Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Brazil, Russia, and South Africa top the list for wealth inequality, each posting Gini coefficients around the low 0.8s. These scores imply a highly concentrated distribution of assets relative to the rest of the population. Several energy-rich economies—such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia—also rank high, reflecting significant concentrations of financial and real assets among upper tiers of wealth holders. Country Gini Coefficient 2024: Brazil 0.82, Russia 0.82, South Africa 0.81, United Arab Emirates 0.81, Saudi Arabia 0.78, Sweden 0.75.

[ZeroHedge]

. . . Latin America remains the only region in the world that has not shown a clear decline in child marriage over the last three decades. Nicaragua has the highest rates within the region and ranks 14th globally with 10% of girls marrying or entering a union before age 15. Among boys, 19% marry or enter a union before the age of 18. Here are the main reasons for child marriage in Nicaragua… Poverty continues to affect a large portion of Nicaragua’s population. The United Nations reports that 48% of people live below the poverty line. Continual climate disruptions devastate the environment and worsen economic conditions. High levels of organized crime and human trafficking also contribute to insecurity. Many families marry off their children to ease financial hardship and improve their economic situation, resulting in increased levels of child marriage in Nicaragua. Furthermore, Nicaraguan society continues to enforce cultural and gender norms that pressure girls to marry young and bear children.

[The Borgen Project]

At the centre of the criminality in Gaza today are armed gangs, whose members are often drawn from the territory’s powerful clans. These clans are extended families that have historically played leading roles in their communities – but have also, at times, operated like local mafia. During the recent conflict, clans have settled old scores with violence. Gangs associated with the clans have expanded into racketeering, drug dealing, kidnapping, robbery and extortion. 

[The Conversation]

The rally was a good time with a positive vibe, and I’m glad to see Americans coming together in opposition to one tyrant. But until and unless we start coming together in opposition to tyranny itself — the state per se — and in support of liberty for all, the only question is how much more kingly and despotic our next ruler will get than the previous one got. 

[CounterPunch]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Private lives (1977)

From the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent in Greater Manchester asks a series of questions beginning: ‘‘What is the socialist view of the regulation and control (if any) of sexual activity within a Socialist society? Please deal individually with the questions of marriage, divorce and its family consequences, the age of consent, homosexuality (male and female), rape.” Further questions are who would have the say in the bringing-up of children, and would children be ‘‘disciplined” as now to make them conform; on individual rights to privacy, quietness, etc.; and finally, whether Socialism would not need some enforcement machinery for these matters.

They all represent aspects of the individual’s relationship to the community—but putting it that way distorts things at the outset. The basic social relationships are created by the structure of society itself. A complex of subsidiary relationships grows within them, with ideas attached. Yet these ideas in turn react on society; they produce endless changes of detail, and also the desire for new relationships which can only be obtained by developing society further. Thus, the socialist view is not that we shall have common ownership and then try to improve existing relationships. It is that with the end of class society, the relationships and attitudes which are parts of it also end, and entirely new ones grow up on the basis of common ownership.

The social pattern of sexual activity has changed from one society to another: for an account of it, read Engels’s The Origin of the Family. Within the “pairing” marriage changes have taken place. The “extended” family which included all close relatives has given way to the “nuclear” family of one couple and its children, and the social importance of this in turn has declined. The reasons are simply economic: division of labour makes the experience and life-style of one generation alien to the next. Along with this goes the separation of sexual pleasure from reproduction, which is by no means a modern idea but has been scientifically perfected in the 20th century.

What will happen in Socialism is that people will live together without having to seek a licence and part if and when they want to. A good many attempt this today, within the limits of convenience and approval allowed by capitalism. Those limits are removed when property society is abolished: social relations of equality and freedom make personal ones possible.

It is the question of parting that causes concern, of course — the “family consequences”. The paramount factor among them is one which will be absent from Socialist society: money, unending worries over it, the need for it to keep a family housed, clothed and fed. In capitalist society the break-up of a marriage almost invariably causes hardship in those terms, and divorce and separation proceedings are chiefly about financial provisions to support the individuals who are “dependent” under the existing family system. But this takes us back to the foundation of the relationship. When it involves material dependence it clearly is not an equal partnership, and it isn’t surprising that resentment is common.

Other consequences cannot be separated from material ones. Children (like adults) want stability and affection, and in present-day society those things are associated with a conventional home-life. There is no reason why they should not be had, fully, in different arrangements. This is not a case of one regime replacing another, but of being able to make choices which capitalism does not allow. Socialism will be a responsible society precisely because it means freedom to choose. Class-based, authoritarian society gives no such freedom; the choices are imposed, and the individual has to be exhorted into responsibility towards them. When they are made personally or communally, with knowledge and without coercion, true responsibility is felt and exercised.

Not much joy

Sex is both a natural impulse and a supreme pleasure. What sort of world is it whose “regulation of sexual activity” denies satisfaction to large numbers of people, and persuades many more that it is intrinsically shameful? In recent years emphasis has been laid on frankness about sex. Whatever the merits of this, it has produced —inevitably, in capitalism—the commercial exploitation of desires which society does not let be fulfilled. It is impossible to have the best from this area of life without decent material conditions. Privacy, hot water, warmth and some degree of comfort, and not being worried or tired, are the minimum requirements; simple as they sound, they add up to a standard of housing and general well-being which the majority of working people cannot get.

Change this, and there is no need to argue for a right to privacy. Our correspondent links it with “a place of one’s own”, and asks if that does not presuppose private property; but owner-occupiers generally are no better off than council-house tenants in this respect. Of course sexual satisfaction (and the enjoyment of life in many other respects) is heavily obstructed by living between cardboard-thin walls through which the neighbours or the children can hear every word and creak. The privacy problem is a matter of bricks-and-mortar environment, the result of a class-divided society and production for profit. Houses built for use instead of money will embody different assumptions.

There is another aspect of this. Privacy, like its opposite, is not supposed to be a permanent situation; lonely people would say they get too much of it. It is a field for the choice which capitalism refuses, except to the privileged minority. There are times when any of us needs to be alone and undisturbed, other times when company and noise are desired. It is a striking indictment of our society that relatively few can choose like that, and a great many lead thoroughly miserable lives because they are condemned to one position or the other.

The age of consent, homosexuality and rape are run together inappropriately by our correspondent, presumably because they all appear as “problems” to do with sex. The first is a matter of social custom which varies from country to country, and its legal force is bound up with the definition of persons below their majority as “minors” or “infants”. Would such a rule be necessary in Socialism, with the same ostensible purpose of protecting the immature? It does not “protect” them now from sexual experience if they have it in mind. But maturity has cultural as well as physical components: sexual pressure on little girls of nine comes not from hormones but from big business (watch the TV advertisements). The sex drive makes itself known sharply at puberty, but the situation in society as a whole determines the direction it takes. It will be the absence of exploitation that shapes conduct in Socialism, not the absence of laws.

Homosexuality is an offence against social custom (its legalization “in private between consenting adults” has not stopped day-after-day prosecutions of homosexuals who cannot arrange the needed privacy). There is no space here for such questions as whether it is a genetic or an environmental phenomenon; but if we accept that it is constitutional in some people and will therefore exist in Socialism, the only remark to make is that it will be regarded as nobody’s concern except those involved. It is worth recalling the scheme of the early socialist Fourier to cater for sexual variations, which he thought Socialism would accommodate cheerfully: each person with a “mania” would carry a card naming it, to facilitate finding partners.

Rape falls into a different category, because it is an act of delinquency with a sexual content. As delinquency, its roots are similar to those of other forms; it is a deliberately injurious reaction against society in general. The particular expression of the reaction shows what has been learned from society, and in that connection the novelist Jacky Gillott wrote recently in a women’s magazine that rape was “just a surface marker indicating a vast and tangled undergrowth of mythologies, resentments and ignorance that still persisted beneath the unspoken—and often unconscious—views men and women have of one another” (Cosmopolitan, September 1977).

Because Socialism will not have the resentment-breeding divisions which cause delinquency, or an “undergrowth of mythologies” obscuring relationships, we believe it will be free of ugly marks like rape. However, it must be made clear that socialists do not imagine everybody will be automatically made “good” once common ownership is established; or, alternatively, that any individual may do his own thing to the detriment of others. Socialism means a democratic organization of society in which the wishes of the majority prevail. Of course there will be problems; but in that sort of society we shall be able to deal with them as capitalism cannot.

Growing up

Last, about the upbringing of children. Our correspondent asks what is “the socialist psychology” in this matter. We haven’t one; possibly, when we are nearer to establishing Socialism, it will appear. The important thing, however, is not just possessing the insights but being able to put them into practice. A chronic frustration for teachers of all age-groups today is to be clearly aware of what needs to be done and to know also that it is impossible in the present system. As regards obtaining conformity by force, the dominant ideas of an age are, as Marx said, those of its ruling class; force is the method of class rule, reflected in (and so re-created through) its everyday conduct. Socialists do not need that.

Who will make the decisions about children—well, who makes them now? The working class have to accept the dominance of the state education system (the wealthy in general get rid of handling their children, first to nannies and then to schools away from home). Certainly, in any social system children have to learn basic skills required by society and for themselves; under capitalism, because its education is geared to the value of labour-power, the outcome for a high proportion is abysmal and recalls Mr. Weller’s question “vether it’s worth goin’ through so much to learn so little”. We do not envisage a sane society trying to impose a single mode of upbringing and learning for all children—that is the capitalist sausage-machine. The “decisions” are choices, which children and parents and their associates will make in different ways at different times.

Robert Barltrop

Editorial: No Escape from Holy Deadlock (1937)

Editorial from the August 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. A. P. Herbert, M.P., hit on a telling phrase when he described unsuccessful marriages for which the law provides no remedy as a state of “holy deadlock.” His Bill to allow divorce for desertion, cruelty and incurable insanity, as well as for adultery, is now to become the law. Mr. Herbert is very proud of his contribution to human happiness and, doubtless, the amended law will simplify life's problems for a number of people, but the Socialist who reads the speeches of the M.P.s and the Peers as the Bill ran the gauntlet through the two Houses of Parliament will have other thoughts. He will be conscious that most of our legislators, both the elected and hereditary kind, do not appreciate at all what are the main problems of marriage for the greater number of the population. Consequently, their efforts to wrestle with divorce left them in a state of strangling deadlock equal to that of unhappy marriage. Much of the discussion was about the marriage problems of the well-to-do; quite naturally, for most of the legislators are themselves well-to-do. Then there were the Roman Catholics and some non-Catholics who believe that marriage is a “sacrament”—as they are quite entitled to do—but who are not content to refuse divorce themselves but want, in addition, to force their peculiar, and to many people detestable and immoral, attitude on the rest of the population. The Archbishop of Canterbury confessed himself torn between the desire to keep up the sanctity of married life, which he would like to believe exists, and his recognition that the present arrangements do not work out as he would like them to. He was forced, therefore, both to support and oppose the Bill, and refrained from voting. The sanest views were those of some of the medical men and lawyers in the House of Lords. But nearly all of them spoke as if marriage and divorce can be considered in a vacuum apart from the economic organisation of society. The fact is that capitalism makes it increasingly difficult for the population to make a success of marriage or of any other personal relationship. Looking for an ideal marriage law under capitalism is therefore as hopeless as asking the capitalist powers to honour the pious aspirations of die League of Nations. It is not in the main the greater or less facility for divorce that poisons the relationships of working-class men and women, but the problem of economic security, the need for adequate food, clothing and shelter, freedom from worry about war and unemployment and, of course, the need for the individual man and woman to be economically independent.

Socialism alone will provide these necessary conditions for successful marriage and without them not all the Peers and Bishops and Members of Parliament can do anything very much to improve things. It can be said in favour of any relaxation of the divorce laws that it is better for the individual men and women that they should use their own judgment in handling the problems arising out of their personal relationships than that their conduct should be forced on them by the law, but the major problems will still remain insoluble.

So the new law will be open to almost as much criticism as the old. In a few years' time we shall have the opponents of all divorce and the seekers for that impossibility: an ideal marriage law, combining to expose the hardships and miseries existing under the law. They will be quite right, except that the miseries are caused by capitalism and cannot be cured by tinkering with divorce laws.

A Scientist on the Family. (1908)

From the February 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the fact is accepted that the family has passed through four successive forms, and is now in a fifth, the question at once arises whether this form can be permanent in the future. The only answer that can be given is, that it must advance as society advances, and change as society changes, even as it has done in the past. It is the creature of the social system, and will reflect its culture. As the monogamian family has improved since the commencement of civilization, and very sensibly in modern times, it is at least supposable that it is capable of still further improvement until the equality of the sexes is attained. Should the monogamian family in the distant future fail to answer the requirements of society, assuming the continuous progress of civilization, it is impossible to predict the nature of its successor.

Morgan. “Ancient Society.”

No More Family Life. (1908)

From the January 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is the awful pronouncement which greeted readers of the Daily Distress one morning in October. Said the Editor:—

“We have proved from the writings of Socialist leaders that atheism is one of their principal creeds, and that the marriage ties are not considered to be of any importance. But our exposures have caused consternation at the Socialist headquarters, and every effort is being made to deny our charges in order to allay the fears of those who have succumbed to the blandishments of the smooth-tongued street-corner orators. Socialism cannot endure exposure. It flourishes in the dark.”

Socialism flourishes in the dark, you see. Only a day or so previously a leading article in the same veracious journal impressed upon its intelligent clientele that “the greatest mistake we can make in dealing with the Socialists is to debate with them. It is just what they want.” It is painfully evident that we Socialists don’t know when we are well off. After all, why should we seek the light of debate when, so the Express says, we “flourish in the dark” ? To us, our hundreds of meetings in the open air, in parks, at street corners, at factory gates, have savoured of extreme publicity, and the invariable presence of the police would appear to warrant the assumption. We have nurtured a phantom. On the authority of the Express we have been in Stygian blackness the whole time. Hence our flourishing condition. This, of course, is Express reasoning. If the editorial tongue were not so plainly visible within the editorial cheek, a plain man might be tempted to style it twaddle. Mr. Pearson further informs us that:

“Under advanced Socialism every child is to belong to the “State.” Parental responsibility in every shape is to be ended. Feeding, clothing, training, educating—the State is to do it all. One stands aghast, and wonders whether the result would be more disastrous to the parent than to the child,”

but on page 4 of the same issue a Mr. Claude Lowther “dealing” with the “Canker of Socialism” says “of course we recognise that the child belongs to the community and that the health of the child is the well-being of the State.” So it would appear that Socialism has stolen a march upon us and is here in all its hideous nakedness. And the mother don’t seem to mind. Or shall we say that Mr. Lowther would be well advised if in future he compared notes with the Editor before rushing into type ? There is a possibility of a glimmer of sense creeping in by accident whilst the present haphazard arrangement lasts. Don’t risk it, Claude.

Education again, we always understood, was the particular concern of the State. But read this first :

BARRACK NURSERIES

And what about character ? What about individual care ? What about family life and that affection which makes childhood’s days so sweet in the remembering ? Because many homes are unhappy; because many poor little children cry for food in the slums ; because some parents are without love and kindness, are all children to be without parents and to have a barrack for a nursery and a soulless “State” for a mother’s care ?

THE HOME IS TO GO. FAMILY LIFE HAS TO GO. Let the little ones wake in the night and cry for their parents — Let the mother stretch out for the child.

It is not hers at all. It is the State’s !

Socialism has no care for empty arms and wistful mothers. The child is the State’s, and mothers must go desolate. The little shoes, the little baby clothes—the kind “State” will provide those, and they will be all of a pattern and all alike.

Under Socialism every child will be a workhouse child. If the mothers dressed them, one would be prettier than another—and that would not be Socialism.”

Let me emphasise the fact that the article here quoted appeared in the Daily Express, Oct. 8th, not in Punch as perhaps might be imagined.

Only one thing is lacking to complete the harrowing picture. Why not prevail upon the talented artist who enlivened the last L.C.C. election with his beautiful and soulful conceptions to endeavour to depict the interior of a “barrack nursery.” Nothing appeals to the masses like a picture, and one such of a very long room, tall and broad, filled with hundreds of squalling infants, each seated before a “soulless” half yard of indiarubber pipe, through which the State pumped nutriment, would carry conviction. I present the idea to the Daily Express for what it is worth.

But coming down to hard facts and above all, those of present-day life, how does this strike the Editor of the Daily Distress and those who think with him that human society has reached its highest possible expression in that of to-day, so completely does it meet the individual wants of its components ? This is from the Boston American, July 28th :—

”MINOR EMPLOYES OF STEEL TRUST SOLD BODY AND SOUL.

Parents Are Compelled to Sign Release Deed Before Work is Secured.

Hundreds Execute It.

Worcester, July 27.—The American Steel and Wire Trust is buying children in Worcester for one dollar a head.

Several hundred have already been sold to slave in the three huge mills of the trust in this city, and the sale of hundreds of others will soon be consummated it the State authorities do not interfere.

Many parents have refused to sell their children into slavery, and it is expected that they will soon have to find employment elsewhere than in the trust mills for their boys and girls.

The Steel and Wire Trust is determined that it shall own its employes body and soul.

To secure absolute control of the children the trust recently demanded that their parents sign “A MINOR’S RELEASE.”

Each parent who signs this receives one dollar, and for that dollar he or she waives forever all control over the child: all right to collect his or her pay and all legal rights, in the opinion of the trust’s attorney, to collect damages should the child be killed or maimed in the mills.

Here is a copy of the “minor’s release,” by which the parent makes his child a slave for a mite of the trust’s gold:

MINOR’S RELEASE. 

Know all men by these presents, That, in consideration of the sum of One Dollar and other good and valuable considerations, to me in hand paid, I ………. of …….. have emancipated and do hereby emancipate …… of …… my son, of and from any and all liability to render or account for his services to me, and all obligations to me of whatsoever kind or nature, and do hereby release and forever waive any and all right which I may have in and to his services, or any wages or salary earned by him; and do hereby authorize any and all persons whomsoever to contract with my said son without any liability to me, and to pay him his wages, and to do any and all things and make any and all contracts, with said son, without any liability to me ; and authorize the said son to appropriate and receive, for his own use and benefit, without any liability to me, his services, and pay and all proceeds or avails thereof.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and seal at …… this …… day of 190…

Witness : ……………………………………………………………………

(Seal)”

Comment is almost needless. The Socialist is simply charged with certain proposals : here is an actuality. What of family life ? “Let the little ones wake in the night and cry for their parents—let the mother stretch out for her child.”

It is not hers at all. It is the Trusts !

“And what about character? What about individual care? What about family life and that affection which makes childhood’s days so sweet in the remembering ?”

How awkward for the Express that we here can speak in the present tense. THE HOME HAS GONE. FAMILY LIFE AS WELL.

And the American Socialists have denounced it. And the American prototypes of the Express have denounced the Socialists.

We need not travel so far as Tariff-protected America for indications of the ineffable state of bliss, marital and otherwise, in which the working class exists. We are indebted to capitalist sources almost exclusively for our best and most illuminating arguments and statistics.

The census returns show about 43 millions of human beings as inhabiting the British Isles. Of these 38 millions take just over half the national yearly production of wealth, the other 5 millions taking the remainder. The average income of the larger division is less than £160 per head. Thirteen millions are perpetually on or below the poverty line, and nearly a million receive Poor Law relief. What a bed of roses ! What possibilities for the formation of character and that affection which makes childhood’s day’s etc., ad nauseum. Beautiful language the Express people pour forth. “Because many homes are unhappy; because many poor little children cry for food in the slums ; because some parents are without love and kindness; are all children to be without parents and to have a barrack for a nursery and a soulless “State” for a mother’s care? ”

I reply : Because a paltry, parasitic, useless, one-ninth of the population absorbs nearly 50 per cent. of the national income and own seven-eighths of the whole wealth of the country; because less than one-thousandth per cent. of the population owns more than 50 per cent. of the total area of land ; because 5 millions of the lazy plunder 38 millions of the industrious; because of these and scores of similar facts, are 13 millions of wealth producers to be perpetually on the brink of starvation ? Are nearly 90,000 human beings to die in workhouses, lunatic asylums and similar institutions annually ? Are 120,000 workers, the only people who matter, to be robbed of life or limb every year, whilst creating wealth they never enjoy ? Are nearly a million fellow-creatures to be so reduced by privation that they are compelled to claim public assistance and become, despite the repressive measures adopted by “sweet charity,” paupers, in the midst of colossal wealth?

A million married women are compelled to work for wages. What of home life ? And childhood’s days so sweet in the remembering? Nearly 140 in every 1,000 never have any childhood’s days to remember, for they die before their first year of “life” is completed. And family life too ! What of that ? Yes, what of family life ? The average age of the worker is 29 years. The lunacy figures have doubled during the last 40 years. The unemployed problem becomes ever more intense. The worker’s wife and children have now to turn out on the labour market and help to keep a roof over their heads until the arrival of the undertaker—at the age of 29 or thereabouts.

“The home is to go” wails the Express. “Family life too” it sobs. Pass on ! it makes one peevish.

And now what of the Socialist proposals. Of course volumes could be written and have been written upon the institutions of religion and marriage. But briefly, very briefly, the position occupied by the Socialist in viewing the institutions named is very simple and readily understood. It is this.

Before man can formulate a religion, or a social custom like marriage, it is fairly apparent that he must be living in a community, and that the nature of that community will depend largely upon the methods by which the material wants, primarily food, are supplied. For instance, where animal or vegetable food is difficult of access, there, as history shows, one can confidently expect to find cannibalism. The social customs of that community will be an exact reflex of the way they are compelled to get their living. Their god will be as partial to human flesh as they. Their frailties, passions and virtues will find a truthful mirror in their deity. This is so historically and logically true that the wonder is that any person is to be found who, having given a very moderate amount of study to the question, can for a moment doubt it. Take the ancient Norsemen : men of pillage, rapine and plunder ; wild, restless, roving pirates, as fond of wine as they were of war. Their gods, Thor, Wodin, etc., were glorified counterparts of themselves. Higher in the scale the Greeks, a people who had brought the arts to a marvellous pitch of perfection, personified the arts and graces, that is, they made their gods and goddesses after their own image, and then deified and worshipped them. With the decay of the Greek civilisation, their deities died of the same complaint. So that as regards religion the Socialist position should be fairly clear. Change the economic condition of a people and their god or gods obediently dance to the altered tune. A moment’s reflection should make this abundantly clear. Even in the case of Christianity it is continually changing as the minds of its adherents change. “It is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdon of Heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle” said Christianity’s great expositor 2,000 years ago. But a system of society has arisen in which the rich capitalist is looked upon as the mainspring by which Society is enabled to move: a society in which the followers of the humble Nazarene become the possessors of enormous wealth. And—mark what happens. Dr. Akeds arise in scores to prove that Christ did not really mean it. Theologians go to extreme pains to prove that the eye of a needle was something entirely different to our domestic implement. The camel’s task was really very easy : only a bit of a squeeze and he was through. Same with the rich man, and so on.

And now regarding the custom of marriage. There is something decidedly humorous in the spectacle of the introducers of the Divorce Courts reproaching anyone with sinister designs upon the “sacred contract.” The severing of the marriage tie by means of divorce is a measure that surely no one will lay to the door of the Socialists. And who is it that fills the Divorce Court ? The very people who are now accusing the Socialist of designs upon the purity and sanctity of home life. Who are the greatest patrons of the horrible social ulcer known as prostitution ? The question is almost automatically answered. Regent Strest and Piccadilly are not working-class quarters; they are not even, remotely “tainted” with the “canker of Socialism.” Yet the bare names of these thoroughfares have become synonymous for the vice which flourishes, unashamed and practically unchecked, upon them. The average man (who is not a Socialist) will tell you that prostitution is a necessary evil, and that the unfortunates who are its victims should receive State recognition and be licensed, as on the Continent. The upholders of the present system cannot conceive of human society without it. “It always has been and always will be” sums up the whole of their philosophy.

The true Socialist position is that the present marriage contract is by no means the last word to be said upon the subject. History shows that as the economic basis of human society has changed, so the customs of that society have altered, including, necessarily, marriage. The present social system is based upon the ownership of private property, and the marriage contract is in essence a property contract. The single sentence from the Marriage Service, “with all my worldly goods I thee endow” is indicative of this, especially as the recipient of this cornucopean shower immediately surrenders all control over it by promising to “love, honour and obey” the benevolent “bestower.” The Married Women’s Property Act legalises the holding of property by married women, but even this becomes an expedient by means of which the bankrupt can secure some of his “hard-earned” plunder against the inroads of his swindled creditors, provided he has sufficient foresight.

It should be clear, then, that present-day society is organised upon a basis of private property in the means whereby the wealth creators live and that necessarily the customs of Society will partake of the general structure. With the change in the basis, necessarily the superstructure must follow suit. Abolish a system where the mainspring of all effort is the glorification, and aggrandisement of the individual at the expense of the community ; where the ideal is tersely expressed as “every man for himself and devil take the hindmost,” and substitute a community whose driving factor shall be collective effort for the mental and material well-being of all, and whose chief concern shall he the free and unfettered development of all its component units ; abolish the one, we say, and substitute the other and the way is easy for a marriage based upon mutual esteem; upon Love in actuality and not as at present, merely as an accessory after the fact—the fact of the possession of a “decent berth” or a banking account.

One thing the Express and those of its kidney appear to overlook is this. In any society where woman were the social equal of man, is it to be imagined for one moment that she would acquiesce in anything the Express portion of the population cared to suggest? No ! Capitalist morals, bourgeois ethics, would follow the Express into the oblivion of a hideous past. Under Socialism there will be no sex barrier. Elementary logic would appear to show that the individuals most interested, or rather more affected, by social changes, should at least be among the first to be consulted. It does not seem to have occurred to the Express that woman would have a voice in the ordering of her sex-relationship. Need her answer be anticipated ? Think it over !

W. T. Hopley

Crisis and scandal – Happy New Year? (2025)

From the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first few days of 2025 has seen the news dominated by two features, neither of which are anything new. That there is a housing crisis is a frequently covered issue, while, unfortunately, reports of sexual exploitation are all too common.

Friedrich Engels, accounting for the many privations he documents in his 1845 book, The Condition of the Working Class in England, draws what would have been a controversial conclusion. Despite laissez-faire being the dominant economic attitude he voiced the necessity of the state playing a much more active mitigating role.

Subsequent history bore this out. The slums and overcrowded tenements of the new industrial towns Engels saw had, just 45 years later, resulted in government action. The 1890 Housing of the Working Classes Act enabled London councils to begin building houses, with Bethnal Green seeing the first of these in 1896. This initiative was extended to councils outside London by the 1900 Housing of the Working Class Act.

The poor physical health of so many working men revealed by First World War recruitment led to such state intervention being further extended in 1919 by the Housing Act. Also known as the Addison Act, it made housing a national responsibility, requiring local authorities to build 500,000 new homes over three years. The rationale was that healthy homes would furnish a healthy population. How ironic and tragic that over a century later, during a time when health services are being overwhelmed, there is currently a housing crisis.

The present government, echoing the one of 1919, has done what it seems all governments do when facing a serious social problem, it has set a target. 1.5 million homes to be constructed by 2029, around 370,000 a year. That is 140,000 more than the quota set by the previous administration. All well and good, to an extent, if building on that scale actually happens. The real problem ultimately is not housing but wealth, or the lack of it.

A recent radio interview with a woman in Liverpool illustrates the difficulties. She has two young children and presently is having to live with her own mother in her two bedroom home. This means the younger mother and her daughters are required to share a bed. Her local authority has a duty to house this woman and her children. Its failure to do so is due not to malfeasance, but to not having the physical property to supply. Nor does it have the resources to build houses.

Affordable housing, whether to buy or rent, is supposed to be an obligation on builders. However, builders do not build to meet need, they do so to make profit. They are driven by the same ethos as all of capitalism. More modest, cheaper properties do not cost substantially less, pro rata, to build than larger, premium properties that can command higher-end prices. A house, just like a single brick, is a commodity that must return the best possible profit for its maker.

Around Barnsley, for example, there are a number of brownfield sites for which planning permission has been granted. Many of these permissions have subsequently lapsed without a brick being laid. Whatever potential for profit exists or existed on these sites it seems insufficient for the market to act. The local authority has not been unwilling or obstructive, nor is there an absence of housing need. No matter whether targets are set locally or nationally, that need will not be met if there is a more pressing need for money.

No matter how sympathetic the radio interviewer, the listeners, politicians and pressure groups, that Liverpudlian woman and her children are, in brutal capitalist terms, not economically viable. It is quite possible that those children, and all too many like them, are or will become vulnerable. The scandal dominating the news at the moment is the seemingly huge sexual exploitation of children, dating back over decades.

Like the housing crisis this is by no means a new phenomenon. The age of consent to marry, in England in 1700, was 12 for a girl, 14 for boys. The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885, raised the age to 16 for girls, with more severe punishments for those procuring those under 13.

Just as housing need is addressed by politicians setting targets, so they deal with this exploitation through establishing, or calls to establish, enquiries. These meet, gather evidence, propose action and then the story drops from the headlines until it re-emerges years later when little has changed.

How such things are legally considered reflects the prevailing economic structure of society. The 12-year-old requirement referred to the minimum age a girl could marry and was first established in the 13th century. Then the feudal system based on land ownership led to marriages via which estates could be secured and expanded through marriage. The Crown, then being the arbiter of law, determined that minimum age by which a female could wed.

By the time Engels was writing his book capitalism had become, and still is, the system through which social relations are produced. Virtually anything can be turned into a commodity for sale. It is a system based on the exploitation of individuals’ labour.

That labour might be employed in making widgets or supplying a service. Child labour in the UK is mainly prohibited except for a few exceptions that are highly regulated. When it is sex work that’s the issue, and there are children involved, legal and moral disapprobation is invoked.

However, for those so steeped in capitalism’s overriding ethos they are willing to risk repercussions, legislation is an inconvenience to be circumvented. If there’s a demand there will be suppliers. The worldwide trade in illegal drugs is a more visible example.

These crises and scandals are undoubtedly connected. At the root of both is money and the power it confers, or nullifies, depending on a person’s financial circumstances. Houses will be built, young persons traded, if there is profit to be made.

For as long as capitalism is allowed to continue, both legal and illegal pursuit of profit will be the ultimate determinant of whether people’s needs, in all respects, will be met. Political posturing and moral handwringing will not make a fundamental difference. Crises and scandals will remain distressing and recurrent features of headlines.

Dave Alton

In Defence of Property. (1907)

Book Review from the March 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Socialism: Its Fallacies and Dangers.” A collection of papers edited by Frederick Millar. Published by Watts & Co. for the “Liberty and Property Defence League.”

“Let us jealously watch the encroachments of the State, and never suffer it to become more than a watchdog.” Such appears to be the political doctrine of the band of belated individualists who are responsible for this book, for they include and condemn under the name of Socialism practically all State activity other than that of the mere policeman. Since, however, the propertied class has in its own interests been compelled to add to the State many other functions than that of the “watch-dog,” it is hardly necessary to consider the question at issue as being individualism versus collectivism at all, but rather as being—the class which lives by labour versus the class which lives by ownership, and whether those who produce should not own and control the product.

To those who seek a clear and useful criticism of Socialist principles the book under review will be disappointing. The facts of industrial evolution are not appreciated. The significance of the huge company and combine, where great and complicated branches of industry are run by hireling workers for absentee shareholders, is not taken into account. Nor is it recognised that industry is developing to the point at which the workers’ choice lies only between the oppressive collectivism of the trust or capitalist State for the profit of a few, and the collectivism of democracy for the benefit of all united in producing. The writers place themselves athwart the economic trend, and though as modern Mrs. Partingtons they may be excellent at a slop or a puddle, yet, trundle their mops as they will, they can hardly succeed in checking the rising Atlantic of economic development.

That there are misrepresentations is to be expected from such a source. Thus on page 17 we meet our old and hoary friend, “Sharing Out,” Socialism being referred to as the “confiscation and division of the national income.” It is also stated that Socialists “maintain that if a man lives in the house of another man, it is an extortion to ask him to pay a rent.” But the scientific Socialist knows that, apart from what is called economic rent, house rent is but the price of a commodity that, like every other commodity, tends to exchange at its value, which already includes its proportion of unpaid labour. The Socialist, therefore, holds that the robbery of the worker really takes place in the factory, not on the market.

Those who go into the highways and byways facing the opposition and abuse of the ignorant and the interested, and who, in their championship of the workers against oppression and robbery, brave the malice and persecution of the defenders of property, are told on page 24 that “The root of Socialism is cowardice. Here is the real source of the whole movement. It is the whine and the dream of the weaklings’ base fear of rivalry, of competition. It is the duty of real men to circumvent and defeat, by war if necessary, by invasion if necessary, by conquest if necessary, by extermination if necessary, the despicable effeminacy of creatures unworthy of the name of men, because they fear to carry on the competitive struggle in which the true life of manhood consists. The Socialist movement is popular because it appeals to these numerous creatures ; panders to their baseness ; promises them what they would be ashamed to desire or seek if they were men.”

Socialism and the Family.

Next comes the war-cry of the pro-property hypocrite,—”Socialism means the abolition of family life.” On this subject the defenders of that class whose heroes fill the divorce courts and whose morals are said to be “of the poultry yard,” have only vague innuendo and misrepresentation to offer. But what are the simple facts ? The family life of the workers is being destroyed by capitalism through the man, wife and child being forced into the factory to earn the daily bread; and where the home life remains it too often spells brutalising drudgery and ill-temper, owing to the poverty of the wage earner and the great waste of labour entailed by the individual household. The tremendous saving in drudgery that the co-operative household under Socialism will allow, the improvement in comfort, health, and happiness that it will bring, leave no room for doubt regarding the future of the home, while should any prefer the greater labour and discomfort of the old style, they would certainly be allowed to please themselves.

But what of the relations of men and women ? The Socialist knows that the methods of obtaining the material living, and the social order essential thereto, form the foundations of the moral and intellectual life of the time; and that with the changing economic foundation, not only must the relations of individuals to each other change, but their ideas also. The history of family life affords a striking example of this. As Prof. Jenks points out, permanent marriage had its origin in patriarchal society, and was due to no improvement in morality, but to the necessities of the pastoral pursuits of the man, and to his desire to secure for himself exclusively the labour of the woman and her offspring. The wife was bought or captured, and the children were valuable articles of merchandise. The very word “family” is derived from an old Italian word, famel, meaning a slave.

From its origin in the institution of property the marriage relationship has reflected the changing needs of property. Children are no longer chattels or assets in the old sense ; they are “encumbrances,” and paterfamilias’ former power of life and death over his household is now restricted to very meagre dimensions. The present marriage contract expresses the needs of the economic dependence of women and children on the man, and becomes an instrument for the control and transmission of property. Mutual affection is quite subordinated to questions of property and income, with the consequent outcrop of hypocrisy, adultery, and unhappiness. While on the one hand the number of men who do not marry is made greater by the insecurity of their lot, on the other hand the number of women who sell themselves on the streets is increased by the inability of many to obtain otherwise even the bare necessaries of life.

But when socialisation ends the reign of capitalist property and insecurity, when woman has economic equality with man, and the fear for the children’s future is ended by communal life, then the relationship between the sexes ceases to be a property one and becomes human ; and who can doubt that modern forms must alter with such change of circumstances, and that the matrimonial market and property contract, with the buying and selling of cohabitation for title and income, must, together with the corollaries of prostitution and domestic misery, become mere memories of a dark past. Who can doubt that the relations between man and woman, when freed of the demoralising influence of economic inequality and vicious social surroundings, will be healthier and purer than ever before being based no longer on a property transaction or economic compulsion, but upon mutual affection. Yet we are told, among much other nonsense on page 29 of the book under review, that under Socialism “the union of men and women would be an affair of the State, not of mutual regard” !

The Intellectual Few.

On page 54 the reader is told, “the more the origin of wealth is enquired into, the more clearly will the truth appear that wealth is caused by the intelligence of the few, as distinguished from the labour of the many.” Now even if this were so it would not bear the inference that the propertied class are the intellectual few reaping the reward of their intellectual labour, for the wealth of the few is accumulated from the purchase and exploitation of both “manual” and “intellectual” workers. But what is the truth regarding the wonderful inventions and improvements which have occurred in industrial processes ? Have a series of supermen arisen to produce at each stroke a great wage-saving improvement ? Herbert Spencer himself has exploded the “great man” theory, and has shown that the great man is the product of his age, whilst the history of industry shows that nearly all improvements have been the result of an accumulation of small inventions which up to a certain point were ignored or despised, in spite of their possibilities, because they were not immediately cheaper to work than the older methods. But a last slight improvement, based upon and supplementing the labour of those who had gone before, rendered the new process more profitable than the former methods, and rapidly the features of that industry became transformed. In 1857, Hodge, before a Commission said : “Present spinning machinery is supposed to be a compound of about 800 inventions. The present carding machinery is a compound of about 60 patents.”

And those who wrought these improvements, were they rewarded ? And were they members of our amazingly intellectual ruling class ? They were, indeed, rawly rewarded, while it is almost entirely from men of the working class that the leading inventions have come. J. Burnley, in “The Story of British Trade and Industry,” says, “It is a notable fact that the leading inventors of the latter half of the eighteenth century were of the artizan class—humble workers who, in their cottages and little improvised workshops, quietly worked out the mechanical problems which achieved so much for the world, if not for themselves.”

John Kay, after inventing the fly shuttle, died a pauper at the end of a few years of ineffectual struggle. Wyatt, who after three years of close effort produced a machine which “spun the first thread of cotton ever produced without the intervention of human fingers,” was poor, and allied himself with Lewis Paul, of Birmingham, who promised to finance the invention. Wyatt, however, never benefited by it, for nothing came of the idea until Arkwright revised it at a later date. Another poor inventor, Crompton, set himself to combine the spinning jenny and the water frame. It took him five years of secret experiment, but he eventually succeeded and for a while quietly used his improvement in his own work. Crompton, however, was asked how he managed to spin such fine yarn ; he then let the manufacturers into the secret on their subscribing about £50. The firm of which Sir Robert Peel, the grandfather of the statesman, was principal, were the first to make big profits out of the invention, making their machines after Crompton’s model. Soon millions of the spindles were working, but Crompton died a few years later in extreme poverty. Such is, indeed, the usual answer of capitalist practice to capitalist theory. The brains of the workers are picked, and their bodily strength exhausted, in order to increase the wealth of those who own the means of living.

The whole argument that “wealth is due to the intelligence of the few” is, in reality, nonsensical. There is no intellectual labour without some degree of manual labour, and no manual labour, however mechanical, that does not imply intellectual labour also. The marketable wealth of the world is not produced otherwise than by labour, intellectual and manual; yet the fact remains that it is a non-producing class who, by their ownership of the means whereby wealth is created, and by their control of political power, are enabled to compel the people to carry on production for them, and to hand over to them all the enormous surplus that remains when the bare necessities of the producers have been grudgingly provided for.

And it is in defence of the title of this owning class to the wealth created by others, that the book under review is published. Well does the League that is responsible for the book deserve to be called, as it is by many working men, the Liberty to Rob Defence League.

F. C.Watts

Blogger's Note:

There isn't a lot of information about Frederick Millar on the net, but he does get a few mentions in Edward Bristow's 1975 article, 'The Liberty and Property Defence League and Individualism', which was published in The Historical Journal.

The Economic Basis of Morality. (1906)

From the October 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

As all the advantages of the rearing of animals come to be realised, the savage “pack” gradually changes into a society of shepherds or herdsmen, in which the men are engaged in tending cattle, sheep, or goats, while to the women fall the subordinate offices of spinning the wool, milking the cows and goats, and making the butter and cheese. The men drive the flocks to pasture and water, regulate the breeding, guard the folds against enemies, decide which of the animals shall be killed for food, and break in the beasts of burden.

But in these pastoral pursuits it gradually becomes apparent to the men that labour is a valuable thing. A man who has been very successful in cattle-rearing requires a number of “hands” to keep his herds in order. Besides the domestic labour performed by women, he requires the outdoor labour of men, to prevent the cattle from straying or being stolen, to drive them to pasture in the morning and bring them back at night. To this demand for labour we probably owe two of the great institutions of the pastoral age : permanent marriage and slavery. There is really, as we shall see, nothing out of place in taking these two together, odd as the connection may sound to modern ears.

Permanent marriage is one of the essential features of patriarchal society. By superficial writers, its appearance is often attributed to some vague improvement in morality or taste. Unhappily, the facts point to a much less exalted origin, viz., the desire of the man to secure for himself exclusively the labour of the woman and her offspring. If the change had come about from exalted ideas of morality, we should probably have found two features in the new system (1) equality of numbers between the man and the woman ; (2) free consent to the marriage on both sides. It is notorious that just the opposite are the facts of the patriarchal system, at any rate at its earlier stages. Polygamy, or plurality of wives, is the rule; and while the husband is not at all particular about the conduct of his wife with other men, he is intensely strict about appropriating the whole of her labours ; and all her offspring, no matter who is the real father, belong to him. Again, the ancient forms of marriage, viz, marriage by capture and marriage by purchase, point irresistibly to the conclusion that the woman had little or no voice in the matter. In the case of marriage by capture, the husband carried off his wife by force from a neighbouring tribe ; and long after the reality of this practice has disappeared, it survives, as is well known, in a ficticious form all over the world. It is considered barely decent for the girl to come to the marriage without a show of force. Even in polite modern society the “best man” is said to be a survival of the friends who went with the bridegroom in ancient days to help him to carry off his bride, while the bridesmaids are the lady’s companions, who attempted to defend her from the audacious robber, and the wedding tour is a survival of the flight from the angry relatives of the bride. In the more peaceful form of marriage by purchase, the lady has become an article of marketable value, whose price is paid, usually in cattle or sheep, to her relatives or owners. It is a refinement of modern days that the “bride price” should be settled on the lady herself, or contributed in the form of marriage gifts, to stock the future home. In ancient times it was paid, if not in hard cash, at any rate in solid cattle, to the damsel’s relatives, who, by the marriage, lost the value of her services. Jacob, we know, paid for his wives by labour; but this was probably an exception. In patriarchal society, the father of a round dozen of strong and well-favoured daughters is a rich man.

Slavery arises from the practice of keeping alive captives taken in war, instead of putting them to death. In savage days wars are usually the result of scarcity of food, and result in the killing and eating of members of a stranger “pack.” But, with the increasing certainty of food supply, resulting among other benefits from pastoral pursuits, cannibalism becomes unnecessary, and captives are carefully kept alive in order that they may labour for their captors. It may sound odd to speak of slavery as a beneficent institution, but one of the first lessons which the student of history has to learn is that things which to us now seem very wicked may really have been at one time improvements on something much worse. Slavery is an ugly thing, but it is better than cannibalism. Again, however, we notice that the upward step was due, not to exalted morality, but to practical convenience. Morality is the result, not the cause, of social amelioration.

Edward Jenks, M.A., “A History of Politics.”

The Family Way (1979)

From the December 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The position of women in society is one of the most significant examples of social, political and economic subordination; various major social movements have arisen committed to changing this situation, ranging from the Liberal feminism of the Suffragettes to the biological determinism of one of the current supporters of “Women's Liberation”. Women as a group share a common oppression for three main reasons: firstly, as potential child-bearers they lack the power of completely determining when and in what circumstances they will bear children; secondly, right across the class structure women are found in subordinate positions in economic and political organisations; lastly, women are socialised and educated to take a domestic role and to be attractive to men rather than to be part of economic activity outside the family.

In all capitalist economies there is a difference in power, income, status and responsibility which operates against women and turns them into a disadvantaged group. (Women are obviously also disadvantaged in other forms of society too. but in this article attention is focussed on capitalism). It is to the property relations of capitalism that we must look in order to explain this all-pervasive inferiority of women. Women's condition is an historically changing aspect of the material situation — the division of labour has developed from division based on sex. natural predisposition, physical strength and so on to a formal institutional division firmly based on the ownership of property. The structure of the present-day family and the role women play within it and in society at large, have been determined by past developments in the organisation of production and will continue to change in response to future changes in capitalism until eventually they are transformed in socialist society.

The transition period from feudalism of capitalism was a crucial one in this long process of change — the lives of women were inevitably profoundly affected. Engels pointed out that the monogamous family had come into being as a result of economic development. In The Origin of the Family. Private Property and the State, he writes “Monogamy was the first form of the family not founded on natural but on economic conditions, viz: the victory of private property over primitive and natural collectivism”. He goes on to elaborate on the change for women that these larger changes involved:

“Supremacy of the man in the family and generations of children that could be his offspring alone and were destined to be the heirs of his wealth — these were openly avowed by the Greeks to be the sole object of monogamy . . . Monogamy then does by no means enter history as reconciliation of man and wife, and still less as the highest form of marriage. On the contrary, it enters as the subjugation of one sex by the other".

The transition in Britain, from feudalism to capitalism destroyed and undermined many relations in the old society, not least of which was the structure of the family. Out of the upheaval were to come the bourgeois proletarian family. Under feudalism, land had been the immediate source of life for rich and poor alike — men and women had lived in predominantly self-sufficient rural households. The feudal family was the unit of production and women played an important and acknowledged role in the survival of the household. However, by the 1640s there were an estimated half million workers who had been ‘freed from the soil’ and their lack of property became the basis for the accumulation of wealth by the growing capitalist class. In Manifesto of the Communist Party Marx and Engels wrote 

“The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his '‘natural superiors’ and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest. than callous ‘cash payment’ . . . (It) has torn away from the family its sentimental veil and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.” 

The landless poor, their ranks swollen by dispossessed and unemployed craftsmen and tradesmen, were forced to rely entirely on selling their labour power. As a result a new family structure came into being, and many women found their lives profoundly altered. They could no longer combine child-bearing and rearing with their work: without land they could not contribute in the same way to their families’ livelihood. The family, in fact, ceased to be the basic economic unit and wives became dependent to a far greater extent on their husbands. Many peasant women became financial liabilities to their menfolk and the family was undermined as an institution.

Just as the lives of the peasant women were changing as the proletarian family was forced into existence, so too the growing affluence of the bourgeoisie meant that they developed a lifestyle and a family structure appropriate to their new economic roles. As the division of labour became more complex and specialised, the successful craftsman or tradesman hired others to work for him: his wife tended to withdraw from her previous activities in the workshop and she became increasingly confined to the home. The roles of husband and wife became more specifically differentiated and the home ceased to be a productive part of the community. “The external world of work became the sphere of the man exclusively. The internal world of the family and the household was the proper business of the women . . . Not to work, for the women of the middling people became the mark of class superiority at the very moment when their men were establishing work as the criterion of dignity and worth” (Women, Resistance and Revolution, Sheila Rowbotham). The administration of the household lost its public character and women were excluded from participation in social production.

Thus, as feudalism gave way to capitalism women's lives changed radically and they found themselves increasingly at a disadvantage in the new organisation of industry. The process was a continuing one, affecting different groups of women in very different ways. For some the separation of the workplace from the home reduced their productivity and limited their role. For others, the introduction of a new machine excluded them from production, or alternatively their position in the guilds and crafts organisations was weakened sufficiently to drive them out, and trades which had been reserved for women were taken over by men. Yet other women moved out of the search for work outside the home altogether and into leisure and domestic isolation. “Modern industry in overturning the economical foundation on which was based the traditional family and the family labour corresponding to it. had also loosened all traditional family ties” (Marx. Capital. Vol.l)

Women’s position in society and their role within the family have changed greatly in the past 400 years, and they will continue to change as capitalism itself develops. However, so long as capitalism remains, the exploitation of women will also remain Not until we establish a system of society based upon common ownership and democratic control of the means of production will everyone — both women and men — be able to realise their full potential.

J.S.

The Revolution in Chinese marriage (1956)

From the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

The establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, despite the usual misleading Communist phraseology, marked the completion of the Capitalist revolution there. The new system of society which is emerging from it has changed many things hitherto fundamental to the Chinese way of life, and not the least of these is marriage.

The majority of people, both in Europe and Asia, regard their existing form of marriage, together with the sexual morality that their society claims as sacrosanct, as something permanent, something that always has been and always will continue. But, in fact, marriage laws and sexual morality change in keeping with changing social systems.

Early Chinese Marriage

In ancient times in China the aristocracy were married with elaborate rites and ceremonies. The wife of an aristocrat would be associated in the rites of her husband’s ancestral temple; the temple of his "Clan.” Marriage was particularly important because property was involved and the heirs’ legal claim to the estate had to be established.

But the peasants were not included in the clan system, had no surname or pedigrees, and consequently could not participate in ancestor-worship. Moreover, they did not possess any land of their own. They were serfs, cultivating their master’s soil under his direction. They dwelt in groups in villages during the harsh winter, and in huts built among the fields during the summer when agriculture was possible. Every spring, the peasants celebrated a festival in which the youths and girls of neighbouring villages met in free association, only translated into formal marriage in the autumn if the girls were with child

The Traditional Chinese Marriage

Feudalism was abolished in China in 300.B.C. and replaced by a unified central government ruling through a civil service. Wealth increased rapidly, and extended to fresh groups of the population. This spread of private property necessitated a change in morality as well as in the marriage customs of the population for peasants wished to leave their farms to their own sons, and marriage, therefore, became a social necessity for them. But the heavy tasks of draining farmland in the marshy valleys and the irrigation works that were needed afterwards, required the labour of large family groups. 

A system of ethics was evolved which was expressed by the teachings of the sage Confucius, laying down a code of behaviour to cover all relationships. The submission of the subject to the ruler, and, within the family, the submission of the individual to the head of the household. Moreover there were rules formulated to cover relationships such as between younger brother and elder brother, husband and wife, wife and mother-in-law. Thus Confucianism not only made the task of ruling over vast China easier, but enabled the individuals in these otherwise unwieldy family groups to live together in more or less harmony and co-operation. Some of those whose mothers-in-law lived with them as one of the family may perhaps have received an inkling of the desirability of such regulating of family life and behaviour.

This somewhat puritanical code of Confucianist morals was rigidly adhered to in conservative China, where changes were extremely gradual because the Chinese made their living by engaging in small scale intensive agriculture, which has developed very slowly right down through the ages until a few years ago. It also forms the philosophic basis for the literary classics, a thorough knowledge of which was necessary to pass the civil service examinations.

In China until recent times it was the custom for the parents of the bride and bridegroom to be brought into contact by a marriage broker, the parents being the final arbiters on the suitability of the proposed union. The couple had no say in the choice and moreover did not meet before the ceremony. The Chinese compared this form of betrothal with a cold pot that is put on the fire and gradually heats up; whereas marriage in the West usually taking place after courtship was likened to a pot boiling at the time of the ceremony, but thereafter beginning to cool off.

Marriage in “Communist” China

The Marriage Law of the Peoples Republic of China, which came into force on 1st May, 1950, indicates the need for a new set of family rules to govern behaviour in this new Capitalist system of society. It reveals too an interesting side-light on some of the social changes taking place there; for it is only to be expected that China, the latest recruit to the State Capitalist system, should adopt the most up-to-date set of Capitalist marriage laws.

Article 1 of the new law formally abolishes the previous marriage system, and in its place institutes the “New Democratic” Marriage Law which, it states, is based on free choice of partners, on monogamy, on equal rights for both sexes, and of the lawful interest of women and children.

“Husband and wife are companions living together and shall enjoy equal status in the home. Both shall have the right to free choice of occupation and free participation in work or social activities."

Other Articles deal with prohibition of bigamy and concubinage. The local government is delegated to issue the marriage certificates.

The change in the status of women has the advantage for the ruling-class that the women are “free" to become wage-workers.

Rights and duties are further detailed, as well as the relations between parents and children; and divorce is to be granted only when the efforts of the local government officials have failed to bring about a reconciliation. After appropriate measures have been taken for the care of children and property, divorce certificates are to be issued without delay. Both parents still have the duty to support their children. In case of divorce, the wife shall retain such property as belonged to her before her marriage.

As a further indication of the trend of society in modern China, 12 put of the 27 articles that go to make up this law deal wholly or partly with money or property matters.

For the smooth running of capitalism, workers must conform to the rules of behaviour which have been found suitable for the social system; and because the needs of capitalism are similar irrespective of which part of the globe is involved, the marriage laws, which codify a part of this behaviour pattern are also similar, differing only in detail in the various national sections of the Capitalist world.

It is understandable that the new Chinese marriage law abolishes the previous marriage system; it is in the interest of the Capitalists to try to increase the surplus value obtained from the labour of the workers, who are induced to speed up their work by the prospects of a higher standard of living. This elusive prize is dangled before them, like the carrot before the donkey’s nose. Moreover, in order to get the Chinese worker to work harder, the old-fashioned household, consisting of several related families sharing the income of their wage-earners, has had to be broken up into smaller units; in this way the wage-earner and his immediate family receive all the benefit from his wages.

The breaking-up of this now out-moded household into the more modern form of family unit has the further advantage, from the Capitalist point of view, that the parents, because the family is now dependent on their sole earnings, are more amenable to Capitalist demands. Hence, the new marriage laws of China, by substituting for child betrothals, the “free choice” of husband and wife and by fixing the responsible minimum marrying ages for women and men, transfer the responsibility for the marriage; financially and otherwise, from the large family group to a smaller family unit; the unit which is now considered normal in the Capitalist world.

This change in the status of women has evoked great interest in China, and Chinese newspapers and magazines frequently carry photos showing the various jobs women have undertaken. One day the Peking newspapers carried on their front pages photographs of women proudly driving the local trams, other pictures showed women repairing these trams, and others, gear-cutting in the machine building shops. A picture of a group of smiling nurses had a caption to the effect that 85,000 medical assistants were to be trained in the next five years. On the railways some of the engine crews are women and there is a train on the Peking-Tientsin run entirely staffed by women whose photographs show them as being understandably pleased with their accomplishments. There are many pictures published of proud "Labour Heroines ’’—those pacesetters of China’s industrialisation drive.

Work teams composed of functionaries of the People's Court and members of the Democratic Womens’ Federation and the Youth League, visit the villages to see that the Marriage Law is properly enforced. They help to settle marital disputes on the spot and illustrate the merits of the law through plays, skits and lantern slide exhibitions.

It is reported that the special panel meetings for husbands and mothers-in-law are proving very effective.

But as a lotus petal separated from the flower is carried along in the grip of the wind, so have the women of China been broken away from the relatively secure group-household to start on a separate course of life. This has at least begun with great hopes of happiness. The publication of the Marriage Law was accompanied by articles written by leading Chinese personalities—the-Vice-President of the Supreme People’s Court and the Vice-Chairman of the All-China Democratic Women’s Federation—anticipating domestic bliss as a consequence of the operation of this law. In other parts of the globe where somewhat similar laws obtain, the mounting figures of divorces, separations, and juvenile delinquency resulting from broken homes, give cause for doubts about such optimism.

And in China, some of the smiles must surely have changed to tears by now, for another photograph published later shows a parting between a young mother and her toddler at the entrance to a factory nursery. The caption reads—“Come, dear! Let your mother go to work."

Other pictures show women members of the armed forces in Korea of whom it is stated that they are merely in the medical corps but that others are taking part in the fighting as combat troops. This information has been borne out by reports in Western newspapers of women figuring in the fighting in Korea. Thus is the road to woman's “emancipation" via blood, toil, tears and sweat."

And so the world changes. But the more things change the more they often really stay the same; for in a class-dominated society so many reforms, on the eve of fulfilment, turn to dust and ashes. By the promulgation and enforcement of the Marriage Law of the Peoples' Republic of China are the women of China free—free to become wage-slaves.

Frank Offord

Tiny Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the August 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

“This is a system of the elite, by the elite and for the elite,” said Riyaz Hussain Naqvi, a retired government official who worked in tax collection for 38 years. “It is a skewed system in which the poor man subsidizes the rich man.” The problem starts at the top. The average worth of Pakistani members of Parliament is $900,000, with its richest member topping $37 million. “It’s a very good country for the rich man. Chauffeurs, servants, big houses. The question is, who is suffering? The common man.” :

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The anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders, whose Freedom party (PVV) won 24 seats and third place in the Dutch national election last month, says he is forming international alliances to launch branches of his Islamophobic party across the Western world. Almost 1.5m Dutch people voted for the PVV in June. “The message, ‘stop Islam, defend freedom’, is a message that’s not only important for the Netherlands but for the whole free Western world.”

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The United Nations estimates that each year 5,000 mostly Muslim women and girls are shot, stoned, strangled, stabled, burned, or smothered by family members with the intention of cleansing shame from the family’s name. While most of these crimes occur in the Middle East and South Asia, immigration is taking them around the globe.

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Fears are growing for the fate of thousands of young girls in rural Mauritania, where campaigners say the cruel practice of force-feeding young girls for marriage is making a significant comeback since a military junta took over the West African country. Aminetou Mint Ely, a women’s rights campaigner, said girls as young as five were still being subjected to the tradition of leblouh every year. The practice sees them tortured into swallowing gargantuan amounts of food and liquid - and consuming their vomit if they reject it.

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As 14-year-old Nguyen Hoang Anh was being branded with hot irons, had solvents poured in his wounds and had his teeth pulled out with pliers, those who heard him ignored his cries. In most countries, suspicions of any kind of child abuse, let alone such a horrific case, would rouse a small army of social workers and police. Vietnam, however, has no such public system and only loose laws protecting children and other vulnerable people. “We don’t consider beating a child to be violence against children,” concedes Nguyen Hai Huu, director of the Ministry for Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs’ child-protection unit.

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An Indian court has ruled that Hindu gods cannot deal in stocks and shares, reports said Saturday, after an application for trading accounts to be set up in their names. Two judges at the Bombay High Court on Friday rejected a petition from a private religious trust to open accounts in the names of five deities, including the revered elephant-headed god, Ganesha. “Trading in shares on the stock market requires certain skills and expertise and to expect this from deities would not be proper,” judges P.B. Majumdar and Rajendra Sawant said, according to Indian newspapers.

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Lonelyhearts: A Parody of Living (1973)

From the May 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The sexiest years of our lives” the News of the World called them, reviewing the changes which have occurred in sexual customs and behaviour during the last twenty-five years. “ ‘Today’s teenagers have burst open the sexual cage. They will never be driven back to the old taboos’, says the Sorensen Report on Adolescent Sexuality” — shouts The Sun. Film-stars boasting that they were not legally married to the fathers of their children. Over a million British women “on the Pill”. Stage productions like Hair and Oh, Calcutta! with completely starkers casts. Every pub, almost, with its Go-Go girls and strippers, and Saturday-night “divorced and separated club” dances. Family planning is free for all, screams the poster on the wall — make sure they are really wanted. The Borough of Camden actually pays taxi fares of girls needing advice urgently.

Forty-five years ago Dr. Marie Stopes (authoress of Married Love and pioneer of the first free birth- control clinic for working-class women in Islington, London) had her book suppressed and a six-month prison sentence which, however, she never served. With all this new-found freedom and frankness, discarding absurd Victorian prudery and hypocrisy, we should all be as happy as sandboys, as free as the air, having it away like rabbits without a care in the world.

But what is the truth? We live in the era of the broken marriage. Divorce and separation have reached staggering proportions, leaving behind them a legacy of grief and anguish hard to visualize. Children become “latch-key kids”, some “juvenile delinquents”. The matrimonial courts are snowed-under with cases, and the jails hard-pressed to cope with the 250,000 maintenance allowance defaulters. The weeklies reap a rich harvest running hundreds of adverts by men seeking women, and women the companionship and sociability of men. This writer remembers well buying a copy of Der Abend in Frankfurt, to find more advertisements by lonely men and women seeking partners in Germany, than in England.

These adverts along with Compat, Duet, and “divorced and separated” clubs are a peep under the lid of a seething cauldron. They are the harrowing heart-cry of the victims of a vicious and depraved society, capitalism, which denies many the exercise of those elementary physical functions which even lower animals enjoy instinctively.

A desperately lonely bachelor seeks an attractive lady.

“Surbiton Surrey’ ’is longing to make somebody happy.

A lonely English bachelor seeks lady for friendship and marriage.

And so on, page after page after page. Neither is it true that the advertizers are merely, or even mainly, interested in sex. Many go out of the way to state their social interests: “dancing”, “walking”, “music” — in fact, "Lonely Teacher” declares himself a “genuine socialist”.

Incidentally, nearly all the males advertized by Marriage Bureaux are “nearly” six feet tall, which doesn’t say much for us shorties who can only muster about five feet eight. Some have not only motor-cars and “good positions”; they are “cultivated”, “travelled”, “intelligent” and “humorous”, they own town and country houses, boats and caravans (one even has his own private plane) — and are still unhappy. One widow advertizes “a good home” for the lucky applicant. Such inducements can only arise in a private-property society where possessions are considered the criterion of contentment. Nevertheless one bright spark announces:

A gentleman, 46, tall, indolent, with no material possessions seeks a lady, whose religion is unimportant.

On the other hand:

A Continental lady with small capital would like to met an understanding gentleman for early marriage.

She probably got a flood of replies asking how small is “small”.

How paradoxically absurd that men and women, who are crammed together like sardines in public transport, homes and employment, have to advertize their frustrations. Hundreds of thousands are milling about like the exploding electrons in an atomic pile, crashing into other marriages and threatening their stability in a social chain-reaction.

Compare the unhappy plight of these “intelligent”, “cultivated”, car-driving bachelors and divorcees, forced to advertize their poverty of companionship, with the joyous freedom of the primitive savage, secure in the knowledge that all the women of the opposite Gens were his lawful, rightful wives, while all the men were the husbands of his Genswomen.

. . . the law enabling the strange Papuan, thousands of miles from home to find frequently, from Tribe to Tribe, women who will without resistance guilelessly surrender to him.

(Engels, Origin of the Family p.54) 

One can hardly restrain a smile at the quaint Victorian terminology still used by even such an iconoclastic pioneer as Engels. The idea that women “surrender” to men is exploded even under capitalism nowadays.

The absorption of women into commerce and industry has made them less economically dependent on men as Engels, Bebel and others predicted. This, and the cheap efficient small car instead of the pram, the washing machine in place of the wash-board, central heating and electrical machinery have partially emancipated women from drudgery in the kitchen and submission in the bedroom. Socialism will continue this process by emancipating women completely.

Lewis Henry Morgan’s great merit lay in his realization that our attitudes change with changing economic conditions, and that the family as a form of social organization evolves. Under slavery, male slaves had no sex life (officially, anyway). All female slaves were automatically the Master’s concubines, if required. Under feudalism sex was confined by the Church, for the lower orders, to the marriage partner for life. To the aristocrat the marriage was to land, not a bride. In this way the Hapsburg dynasty gained control over half of Europe. This form of repression inevitably produced prostitution which, however, never flourished then as under capitalism now, where literally everything is on sale for money.

For primitive man the choice was wide and free. Children were the social responsibility of the whole tribe. The absurdly individualistic private possessive relation to their own children of many proletarian mothers today was unknown. With the extension of knowledge and culture comes the advent of individual sex-love, although Engels held that it was impossible before the Middle Ages:

It goes without saying that personal beauty, harmony of inclinations, intimate intercourse, awakened a longing for sexual intercourse, but from such relations to our sex-love is a long way yet.

(Origin of the Family p.92) 

Sexual relations will be decided after a new generation has come to maturity, a breed of men who have never had occasion to buy the surrender of a woman for money, and women who have never had occasion to surrender to any man for any other reason but love. Once such people are in the world they will not give a moment’s thought to what we, today, believe should be their course.

(ibid., p.100)

Relieved of all economic problems, unsatisfactory unions will be dissoluble immediately on the simple decision of one or both parties. Mental compatibility and mutual achievement will gradually supplant physical satiety as the years pass. The individual family of private-property society will be superseded by the great social family of all humanity.

Hail to our sons and daughters! who, learning from the fumbling blunders of their stupid and clumsy parents, will attain a noble happiness we can never know.

Horatio.