The "Abolish The Family" Canard

As it turns out, children still hate chores and school

One of my least favorite things to address with Marx and Engels is the family. It's not because I think they are wrong or I have theoretical contention. It's that other people act as though they have researched this subject when they are only familiar with a single line from the English translation of The Communist Manifesto and seemingly extrapolated their entire worldview from it.

I’ve watched this exact same argument play out a million times. It comes from people calling themselves “Marxists that have read The Origin of The Family, Private Property, and The State” but are not, have not, or both. Instead, they’ve learned terminology they employ as pedantically as possible to preserve their viewpoint that the family is evil and must be destroyed.

It's one of the most annoying things because I've read the book. I've not only read the book several times, but I've also listened to the book while exercising and driving several times. It's a fantastic book, but it never says anything close to “abolish the family.”

This entry will deviate from my typical format, requiring extensive quotations for proper context, and arguments will be presented between them.

What is “The Family”?

Before we get to anything juicy, the concept of “the family” can vary greatly depending on an individual's immediate family and personal experiences. Because of this, people become fixated on their own idealized (read: not necessarily positive or negative) version of the family, causing them to become agitated when they assume others are referring to the same ideal. This miscommunication occurs on both sides (the forbidden words), as each party often holds its own distinct definition of what constitutes a family.

In his criticism of Stirner, Marx wrote: "We make a mistake when we speak of “the family” without qualification. Historically, the bourgeoisie endows the family with the characteristics of the bourgeois family, whose ties are boredom and money." So it must be said that when Marx and Engels speak of “the family,” they mean “the character imposed upon families by the bourgeoisie, the ‘nuclear’ family.”

A nuclear family typically refers to a social unit consisting of a heterosexual couple and their dependent children living together in one household. The concept of a nuclear family gained prominence during the rise of industrialization and capitalism, though the term wouldn’t come about until the mid 20th century.

However, if the bourgeoisie’s rule and the capitalist character of contemporary society disappear, the bourgeoisie’s ability to impose ideology on the concept of the family (or indeed anything) would also disappear. Consequently, people would be free to choose the familial structure that suits them best, whether it be something resembling a nuclear family, a same-sex partnership, or even an open polyamorous conglomerate. Ultimately, all these variations could be “normal” all at once.

“Why can’t you just say you disagree with Marx and Engels?”

This particular argument began when Eddie of Midwestern Marx (which itself merits a nuanced discussion separate from this one; Eddie is pushing people to actually read what Marx said and therefore must be given proper credit) posted the following:

People gotta read origins. Engels never says anything about abolishing the family. He just traces the different forms of the family throughout history and how they correspond to different modes of production. Sure the family form will change again with time, but there’s no need to set about “abolishing” the relationships people have with their family members.

- Eddie Lyger Smith [x]

This is factually correct. If one has read the book, one will immediately be taken aback by how dissimilar Engels’s view is to what people think his view is. Years ago, it was actually instrumental in making me a Marxist because I actually don’t hate the family. I love my family and I love the bonds we share. I love my kids, and although I have had times in my life where I was in major conflict with them, I love my parents, too.

This is a human feeling and not materialism, but before reading Marx and Engels, one is told they have radical hatred of everything a “normal” person holds dear and that following their teachings can only result in the destruction of contemporary life. This, too, is just human feeling and not materialism.

However, a user, DeliaCore, attacked Eddie’s tweet with:

Why can't you just say you disagree with Marx and Engels on this issue? Many communists of the past have

- DeliaCore [x]

Eddie’s tweet, as I said, is uncontroversial if one has read the book. He is not presenting a warped interpretation, nor is he challenging Engels. In fact, if Eddie were not confident in his knowledge (as many people who are learning Marx/Engels often are; these texts are not breezy reads), he could have been gaslit into thinking he misunderstood Engels here.

Rightfully, though, he responded:

I’ve read & taught Origins of the Family Three times now and Engels never says to abolish the family. He actually argues for a form of monogamy free from economic coercion. Can you show me where he said to abolish the family? I feel like you’re just making stuff up.

- Eddie Lyger Smith [x]

I have seen this exact nonsense play out again and again. This is an argument I have had (with “leftists” and more recently with “Marxists”) too many times to want to have it again. I expressed some of this in response to Eddie:

You're wading into an area that is super hard to make progress in. "Aufheben" was translated as "abolish" rather than "sublate" in the manifesto and kids who hate school and chores love it. The sheer number of people I've told Engles is advocating for genuine monogamy who reject if tells me how few people read this stuff. Even so, the liberal paradigm is to say if a thing is "good" or "bad" rather than investigate. Obviously, best of luck, and it's good that people are willing to fight for what was actually said.

- Peter Coffin [x]

I softly warned about the territory that came along with saying what Eddie had said, along with showing some support for having said it. My intent was not to wade into the conversation myself.

That is not how Twitter works. I don't know why I forget, but sometimes I do. DeliaCore, of course, began arguing with me because I offered even mild support for what Eddie had said. Also, I provided a condensed rationale for why Engels was not calling for people to simply opt-out of family relations (translation of the German word “aufheben” as “abolish” rather than “sublate”).

This is not okay!

"Aufheben" in German means "to lift" in the literal sense and in the sense that a law is lifted (hence, abolished). Hegel uses this double meaning as a way to communicate something being abolished (usually in form) but in other ways being elevated (usually in content) [x]

Within M&E, it is not always clear that this meaning carries over (Engels did approve the translation of it to "abolish") but it most likely does in the context of the family. The form of the family is abolished while some of its content is elevated and lifted up. [x]

So, children are raised communally, and the family as an economic unit is done away with. This allows sexual relationships to flourish in a truly private way, free from influence by the laws of the state or the pressures of the market. [x]

Engels remarks that monogamy in this context would be a more honest fulfillment of the ideals of monogamous relationships (partially to counter accusations that communists advocated for "communities of women" to be sexually available to men) [x]

He explicitly does not predict that this is the form sexual relationships necessarily have to take in a communist society. [x]

- DeliaCore

DeliaCore’s argument that Hegel uses “aufheben” to mean “abolish and replace” (and that Engels approved the translation) is to attempt to say “using sublate is the wrong word, because Engels is continuing Hegel’s use, which is “not sublate.”

I’ll quote the Marxist Encyclopedia here:

Aufheben is a German word, crucial to Hegelian and Marxist thinking, for which there is no English equivalent.

Aufheben can be translated as to sublate, to abolish, to transcend or to supersede or even “to pick up,” “to raise,” “to keep,” “to preserve,” “to end” or “to annul.” Literally and originally, aufheben meant “to pocket,” as when someone pockets your payment but continues to work for you.

Something is aufheben when it is superseded by something else. “Supersede” and “transcend” do not carry the same connotation however as “abolish,” in which the old is actually terminated and got rid of by that which supersedes it; “sublation” carries the connotation of “including” the old in the new, but is altogether too platonic and misses the sense of “abolish.”

Engels authorised the use of “abolish” in the English translation of The Communist Manifesto where it talks of the aufheben of the family; this however gives leeway to those who would simply ban the institutions of religion, or dismiss the very existence of spiritual needs. The translators of the Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right variously used “abolish” and “supersede” according to context.

Generally speaking, when reading English translations of Marx and Engels, the words “abolish,” “supersede” and “sublate” are most likely translations of aufheben, and should be understood in that sense, as something being made obsolete by means of resolving the problems that gave rise to it in some new way.

If "sublate" is not the correct word, then “supersede” most likely is. Engels’s authorization of “abolish” is even addressed here; it is met with criticism over giving leeway to an incorrect reading. “Abolition" is a conscious act rather than the result of conditions developing (particularly in contemporary usage of the word). My belief is that simply using "abolish" implies an idealist reading. The family will take on the character of the society that it exists in.

Further, the implication that I am saying Engels specifically advocates for one single type of sexuality and family is uncharitable (and likely intentional). However, he advocates for a world in which monogamy is not the product of coercion. His advocacy is not specific because he doesn't trend toward utopianism.

When I stated this, it wasn’t accepted (of course):

The word sublation was coined to describe hegel's use of the term. Hegel was an idealist. So your use of the term idealist here is very obviously incorrect. Sublate also implies a kind of simple replacement in common parlance, so I tend to avoid the term. [x]

Additionally, the family is abolished through both market forces exerting pressure and the proletariat's actions as agents of history. To deny the role of human action is feurbachian mechanical materialist and to deny the social forces weighing on those actions is idealist. [x]

- DeliaCore

In all honesty, so much of what DeliaCore is saying would be interesting and worth talking about if it were not framed in opposition to me. Obviously, a large point of Marx's dialectical materialism is to incorporate the active character of humanity. I'm well aware of this, but this person intends for me to look as if I do not know what I am talking about.

But whatever! It’s really about winning the theory competition! Congratulations!

Communal Childrearing

But at this point, we must understand what is really at play. This person, though good at using terms and justifications, does not have a genuine understanding of The Origin of The Family, Private Property, and The State (whether this is intentional or not is something we can’t know). She is interested in a fight between “the nuclear family” and a specific (utopian) idea of what the absence of it would look like.

Going back to one of DeliaCore’s tweets from earlier in the conversation, she outlines specifics, “children are raised communally, and the family as an economic unit is done away with.”

Firstly, Engels prescribed very little in the book. In fact, he was specific in noting he can not specifically say what will and won’t exist in a higher mode of production (remember, he’s the one that wrote Socialism: Utopian and Scientific):

But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love, or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences. When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual – and that will be the end of it.

- Friedrich Engels, The Origin of The Family, Private Property, and The State

Secondly, this “leftist/Marxist” view on “abolishing the family” is strikingly similar to what is expressed in works like Richard Weikart’s “Marx, Engels, and the Abolition of the Family,” published in 1994.

It should be noted that Weikart is known for writing controversial books and articles that propagandize in favor of creationism, including one arguing that Marx and Engels “biologized” social theory to come up with a “scientifically grounded socialist theory.” In his other works, he links Marx to the Democrats and Marx to Hitler through Darwin.

Maybe not the best guy for “Marxists” to share an opinion on Marxism with…

“Marx's and Engels' position, then, was a decisive move away from the naturalism of their predecessors…. Even if people had a natural bond to their children, no provision would be made for this in communist society. Whatever Engels may have conjectured about the natural affinity of humans toward stable amorous relationships in communist society, he envisioned a society in which no compulsion would interfere with relationships. Thus, theoretically, any sexual relationship between mutually consenting persons would be possible. What would not be possible would be the security of a life-long marriage.”

- Richard Weikart, “Marx, Engels, and the Abolition of the Family”

The final paragraph asserts that Marx and Engels were against any form of “family” while simultaneously attempting to handwave away Engels's talk of the “natural affinity of humans toward stable amorous relationships in a communist society.” If one read Weikart’s paper without the context of what he believes, one could easily mistake it for something written by one of these “leftists” and “Marxists” arguing for simplistically “abolishing the family.”

Thirdly, children are already raised communally. “It takes a village” is a phrase that refers to that specifically. Under capitalism, we have schools, daycare, programs like martial arts, hobbyist clubs for building robots, community centers, and many others. The problem is the capitalist character of current relations; they are not free (not even public schools; taxes pay for them), they are often not accessible, and they are often infected by ideologies ultimately intended to maintain the status quo.

That mode of communal childrearing would not be abolished; it would be sublated (or superseded). Much of what is there would likely remain, and we would see a different character develop based on the lack (or reduction) of coercion in economic relations.

from my upcoming doc, “Marx For Sale”

This is what dialectics is. An existing thing is presented with conflict. As that conflict is worked out, something new featuring elements of what was there and what conflicted with it is created. Marx’s dialectical materialism was created in part because older materialism was deterministic and did not incorporate humanity’s agency.

Her statement, “to deny the role of human action is Feurbachian mechanical materialist and to deny the social forces weighing on those actions is idealist,” is a pedantic attempt to make it seem as though I do not understand foundational aspects of Marx. And her statement, “the family is abolished through both market forces exerting pressure and the proletariat's actions as agents of history,” is to attempt to imply that I deny that the proletariat’s actions have weight in this equation.

But the next response provides all the necessary explanations for why this seems necessary to DeliaCore. It is not about the accuracy of anyone’s statements regarding theory, it is that this person associates me with people they don’t like, including Eddie. Why don’t they like those people? Because not only do they not want to destroy family ties, they want to protect them!

This whole drama spawned from discourse saying that communists need to protect the family! You can wash your hands of that and claim that our only differences are rhetorical, but you've thrown your lot in with people who want to turn back the clock to an imagined 1950.

- DeliaCore [x]

Conclusion

I recognize that dialectical change will occur to the expression of “the family,” no matter what, but I believe there will be “family” as long as there are people. Hopefully, someday there will no longer be a bourgeois concept of what a family should be, however.

Similar expressions to that of the family today could (and I believe would) remain after that paradigm shift. However, if that bears out, they would exist without coercion. The people who hypothetically exist in familial ties that resemble today's nuclear family would do so genuinely. If that situation were to come to be, that would not be “the nuclear family,” though, as it doesn’t bear the economic coercion to be in it. It would, however, be “family,” just as with other arrangements.

This is what most people allegedly want: freedom. The freedom to express things like sexuality, gender, familial ties, or whatever as one sees fit to comes along with a stipulation, though: it means other people are free to do as they see fit, as well. I say allegedly because people like this person do not. To “abolish the family” is to forbid it because, if the past is of any indication, people will choose similar arrangements as before, even without coercion.

To outline specifics as to what the family will be is utopian. To say there will be no family is as well. Note that in my guesses, I am not saying, “it will look like x.” I am saying that people want different things and will express things differently. The bourgeois character of the family, that is, the specific way(s) that a family is economically coerced to exist, will wither away. But the point is not to coerce people into a new, specific situation, but rather that the character of the family will not be bound to bourgeois rule.

Interestingly, Weikart’s paper reveals the utopian origins of this entire issue in his attempt to conflate Marx with the utopians:

Marx's first significant exposure to the concept of the abolition of the family probably came during his stay in Paris in 1843-1844, when he first imbibed communist ideas and held long discussions with numerous socialists and other radicals who congregated in the French capital. Charles Fourier's ideas played a significant role in the socialist movement in France in the 1830s and 1840s and his ideas on the family were propagated in the first volume of the Oeuvres Completes, published in 1841. Fourier advocated the replacement of monogamous marriage with a system allowing much greater latitude for sexual passions since he believed that monogamy was an institution contrary to human nature and was thus an impediment to human happiness. He also proposed that children be raised communally, so society would be one, big, harmonious family rather than fractured into competitive, squabbling family units.

Unfortunately, the prescriptive stances these “Marxists” take are ultimately a continuation of Fourier rather than Marx and Engels, who, through historical analysis that incorporated class character, criticized the form of family specific to bourgeois rule as a standard imposed on the proletariat. This can not be solved by imposing another standard.

I recognize that many who cling to “abolish the family” come from shitty familial situations. What should be changed isn’t that there can be a familial situation, though; just that anyone should be stuck with it.

Instead, what we see is an average Western leftist searching for catharsis as a means of addressing their underlying anxieties. This involves reconciling their personal desires with ideological frameworks or intellectual concepts, distorting the original intent of the theories they rely upon.