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View Full Version : Why do Communist Countries Approve Of Families?



tailfins
03-11-2017, 04:58 PM
This is mainly directed at @Balu (http://www.debatepolicy.com/member.php?u=3557) , I was going to make it a private message, but decided to make it public in case other board members are interested.

I have known a number of full-fledged hammer-and-sickle Communists in my time. A curious detail has come to mind. I noticed that in Communist countries such as Vietnam, Cuba, and the former Soviet Union that families are featured in government propaganda. However, Marxism considers the family as a hindrance to women's equality. It further specifies that children should be raised by the state, with parents serving only as assistance.

Decades ago when I was searching for a wife, I met a Brazilian Music Major when visiting an old professor at the University of Missouri. That Brazilian was preparing to head home for the Summer and was busy shopping for flights home. To my surprise, she offered to let me drive her from St. Louis to Miami, making it clear that the deal had certain "benefits". During the four days that I spent with her, I learned that she and her parents were active members of the Communist Party of Brasil (PC do B). She told me that she considered families nauseatingly bourgeois. She hoped to have a child without being able to know who the father was. She warned me to take precautions if I didn't want to contribute to her effort to raise a little Communist without a father. I never forgot that and don't think I had ever met anyone so radically Marxist in my life.


Consider the following:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm


The family breaks down as more and more women go out to work. How can one talk about family life when the man and woman work different shifts, and where the wife does not even have the time to prepare a decent meal for her offspring? How can one talk of parents when the mother and father are out working all day and cannot find the time to spend even a few minutes with their children? It was quite different in the old days. The mother remained at home and occupied herself with her household duties; her children were at her side, under her watchful eye. Nowadays the working woman hastens out of the house early in the morning when the factory whistle blows. When evening comes and the whistle sounds again, she hurries home to scramble through the most pressing of her domestic tasks. Then it’s oil to work again the next morning, and she is tired from lack of sleep. For the married working woman, life is as had as the workhouse. It is not surprising therefore that family ties should loosen and the family begin to fall apart. The circumstances that held the family together no longer exist. The family is ceasing to be necessary either to its members or to the nation as a whole. The old family structure is now merely a hindrance.


The state is responsible for the upbringing of children

But even if housework disappears, you may argue, there are still the children to look after. But here too, the workers’ state will come to replace the family, society will gradually take upon itself all the tasks that before the revolution fell to the individual parents.

Balu
03-11-2017, 06:05 PM
This is mainly directed at @Balu (http://www.debatepolicy.com/member.php?u=3557) , I was going to make it a private message, but decided to make it public in case other board members are interested.

I have known a number of full-fledged hammer-and-sickle Communists in my time. A curious detail has come to mind. I noticed that in Communist countries such as Vietnam, Cuba, and the former Soviet Union that families are featured in government propaganda. However, Marxism considers the family as a hindrance to women's equality. It further specifies that children should be raised by the state, with parents serving only as assistance.

Decades ago when I was searching for a wife, I met a Brazilian Music Major when visiting an old professor at the University of Missouri. That Brazilian was preparing to head home for the Summer and was busy shopping for flights home. To my surprise, she offered to let me drive her from St. Louis to Miami, making it clear that the deal had certain "benefits". During the four days that I spent with her, I learned that she and her parents were active members of the Communist Party of Brasil (PC do B). She told me that she considered families nauseatingly bourgeois. She hoped to have a child without being able to know who the father was. She warned me to take precautions if I didn't want to contribute to her effort to raise a little Communist without a father. I never forgot that and don't think I had ever met anyone so radically Marxist in my life.


Consider the following:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm

First of all thank you very much for your interest to this subject and to your approach to investigate this theme, which I appreciate very much. The most remarkable thing in this that you referred to the brightest supporter of this trend Mrs. Kollontai. :clap::slap:
Let us start from the beginning. The theory of Communism was imported to Russia from the West and the basis of it was the doctrine of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels which was popular and widely spread in Liberal and Democratic circles of Russian Empire which finally were organized in many Paries, one of which was The Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party.

http://cont.ws/uploads/pic/2016/3/3%20(324).jpg

It is true that during first 3-5 years after the October coup(*) in 1917 the bolsheviks tried to implement this theory of a family into Society, but failed. The reason for it is that Russia was and is traditional and religious country with many centuries traditions. And these liberal seeds didn't germinate on the Russian soil. People rejected it. So in further Party and State documents Family was defined as the prime cell of the Communist Society where Mother and kids were the objects of special care of the State.
I would recommend you for better understanding to read the biography of Mrs. Kollontai, the History
of RSDLP, the materials of it's II Congress in London, a list of the names of the founders of the this Party and the nationalities of its leaders before and after the October coup. It will be a great assistance for better understanding the development of further events.
And do not be mislead by their 'Party names'.

(*) - the term Coup was used in the USSR till 1927.