According to Friedrich Engels, does gender inequality date back to the Stone Age?

Dear Leni

It’s been a very long time since I last read Engels’ text – or rather, the section on the family in it. That was probably in connection with a Gender Studies lecture at the University of Basel.

I’d say that Engels isn’t necessarily dealing with the Stone Age in this section, but rather with various theories and hypotheses regarding the forms of relationship between men and women, as they were – presumably – practised on different continents and at different times. The text is multi-layered and rambling, but I’ll attempt a very rough summary of his thesis:

Property and gender relations

In the section entitled ‘The Family’, Engels that the relationship between men and women has been characterised by male dominance (including violent forms of it) ever since societies began to focus on the accumulation of capital. In other words, from the moment people began to hoard goods.

From then on, men claimed the right to pass on their accumulated wealth to their offspring, and in return demanded fidelity from women to ensure that these were indeed ‘his’ offspring. Women, in turn, became economically dependent on men. And although societies have changed over the centuries, according to Engels, the relationship between property relations and gender relations has remained essentially the same.

Engels’ vision of the ‘new genders’

And what does this mean for a socialist society?

The aim of this form of society was to end the exploitation of people by nationalising the means of production. Ownership structures would then no longer play a dominant role in relationships between people. This, according to Engels, would fundamentally change the relationship between women and men in particular. If economic motives no longer played a role in the ‘choice of a spouse’, then – according to Engels – ‘there remains no other motive than mutual affection’.

Exactly what this will mean, and how the ‘new human being’, the ‘new gender’, will behave under these new circumstances, we cannot yet know, according to Engels:

‘But what else will come of it? That will become clear once a new generation has come of age: a generation of men who have never, in their lives, found themselves in the position of having to buy a woman’s surrender with money or other means of social power, and of women who have never found themselves in the position of either giving themselves to a man for any reason other than true love, nor of refusing to give themselves to their beloved for fear of the economic consequences. When such people exist, they will not give a damn about what people today believe they ought to do; they will form their own practices and, based on these, their own public opinion regarding the conduct of each individual – full stop.”

For Engels, this prospect of a new form of gender relations is one of several arguments in favour of a socialist form of society.

Does that answer your question? Have you read the text yourself? Do you find Engels’ argument convincing?

With warm regards

Lina

References:

Engels, Friedrich. 1884. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Following on from Lewis H. Morgan’s research. In: Marx-Engels Collected Works. 1990. Section I, Volume 29. Berlin.