SOURCE: “Engels on the Family,” in Science and Society: A Centenary of Marxism, Vol. XII, No. 1, Winter, 1948, pp. 42-64.

In the following essay, Stern examines Engels' Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State in order to elucidate Engels' view of the family and the effects of capitalism on family development. Stern discusses the strengths and weaknesses of Engels' arguments.

I

The major work in Marxian literature on the family, Engels' Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State,¹ appeared thirty-six years after the Communist Manifesto. There are several anticipations of its points of view, however, in the Manifesto and in other writings of Marx and Engels prior to it, which throw light on the genesis and development of their later judgments.

The discussion of the family in the Communist Manifesto is not extensive. In developing upon the theme that the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly...