reinstatement of familism," and to "make it extremel
for the agents provocateurs of atomism," which is his desig
gressive writers on the family.44 Such views as these f
those Freudian analysts who would have women "accept
a position that has recently been promulgated in its mo
Lundberg and Farnham's recent work,45 which glorifie
Recent developments in the United States, however,
aged family trends in the opposite direction from tho
these writers. Technological advances in the sources of
in manufacturing processes and in new materials have
than checked the possibilities of women's participation
The marked expansion in the employment of women du
II was an acceleration of an historic trend. Since 1870,
41 Alfred Meusel, "National Socialism and the Family," British

xxvni (1936), p. 182-84, 389-99.
42 For the advances in women's status in Germany prior to th
see H. W. Puckett, Germany's Women Go Forward (New York, io*)).
43 c. C. Zimmerman and M. E. Frampton, Family and Society (New York, 1935).
44 C. C. Zimmerman, Family and Civilization (New York, 1947), p. 808 f.
45 Ferdinand Lundberg and M. F. Farnham, Modern Women: The Lost Sex (New
York, 1947). That this position is not that of progressive analysts is well shown in
Judson T. Stone, "The Theory and Practice of Psychoanalysis" science and society, x
(1946), p. 54-79. The fallacies of the book have been ably exposed by Mildred Burgum,
ibid., xi (1947), p. 382-88,
women employed has mounted along with the increa

and apartment dwelling, with the decline in the bir
increase in consumers' goods and the rise of living s
greater availability of housekeeping conveniences
processed foods, with better educational opportuniti
with the growth of the women's rights movement an
trade union movements which have improved the so
political status of women in American life. The ex
increase in employment of women is seen by the fact
ber of non-agricultural employed women rose from 1
1940 to over 16,000,000 in 1944 and 1945. Contrary t
many authorities, it did not recede to the pre-war lev
the end of January, 1946, the total was 14,750,00o.46
number of non-agricultural employed women has
figure has risen again to about 16,000,00o.47 That the
in factory production increased by 1,000,000 from
September, 1946 when it totalled 3,750,00o,48 is part
The proportion of married women in the labor fo
siderable and has grown appreciably from 35.5 perc
percent in 1946.49 In 1946, both the husbands and wi
families (almost a fifth of all families with both hus
ent) were in the labor force, an increase of about 2,0
In February, 1946, 15 percent of wives in normal fa
more children worked, compared with nine percent
married women working in 1946, 890,000 were wive
families in which there were children under six years
These developments have had important effects u
of authority in the American family, as Marx and
They have increased women's demands, and have
46 U. S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, Employment

'Post War Period (Washington, 1946), p. 2, Table 1.
47 U. S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, Facts on Women Workers, August
S 1947-
48 u. S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, Facts on Women Workers, Jan. 31,
*947-
49 U. S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, Employment of Women in the
Early Postwar Period, p. 11, Table 7, Facts on Women Workers, Aug. 31, 1947, p. 2.
SOU. S. Department of Labor, Labor Information Bulletin, June 1947.
51 U. S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, Fads on Women Workers, June 30,
1947-
32 u. S. Department of Labor, Labor Information Bulletin, June 1947.
bargaining power for the attainment of equality of r

their husbands, including sexual as well as econom
rights. To assist women to carry on the double task
husbands have come to take a more active share in household duties, and
the ideal of mutuality of interests and sharing of difficulties of husbands
and wives has to that extent been strengthened. Governmental provisions
for educational and recreational services for children while their mothers
are at work, have become imperative, but these services, which were pro-
vided reluctantly by economy-minded legislators during World, War II.
are now being curtailed. Although there has been considerable progress,
the participation of women in industry has by no means resulted in actual
equality for women with men in the United States. Conventional atti-
tudes on women's responsibilities in the home are still tenacious. There
remain marked sex distinctions in civil and in political laws which dis-
criminate against women.53 Traditionally, women have been paid less
than men for performing the same labor and have had to combat his-
torically derived attitudes, used to advantage by employers, that they are
less capable than men in developing skills and attaining men's level of
productivity. Thus in our society there have been many impediments
to women's social equality both in law and in practice, and social services
and legislation have been insufficient to cushion the effects upon the
family of women's entrance into industry. The emancipatory effects of
technological change have not been fully realized because of the restrain-
ing effects of the class structure of society and the conservative attitudes
and customs it nurtures.
Marx and Engels gave valuable perspectives for an evaluation of
the contemporary situation. They were not concerned merely with formal,
material equality of women with men. Economic emancipation of women
they regarded as a prerequisite, the foundation stone, for the emancipa-
tion of women in family relations. But they were also alert to the need
for equality in 4II aspects of human relationships, including sex relations.
Engels, for example, discussed the fact that the sanctions of monogamy
have historically only been applied to women, and contended that both
enjoyments and restrictions in sex relations should be shared equally by
both parties.54 He set forth an ideal of a monogamie family of equals in
which both spouses would find personality fulfillment through stimulat-
ing companionship and mutually satisfying sex enjoyment. He envisioned
53 u. S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the

United States of America (Washington, 1941).
54 Engels, Origin of the Family, p. 56.
a relationship devoid of male coercion and condes

was stable, not because religious sanctions and law
but because it was cemented by reciprocal love. T
in his mind, an agency to give a sense of personal
through the affection of the spouses for one anothe
ing devotion of offspring and parents. He advoca
ices and technological innovations to facilitate th
based on affection, by relieving women of drudgery
hold tasks.55 He thus enriched the ideal of the fam
for living for the development of free and emot
It is for the complete attainment of these enlight
personal living, that Marx and Engels in the Com
for the end of class exploitation and the establish
Columbia University.
58 Lenin, in the tradition of Marx and Engels, declared

democratic party in the world, not even in any of th
republics, has done in this sphere [abolition of restrictions a
in ten years a hundredth part of what we did in the very
were in power," and went on to say: "Notwithstanding
have been passed, woman continues to be a domestic slave
crushes, strangles, stultifies and degrades her, chains he
nursery, and wastes her labor on barbarously unproduc
stultifying and crushing drudgery. . . . Public dining roo
there are examples of the shoots, the simple everyday m
pompous, grandiloquent or solemn, but which can in fac
can in fact lessen and abolish their inferiority to men in
production and in social life." V. I. Lenin, Women and
p. 13 f. For the methods by which this principle was imp
society in the Soviet Union, see Susan M. Kingsbury and
Family and Women in the Soviet Union (New York, 193
family and women by Beatrice Ring and Ralph Parke
protection of women are published in Bernhard J. Stern
standing the Russians (New York, 1946), p. 151-58 and 23

Engels On The Family

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Engels On The Family

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Engels on the Family

major work in Marxian literature on the family, Engels*

"Bourgeois claptrap about the family and education,

4 Citations ibid., p. 223-25.

in which he wrote: "Social progress can be measur

Most of the recent discussion in the United States of Engels* Origin

Karl Marx, Letters to Dr. Kugelmann (New York, 1934), p. 83.

from Engels* work is impressive. Not always formulat

-Polygyny and polyandry are only exceptional "historical luxur

-Under the patriarchal family, woman's exclusi

responsibility, relieving the wife, now socially employ

Engels' relation to Morgan in the discussion of the family in primi-

0 Engels, Origin of the Family, p. 17 f.

generalizations on the family, although it is recogn

At the time Morgan wrote his book, our know

Engels then goes on, however, to claim as eviden

io For a critical approach of Morgan's work see Bernha

mer Fison and A. W. Howitt for Australia. Their dat

In an article he published in Die neue Zeit in 1892,15 Enge

tual functional family relationships. He seems to sen

17 Sec below, p. 53.

unformalized.18 After the clan has been formalized, the

A fruitful approach to an analysis of the changes in relations be-

helped correct a widespread misapprehension, when he

10 Engels, op. cit., p. 42.

In contrast to our society, the right to shared property

mestication of plants was a product of women's wor

21 Engels, op. cit., p. 16.

female line, and the system of "mother right" prevails. W

American anthropologists, particularly Swanton,23 Low

the patrilineate and matrilineate represent adjustments to special elabora-

"Patrilineal forms," he further declares, "show an especially high correla-

22 V. Gordon Childe, What Happened in History (New York, 1946), p. 58 f.

ant economic importance. Male-supported societies ten

The impact of a change in the methods of production upon the family

28 Ralph Linton, The Study of Man (New York, 1936), p. 169.

ized them for profit. Men and women, husbands and w

29 There has been considerable literature on the effects of these ch

and family disruption.82 Engels made full use of these of

The employment of the wife dissolves the family utterl

It is self-evident that a girl who has worked in a mill f

82 See especially the Reports of the Inspectors of Factories, and dat

If the wife can now base her supremacy upon the f

However terrible, however repulsive, the breakup of the old family

viduals of both sexes and various ages- althoug

Engels later took a like position in the Origin o

and domestic work under the indisputable authority of

41 Alfred Meusel, "National Socialism and the Family," British

women employed has mounted along with the increa

46 U. S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, Employment

bargaining power for the attainment of equality of r

53 u. S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the

a relationship devoid of male coercion and condes

58 Lenin, in the tradition of Marx and Engels, declared

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