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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   23943 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

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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.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1926/07/the-russian-effort-to-abolish-marriage/306295/ "The Russian Effort to Abolish Marriage", written in 1926

When the Bolsheviki came into power in 1917 they regarded the family, like every other 'bourgeois' institution, with fierce hatred, and set out with a will to destroy it. 'To clear the family out of the accumulated dust of the ages we had to give it a good shakeup, and we did,' declared Madame Smidovich, a leading Communist and active participant in the recent discussion. So one of the first decrees of the Soviet Government abolished the term 'illegitimate children.' This was done simply by equalizing the legal status of all children, whether born in wedlock or out of it, and now the Soviet Government boasts that Russia is the only country where there are no illegitimate children. The father of a child is forced to contribute to its support, usually paying the mother a third of his salary in the event of a separation, provided she has no other means of livelihood.

Interesting, I didn't no about this. Though to modern eyes equalizing bastard children doesn't seem very radical.

Note that my quote from the same article clarifies that the original draft of the bill was much more radical, practically legalizing polygamy. But that portion was omitted from the final law.

Interesting. The early Soviet period was incredibly experimental but I didn't know this bit.

Better quote:

The session of the Tzik which discussed the abolition of marriage as an institution last autumn took place in the famous throneroom of the Tsars…

The bill was introduced by the Commissar for Justice, Mr. Kursky, a large man with tremendous blonde moustaches. He pointed out that whereas, according to the old law, the wife had no rights in the case of an unregistered marriage, the proposed law would give her the rights of a legal wife in holding property and other matters. Another new point was that wife and husband would have an equal right to claim support from the other, if unemployed or incapacitated for work. The woman would have the right to demand support for her child even if she lived with several men during the period of conception; but, in contrast to previous practice, she or the court would choose one man who would be held responsible for the support. Commissar Kursky seemed especially proud of this point because it differed so much from the "bourgeois customs" of Europe and America. In those countries, he said, the husband can bring a friend who declares that he also lived with the woman, and the latter is then left defenseless. In the villages, where sons continue to live with their parents long after they are married, the whole family is held responsible if a woman claims alimony, according to the original draft of the proposed law.

The opposition to the proposed law seemed to center around four points: (1) that it would abolish marriage; (2) that it would destroy the family; (3) that it would legalize polygamy and polyandry; (4) that it would ruin the peasants.

Leon Trotski also pronounced himself in favor of the proposed new law at a conference of medical workers engaged in medical maternity work. Trotski stressed the point that such a law, by giving more protection to women, would make for the benefit of the country's children.

Although discussion is still going on all over Russia, there seems to be little doubt that the bill, with certain modifications, will be passed at the next session of the Tzik, which will be held in the summer. The more important changes to the draft law, to which the Commissariat for Justice has agreed in deference to the widespread popular protests and opposition, are as follows:

Unregistered marriage will entail legal rights only in cases where the parties concerned mutually acknowledge each other as husband and wife, where it is established before a court that they lived together and had joint property, either by the testimony of a third party or by the evidence of their personal correspondence or other documents, where there was mutual material support or joint bringing up of children.

I genuinely can't tell whether you are being sarcastic or not.

No? but I'm happy to be corrected see my other post.

Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky all wrote at length about how "bonds of blood and affection" presented an obstacle to the revolution and would need to be at weakened if not eliminated in the name of social progress. They may have never literally uttered the precise words "abolish the family" but what they were advocating for was functionally indistinguishable from it. The bit in 1984 about schools teaching kids to rat on their parents and siblings was based on real world policies enacted by both the Third Reich and Soviet Union.

Furthermore, the position that children ultimately belong to the state and that parents are merely temporary custodians seems to remain a reasonably mainstream position amongst progressives to this day, and I would argue that this fundamental disagreement about who children belong to, their parents or the state, is the source of much of the vehemence and vitriol behind issues like school choice and whether schools should be allowed to keep secrets from parents.

I'm really not trying to nitpick as you made a really good faith effort to answer my honest question. But I just can't see it, by this standard the family has been abolished in many Western European countries which I don't think I've ever heard anyone say.

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.

I believe the official BLM website had a line about "disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure"

My point is that it's a cringe artifact of Marxism. It scares the hoes, so anyone who still holds to it is an idealogue, or a shock-jock farming outrage clicks.

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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