The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State: in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan (German: Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats) is an 1884 historical materialist treatise by Friedrich Engels. It is partially based on notes by Karl Marx to Lewis H. Morgan's book Ancient Society (1877). The book is an early anthropological work and is regarded as one of the first major works on family economics. Following the death of his friend and co-thinker Karl Marx in 1883, Friedrich Engels served as his literary executor, actively organizing and preparing for publication various writings of his scholarly friend. This activity, while time consuming, did not fully occupy Engels' available hours, however, and he managed to persevere reading and writing on topics of his own. While his 1883 manuscript Dialectics of Nature faltered, remaining uncompleted and unpublished, a greater success was achieved in the spring of 1884 with the writing and publication in Zurich of Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats: Im Anschluss an Lewis H. Morgan's Forschungen (The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State: in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan). Writing of The Origin of the Family began early in April 1884, with the project completed on 26 May.[1] Engels began his work on the subject after reading Marx's handwritten synopsis of a book by pioneering anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society; or, Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, Through Barbarism to Civilization, first published in London in 1877.[2] Engels believed it clear that Marx had intended upon a critical book-length treatment of the ideas first broached by Morgan and determined to produce such a manuscript as a means of fulfilling a literary behest of his late comrade.

Author Biography

Friedrich Engels (28 November 1820 - 5 August 1895) was a German philosopher, communist, social scientist, journalist and businessman.[4] His father was an owner of large textile factories in Salford, England and in Barmen, Prussia (what is now in Wuppertal, Germany). Engels developed what is now known as Marxist theory together with Karl Marx and in 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research in English cities. In 1848, Engels co-authored The Communist Manifesto with Marx and also authored and co-authored (primarily with Marx) many other works. Later, Engels supported Marx financially, allowing him to do research and write Das Kapital. After Marx's death, Engels edited the second and third volumes of Das Kapital. Additionally, Engels organised Marx's notes on the Theories of Surplus Value, which he later published as the fourth volume of Capital.[5] In 1884, he published The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State on the basis of Marx's ethnographic research. Engels died in London on 5 August 1895, at the age of 74 of laryngeal cancer and following cremation his ashes were scattered off Beachy Head, near Eastbourne. Engels was born on 28 November 1820 in Barmen, Rhine Province, Prussia (now Wuppertal, Germany) as eldest son of Friedrich Engels Sr. (1796-1860) and of Elisabeth Elise Franziska Mauritia von Haar (1797-1873).[6] The wealthy Engels family owned large cotton-textile mills in Barmen and Salford, both expanding industrial metropoles. Friedrich's parents were devout Pietist Protestants[4]and they raised their children accordingly. At the age of 13, Engels attended grammar school (Gymnasium) in the adjacent city of Elberfeld but had to leave at 17, due to pressure of his father, who wanted him to become a businessman and start to work as a mercantile apprentice in his firm.[7] After a year in Barmen, the young Engels was in 1838 sent by his father to undertake an apprenticeship at a commercial house in Bremen.[8][9] His parents expected that he would follow his father into a career in the family business. Their son's revolutionary activities disappointed them. It would be some years before he joined the family firm. Whilst at Bremen, Engels began reading the philosophy of Hegel, whose teachings dominated German philosophy at that time. In September 1838 he published his first work, a poem entitled The Bedouin, in the Bremisches Conversationsblatt No. 40. He also engaged in other literary work and began writing newspaper articles critiquing the societal ills of industrialisation.[10][11] He wrote under the pseudonym Friedrich Oswald to avoid connecting his family with his provocative writings.