The fall of woman property oppression and the family

Marxist Theory · 2026-05-13

Core Argument¶

The central thesis is that women's oppression is not natural, eternal, or biologically determined, but is a historical product of the emergence of private property and class society. Fred Weston argues that the monogamous nuclear family — far from being the universal bedrock of civilisation — is a relatively recent social form that arose alongside the need to secure paternity for inheritance purposes. The article reclaims the materialist method of Lewis Henry Morgan, as developed by Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, against a century of idealist anthropology that has sought to discredit evolutionary approaches to social development. The claim is that understanding the historical origins of women's oppression is not merely academic: it is essential for the strategic orientation of the working-class movement, because it demonstrates that the family form can and will change again with the abolition of class society.

Theoretical Grounding¶

The analysis is grounded in Engels' extension of historical materialism to kinship and gender relations, itself built on Morgan's discovery that "the idea of the family has been a growth through successive stages of development". The article draws on the core Marxist distinction between the development of the productive forces and the social relations of production, applying it to the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural class societies. Key concepts deployed include:

Primitive communism: the egalitarian, classless organisation of early human societies, where the absence of private property meant no basis for the subordination of women.
Matrilineality: tracing descent through the maternal line, which Morgan identified as the original form of kinship organisation, giving women a structurally equal position.
The rise of private property: the decisive material factor that overturned matrilineal inheritance and imposed monogamy on women to guarantee paternity for male heirs.
Combined and uneven development: acknowledged to account for variations in the timing and form of the transition to patriarchy across different societies.

The article situates itself within the Marxist tradition's defence of scientific, materialist method against the idealist turn in 20th-century anthropology — from Boasian "historical particularism" through to postmodernism. This is not presented as a side debate but as a front in the class struggle, since the denial of laws of social development serves to naturalise capitalism and foreclose the possibility of its supersession.

Conjunctural Relevance¶

The article was published in March 2026 to mark International Working Women's Day, and it connects the theoretical argument to the contemporary situation in several ways:

Persistent material oppression: The opening cites ongoing realities — female genital mutilation, sex trafficking, femicide — to establish that the question is not settled by formal legal equality.
Crisis of the nuclear family under capitalism: The article notes that marriage rates are falling, divorce rates rising, and births outside marriage now account for around 40 percent of the total in the United States. These changes are attributed primarily to women's entry into the labour market and the partial economic independence this has afforded.
Capitalist use of division: The ruling class actively deploys misogyny, alongside racism, homophobia and transphobia, to divide the working class. The nuclear family is ideologically defended as a "cornerstone of civilisation" precisely because it serves to fragment class consciousness.
Limits of reform under capitalism: Despite significant changes in family structure over the past 70 years, the article insists that full emancipation cannot be achieved within capitalism. The gender pay gap, the burden of unpaid domestic labour, and the persistence of misogynistic ideology all demonstrate that the system continues to reproduce women's oppression even as it partially undermines the traditional family form.

Where the Argument Continues¶

The article is itself a republication from issue 41 of In Defence of Marxism magazine, the quarterly theoretical journal of the Revolutionary Communist International. It points forward to several connected lines of analysis:

The relationship between the family form and the state, which Engels treated in the same work but which is not developed here.
The concrete programme for women's liberation under socialism, referenced through the Bolsheviks' early reforms (marriage laws, childcare provision) but not elaborated.
The broader critique of postmodernist and idealist methods in the social sciences, which the article identifies as a general problem affecting not just anthropology but the strategic orientation of the left.
The question of how the working class can fight for transitional demands on women's oppression today — the article establishes the theoretical basis but does not spell out the political programme.

Connections¶

Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884): The foundational text from which the entire analysis proceeds.
Morgan, Ancient Society (1877): The empirical basis for Engels' work, defended here against its detractors.
Marx's Ethnological Notebooks: The notes Marx took on Morgan and other anthropologists, which Engels used after Marx's death.
Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968) and Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times (1999): Key sources for the article's account of the idealist turn in anthropology.
Lenin and Trotsky on the woman question: Referenced as the political continuation of Engels' ideas in the revolutionary period.
Leslie A. White, The Evolution of Culture (1959): A materialist anthropologist who defended Morgan's method.
The broader IDOM corpus on the state, class consciousness, and the critique of postmodernism.

Key Quotes¶

"Morgan in his own way had discovered afresh in America the materialistic conception of history discovered by Marx forty years ago, and in his comparison of barbarism and civilization it had led him, in the main points, to the same conclusions as Marx."
"The monogamian family owes its origin to property."
"What we have to understand, however, is that those who attack Morgan or Engels do not do so from the point of view of sharpening our understanding on the basis of more up-to-date studies — something Engels himself would have been open to. No, they attack and attempt to discredit his scientific method, the method of dialectical materialism, as part of a wider and more general attack on Marxism."
"If we accept the anti-materialist and idealist outlook that came to dominate anthropology in the 20th century — and continues to do so today — we are left with no real understanding of how and why society changed, how and why the family changed, and therefore how and why it can change again in the future."
"The final and true emancipation of women will only be achieved when class society is removed once and for all."
"Once such people appear, they will not care a rap about what we today think they should do. They will establish their own practice and their own public opinion, conformable therewith, on the practice of each individual — and that's the end of it." (Engels, quoted approvingly)