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Title: The Origin of the Family: Private Property and the State by Frederick Engels, Ernest Untermann, Friedrich Engels ISBN: 0-89875-469-0 Publisher: University Press of the Pacific Pub. Date: July, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $32.50

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (6 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: they were wrong but you have to know why
Comment: Marx and Engels made a fundamentally wrong guess about the nature of human beings. But it is very important to understand their line of reasoning, because they developed quite a few critical insights along the way. Due to political charge associated with their teachings it is practically impossible to find suitable third party narrative of their works. So, the only way to enlighten yourself is to dig right down into originals.

Rating: 5
Summary: Why doesn't the war of the sexes ever end?
Comment: Why is society so cruel? It seems to be self-defeating. Why doesn't the war of the sexes ever end? In no other species do the two sexes battle against each other.

In this book we learn that things weren't always this way. In fact, oppression and exploitation are recent inventions, if we count that human history dates back EIGHTY thousand years since the rise of homo sapiens sapiens. At one point most cultures suddenly became sedentary and agriculturalist - and private property in the land emerged. Private property of land resulted in an overthrow of the matriarchal family by its male members and in the establishment of a separate group of men who violently protect unequal relationships (the state as we know it today). All happened together in a revolution that occurred in the course of just a few generations some SIX thousand years ago.

Nonetheless, the moral of this story is one of hope. If we were capable of remaking ourselves once, and based on that have advanced dramatically in a limited sense of creating material culture, then humankind can remake itself again and found a culture that enriches all aspects of everyone's lives. But this time the redesign will have to be conscious and conscientious, the beginning of a humane human history in which all participate on an equal basis. Such is the future that socialism and communism promise for us.

As a companion to this volume, be sure to read Women's Evolution, by Reed. Written a century later, it shows that anthropology's evidence overwhelmingly coincides with the theory Engels put forward in this book.

Rating: 5
Summary: Relevant Today
Comment: Was human society always overseen by a military and police force?
Was wealth and the means of producing more wealth always the private possession of individuals or a small section of society?
Were women always at the bottom of society, treated primarily as sex objects and machines for child-bearing and child-raising?

And is this humanity's destiny?
In this book published in 1884, Fredrich Engels answers the above questions in the negative. His book is based on anthropological data available in his day from societies around the globe. New discoveries since have confirmed his conclusions and the book is remarkably relevant today.

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