[MB.]

We're going to move forward from this point, and if anyone starts arguing about star trek vs star wars they will be permabanned.

[The Immortal Goon]

If you are going to delete my post you should delete TIG's too.

My post underlined the absurdity of your logic. There are no differences with anyone in all of history, because there are penises.

Thus, nothing has ever changed; thus there is no reason to consider change.

[SolarCross]

My post underlined the absurdity of your logic. There are no differences with anyone in all of history, because there are penises.

Thus, nothing has ever changed; thus there is no reason to consider change.

Your post underlined the absurdity of your strawman, it was a shit post. However it did so mentioning certain directors who I may not name who produced sci-fi franchises which I may not name.

[The Immortal Goon]

False.

A problem that Star Destroyer's little thesis had (among many) was that it assumed that there were no changes in history, so Marx addressing change was out of line.

As an example to counter this, I pointed out that ancient Spartan society wasn't like the society that a 21st century Inuit fisherman off of Juno was living.

You argued they were about the same. When pushed as to why all the many differences in culture, technology, customs, and social interaction, should be disregarded, your answer was essentially that they had penises.

Which, apparently means that all history doesn't matter. Because of cock.

Which, yes, is a profoundly ignorant and stupid argument.

So now you have the Marxists saying, "History exists," and the rightwingers saying, "Nothing has ever happened because that would concede the most obviously incorrect point of an argument."

[SolarCross]

False.

A problem that Star Destroyer's little thesis had (among many) was that it assumed that there were no changes in history, so Marx addressing change was out of line.

As an example to counter this, I pointed out that ancient Spartan society wasn't like the society that a 21st century Inuit fisherman off of Juno was living.

You argued they were about the same. When pushed as to why all the many differences in culture, technology, customs, and social interaction, should be disregarded, your answer was essentially that they had penises.

Which, apparently means that all history doesn't matter. Because of cock.

Which, yes, is a profoundly ignorant and stupid argument.

So now you have the Marxists saying, "History exists," and the rightwingers saying, "Nothing has ever happened because that would concede the most obviously incorrect point of an argument."

Doubling down on a strawman argument is just doubling down on the shit post.

Pay attention, I have already said this before but since you choose to ignore it I must speak a LITTLE LOUDER.

NEITHER STAR DESTROYER NOR MYSELF EVER DENIED THAT:
- CHANGE OCCURS
- THERE ARE CULTURAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SPARTANS, INUIT AND ENGLISH MIDDLE CLASS SHOPKEEPERS FROM THE 19TH CENTURY

The question remains whose family is going to be abolished? You say SD is wrong to believe all families will be abolished because Marx is just talking about abolishing "bourgeois" families.

Fine so then I ask why does the bourgeois family get singled out for this termination but not anyone else?

You go nuts and start crying about penises.

[The Immortal Goon]

Doubling down on a strawman argument is just doubling down on the shit post.

Oh, I guess I could have refused to acknowledge my ignorance of the topic until I was backed into a wall and then tried to derail the failure argument I insisted on making into a discussion about something completely unrelated. But I didn't do any of those things.

Pay attention, I have already said this before but since you choose to ignore it I must speak a LITTLE LOUDER.

NEITHER STAR DESTROYER NOR MYSELF EVER DENIED THAT:
- CHANGE OCCURS
- THERE ARE CULTURAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SPARTANS, INUIT AND ENGLISH MIDDLE CLASS SHOPKEEPERS FROM THE 19TH CENTURY

Seeing as you have seemingly never read Marx and insist on trying to engage Marxists about Marx, I suppose it should be no surprise that you have difficulty.

In this post I go over the issue that Star Destroyer has in more detail (which, in fairness, you did choose to almost completely ignore).

His premise was that Marx wanted to alter a, "society that thousands of years of human civilization had slowly constructed." This being, a singular culture that (apparently) has had no drastic change, but a steady ascent into whatever he is now with a firm hand.

In this monoculture where there were no wars, revolutions, or plague, "humans play by rules which are their nature." This is a quote, removing the negatives as he is upset that Marx wants to make change and upset this balance.

He goes onto expand this further, claiming that:

Humans won't work as hard without self-interest to motivate them, as anyone familiar with the behaviour of our evolutionary ancestors will quickly realize. The collective self-interest of a nation of millions is much too remote and abstract to have the emotional immediacy necessary to strongly motivate most individuals.

Because, apparently, "our evolutionary ancestors," are identical to, "a nation of millions," and there are no differences between the two. Obviously Homo Erectus would innately understand bitcoin, right?

You then became irate and were reduced to name calling instead of addressing the point, going so far as to just making things up about Marx because they were convenient, and not even bothering to try and defend the emotional outburst.

I retorted the best that I could with the limited logic, and you followed with a manifesto about how humans were basically like gorillas and lions and tried to hand-wave away the concept of different cultures and changes by saying that:

The more legal aspect of human mating which is generally called marriage evolved very particularly to provide a structure for managing property between the mating pair and their offspring.

As if:

1. All human mating for all of human history had been identical
2. All human mating involved marriage
3. All human marriage was identical
4. All human interactions with property has always been the same and never changed.

This is problematic.

I attempted to explain how this was problematic, and how a lot of Marxism was examining these differences and changes.

I used a lot of citations and examples, which you ignored when you tried to just pretend that Marx didn't qualify anything he said.

I pointed out that this was incorrect, so you tried a new tactic.

The point is SD is not seeing that the "bourgeois family" is substantially different from any breeding pair like your inuit and spartan.

So, again, we are back at the bourgeois family is essentially the same as an ancient Spartan, which is essentially the same as the Inuit. And thus any variation or change again, never really happened.

I mocked such a ridiculous statement as a:

tactic is to completely ignore the perpetual fail, and simplify until you get to, "boys have penises and girls have vaginas."

You then kept trying (and failing) to derail the thread entirelly for about half a page before you attempted to make sense of your nonsensical stance that nothing has really changed in substance. That an Inuit, an ancient Spartan, a Chinese Emperor, lions (?) and you were all exactly the same.

I hope that catches you up

The question remains whose family is going to be abolished? You say SD is wrong to believe all families will be abolished because Marx is just talking about abolishing "bourgeois" families.

The bourgeois family will be abolished. One could argue the process Marx describes in the Manifesto that Star Destroyer and you seem to have had trouble reading, goes over this rather explicitly.

In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

In fact, one could argue this is what Star Destroyer was talking about when he went into his weird little junction about Americans in the 1960s being communists because he imagined orgies or whatever. He was completely wrong on most things, but accidentally walked into something that might be accurate if you squinted enough. I tried to quote Marx and provide citations so that you would get that, but I was expecting too much, obviously.

Fine so then I ask why does the bourgeois family get singled out for this termination but not anyone else?

Who wasn't? Do you live according to feudal custom? Do you think modern Spartans live like ancient Spartans? Do you live next to a traditional Inuit family?

Because I would argue that those sorts of families have already been terminated. In fact, Marx does too in the Manifesto that both you and STAR DESTROYER apparently neglected to read:

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

You go nuts and start crying about penises.

If you can think of whatever else unites sexual relations between the male gorilla, the male lion, the male Inuit, the male Spartan, Homo Erectus, you as a male, and whatever else you're welcome to push me in the direction of what you meant to be saying they all had in common with fucking.

[SolarCross]

@The Immortal Goon
You can make this easier for me by clarifying these points:

- Is marx's use of the word "abolition" literal or metaphorical? Literally abolish means to ban through law, as in abolish slavery, abolish the death penalty. That is quite a specific meaning. But I can see how it could be used metaphorically or jokingly so for example someone might say "winter abolished summer" as a metaphorical way of suggesting winter came on suddenly or something. If Marx is using the word abolish as metaphor for something like a hypothetical guess that people will not want church weddings if they don't believe in jesus, then fair enough but then why even put that in the manifesto at all? Manifestos are all about what one intends to do, not just want one guesses might happen anyway.

- What exactly makes a "bourgeois family" distinctive from other families? Church wedding? Gold wedding bands? Laws against adultery? Laws against sibling marriage? Presence or absence of a dowry? Average number of offspring? Which of any of these things does he want to ban?

[The Immortal Goon]

Good thing you brought Star Destroyer in here to lecture us all about the Communist Manifesto which plainly neither of ye had read!

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.

They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.

All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.

The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

That should answer both your questions.

Changing the way that we interact with the world will change the way we interact with each other--even through our intimate relations.

You wouldn't kneel to your landlord after feudalism, but instead have changed it to a strictly financial (bourgeois) exchange of property.

The same social changes would occur once bourgeois finances are gone that occurred after feudal patronage was gone.

I am tempted to get more specific, but you have a remarkable tendency to not read anything written by Marx and instead want the most basic and imperfect analogy that you then try to pick apart in the most ludicrous and ignorant ways. So I'm keeping it simple...

[SolarCross]

Good thing you brought Star Destroyer in here to lecture us all about the Communist Manifesto which plainly neither of ye had read!

Oh we read it but if your objections to our reading are fair then we made the reasonable mistake of reading it literally. When Marx says "abolish the family" or "abolish private property" we are reading that literally but it seems you are suggesting that is the wrong way to read it, which can only mean we are meant to read them as metaphors for something else.

Just speaking for myself I don't generally fail to recognise a metaphor when I read one, for one thing a well constructed metaphor generally announces itself pretty clearly, Smith's Invisible Hand for example. They announce themselves by being composed in such a way as to be resistant to a literal reading because a literal reading produces nonsense either intrinsic to the phrase or in the context where it is used which pushes the reader's mind, in its effort to make sense of the text, to attempt a metaphorical reading.

People say Marx has poor writing skills and writing using metaphors that read more easily literally is very bad writing.

hat should answer both your questions.

Changing the way that we interact with the world will change the way we interact with each other--even through our intimate relations.

You wouldn't kneel to your landlord after feudalism, but instead have changed it to a strictly financial (bourgeois) exchange of property.

The same social changes would occur once bourgeois finances are gone that occurred after feudal patronage was gone.

I am tempted to get more specific, but you have a remarkable tendency to not read anything written by Marx and instead want the most basic and imperfect analogy that you then try to pick apart in the most ludicrous and ignorant ways. So I'm keeping it simple...

So you are indicating here that "abolition" should be read as a metaphor for "stuff just changes man" and not as it literally reads. We already know that Marxists have altered the term "bourgeois" from a literal meaning of town dweller, merchant or middle class into a metaphor for evil. Perhaps the word "family" is a metaphor for something else also?

That being the case it seems we should not read "abolish the (bourgeois) family" as it literally reads as "abolish the (bourgeois) family" but instead as a metaphor for "stuff changes, man, like you know, the evil people they is all gonna just, you know, go, change into something kinda cool man"

As aside there is a huge logistical overhead in reading works which need such heavy guided interpretation by experts on the text such as yourself. Patently it is dangerous to let someone just read the text without someone standing over the reader's shoulder showing the correct way to interpret all the hidden metaphors in what would otherwise read very differently literally and that is rather cumbersome.

The bible has that problem too. Start reading at the beginning and you get all this stuff about God creating the Earth in 7 days. Read literally all that sounds like an absurd fairytale to anyone even moderately acquainted with Earth Science, so you need a priest, as an analogue to yourself, explaining how "7 days" is a metaphor for "like you know billions of years man".

[MememyselfandIJK]

@SolarCross "abolish the family" most directly refers to getting rid of the then prevailing model of the family -- most specifically, gender roles. Modern interpretations also include allowing for same sex marriage and other such activities that undermine family in the traditional sense.

[The Immortal Goon]

Oh we read it but if your objections to our reading are fair then we made the reasonable mistake of reading it literally. When Marx says "abolish the family" or "abolish private property" we are reading that literally but it seems you are suggesting that is the wrong way to read it, which can only mean we are meant to read them as metaphors for something else.

Oh dear God. Read the document.

When people speak of the ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express that fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.

When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.

“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.”

“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”

What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.

But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.

I could go on...And really quote the entire thing that you claim to have read.

Of course he means, "abolish." Pretending to get confused by words isn't going to help.

The type of family that exists will be abolished by history; and history will move through the rise of the proletariat through a dialectic process. The exact same as Marx and Engels spend an entire chapter writing about in the previous chapter of the Manifesto that you seem to have missed.

Perhaps Hulk speak will help.

Hulk have stuff and move stuff.

The stuff Hulk have and move affect Hulk.

When new stuff comes in, and Hulk have and move stuff in different way, Hulk change too.

New stuff come not from nowhere.

Hulk both change way he do things by own Hulk hand, and by new Hulk stuff.

---

That's about as easy a I can put it. Part of this comes down to a new 2417 year old concept you apparently have not heard of. But I'm not even going to attempt to explain that since you're having difficulty with rudimentary English.

Just speaking for myself I don't generally fail to recognise a metaphor when I read one, for one thing a well constructed metaphor generally announces itself pretty clearly, Smith's Invisible Hand for example. They announce themselves by being composed in such a way as to be resistant to a literal reading because a literal reading produces nonsense either intrinsic to the phrase or in the context where it is used which pushes the reader's mind, in its effort to make sense of the text, to attempt a metaphorical reading.

Not a metaphor. I can provide you with a lot of other literature, but since you seem unwilling to read anything about Marxism, it seems pointless. If you want specifics though, I like this source for how the family should be regarded.

People say Marx has poor writing skills and writing using metaphors that read more easily literally is very bad writing.

People also say that I'm brilliant. People are full of shit.

So you are indicating here that "abolition" should be read as a metaphor for "stuff just changes man" and not as it literally reads. We already know that Marxists have altered the term "bourgeois" from a literal meaning of town dweller, merchant or middle class into a metaphor for evil. Perhaps the word "family" is a metaphor for something else also?

No.

That being the case it seems we should not read "abolish the (bourgeois) family" as it literally reads as "abolish the (bourgeois) family" but instead as a metaphor for "stuff changes, man, like you know, the evil people they is all gonna just, you know, go, change into something kinda cool man"

It is not the case. Had you or Star Destroyer read the Manifesto, you would know this.

As aside there is a huge logistical overhead in reading works which need such heavy guided interpretation by experts on the text such as yourself. Patently it is dangerous to let someone just read the text without someone standing over the reader's shoulder showing the correct way to interpret all the hidden metaphors in what would otherwise read very differently literally and that is rather cumbersome.

The biggest problem, it seems to me, is not reading the document in the first place. I see no indication that you have. And I'm guessing that Star Destroyer read it while he was scribbling responses instead of reading it first, collecting the information that come up, and then going over it in detail.

The bible has that problem too. Start reading at the beginning and you get all this stuff about God creating the Earth in 7 days. Read literally all that sounds like an absurd fairytale to anyone even moderately acquainted with Earth Science, so you need a priest, as an analogue to yourself, explaining how "7 days" is a metaphor for "like you know billions of years man".

I am well aware of the Bible. I am unsure how you think this parallels with what you're saying. However, you're not saying much of anything, so I suppose that's no surprise.

[MB.]

You can certainly see the influence of utopian internationalism, such as was explored by Tennyson in Locksley Hall. Also the influence of Stirner's revolutionary proto nihilistic egotistical rejection of organized religion. Marxs pre-kapital economics is not surprisingly mainly Smith, Riccardo, Bentham, as seen through the lens of Hegel. Even the rationalist idealism of geothe or schopenhauer is apparent.

Marxs influence is clearly the introduction of the working class struggle into the burgermister history that defined proto-industrial life. Marxs was an agent of the context of his time, representing an early attempt to assimilate the implications of industrialization, while rejecting the traditional value of state religion as ossified.

[SolarCross]

could go on...And really quote the entire thing that you claim to have read.

Of course he means, "abolish." Pretending to get confused by words isn't going to help.

The type of family that exists will be abolished by history; and history will move through the rise of the proletariat through a dialectic process. The exact same as Marx and Engels spend an entire chapter writing about in the previous chapter of the Manifesto that you seem to have missed.

"abolished by history" is a metaphorical use of abolish or a metaphorical use of history it can't be literal because history cannot literally sign decrees prohibiting something on pain of persecution by agents of the law.

"history" could be a metaphor for a post-revolutionary communist legislature in which case "abolish" makes sense literally.

Sorry Hulk speak doesn't help at all.

Okay so Connolly's interpretation of this family question is this:

Marriage

Again, when touring this country in 1902, I met in Indianapolis an esteemed comrade who almost lost his temper with me because I expressed my belief in monogamic marriage, and because I said, as I still hold, that the tendency of civilisation is towards its perfection and completion, instead of towards its destruction. My comrade’s views, especially since the publication in The People of Bebel’s Women [4], are held by a very large number of members, but I hold, nevertheless, that they are wrong, and, furthermore, that such works and such publications are an excrescence upon the movement. The abolition of the capitalist system will, undoubtedly, solve the economic side of the Woman Question, but it will solve that alone. The question of marriage, of divorce, of paternity, of the equality of woman with man are physical and sexual questions, or questions of temperamental affiliation as in marriage, and were we living in a Socialist Republic would still be hotly contested as they are to-day. One great element of disagreement would be removed – the economic – but men and women would still be unfaithful to their vows, and questions of the intellectual equality of the sexes would still be as much in dispute as they are today, even although economic equality would be assured. To take a case in point: Suppose a man and woman married. The man after a few years ceases to love the woman, his wife, and loves another. But his wife's love for him has only increased with the passage of years, and she has borne him children. He wishes to leave her and consort with his new love. Will the fact that her economic future is secured be any solace to the deserted mother or to her children? Decidedly not! It is, a human and sexual problem, not an economic problem at all. Unjust economic conditions aggravate the evil, but do not create it. Comrade De Leon [5] says in his preface, which I have just seen, that Bebel’s Woman raises up for the proletaire, friends in the camp of the enemy. I consider that it is, on the contrary, an attempt to seduce the proletariat from the firm ground of political and economic science on to the questionable ground of physiology and sex. Instead of raising up friends in the camp of the enemy, it engenders the fatal habit of looking outside our own class for help to the members of a class – the "enemy" referred to – whose whole material interests are opposed to ours. In the days of battle will the claims of sex or the claims of their class weigh most with the ladies of the capitalist class? Bebel’s Woman is popular because of its quasi-prurient revelations of the past and present degradation of womanhood, but I question if you can find in the whole world one woman who was led to Socialism by it, but you can find hundreds who were repelled from studying Socialism by judicious extracts from its pages. I believe it is destined to be in the future a potent weapon against us in this country. And it is a weapon put into the enemy's hands without obtaining any corresponding advantage for our side. The valuable propaganda material in the book is absolutely nullified by its identification with a debatable physiological question on which the party as a whole has never been consulted, and could not be.

So it seems this "esteemed comrade from Indianapolis" has pretty much the same idea as Star Destroyer as what Marx meant except where Star Destroyer is appalled he approves. Connolly's interpretation is clearly different from this "esteemed comrade" but it is interesting that some Marxists themselves are interpreting marx literally on this as Connolly indicates even while he says they are wrong to do so.

Isn't the problem here really just that Marx does not express himself very well?

It still remains then uncertain as to whether or not it will be illegal to parent one's own offspring in one's own home after the revolution for while Connolly clearly would permit it and perhaps even encourage it, were he or someone like him to be General Secretary of the World Socialist Republic, many others carrying the red flag in interpreting Marx too literally would not.

-------------

Why don't we leave the issue of the family for now and move on to the 1st commandment of the manifesto now? It wasn't a one of the ten commandments anyway as it was introduced into the manifesto to respond, without clarifying, to what seems to be a common complaint made against communists.

So the first commandment is this:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

To which Star Destroyer's equally brief retort is:
"In other words, seizure of all real estate. No more worrying about saving money to buy that house ... the government will take it away!"

Is Star Destroyer taking that too literally as well?

[The Immortal Goon]

"abolished by history" is a metaphorical use of abolish or a metaphorical use of history it can't be literal because history cannot literally sign decrees prohibiting something on pain of persecution by agents of the law.

"history" could be a metaphor for a post-revolutionary communist legislature in which case "abolish" makes sense literally.

Sorry Hulk speak doesn't help at all.

You seem to be really interested in this specific topic. Here you go then:

Working mothers have no need to be alarmed; communist not intending to take children away from their parents or to tear the baby from the breast of its mother, and neither is it planning to take, violent measures to destroy the family. No such thing! The aims of communist society are quite different. Communist society sees that the old type of family is breaking up, and that all the old pillars which supported the family as a social unit are being removed: the domestic economy is dying, and working-class parents are unable to take care of their children or provide them with sustenance and education. Parents and children suffer equally from this situation. Communist society has this to say to the working woman and working man: “You are young, you love each other. Everyone has the right to happiness. Therefore live your life. Do not flee happiness. Do not fear marriage, even though under capitalism marriage was truly a chain of sorrow. Do not be afraid of having children. Society needs more workers and rejoices at the birth of every child. You do not have to worry about the future of your child; your child will know neither hunger nor cold.” Communist society takes care of every child and guarantees both him and his mother material and moral support. Society will feed, bring up and educate the child. At the same time, those parents who desire to participate in the education of their children will by no, means be prevented from doing so. Communist society will take upon itself all the duties involved in the education of the child, but the joys of parenthood will not be taken away from those who are capable of appreciating them. Such are the plans of communist society and they can hardly be interpreted as the forcible destruction of the family and the forcible separation of child from mother.

There is no escaping the fact: the old type of family has had its day. The family is withering away not because it is being forcibly destroyed by the state, but because the family is ceasing to be a necessity. The state does not need the family, because the domestic economy is no longer profitable: the family distracts the worker from more useful and productive labour. The members of the family do not need the family either, because the task of bringing up the children which was formerly theirs is passing more and more into the hands of the collective. In place of the old relationship between men and women, a new one is developing: a union of affection and comradeship, a union of two equal members of communist society, both of them free, both of them independent and both of them workers. No more domestic bondage for women. No more inequality within the family. No need for women to fear being left without support and with children to bring up. The woman in communist society no longer depends upon her husband but on her work. It is not in her husband but in her capacity for work that she will find support. She need have no anxiety about her children. The workers’ state will assume responsibility for them. Marriage will lose all the elements of material calculation which cripple family life. Marriage will be a union of two persons who love and trust each other. Such a union promises to the working men and women who understand themselves and the world around them the most complete happiness and the maximum satisfaction. Instead of the conjugal slavery of the past, communist society offers women and men a free union which is strong in the comradeship which inspired it. Once the conditions of labour have been transformed and the material security of the working women has increased, and once marriage such as the church used to perform it – this so-called indissoluble marriage which was at bottom merely a fraud – has given place to the free and honest union of men and women who are lovers and comrades, prostitution will disappear. This evil, which is a stain on humanity and the scourge of hungry working women, has its roots in commodity production and the institution of private property. Once these economic forms are superseded, the trade in women will automatically disappear. The women of the working class, therefore, need not worry over the fact that the family is doomed to disappear. They should, on the contrary, welcome the dawn of a new society which will liberate women from domestic servitude, lighten the burden of motherhood and finally put an end to the terrible curse of prostitution.

The woman who takes up the struggle for the liberation of the working class must learn to understand that there is no more room for the old proprietary attitude which says: “These are my children, I owe them all my maternal solicitude and affection; those are your children, they are no concern of mine and I don’t care if they go hungry and cold – I have no time for other children.” The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers.

Okay so Connolly's interpretation of this family question is this:

You'll note that there are two tendencies going at it there, but I agree Connolly is correct.

So it seems this "esteemed comrade from Indianapolis" has pretty much the same idea as Star Destroyer as what Marx meant except where Star Destroyer is appalled he approves.

I don't really follow this logic, and it seems to be the opposite to me.

But the Manifesto i upposed to be a thumbnail at best. This is one of those issues that has divided socialists from the beginning.

The Connolly-DeLeon controversy is amongst the first.

Lenin, in taking control of the first worker's state, acknowledged that his views were that of an, "old man,"

The coercion of bourgeois marriage and bourgeois legislation on the family enhance the evil and aggravate the conflicts. It is the coercion of ‘sacrosanct’ property. It sanctifies venality, baseness, and dirt. The conventional hypocrisy of ‘respectable’ bourgeois society takes care of the rest. People revolt against the prevailing abominations and perversions. And at a time when mighty nations are being destroyed, when the former power relations are being disrupted, when a whole social world is beginning to decline, the sensations of the individual undergo a rapid change. A stimulating thirst for different forms of enjoyment easily acquires an irresistible force. Sexual and marriage reforms in the bourgeois sense will not do. In the sphere of sexual relations and marriage, a revolution is approaching in keeping with the proletarian revolution. Of course, women and young people are taking a deep interest in the complex tangle of problems which have arisen as a result of this. Both the former and the latter suffer greatly from the present messy state of sex relations. Young people rebel against them with the vehemence of their years. This is only natural. Nothing could be falser than to preach monastic self-denial and the sanctity of the filthy bourgeois morals to young people. However, it is hardly a good thing that sex, already strongly felt in the physical sense, should at such a time assume so much prominence in the psychology of young people. The consequences are nothing short of fatal. Ask Comrade Lilina about it. She ought to have had many experiences in her extensive work at educational institutions of various kinds and you know that she is a Communist through and through, and has no prejudices.

Youth’s altered attitude to questions of sex is of course ‘fundamental’, and based on theory. Many people call it ‘revolutionary’ and ‘communist’. They sincerely believe that this is so. I am an old man, and I do not like it. I may be a morose ascetic, but quite often this so-called ‘new sex life’ of young people and frequently of the adults too seems to me purely bourgeois and simply an extension of the good old bourgeois brothel. All this has nothing in common with free love as we Communists understand it. No doubt you have heard about the famous theory that in communist society satisfying sexual desire and the craving for love is as simple and trivial as ‘drinking a glass of water’. A section of our youth has gone mad, absolutely mad, over this ‘glass-of-water theory’. It has been fatal to many a young boy and girl. Its devotees assert that it is a Marxist theory. I want no part of the kind of Marxism which infers all phenomena and all changes in the ideological superstructure of society directly and blandly from its economic basis, for things are not as simple as all that. A certain Frederick Engels has established this a long time ago with regard to historical materialism.

Which is part of the reason, though Lenin was against it himself, he allowed a woman's section of the Bolsheviks to bring in prostitutes and other sex workers to be educated and then to aid the masses. Abortions were made cheap, legal, and safe. Divorces were made free, and available to both men and women to initiate. He presided over the first modern country to make homosexuality legal, to allow "so-called “wild marriage”; pair marriage, marriage in threes and even the complicated marriage of four people."

Lenin, as everyone agreed, having had better things to worry about, let things go.

It was Stalin that started putting a clamp on everything with the, "Decree on the Prohibition of Abortions, the Improvement of Material Aid to Women in Childbirth, the Establishment of State Assistance to Parents of Large Families, and the Extension of the Network of Lying-in Homes, Nursery schools and Kindergartens, the Tightening-up of Criminal Punishment for the Non-payment of Alimony, and on Certain Modifications in Divorce Legislation"

Trotsky took a more nuanced view, in that socialist society had to come from proletarian society, which had to have been developed from bourgeois society in the same way socialism develops from capitalism.

I think it's an important question.

I agree with Connolly, Lenin, and Trotsky.

I think that these things are not issues that the part can wave a magic wand around and resolve. To some extent, you're going to have to change the base and watch the superstructure change. Changing the superstructure and dictating what it's supposed to be like before the world's base is changed seems like complete ass-hattery to me. It's making cosmetic changes to your hair and hoping it cures heart disease by doing so.

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So to close up, amongst Marxists it's a big issue. It tends to come down to whether you think there can be socialism in one country (though there are other factors). The idea being that if you can just conjure socialism into being, then you have to pull society up with you. This isn't is as radical as one may think—Jefferson said similar things, amongst other founding fathers. The Puritains certainly thought it was the case, as did others.

The people who reject socialism in one country (and thus tend to gravitate to permanent revolution, but not always) tend to think that society needs to be let to evolve by itself.

If you want to read about a microcosm of this, the proletkult wanted to eradicate the old society and build a new one by what it thought socialist society would be like, while the Narkompros tended to take a view that new education and art had to grow out of the old classics.

Isn't the problem here really just that Marx does not express himself very well?

From page one, wasn't everybody telling you that you should read Marx in order to understand this entire thing? That the Manifesto was an inappropriate document from which to try and invalidate (or validate) Marx?

It still remains then uncertain as to whether or not it will be illegal to parent one's own offspring in one's own home after the revolution for while Connolly clearly would permit it and perhaps even encourage it, were he or someone like him to be General Secretary of the World Socialist Republic, many others carrying the red flag in interpreting Marx too literally would not.

Indeed. Marxists do not pretend to be fortune-tellers. Only their opponent pretend that they are.

Why don't we leave the issue of the family for now and move on to the 1st commandment of the manifesto now? It wasn't a one of the ten commandments anyway as it was introduced into the manifesto to respond, without clarifying, to what seems to be a common complaint made against communists.

This is, again, attributing power to the Manifesto that nobody-not even Marx and Engels-assumed that it would have.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

To which Star Destroyer's equally brief retort is:
"In other words, seizure of all real estate. No more worrying about saving money to buy that house ... the government will take it away!"

Is Star Destroyer taking that too literally as well?

Since I don't really understand what you are having difficult with in your interpretation of literalism, I cannot answer this question.

I would suspect it, again, comes down to page one on this page where you're attempting to find a nit-picky refutation of an ideology based upon something that was never supposed to be anything more than a quick thumbnail at a given time.

But since you cannot seem to reconcile that, I cannot address your inquiry.

[SolarCross]

You seem to be really interested in this specific topic. Here you go then:

Actually you brought this "abolition of the family" aspect of the manifesto up first:

Yes, yes. Nothing has ever changed in all of history for him. People won't give up a traditional family structure, for instance.

As we all know, science has proven that a traditional family structure is that family structure that all of humanity has always had in any given situation through all of human history. Our 21st century Inuit fisherman has relations with sex and his family exactly like an Ancient Spartan does with his. Right?

I've been responding but actually I'm more interested in getting on with the 10 commandments.

From page one, wasn't everybody telling you that you should read Marx in order to understand this entire thing? That the Manifesto was an inappropriate document from which to try and invalidate (or validate) Marx?

I know what a manifesto is and if this was an ordinary manifesto we wouldn't be having this conversation, here in the 21st century, anymore than we would be having a discussion about party manifesto authored by William Pitt the younger, such things are centuries obsolete. Manifestos are temporary documents made by politicians to persuade some people to support them either at the ballot box or in a civil war. It Marxists themselves that have elevated this work to that of a holy text, otherwise it would be quite forgotten by now. The fact that Marxists and fellow travellers continue to wave it around as if it still had literal currency means it is not beyond the realms of reason for others to take a critical look at it. That may well be unfair on Marx though, I'll admit that.

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Actually just before we leave behind this family issue, I am still unclear as to what is meant by a "bourgeois" family? I actually already asked this and you said you answered but actually didn't.

I know a bourgeois person is according to a marxist a bad person who has some financial investments. So is a bourgeois family just a family that derives some of its income from stocks and shares?

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Since I don't really understand what you are having difficult with in your interpretation of literalism, I cannot answer this question.

I would suspect it, again, comes down to page one on this page where you're attempting to find a nit-picky refutation of an ideology based upon something that was never supposed to be anything more than a quick thumbnail at a given time.

But since you cannot seem to reconcile that, I cannot address your inquiry.

Alright so Star Destroyer's literal interpretation is the correct one? That being the case what is meant to be attractive about this policy to anyone even a poor person?

Renting real estate generally suits people who:
- have income but don't have substantial assets (yet)
- want to be able to relocate quickly

Owning real estate generally suits people who:
- have assets but don't have so much income potential (especially true of old people)
- don't want or need to relocate quickly

Generally how that works out for residential property is young people rent and old people buy, and so also for businesses: young businesses rent and old ones buy.

Under normal circumstances both options are available to people that is to say neither is illegal but this manifesto appears to want to reduce the legal options down to just renting and not owning.

Granted that some portion of the population who may expect because of their inclinations and circumstances to never buy do not lose anything except a hypothetical option but they won't be gaining anything either. Whereas those that either already own or intend to own in the future will have their interests severely injured by this. So this is a policy which gives some people nothing and injures everyone else. What other purpose could it serve except to satiate the greed of the communist government?

This seems to be a policy that is the materialistic benefit of a communist government but not those they rule over.

[ingliz]

a bourgeois family

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.

According to Engels, the monogamous nuclear family only emerged with Capitalism.

[SolarCross]

Okay that's bizarre. Do any communists still believe that?

[Pants-of-dog]

Okay that's bizarre. Do any communists still believe that?

What is bizarre about it?

[Decky]

Before capitalism people lived in extended families with multiple generations under one roof, the nuclear family came about as a result of capitalism. People needing to move around to chase the jobs in factories mean the family had to become more mobile, obviously this was more convenient for smaller families and thus the nuclear family was born. Honestly Solar Cross, why is it you fascists know nothing about history?

Read and banish your ignorance.

[SolarCross]

What is bizarre about it?

Bizarre and wrong.

What is almost right is "It is also the institution through which the wealthy pass down their private property to their children, thus reproducing class inequality." However the truth is that anyone who loves their own children more than strange children will want to help them more than they help other people, inevitably this is a generalisation but a fair one, that will include passing on any accumulated money or other goods as well as knowledge and culture. It is not like us poor people love our children less we just have less to give. Let me emphasise this isn't an exclusively "bourgeois" thing because people have been materially helping their children, in life and even posthumously through inheritance, throughout all the whole world, throughout all history. So rural people do this too and people who are not merchants or middle class.

POD you have children do you not look after them? Are you "bourgeois" for doing that?

The bizarre stuff is the thing about ideological functions which is expanded by the claim that the family "acts as a unit of consumption and teaches passive acceptance of hierarchy". Just bizarre.

What is just plain wrong is Engel's claim that the monogamous nuclear family only emerged with Capitalism*.

* Here I am assuming by Capitalism he means the industrial revolution, it must be remembered that Capitalism is used a virtual synonym for the industrial revolution by communists as distinct from the dictionary definition "trade and commerce substantially by non-government decision" which is basically ubiquitous anywhere there is civilisation throughout all history. Arguably the heavily regulated markets of today are less capitalistic than the enterprises of the european middle ages or of ancient times, because there is so much more government ownership and involvement.