Even invincible supermen need a vacation. Therefore, the Razil, a free agent of the Tellus intelligence service, and went with his beloved wife to the peaceful and almost deserted planet Ardig to enjoy the rest on the shores of the warm sea. But you can’t escape fate, and the married couple suddenly found themselves at the forefront of confrontation between the two most powerful worlds in the Galaxy. This time it was about domination in the Cosmos, and in such a game any means are good ...

Vladimir Mikhailov
Copper pipes Ardiga

Chapter first

1

“Still, it’s not in vain that our techies eat their bread and drink it down - I wonder what they drink in general? Well, probably the same as we sinners do. Not in vain. Each new ship is piece work, smarter and more dexterous become machines. If even now they can do without us, then tomorrow our brother will generally be sent to retire immediately after birth, so that their fuss does not interfere with progress. That's where we're going, brothers. But we haven't come yet. demand, Wirth Cap, you'll have to mess around for a while, although it's for you, I know that the knife is sharp, but be patient. Because we have you - a law-abiding creature and do not allow yourself to violate anything. We'll have to do it. You don't know how. But I can. Because the rules and regulations that you are supposed to strictly adhere to are invented by people, and they - we - are still the highest authority for you, although, I think, not for long. I myself am a man and I know the price for us, and I also know that everything what one person thinks another can, and sometimes just has to bypass, because the situation requires it. Like now, for example. So once again I apologize - and this ends this dialogue with you, not even a dialogue - I say it alone, and you keep quiet in a rag. Everyone, hang up!"

This is how Genus Tavrov, the commander-pilot-mechanic-crew of a distant all-elemental reconnaissance Triolet class, reasoned, or rather, he didn’t even reason, but simply allowed the stream of consciousness to flow, mentally referring to the virtual captain of the “two”, in front of whose console the lieutenant was sitting now. Not because it was part of some kind of ritual: an apology to the ship for turning it off the control system and taking everything upon yourself - there was no such ritual at all, they had not yet been invented. And now it was necessary to simply turn off your consciousness from this very process of control and rely entirely on the reflexes developed by years of operations and training. Evaluating your every action with your mind this time would mean embarking on a sure path to failure: now all maneuvers were tempo and a delay of even a fraction of a second would lead to a breakdown. So the gymnast on the crossbar cannot linger at the top point of the "sun" to think about the next action: it either continues automatically, or there is a fall, a failure. Act without thinking common sense in the meantime, let him do whatever he likes – at least remembers long-read poems, talks to the computer, not counting on an answer, or tries to figure out if he forgot to water the flowers before leaving home or, most likely, he forgot again. And the eyes, arms, legs, and most importantly - your microcomputer, your faithful microphone, work at the right pace, performing the intended action.

And this action was a dashing and strictly forbidden maneuver of leaving the Expanse, not only at a minimum distance from the planet planned for examination, but literally almost on its surface, not even in the upper layers of the atmosphere, but in dense, lower ones, at such a height which aircraft is already starting a landing maneuver. But this exit was not needed at all for landing: Tavrov was not going to finish on this planet at all, he only wanted to make one turn - and again go to the Expanse, leaving those who would have to witness such hooliganism in deep annoyance. The lieutenant needed this maneuver for several reasons.

The first of these was, oddly enough, the preservation of his own safety: if he had gone into ordinary space, he would have been noticed in advance, and measures would have been immediately taken to destroy him.

The fate of one ship, the "Route Inspector" with fourteen crew members, made me think so, the fact of the death of which (and, in all likelihood, which) under unclear circumstances became known just yesterday. This, in fact, forced the Tellurian authorities to send a scout to the same area of ​​\u200b\u200bspace - this time with only one person, to reduce the risk.

The celestial body around which - or on which - the Inspector died, was one of many dead, uninhabitable outer planets and the second a short time, where something unforeseen and inexplicable began to happen, namely, the emergence of life, which seemed to be not justified by anything. The changes obviously did not begin without the participation of people, moreover, according to some signs, it was people who were initiated thanks to some new opportunities. Epochal! But the creators of miraculous transformations clearly did not want not only the interference of outsiders in the process they had begun, but even their presence in space, at a distance from which it would be possible to observe what was happening. And in the case when someone tried to encroach on this desire of the reformers for solitude, they went to any lengths, up to the destruction of the violator of the boundaries that they themselves established. At the same time, who these “they” were still remained unknown: no one was in a hurry to declare himself a miracle worker.

But with such a maneuver, for which Tavrov was preparing now, while still in Prostor, no one - neither people nor automation - would even have time to figure out what was actually happening, and even more so - to aim and use the means of destruction. So the intruder ship had every chance to escape, if not unnoticed, then at least undamaged.

This was the first reason. And the second was, in fact, the main goal of the intended action: during the flight - to record on video crystals everything that falls into the field of view of the equipment, first of all - changes occurring on the surface, then - technical means that, undoubtedly, should have appeared there for this very transformation and which, as Tellus hoped, could then be identified, going in this way to their manufacturer, and from him, through trade channels, in the end to those who use them in these operations. And finally, since the deceased "Inspector" managed to report that there was a ship on the surface of the planet at that time, now one could hope, if not to catch the ship itself, then at least find the place of its landing and take-off and take its characteristics, according to which subsequently it will be possible to determine not only the class, but, if you're lucky, the name of the ship, and also (having already returned to the Reach) to find out its route, since at the nodes of co-space (as the Reach was officially called until now), each maneuvering ship changes the physics of this ship in a certain way. node and this trace is preserved, although not forever, but for a time sufficient to fix it. Exactly such matters were handled by the vast department of the Service - Space Intelligence. And the all-natural scout belonged to just this department and was equipped with equipment for analysis - if not fundamental, comprehensive, then, in any case, it made it possible to obtain the main characteristics of the ship being determined in express mode. That was the point of the expedition.

... Tavrov involuntarily sighed: the last seconds before the start of the maneuver, the crazy exit from the Expanse on the verge of disaster, expired; they would not even be enough to once again check whether his personal mike turned on well, which, in fact, would conduct the operation - because the mike knew everything about the lieutenant better, including the speed of reaction and the speed of performing the necessary actions. Control over the state of the pilot was carried out by him with the utmost precision, since he was, after all, inside this pilot; and besides, Mick knew everything about the operation, Wirt-cap didn’t, the authorities did not consider it necessary to enter all the information into him. In general, trusting secrets to computers, some, including General Ivanos of the Service, believed, was a dangerous and unreliable business. And so…

Five, four, three... Zero.

The hand itself, without the participation of the brain, worked. Field! An invisible cloud enveloped the ship. Move! Breakdown!..

Fog in the eyes. Dizziness. The smallest vibration not only of the body, but of the entire ship. Habitual. And it's still scary. The blackness on the screens is a breakthrough through nothingness. Nothing, it's all right. Now a wonderful starry sky will appear on the monitors ...

"The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", the work of F. Engels, which gives a dialectical-materialist analysis of the history of human society on early stages its development, the process of disintegration of the tribal system and the emergence of class relations based on private property is revealed, the evolution of family forms is investigated, the origin and essence of the state as an instrument of class domination is explained, the inevitability of the withering away of the state with the transition to a classless, communist society is substantiated. Written and published in 1884; in 2nd ed. Op. K. Marx and F. Engels was included in the 21st volume. According to the characteristics of V. I. Lenin, it is "... one of the main works of modern socialism ..." ( complete collection soch., 5th ed., vol. 39, p. 67). In writing this work, Engels relied on Marx's detailed synopsis of Amer. ethnographer and historian L. Morgana "Ancient Society" (1877). Engels, following Marx, highly appreciated Morgan's discovery of the tribal organization of primitive society and widely used the results of his research, especially the vast factual material he had collected, to substantiate and further develop Marx's materialistic conception of history and economic theory. Engels drew on a number of other sources, greatly expanding the range of issues considered by Morgan, and also used the results of his own research on the history of Greece, Rome, ancient Ireland, and the ancient Germans. When preparing the 4th edition (1890-91), he made significant changes and additions (especially to the chapter on the family, in the finalization of which the results of research by M. M. Kovalevsky ). Data modern science allow us to present a more perfect picture of the evolution of primitive society, based on the development of production relations of this society, and not material culture, as was the case in Morgan's studies. But the refinements of the history of the primitive epoch, in particular, certain forms of the primitive family, the mechanism of the formation of classes, do not affect the basic conclusions of Engels' work.

The work consists of 9 chapters. In the 1st and 2nd chapters, Engels analyzes the living conditions of people in the most ancient period, before the emergence of the tribal system, explores the development family and marriage relations in a class society, criticizes the bourgeois family. Just as in his earlier work The Role of Labor in the Process of the Transformation of Apes into Man, Engels in this work developed the main methodological propositions of the Marxist concept of the primitive stage as a special stage in human history, according to which the line separating man from animals is the first basic condition for human life is labor, beginning with the making of tools.

In chapters 3-9, Engels examines the features of the tribal organization of society as the main cell of pre-class society and characterizes the primitive tribal "communism". After tracing the decomposition of the tribal system, Engels studied those economic conditions that undermined the tribal organization of society at the highest stage of its development, and then, with the transition to civilization, completely eliminated it. He showed how, with the development of productive forces, the division of labor and the growth of its productivity, the possibility of appropriating the products of other people's labor arose, the exploitation of man by man appeared and the split of society into hostile classes, as a result of which state as a tool of the exploiting class to suppress the oppressed class.

Considering the various concrete forms of the state, Engels reveals their class nature and studies the tendencies of the further evolution of the bourgeois state. Noting that as long as capitalism persists, no democratic freedoms can lead to the emancipation of the working people, he at the same time emphasizes the objective interest of the proletariat in the preservation and maximum expansion of democratic freedoms that create favorable conditions for the struggle for the revolutionary transformation of society.

Engels in his work showed that in various natural and concrete historical conditions the process of decomposition of primitive society takes place in different forms, but its main content - the transition from pre-class society to class society - is the same for all countries and peoples. This analysis is a vivid confirmation of the dialectical-materialist position about historical unity, progressive development and the regular change of forms of social life. Engels' work was an important stage in the development of the Marxist doctrine of the state (see. "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" , "Civil War in France" , "Criticism of the Gotha Program" , "Anti-Dühring" ), which was developed in relation to the new historical conditions by V.I. Lenin, primarily in his work "State and Revolution".

Engels' book is directed against the bourgeoisie. concepts of the state as a kind of supra-class force, supposedly called upon to equally protect the interests of all citizens.

Lit.: Marx K., Synopsis of Lewis G. Morgan's book "Ancient Society", in the book: Marx and Engels Archive, vol. IX, [M. - L.], 1941; Lenin V.I., On the State, Poln. coll. soch., 5th ed., v. 39; Friedrich Engels. Biography, M., 1970, p. 448-54; Engels - theorist, M., 1970, p. 219-25, 253-62; F. Engels on the state and law, [M., 1970]; Problems of ethnography and anthropology in the light of the scientific heritage of F. Engels, M., 1972.

V. S. VYGODSKII.

FRIEDRICH ENGELS

THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY, PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE STATE

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF 1884

The following chapters represent, to a certain extent, the execution of the testament. None other than Karl Marx was going to present the results of Morgan's research in connection with the data of his - within certain limits, I can say our - materialistic study of history, and only in this way to clarify their full significance. After all, Morgan in America, in his own way, rediscovered the materialistic conception of history, discovered by Marx forty years ago, and, guided by him, in comparing barbarism and civilization, in the main points, he arrived at the same results as Marx. And just as the sworn economists in Germany for years were as eager to write off Capital as they obstinately hushed it up, so the representatives of "prehistoric" science in England did with Morgan's Ancient Society. My work can only to a small extent replace what my late friend was not destined to do. But I have in my possession, among his detailed extracts from Morgan, criticisms, which I, in so far as they relate to the topic, reproduce here.

According to the materialist understanding, the defining moment in history is ultimately the production and reproduction of immediate life. But it itself, again, is of two kinds. On the one hand, the production of means of subsistence: food, clothing, housing, and the tools necessary for this; on the other hand, the production of man himself, the continuation of the family. The social order in which people live in a particular historical era and a certain country, are determined by both types of production: the stage of development, on the one hand - labor, on the other - the family. The less developed labor, the more limited the quantity of its products, and consequently the wealth of society, the stronger the dependence of the social system on tribal ties is manifested. Meanwhile, within the framework of this structure of society based on ancestral ties, labor productivity is developing more and more, and with it - private property and exchange, property differences, the ability to use someone else's labor force and thus the basis of class contradictions: new social elements who, for generations, try to adapt the old social order to the new conditions, until, finally, the incompatibility of both leads to a complete upheaval. The old society, based on tribal associations, explodes as a result of the collision of the newly formed social classes; its place is taken by a new society, organized into a state, the lowest links of which are no longer tribal, but territorial associations - a society in which the family system is completely subordinated to property relations and in which class contradictions and class struggle are now freely unfolding, which constitute the content of all written history. up to our time.

Morgan's great merit lies in the fact that he discovered and restored in its main features this prehistoric basis of our written history and found in the ancestral ties of the North American Indians the key to the most important, hitherto insoluble mysteries of ancient Greek, Roman and German history. His writing is the work of more than one day. For about forty years he worked on his material until he completely mastered it. But on the other hand, his book is one of the few works of our time that make up an era.

In the following exposition, the reader will by and large easily distinguish between what belongs to Morgan and what I have added. In the historical sections on Greece and Rome, I went beyond Morgan's data and added what was at my disposal. The sections on Celts and Germans are mostly mine; Morgan had almost only second-hand materials here, and about the Germans - except for Tacitus - only the base liberal falsifications of Mr. Firman. The business cases, which were sufficient for Morgan's goals, but wholly inadequate for my purposes, have all been revised by me. Finally, it goes without saying that I am responsible for all those conclusions that are made without direct reference to Morgan.

Printed in the book: F. Engels. "Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigent-hums und des Staats". Hottingen Zurich, 1884

FOREWORD TO THE FOURTH GERMAN EDITION OF 1891 TO THE HISTORY OF THE PRIMARY FAMILY (BAHOFEN, MCLENNAN, MORGAN)

Previous editions of this book, which were published in large numbers, sold out in their entirety almost half a year ago, and the publisher has long asked me to prepare a new one. More urgent work has so far prevented me from doing so. Seven years have passed since the publication of the first edition, and during these years great progress has been made in the study of the primitive forms of the family. Therefore, it was necessary to make careful corrections and additions here, especially since the proposed printing of this text from a stereotype will deprive me for some time of the opportunity to make further changes.

So, I have carefully revised the entire text and made a number of additions, which, I hope, have adequately taken into account the current state of science. Further I give below in this preface short review development of views on family history from Bachofen to Morgan; I am doing this mainly because the chauvinistic English school of primitive history is still doing its best to silence the revolution in the views of primitive history brought about by Morgan's discoveries, however, not at all embarrassed, however, at the same time appropriating Morgan's results. Yes, and in other countries, in some places too zealously follow this English example.

My work has been translated into various foreign languages. First of all into Italian: "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", translated by Pasquale Martignetti, Benevento, 1885. Then into Romanian: "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", translated by Ion Nadezhde; published in the Iasian journal "Contemporanul" from September 1885 to May 1886. Further in Danish: The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, an edition prepared by Gerson Trier. Copenhagen, 1888; a French translation by Henri Ravet, taken from the present German edition, is in press.

Until the early sixties, the history of the family was out of the question. Historical science in this area was still entirely under the influence of the Pentateuch of Moses. The patriarchal form of the family, depicted there in more detail than anywhere else, was not only unconditionally considered the most ancient form, but also identified - with the exception of polygamy - with the modern bourgeois family, so that the family, in fact, did not experience at all, supposedly, no historical development; at most it was admitted that in primitive times there might have been a period of disordered sexual relations. - True, in addition to monogamy, Eastern polygamy and Indian-Tibetan polyandry were also known; but these three forms could not be arranged in historical sequence, and they figured side by side without any mutual connection. What do individual peoples ancient world, as with some still existing savages, the descent was considered not through the father, but through the mother, so that the female line was recognized as the only one of importance; that among many modern peoples marriages are forbidden within certain, more or less large, groups, which at that time were not yet studied in detail, and that this custom is found in all parts of the world - these facts were, however, known, and such examples accumulated all more. But how to approach them, no one knew, and even in the "Studies in the primitive history of mankind, etc." E. B. Taylor (1865), they figure simply as "strange customs," along with some savages' prohibition against touching a burning tree with an iron tool, and similar religious trifles.

The study of family history begins in 1861, when Bachofen's work "Mother's Right" was published. The author put forward the following propositions in this work:

1) people originally had unrestricted sexual relations, which he denotes by the unfortunate expression "hetaerism";

2) such relations exclude any possibility of reliably establishing the father, and therefore the origin could be determined only along the female line - according to maternal law - as it was originally among all peoples of antiquity;

3) as a result, women as mothers, as the only reliably known parents of the younger generation, enjoyed a high degree of respect and honor, which, according to Bachofen, reached the complete domination of women (gynecocracy);

Chapter 2

The basis of my work is the analysis of the work of Friedrich Engels "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", in which he outlined the results of Lewis G. Morgan's research on the materialistic understanding of history, comments by Karl Marx, as well as his critical remarks on this work.

Morgan remodels history into three main eras - savagery, barbarism and civilization, he divides the first two eras into a lower, middle and higher stage according to the process in the production of means of life.

Analyzing Morgan, Engels identifies several stages in the development of society: clan, franchise, tribe, union of tribes, state. The clan arose in the middle stage of savagery and reached its dawn in the lower stage of barbarism. Each clan has its own customs, such as the election of the sachem (an elder in peacetime) of the leader, the displacement of the sachem and the leader, the prohibition of marriage within the clan. Many Indian clans united and formed a francia (brotherhood) that ruled the court, dividing the costs of the funeral of "distinguished persons", choosing together a sachem for one of the clans. As several families form a frantia, so several frantias form a tribe, characterized by its own territory and name, dialect, the right to solemnly inaugurate sachems and military leaders elected by the families, the right to depose them, common religious ideas, the council of the tribe, and in some tribes we can even see the supreme leader, "the prototype of the official" , mostly not developed further. Sometimes the tribes united in unions, a prominent representative of which is the Iroquois union, characterized by a union council, voting, meetings held in the presence of the people. Engels admires the tribal organization: “And what a wonderful organization this tribal system is in all its naivety and simplicity. Household carried out jointly on communist lines. This is what people and human society looked like before the division into different classes took place.

In his book, Friedrich Engels traced the decomposition of the tribal system on the three most studied examples - the Greeks, Romans and Germans. Let us single out the main conditions for the emergence of the state, which are created by economic reasons.

In the tribal system there is no domination and enslavement, there is no difference between the rights and duties of people, the stratification of the tribe and clan into classes is not possible. What led to the creation of the state?

The division of labor is a natural phenomenon that existed only between the sexes. So, a woman works at home, and a man protects the birth center and provides food. Each of them is the owner of the things they have made and shares them on a communist basis among several families. What is made and used together is common property: a hut, a garden, a boat.

Among many developed tribes (Aryans, Semites), the domestication and breeding of cattle became the main branch of labor. "Shepherd tribes stood out from the rest of the mass of barbarians - this was the first major social division of labor" . Cattle gave its owner wool, milk, meat, skin and much more, which led to the emergence of regular exchange, and cattle acquired the function of money. There were achievements in the field of industrial activity: loom, smelting metal ores and metal processing, which led to an increase in productivity and the improvement of weapons. Also, now the owner of the land could be individual and to have certain rights and obligations over it, which also increased the income of this land. The increase in production made man's labor force able to produce more products than was necessary to maintain it. At the same time, it increased the daily amount of labor for each member of the clan, which led to the emergence of a need to attract new labor, that is, slaves provided by wars. Thus, society was divided into two large classes - masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited. Herds and land from the common possession of a tribe or clan passed into the ownership of the heads of individual lands, private property appeared, which led to the second division of society into rich and poor.

Increasing population density forces closer unity, the creation of alliances of kindred tribes, and as a result, the military leader, military leader, council, and people's assembly form the organs of a tribal society that is developing into a military democracy. Military protection becomes necessary because “the wealth of neighbors excites the greed of nations. The right to be a military commander gradually becomes hereditary and lays the foundation for hereditary royalty.

Thus, the greedy desire for wealth, which led to the split of society into rich and poor, and if "as a result of the spread of slavery, earning a living by one's own labor did not begin to be recognized as a deed worthy of only a slave, more shameful than robbery."

What happened to the tribal system with such large-scale changes? The clans mixed up due to the frequent change of residence due to the development of trade, unions and councils lost their role, people demanded better authorities that could ensure their new interests that arose due to the division of labor. The tribal system was alien to internal contradictions, which now appeared in the form of slaves and free, exploiters and exploited. “Such a society could exist only in an unceasing open struggle between these classes, or else under the domination of a third force, which, supposedly standing above the mutually struggling classes, suppressed their open conflicts and allowed class struggle at most only in the economic field, in the so-called legal form. The tribal system has outlived its time and was replaced by the state" . Thus, the state is not a forced manifestation imposed on society, but only "a product of society at a certain stage of development", with the need to "keep the opposition of classes in check"

Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) - an outstanding American ethnographer and archaeologist, sociologist, historian of primitive society, progressive public figure, one of the founders of social anthropology.

Engels F. The origin of the family, private property and the state: per. with him. - M ..: Publishing house of political literature, 1985 P. 150

Ibid S. 166

Ibid S.172

Ibid S.187

Ibid S. 270

The book develops the position that the production and reproduction of immediate life are of a twofold nature: the production of means of subsistence and the production of man himself. And the less developed the first, the more influence the second has on people's lives. Following Morgan, Engels singled out periods of savagery and barbarism in the prehistory of mankind, each of which includes the lowest, middle and highest levels. The transition from one stage to another is due to the development of tools. He specifically noted that it was the discovery of the use of fire that allowed humanity to break out of the animal state. By making primitive stone tools, people subsisted on gathering, hunting, and fishing. During the period of barbarism, there was a transition to the production of means of subsistence - agriculture and cattle breeding arose (later this transition was called the Neolithic Revolution). The development of the productive forces on this basis prepared the material preconditions for the emergence civilization . Thus, the change of stages of primitive society is determined by the development of material production. But the forms of social organization also turn out to be dependent on the production of the person himself, which gives rise to various forms of the family, the system of kinship. These latter characterize the relations of the people of that time. Historically, they arose on the basis of prohibitions on sexual relations, first between generations, parents and children, then between brothers and sisters. As a result, a genus arises, consisting of relatives on the maternal side. Several close clans made up a tribe. Marriages within the clan were prohibited. But there were various forms group marriage between men and women from different clans of a given tribe. During the period of transition to barbarism, relatively stable marriage couples began to form, and group marriage began to develop into a pair marriage. Gradually, the family also acquires the function of an economic unit, which leads to its isolation within the clan. As wealth grows, so does the problem of inheritance from father to son. A patriarchal family is being created, which included relatives on the paternal side, destroying the maternal clan. She approved the inequality of men and women, the dominant position of men and was a form of transition to a monogamous family, characteristic of civilization. This inequality persists in the bourgeois family as well. In the future society, the economic function of the family will wither away, and with it the economic calculation in relations between a man and a woman will also disappear. These relationships will be built only on individual love, and the people of the future will determine their forms themselves.

For Engels, it was of fundamental importance that the genus of the American Indians and the genus of the ancient peoples of Europe had common features, the establishment of the fact that they were different stages of the same tribal organization of society. This meant that a form of social structure of the prehistoric period of human existence was discovered. This form is in line with low level the development of productive forces, a sparse population, the almost complete subordination of man to nature, and the individual to the community to which he belonged. Common property, the natural age and sex division of labor, joint housekeeping united the clan, and this made it possible for people to survive in those conditions. It was impossible to survive alone. Not an isolated individual, but a primitive collective - clan, tribe, community - were at the beginning of human history. The development of productive forces began to undermine the foundations of the tribal organization, since a surplus product appeared and the possibility of its accumulation, redistribution, etc., was incompatible with primitive equality. The process of decomposition of the tribal system coincided with the genesis of private property, social inequality, classes and the state. Thus, the starting positions were determined for the scientific formulation of the question of the origin of class society and its institutions, or, as it is indicated in the book, of the emergence of civilization. Here the growth of labor productivity associated with the appearance of iron tools and the social division of labor was of decisive importance. Engels named three major stages in the division of social labor that formed the path to civilization: the separation of pastoral tribes, which made it necessary to systematically exchange products, the appearance of money; the separation of handicrafts from agriculture, which led to the widespread use of slave labor, the development of commodity production and trade, property inequality, private property and the division of society into classes; the separation of trade into an independent type of activity: merchants could no longer do without metal money. The development of handicrafts and trade, the growth of wealth, the severing of former tribal ties, the emergence of property inequality and social classes paved the way for the formation of the state.

In a class society with its antagonisms, according to Engels, an organized political force is necessary to preserve the existing order and protect the interests of the ruling class. It is the state. Based on extensive material, the book provides a description and analysis of the formation of state institutions among the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Germans. At various peoples this process had its own characteristics. But its common features were the emergence of public authority (the army, officials), taxes and the division of the population not by clan, but by territorial basis. The state performs some functions necessary for society, but unlike the tribal organization, it places itself above society. The history of civilization knows three great forms of exploitation of one class by another: slavery , serfdom and wage labor. In every epoch, the state, as the organ of the most economically powerful class, has perpetuated these forms of enslavement. This is also democratic republic in bourgeois society, where capital dominates indirectly, but all the more so. The state arose together with classes, has a class character, and must die out with the abolition of classes.

The book reflects the level of science con. 19th century Since then, both science and history have gone far ahead, and many of the issues discussed in the book are now interpreted differently. Many new problems have also arisen. But the work, having played an important role in the history of Marxism and worldview in general, retains its significance as an expression of principled positions on a number of fundamental problems of Marxist socio-historical theory.