Introduction by Rob Sewell¶
Core Argument¶
In the introduction to his edition of Engels’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Rob Sewell establishes the enduring Marxist significance of Lewis Henry Morgan’s materialist anthropology. Morgan’s Ancient Society (1877) provided the empirical foundation for Engels’s classic work, yet modern attempts to discredit both men, Sewell argues, rely on a narrow reading of hunter-gatherer evidence while ignoring mythology and classical literature. Morgan unconsciously applied dialectical materialism, linking the evolution of the family and property to stages of savagery, barbarism, and civilisation, but avoided crude unilinealism by recognising combined and uneven development. This framework directly challenged the bourgeois assumption of an eternal patriarchal family.
Sewell emphasises that Marxism has a unique stake in this field, as only dialectical materialism can explain the laws of social change. Engels insisted that history is determined by both the production of subsistence and the reproduction of human beings. Marx had intended to write on Morgan but died before doing so; Engels completed the task. Morgan’s classifications—savagery (food-gathering, covering 98% of human existence), barbarism (agriculture, the Neolithic), and civilisation (class society, the Bronze Age)—correlate with transformations in the productive forces. Engels explained human origins through labour: erect posture freed the hand, which developed tools, then intelligence and speech, reversing Darwin’s idealist ordering.
In early hunter-gatherer societies, Sewell notes, women held a position equal to men within a communal economy based on production for use, co-operation, and sharing—not exploitation or class relations. Descent was reckoned through the female line (mother-right) because paternity was uncertain, a discovery Engels credited to Bachofen. The earliest family form was the communistic gens (clan), within which there was equality in decision-making. Among the Iroquois, women selected sachems and acted as regents; among the Mandan, matrilineal extended families were the functioning economic unit, with land held by usufruct. Engels described gentile society as having no soldiers, police, nobles, or prisons—all were equal and free, including women. Sewell clarifies that Engels never believed a matriarchy existed, only that matrilineal descent was once universal.
The introduction of private property and class division brought about what Engels called “the world historical defeat of the female sex”. Men sought to pass property to male heirs, shifting descent to the male line. August Bebel summarised this: mother-right implied communism and equality, while father-right implied private property and the enslavement of women. Class society introduced the state as a machine to defend private property and regulate class struggle. Yet it also developed the productive forces to the point where classes become a hindrance. Engels predicted their inevitable fall, along with the state, to be replaced by a society of free and equal producers—a higher stage of socialism that would revive “the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes” in a higher form.