MCViewPoint

Yet, Marx, Engels, and many of their modern followers are anti-family. Marx and Engels write in The Communist Manifesto:

Abolition of the family! […]

https://mises.org/wire/why-do-socialists-hate-families

Jonathan Newman

…Interestingly, another key tenet of socialism, besides abolishing the ownership of the factors of production, is abolishing the family. This is strange because the traditional nuclear family seems like it could be used in producing convincing socialist rhetoric: it is a good example of social bonds without private property, prices, and “capitalist exploitation.”

Yet, Marx, Engels, and many of their modern followers are anti-family. Marx and Engels write in The Communist Manifesto:

Abolition of the family! […] On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

Marx and Engels make a distinction between bourgeois and proletariat families, but “both will vanish” once communism is realized, apparently because — according ot Marx — bourgeois families are predicated on exploitation. Men exploit their wives and parents exploit their children, all for “private gain.”

Engels writes in Principles of Communism:

What will be the influence of communist society on the family?

It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage – the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents.

The communist society includes the public education of children and a breakdown of social norms on monogamy, family responsibilities, and dependence on any individual. According to ReviseSociology.com:

Marxists argue that the nuclear family performs ideological functions for Capitalism – the family acts as a unit of consumption and teaches passive acceptance of hierarchy. It is also the institution through which the wealthy pass down their private property to their children, thus reproducing class inequality.

Modern Marxists argue that families are just propaganda channels for capitalism. Families instill acceptance of hierarchy and give the bourgeoisie a way to “reproduce class inequality” through inheritances. To this end, Engels approvingly quotes Marx in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State:

The modern family contains in germ not only slavery (servitus), but also serfdom, since from the beginning it is related to agricultural services. It contains in miniature all the contradictions which later extend throughout society and its state.

For Marx, the family represents a microcosm of capitalism. But why didn’t he identify it as a microcosm of socialism to argue that if socialism is feasible at the family level, then it could be feasible at a larger scale?…

Be seeing you

Is that Sean Penn?