Karl Marx was a socialist and a revolutionary thinker
of the 19th century. He was influenced by the works of Lewis Henry
Morgan a lawyer who turned his attention to ethnographic study of native people.
The notes prepared by Marx were used by Engels to bring out the book – The origin
of the Family, Private Property and the State.
Marxist anthropology provides a typical 19th
century model of social evolution in which contemporary ethnographic evidence
could be fitted into appropriate positions. The positions were recognized in
the movement from the primitive through the ancient and the feudal to the
capitalist and finally the communist stage. Economic base received primary
focus in Marxist anthropology and religion, law or sociology.
Marxist anthropology received importance as a subject
of study in the Soviet Union and China. Its impact on North America and Europe
was low though some individual anthropologists in USA and Britain had certain political
and intellectual affiliations with Marxism.
Engels was of the view that mankind passed through the
stages of primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, capitalism and
communism.
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