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What is Engels Saying?
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Engels is asserting that the western notions of sex-love and monogamy are based upon the creation of private property. Essentially, when humans lived together in egalitarian societies, private property did not exist because there was no such technology that could be passed down from one generation to the next. However, with the domestication of animals, the issue arose of whom one would pass on their wealth, or animals onto after they died. Previously, the society underwent group marriages, where everyone had sex with everyone else, and therefore only the mothers knew who their children were and the fathers had no idea who their children were. Therefore, in order for men to know who to pass on their property to, they enforced monogamy onto women. Engels writes in regards to monogamy, "It was the first form of the family not based on natural but on economic conditions - the victory of private property over primitive, natural communal property" (95). Therefore, monogamy is based upon economic needs, not the western notion of sex-love. Individual sex-love is created to justify monogamy, the idea of love for one person only is created to ensure the passing of property on from one generation to the next. Engels finds that individual sex-love is am impossible ideal to achieve if one owns property, but can be achieved if the individuals are among the working class, "Sex love in the relationship with a woman becomes and can only become the real rule among the oppressed classes ... Here there is no property, for the preservation and inheritance of which monogamy and male supremacy were established; hence there is no incentive to make this male supremacy effective. What is more, there is no means of making it so" (102). |
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