Classics
2 total works
Edited by Samuel H. Beer, with key selections from Capital and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, this volume features an especially helpful introduction that serves as a guide to Marxist political and economic theory and to placing the specific writings in their contemporary setting. Included are a bibliography and list of important dates in the life of Karl Marx.
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), was a provocative and profoundly influential critique of the Victorian nuclear family. Engels argued that the traditional monogamous household was in fact a recent construct, closely bound up with capitalist societies. Under this patriarchal system, women were servants and, effectively, prostitutes. Only Communism would herald the dawn of communal living and a new sexual freedom and, in turn, the role of the state would become superfluous.