On April 26, 1884, Engels wrote a letter to his close political associate Karl Kautsky, saying he sought to 'play a trick on Bismarck' by writing something 'that he would be positively unable to ban'. Writing process Įngels's first inclination was to seek publication in Germany in spite of the passage of the first of the Anti-Socialist Laws by the government of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Įngels acknowledged these motives, noting in the preface to the first edition that 'Marx had reserved to himself the privilege of displaying the results of Morgan's investigations in connection with his own materialist conception of history', as the latter had 'in a manner discovered anew' in America the theory originated by Marx decades before. Engels believed that Marx had intended to create a critical book-length treatment of the ideas suggested by Morgan, and aimed to produce such a manuscript to fulfill his late comrade's wishes. Morgan's Ancient Society or, Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, Through Barbarism to Civilization, first published in London in 1877. Engels began work on the treatise after reading Marx's handwritten synopsis of Lewis H. The writing of The Origin of the Family began in early April 1884, and was completed on 26 May.

Morgan's Forschungen ( The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State: in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. While Engels' 1883 manuscript Dialectics of Nature was left uncompleted and unpublished, he successfully published Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats: Im Anschluss an Lewis H. While time-consuming, this activity did not fully occupy Engels's available hours, and he continued to read and write on topics of his own. Publication history Background įollowing the death of his friend and co-thinker Karl Marx in 1883, Engels served as his literary executor, organizing his various writings and preparing them for publication. The book is an early historical materialist work and is regarded as one of the first major works on family economics. It is partially based on notes by Karl Marx to Lewis H.

Morgan ( German: Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats) is an 1884 philosophical treatise by Friedrich Engels. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State at Wikisource

Friedrich engels origin of the family