Date: Sun, 12 Jan 1997 12:39:42 -0500
Subject: Re: FW: M-G: Re: family and Marxism


Unfortunately, I am too busy these days to take a more active
part in our discussion of family.  I agree with
 Ishai that this topic is of extreme importance for us *now*.
 Still, here is a short comment on his post about the kibbutzes.

Ishai wrote:

<<I'd like to tell you about the attempt to make cooperative education
and children raising, in the last 70-80 years in the KIBBUTZES in Israel.
The main purposes of this system were very much like the purposes of the
communists about this issue.
{
 For Communists the problem is put in freeing people from this medival
institution and in a planned way, collectively to try and solve the problems
of child raising and at the same time freeing people to develop in other 
areas to their full potential. I mean the role of father, mother certainly
will not dissappear, but the reactionary ideology and organisational forms
around this stuff should be organised in a way that raising
children,healthcare,childcare,schooling and even some of the free time is
collectively organised in order to give parents more time to do other
things--but also that children can avoid sometimes the oppressive
atomosphere of their parents!>>


I agree with most of this description except that "the role of father,
mother will not disappear." It will have to if by this role we understand
not a trivial biological fact but their *ideological* function 
in the context of class society. Family is the cardinal mechanism of
authoritarian obedience in such society.  Take, for instance, recent
developments in the US.  The dismantlement of the welfare state here 
goes hand in glove with the ideological warfare under the banner
of "family values"  and more repressive family laws. 

I cannot agree with Ishai's assumption that collective upbringing
of children in kibbutzes had the same purpose that it does for
communists.  Kibbutzes, after all, were never independent from the outside
world and the ultimate goals of Zionist movement and the new Jewish
state. Nor kibbutzes ever represented a significant part of Israeli
society for which they served as a spiritual focus and the embodied 
idea of Jewish unity that has never existed outside the kibbutz.
So the ideological function of the kibbutz and its collective ethos
has always been subordinate to the goal of creating and strengthening
the Jewish state, i.e. , the class organization of Jewish bourgeoisie.
There is a clear link between the ethos of collectivity and self-
abnegation that was cultivated within the kibbutz and of which the
truncated family was a central component - and the kibbutz' function
of being a breeding ground of the political class during the "heroic"
period of state building. 

But with every advance in consolidating the Jewish state and a full-
blown class society with it, the kibbutz ideology of collectivism, 
i.e. egalitarianism became less and less at odds with both and
therefore undesirable. No wonder that when those kibbutz parents and
children found themselves face to face with *such* state and *such*
society they screamed: bloody murder! And I would too in their place!
For the very structure of their relations and one may say the 
political economy of their emotional life was established as a 
necessary part of their social microcosm: collective property, emphasis
on communal life and therefore the reduced role of family ties.  
All of which have become inimical to the Israeli state and society.

-We gave away our family ties to build the Jewish state,  - they now
complain to the state and society, -  but how can we survive without
them in your world? 

-But the Israeli state and society need family, 
they are told: to bring up solders who never question orders, to care
for their sick and old, because the state and society cannot do this
(they exist for some higher purposes than that), and above all, to
take care of oneself, for these are a democratic state and a free-market
society.  

-But aren't we supposed to be one big happy family with every one 
taking care of all, and all of everyone? That's how they taught us 
our kibbutz.

-Hmm, yes, we, the Jewish people is one
big family, of course. But, please, get married, raise kids, be a good
worker and soldier, respect your parents and take good care of them,
and ...don't ask stupid questions. You are a nice Jewish boy, not 
a godless Bolshevik, aren't you? 
  

<<We can also see today many men and women that were raised in this communist way and now they can talk about many problems they have because of this - in raising their own children, their connection with their parents, they memories from their childhood are not always very good and generally they speak about it as a non natural way to raise children, their opinion is usually in favor of the regular family construct.>>

Yes, family appears "natural" exactly in the sense and to the extent 
that the state and class society - in which these Israelis live - do.

<<This things are based on many researchers that has been done about this issue and I think that all of us should learn that experience when we come to have a debate about it.>>

Not surprising that "many researchers" have come to the same 
conclusions that the state and society which provided them with funds
to do this research. To support and strengthen family as the central
social institution and ideology is the prime concern of the ruling
classes and their "science."

Vladimir


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