The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

The following chapters form, in a sense, the execution of a legacy. It was none other than Karl Marx who had reserved for himself the task of presenting the results of Morgan’s research in connection with the results of his—I may say, within certain limits, our—materialist study of history, and thereby to make their full significance clear. Morgan had, after all, rediscovered in America, in his own way, the materialist conception of history that Marx had discovered forty years ago, and had been led by it, when comparing barbarism and civilization, to the same results as Marx in the main points. And just as Das Kapital Capital was zealously plagiarized for years by the professional economists in Germany, as well as stubbornly ignored, so too was Morgan’s Ancient Society original: "Ancient Society" *) treated by the spokesmen of "prehistoric" science in England. My work can offer only a small substitute for what my late friend was no longer permitted to do. Yet I have before me his detailed excerpts from Morgan, along with critical notes, which I reproduce here as far as it is at all possible.

*) Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism, to Civilization. By Lewis H. Morgan. London, Macmillan & Co., 1877. The book is printed in America and is remarkably difficult to obtain in London. The author died a few years ago.