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I think that the Marxist platform is very diverse because there are many kinds of Marxists. I think that most of them do not want to abolish the family.
As for Marx himself, as far as I know he did not want to abolish the family, he just wanted to get rid of the "bourgeois" style of family.
I'm no expert on Marxism though, so correct me if I'm wrong.
Perhaps most Marxists don't want to abolish the family.
But, most people who want to abolish the family are Marxists.
This is generally because they can't get a family for themselves for some reason, and they want [the qualities that make others able to do that] to be taken away from you and given to them. (Or they're academics.)
The way that's accomplished is to maximize the threat each person in the relationship poses to each other. This can range from most of the basic Western stuff that's "only" financially ruinous- no-fault divorce, alimony, child support- to the more extreme stuff like encouraging children to inform on their parents, separating them entirely Residential Schools-style, or mandating them be grown in a lab and punishing all sex as rape (the Demolition Man/1984 approach). Nobody's gone back to this in the modern age yet, but if they did, it'd look more like [1].
In this way, "the capacity to maintain a family" is redistributed by the State, with those that have it paying more of the bill in the form of needless oppression (as spouses and parents lack the moral hazards the State [as an extension of the people demanding redistribution] has in this matter), while at the same time allowing those with less to escape the consequences of lacking it by having the State exert pressure on the other member(s) in legible, pre-defined ways.
[1] The Harrison Bergeron-style handicapping method for functional families, where you're not allowed to talk to each other beyond an AI intermediate that perfectly mimics your [family member] screaming personalized insults at you for X amount of time before you can listen to whatever else they want to talk to you about. Conversations between couples are ranked based on how much you disagree naturally, so it could be several days before you're allowed to speak a single word to each other, in order to level the playing field for couples that can't do that.
(Actually, AI offers so many other possibilities for the virtue-Marxist; this is just one of them. Imagine a system imposed on you whose sole purpose is to cause you unbearable pain until you've abused your spouse or kid comparable to the State average. It's a handicapper general's, or equity commissioner's, wet dream.)
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Yeah abolish the family is essentially capitalist propaganda the Soviet Union and Maoist China never tried or planned anything like that.
I genuinely can't tell whether you are being sarcastic or not.
No? but I'm happy to be corrected see my other post.
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Could you provide the definition of "abolish the family" which neither the Soviet Union nor Maoist China tried or planned?
I don't know because I don't know how you'd even manage such a thing it seems fundamentally incompatible with human nature which I guess is why it works so well as an accusation. Actually I realize I might be totally wrong here and not understanding the criticism, so feel free for you or @JeSuisCharlie to correct me. I've only ever seen the allegation of abolishing the family in conservative fearmongering or Socialist apologists against the same. I know Marx wrote about abolishing the family in some 19th century context. But both the Soviet Union and Maoist China were full of families and maintained the institution of marriage and allowance for parental rights over children. If your going to say parents didn't have the right to educate their children themselves sure but that's true in many Western European countries and no one says they've abolished families. I guess just they fact that the Soviets and Maoist China were full of families and on a policy level they made no moves against this, I don't even understand how one would abolish the family but getting rid of marriage seems a basic first step but every socialist/communist country, except maybe Democratic Kampuchea, maintained the family as a basic unit of society. I suppose the Cultural Revolution had children denouncing parents which is an inversion of Confucian values and a deliberate effort to flatten the hierarchy but children denouncing parents often happens with mass hysteria the fundamental structure is still maintained. Again feel free to correct me I've always just seen it as a snarl accusation based on esoteric Marxist theory and self evidently false given that Communist societies were full of families.
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The Soviet Union actually briefly tried it in the 20's, with children raised by the whole commune. The bigger problem was polyamory, as it greatly increased the prevalence of both drama and STDs in the communes.
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