The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State- Engels

The book begins with an extensive discussion of Ancient Society which describes the major stages of human development as commonly understood in Engels' time. In contrast to other contemporary essays on the subject, Engels emphasizes the importance not of primitive psychological development but rather of social relations of power and control over material resources, sometimes related to the development of new technologies. Morgan, whose account of prehistory Engels largely accepts as given, focuses primarily on the first two stages of Savagery and Barbarism but only ventures as far as the transition into Civilization. The terms Savagery and Barbarism as used by Morgan were meant to be objective and not terms of derision or disparagement as they might be assumed to be then or now. Engels summarizes these stages as follows:

1. Savagery – the period in which man's appropriation of products in their natural state predominates; the products of human art are chiefly instruments which assist this appropriation.
2. Barbarism – the period during which man learns to breed domestic animals and to practice agriculture, and acquires methods of increasing the supply of natural products by human activity.
3. Civilization – the period in which man learns a more advanced application of work to the products of nature, the period of industry proper and of art.

In the following chapter on family, Engels tries to connect the transition into these stages with a change in the way that family is defined and the rules by which it is governed. Much of this is still taken from Morgan, although Engels begins to intersperse his own ideas on the role of family into the text. Morgan acknowledges four stages in the family.
Of the three main epochs, savagery, barbarism and civilisation, he is naturally concerned only with the first two, and with the transition to the third. He subdivides each of these two epochs into a lower, middle and upper stage, according to the progress made in the production of the means of subsistence;
1. Savagery
1. Lower Stage. Infancy of the human race. Man still lived in his original habitat, tropical or subtropical forests, dwelling, at least partially, in trees; this alone explains his continued survival in face of the large beasts of prey. Fruits, nuts and roots served him as food; the formation of articulate speech was the main achievement of this period.
2. Middle Stage. When the food was not so much available and the weather became inclement to them, they began to restrict their movements to a fixed place and live on   the utilisation of fish (under which head we also include crabs, shellfish and other aquatic animals) for food and with the employment of fire. These two are complementary, since fish food becomes fully available only by the use of fire. This new food, however, made man independent of climate and locality. By following the rivers and coasts man was able, even in his savage state, to spread over the greater part of the earth’s surface. The crude, unpolished stone implements of the earlier Stone Age — the so-called palaeolithic — which belong wholly, or predominantly, to this period, and are scattered over all the continents, are evidence of these migrations.
3. Upper Stage. Begins with the invention of the bow and arrow, whereby wild game became a regular item of food, and hunting one of the normal occupations. Bow, string and arrow constitute a very composite instrument, the invention of which presupposes long accumulated experience and sharpened mental powers, and, consequently, a simultaneous acquaintance with a host of other inventions.
2. Barbarism
l. Lower Stage. Dates from the introduction of pottery. This latter had its origin, demonstrably in many cases and probably everywhere, in the coating of baskets or wooden vessels with clay in order to render them fireproof, whereby it was soon discovered that moulded clay also served the purpose without the inner vessel.
2. Middle Stage. Begins, in the East, with the domestication of animals; in the West, with the cultivation of edible plants by means of irrigation, and with the use of adobes (bricks dried in the sun) and stone for buildings.
3. Upper Stage. Begins with the smelting of iron ore and passes into civilisation through the invention of alphabetic writing and its utilisation for literary records. At this stage, which, as we have already noted, was traversed independently only in the eastern hemisphere, more progress was made in production than in all the previous stages put together.
From the upper stage of the Savagery ownership of the productive forces begins and the division of work begins among the different section of the human society.
From the lower stage of Barbarism surplus value began to accumulate and a section of a community began to become rich than the other. Class began to develop and exploitation of one class over that of the other started..
A family, private propety and the state began to exist.

Marx, Engels, Luxemburg......

Marx, Engels, Luxemburg and the return to primitive communism - Mark Kosman

Marx, Engels and Luxemburg were all keen to return to the egalitarian relations of primitive communism, at a higher level. But how does the egalitarianism of early human societies connect up with Marxism’s prime focus on the rise and decline of capitalism? As capitalism continues to disintegrate, this article looks at the egalitarian origins of money in ancient Greece for clues as to how we might transcend the whole money system.

In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels claims that “the overthrow of mother-right was the world-historic defeat of the female sex”. He goes on to argue that this counter-revolution led to the decline of primitive communism and the rise of class society. He also predicts that humanity will one day return to communistic relations. He then ends the book with a quote from the pioneering anthropologist, Lewis Henry Morgan, which states that this future society “will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes.”

Contemporary Marxists sometimes use these arguments to show that sexism and class divisions are not inherent to human nature. But it is rare for them to defend Engels’ anthropology and rarer still for them to argue that Engels’ ideas can help us understand the nature of any future revolution.
Yet, although Engels made many errors, anthropological and genetic studies of African hunter-gatherers do now show that early human society may have been both matrilocal and matrilineal. Hunter-gatherer societies are far from perfect but studies also show that hunter-gatherer women have more power than women in agricultural societies and that hunter-gatherer childcare is more collective. Furthermore, unlike other tribal societies, nomadic hunter-gatherers maintain strong egalitarian and communistic principles as regards material wealth. These principles of equality and sharing would have been particularly easy to maintain in prehistoric times when hunters had access to abundant food supplies in the form of mammoths and other mega-fauna. So, perhaps, we should look again at the early Marxists and their hopes of a return to primitive communism, at a higher technological level.
Engels wrote The Origin of the Family at Marx’s ‘bequest’ and he derived many of its ideas from Marx’s intensive research into anthropology. In his later years, Marx seems to have prioritised this research, rather than finishing further volumes of Capital. Unfortunately, he then died before he could connect up this anthropological work with his analysis of capitalism. However, an unsent letter to the Russian revolutionary, Vera Zasulich, gives us some idea of what he was thinking.
In that letter, Marx writes that “the vitality of primitive communities was incomparably greater than that of … modern capitalist societies.” He goes on to argue that “the best proof that the development of the Russian ‘rural commune’ is in keeping with the historical trend of our age is the fatal crisis which capitalist production has undergone in the European and American countries where it has reached its highest peak, a crisis that will end in its destruction, in the return of modern society to a higher form of the most archaic type - collective production and appropriation.” Well aware of how radical this argument was, Marx reassures any readers that “we must not let ourselves to be alarmed at the word ‘archaic’.”
One of the first Marxist theorists, August Bebel, was certainly not ‘alarmed’ by ideas of returning to the ‘archaic’. In his classic text, Woman under Socialism, Bebel even quotes the 19th century anthropologist, Johann Bachofen, who argued that “the end-point of political development resembles the beginning of human existence. The original equality returns again at last. The materialistic, maternal existence opens and closes the cycle of human history.” Bebel also writes that “the line of human development returns at the end of its journey to social structures similar to those of primal society, only at a much higher level of culture.... The whole development forms a spiral heading upwards, whose end point is exactly above the start.”
Rosa Luxemburg was also not ‘alarmed’ by such ideas. In her last book, Einfuhrung in die Nationalokonomie, she argues that “primitive communism, with its corresponding democracy and social equality [was] … the cradle of social development.” She goes on to claim that “the whole of modern civilisation, with its private property, its class domination, its male domination, its compulsory state and compulsory marriage [are] merely a brief passing phase, which, because they first formed from the dissolution of primitive communist society, in future will become higher social forms.… The noble tradition of the ancient past, thus holds out a hand to the revolutionary aspirations of the future, the circle of knowledge closes harmoniously, and the present world of class domination and exploitation … becomes merely a minuscule transient stage in the great cultural advance of humanity.”

Civilisation-Marx-Engels

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Civilization, Barbarism and the Marxist view of History

Written by Alan Woods Wednesday, 17 July 2002

This article by Alan Woods deals with barbarism and the development of human society. In post-modern writing, history appears as an essentially meaningless and inexplicable series of random events or accidents. It is governed by no laws that we can comprehend. A variation on this theme is the idea, now very popular in some academic circles that there is no such thing as higher and lower forms of social development and culture. This denial of progress in history is characteristic of the psychology of the bourgeoisie in the phase of capitalist decline. Henry Ford is reported to have said "history is bunk". For those of you who are not familiar with the intricacies of American slang, the word bunk signifies nonsense - and non-sense signifies something which has no meaning. This not very elegant phrase adequately expresses an opinion that has gathered strength in recent years. The illustrious founder of the Ford motor company further refined his definition of history when he described it as "just one damn thing after another", which is one way of looking at it.
The same idea is expressed rather more elegantly (but no less erroneously) by the supporters of the post-modernist craze that some people seem to regard as valid philosophy. Actually, this idea is not new. It was expressed long ago by the great English historian Edward Gibbon, the author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In the celebrated phrase of Edward Gibbon, history is "little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind." (Gibbon, vol. 1, p. 69)
History appears here as an essentially meaningless and inexplicable series of random events or accidents. It is governed by no laws that we can comprehend. To try to understand it would therefore be a pointless exercise. A variation on this theme is the idea, now very popular in some academic circles that there is no such thing as higher and lower forms of social development and culture. They claim that there is no such thing as "progress" which they consider to be an old fashioned idea left over from the 19th century, when it was popularised by Victorian Liberals, Fabian socialists and - Karl Marx.
This denial of progress in history is characteristic of the psychology of the bourgeoisie in the phase of capitalist decline. It is a faithful reflection of the fact that, under capitalism progress has indeed reached its limits and threatens to go into reverse. The bourgeoisie and its intellectual representatives are, quite naturally, unwilling to accept this fact. Moreover, they are organically incapable of recognising it. Lenin once observed that a man on the edge of a cliff does not reason. However, they are dimly aware of the real situation, and try to find some kind of a justification for the impasse of their system by denying the possibility of progress altogether!
So far has this idea sunk into consciousness that it has even been carried into the realm of non-human evolution. Even such a brilliant thinker as Stephen Jay Gould, whose dialectical theory of punctuated equilibria transformed the way that evolution is perceived, argued that it is wrong to speak of progress from lower to higher in evolution, so that microbes must be placed on the same level as human beings. In one sense it is correct that all living things are related (the human genome has conclusively proved this). Man is not a special creation of the Almighty, but the product of evolution. Nor is it correct to see evolution as a kind of grand design, the aim of which was to create beings like ourselves (teleology - from the Greek telos, meaning an end). However, in rejecting an incorrect idea, it is not necessary to go to the other extreme, leading to new errors.
It is not a question of accepting some kind of preordained plan either related to Divine intervention or some kind of teleology but it is clear that the laws of evolution inherent in nature do in fact determine the development from simple forms of life to more complex forms. The earliest forms of life already contain within them the embryo of all future developments. It is possible to explain the development of eyes, legs and other organs without recourse to any preordained plan. At a certain stage we get the development of a central nervous system and a brain. Finally with homo sapiens, we arrive at human consciousness. Matter becomes conscious of itself. There has been no more important revolution since the development of organic matter (life) from inorganic matter.
To please our critics, we should perhaps add the phrase from our point of view. Doubtless the microbes, if they were able to have a point of view, would probably raise serious objections. But we are human beings and must necessarily see things through human eyes. And we do assert that evolution does in fact represent a development of simple life forms to more complex and versatile ones - in other words progress from lower to higher forms of life. To object to such a formulation seems to be somewhat pointless, not scientific but merely scholastic. In saying this, of course, no offence is intended to the microbes, who after all have been around for a lot longer than us, and if the capitalist system is not overthrown, may yet have the last laugh.

Class character of Ancient Civilisation

Civilisation first grew up in four places.
1. North Africa,
2.West Asia,
3. India,
4.China
The natural condition of Egypt and Mesopatamia was very fertile. The lower point where the two rivers Tygris and Euphrates met was known as Sennar. At that place the Tribes Sumer lived in 4000 to 5000 BC. The land of Sennar became fertile due to the flood of sea. they were accustomed with irrigation by constructing dams and canals. the labourers were free from exploitation as at present. There was no master and no exploitation.All the works were done by the labour of all the persons of the community. Redistribution of land was done, if necessary. The best lands were given to the old and leaders of the community. These lands were inherited by their next generation. During the next time of redistribution, these lands remained to the owners as it was. The priests were also allotted the best lands.By removing  water from the swampy lands, they extended their lands an for this purpose they utilised the labour of the poor section of the community. Some people took loans from these leaders, priests or old in their distress condition which they could not repay .Thus these people became landless and converted to land-slaves.
Sometimes the tribes of the hilly sides attacked the people of the plain land. In war fare the lod people and the leaders of the community participated. They usually used weapons made up of Bronze. The ordinary farmers could not participate in the war. Gradually the war became their monopoly. Thus they became the king of the community.          

The Growth of Civilisation

Thousands and thousands of years elapsed since the human society became civilised. The main important factors of an ancient  civilised society were the development of weapons with the help of metals, use of animal as a productive forces, and large scale irrigation for the development of agriculture. The centre of human society was city  where the main pivots of the society such as King, businessmen, hand-loom industry, priests were available. Other important things were development of conveyances and trade facilities.

In the barbarous age the centre of human society was village. The only products for living were agriculture. The weapons for agriculture were made up of stones and  shelters, garments, were also made up of stones, leaves etc. Weaving of garments and  making of earthen pots, they could only prepare.
The first human civilisations were perceived in North Africa and West Asia in
about 3000 to 4000 BC.
Almost all the great civilisations originated in river valleys,  nourished by trade, and came to maturity in cities.The conditions of life in the cities provided the intellectual stimulus in which philosophers and scientists could study the meaning of the Universe and the nature of matter; artists and writers could express the ideals and aspirations of their people through the medium of
architecture, literature, paintings, and music.
The course of civilization can be traced in four geographical areas. 1. valleys of Nile, 2. Tygris and Euphratis, 3. Indus valley civilization, and 4. Yellow river valley (Chinese civilization).

Rise of civilization

Cuneiform—earliest known writing system

The Neolithic Revolution, beginning about 8,000 BCE, saw the development of agriculture, which drastically changed the human lifestyle. Farming permitted far denser populations, which in time organised into states. Agriculture also created food surpluses that could support people not directly engaged in food production. The development of agriculture permitted the creation of the first cities. These were centres of trade, manufacturing and political power with nearly no agricultural production of their own. Cities established a symbiosis with their surrounding countrysides, absorbing agricultural products and providing, in return, manufactured goods and varying degrees of military control and protection.
The development of cities was synonymous with the rise of civilization. Early civilizations arose first in lower Mesopotamia (3500 BCE), followed by Egyptian civilization along the Nile (3000 BCE) and the Harappan civilization in the Indus Valley (in present-day Pakistan; 2500 BCE). These societies developed a number of unifying characteristics, including a central government, a complex economy and social structure, sophisticated language and writing systems, and distinct cultures and religions. Writing was another pivotal development in human history, as it made the administration of cities and expression of ideas far easier.
As complex civilizations arose, so did complex religions, and the first of their kind apparently originated during this period. Entities such as the Sun, Moon, Earth, sky, and sea were often deified. Shrines developed, which evolved into temple establishments, complete with a complex hierarchy of priests and priestesses and other functionaries. Typical of the Neolithic was a tendency to worship anthropomorphic deities. Among the earliest surviving written religious scriptures are the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, the oldest of which date to between 2400 and 2300 BCE. Some archaeologists suggest, based on ongoing excavations of a temple complex at Göbekli Tepe ("Potbelly Hill") in southern Turkey, dating from c. 11,500 years ago, that religion predated the Agricultural Revolution rather than following in its wake, as had generally been assumed.
As the civilisation developed along the course of the river it is called River Valley Civilisation.

Origin of family - Engels

The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State: in the light of the researches of Lewis H. Morgan (Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats) [ Lewis Henry Morgan (November 21, 1818 – December 17, 1881) was a pioneering American anthropologist and social theorist who worked as a railroad lawyer. He is best known for his work on kinship and social structure, his theories of social evolution, and his ethnography of the Iroquois. Interested in what holds societies together, he proposed the concept that the earliest human domestic institution was the matrilineal clan, not the patriarchal family; the idea was accepted by most pre-historians and anthropologists throughout the late nineteenth century.
Also interested in what leads to social change, he was a contemporary of the European social theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who were influenced by reading his work on social structure and material culture, the influence of technology on progress. Morgan is the only American social theorist to be cited by such diverse scholars as Marx, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud. Elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Morgan served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1879.
Morgan was a Republican member of the New York State Assembly (Monroe Co., 2nd D.) in 1861, and of the New York State Senate in 1868 and 1869.] is a historical materialist treatise written by Friedrich Engels and published in 1884. It is partially based on notes by Karl Marx to Lewis H. Morgan's book Ancient Society. The book is one of the first major works within the family economics.
Engels wrote The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State in just two months – beginning toward the end of March 1884 and completing it by the end of May. It focuses on early human history, following the disintegration of the primitive community and the emergence of a class society based on private property. Engels looks into the origin and essence of the state, and concludes it is bound to wither away leaving a classless society.
This work systematically set out to provide a social explanation for the emergence of women’s oppression with the development of the social institutions of the patriarchal family and private property at a particular historic period.
Tit-bits of Engels study;
1. Mastery over nature began with the development of the hand, with labour,
2. For Morgan rediscovered in America, in his own way, the materialist conception of history that had been discovered by Marx 40 years ago, and in his comparison of barbarism and civilisation was led by this conception to the same conclusions, in the main points, as Marx had arrived at.
3. According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the last resort, the production and reproduction of immediate life. But this itself is of a twofold character. On the one hand, the production of the means of subsistence, of food, clothing and shelter and the tools requisite therefore; on the other, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species.
4. Meanwhile, more and more facts soon came to light, which did not fit into his neat scheme. McLennan knew only three forms of marriage — polygamy, polyandry and monogamy. But once attention had been directed to this point, more and more proofs were discovered of the fact that among undeveloped peoples forms of marriage existed in which a group of men possessed a group of women in common; and Lubbock (in his The Origin of Civilisation. 1870) acknowledged this group marriage (“communal marriage”) to be a historical fact.
5. 1. The Consanguine Family — the first stage of the family. Here the marriage groups are ranged according to generations: all the grandfathers and grandmothers within the limits of the family are all mutual husbands and wives, the same being the case with their children, the fathers and mothers, whose children will again form a third circle of common mates, their children — the great-grandchildren of the first — in turn, forming a fourth circle.
     2. The Punaluan Family. If the first advance in organisation was the exclusion of parents and children from mutual sexual relations, the second was the exclusion of brothers and sisters. In view of the greater similarity in the ages of the participants, this step forward was infinitely more important, but also more difficult, than the first. It was accomplished gradually, commencing most probably with the exclusion of natural brothers and sisters (that is, on the maternal side) from sexual relations, at first in isolated cases, then gradually becoming the rule (in Hawaii exceptions to this rule still existed in the present century), and ending with the prohibition of marriage.
   3. The Pairing Family. A certain pairing for longer or shorter periods took place already under group marriage, or even earlier. Among he was her principal husband, among the others. This situation contributed in no small degree to the confusion among the missionaries, who see in group marriage, now promiscuous community of wives, now wanton adultery. Such habitual pairing, however, necessarily became more and more established as the gens developed and as the numbers of classes of “brothers” and “sisters” between which marriage was now impossible increased. The impetus given by the gens to prevent marriage between blood relatives drove things still further. Thus we find that among the Iroquois and most other Indian tribes in the lower stage of barbarism, marriage is prohibited between all relatives recognised by their system, and these are of several hundred kinds.
Thus, as wealth increased, it, on the one hand, gave the man a more important status in the family than the woman, and, on the other hand, created a stimulus to utilise this strengthened position in order to overthrow the traditional order of inheritance in favour of his children. But this was impossible as long as descent according to mother right prevailed. This had, therefore, to be overthrown, and it was overthrown; and it was not so difficult to do this as it appears to us now. For this revolution — one of the most decisive ever experienced by mankind — need not have disturbed one single living member of a gens. All the members could remain what they were previously. The simple decision sufficed that in future the descendants of the male members should remain in the gens, but that those of the females were to be excluded from the gens and transferred to that of their father.
4. The Monogamian Family. As already indicated, this arises out of the pairing family in the transition period from the middle to the upper stage of barbarism, its final victory being one of the signs of the beginning of civilisation. It is based on the supremacy of the man; its express aim is the begetting of children of undisputed paternity, this paternity being required in order that these children may in due time inherit their father’s wealth as his natural heirs. The monogamian family differs from pairing marriage in the far greater rigidity of the marriage tie, which can now no longer be dissolved at the pleasure of either party. Now, as a rule, only the man can dissolve it and cast off his wife. The right of conjugal infidelity remains his even now, sanctioned, as least, by custom (the Code Napoléon expressly concedes this right to the husband as long as he does not bring his concubine into the conjugal home19), and is exercised more and more with the growing development of society.
While, as Marx observes, the position of the goddesses in mythology represents an earlier period, when women still occupied a freer and more respected place, in the Heroic Age we already find women degraded owing to the predominance of the man and the competition of female slaves. One may read in the Odyssey how Telemachus cuts his mother short and enjoins silence upon her.
The old conjugal system, now reduced to narrower limits by the gradual disappearance of the punaluan groups, still environed the advancing family, which it was to follow to the verge of civilisation … It finally disappeared in the new form of hetaerism, which still follows mankind in civilisation as a dark shadow upon the family.

MORGAN is the first man who, with expert knowledge, has attempted to introduce a definite order into the history of primitive man; so long as no important additional material makes changes necessary, his classification will undoubtedly remain in force.

Of the three main epochs – savagery, barbarism, and civilization – he is concerned, of course, only with the first two and the transition to the third. He divides both savagery and barbarism into lower, middle, and upper stages according to the progress made in the production of food; for, he says:

Upon their skill in this direction, the whole question of human supremacy on the earth depended. Mankind are the only beings who may be said to have gained an absolute control over the production of food.... It is accordingly probable that the great epochs of human progress have been identified, more or less directly, with the enlargement of the sources of subsistence.

[Morgan, op. cit., p. 19. -Ed.]

The development of the family takes a parallel course, but here the periods have not such striking marks of differentiation.

Origin of Family

A society in primitive age was of two kinds. 1. Primitive age , and  2. Age of Barbarism.

In the primitive age people lived on entirely dependent on nature having no weapon to protect themselves or to procure food for them. In barbarous age men began to live in a permanent  shelter, began animal husbandry, cultivating lands. Though they had weapons made up of stone which they could make in the shape according to their need. But in  the case of relation between a man and a woman at this stage, a difference of opinion exists. According to Engels the relation between a man and a woman differs from that in the case prevailed as in animals. In animals we find all types of relations in the case of mammals. Actually, there are no definite or a single system. They had one to one relation, many to many relation, one to many and many to one relation regarding their sexual behaviour.
A community and an individual have its own contribution. When individual family life developed community life disappeared. On the other hand, when many to many sexual life developed, a community relationship developed automatically.
Primitive family life was community marriage. In such a family each man had relation with each woman and there was nothing to envy upon. Sexual relationship was open and was simple. But there was a generation gap. Each man behaved as husband to each woman within the same generation which was true for the next generation also. Thus a clan was developed. Marriage between the male and the female within the clan was not allowed.
As communal marriage was in vogue, it became difficult to determine the father of a new baby in a community. Therefore, the child was known after its mother and the clan was determined by his mother.
In the primitive stage the property of a community was meant only household goods, shelters, weapons to procure food and other productive forces. In the higher form of barbarous stage, property included animal husbandry which gradually became individual property. Thus a community became richer than the other and some became servants to others. After some time these slaves became the property of an individual as the animals.
As the clan was determined by the female, the male after marriage come to the family of the female. But as the property became huge, the influence of the male increased and the bindings of the matriarchal family gradually became loosened.      
 

Marx on Religioon

Encyclopedia of Religion and Society William H. Swatos, Jr. Editor

Table of Contents | Cover Page | Editors | Contributors | Introduction | Web Version

MARX, KARL

(1818-1883) Social economist, born in Trier, Germany. Marx's father was a lawyer who, because his Jewish religion caused him to be deprived of social and occupational mobility, decided to convert himself and his children to Protestantism. (His wife converted much later after her mother's death.) After university studies at Bonn and Berlin, with a doctorate from Jena in 1841, Marx assumed the editorship of the Reinische Zeitung , a newspaper opposed to the ruling political system. Because of his socialist perspective, Marx had to flee Germany. For a while he lived in Paris, where in 1848 he and Friedrich Engels published the Communist Manifesto and participated in the 1848-1849 revolution. After its defeat, Marx again had to flee and settled in London, where he began his studies in political economy that led to the publication of Capital . He lived in London until his death. Theory of Religion Marx's theory of religion (Marx and Engels 1975:38 f) must be viewed as an aspect of his general theory of society. Like many others in his era, Marx too was critical of religion. Unlike them, however, Marx did not seek to criticize the logic of religion as a set of beliefs. Rather, he proposed that religion reflects society, therefore any criticism of religion must ipso facto be a criticism of society itself. "Thus the criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics ." Religion for Marx is a human product. "Man makes religion, religion doesn't make man. Religion is the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet found himself or has already lost himself again." In short, what Marx proposes is that religion does not reflect man's true consciousness. Religion, as Marx sees it, is a false consciousness; religion is the product of men, the product of those in power—those who control the productive process. Religion comes to divert people's attention from their miseries, which are the consequences of exploitation. Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless condition. It is the opium of the people. To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand their real happiness. The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of tears, the halo of which is religion. This passage clearly illustrates Marx's view that religion is not the creation of the bourgeoisie but the resulting conditions of the historical systems of exploitation. Given that religion has existed long before capitalism, its clear that, even from Marx's view, this is not the product of capitalism. It is the natural consequence of distress, which includes both transvaluation and ressentiment . Both Marx and Engels renounced the anarchists such as the Blanquists and Dühring who sought to use coercive methods against religion. For Marx and Engels, religion cannot be eliminated until the social and political conditions that foster it are eliminated. A concomitant factor is the development of religion as a compensatory mechanism. This is achieved through the process of transvaluation (Nietzsche 1927 [1887]). This is the process by which those of the lower class when faced with their powerless conditions redefine them and attribute a positive value to those conditions (see Mannheim 1936: 45 f). This, for instance, is best exemplified in the Christian teachings of meekness, turning the other cheek, and the desirability of poverty. But are not people aware of their interests? Are not people aware that religion serves the interests of the ruling classes? The answer is obviously—No. It is no because people are socialized into believing that what they know is the truth. Marx proposes that religion internalizes in people a set of beliefs that are contrary to their interest but are in the interest of the ruling class. In short, it teaches obedience to authority as a condition for achieving future happiness through salvation. Both Halévy (1971 [1906]) and Thompson (1966), for instance, suggest that the rise of Methodism in England was a primary force that dissipated political fermentation that, in their opinion, otherwise would have led to revolution. In fact, Marx was even skeptical of Christian socialism's ability to serve the interests of the proletariat. He comments that just "as the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism. . . . Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priests consecrate the heartburn of the aristocrats" (Marx and Engels 1968 [1848]: 55). In the Communist Manifesto , Marx suggests that religion, like morality and philosophy, must be eliminated if we are to achieve a new political and economic existence. "Communism," he and Engels write, "abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on new basis" (1968:52). The reason for this is the historical evidence that regardless of previous changes in the productive systems, religion has always supported the maintenance of the legitimacy of the exploiter and exploited. Thus, to create a truly free society, religion as a tie to the past must be eliminated. Religion as the Social Superstructure To Marx, religion is one facet of that whole that he called the superstructure and that is based on and affected by the infrastructure . Differences in religion occur with changes in the infrastructure. Thus Marx and Engels proposed that earlier (precapitalist) religious beliefs arose from primitive man's helplessness in his struggle against nature, while in the class society it is rooted in his struggle against man. In man's quest and struggle against his exploiters, the working masses experience a different form of helplessness—and this experience is what changed religion and introduced the belief in a better life in a hereafter, the alleged reward for his earthly suffering. Moreover, Engels suggests in "Bruno Bauer and Early Christianity" (in Marx and Engels 1975) that Christianity, with its concept of salvation, reflects the outlook of utterly despairing people, of slaves who lost their battles with their masters, of indigent people and Greeks and other nationalities who lost wealth and status. Religion as a Dominant Ideology In The German Ideology , Marx (Marx and Engels 1976 [c. 1845]: 67) writes, The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. . . . The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self evident that they do this in its whole range , hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the idea of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. One apparatus of the transmission of ideas is the church through religion. Religion adds legitimacy to ideas (by making them sacred) that enhance the ruling class's economic position and their hegemony. (This view has been challenged in Abercombie et al. 1980.) The influence religion exerts on the lower classes is only possible to the extent that they constitute a class by itself (eine Klasse en Sich) , namely, a class that has not developed a class consciousness. However, when a class develops consciousness, becomes aware of its own interests and become a class for itself (eine Klasse für Sich) , then the consciousness it develops reflects its own interests. Marx and Judaism Marx's opposition to Christianity was extremely mild compared with hostility to Judaism. While on the one hand his hostility toward Jews may reflect a general anti-Semitism that pervaded Germany, and in fact made the mid-twentieth-century Holocaust possible, on the other hand it also reflects his hostility to his mother and her family, the Phillips, who were wealthy Dutch manufacturers. His hostile view of Jews and Judaism is expressed in 1843 under the title "On the Jewish Question" (Marx 1977 [1843]). This essay is Marx's criticism of Bruno Bauer's study on the emancipation of Jews in Germany. In the first part of the essay, Marx seeks to solve the problem of the duality of egoistic individualism that can be expressed in the "civil society" and the political individual as a member of the state. In the second section, Marx turns to the question of Jewish emancipation. Here he advocates the need to emancipate the Christian world, which made the civil world possible, from Judaism. The real Jew, in contrast to the abstract Jew, is a selfish huckster whose god is Mammon. This hostile attitude was not due to his lack of knowledge of Jewish history. Feuer (1969: 36 f.) writes of Marx, "He knew the history of the Spanish and German Jews and their decisions to resist economic determination and to sacrifice their goods for their religious loyalties." Marx's hatred of Jews in general and Dutch Jews in particular is so intense, so dogmatic, that it led him, according to Feuer, to the verge of a conspiracy theory of history that cannot be but a "reaction-formation," an ego-defense mechanism of an insecure person. In spite of a number of problems with his ideology and personality, Marx's theory of society and of religion, while in many ways controversial, has nonetheless provided great insight into the functioning of society. While one may not accept his political views, his social theory based on the interaction between the social infrastructure and superstructure has been and continues to be an important departing point for the sociological approach to the study of society and religion. —Eugen Schoenfeld

Origin of Religion

Religion originated in the age of "Totem" when the primitive person went out for hunting . They thought that the animals are more powerful than human beings they began praying help from them. Each "totem" had its own animal for praying. They portrait their image on their weapons. Sometimes they also embalmed their image on the walls of the caves where they live.
When humans first became religious remains unknown, but there is credible evidence of religious behavior from the Middle Paleolithic era (300–500 thousand years ago) and possibly earlier.

Paleolithic burials

The earliest evidence of religious thought is based on the ritual treatment of the dead. Most animals display only a casual interest in the dead of their own species. Ritual burial thus represents a significant change in human behavior. Ritual burials represent an awareness of life and death and a possible belief in the afterlife. Philip Lieberman states "burials with grave goods clearly signify religious practices and concern for the dead that transcends daily life."
The earliest evidence for treatment of the dead comes from Atapuerca in Spain. At this location the bones of 30 individuals believed to be Homo heidelbergensis have been found in a pit. Neanderthals are also contenders for the first hominids to intentionally bury the dead. They may have placed corpses into shallow graves along with stone tools and animal bones. The presence of these grave goods may indicate an emotional connection with the deceased and possibly a belief in the afterlife. Neanderthal burial sites include Shanidar in Iraq and Krapina in Croatia and Kebara Cave in Israel.
The earliest known burial of modern humans is from a cave in Israel located at Qafzeh. Human remains have been dated to 100,000 years ago. Human skeletons were found stained with red ochre. A variety of grave goods were found at the burial site. The mandible of a wild boar was found placed in the arms of one of the skeletons. Philip Lieberman states:

"Burial rituals incorporating grave goods may have been invented by the anatomically modern hominids who emigrated from Africa to the Middle East roughly 100,000 years ago".

Matt Rossano suggests that the period in between 80,000–60,000 years after humans retreated from the Levant to Africa was a crucial period in the evolution of religion.

The first form of Religion was to worship "Animals".
At first the aged persons were engaged in worship. Some among the aged became expert in rituals. they were called Priests. The priests demanded price for worshiping.

Origin of Language

All social animals communicate with each other, from bees and ants to whales and apes, but only humans have developed a language which is more than a set of prearranged signals.

Our speech even differs in a physical way from the communication of other animals. It comes from a cortical speech centre which does not respond instinctively, but organises sound and meaning on a rational basis. This section of the brain is unique to humans.
 
When and how the special talent of language developed is impossible to say. But it is generally assumed that its evolution must have been a long process.

Our ancestors were probably speaking a million years ago, but with a slower delivery, a smaller vocabulary and above all a simpler grammar than we are accustomed to.
  Origins of language

The origins of human language will perhaps remain for ever obscure. By contrast the origin of individual languages has been the subject of very precise study over the past two centuries.

There are about 5000 languages spoken in the world today (a third of them in Africa), but scholars group them together into relatively few families - probably less than twenty. Languages are linked to each other by shared words or sounds or grammatical constructions. The theory is that the members of each linguistic group have descended from one language, a common ancestor. In many cases that original language is judged by the experts to have been spoken in surprisingly recent times - as little as a few thousand years ago.

At first the human beings used o communicate with its fellows just as the animals did by sounds and body languages. But as the development of weapons proceeded languages began to develop. First of all some words were created . A word was used to mean more than one object. Such as the same word was used to mean "water" and "cloud", same word was used to mean the "quantity" and " number". But along with the progress of the productive forces, the languages began to develop in its present form. Probably it took million of years to develop languages in the present form its primitive stages. Actually it took a proper shape during the age of agriculture and animal husbandry.  

Trade in Primitive Society and class division

When the people of Primitive Society became confined to a particular place due to inclement weather they began agriculture and animal husbandry. At that time they also tried to collect wool for their protection. The people who used to get animal husbandry, would have want of cereals. Thus they needed exchange of their product with others who were used to agriculture as their occupation and a trade system developed in the primitive society. The people in the desert area started trade with other community. But such exchange of products among them was not individual affair but restricted within the two or more communities. One community exchanged products with that of the  other community. But even in such a restriction,  some families became rich among the tribes of the other families. Thus exploitation began within the families of a community.
In primitive society division of labour and class division started.
In the family of shepherds, it became patriarchal, because in this occupation some physical strength was needed where as in agricultural society, it was matriarchal. In matriarchal society number of family members became gradually increasing than that of the patriarchal society.   Due to the increase of products in a community a surplus of their products began to grow and a storage for surplus food became necessary  In the shepherd families weapons made up of metals required. At first the weapons are made up of copper because copper was available on the surface of earth. In due course they made it hard by mixing it with tin, lead etc.
In the case of agricultural society lands available were distributed among its members were not even. Some lands were more fertile than the other. Thus differences of the wealth began to grow not only in two societies but also in two families. Thus some families became slaves for want of food. Class societies began to develop in primitive stages. The differences and exploitation between two societies and families developed. Gradually class societies and class families developed in primitive society.

From primitive communism to class society

Compared with a lion, a gorilla, or even a horse, the human animal is weak, slow and defenseless. And yet homo sapiens has become the dominant species of the planet. Our species developed none of the specialized attributes that have fitted other creatures so well for their environments. Physiologically, we have hardly evolved at all since we became a distinct species. Whereas other species have evolved to fit their environments and the available food supplies, human beings have remained unspecialised, but very adaptable. Instead of their bodies altering to suit their environments, they have altered their environments to suit themselves.
Human beings spread across the surface of the planet, occupying tropical rain forests, deserts, temperate regions, and even polar ice. They lived on virtually every type of food possible, from seal fat to tropical fruits and desert insects. And from this variety of life-pattems there arose wide differences in knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, feelings and behaviour. Almost every conceivable kind of belief has been adopted by some humans at some time somewhere. Although we are one species, from the jungle of New Guinea to the streets of New York, the inhabitants of different places may think and act in quite dissimilar ways
And yet a baby, carried across the world from New Guinea to New York and brought up there, could become a complete New Yorker, with the accent, the food preferences, the personal habits, the love of baseball, and the average tendency towards obesity, heart disease, divorce and crime. The basic animal is the same, but all behaviour patterns and ideas are shaped by the society in which the child is brought up.
But if societies mould individuals, different types of society are themselves shaped by a number of external factors, as well as by the activities of individuals and classes within them. The basic needs of the human animal are, like those of any other mammal, food, drink, warmth and sex. But these needs have not always been easily met .For most of human existence, the lives of the great majority have been dominated by scarcity. The methods of making a living from the land and sea have therefore been the major influences on the sorts of lives people have led, the types of society that have been formed, and the attitudes and behaviour of those societies
We do not know exactly how long ago human beings evolved from other species. Modern man, according to many anthropologists, emerged in Africa about 100,000 years ago, and gradually spread out from there to replace all earlier species in the rest of the world (Snooks, 1996:50). For most of that time people lived communally, through hunting and gathering. For many thousands of years there was no private property, no money, no working for wages, no stock exchange and no class divisions. People lived with and for one another. It was a system of primitive communism.
The comic cartoon idea of the cave man with his club displaying aggression towards everyone is a fiction. Such an individual would not have lasted a week in the world of prehistory. Human beings have survived and prospered because they are adaptable and they have co-operated with one another. Long before there were private property societies with their class divisions and exploitation, small hunter-gatherer communities relied for their existence on all members playing their part. This co-operation lasted for many tens of thousands of years. The remnants of it can still be seen in surviving primitive communities such as of the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, the pygmies of the Congo rain forests, Australian aborigines and South American Indians.
The earliest human societies -as self-sufficient producer groups -would have been composed of relatively small numbers whose members survived in nature as nomadic bands capturing and killing wild animals and gathering wild plants, fruits and insects. The particular character of these material conditions of production demanded a certain division of labour between hunters, gatherers and those engaged in making the tools used in these activities. They also demanded free access to nature, the main means of production
Thus, in accordance with the material conditions of production in which hunter-gatherer societies operated, they were societies which did not know private ownership of the means of production. There was no private ownership of what was produced. What was produced -whether by hunting or gathering -was not the private property of the hunter or the hunting party or of the gatherer(s) but was to be shared out among all the members of the group on an equitable basis. Hunting, gathering and tool-making were all regarded as essential activities entitling those who performed them to be maintained by the whole group.
It used to be thought that living by hunting and gathering was a bad way to live. But recent evidence suggests that they lived in surprisingly abundant environments that provided all of the basic calories, nutrients and proteins they needed, and they worked relatively few hours to enjoy those things. This left them plenty of free time for visiting relatives, playing games, or just relaxing (Sanderson, 1995:21).
Anthropologists who live among the hunter-gatherers who survive today describe the ways in -which they are generally free from material pressures. According to Sahlins:
It is not that hunters and gatherers have curbed their materialistic impulses; they simply never made an institution of them… We are inclined to think of hunters and gatherers as poor because they don't have anything; perhaps better to think of them as free. A good case can be made that hunters and gatherers work less than we do; and, rather than a continuous travail, the food quest is intermittent, leisure abundant, and there is a greater amount of sleep in the daytime per capita per year than in any other condition of society (1972:14)
Settled agriculture
The practice of settled agriculture represented a major change in the material conditions of production. It meant an end to nomadism and the establishment of settled communities. It also meant an increase in the amount of food available, so permitting an increase in the size of human communities. But it also involved a different division of labour which paved the way, as it developed, for the emergence of minority control over access to the means of production.
The first settled agricultural communities would have been established by societies which had previously practised hunting and gathering and so had a communistic economic structure. This was characterised by the absence of private ownership of the means of production and by the sharing of products according to need. After the adoption of agriculture, these communistic economic arrangements survived for a while, but tended to break down in the long run as they no longer corresponded to the material conditions of production.
The social arrangement for meeting the material requirements of early agriculture is most likely to have been the allocation to family units of plots of land to cultivate. This was not yet the establishment of private ownership, but it meant the end of free access to the means of production that had obtained in hunter-gatherer societies. It ruled out any member of society simply helping themselves to the products of any plot of land. Normally they would only have free access to the products of the plot cultivated by the family unit to which they belonged.
Nevertheless, such a limitation is not incompatible with the continuation of some communistic practices. The actual cultivators could still be regarded by the community as performing a function on its behalf and be required by social custom to contribute any surplus product to a common store on which any member in need could draw. This could happen, for instance, as a result of their crops having failed or been destroyed by a storm. Such social arrangements have been discovered in societies at this stage of development which have survived into modern times.
The existence of a common store becomes another aspect of the society's material conditions of production and requires a social arrangement for managing this store -collecting and distributing the surpluses. The usual arrangement seems to have been to confer this responsibility on a particular family. Arguments can go on as to whether being given this responsibility was conferred on a family whose head had already acquired this status for other reasons -perhaps military or religious. But the fact remains that this role of collecting and redistributing surpluses had to be filled if all the members of the community were able to meet their basic needs as of right.
The Emergence of Class Society
It is easy to imagine how over time the co-ordinating role in distribution could become a source of privileged consumption for the chief and his family. The duty to contribute any surplus products to the common storehouse could become a duty to contribute this to the chief, and the chief and his family could come to consume an excessive amount of the stores at the expense of distributing them to those in need.
The tendency for what was originally a necessary technical function to evolve into a social privilege would have been even more pronounced when the co-ordinating role concerned production rather than simply distribution. It was the case when large-scale irrigation works had to be managed so that agriculture could be practised. For instance, this happened with agriculture in the Nile, Euphrates and other river valleys. It was the main material condition of production which gave rise to an economic structure in which the cultivators were exploited by a class of priests who collectively controlled the key means of production which the irrigation works represented.
The emergence of control over means of production by a section of society, or social class, was a radical departure in human social arrangements. Production was no longer controlled by society as a whole. Such societies ceased to be communities with a common interest and became divided, with one class, on the basis of its control over access to and use of the material forces of production, exploiting the productive work of the other class and allocating itself a privileged consumption.
The emergence of class and property meant that some humans acquired the power to exclude others from access to the material forces of production, including nature, except on their terms. In these circumstances, humans ceased to be a united community seeking to satisfy the needs of all its members. Instead they became members of a class-divided society in which there is internal conflict over how the material forces of production and distribution should be used: to satisfy the needs of all or to accumulate wealth for the few.
Throughout history this conflict has nearly always been settled in favour of the class that has controlled the means of production. There are two main reasons for this. First, the power of this class was based on a real functional role within the division of labour, at least originally. Secondly, this class controlled armed bodies to enforce its will, thus enabling it to hold on to power, at least for a while, even after its original function in organising production had disappeared and been taken over by some other group as a result of technological change
The discovery and utilisation of metals, and the development of more and more complex tools and machines have usually gone hand in hand with progress in methods of making a living, increasing the amount of wealth produced per capita many times over. But the benefits of these improvements have not been shared by all members of society. After the rise of settled townships on an agricultural base in Mesopotamia, trade between localities developed. For the first time the products of hands and brains took on an alien life as commodities to be bartered, and then bought and sold with the abstract commodity of money. Property, realised at the boundary between tribes, began to impinge within them. The first property society came to be developed when people were bought and sold as slaves.
Slavery
Slavery differs fundamentally from wage labour. With the wage system the labour power of the worker becomes one of the main commodities in the marketplace. With slavery the workers themselves become commodities, they have no rights and are legally the property of the person who controls them. Slaves were fundamental to the economy of ancient Greece and Rome during their classical periods -the fifth to third centuries BC for Greece and the first century BC to the second century AD for Rome (Applebaum, 1992:170).
Anyone might have become a slave through capture in war, piracy, or breaking the law. They could be bought or sold through the slave trade on the open market. Slaves in theory had no rights. They were property and might be disposed of as their masters wished. In practice, slaves did have some protection under the law -the owner could not maltreat slaves or put them to death with impunity.
Access to political power was unthinkable for slaves. The only form of action they could take was running away when a favourable opportunity arose. However, it cannot be assumed that all slaves occupied a low status in Greek and Roman society, although undoubtedly most of them did. Slaves worked on farms, in workshops and in mines, mostly under harsh conditions. But there were slaves employed as managers and administrators, especially during the Roman Empire. Slaves were also employed as professionals, teachers, doctors, and household servants. Some slaves who were engaged in commerce even engaged their own slaves.
Between 1500 and 1870 plantations in the southern USA, the Caribbean and Brazil contained 10 million slaves (Wallace, 1990:71). Although it is mainly an institution of the past, slavery or slave-like practices are still common around the world (Levinson and Christensen, 1996:291). The three main forms are child labour, debt bondage and forced labour. Around 100 million children world-wide are forced to work long hours in unhealthy conditions and are paid little or nothing for their labour. In India alone an estimated 6.5 million people have pledged their labour against debts. Often the debt bondage (illegal since 1976) remains so for life.
Feudalism
In the feudal system absolute ownership of the land is vested in the feudal lord but, unlike the slave owner, his title to the worker (serf) is not absolute. The lord owns him merely by title to a share of his labour. In return he is obligated to grant the worker use of some land, some ownership of tools and some of the products of his own labour. Slavery thus gave way to serfdom. In both cases the majority was exploited by the minority. The slave owned none of the products of his labour but was fed and clothed by his owner. The serf had enough to keep himself and his family alive, but the rest was appropriated by the lord, a non-producer (Venable, 1945:100).
Feudalism evolved as a hierarchical system of personal relationships in which land and military power—and of course the labour of the serfs—were the principal commodities exchanged. (Singman 1999:4). The system was strengthened and expanded in Britain with the eleventh-century Norman Conquest. In feudal times the king nominally owned all the land. He granted lands to his tenants-in-chief, the aristocracy, and they in return had to give military service to him and pay customary dues which comprised a percentage of their wealth. Not only did the feudal aristocracy and the church own most of the land, but they controlled the men and women who lived and worked on it. The landlords had their own courts, they levied taxes and exacted services from their serfs and, in times of war, they ordered their subjects to fight their battles.
The power of the feudal lord depended on the amount of land he owned and the number of peasants he could control. Peasants had feudal obligations to their landlord. They either had to work on his land for a certain length of time each week or else they had to give him a portion of their produce in return for living on his land. Either way, the landlord received his wealth without having to work.
Every family had access to a piece of land for cultivation and to the commons for pasturing their animals. Their rights were recognised by all. The behaviour which regulated society was not backed by sanctions -law, police or army -but by custom which was a condition of existence: expulsion from the community could mean death from hunger or exposure (Smith, 1994:58).
Capitalist social relations emerged with the expropriation of common land by the aristocracy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The lands were enclosed to be used for sheep farming rather than arable cultivation. One reason for this was that the new Flemish woollen industry made sheep more profitable tenants than peasants. Enclosure destroyed the lives of thousands of peasant families, turning them into propertyless vagabonds. In dealing with the primitive accumulation of capital, Marx wrote:
The fathers of the present working class were chastised for their enforced transformation into vagabonds and paupers. Legislation treated them as voluntary criminals and assumed that it depended on their own good will to go on working under the old conditions that no longer existed (1954, vol. 1 :686).

Deprived of their land, their homes, their traditional surroundings and the protection of the law, the expropriated peasantry were left to sell the one thing they possessed -their ability to work. The introduction of wage labour was the starting point of capitalism..