Roman, German and other family structures. He began his analysis by categorizing the history into three different stages. The important stages in the family history took place long before written records were kept. In the era of savagery, group marriage predominated; during the time of barbarism, a form of pairing became common. The critical change occurred with civilization; modern monogamy or individual sex-love premiered due to changes in property relations, which
Engels viewed as the “greatest moral advance.”
Engels also analyzed the historical rise of the family as a property relationship–which developed together with class society. He denoted this relationship by …show more content…
The patriarchal family continued to subjugate women for economic reasons and as a result, rewarding men with a secondary benefit through the double standard of sexual conduct.
With capitalism and sexual repression so neatly tied together, Engels and Marx believed that the abolition of private property and the introduction of socialism would bring in its wake an abolition of family. Monogamy itself was instituted to insure the male’s economic dominance.
Marx also, points to the familial oppression in the upper classes and the need for a total transformation of the bourgeois family.
In spite of this, Marx and Engels recognized oppression of women and patriarchal rule as the major problems in the society and argued against private property and the form of family tied to private property as it exists in the present. Marx and Engels continually emphasize the nature of property relationships and used this to show different ways in which these has affected women negatively. Their analysis focused on a major source of social inequalities. Marx points to the family in its bourgeois form as “oppressive and something that must be significantly changed if a better society is to come