Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/13

Rh any written on the subject of ancient social development. Westermark's "History of Human Marriage" treats the question mainly from the standpoint of Ethnology and Natural History. As a scientific treatise it is entirely inadequate, being simply a compilation of data from all parts of the world, arranged without the understanding of gentile organizations or of the materialistic conception of history, and used for wild speculations. Kovalevsky's argument turns on the proposition that the patriarchal household is a typical stage of society, intermediate between the matriarchal and monogamic family.

None of these men could discuss the matter from the proletarian point of view. For in order to do this, it is necessary to descend from the hills of class assumption into the valley of proletarian class-consciousness. This consciousness and the socialist mind are born together. The key to the philosophy of capitalism is the philosophy of socialism. With the rays of this searchlight, Engels exposed the pious "deceivers," property and the state, and their "lofty" ideal, covetousness. And the monogamic family, so far from being a divinely instituted "union of souls," is seen to be the product of a series of material and, in the last analysis, of the most sordid motives. But the ethics of property are worthy of a system of production that, in its final stage, shuts the overwhelming mass of longing humanity out from the happiness of home and family life, from all evolution to a higher individuality, and even drives progress back and forces millions of human beings into irrevocable degeneration.

The desire for a higher life cannot awake in a man, until he is thoroughly convinced that his present life is ugly, low, and capable of improvement by himself. The present little volume is especially adapted to assist the exploited of both sexes in recognizing the actual causes which brought about their present