Love and the Family in Capitalism Ruthless Criticism

Love and the Family in Capitalism

The love affair - an exception to the usual ways of relating in capitalism

Marriage and the family, or simply a partnership, are mistakenly viewed as forming a refuge from the effects of bourgeois society and politics. Marriage and the family is the basic unit for reproducing the relations of the capitalist mode of production. The marriage form fixes a relationship in which the sexes are supposed to behave towards each other. This relationship is established both by law and by people’s false ideas and is reproduced equally by both. Love, sex and family are generally regarded as what is and should be completely private: who I love is really determined by my free will. It is interesting how this comes about in bourgeois society.

Beginning in a romance, marriage is where “true love” is supposed to find its confirmation. It was not always the case that marriage ceremonies and the organization of married life and the family were the “private matters” of those involved. Romantic marriage is a product of bourgeois society -- even if the divorce rate rises: the monogamous heterosexual partnership is considered the standard for bourgeois co-existence. In addition, if a partnership does not lead to marriage, it remains structurally identical even without formal marriage. Love as a feeling is supposed to be united with marriage: a feeling is brought into the form of an institution. Although the feeling of love cannot be made to last forever, the institution of marriage makes a calculation that the relationship will last a lifetime.

The state does not have to force anybody to marry; the bourgeois subjects hold marriage as an individual ideal and an apparent need. In former times, marriage and the family were an economic community not necessarily associated with love. Love that must "endure" became ever more important because it is easier to meet the demands of individual reproduction when an emotional bond is attached. Accordingly, the demands on marriage rose: Harmonious co-existence and security are the ideals by which a marriage measures itself. The problems that follow from the reproduction of the individual are made individual and private problems, although they are actually social. If one explains marriage as always private and intimate, one excludes general criticism and makes problems purely individual problems. This is the whole ideology.

Although love is imagined to be free, it is nevertheless bound to social conditions. It begins with the fact that one must provide for one’s own reproduction. One must go to work; and then one is on the treadmill of the capitalist mode of production: one must make sure to sell one’s labor successfully because there are always so many others on the labor market; one must be nice when dealing with customers; never tell off the boss; always knuckle under and never turn down the volume – one finds nothing in it for oneself except the wages that one needs to survive, and then only to continue as a wage laborer. Of course, many lie to themselves: they try to identify with the company or with their occupation because they selected their training in accordance with their inclinations. But work remains a requirement over which they have no choice, whatever false ideas they may hold about it.

A couple, particularly a married couple, does not compete with one another. They form a community in which they exclude themselves from the other competitive calculations of capitalist society. Because one cannot find happiness in the hostile world outside where competition prevails, one looks for it at home. One can relax there and make oneself fit for the next working day again; there one searches for happiness in one trusted partnership. If one works all day long, then one wants to see for what. The fact that one simply gets by does not seem to be enough. At work, demands and competition prevail. One may not act as one wants at work, but at home one does not have to prove oneself because different standards apply there.

If two people are happy together, they might move in together because after eight hours of work they can at least spend their spare time together. In the ideological conception, one should raise children because the brats are "living proof of love." In former times it was to find a "son and heir" to inherit the house and land and ensure that the property did not go to ruin but survived in the hands of the next generation. Even though the value of inheritance has not become less significant, today this relationship is interpreted as an act of love.

Why the state wants the family ...

The state has an interest in marriage. As the ideal total capitalist, its task is to regulate the reproduction of a population able to work for the functioning of the capitalist mode of production and the entire social life. In addition, the state also has an interest in a new generation so that a sufficiently large and qualified number of human resources can be fallen back on for production. The state makes people productive members of society by organizing an education system and compulsory schooling and by ordering the family to raise the young.

The task of parents is the socialization of the new generation, the introduction of children to the rules and standards of social cooperation. This takes place in the form of the nuclear family, in which the entire individual reproduction takes place. To ensure that a sufficient new generation is produced, the state grants financial incentives to parents, such as tax benefits and child allowances. The child protection service as a state authority controls and supervises the raising and education of children. It intervenes if so inclined. Orphaned children are put up for adoption and their upbringing is the responsibility of foster parents. This is so that the state does not have to count among its tasks their care and proper nourishment.

The bourgeois marriage contract is like every contract between formal equals in that it serves to take the nuclear family out of the sphere of competition. It gives the individual the security to be able to survive even if he or she cannot sell their labor because the reproduction of the contracting party must still be carried out. In marriage a common interest is taken care of, and the point of view of owners is given up between the two. Marriage and the family become the means for coping with demands and duties. These demands impel them to find it practical for one of them to remain at home in order to create more favorable reproduction conditions.

In the reproduction of the individual, a division of responsibilities takes place that is often divided on the basis of sex. Since the man is usually the one who goes to work, or has to go, and the woman is the keeper of house and kitchen, the man is the one who comes home at night and expects comfortable rest after he has been exploited all day. The woman is then his reproduction aid, his quiescent opposite, and his reward is to supply her and the children financially while she administers the poverty of the household budget. As child bearer, the woman is available for work only sporadically so capitalist enterprises assess the male constitution to be the better means for wear and tear. However, this does not depend on biological necessities, which are quite insignificant (pregnancy, puerperium, breastfeeding), but an ideology that assigns women the tasks of eternal housewife and mother: primal mother love and weakness for the tough life outside the kitchen and bedroom. In this way some functions are made sex specific qualities in order to push people into certain tasks.

The state ensures that individual reproduction continues in private because otherwise it would have to expand the range of its social responsibilities. On love that is not destined to "last forever" the state bestows an eternal relationship in which two declare their love and fix this relationship by contract as an exclusive exchange relation binding for a lifetime. The idea of a conjugal community contains obligations to domestic community, family maintenance (by work and one’s own property), lifelong monogamy, mutual respect and the renunciation of realizing one’s own interests in favor of the marriage. Some find it crazy to bring yet another "external" authority into a love affair as a controlling entity: they cannot swear loyalty to each other, but they would gladly have a guarantee of faithfulness if they close a contract which forces them to it out of jealousy.

... and its meaning for the decision to find happiness together

The existence of marriage and the family reproduce itself by its own conditions. Every member of bourgeois society is regulated as a family person. Family values, i.e. the interpretation of the functionalization of individuals for the reproduction of capital by the family into a means for the self-realization of those involved (as a mother, father, child), is for the state an important instrument to guarantee social peace and the political bond (the "community"). Family people act as -- and to that extent are confirmed as -- citizens. They personally take upon themselves and their loved ones the demands required by capital and the state.

One grows up with economic dependence and its association with love. One does not need to experience intimacy only in this way of living together and sharing according to an exclusive and long-term contract. Often the family concept is made into a natural law: What type am I? And who is the Right One for me? Tips for finding a partner and other such advice are everywhere. And if a marriage goes sour there is always marriage counseling. On one hand, a married couple puts aside competition between themselves by a contract; on the other hand, the marriage is of course not removed from competition by this contract form. Completely the opposite: because the marriage contract is conceived with a view to its end. Indeed, the divorce court judge examines their ownership relations and checks with the youth welfare office to decide which parent the children should remain with. There the case is already settled by the contract if a marriage partner is unemployed or wants a divorce. Even if the affection is gone, the marriage remains. Maybe the divorce is approved after an official examination and a period of separation, but nevertheless the obligation to care for each other remains, i.e. to pay for support.

A couple makes the purpose of marriage their own if they want to cope with the demands of the capitalist mode of production because of love. If a couple -- from and for love -- take on themselves the demands of the capitalist mode of production, then they make these external constraints an integral component of their love and will. The couple endures the administration of poverty, and then it only depends on him not drinking the money away and she, if necessary, must bear the double burden and go to work too. Then nevertheless the size of the wages determines how much pleasure is possible in interacting with the opposite sex. And if a constant lack is administered, it usually leads to bickering.