Professional Documents
Culture Documents
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
Guilford Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Science
& Society
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ENGELS ON THE FAMILY
BERNHARD J. STERN
1 Frederick Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats.
Im Anschluss an Lewis H. Morgan's Forschungen (ist ed. Zurich, 1884; 5th ed.,
Stuttgart, 1892). Between the appearance of the first and fifth editions, the book had
been translated into Italian, Roumanian, and Danish and it has since been published
in many languages. The most recent English translation is The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State, In the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan.
(New York, International Publishers, 1942). All references to the book in this article
will be to this edition. August Bebel's Die Frau in der Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und
Zukunft (Zurich, 1884), later editions of which were published under the title, Die
Frau und der Sozialismus, was also translated into many languages and did much to
extend the influence of Engels' book.
2 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "The Communist Manifesto," Selected Works,
2 vols. (New York, 1935), 1, p. 208.
ZIbid., p. 216.
42
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ENGELS ON THE FAMILY 43
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
44 SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
II
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ENGELS ON THE FAMILY 45
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
46 SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ENGELS ON THE FAMILY 47
Ill
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
48 SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ENGELS ON THE FAMILY 49
The Gilyak addresses as father, not only his own natural father, but
also all the brothers of his father, all the wives of these brothers, as well
as all the sisters of his mother, he addresses as his mothers; the children
of all these "fathers" and "mothers" he addresses as his brothers and sis-
ters . . . every Gilyak has the rights of a husband in regard to the wives
of his brothers and to the sisters of his wife; at any rate the exercise of
these rights is not regarded as unpermissible.16
In his deductions from this, Engels seems to confuse the kinship terms
of the clan system and the potential rights subsumed under them with ac-
13 The letters of Lorimer Fison and A. W. Howitt to Lewis Henry Morgan throw
light on this controversy. See "Selections from the Letters of Lorimer Fison and A. W.
Howitt to Lewis H. Morgan," edited by Bernhard J. Stern, American Anthropologist,
xxxii (1930), p. 257-79 and 419-53. See also Stern, Lewis Henry Morgan: Social Evolu-
tionist, p. 158-69.
14 Engels, op. cit., p. 39.
15 Die neue Zeit, xi (1892), p. 373-75. This article has been translated and published
as an Appendix to Engels, op. cit., p. 164-67.
16 Engels, ibid., p. 165.
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
50 SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ENGELS ON THE FAMILY 51
IV
18 See Julian H. Steward, "The Economic and Social Basis of Primitive Bands," in
Essays in Anthropology Presented to A. L. Kroeber (Berkeley, Cal., 1936), p. 331-47.
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
52 SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ENGELS ON THE FAMILY S3
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
54 SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
Among the pure cultivators, owing to the role of the women's con-
tributions to the collective economy, kinship is naturally reckoned in the
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ENGELS ON THE FAMILY 55
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
56 SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ENGELS ON THE FAMILY 57
31 Engels says of the philanthropic Tories who had constituted themselves a group
called "Young England": "The hope of Young England is the restoration of the old
'Merry England' with its brilliant features and romantic feudalism. This hope is of
course unattainable and ridiculous, a satire upon all historic development; but the
good intention, the courage to resist the existing state of things and prevalent preju-
dices, and to recognize the vileness of our present condition, is worth something
anyhow." See Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, p. 294,
footnote. Marx later wrote: "There is an old English proverb to the effect that when
thieves fall out, honest men come to their own. In actual fact, the clamorous and
passionate dispute between the two sections of* the ruling classes as to which of them
was exploiting the workers most shamefully, helped on either side, to bring the truth
to light, Lord Shaftesbury, at that time Lord Ashley, was commander-in-chief in the
aristocratic campaign against the factory owners," Capital, translated from the 4th ed.
by Eden and Cedar Paul (New York, 1929), p. 747. The role of Lord Shaftesbury as a
reformer is described in J. L. and Barbara Hammond, Lord Shaftesbury (London,
1932)-
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
58 SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ENGELS ON THE FAMILY 59
of the feudal family was laying the basis for a higher form
Not that he or Marx ever glorified the feudal family, a
ously charged.85 For example, after he described the re
tion then frequently found, in which the women bec
viders because of male unemployment, he wrote:
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
60 SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ENGELS ON THE FAMILY 61
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
62 SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ENGELS ON THE FAMILY 63
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
64 SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
Columbia University.
This content downloaded from 192.190.180.53 on Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:48:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms