Main NI Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
From The New International, Vol. XV No. 6, August 1949, pp. 184–186.
There is another version of this article here.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The inner relations and happenings within the family are, by their very nature, the most difficult to investigate, the least subject to statistics. It is not easy, therefore, to say in how far family ties are the more easily broken nowadays (in actual life, not merely on paper) than formerly. To a great extent we must be content to judge by the eye. The difference, moreover, between pre-revolutionary times and the present day is that formerly all the troubles and dramatic conflicts in working-class families used to pass unnoticed by the working classes themselves; whereas now, a large upper part of the workers occupy responsible posts, their life is much more in the limelight, and every domestic tragedy in their life becomes a subject of much comment and sometimes of idle gossip.
Subject to this serious reservation, there is no denying, however,
that family relations, those of the proletarian class included, are
shattered. This was stated as a firmly established fact in the
debates of the Moscow Propagandists, and no one contested it. They
were only differently impressed by it – each in his own way.
Some viewed it with great misgivings, others with reserve, and
others, still, seemed perplexed.
It was, anyhow, clear to all, that some big process was going on, very chaotic, assuming, alternatively, morbid or revolting, ridiculous or tragic forms, and which had not yet had time to disclose its hidden possibilities of inaugurating a new and higher order of family life. Some information about the disintegration of the family has crept into the press, but just occasionally, and in very vague, general terms.
In an article on the subject, I have read that the disintegration of the family in the working class was represented as a case of “bourgeois influence on the proletariat.” It is not so simple as this. The root of the question lies deeper and is more complicated. The influence of the bourgeois past and the bourgeois present is there, but the main process consists in a painful evolution of the proletarian family itself, an evolution leading up to a crisis, and we are witnessing now the first chaotic stages of the process.
The deeply destructive influence of the war on the family is well known. To begin with, war dissolves the family automatically, separating people for a long time or bringing people together by chance. This influence of the war was continued and strengthened by the revolution. The years of the war shattered all that had stood only by the inertia of historic tradition. They shattered the power of czardom, class privileges, the old traditional family. The revolution began by building up the new state and has achieved thereby its simplest and most urgent aim. The economic part of its problem proved much more complicated. The war shook the old economic order, the revolution overthrew it. Now we are constructing a new economic state – doing it as yet mostly from the old elements, reorganizing them in new ways.
In the domain of economics we have but recently emerged from the destructive period and begun to ascend. Our progress is still very slow, and the achievement of new socialistic forms of economic life are still very distant. But we are definitely out of the period of destruction and ruin. The lowest point was reached in the years 1920–21.
The first destructive period is still far from being over in the life of the family. The disintegrating process is still in full swing. We must bear that in mind. Family and domestic life are still passing, so to say, their 1920–21 period and have not reached the 1923 standard. Domestic life is more conservative than economic, and one of the reasons is that it is still less conscious than the latter.
In politics and economics the working class acts as a whole and pushes on to the front rank its vanguard, the communistic party accomplishing through its medium the historic aims of the proletariat.
In domestic life the working class is split into cells constituted by families. The change of political regime, the change even of the economic order of the state – the passing of the factories and mills into the hands of the workers – all this has certainly had some influence on family conditions; but only indirectly and externally, and without touching on the forms of domestic traditions inherited from the past.
A radical reform of the family and more generally of the whole
order of domestic life requires a big conscious effort on the part of
the whole mass of the working class and presumes in the class itself
the existence of a powerful molecular force of inner desire for
culture and progress.
A deep-going plough is needed to turn up heavy clods of soil. To institute the political equality of men and women in the Soviet State was one problem and the simplest. A much more difficult one was the next – that of instituting the industrial equality of men and women workers in the factories, the mills and the trade unions, and to do it in such a way that the men should not put the women to disadvantage. But to achieve the actual equality of man and woman within the family is an infinitely more arduous problem. All our domestic habits must be revolutionized before that can happen. And yet it is quite obvious that unless there is actual equality of husband and wife in the family, in a normal sense as well as in the conditions of life, we cannot speak seriously of their equality in social work or even in politics. As long as woman is chained to her housework, the care of the family, the cooking and sewing, all her chances of participation in social and political life are cut down to the extreme.
The easiest problem was that of assuming power. Yet just that problem alone absorbed all our forces in the early period of the revolution. It demanded endless sacrifices. The civil war necessitated measures of the utmost rigor. Narrow-minded, silly people raised cries of debased morals, of the sanguinary deprivation of the proletariat, etc., whereas what had actually happened was that the proletariat, in using the means of revolutionary violence forced into its hands, started to fight for new standards of culture, for genuine humanitarianism. In the first four or five years we have passed economically through a period of terrific breakdown. The productiveness of labor collapsed, and the products were of an appallingly low quality. Enemies saw, or chose to see, in such a situation a sign of the rottenness of the Soviet regime. In reality, however, it was but the inevitable stage of the destruction of the old economic forms, and of the first helpless attempts at the creation of new ones.
In regard to family relations, and forms of individual life in general, there must also be an inevitable period of disintegration of things as they were, of the traditions, inherited from the past, which had not passed under the control of thought. But in this domain of domestic life the period of criticism and destruction begins later, lasts very long and assumes morbid and painful forms, which, however, are complex and not always perceptible to superficial observation.
These progressive landmarks of critical change in state
conditions, in economics and life in general, ought to be very
clearly defined to prevent us getting alarmed by the phenomena we
observed. We must learn to judge them in the right light, to
understand their proper place in the development of the working
class, and consciously to direct the new conditions toward
socialistic forms of life.
The warning is a necessary one, as we already hear voices expressing alarm. At the debate of the Moscow Propagandists some comrades spoke with great and natural anxiety of the easiness with which old family ties are broken for the sake of new ones as fleeting as the old. The victims in all cases are the mother and children.
On the other hand, who, in our midst, has not heard in private conversations complaints, not to say lamentations, about the demoralization of young Sovietists, particularly of those belonging to the Communist unions of the young – the so-called Comsomols? Not everything in these complaints is exaggeration – there is also truth in them. We certainly must – and will – fight the dark sides of this truth – this being a fight for higher culture and the ascent of human personality. But in order to begin our work, to tackle the ABC of the problem without reactionary moralizing or sentimental down-heartedness, we must first make sure of the facts and begin to see clearly what is actually happening.
Gigantic events, as we said above, have descended on the family in its old shape, the war and the revolution. And following them came creeping slowly the underground mole – critical thought, the conscious study and valuation of family relations and the forms of life. It was the mechanical force of great events combined with the critical force of the awakened mind that generated the destructive period in family relations that we are witnessing now.
The Russian worker must now, after the conquest of power, make his first conscious steps toward culture in many departments of his life. Under the impulses of great collisions, his personality shakes off for the first time all traditional forms of life, all domestic habits, church practices and relationships.
No wonder that, in the beginning, the protest of the individual, his revolt against the traditional past, is assuming anarchic, or to put it more crudely, dissolute forms. We have witnessed it in politics, in military affairs, in economics; here anarchic individualism took on every form of extremism, partisanship, public-meeting rhetoric. And no wonder also that this process reacts in the most intimate and hence most painful way on family relationships. There the awakened personality, wanting to reorganize in a new way, removed from the old beaten tracks, resorts to “dissipation,” “wickedness” and all the sins denounced in the Moscow debates.
The husband, torn away from his usual surroundings by
mobilization, changed into a revolutionary citizen at the civic
front. A momentous change. His outlook is wider, his spiritual
aspirations higher and of a more complicated order. He is a different
man. And then he returns home to find everything there practically
unchanged. The old harmony and understanding with the people at home
in family relationship is gone. No new understanding arises. The
mutual wondering changes into mutual discontent, then into ill-will.
The family is broken up.
The husband is a Communist. He lives an active life, is engaged in social work, his mind grows, his personal life is absorbed by his work. But his wife is also a Communist. She wants to join in social work, attends public meetings, works in the soviet or the union. Home life becomes practically non-existent before they are aware of it, or the missing of home atmosphere results in continual collisions. Husband and wife disagree. The family is broken up.
The husband is a Communist, the wife is non-party. The husband is absorbed by his work; the wife, as before, only looks after her home. Relations are “peaceful,” based, in fact, on customary estrangement. But the husband’s committee – the Communist “cell” – decrees that he should take away the ikons hanging in his house. He is quite willing to obey, finding it but natural. For his wife it is a catastrophe. Just such a small occurrence exposes the abyss that separates the minds of husband and wife. Relations are spoiled.
An old family. Ten to fifteen years of common life. The husband is a good worker, devoted to his family; the wife lives also for her home, giving it all her energy. But just by chance she comes in touch with a Communist women’s organization. A new world opens before her eyes. Her energy finds a new and wider object. The family is neglected. The husband is irritated. The wife is hurt in her newly awakened civic consciousness. The family is broken up.
Examples of such domestic tragedies, all leading to the one end – the breaking up of the family, could be multiplied endlessly. We have indicated the most typical cases. In all our examples the tragedy is due to a collision between Communist and non-party elements. But the breaking up of the family, that is to say, of the old-type family, is not confined to just the top of the class as the one most exposed to the influence of new conditions. The disintegrating movement in family relationships penetrates deeper. The Communist vanguard merely passes sooner and more violently through what is inevitable for the class as a whole.
The censorious attitude toward old conditions, the new claims upon the family extend far beyond the border line between the Communist and the working class as a whole. The institution of civil marriage was already a heavy blow to the traditional consecrated family which lived a great deal for appearances. The less personal attachment there was in the old marriage ties, the greater was the binding power of the external forces, social traditions, and more particularly, religious rites.
The blow to the power of the church was also a blow to the family. Rites, deprived of binding significance and of state recognition, still remain in use through inertia, serving as one of the props to the tottering family. But when there is no inner bond within the family, when nothing but inertia keeps the family itself from complete collapse, then every push from outside is likely to shatter it to pieces, while, at the same time, it is a blow at the adherence to church rites. And pushes from the outside are infinitely more likely to come now than ever before. That is the reason why the family totters and fails to recover, and then to tumble again.
Life sits in judgment on its conditions and does it by the cruel
and painful condemnation of the family. History fells the old wood –
and the chips fly in the wind.
But is life evolving any elements of a new type of family?
Undoubtedly. We must only conceive clearly the nature of these
elements and the process of their formation. As in other cases, we
must separate the physical conditions from the psychological, the
general from the individual. Psychologically the evolution of the new
family, of new human relationships in general, for us, means the
advancement in culture of the working class, the development of the
individual, a raising of the standard of his requirements and inner
discipline. From this aspect, the revolution in itself has meant, of
course, a big step in advance, and the worst phenomena of the
disintegrating family signify merely the abnormality of the form of
expression of the awakening class and individuals composing the
class. All our work relating to culture, the work we are doing and
the work we ought to be doing, becomes, from this aspect, a
preparation for new relationships and a new family. Without a raising
of the standard of the culture of the individual working man and
woman, there cannot be a new, higher type for family, for, in this
domain, we can only, of course, speak of inner discipline and not of
external compulsion. The force then of the inner discipline of the
individual in the family is conditioned by the tenor of the inner
life, the scope and value of the ties that unite husband and wife.
The physical preparations for the conditions of the new life and the new family, again, cannot fundamentally be separated from the general work of socialistic constructiveness. The workers’ state must become wealthier in order that it may be possible seriously to tackle the public education of children and the releasing of the family from the burden of the kitchen and laundry.
The socialization of family housekeeping and the public education of children are unthinkable without a marked improvement in our economics as a whole. We need more socialistic economic forms. Only under such conditions can we free the family from the functions and cares that now oppress and disintegrate it.
Washing must be done by a public laundry, catering by a public restaurant, sewing by a public workshop. Children must be educated by good public teachers who have a real vocation for the work. Then the bond between husband and wife would be freed from everything external and accidental, and the one would cease to absorb the life of the other. Genuine equality would at last be established. The bond will depend on mutual attachment. And on that account, particularly, it will acquire inner stability; not the same, of course, for everyone, but compulsory for no one.
Thus the way to the new family is twofold: (a) the raising of the standard of culture and education of the working class and the individuals composing the class; (b) an improvement in the material conditions of the class, organized by the state. The two processes are intimately connected with one another.
The above statements do not, of course, imply that at a given moment in the material betterment the family of the future will instantly step into its rights. No. A certain advance toward the new family is possible even now. it is true that the state cannot as yet undertake either the education of the children or the establishment of public kitchens, which would be an improvement on the family kitchen, or the establishment of public laundries, where the clothes would not be torn or stolen.
But this does not mean that the more enterprising and progressive families cannot group themselves even now into collective housekeeping units. Experiments of this kind must, of course, be made carefully; the technical equipment of the collective unit must answer to the interests and requirements of the group itself, and should give manifest advantages to every one of its members, even though they be modest at first.
“The task,” Comrade Semashko recently wrote on the necessity of the reconstruction of our family life, “is best performed practically; decrees and moralizing alone will have little effect. But an example, an illustration of a new form, will do more than a thousand excellent pamphlets. This practical propaganda is best conducted on the method surgeons in their practice call ‘transplantation.’ When a big surface is bare of skin either as the result of a wound or burn, and there is no hope that the skin will grow sufficiently to cover it, pieces of skin are cut off from healthy places of the body and attached in islets on the bare surface; these islets adhere and grow until the whole surface is covered with skin.”
The same thing happens in practical propaganda. When one factory or works adopts communistic forms, other factories will follow.
Such collective family housekeeping units must be carefully thought out and studied. A combination of private initiative, supported by the governing powers – in the first place, the local soviets and economic organs – must be the first step. The building of new houses – and, after all, we are going to build houses! – must be regulated by the requirements of the family group communities.
The first apparent and indisputable success in this direction,
however slight and limited in extent, will inevitably arouse a desire
in more widespread groups to organize life on similar lines.
For a thought-out scheme, initiated from above, the time is not yet ripe, either from the point of view of the material resources of the state, or from that of the preparation of the proletariat itself. We can escape the deadlock at present only by the creation of model communities.
The ground beneath our feet must be strengthened step by step; there must be no rushing too far ahead, or lapsing into bureaucratic fanciful experiments. At a given moment, the state will be able, with the help of local soviets, co-operative units and so on, to socialize the work done, to widen and deepen it. In this way the human family, in the words of Engels, will “jump from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom.”
Main NI Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 29 September 2018