The obvious critique of this book is the over-reliance on Morgan’s investigations into the Iroquois and subsequent universalization of certain practices and history to all peoples of the Americas. I both find that completely valid and not my primary frustration with the text.

Reading a predominantly Engels-led work is always fascinating because of his somewhat innate desire to create black and white “stages.” His constant, near unconscious, movement to describe different familial, kinship, and societal structures as building blocks all leading to the same place is the genesis for what would become the hyper-deterministic Marxism critiqued by almost all of academia.

However within this work, if one does some digging, there are some fascinating patterns of development that seem to appear and reappear across the world. While in one sentence he may use the antiquated terms of Savagery or Barbarism (although in his defense the moral baggage of those terms often aren’t present in his descriptions, with him more-so critiquing “Civilization” as the most immoral, violent, etc) only a few sentences later he will elaborate on the characteristics of class struggle that begin formally with the separation and enforcement of the gender binary and the subsequent separation of labor.

This isn’t a text I would tell a young leftist to read, but it is one that helps to flesh out the inner-method of historical materialism and how the logic of history can be used to draw connections between patterns of history and the development of capitalism. That is the primary use-value of reading a text like this today.