Friedrich Engels and historical cultural studies

The article shows the role of Friedrich Engels in the formation of cultural anthropology on the example of the work "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State." The methodological unity of the analysis of social and cultural transformations and the ordinary layer of culture in modern historical cultural studies with the approach of Engels, which is implemented in his works on the history of ancient society and cultural life of the middle of the 19th century, is revealed. The author argues that Engels did not oppose, in his analysis of history, the general logic of development to concrete historical originality and variability, as it will be in the 20th century, when a confrontation between formational and civilizational approaches is formed. On the example of Engels's works on the position of the working class in England, the mechanism of cultural reproduction in bourgeois society is analyzed. Revealed the relevance of the materialistic understanding of history in the light of methodological searches in cultural studies of the 20th-21st centuries.