Application of Engels’ Interpretation of the Dialectical and Materialist of the History of Monogamy to Masuo People

Friedrich Engels, a 19th century German social scientist, is probably best known for his collaboration with and sponsorship of fellow revolutionary socialist, Karl Marx. Together, they co-authored many books—most famously, The Communist Manifesto. However, he also published many articles independently. In one of his writings, Engels interprets the history of monogamy through a materialist point of view. He reviews how the evolution of familial forms led to monogamy, how the construct of monogamy led to inequality between the sexes and a subsequent male-female class struggle, and how romantic love, in the modern sense, arose from monogamy. Engels also discusses what is unethical and unjust about marriage and provides a solution for a more balanced familial form. While I agree with the points that Engel’s makes concerning the Western world, I cannot help but feel that his argument could be more reliably proscribed to other areas of the world if he provided examples to more world cultures. I hope to draw parallels between the Hellenistic and Euro-centric and other cultures to affirm Engels’ claims. In Engels’ dialectical view of history, the familial forms that preceded it where instrumental in leading to the generalized institution of monogamy. Engels outlines “three chief forms of marriage which conform to the three main stages of human development.” “For savagery—group marriage; for barbarism—pairing marriage; for civilization—monogamy.” At the beginning of human history, communistic households were prevalent. In these societies, the “supremacy of women in the house” was implied. Because females had the “exclusive recognition of natural mother,” women held positions of high esteem in these early matrilineal societies. Engels claims “woman occupied not only a free but also a highly respected position among all savages and all barbarians of the lower and middle stages and partly even the upper stage.” Engels cites the Seneca Iroquois, where women rule the house and can readily divorce their husbands by leaving their possessions outside, as evidence. This is also evident in societies like the Masuo people in Yunnan, China. Their social structure is one that is difficult to categorize in terms of Western definitions. Their communal social structure can only be described as being similar to that of an ant or bee colony where the eldest women are the equivalent of the queen, the younger women are the workers, and the Masuo men are primarily there to help procreate and do more strenuous tasks like farming. In the Masuo community, social status is passed through a matrilineal society. Because sexual relations are performed in the privacy of night at the woman’s home and because women can take any and as many partners as they choose, the true identity of a child’s patrilineage is not always clear. However, this is not an issue for the Masuo since the women and children never live with the man’s family, and the man has a very limited role in the child’s life.
Engels believes that “the evolution of the family in prehistoric times consisted in the continual narrowing of the circle…within which marital community between the two sexes prevailed.” This type of “successive exclusion” ultimately made every kind of group marriage “practically impossible” until one of the first basic familial forms, “the molecule,” was rendered. This type of family was still only “loosely united” and indicates the paltry influence individual sex-love had on the origin of monogamy. Before monogamy, there was also the “pairing family” which Engels considered to be “too weak and unstable to make an independent household necessary.” As wealth increased, men began to gain a more important status in the family, encouraging the shift from matrilineal societies to patrilineal heritage. Engels saw this “overthrow of mother right” as the “world