The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

Engels understands the family as a governing unit, and the only one with natural and inherent legitimacy. The state is a modern invention meant to break up this more natural condition so as to pave the way for finance capital. As a dialectical theory of history, Marxism envisions the clashing of opposite elements until a kind of synthesis is formed. The most important of these is class struggle, chiefly between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, which must ultimately end in proletarian revolution. Engels’s core argument in this book is that the ruling classes rely on subsidiary institutions for their support, and chief among these is the state. The institutions of the state are meant to solidify an arrangement where the main concern is the preservation of property. Since property is distributed unequally, the enforcers of the law are not neutral arbiters, but “essentially a machine for holding down the oppressed, exploited class” (215). Since property is at the center of the political system, people themselves are viewed as producers and consumers of commodities, and this is what determines their value. The agents of the state hold up this system as natural, suggesting that without it humanity would succumb to anarchy and immorality.