Family Abolition: Beyond individualism, liberalism and Stalinist feminist impotence
Family Abolition: beyond Stalinism liberalism and individualism
Three ways of addressing the problem of patriarchal heteronormativity are mainstream! You hear Stalinist feminists suggesting welfare or state programs can alleviate the problems with patriarchy through expanded state institutions or you will hear liberal feminists who think individualist human rights defended by a democratic capitalist state or you will hear individualist anarchists suggesting a series of familial homesteads run by polycules and sometimes such anarchists will mistakenly refer to them as communes. All of these forms of organizing human life re-entrench patriarchy! Most forms of the state generated by humans have predominantly male prime ministers/presidents/secretaries/generals or leaders. As long as the state is constructed through a series of party leaders, rich leaders of families, regional business owners, religious bureaucrats or other positions of wealth and authority conducted by the norms of domination the way all states work will obey the implicit rules of patriarchy. If the state is constructed through the norms of a series of other patriarchal institutions, women or non-men who seek to lead it will have to assimilate to these machinations. If your definition of anti patriarchy is to empower feminine people to control patriarchal institutions, you are not trying to end patriarchy. This is the problem with much of liberal feminism and Stalinist feminism. If the solution to these problems that you envision is to simply form a series of smaller homesteads (like the Georgists) especially if you do not intend to get rid of capitalist states, those homesteads without organization will eventually be reconquered by capitalist states.
The path forward is outlined in Jules Gleeson and K.G. Dingani’s Kindercommunismus. In that chapter of the Transgender Marxism anthology, a crèche system is proposed as an alternative to the nuclear family unit. Through a council communist lens, the notion of family abolition is very much in the Marxist tradition but originating from Alexandra Kollontai. Family abolition as a Marxist concept goes further than Stalinism or liberalism because it proposes collective worker led reorganization of kinship. The nuclear family unit is a norm instilled by individualist capitalism which enshrines inheritance within the feudal relationship of the western patriarch whose children and wife were, in ancient times (and indeed much of modernity and mercantilism), property. Indeed the etymology of the word family implies the bodily property relationship of being a hand extending from the patriarchal head. To abolish, in the etymological lineage of aufhebung, (from the German) means to get rid of some parts and preserve other parts. While relations of motherhood and fatherhood would be maintained as kinship connections, a responsibility or ownership that implies extension from a patriarchal body would end. The mandate of domestic work, the mandate of single family care and the individuality of inheritance would be brought to an end. Crèche councils would exist in every collective living space or neighborhood. The crèche council would designate collective kitchen spaces to be used for mass meals as well as recreation learning and common spaces. The end of the family as an individualized institution would occur but neither would a singular monolithic parliamentarian state replace it. Local organic community organizations could thrive collectively. We must envision these utopic worlds as alternatives to the current way that all exists. Ernst Bloch might remind us that utopian vision helps us see what is wrong in the now! What is clearly wrong is the implicit property relation that heads of household carry. With the abolition of the institution of family whose norms serve to maintain the property relation wielded by patriarchal heads of household, a world of community is possible.