Engels on women, the family, class and gender

Bibliographic Data

ID12979306
AuthorsSheila Margaret McGregor (corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume14
Issue2
Pages186-197
Publication date2021-03-12
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHuman Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1942-7786 • E-ISSN: 2633-674X
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/19427786211000047
OpenAlexW3138606252
LanguageEN
References cited21

This article looks at Engels’s writings to show that his ideas about the role of labour in the evolution of human beings in a dialectical relationship between human beings and nature is a crucial starting point for understanding human society and is correct in its essentials. It is important for understanding that we developed as a species on the basis of social cooperation. The way human beings produce and reproduce themselves, the method of historical materialism, provides the basis for understanding how class and women’s oppression arose and how that can explain LGBTQ oppression. Although Engels’s analysis was once widely accepted by the socialist movement, it has mainly been ignored or opposed by academic researchers and others, including geographers, and more recently by Marxist feminists. However, anthropological research from the 1960s and 1970s as well as more recent anthropological and archaeological research provide overwhelming evidence for the validity of Engels’s argument that there were egalitarian, pre-class societies without women’s oppression. However, much remains to be explained about the transition to class societies. Engels’s analysis of the impact of industrial capitalism on gender roles shows how society shapes our behaviour. Engels’s method needs to be constantly reasserted against those who would argue that we are a competitive, aggressive species who require rules to suppress our true nature, and that social development is driven by ideas, not by changes in the way we produce and reproduce ourselves

Argument (complex analysis · Biology · Capitalism · Class (philosophy · Class analysis · Dialectic · Epistemology · Historical materialism · Marxist philosophy · Materialism · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Social class · Social science · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Law · Philosophy

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