Nasser Paydar August 2000
The emergence of the family and the course of its evolution like any other social phenomenon have a history of their own; however, examining that history is not our focus here. The discussion concerns the contemporary family as a component of the civil and legal fabric of capitalism, the role this type of family plays in reproducing the order of wage slavery, and the nature of love, attachments, and familial affections under the dominance of the capitalist mode of production.
No social phenomenon can be examined without reference to the society’s overarching economic force and without delving into the intrinsic, organic relationship between the two. The relationship between labour and capital or, in other words, the exploitation of labour by capital constitutes the dominant economic force of the contemporary world; it is a relationship in which all of society’s political, civil, and legal institutions are immersed and from which they derive their substance. Any judgment regarding the modern family that fails to address the rationale for its survival and its role in reproducing the wage-labour process serves only to distort reality in favour of capital and to the detriment of capitalism’s wage slaves.
The existing family is an institution wherein exploitation, inequality, humiliation, human self-alienation and indeed all the economic and social phenomena of capitalist society manifest as a culture or a natural way of life and are thereby produced and reproduced. This is a general principle applicable to the entire capitalist world; its scope is by no means limited to less developed capitalist nations or societies labouring under the yoke of naked capitalist dictatorship. Even in the world’s “most democratic” countries, the prevailing family structure serves as a veil concealing the system’s intense exploitation, deprivation, and crimes or, to put it another way, as an instrument for its cultural and moral justification. Across the capitalist world, insofar as the working class and the downtrodden masses are concerned, the conventional family of today is generally characterized by the following shared features:
1. It is an institution for the cost-free rearing of the labour force required by capital. This is one of the most significant and routine functions the family performs within any capitalist society. Individuals acting as parents within the institutional framework of the family are compelled willingly and with a profound sense of human responsibility to devote a significant portion of the meagre value of their own plundered labour to rearing the workforce required by capital! Love, affection, and human bonds are effectively transformed into a vehicle for capital to subject workers’ labour to even more intense and brutal exploitation.
On the surface, the situation appears entirely ordinary, manifesting as a completely conventional human relationship. People reproduce and following the ways of their forebears throughout history or indeed acting upon a trait shared by all living beings they feed and raise their children. At this level, not only is there nothing strange or unusual to be seen, nor any sense of encroachment upon anyone’s rights, but on the contrary any perspective that questions or even criticizes this practice elicits general astonishment. But this is merely the outward appearance of the matter. This common and natural human phenomenon does not unfold in a vacuum; rather, it takes place in the real world, dominated by the relations of wage labour. Parents responsible for procreating and raising children are neither free individuals who control their own destinies nor masters of the fruits of their own labour. Their act of caring for and rearing children is not a free choice made to ensure the survival of free human existence or to sustain a life based on the united, equal, and free participation of citizens. Instead, they are wage labourers for capital, producing and raising generation after generation capital’s reserve army of labour. Their share of the social product is determined by the “iron law of wages,” and their procreation, child-rearing, and the life destinies of both them and their children are all subordinate to the imperatives of profitability and the reproduction of capital. The contemporary family serves as a cell within the heterogeneous and contradictory organism of the capitalist order, playing a specific role: institutionalizing these relations and presenting them as a natural, civilized norm. To grasp this function concretely, we will illustrate its actual manifestation in the current capitalist world through specific examples, examining two distinct and somewhat different cases from different corners of this system.
The first example is Swedish society a tiny segment of the capitalist world where the working class has succeeded in imposing certain reformist demands on the capitalist class and mitigating the pressures of capitalist exploitation compared to workers in other countries. Here, the bourgeois state claws back roughly half of the workers’ official wages that themselves represent only a small fraction of the value they produce in the form of taxes, daycare fees, medical expenses, and the like; it uses these funds to finance education, healthcare, so-called public services, and, ultimately, the costs of the state bureaucracy. The entire outlay required to raise Sweden’s 2.15 million children and youths (1) and usher them into the capitalist labour market is funded in its entirety from that very portion of the workers’ labour that is paid out as wages or from the taxes they pay. If we add the costs of nutrition and other living expenses for the child and adolescent population which are likewise covered by the paid portion of labour, or workers’ wages to the aforementioned items, we readily see that every member of the working class devotes more than half of their annual wage solely to rearing the labour force required by social capital. The capitalist system conceals this entire encroachment and brutality within the confines of the existing family structure, shielding it from public scrutiny and critique by cloaking it in the guise of natural human bonds or emotional relationships.
There is no doubt that love, affection, and the mutual sense of responsibility among individuals such as the deep self-sacrifice and moral commitment between parents and children are cherished aspects of human life; however, the issue at hand concerns the specific social content and burden that capital, utilizing the family as a vehicle, imposes upon these natural human interactions and bonds. This social burden represents the very levers and mechanisms that intensify the exploitation of labour, deepen human alienation from the fruits of one’s own work, and cement the yoke of wage slavery upon the working class. The capitalist system demands that the individual who sells their labour power and whose surplus labour serves as the source of capital’s vitality, profit, and self-expansion fulfil their parental duty by bearing the full cost of producing and rearing the bourgeoisie’s reserve army of labour; in doing so, they effectively dissolve their own existence for the sake of the capitalist class’s profit-seeking and the expansion of social capital accumulation. Even Swedish working-class parents living in a society where children have secured greater social rights than those in many other parts of the contemporary world are compelled by weighty family responsibilities to return at least half of their annual wages to the bourgeoisie.
The second example is Iranian capitalist society a society where the masses of workers and the downtrodden, much like the majority of the global working class, are deprived of even the most basic leisure and the right to a dignified human existence. Here, the family is not merely an institution for the free rearing of the army or a reserve of labour for capitalism; rather, it is an integral part of the factory system itself, wherein half of society’s workforce women labour entirely without wages, and indeed without any human rights, working completely for free for the capitalist class. The role of the family in such countries is not limited to this alone. Here, the slave-like labour of children for capital and the ruthless exploitation of the child population are cloaked in the guise of custom, religious law, and “humanity.” Within the logic of capital, these children possess no rights whatsoever! They are regarded as subjects of an island known as the “family,” an entity expected to raise them to the age of labour-power sale using the meagre wages of its members; yet, because the family besieged by the coercion and yoke of capitalist exploitation cannot adequately nourish them, they are inevitably faced with a choice: either perish or sell their child labour in the damp, soul-crushing dungeons of carpet-weaving workshops or medieval-style brick kilns to help cover the family’s living expenses. In Iran and in a multitude of similar nations the family serves as a tool in the hands of the bourgeoisie for the slaughter of children and their sacrifice at the altar of maximizing capitalist profit.
In a great many capitalist countries, the extensive hours women spend on domestic labour within the “warm family hearth” constitute a significant portion of the process by which social capital consumes the labour power of the working class as a whole. Driven by the lethal blows of hunger, poverty, and all-encompassing social deprivation, workers are compelled rather than purchasing basic necessities to rely on the continuous physical and mental exhaustion of themselves to secure these essentials; in doing so, they surrender vast amounts of labour time, gratis, to the cesspool of capitalist profit-seeking. Under the pressure of poverty, workers never set foot in a restaurant, as the cost of a single meal out for themselves, their spouses, and their children would devour more than half their monthly wages. Consequently, the tasks of cooking and food preparation must be carried out entirely and perpetually within the confines of the home. There are no public laundries free or otherwise available in society, and the overwhelming majority of workers do not own washing machines; thus, they are inevitably forced to dedicate a significant amount of labour time to washing their own and their children’s clothes. A segment of the working-class population living on the outskirts of large and small cities and in the vast majority of villages lacks piped water, forcing individuals to travel long distances to secure their daily supply of drinking water. But this task requires a significant portion of the workday. Home repairs and in many instances, the construction of housing units or mere shacks lacking water and electricity are carried out using the workers’ own unpaid labour. In many regions, cooking and heating the home much like in the distant past depends on gathering firewood and foliage, a task requiring hours of labour. Were we to itemize the full range of such tasks, we would arrive at an extensive list; completing them all within a single day would likely require the equivalent of two standard workdays in the capitalist world. In Iran and similar societies, this entire volume of labour which serves as a prerequisite for maximizing capitalist profit is continuously performed as unpaid domestic work within the confines of the home by workers, predominantly women; the bourgeois state, through the institution of the family, cloaks the realization of this unpaid labour and its contribution to capitalist profit in the guise of “civilization.”
Regarding the role of the family in rearing capital’s reserve army of labour, there are palpable differences here compared to the aforementioned countries differences that warrant deep reflection on how the burden of rightlessness and capitalist exploitation is shifted onto the shoulders of the working class. Based on statistics from the year 1375 (1996–97), the number of children under the age of five in Iranian society cared for by their mothers exceeded seven million. Had the rearing of these children been undertaken by daycares and collective childcare centres, the cost even excluding expenses for food, clothing, and housing would have amounted to approximately 700 billion tomans per month, or 8,400 billion tomans annually. This sum is equivalent to the average annual wages of 14 million workers. (2) Iranian capitalism adds this entire amount to its annual profits by offloading the burden of child-rearing onto mothers; it then sanctifies this ruthless exploitation through the institution of the existing family, stamping it with the label of “the routine, humane duty of parents toward their children.”
As we shall demonstrate later, the role of the contemporary family in masking the intensified pressure of capital on workers’ living standards is not limited to what has been discussed so far; yet, even this much suffices to grasp the secret behind the sanctity accorded to the family within bourgeois norms. It is hardly surprising that the weaker the labour movement in these countries and the feebler the workers’ offensive against capitalist exploitation and disenfranchisement the more resilient the fabric of the existing family becomes, and the more vociferously the bourgeoisie sanctifies its sanctity. The contemporary family in Swedish society differs from the current Iranian family to the same extent that the degree of capitalist exploitation and disenfranchisement weighing upon workers differs between the two. Wherever the force of workers’ protest has succeeded in compelling the bourgeoisie to concede even a modest level of basic labour demands, the family’s function of exerting pressure on behalf of capital has been altered; conversely, where the labour movement has failed to exert such power, the family has fully retained its role as a fundamental instrument for intensifying capitalist oppression and the deprivation of workers’ rights.
2. The family is an effective tactic of capitalism in imposing the cost of taking care of the elderly, disabled and elderly people on the shoulders of children or even relatives and distant or close family members. This phenomenon is especially widespread in societies where the labour movement under dictatorial pressure and capital suffocation has not been able to play a decisive role in reducing the intensity of capitalist exploitation. In the society of Iran, in 1996, there were nearly four million people over 60 years old and at retirement age. (3) Perhaps half of this population was unemployed, without any kind of social insurance, drug and treatment insurance, or stable economic support for their livelihood. The cost of food, shelter, treatment and other life needs of this huge amount falls on the shoulders of their workers’ children. Here too, the family is used to justify capitalist injustice and a vessel to transmit the pressure of this injustice.
3. The existing family serves as a deceptive human veneer for the hideous form of private property. Within the contemporary family, the principle of the “Self” the notion that everything must originate with me or that the lives of others are merely subordinate to my own vital interests finds the ideal environment in which to take root and flourish. Loving one’s own child while remaining indifferent to the fate of others; dreaming of one’s own children’s advancement and their surpassing of the world’s other children; feeling responsible for the food and clothing of one’s own offspring while remaining irresponsible regarding the life and death of other children; caring for family kin while remaining unconcerned about the well-being of all other human beings these and hundreds of other such sinister moral and emotional phenomena, all of which spring from the very heart of commodity-based economic relations and capitalist production, don the cloak of virtue within the sanctified confines of the existing family, thereby being cleansed of their inherent, inhumane ugliness. Some defenders of the status quo and proponents of the current family structure might shrug and say, “No, that is not the case! We are altruistic people who, while believing in the sanctity of the family, deeply care about all human beings on earth.” While there is certainly no doubt about the existence of self-sacrificing and altruistic individuals across the globe, under the dominance of values and ethical standards rooted in the capitalist system, such behaviour remains the exception rather than the rule. Some of these very individuals would be willing to abandon dozens of other people to the flames leaving them to perish simply to save their own child from the slightest harm in a disaster, such as a fire. The contemporary family internalizes and perpetuates the elements of private property specifically capitalist private property manifesting them as social, ethical, and cultural values; it then relies on these standards and foundations to reinforce the very material and economic roots from which they spring.
4. The capitalist system strips the concept of love between a man and a woman of its essential human character, transforming the family an institution of shared life between a couple into a locus for the distortion and perversion of genuine human love. Even the purest and most sincere unions are not immune to the characteristics of a commodity economy under the sway of this system. Greater wealth, higher academic credentials, superior physical beauty and attractiveness, a more influential administrative position, and ultimately greater social renown and prestige determine the dominant criteria for selecting a spouse and establishing a shared family life. Consequently, the toxic culture stemming from commodity production dissolves the very fabric of the family and the essence of love between man and woman. Individuals do not forge bonds of shared life based on free, unfeigned human affection or through a natural choice devoid of need and opportunism but rather “hunt” one another out of necessity and helplessness, in a manner akin to a commercial transaction. In parts of the capitalist world where poverty, hunger, and destitution run rampant, forming a family often amounts to a form of slave-like sale of a woman to a man. Here, love, affection, and human sentiment are the least valuable commodities on the market. Instead of schooling and study, a nine-year-old girl forced by coercion and intimidation, yet under the guise of marriage and family formation is surrendered to the ruthless clutches of a man’s sexual lust. Within the “sacred sanctuary” of such families, concepts like choice, freedom, and genuine human inclination are regarded as the most profane of notions. A significant portion of marriages and marital life in these countries must be regarded as a dark human tragedy. Total subjugation, boundless degradation, the absolute denial of any freedom, and the complete stripping of a woman’s agency characterize the natural course of life within the “sacred family units” of these societies. Human affections and emotions play no role whatsoever in the formation of these families; instead, the true dynamics of the couple’s shared life are defined solely by necessity, duress, and the terror of death or starvation. In many of these countries, this phenomenon is not an exception but the general rule governing family formation. The pressures of exploitation and deprivation compounded by capitalism’s encroachment upon human rights and freedoms mean that marriages are generally not entered into based on genuine individual freedom and choice, but rather under the duress of necessity and coercion. In some instances, the marriage is not based on any prior acquaintance between the couple; instead, it is the parents or sometimes even distant or close relatives who dictate the terms of their shared life. Even more appalling is the fact that the opposition of the prospective partners plays no role in halting or preventing the marriage; just as, in many instances, the burning love and profound devotion between a young man and woman fail to lead to a shared life when faced with the pressure of opposition from parents or others. These are common phenomena of marital life in capitalist societies, occurring under the pressure of the dictatorship and the denial of rights inherent to capitalism. But even setting aside the prevailing norms of family formation or the criteria and foundations of marriage in this sector of the capitalist world, the fact remains that even in the most advanced capitalist societies the double exploitation and escalating deprivation of women find civil, cultural, and legal sanction within the existing family structure. In a system where individuals derive their identity and legal standing primarily as sellers of labour power, whenever a man’s labour for whatever reason might cause the profit curve to tick slightly upward, the woman is relegated to a secondary position; and a woman who finds herself in such a situation is treated as a second-class human being in the courts of religious law, social custom, and capitalist civil order. In her marital life, too, she maintains her position as the owner of a “lower-value commodity” vis-à-vis a spouse who possesses a “more marketable commodity,” and within a family structure aligned with the capitalist mode of production she is relegated to the status of a second-class human being. Naturally, the level of struggle waged by the labour movement and the balance of power between labour and capital exert significant pressure on these dynamics and on the role the family plays in reflecting them. The greater the workers’ class organization and the more advanced their struggle, the more capital’s ability to employ medieval or even pre-medieval traditions, laws, and customs to transform the family into a site of double exploitation and the disenfranchisement of women is curtailed; conversely, the more workers’ struggles are suppressed, the greater the role the family plays in stripping women of their social and human rights.
5. In many countries, the capitalist system has harmonized the most backward and archaic traditions stemming from earlier modes of production with the imperatives of its own expansion and domination, utilizing them as levers to perpetuate its own survival. Patriarchy, the absolute lack of rights for women, and the dictatorial dominance of parents particularly fathers over their children which characterize family life across vast swathes of the capitalist world are among these phenomena. When capital, aiming to intensify the exploitation of workers, strips the working class of all freedoms and social rights; when women and children are deprived of any form of human self-expression in society; and when capital sacrifices the potential for human self-development on the altar of profitability and ever-increasing profits, it is only natural that the family itself transforms into a framework for enforcing patriarchy and the unconditional domination of parents over children. In these societies, religion and all the decayed superstructures of bygone eras of barbarism find free rein to dominate and dictate within the family. A woman’s “skilful performance of wifely duties” is interpreted as her greatest revolutionary act! The stifling atmosphere and dictatorship of capital which dominate the lives of workers and the downtrodden permeate the entire fabric of human social existence, ultimately dissolving internal family relationships into that same oppressive mold. While parents may make the most extreme sacrifices for their children, they simultaneously impose a dictatorial dominance over them. A child’s free development is severely stifled under the pressure of patriarchal culture itself a reflection of the disenfranchisement inherent in the capitalist system and their agency, freedom of choice, and liberty of action all essential for the flourishing of intellect and personality and the growth of creativity are grievously impaired.
We reiterate that the family is neither the originator, creator, nor primary guardian of any of these social functions. They all emerged historically from modes of production rooted in exploitation, class divisions, and private property; under current conditions, it is the capitalist system that driven by the imperatives of its own reproduction preserves and manipulates them or modifies them under the pressure of workers’ struggles. What we emphasize is that, within the dominion of the capitalist system, the family serves as the legal and civil scaffolding for these functions, or as an instrument for the cultural and legal justification of this double exploitation of women. In this context, the family assumes the very same role performed by any other institution dedicated to maintaining the social order and stability of capital.
In the view of sociologists, whether theist or atheist the family is the locus of pure love between husband and wife and the wellspring of the most tender human emotions. They point to the deep, self-sacrificing emotional bonds parents share with their children bonds they believe stem from the very existence of the family unit, intensifying as the family structure becomes more solid and enduring. But this sociological perspective is highly idealistic and illusory. The mutual affections and behaviours of family members and the nature of the family itself are essentially a reflection of the material foundations of their social lives. A simple observation reveals that the emotions and attachments within poor families whether working-class or otherwise, particularly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America appear far more intense and profound than those found in other social classes, or even among Western European workers. Why is this the case? Naturally, the matter is entirely rooted in the individuals’ material living conditions; poverty, hunger, and the lack of basic necessities or social welfare transform parents into the child’s sole source of support for survival and life itself. Parents must somehow bridge the gap filling the void left by the lack of simple nutrition, clothing, hygiene, and safe drinking water; the absence of toys and childcare; the lack of medical care and medication; the absence of suitable, warm housing; and the lack of all essential living necessities by staking their very lives and sacrificing their own sleep, food, and physical and mental well-being. In the course of this act of self-sacrifice or rather, this desperate, harrowing self-depletion, which is rooted entirely in exploitation, oppression, and class-based deprivation parents (and especially mothers, who must endure the compounded capitalist exploitation and disenfranchisement alongside the horrific burden of patriarchy) naturally develop an overwhelming, almost frenzied sense of pity and compassion for their children. They spend every moment of their lives in a state of anxiety regarding their children’s health, survival, and future; for, under the crushing weight of poverty and the total absence of social support, these children are constantly threatened by disease, death, and a myriad of other misfortunes. Due to malnutrition, a lack of hygiene and medical care, and polluted living environments, the child is perpetually ill and faces the constant threat of death. For most of the year, the mother is compelled to stay awake from nightfall until dawn, watching over her child. Every moment of her existence is defined by fear, solicitude, anxiety, and a sense of threat. In other words, she pours her life drop by drop into the life of her child, effectively channelling her entire personality and human essence into acts of compassion toward that child. The reflection of such maternal or paternal sacrifices and care manifests in the children’s minds and personalities as intense, profound emotional attachments. A son or daughter who whether in sickness or health has grown up without any social safety net, sheltered solely by a mother’s protective care and nurtured by her sacrifices and affection, inevitably harbours a heart filled with compassion for that mother. Furthermore, under the crushing weight of widespread economic and social destitution, that child is in turn compelled to repay the parents’ efforts in the very same manner. In their old age, the parents are unemployed and bereft of any economic or social support; the assistance provided by their children becomes their sole lifeline during their final years. It is only natural for a child who owes their very existence to the compassion and self-sacrifice of their parents, and who has experienced the tangible reality of this devotion throughout every moment of their life as an integral part of their own growth and maturation to feel indebted to them and to regard coming to their aid as essential to their own inner peace. The fervent flames of love, mutual attachment, and affection along with all the standards and values of self-sacrifice do not originate from some metaphysical realm or an abstract “nowhere”; rather, they spring directly from the material conditions of human life and labour, from the depths of necessity, helplessness, and compulsion. Naturally, the formal and quantitative differences among the constituent elements of these living conditions across various sectors of the capitalist world give rise to variations in the composition of these emotions, as well as in their modes of expression and their intensity. Where the working class, through years of struggle, has wrested a minimum of essential living standards and welfare provisions from the bourgeoisie thereby more or less diminishing the economic dependence of children on parents and vice versa the content and form of their mutual affections have undergone a tangible transformation. The reverse holds true in societies where the working masses and the downtrodden bear the escalating and compounded burdens of exploitation, oppression, and the disenfranchisement inherent in wage slavery. In such countries, the extreme economic interdependence of family members breeds a volatile blend of intense emotions a phenomenon that is highly sanctified and extolled within the literature of class society. Emotions, sentiments, and attachments that despite their profoundly human nature spring not from freedom, nor from the life of a free individual, nor from a state of self-sufficiency and relationships grounded therein, but rather from the depths of human poverty, need, captivity, and helplessness. These are emotions and attachments that are inherently human and worthy of praise, but they well up from the depths of deeply unequal and inhumane material living conditions; for humanity to truly restore their human essence, a fundamental transformation of their material foundation is required.
Ideological representatives of capitalism particularly in societies crushed by the brutal and naked dictatorship of capital cite these acts of self-sacrifice and these emotions to emphasize the role of the existing family as the breeding ground for such sentiments. Through this, they demagogically attempt to obscure the role the current family plays in intensifying and deepening the capitalist exploitation of labour.
The Family in the Future
In examining the place of the family within the capitalist system, one must ask: what fate awaits the existing family structure once capitalism is dismantled? When the capitalist mode of production gives way to a system where all human beings participate freely, directly, and equally in shaping the destiny of labour and social production and when private property and wage labour vanish from human life the very foundation of the existing family will undergo a radical transformation. At that juncture, the responsibility for raising and caring for children will rest entirely with society and specialized council-based institutions. Domestic labour will disappear; education at all levels from preschool through the final stages of schooling along with the supervision, care, healthcare, and recreation of children and youth, will all be integrated into the natural flow of human activity as part of citizens’ voluntary socialist labour. Similarly, meeting the material and spiritual needs of the elderly and the infirm, as well as their care, will become a standard function of councils and specialized social institutions, handled in the best possible manner. The family, as an economic unit, loses its reason for existence. Men and women become equals in every respect. As parents, they bear no obligation to resolve their children’s economic difficulties; indeed, any role they play in their children’s upbringing and care becomes a form of voluntary socialist activity. Even while still in the womb regardless of which mother gives birth to them children are regarded as citizens whose birth is celebrated by the entire socialist society, which provides all necessary resources to unlock a life of communist abundance and self-sufficiency. A child is an equal citizen of society even before birth, and parents bear no greater responsibility for the child’s care, upbringing, and physical or intellectual development than any other citizen. Maternal affection, the mother’s embrace, and her special love are transformed into elements of society’s psychological nurturing resources, and the free development of each child becomes the condition for the free development of every human being in the new society. Preoccupations cantered on “my child” and their specific destiny along with any other form of possessiveness regarding children will give way, much like private ownership in other economic and social spheres, to beautiful new sentiments embracing all the young ones of society. Instead of staring fixedly at their own child’s future with a constricted heart and a narrow, self-centred gaze or dehumanizing their human passion by striving to set their child apart and secure a privileged life for them over other parents will come to view all the community’s children as their own. The abolition of private property in the economic realm leads to the end of the culture of ownership over children and the dissolution of mindsets and emotions rooted in private property; from the material conditions of this new way of life itself the embodiment of humanity’s united, egalitarian struggle for a free, prosperous, and equal existence for all the purest, most beautiful, and most tender human emotions will begin to flourish. Interactions between parents and children are cleansed of any taint of commercialism, dependency, discrimination, humiliation, or legal disparity; reliance on need gives way to self-sufficiency. The element of pity which echoes human helplessness, oppression, victimization, and the indignity and neediness inherent in mere survival is purged from human life, replaced by solidarity, genuine bonding, and free, humane compassion.
Socialism replaces the current form of the family with such a pure, ethical human relationship, thereby eradicating the social roots of corruption, prostitution, and destitution. Prostitution is the commodification of the self; as long as individuals consent to live with others out of economic necessity or a sense of inferiority regarding what others possess but they lack as long as occupation, credentials, and social status dictate the motives for a shared life, and as long as women are viewed merely as instruments for sexual gratification or domestic labour prostitution remains a natural, ubiquitous feature of human life, even within seemingly respectable existence. This holds true regardless of the formal, conventional forms of prostitution found in capitalist society.
By bringing about the withering away of domestic labour, socialism liberates the family from the framework that erodes individuals physically and mentally, transforming family life into a centre for leisure and voluntary activity aligned with the requirements for personal flourishing and physical and intellectual development. In a socialist civilization, the formation of a family and marital life is cleansed of all the sordid foundations and criteria of the commodity economy. It is not the glitter of a career, academic credentials, wealth, or a lavish lifestyle that draws men and women together; rather, the foundation of this new life is a free bond rooted in unity, shared ideals, and mutual love untainted by mercenary motives. Education, credentials, expertise, employment, and every other aspect of life are purged of the taint and pretence of commodification, and access to the highest level of social resources becomes a natural part of everyone’s social existence. People become equal in all spheres of life from housing and employment to clothing, diet, essential leisure activities, and everything else and none of these factors play any role in the union of a young man and woman. Forming a family strip away any trace of need, compulsion, or desperation; once these repulsive elements are cast aside, the conscious inclinations and voluntary nature of shared life reveal themselves with utter clarity. Under socialism, the family as it currently exists an institution for unpaid labour, the rearing of a reserve army of labour, and the shouldering of the burden of caring for the elderly will cease to exist; for, fundamentally, there is no capital, and no one sells their labour power to any individual, institution, or state.
Faced with these arguments, bourgeois thinkers will undoubtedly take the moral high ground and proclaim that the dissolution of the existing family structure spells the end of morality and the destruction of the emotional bonds between parents and children. In their view, morality and human emotional ties are measured solely by the yardstick of private property and the exigencies arising from it. They believe that for human beings to share intimacy, closeness, and affection, there must be an underlying element of commercial, proprietary exchange between them otherwise, they would feel nothing for one another! The profit-obsessed bourgeois mind cannot grasp the human criteria of emotion, sentiment, and morality. They fail to comprehend that socialism by abolishing the state, eliminating all bureaucratic and administrative relations, and entrusting an active, committed role in managing society to every single citizen will transform society as a whole into a warm haven, brimming with the purest and most beautiful forms of human affection. Self-sacrifice, friendship, sincerity, intimacy, and love will break free from the narrow confines of family ties and expand into a realm of free human interaction among all people.
Footnotes:
1. Statistical Yearbook of Sweden (*Statistisk årsbok*), 1999;
2. *Sima-ye Sosialism* (The Face of Socialism), Issue No. 8;
3. Statistical Yearbook of the Islamic Regime 1375 (Year 1996);