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The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man" (German: "Anteil der Arbeit an der Menschwerdung des Affen") is an unfinished essay written by Friedrich Engels in the spring of 1876. The essay forms the ninth chapter of Dialectics of Nature, which proposes a unitary materialist paradigm of natural and human history.
The writing of The Origin of the Family began in early April 1884, and was completed on 26 May. [5] Engels began work on the treatise after reading Marx's handwritten synopsis of Lewis H. Morgan's Ancient Society; or, Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, Through Barbarism to Civilization, first published in London in 1877. [6]
Engels predicts that unfortunately, such social reorganization will have to be carried out using violence, because the bourgeoisie will not voluntarily give up its power. [10] Moreover, due to the global character of the Industrial Revolution, such violence must eventually and necessarily occur in all countries, not being limited to some. [11]
A related quote from Engels comes from Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884): The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong—into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze axe ...
The Engels family house at Barmen (now in Wuppertal), Germany. Friedrich Engels was born on 28 November 1820 in Barmen, Jülich-Cleves-Berg, Prussia (now Wuppertal, Germany), as the eldest son of Friedrich Engels Sr. [] (1796–1860) and of Elisabeth "Elise" Franziska Mauritia van Haar (1797–1873). [6]
Engels views the monogamous two-parent family as a microcosm of society, stating "It is the cellular form of civilized society, in which the nature of the oppositions and contradictions fully active in that society can be already studied". [25] Engels pointed out disparities between the legal recognition of a marriage, and the reality of it.
Feminist scholars have criticised the idea of the lack of subjugation of women as suggested from the works of Engels, [82] [5] while Marxist feminists have been critical of and have reassessed Engels' ideas in The Origin of the Family related to the development of women's subjugation in the transition from primitive communism to class society ...
Engels argued these conditions were the results of inherent exploitation and pursuit of profit under the capitalist system. In his opinion, at fault was "the class which at present holds social and political control" (i.e. the bourgeoisie ), who placed hundreds of proletarians in a position where they inevitably met an early and unnatural death.