In the Preface to _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_, Engels says: “ According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of the immediate essentials of life. This, again, is of a twofold character. On the one side, the production of the means of existence, of articles of food and clothing, dwellings, and of the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The social organization under which the people of a particular historical epoch and a particular country live is determined by both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labor on the one hand and of the family on the other.”
_The Manifesto of the Communist Party_ and “The Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Econom”” only assert the production of means of existence as the determining factor in history; not production of human human beings , the propagation of the species or the form of the family as a co-equal determining factor of history.
So , the above two factor determination of history is a fundamental development of Marxist theory of historical change , historical materialism or the materialist conception of history. In other words , Engels impliedly announces that Marxists should be as much Women’s Liberationists as Workers’ Liberationists in political struggle .
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