Chapter 04 - Industrialization and the Bourgeois Family
Section Notes¶
Marx and Engels on the Family¶
According to Feuerbach, God and religion do not exist outside of human thought; they are the creation of humans
If people cannot understand/accept this they become alienated from their true nature
According to Marx, this alienation has roots in material relations, not ideology
Marx and Engels publicly introduced their family abolitionist critique in the 1848 Communist Manifesto
See also: Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class (1845) and The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884)
Engels in Manchester¶
Engels documented proletarian condition in Manchester 1842-1844
Concerned about how family form persists given very poor living & working conditions
Child mortality was very high
Over 57% of working class children
Around 20% for bourgeoisie
Social reformers wanted more bourgeois moralism among working class
Marx & Engels: bourgeois moralism does not address root causes of poverty crisis
Real blame is on the ruling class
Beginning of consideration of family as the unit of capitalist society; beginning of analysis of working-class social reproduction under capitalism
Industrialization and the Crisis of Working-Class Reproduction¶
Mid-19th century: English working class could not replace (reproduce) themselves
Half of the working class made enough wages for daily reproduction but not generational
Half of manufacturing workers were pre-adolescent children
Managed through male relatives
Capitalism destroyed peasantry but made it difficult for proletarian family life
Wages were too low
Could not maintain close kin ties
Crisis spread through historical development of capitalism
Even more through globalization
Marx, Engels, and the Lumpenproletariat¶
Marx and Engels feared moral decay among poor
Creation of “lumpenproletariat” concept
Vague, mostly criminal
Eugenic implications of the concept of degeneracy
Lack of a clear separation between lumpenproletariat and rest of working class
Especially clear in discussions about sex work
Depravity increasingly universal
Capitalism driving entire working class into intense poverty
Engels hoped socialist movement would save working class from degeneracy
The Bourgeois Family¶
Throughout industrialization, new bourgeois family narrowed to nuclear form
Used to include extended family, servants/slaves, etc.
Commitment to romantic love over politics
Based on accumulation, expansion of private wealth, capital
New family form is hypocritical
Celebrates chastity and monogamy, but functionally only for women
Household lost its “public character”
Household used to be center of production
When production moved to factories, public/private divide was created, and households became private
Engels thought working class family = no property = no male domination
Thought poverty made everything equal between men and women
Pretty oblivious to actual gender dynamics of working class, which became big points of discussion later in the socialist movement
Marx’s and Engels’s Family Abolition¶
Capitalism was doing two things at once in this era:
Destroying kinship ties between working class
Creating new bourgeois family form
Marx and Engels stated that bourgeois family is based on capital, will disappear with abolition of private property
Critiques of bourgeois society
Dissolving of feudal relations, restructuring of society to encourage and accommodate the accumulation of capital
Combined understanding of new market dynamics and social institutions
Family abolition as necessary aspect and inevitable result of the abolition of bourgeois society (capitalism)
Marx & Engels believed communists do not need to directly challenge structure of the family
Proudhon defended dignity of peasant family
Fourier called for direct attack on family as primary communist task
After the Family, Heterosexual Monogamy¶
After abolition of bourgeois society, family, property...
Engels imagined only “true heterosexual monogamy” based on mutual affection
Believed sex work would end
Marx and Engels expressed contempt for homosexual liberation and Fourier’s vision of sexual freedom
Quotes¶
"Marx argues that [human] alienation finds its roots in the material relations of society, linking criticism and revolutionary action. Understanding this earthly family, as a social institution of class society and as a form of human alienation, requires our commitment to this family’s destruction.
“Marx is intertwining two points crucial for thinking critically about the family. First, institutions of class society such as the family are rooted in a material history of the alienated social relations of class society. Second, fully understanding this history demands of us their revolutionary abolition.” (pp. 61)
“Engels rightfully doubts the bourgeois reformers and early social workers attempting to implement various efforts to strengthen the working-class family to address the crisis of social reproduction. Social reformers of his day widely believed that the adoption of bourgeois moralism by the working class, including some closer semblance of the bourgeois family, would provide the necessary antidote to poor health conditions. These advocates imagined the norms of the bourgeois family could save the working class. Marx and Engels rejected such a solution, both on the grounds that it did not address the root causes in industrial employment and that bourgeois moralism was always a sham. They argue that the defeat of the capitalist class and the winning of socialism was the only way out.” (pp. 63-64)
“The bourgeois family was a vehicle for amassing and maintaining wealth. The family was made coherent by property ownership, as well as acting as a form of property of their own. Children belonged to their parents, as wives belonged to their husbands.” (pp. 70)