Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of sexuality, including incest, and references outdated and racist ideas and offensive language about the development of societies and cultures, replicated only in direct quotes of the source material.

Karl Marx had wanted to apply British anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan’s theories of social evolution to his own economic theory but died before he could complete his research. Engels thus presents himself as trying in his own way to finish Marx’s task. Marxism is a materialist theory that understands the production of social institutions in light of economic forces, such as production and consumption. Societies are traditionally organized around ties of kinship, but as economic forces become more sophisticated, family structures are “completely dominated by the system of property” (36). Morgan’s work helps to elucidate this process, and Engels will rely on it consistently as he weaves it into an explicitly Marxist framework.

Seven years after the text was first printed, Engels has made some revisions, in part to fill gaps that he claims many critics would wish remained unfilled. The work has been published in many languages, helping to spread the concept of a history of the family, a relatively new subject of academic inquiry.