Chapter 11 - Communist Social Reproduction
Section Notes¶
The Renewed Call for Family Abolition¶
Red Decade was the high point for family abolitionist critique
Some feminists maintained their critiques of the family form through late 1970s and early 1980s
But late 1980s through early 2010s, calls for family abolition pretty much disappeared
Now emerging again in radical research
Effects of 2008 financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic
Repeated, accelerated family crises
Reemergence of family abolitionist critique: Kinderkommunismus: A Feminist Analysis of the 21st Century Family and a Communist Proposal for its Abolition by KD Griffiths and JJ Gleeson
Strategy, Rhetoric, and Revolutionary Moments¶
Critiques of family abolition from all sides
Social democrats: concerns about “family abolition” term alienating WC, making enemies
Cannot let concerns about terminology limit revolutionary imaginations
Capitalism relies on people thinking that the current way is the only real, practical way
Family abolitionists can strategically change rhetoric, but must not compromise core revolutionary positions
Periods of mass unrest = revolutionary possibilities
Utopianism and Provocation¶
Use of speculative visioning
Inspiring revolutionary imaginary
Marx and Engels against utopianism
Revolution cannot be planned in advance
Utopian socialists depend on colonial dispossession of settler frontier
No intent to overthrow capitalism
Rely on endorsement from racial capital
Fail to inspire lasting change
However, it’s still important to be able to name positive visions for a socialist future, in order to effectively inspire people to action
Not the State, Not the Wage, Not the Family¶
Current social reproduction organized by family, market, and state
Most family abolition theorists call for social reproduction in the hands of state
O’Brien disagrees
States require compulsion to work to manage activity of people removed from its decision-making capabilities
Instead, want mass organs of communist administration
Soviets, workers councils, assemblies
Qualities of Communist Social Reproduction¶
Communism
Classless society
Abolition of capitalist social relations
Unconditional access to means of survival
Collective goods, not private property
Social
Beyond public and private (fixing terror of families)
Beyond segregation and homogeneity
Shared joy, shared pleasure
Reproduction
Facilitate human flourishing
Appropriate love and care
Autonomy and dependency
Gender Freedom and Communist Social Reproduction¶
Under capitalism, sexgender freedom constrained
First under family
Then by wage labor and welfare
Opening up care options gives people more freedom to transition
Benefits for children
Addressing developmental and emotional needs
Challenging coercive gendering
Exposing children to nonatomized, heterogenous, nonsegregated society
Best system to support full human development
Quotes¶
“Revolutionary ideas can only take on mass appeal during revolutionary moments. The rest of the time, they can only gain traction among marginal and disaffected sections of society. But even when unrecognized, they speak to persistent and deep-set social contradictions, widespread dissatisfaction, and social problems with no obvious pragmatic solutions.” (pp. 187)
“Family abolition names and attempts to describe a necessary dimension of overcoming class society, the way a broader revolutionary transformation may reshape our personal lives. It is not a program nor a plan to be implemented nor a slogan to be rallied around. It is a way of naming and thinking about what a free society could mean in how we raise children, how we survive, how we love, and how we age. Family abolition is a provocation. It is not meant to enrage, though no doubt it unfortunately will. It is a call on every one of us to imagine, to debate, to think about what social forms could foster lives worth living.” (pp. 190)