The idiom of Marxism has been a thorough analysis of class formulation. Its pre-occupation with social class has resulted in the neglect of the structure and role of the family. Friedrich Engels (1884) looked at family with an evolutionary perspective. What he has done is to combine the evolutionary approach with Marxian theory.
He argued that with the change in the mode of production the family also changes. During the early stages of human evolution, Engels believed that the forces of production were communally owned and the family” as such did not exist.
This era of primitive communism was characterized by promiscuity. “There were no rules limiting sexual relationships and society was, in effect, the family.”
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The position taken by Engels has been in a way supported by Kathleen Gough who is credited to have worked for long period of her career in South India. Her supportive comments argued that man’s nearest relatives the chimpanzees live in ‘promiscuous hordes’.
This must also have happened with early man. While tracing the origin of family Engels writes at a later stage: “Family is based on the supremacy of the man, the express purpose being to produce children of undisputed paternity; such paternity is demanded because these children are later to come into their father’s property as his natural heirs.”
At the close of his analysis, Engels says that family in capitalist society developed mainly in the late 1960s and 1970s when several feminist writers employed Marxian concepts in their criticisms of the family.