Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels on Communism and the Origin of the Family (Illustrated)

The book has an active table of contents for readers to access each chapter of the following titles directly.

1. THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels

2. THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY, PRIVATE PROPERTY, AND THE STATE - Friedrich Engels

In the title of THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, Marx and Engels presented an analytical approach to the class struggle and the problems of capitalism. THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO also contains their ideas for how the capitalist society of the time would be replaced by socialism, and then eventually communism. However, the book is lack of detailed potential future forms of communism.

In contrast to a great concept and abstraction of THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, THE ORIGI OF THE FAMILY by co-founder of Marxism Friedrich Engels is the principal source of understanding the social analysis of the family theory and communism. Economists of Marxism credited that THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY is an early anthropological work and is one of the first major works on family economics of communism.

In THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY, Engels discussed primitive communism partially based on notes by Karl Marx to Lewis H. Morgan's book ANCIENT SOCIETY. The discussion was based on the matrilineal clan where women lived with their classificatory sisters. Applying the principle that "my sister's child is my child", Engels explained that the first domestic institution in human history was not the family but the matrilineal clan.

Starting the ideas on the role of property in the creation of the modern family, Engels began to elaborate on the question of the monogamous relationship and the modern civilization to become more transparent in the latter part of Chapter II of THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY. Engels argued that bourgeois law dictated the rules for relationships and inheritances. Furthermore, a relationship based on property rights and forced monogamy would only lead to the proliferation of immorality and prostitution. He argued that the only class free from these restraints of property and free from the danger of moral decay was the proletariat as they lacked the monetary means that were the basis of the bourgeois marriage. Engels finally concluded in THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY if men needed only to be concerned with sex-love and no longer with property and inheritance, then monogamy would come naturally.

After Marx and Engels, it was Lenin who took the theories of THE COMMUNIST MANIFEST and THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY to the next level for delivery and implementation of a truly socialistic country.

Marx's thought and Lenin's path of building Soviets to address issues of Capitalism were catastrophic to the world. An estimated 70 million people died under the soviet regime. The human cost paid for their utopian theories was enormous. Yet despite all this, Marx's thought is still worshipped by millions by other countries including North Korea and the aged followers in China today.

All of the essential predications by Marx in the book about world moving direction failed. However, history is a mirror for us. Reading the book, THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO and THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY, we can have a second thought on evolution of our social systems and avoid paying human cost we made in the past by socialistic countries including Soviets and China. Show more Show less

This is a must-read book to understand the foundational thought of a communist party and the nature of a socialistic country.

Dettagli