Primitive communism is a concept originating from
Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels who argued that
hunter-gatherer societies were traditionally based on egalitarian social relations and common ownership. A primary inspiration for both Marx and Engels were Lewis Henry Morgan's descriptions of 'communism in living' as practised by the Iroquois Indians of North America. In Marx's model of socioeconomic structures, societies with primitive communism had no hierarchical
social class structures or
capital accumulation.