The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

— IV —

My work can only offer a small substitute for that which my late friend was no longer permitted to do. However, I have at my disposal his detailed excerpts from Morgan containing critical notes, which I reproduce here as far as it is at all possible.

According to the materialist conception of history, the determining factor in history is the production and reproduction of immediate life. This is, however, itself of a dual nature. On the one hand, the production of the means of existence: of articles of food, clothing, housing, and the tools necessary for these. On the other hand, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The social institutions under which people of a definite historical epoch and a definite country live are conditioned by both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labor on the one hand, and of the family on the other. The less developed labor is, and the more limited the amount of its products—and consequently the wealth of society—the more the social order appears to be dominated by ties of kinship. Under this structure of society based on kinship ties, however, the productivity of labor develops more and more; with it, private