In this series, we’ve seen economic evils planned for America by the designers and implementers of a socialist society. In their plans we lose the right to own a home, a car, or anything nice. With socialism we must rely on the government for our daily food, our clothes, and everything else.
This second article of the series examines what a fully-implemented socialism intends to do to the structure of the family. It intends to invalidate the concept of family and marriage, completely changing the nature of society.
Socialism in review
Let’s recall the definition of socialism being used in this series. According to one dictionary, socialism is:
- a theory or system of social organization in which the means of production and distribution of goods are owned and controlled collectively or by the government.
- (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.[1]
As detailed in the first article of this series, this definition has these implications.
- Individuals may not own any productive property.
- The government is the de-facto owner of practically everything.
- The intent is to transform human character.
Socialism amounts to a religion, a political theory, and an economic theory, all rolled into one.
Socialism: The family is obsolete
According to socialists, taking our property isn’t enough. We must become an entirely different country, with new values and ideals. This is revealed in the words of Alexandra Kollontai, a champion of Marxist feminism and leader in family issues for Lenin’s Russia.
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.[2]
Why worry about what a Soviet functionary said a century ago? Because with socialism there is really nothing new. Neither does anything become obsolete. What has been tried before will come around again. Think of it as a warning from history. Her words summarize these intentions.
Break the bonds between parent and child. According to Kollontai,
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.[3]
Defying our natural attachment to our children (Isaiah 49:15), parents are to be aloof towards them. A mother must birth the child, but must also then be willing to turn it over to state care. According to modern American socialists,
From a young age children will be given the choice to leave the family home and live in social homes, or on their own, with their food and home being guaranteed for free. In communism, children will be allowed to do anything which does not harm themselves or others; and they will be free to do more risky things from a much younger age than they are now, as soon as they demonstrate they have the rational capacity to take decisions. No arbitrary restrictions, indoctrination nor censorship would take place.[4]
In short, the parents will be robbed of the affection, and even of contact with, their own children. Their children will hardly know them.
Those aren’t your children any more. Revisiting what Kollontai wrote,
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.[5]
The state doesn’t want the parents to be in the child raising process. The parents procreate, but the government provides the food, the clothes, the shelter, and the child’s education. The state will accommodate those “those parents who desire to participate in the education of their children,”[6] but can you guess who will win out if the parents and state differ on what the child is learning.
The family must go because it resists the state. According to Kollontai, once the parents no longer provide for the child, nor teach the child, why is there a family at all?
What responsibilities are left to the parents, when they no longer have to take charge of upbringing and education?… 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.[7]
The state’s problem with families is how they are loyal to themselves. Their youth learn to question the world around them according to their parents’ shaping. According to socialist activists, this is a major crime against humanity.
Today, the main backwards role the family plays is the oppression of children, who are subjected to a tyranny of the parents and denied the basic rights which should belong to every human, most importantly the right of free development of the personality.[8]
In the parents’ place, the state will impose a uniform shaping of personality. It prefers clones raised in a values factory.
A committed marital relationship isn’t needed. According to Kollontai, the bond between husband and wife must also change. Repeating her earlier quote:
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.[9]
Relationships are encouraged, but committed ones are not.
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.[10]
To clarify, the man and woman are to be free to create, and dissolve, relationships as their emotions and desires take them. Don’t let the possibility of children slow you down, for the state is there to cover for you. From Frederick Engels, one of Marx’s buddies:
In any case, therefore, the position of men will be very much altered. But the position of women, of all women, also undergoes significant change. With the transfer of the means of production into common ownership, the single family ceases to be the economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is transformed into a social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public affair; society looks after all children alike, whether they are legitimate or not. This removes all the anxiety about the “consequences,” which today is the most essential social – moral as well as economic – factor that prevents a girl from giving herself completely to the man she loves. Will not that suffice to bring about the gradual growth of unconstrained sexual intercourse and with it a more tolerant public opinion in regard to a maiden’s honor and a woman’s shame? And, finally, have we not seen that in the modern world monogamy and prostitution are indeed contradictions, but inseparable contradictions, poles of the same state of society? Can prostitution disappear without dragging monogamy with it into the abyss?
Here a new element comes into play, an element which, at the time when monogamy was developing, existed at most in germ: individual sex-love.[11]
In short, sex without consequences, the so-called “free love.” Soviet Russia had a bout with that.
As soon as the communists took power in 1917 in Russia, they began to systematically enact policies that followed the doctrines of Karl Marx. Their dream of a materialistic utopia could be attained “only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions,” as Marx had written in the “Communist Manifesto.” That included not only confiscating “means of production,” like factories and land, but also disintegrating the institution of the family. Communists saw commitment to family as an obstacle to people’s devotion to the pursuit of their utopia. Instead, people were to live in “free unions,” mating at will. [12]
The idea caught on too well, and the Soviets rapidly backtracked.
To reverse a society-wide disaster, by 1936 the Soviet Union abandoned the “free love” ideology and returned to pro-family policies, outlawing abortion, requiring substantial fees for a divorce, imposing higher penalties for abandoning a family, and encouraging women to have more children.
“The idea that the state would assume the functions of the family was abandoned,” Goldman wrote.[13]
Socialism creates a selfish, shallow, mean-spirited society. People don’t raise children to get rich. With love they pour youth and fortune into their children, in hopes of them becoming wise, diligent, and compassionate adults.
However, the new socialist world will have none of that. As is their want, the state knows best, and how can mere untrained people be trusted to raise a baby? For example, the state of Oregon wants to come between the parents and the child:
If Oregon Governor Kate Brown has her way, the Beaver State will become the first to require universal home visits for newborn children in the care of their own parents…. While it’s not clear whether either of these programs would be mandatory, the use of the term “universal” suggests that they would. It’s frightening to think about what would happen to parents who refuse such visits.[14]
If the socialists get to fulfill their plans, what are some consequences?
- Parents are taught to not have children, or not care about them if they “make a mistake.” The state orphanage will raise them. This option, and encouraging this option, reinforces selfishness.
- Young adults will stay lazy and careless. Many people don’t learn of diligence and hard work until they find themselves responsible to provide for those in a household.
- There isn’t a place to learn love, intimacy, compassion or commitment. If you’re having relationship difficulties, it is easy to run away. There isn’t a venue for character building. There also isn’t a way to build loyalty, a giving love. There is no need for honesty, and certainly no reason to be a hero.
- There will be even fewer children than now. If it is hard to birth children, and care for them through their infancy, and then soon enough the state grabs them, then what is the payoff? Why bother with the pain in the first place?
- The few children that there are will grow up hard-boiled. There will be nobody to comfort them about hurts or the unexpected. They’ll learn society’s rules from the gangs. They will be aloof. From what wellspring will come love or compassion?
What’s next?
The third article in this series describes how a fully-empowered socialism destroys the freedom of religion. Socialism and Christianity are mortal enemies, so religion and morals must be ridiculed and banished by every means.
Endnotes
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socialism (n.d.), Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary, 2010, https://www.thefreedictionary.com/socialism ↑
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Kollontai, Alexandra, Communism and the Family, published in The Worker, 1920, collected in Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai, Allison & Busby, 1977, found at https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm ↑
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Ibid. ↑
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Meghany, The communist abolition of the family, Destroy Capitalism Now! ↑
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Kollontai, Alexandra, Communism and the Family ↑
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Ibid. ↑
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Ibid. ↑
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Meghany, The communist abolition of the family, Destroy Capitalism Now! ↑
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Kollontai, Alexandra, Communism and the Family ↑
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Ibid. ↑
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Engels, Frederick, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, II. The Family, 4. The Monogamous Family, Marx/Engels Selected Works, Volume Three, October 1884, found at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02d.htm ↑
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Svab, Petr, The Failed Soviet Experiment With ‘Free Love’, https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-failed-communist-experiment-with-free-love_2242535.html ↑
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Ibid. ↑
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Bolyard, Paula, Oregon Could Become the First State to Require In-Home Surveillance of Newborn Babies, PJ Media, January 15, 2019, https://pjmedia.com/trending/oregon-could-be-the-first-state-to-require-in-home-surveillance-of-newborn-babies/ ↑