Squaring the family circle
The article on “The Future of the Family” in the February Socialist Standard gave me food for thought, and I’d like to make some comments.
First, about social groupings in Socialism. P. Deutz says — “People . . . belonging to the community does not have to mean living cheek-by-jowl in an undifferentiated mass! Rather, a mixture of private and communal life in accordance with individual choice.” I think she carries over into the new society the distinction between “private” and “public” life which exists in capitalism.
“Private” life in the nuclear family is often restricting and isolating, but it does have some human qualities — continuity, personal relations etc. — which are lacking in the even more manipulated and alienating forms of “public” life, such as the mass political meeting. In both, workers are kept separated from one another and dominated. No doubt people in a Socialist society will want different degrees of privacy at different times, but there is no need to fear that either the more or the less communal parts of their lives will bear any resemblance to the present-day family or mass events. People will want to break down the huge factory and office work settings into smaller and more friendly workshop-type teams. Discussion and decision-making will most conveniently be done in quite small meetings, linked together by delegate congresses and telecommunications. This will be made possible by automation and computer technology. On the other hand, people will have gained the security, material and emotional, that may enable them to extend their intimate relationships at the same time as improving their responsibility to one another’s needs.
Just as people will want to combine the most satisfying aspects of urban and rural life, so they’ll want to combine the most satisfying aspects of “public” and “private” life. At any rate, I’d want to.
I’m glad that P. Deutz recognizes that men and women will both take a full part in childcare, and whatever housework cannot be eliminated, as well as in production and so on. Finally, don’t the family and lack of Socialist understanding have some connection with one another? (I mean the family as it exists now.) In terms of restricted horizons and concerns for both men and women, the illusions of sex rôles, and all those people in little boxes staring at the goggle-box? Don’t we have to start thinking about the effects that different social institutions have on consciousness, and what we can do about it?
Stephen Stefan
London N2.
Reply
The history of the family shows that its form has adapted to suit prevailing economic conditions and not the other way round. Modern families may be preoccupied with their own affairs but they do not exist in a vacuum. Or do you seriously suggest that people are impervious to any influence from outside their family circle? (Many parents might wish it were so). Even television, as well as puerile slop, beams into workers’ homes pictures of the latest technological success which contrast starkly with other scenes of human deprivation and misery.
The view on the blend of private and public life assumed that in a harmonious society human individuals will still have varying personalities and needs. However congenial the communal life we may still wish to relate to, and live with, others on a more individual basis.
We have always stated that under Socialism men and women will, in accordance with their ability, co-operate to perform the tasks necessary to that society. You have never read anything to the contrary in this journal!
Editors.
1 comment:
'Stephen Stefan' was the late Stephen Shenfield's pen-name.
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