Marriage Issues According to Frederick Engels

According to Fredrick Engel's, the institution of marriage, as we have come to know it, began with the rise of industrialization, wage-labor and more specifically with inheritable wealth. It was mostly white/bourgeois men who worked, and gained, mainly from the new system of the working class society through the wage earner. Women did work during the rise of industrialism, though they were mostly black, immigrant or very poor, and they never made a fair wage. White/bourgeois men began to profit from the labor of the lower classes, and thus had money to support their wives staying home to raise their children as well as to pass on to their heirs. Marriage quickly became a legal way of "caring" for ones estates and family, as well as businesses. That is what marriage remains to be today and it applies to all who get married in this country as well as in other countries.

Before the rise of industrialism, families were more of a communal type of living with identity of the children being with their mother. The rise of industrialization meant the industrialization of most of the jobs women did at home, save for tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and childrearing. This really did not apply, at first, so much to the poor, non white, or immigrant community as they were so poor the women had to work outside of the home alongside their men, and African Americans were slaves. Although, immersion into this way of life has been a result for all whom live in this country today through other "progresses" we have made. Slavery, tolerance, and women's suffrage movements are examples of real progress we have made, though we still have class and marriage systems.

Fredrick Engel's had said something to the effect of the first division of labor was between the sexes for the purposes of child rearing. He also said it will be the last division to some degree. Sexism will be the last form of oppression in a democratic republic/capitalist society. All of the races will unite and so will the all of the classes, to some extent, before men are going to give of the position of the bourgeoisie, thus making women, in general, the proletariats of society. Women have been "feminized", making them "able" only to do menial unpaid tasks, or earn very little working jobs with little to no stimulation. Monogamous marriage brought with it the further perceived inferiority of women as they were subject to obey their husbands, and made to rely on them almost completely. Engel's says that prostitution and adultery are collateral damage of monogamous marriage. Unmarried women were reduced to selling their own bodies to survive, and unhappiness in a marriage centered on economics instead of love has created adultery.

Frederick Engel's obviously felt that class society and sexism, or female inferiority, are very close to being one in the same, as they rose together so shall they fall together. He feels that change in society shall come through the intolerance of its citizens. If men and women unite and stand together to do away with class society and capitalism, they will in effect cause economic marriage to disappear along with it. With the idea of inheritable wealth being of almost no importance in society anymore, marriage can become centered on love and other emotions humans may want to share with each other.