13 minSummaryRead it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook editionPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 178 pagesHardcover · 6 × 9 in · 178 pagesAbout this book
What if the family, private property, and the state are not permanent facts, but arrangements that history can change?
Friedrich Engels asks where our most familiar institutions come from. He argues that families, property, and governments take shape under particular conditions, rather than existing unchanged throughout history. His starting point is concrete: how people make a living and sustain life.
The journey moves through Iroquois clans, Athens, Rome, and the Germanic tribes. Engels traces links between changing family ties, growing wealth, and divisions of class. He asks how societies organized through kinship give way to states with public force and taxes, and what these changes mean for women and power.
What you’ll discover
- Families through history Follow Engels’s argument that family forms change with the societies around them.
- Clans without police Explore his account of Iroquois society and an order built around kinship.
- Wealth and women’s power Examine the connections Engels draws between growing wealth and the loss of mother right.
- The rise of states See how Athens, Rome, and Germanic tribes shape his explanation of government.
- An argument to question Encounter a Marxist account of social change whose evidence later research substantially revises.
Who will love it
Readers who enjoy big questions about where marriage, property and government come from will find a clear, pointed argument here. It suits lovers of history, anthropology and political thought.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Material life shapes social institutions
- Family names preserve earlier relationships
- Marriage groups narrowed toward the pair
- Male wealth changed the inheritance line
- Monogamy served property before love
- Kinship could organize life without government
- States emerged through different social conflicts
- The state arises from class conflict
- Family and state share one history
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Philosophy & IdeasFree shelf
The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State
by Friedrich Engels · 1884
An Iroquois longhouse has no police, no prisons and no kings, and Engels asks how the state ever came to exist.
Challenging2–5 hours to read20 languages
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“The state, then, has not existed from all eternity.”
In short
How did people live before there were kings, police, prisons and taxes? Friedrich Engels says that for most of human history there was no state at all.
The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State at a glance
- Reading time
- About 4 h 10 min3 h 15 min fast, 4 h 55 min slow
- Length
- 59,100 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1884by Friedrich Engels
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Engels completes a task left by Marx
Engels opens by calling his book a bequest. Marx had meant to present Morgan's research alongside the materialist view of history, and he left notes behind. Engels reproduces them and adds his own work on Greece, Rome, the Celts and the Germans.
The core claim comes in the preface. The decisive factor in history is the production and reproduction of life. That means making food, shelter and tools on one side, and having children on the other.
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An Iroquois longhouse has no police, no prisons and no kings, and Engels asks how the state ever came to exist.
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Details
- First published
- 1884
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 4 h 45 min
- Level
- Challenging
- Paperback
- 178 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Hardcover
- 178 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Large print paperback
- 296 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Large print hardcover
- 296 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Delivery and returns
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For Christmas, order by Thu 12 Nov
Cite this edition
Engels, Friedrich. The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-origin-of-the-family-private-property-and-the-state.
Engels, F. (2026). The origin of the family, private property, and the state. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-origin-of-the-family-private-property-and-the-state (Original work published 1884)
Engels, Friedrich. The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-origin-of-the-family-private-property-and-the-state.
@book{engels2026origin,
author = {Engels, Friedrich},
title = {The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-origin-of-the-family-private-property-and-the-state},
note = {First published 1884}
}
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What is The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State about?
It traces how family forms changed from group marriage to monogamy, how private property arose, and how the state emerged once society split into classes. Engels draws on Lewis Henry Morgan's study of the Iroquois, then tests the idea on Greece, Rome and the Germans.
Who was Lewis Henry Morgan and why does Engels rely on him?
Morgan was an American scholar who lived among the Iroquois and wrote Ancient Society in 1877. He showed that clans, phratries and tribes were the old building blocks of society. Engels saw in this work a match for the materialist view of history.
What does gens mean in this book?
A gens is a group claiming common descent, originally forbidding marriage within itself, though Greek inheritance rules later introduced exceptions. It shares burial grounds, names and mutual protection. Engels shows that Iroquois, Greek and Roman clans share this same basic form.
The author
Friedrich Engels
1820–1895 · German socialist philosopher
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) was a German philosopher and economist born in Barmen, Prussia. He lived in Germany and England, including Manchester and London. He wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) and The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884). With Karl Marx, he wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848).
“The state, then, has not existed from all eternity.”
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