The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

The most influential theory of the origins of women's oppression in the modern era, in a beautiful new edition

In this provocative and now-classic work, Frederick Engels explores the interrelated development of the family and the state from ancient society to the Victorian era. Drawing on new anthropological theories of his time, Engels argued that matriarchal communal societies had been overthrown by class society and its emphasis on private, not communal, property and monogamous, rather th...