The Evolution of Property and Social and Philosophical Studies

Marx and Engels found in Lewis Henry Morgan’s study of primitive society an independent confirmation of the materialist conception of history. Lafargue’s ‘Evolution of Property’, in its day a major contribution to this work, has brilliantly withstood the test of time as a demonstration of the evolution of forms of private property out of the original form of primitive communism. This edition, which makes Lafargue’s work available once more to the English reader, also contains ‘Social and Philosophical Studies’, essays on the material origins of religious belief and the abstract ideas of good and justice.