Daurenbayev Akzhol

Daurenbayev Akzhol

The book which I chose is called “Origin of family, private property and state” it was written by Fredrick Engels. To begin with, from my point of view it is very valuable work which involved a lot of investigations and researches during writing. There is a plenty of information about development and evolution of humanity and it seems to me that all this information is right and proved by author with clear facts and arguments in the text.

Actually, this book was written by the help of  work of another writer, ethnographer and historian Lewis Morgan, “ Ancient society: or, Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization”, and also by the  help of Mark’s works. Maybe that is why this book was written in two months. The author strives to provide reader with idea that humanity passed through different stages of development and also concerns problems of primitive history, evolution of family relations, the characteristic of generic "communism" and the formation of private property, classes, and State Island, he also describes nature of the state as an instrument of class dominance and proved inevitable disappearance of the state with the transition to communist society. This book consists of 9 chapters. In 1 and 2 chapters Engels analyses the living conditions of people in the ancient times, before the rise of the tribal system, explores the development of family relations in a class society, criticizing the bourgeois family. In 3-3 chapters he gives the description of the primitive tribal "communism", considers the tribal organization of society and shows how the development of the productive forces, the division of labor and increasing its productivity created ability to assign products of alien labor, the exploitation of man by man and the division of society into hostile classes, which results exploiting class.

Form the first part of the book it is obvious that the author means that the term “family” can be concerned from different sides. Actually, family which is now consist just from parents and children had totally another structure and appearance in the past and the author describes ways by which family came to guise which it has now. There also different types of ancient families such as: punalual, group family, pair family and etc, he also describes prehistoric stages of culture, Iroquois generation, Greek generation, appearance of Athenian state, state of Rome, Germanic generation and barbarism.

First of all we begin with periods of culture: wildness, barbarism and civilization. The author makes sense on first 2 steps and on passing through the stage 2 to stage 3.

Wildness. The lowest stage. As author says “childhood of humanity”. It assumed that this stage presented during long period of time, about thousands of years, but nobody has proof of this. However, it is clear that this step is the first stage of humanity development, when people only emerged and just retrieved ability to communicate and their main aim was surviving.

The second stage of wildness begins with providing first meet of fish. People became independent on climate conditions and they were able to maintain food near water areas.

The highest step of wildness is concerned with idea that people invented primitive tools, tools for hunting and they were always provided with food, especially with meet. Bows and arrows became important weapon for that time, such as sword for barbarism and gun for civilization i.e. decisive tool.

Barbarism. The main features of the lowest stage of that time are development of agriculture and pottery, domestication of animals.

The middle stage of this time concerns idea that residents of  Asia or east part were able to domesticate all possible animals, whereas west part or American continent was able to domesticate only lamas, because they had not other animals, that is why their development of agriculture was higher.

The highest stage of barbarism came with ability to fuse or melt iron and writing and gradually people passed to civilization.