Will a classless stateless society be polyamorous?

[mutualaid]

Engles seems to suggest this in _Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State_

[Masha]

Polyamory would probably be the norm, but monogomy can still function if people want that! Commitment to one person on a deep level could still remain, and monogomy may be present in that relationship if that's what you'd like to do.

I think sexuality would no longer be classified as "either one partner at a time or many". It'd be normal to have many partners, but 1 partner for a long period of time would not be seen as "wierd" either.

[cyu]

I would imagine it will be whatever each person wants it to be. If someone likes to see monogamy, then they'll surround themselves with people who are monogamous. If someone likes to talk about music, then they'll surround themselves with people who like to talk about music. If someone likes quiet meditation, then they'll surround themselves with people who like quiet meditation.

So there would be pockets of this or that type of subculture throughout the population and at the borders of, for example, the music and anime subcultures, there would be people who like both music and anime, who enjoy dealing with fans of both.

[Zoop]

Fundamentally, monogamy is based upon jealousy, possessiveness, and authoritarianism. Given the nature of the future society, and the intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic consequences it will have on humanity, I highly doubt monogamy will exist.

[Comrade #138672]

Polyamory sounds exhausting. I do not think it is for everyone.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Frankly, I think it will be a case of "whatever floats your boat". Why do you care if someone wants to live monogamously, or otherwise? Is that your problem? The same goes for those who want to live a "freer" lifestyle.

[Sibotic]

Engels didn't necessarily seem too keen on such arrangements and generally supposed that a communist society might foster monogamy more than other forms of relation, as it were. They generally assumed that it might lead to more prudish and more libertarian or hedonistic tendencies and then it might be a question of which gains control, but they might have been describing the communism of their own day more than perhaps the inherent nature of such a movement, one may suggest. Obviously since then the hedonistic trend had been shown to be pretty much in harmony with developed, fully-formulated capital, and hence that particular abstraction unlikely to have come anywhere near the identifying traits of a communist movement.

Evidently the possibility of free productive activity would lead to a state (stop hammertime) where as Mohammed put it, even people naked together might have other things to do than gawk and so on, such that polyamoury might imply a certain amount of commitment to the formation of such relations, etc., to the degree where it's unlikely to become as much a norm among most people. Just because many people find a relationship of some sort in a monogamous context (which seems a weird phrase but heh :lol:), it doesn't follow that in a polygamous context this happens to everyone, and as such people having 'collections' of lovers in the abstract could be not too different to capitalist society where people felt obligated to enter a new relationship or marriage pretty much as soon as another finished just for the sake of having one. Obviously it isn't inherently problematic as an arrangement by itself.


aesthetic consequences it will have on humanity, I highly doubt monogamy will exist.
This came off as slightly amusing in the light of Kierkegaard's Johannes, but anyway.

[The Feral Underclass]

I would like to think that in a communist something like monogamy would become outdated. The history of monogamy is one steeped in violence, coercion, homophobia and legitimises a heteronormative world view. It's fine to say "whatever floats your boat," but I also think it is wrong to view monogamy as a neutral 'thing' simply by virtue of the people that are involved in it.

[Luís Henrique]

"Monogamy" is not about individuals preferring to have just one partner instead of many; it is about a societal norm in which having more than one partner is socially unacceptable.

Luís Henrique

[Daxim]

I disagree with people saying that monogamy is an inherently bad thing. I find both monogamy and polyamory acceptable, but i would personally never consider partaking in the latter. There's nothing wrong with wanting to feel a personal bond with just one person.
In the end, i think it really is just a matter of preference. I'd implore you all not to demean monogamy simply because you personally see polyamory to be a better method of attachment. In my views, this is comparable to accusing heterosexuals of being closed-minded.
Remember, equality for ALL.
...Apart from Fascists.

[mutualaid]

Engels didn't necessarily seem too keen on such arrangements and generally supposed that a communist society might foster monogamy more than other forms of relation, as it were. They generally assumed that it might lead to more prudish and more libertarian or hedonistic tendencies and then it might be a question of which gains control, but they might have been describing the communism of their own day more than perhaps the inherent nature of such a movement, one may suggest.

In the book I mentioned above, Engles was thinking about what a communist society might look like by giving his own interpretation of Lewis Morgan's anthropological work on the cultural evolution of the family. Engles looks at pre-civilized societies which had non monogamous forms of relationships. Because the lineage of a child could not be traced through the father, these societies had "mother right" and families were based on maternal groupings (eg, you had a closer relationship to your mother's brother's children than you did to your father's brother's children, who you might not even know). For Engles, monogamy is entirely a consequence of private property, where the man groups his wife into the property of his family (eg, in roman, the pater familia).

Engles seems to say that monogamy will disappear in a communist society as the bonds of property dissolve. But near the end of his section on family, he back tracks a little and admits that monogamy might be preferable to some people, even in a classless society. This astonished me because that goes against his marxian/anthropological interpretation of marriage. Engles appeared to have happy marriages (they were both long and contented as I recall) though he did like to party. His motto was "take it easy." I personally don't think monogamy is instinctual or inherent; but for some reason I think polyandry couldn't describe sexual relationships in a classless society ... but I just can't imagine what it would look like.

[Emmett Till]

Engles seems to suggest this in _Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State_

Around sex, a classless socialist society won't "be" anything. People will do what they want to do, and not do what they don't want to do.

[mutualaid]

Around sex, a classless socialist society won't "be" anything. People will do what they want to do, and not do what they don't want to do.

I'm just thinking about what desire would look in a classless society, how would people's 'wants' change

[Emmett Till]

I'm just thinking about what desire would look in a classless society, how would people's 'wants' change

Who knows? Like Engels said, any speculations now are almost guaranteed to be dead wrong.

[HevMet]

It would be up to what people personally want I imagine

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Who knows? Like Engels said, any speculations now are almost guaranteed to be dead wrong.

We can still make some inferences. If it turns out we're wrong, such is life, but that by itself doesn't mean that our inferences were unwarranted. Now, empirically, many, many people enjoy rubbing certain body parts against other people. In class society, this is subject to all sorts of neuroses and prohibitions arising from the way in which social structure reproduces itself. In socialism, on the other hand, there will be no family, and no government over men. And with free, in every way, contraception, abortion, childcare etc. the old conservative nightmare of consequence-free sex will be the joyful reality of the new society. With that in mind, I think we can reasonably say that many people will be polyamorous or at least promiscuous (I don't really like the term poly-"amorous", to be honest, in most cases we're talking about promiscuity other than serial - parallel promiscuity? - and to quote Van Halen, ain't talkin' 'bout love).

[HevMet]

No family? So children won't be raised by their parents and people won't have relatives? I'm confused.

[motion denied]

Marx in many places, in German Ideology where he demolishes Stirner for example, already acknowledges that the bourgeois family is almost like a formality, that the bourgeois themselves won't respect it.


The dissolute bourgeois evades marriage and secretly commits adultery; the merchant evades the institution of property by depriving others of property by speculation, bankruptcy, etc.; the young bourgeois makes himself independent of his own family, if he can by in fact abolishing the family as far as he is concerned. But marriage, property, the family remain untouched in theory, because they are the practical basis on which the bourgeoisie has erected its domination, and because in their bourgeois form they are the conditions which make the bourgeois a bourgeois, just as the constantly evaded law makes the religious Jew a religious Jew. This attitude of the bourgeois to the conditions of his existence acquires one of its universal forms in bourgeois morality.

However, Marx mistakenly, such as Engels, assumes that the family is already dissolved among the proletariat.

I mean, actually abolishing the family as we know it and, therefore, its functions (and here I think Althusser is pretty good in Ideological State Apparatuses). Freeing sexuality from its chains.

But yeah, I think it's probable that an emancipated society would be polyamorous. which doesn't mean that I'm 'ready' for it (in the sense of being comfortable with it right now, even though I try to).

EDIT: also, 666 post.

[Strannik]

Sexual (and other cultural) matters of future society are business of the people of future society, I think. We wouldn't expect our descendants to be polyamorous just because we decided once that it would be a good idea. That's the problem with discussing visions of future society - a vision addresses problems of present, not of future. At it's worst it becomes a duty for people of the future, but the goal should be a world where people can create their own future.

[QueerVanguard]

Does a bear shit in the woods? I mean are we really having this conversation right now? What would be the material basis of monogamy once private property is eliminated hmm? Communal property will give rise to communal sex, pretty simple shit here. The most class conscious of the proletariat should already have dropped monogamy.

And Engels "defense" of monogamy that conservative phony "Marxists" have been clinging to for years was all tongue and cheek, anyone with half a brain cell could see that when reading The Origin.

[cyu]

What would be the material basis of monogamy once private property is eliminated hmm?

There would be no fear of poverty that forces anyone to stay with their traditional family, be it battered spouses, or sexually abused children. But this isn't to say everyone will be forced to love more than one person. Some will only be able to love one person. And some won't be able to love anybody. It isn't our job to force them into a relationship. If they are actually looking for some kind of relationship and you want to play matchmaker, fine, but if they are not looking, it's nobody's business but their own.

[QueerVanguard]

There would be no fear of poverty that forces anyone to stay with their traditional family, be it battered spouses, or sexually abused children. But this isn't to say everyone will be forced to love more than one person. Some will only be able to love one person. And some won't be able to love anybody. It isn't our job to force them into a relationship. If they are actually looking for some kind of relationship and you want to play matchmaker, fine, but if they are not looking, it's nobody's business but their own.

"love" is abstract bullshit, much like the "soul". It's a spook, to use Stirner's language. After capitalism we're going to fuck other people and not feel possession over them, read up on your Alexandra Kollontai. Monogamy, in any form, is the direct result of private property. Kill one, you kill the other.

[cyu]

If there's somebody you have sex with, but they annoy you to the point that you don't like hanging out with them, that's not love.

There may also people that you want to hang out with, but have no intention of having sex with them - maybe it's a relative, maybe it's a friend, maybe it's an animal. Many people call that love, but not in the sense of "romantic" love.

If someone is basically just annoyed by everybody and wants to live as a hermit, it's not your place to question their lifestyle.

If someone is basically annoyed by everybody except one animal (that they don't want to have sex with), it's not your place to question their lifestyle.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

No family? So children won't be raised by their parents and people won't have relatives? I'm confused.

In socialism, children will be raised by the collective institutions of the socialist society. Thus the family will disappear (contrast this to the notion, popular among feminists, that domestic labour will be collectivised but child-rearing will not; a way to have one's cake and eat it too if there ever was one). People will have relatives, but that fact will not have any social significance, just like the fact that X has green eyes and Y has blue eyes has no social significance.

[Vee]

It will not be monogamous or polyamorous. people will be free to associate with as many people as they like as long as it's consensual and they can stop associating with those people at any time. if 2 people both want to only be with each other then that is fine. who is going to stop them?

[HevMet]

In socialism, children will be raised by the collective institutions of the socialist society. Thus the family will disappear (contrast this to the notion, popular among feminists, that domestic labour will be collectivised but child-rearing will not; a way to have one's cake and eat it too if there ever was one). People will have relatives, but that fact will not have any social significance, just like the fact that X has green eyes and Y has blue eyes has no social significance.

So people will not know their parents and brothers/sisters etc and will be raised by communal institutions by law? Why? What's the purpose of this? Sounds actually rather frightening.

[HevMet]

Does a bear shit in the woods? I mean are we really having this conversation right now? What would be the material basis of monogamy once private property is eliminated hmm? Communal property will give rise to communal sex, pretty simple shit here. The most class conscious of the proletariat should already have dropped monogamy.

"Communal sex" sounds very unappealing to me. I only have sex with people I have some emotional connection to.

[Tim Cornelis]

Hadza people have no private property, as they are in a stage of primitive communism, yet practice serial monogamy.

[Tim Cornelis]

Of course they will know their parents and relatives. Or at least, they will not be withhold access from their children or parents. But biological relatedness would not imply social obligations. The purpose (870 will tell you that purpose is -- mostly -- irrelevant, as it is simply mandated by the then prevailing material conditions) would be to eliminate practically unaccountable child rearing by parents. A significant number of children are abused, enabled by the privacy erected by the bourgeois family structure, or neglected, or raised wrongly (having a negative impact on the emotional and/or social development of the child). Child rearing becomes a collective responsibility, and based on responsible, proven children rearing practices.

It may sound frightening, but so would the bourgeois family structure if you had lived in communism your entire life. Do you think mandatory public education is frightening? I doubt it, you're a self-described socialist. Essentially, it is a broadening of mandatory public education (mandatory in the revolutionary transition), by expanding the mandatory school day, and of course leaving more room for activities, play, other than education. Schools would be transformed into communal pedagogical institutions.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

So people will not know their parents and brothers/sisters etc and will be raised by communal institutions by law? Why? What's the purpose of this? Sounds actually rather frightening.

As there is no state in socialism, there will be no law. But yes, children will be raised by collective institutions of the socialist society. I have no idea if they will know who their parents are. Obviously no one is going to forbid them from finding out, but I doubt anyone will care at this point. The family is how bourgeois society reproduces itself; dispossessed producers are reproduced as dispossessed, and property-owners are reproduced as property-owners. With property gone, the same will happen to the family. Which is good for us, as the family is the source of oppression of homosexuals, young people, transsexuals and women everywhere.


Hadza people have no private property, as they are in a stage of primitive communism, yet practice serial monogamy.

Two things need to be mentioned here: first, while the Hadza don't seem to have passed through an pastoralist stage, they have had contact with neighbouring state peoples for centuries. So the extent to which they can be taken as representative of a primitive communist group is questionable. Second, the only citation I can find for Hadza monogamy (there might be more but I don't have access to a lot of the journals in question) is an evo-psych work published in an evo-psych journal.

[cyu]

I would imagine that if parents want their kids to hang around, it would be their job to keep the kids happy. If they fail, for whatever reason, maybe even for a temporary reason, the kids will just leave - but they will still be able to get whatever material or social support they need without their relatives. If their parents still want the kids back, it would be their job to try to woo them back, but the kids will have enough support to easily tell them to take a hike.

Make it as easy as possible to escape abusive relationships. If parents don't know how not to be abusive, then sucks to be them if they still want to be part of their children's lives.

[HevMet]

This stuff sounds like the stuff of cults that try to make each member a communal cog, I can't see this taking off or appealing to many people.

[Tim Cornelis]

Well would you describe public education as a cult practice to make everyone a communal cog? Right-libertarians do, so it's possible I guess.

[mutualaid]

I see a lot of people are responding with "people will do whatever they want to." The point of my question is to think about what people actually "want." I assume most of us appreciate marxism, so we can take it for granted that our "wants" are conditioned by the relations of production in a capitalist society. I think the interesting point Engels was getting at is that in a communist society, sex would mostly free itself from the act of reproduction. Engels calls this "sex love." With technology, this could certainly be the case. But here's my issue, if "sex love" is outside of reproduction (as I think it would be in a communist society) then would it sill necessarily reflect the relations of economic production (as it does now)? if so, then sex would be, communal, polyamorous, or distributed based on need, whatever; if not, then sex would look completely new, maybe it would cease to involve two people ... I don't know...

Another point, for Engels, a communist society sees women more equally, not only because she's no longer tied to the property of her husband's familia, but also because the organization of the family happens around the mother. Do yall think that Engels second point would still be valid in a communist society of the future where families could be determined with a genetic test? How much of the family would dissipate into the collective, would a child even need to know its mother?

edit: sorry about misspelling Engels upfront. im a [email protected] idiot.

[#FF0000]

This stuff sounds like the stuff of cults that try to make each member a communal cog, I can't see this taking off or appealing to many people.

That's, uh, an interesting reading of "people will have sex with as many people as they want".

[Comrade #138672]

Love is not really comparable to the soul. Love is a description, while the soul is a metaphysical entity.

[HevMet]

I was referring to the people wanting to take children away to be raised in cullty commues, not group sex which is something only typically wanted by hypersexual teenagers and college students.

Public education is about instilling literacy in people,not raising them. However there are inherent problems in mandatory education regarding individual identity I'm not sure how to overcome.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

This stuff sounds like the stuff of cults that try to make each member a communal cog, I can't see this taking off or appealing to many people.

"This stuff" (raising children collectively) has been the norm for most of the existence of the human species. Even in class society, the form of the reproduction of the labour force changed quite a bit. Nuclear families are modern; in some regions of the world they haven't even caught on. And far from being cult-like, we are talking about the best-qualified, most motivated people (not overworked parents on the verge of a nervous breakdown) raising the new generation according to our best practices, with extensive socialisation and exposure to new ideas. I can't think of anything that would be less cult-like.


I was referring to the people wanting to take children away to be raised in cullty commues, not group sex which is something only typically wanted by hypersexual teenagers and college students.

Public education is about instilling literacy in people,not raising them. However there are inherent problems in mandatory education regarding individual identity I'm not sure how to overcome.

What problems?

And hah, despite the stereotypes about group sex and polyamory, it is something middle-aged and older people engage in. I'm not aware of any statistics on the issue, but there is no reason to assume young people engage in group sex or polyamory more than older individuals, except the notion that this is something "immature" that a person "grows out of" (just like homosexuality, which is why older gay couples are still practically invisible in the media). If anything, young people today have to contend with a lot of sexual repression, from the pathologisation of sex in general to anti-sex witch hunts drummed up by the usual suspects.

[HevMet]

Cults and religious obedience are also norms in human history and still prevelant now, doesn't make them good or desirable. A lot of parts of human history are unpleasant.

I don't see how taking children away to be indoctrinated by "experts" isn't cult like and totally creepy. Reminds me of the forced collectivizations of the 20th century, which were the stuff of nightmares.

Schools by definition indoctrinate people, but they're as also a necessary evil. I'd prefer total individual freedom and no collective responsibilities, etc but I realize that's impossible. I'm not sure how to solve this problem.

As for senior citizens and orgies....eww. As for sexual repression, as I live in a place without such taboos, in my experience its usually immaturepeople who want such things

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Cults and religious obedience are also norms in human history and still prevelant now, doesn't make them good or desirable. A lot of parts of human history are unpleasant.

I don't see how taking children away to be indoctrinated by "experts" isn't cult like and totally creepy. Reminds me of the forced collectivizations of the 20th century, which were the stuff of nightmares.

Well, no, cults and religions appear relatively late on the scene, with state societies. (Cults in their modern form appear, well, with capitalism - assuming we're talking about things like Aum Shinrikyo and the People's Temple. Maurice Brinton, the Solidarity/UK member and neurologist, had a great article about political cults and how they function, and if I can remember the name I'll post it.) In any case, the point is not that something existing for a long time makes it a good idea, but raising children communaly is hardly something unprecedented.

And why do you assume children are going to be "indoctrinated"? (Unless you think teaching children is indoctrination, in which case, sadly children need this sort of indoctrination if they are to be members of human society.) I think this tells us more about your assumptions than it tells us about collective rearing in the socialist society. Besides, what makes you think the family is "good and desirable"?


As for senior citizens and orgies....eww. As for sexual repression, as I live in a place without such taboos, in my experience its usually immaturepeople who want such things

Oh, and where might this wonderful place without sexual repression be?

And sorry, but if you're calling other people immature, saying "eww" to the thought of two or more people with bodies other than the idealised image of youthful beauty having sex isn't leaving a good impression. In fact it makes you look a bit like a hypocrite. Yes, older people have sex. Is that such a radical notion? Apparently it is to some people, but if you think people just end their sex lives when thinking about them becomes uncomfortable to twenty-somethings you're in for a rude awakening (and possibly a boring old age).

[HevMet]

Er no, state cults and religions are old as human society. Even in hunter-gatherer and tribal societies such things exist, where individuals are sumerged to the he will of the community. So no, nothing like this is new. If anything we've made progress against such things.

All education is indoctrination, and raising kids by impersonal managers and not loving families is certainly creepy indoctrination. I don't see who's seriously be for this, esp. Not parents and doesn't sound realistic or desirable.

SoCal.

Well there's a reason elderly porn is the stuff of shock images :p

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Er no, state cults and religions are old as human society. Even in hunter-gatherer and tribal societies such things exist, where individuals are sumerged to the he will of the community. So no, nothing like this is new. If anything we've made progress against such things.

All education is indoctrination, and raising kids by impersonal managers and not living families is certainly creepy indoctrination. I don't see who's seriously be for this, esp. Not parents and doesn't sound realistic or desirable.

Obviously state cults can't be "as old as human society" as the state is a fairly recent social form, dating back to the development of slavery. Religion, too, we have no evidence for until the time of early state societies or at most (I think there were some people that interpreted Natufian remains as showing signs of religion) very late pre-state societies.

And sorry, by saying that all education is indoctrination, you're (1) making the term "indoctrination" redundant; (2) saying there is no difference between "2x4=8" and "il Duce ha sempre raggione", which I think is just silly. "Impersonal managers"? They will certainly have to be personal managers, as we've yet to discover a manager that is not a person, no matter how robotic they seem. Don't they have creches in South California? Childcare facilities? These were fought for by the socialist movement, precisely because they wanted to free women from the shackles of individual child-rearing and domestic labour.


SoCal.

So a state where the last recorded clitoridectomies for lesbianism occurred in, what, the seventies? Where there are still occasional anti-sex witch hunts? Free of sexual repression my arse.


Well there's a reason elderly porn is the stuff of shock images :p

Yes, because a lot of people are immature and class society in any case treats the elderly like dirt, not allowing them any human dignity or agency once no more surplus value can be squeezed out of them.

[HevMet]

Obviously state cults can't be "as old as human society" as the state is a fairly recent social form, Erm, "states" are as old as human society, which only stretches back like five, six thousand years. Unless you count the hundreds of thousands of years of hunter-gatherer existence, which even then had tribes and leaders and laws, on a very primitive scale, and superstitions and worship and obedience, etc, ie basically tiny little "states". So yes these things that you're both simultaneously promoting and criticizing are as old as humans, indeed they arise from biological factors, just like everything else.


dating back to the development of slavery.Slavery is found in the animal kingdom and predates humans, it's esp. found with insects. Unfortunately things like brutality and domination are very natural, and society kind of exists to overcome those.




Religion, too, we have no evidence for until the time of early state societies or at most (I think there were some people that interpreted Natufian remains as showing signs of religion) very late pre-state societies. Actually Neanderthals had primitive religion, and evidence goes back even before them. We think cave paintings in Europe were sympathetic magic, which is a form of religious/spiritual worship and belief.


And sorry, by saying that all education is indoctrination, you're (1) making the term "indoctrination" redundant;No, just stating the facts. For example, all restrictions on freedom are well, restrictions on freedom but sometimes its necessary. Yes it's necessary to a limited extent to indoctrinate kids into functioning in society, but clearly there is a limit of what should and can be done, and your weird fantasy crosses well over the threshold. And to be fair, "indoctrination" only now has a mostly pejorative meaning, like "propaganda", these used to be neutral terms. I personally despise all indoctrination, and all collectivism in general, but some of it I begrudgingly see as necessary.


"Impersonal managers"? They will certainly have to be personal managers, as we've yet to discover a manager that is not a person, no matter how robotic they seem. *rolls eyes*


Don't they have creches in South California? Childcare facilities? These were fought for by the socialist movement, precisely because they wanted to free women from the shackles of individual child-rearing and domestic labour.These have nothing to do with what you're proposing though.


So a state where the last recorded clitoridectomies for lesbianism occurred in, what, the seventies? Where there are still occasional anti-sex witch hunts? Free of sexual repression my arse.Since the first thing you mention is in the past, it's not worth discussing, however actually I concede we do have a minor problem with anti sex witch hunts, I mean we did pass this Draconian and easily abused campus rape law that will most likely be used by women to punish men they slept with and got angry with, but this is hardly representative of society at large and is one minor example. You can't exaggerate this.


Yes, because a lot of people are immature and class society in any case treats the elderly like dirt, not allowing them any human dignity or agency once no more surplus value can be squeezed out of them. Or they just find elderly pornography gross. Also the elderly get the most benefits in our society so clearly this isn't the case. Your ideology is totally out of touch with reality.

[Sewer Socialist]

The only sexual repression in California is the repression of rape? In addition to rape being a form of repression, you really need to get out more. While there is support in California for nonconforming sexualities, heterosexuality dominates, the cisgendered are the great majority, and those who do not fit these normativities are forced to fight (often literally) for the simple right to live their life as they please.

As far as an anti- family stance being creepy or cult-like, you have it completely backwards. The family itself is more insular, just as indoctrinating, and infinitely more repressive than larger social forms.

The nuclear family is a social structure particular to capitalism, and the family a structure unique to private property and class society. With the abolition of private property and class, we will give rise to new liberated social forms which reflect the liberated society.

[HevMet]

The law doesnt repress rape, it represses consensual sex in an effort to make camoyses puritan sex free zones, which is...sexual repression. Oops, our leaders in Sacramento are idiots. I can't see anyone citing any examples not in the past here.

Communal settings clearly are more prone to indoctrination and control than living individually or in smaller groups obviously, I'm not sure how this can be disputed.

"Liberated" here is used to the point of meaningless and seems to be the exact opposite of "liberation" when people use it.

[Faust Arp]

Nobody wants to ban the nuclear family by decree, that'd be absurd.

It's a capitalist mechanism with the purpose of preventing private property from dissipating. With the abolishment of capitalism, it will grow obsolete. Family will disappear spontaneously, because its purpose is gone.

As much as the disappearance of the family can appear ridiculous to some people today, so will the very idea of the family appear to the people of tomorrow. Attitudes change, much faster than many would expect.

[HevMet]

Of course no one knows what the future holds, but I don't see any system where mothers and fathers overwhelmingly want nothing to do with their kids.

[Sewer Socialist]

Communal settings clearly are more prone to indoctrination and control than living individually or in smaller groups obviously, I'm not sure how this can be disputed.

Isolated communes, perhaps. But I feel that the fact that they are a small social unit is precisely why this is the case. The isolated commune is more or less an extended family, intentionally selected rather than genetically related. Nonetheless, being able to choose who one associates with is preferable to bring forced to submit to the family one is born into, no? I certainly don't see how smaller families are less indoctrinating or controlling.


"Liberated" here is used to the point of meaningless and seems to be the exact opposite of "liberation" when people use it.

As the family is a social unit of repression, freeing future generations from this repression is quite liberating, yes. In what way is the family liberating, in your view?


Of course no one knows what the future holds, but I don't see any system where mothers and fathers overwhelmingly want nothing to do with their kids.

I feel this is already increasingly the case. Speaking personally, I don't have a good relationship with my parents, and there was lots of conflict with them growing up. I know many, many people who were abused by relatives. At any rate, the nuclear family is unable to prepare children for life in modern society, and school fulfills this function. Of course, in a capitalist society, this also unfortunately involves making a future docile workforce, and indoctrinating them with the diets of prejudices class society thrives on, but this will of course be changed. The social being of children should be furthered, unlimited child care immediately made free, and all of child- raising should be as communal as possible.

[HevMet]

Isolated communes, perhaps. But I feel that the fact that they are a small social unit is precisely why this is the case. The isolated commune is more or less an extended family, intentionally selected rather than genetically related. Nonetheless, being able to choose who one associates with is preferable to bring forced to submit to the family one is born into, no? I certainly don't see how smaller families are less indoctrinating or controlling.Uh, I don't see how forcing kids to go into communes is giving them choice, it's the opposite, also little kids can't make choices on certain things, hence age of consent laws, mandatory education, etc. That's just a fact of biological maturity.


As the family is a social unit of repression, freeing future generations from this repression is quite liberating, yes. In what way is the family liberating, in your view?Using the word "repression" in this sense makes it meaningless, and I don't see how making people live in bigger families is not "repressive" unless communes are not repressive, when in reality they typically are, usually formed by fundamentalist religious communities or creepy sex cults. I don't view it as liberating or repressive, it's just a neutral part of the human existence.


I feel this is already increasingly the case. Speaking personally, I don't have a good relationship with my parents, and there was lots of conflict with them growing up. I know many, many people who were abused by relatives. In other words you had a bad experience that shaped your worldviews, not an actual critical, objective analysis.


At any rate, the nuclear family is unable to prepare children for life in modern society, and school fulfills this function. Of course, in a capitalist society, this also unfortunately involves making a future docile workforce, and indoctrinating them with the diets of prejudices class society thrives on, but this will of course be changed. The social being of children should be furthered, unlimited child care immediately made free, and all of child- raising should be as communal as possible. Sounds like the stuff of a cultish crackpot, no offense. Also I thought families were pro capitalist, now they're anti capitalist? I'm confused. I'm increasingly finding socialist ideology, at least the "radical" type incomprehensible and silly. Assuming this is even socialist ideology and not the weird hypothesizing of random communists. I guess one plus of such a system is far fewer people would have kids, as they're be little motivation to have kids if they would just get taken away, and the population would actually stabilize :P I'm not sure why anyone would have kids, as I imagine this would be a rather gut-wrenching existence.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Erm, "states" are as old as human society, which only stretches back like five, six thousand years. Unless you count the hundreds of thousands of years of hunter-gatherer existence, which even then had tribes and leaders and laws, on a very primitive scale, and superstitions and worship and obedience, etc, ie basically tiny little "states". So yes these things that you're both simultaneously promoting and criticizing are as old as humans, indeed they arise from biological factors, just like everything else.

I'm sorry, but this won't do. You're arbitrarily redefining "human society" so that it only applies to state societies. This is not how the term is generally used (we talk about "Paleolithic societies" all the time), and it makes "society" a synonym for "the state". As for tribes, these are a feature of the very late pre-state societies. For most of the existence of the human species we lived in bands, a relatively egalitarian social formation.

I would really urge you, without any hint of irony or derision, to read more about the first societies. I think it's useful both to develop a feel for historical materialism and to dispel some notions, one is likely to pick up from popular culture, popular "science" and so on, about capitalism being eternal, due to biological necessity etc. I myself didn't appreciate the importance of an anthropological perspective until some two years ago (anthropology is not my field).


Slavery is found in the animal kingdom and predates humans, it's esp. found with insects. Unfortunately things like brutality and domination are very natural, and society kind of exists to overcome those.

Are humans ants? We're not. We have gamergates, but that means something else in human society. The fact is that the earliest human groups did not practice slavery; slavery developed with agricultural surpluses during the so-called Neolithic revolution. This was a progressive historical development, mind! Not that it wasn't hard on the people involved. But it contributed to the development of the productive forces.


Actually Neanderthals had primitive religion, and evidence goes back even before them. We think cave paintings in Europe were sympathetic magic, which is a form of religious/spiritual worship and belief.

That is one interpretation of the cave paintings, yes, although it's not the only one, and note that the primitive cultures we're discussing had notable artistic production (e.g. the Magdalenian swimming reindeer). But magic isn't religion. It is only in the modern society that magical rites are mostly preformed by priests (in socialism, of course, there will be no magic or religion). But consider e.g. mediaeval Europe, with a strict separation between magic and religion (with priests forbidden to practice magic), Japan, where magical rites were under the supervision of the ministry of the center, and not under the religious department of divinities, and so on.


No, just stating the facts. For example, all restrictions on freedom are well, restrictions on freedom but sometimes its necessary. Yes it's necessary to a limited extent to indoctrinate kids into functioning in society, but clearly there is a limit of what should and can be done, and your weird fantasy crosses well over the threshold. And to be fair, "indoctrination" only now has a mostly pejorative meaning, like "propaganda", these used to be neutral terms. I personally despise all indoctrination, and all collectivism in general, but some of it I begrudgingly see as necessary.

But those are not the facts. We don't use the word "indoctrination" in this sense. So you're either redefining commonly understood words, or you're claiming that education shares something with the actions we commonly call "indoctrination". Sometimes I wish it did; it would make my job as a teaching assistant much easier.


*rolls eyes*

You can roll your eyes as much as you like, but the people who would be assigned to the collective raising of children in the socialist society would also be people. Why would their interactions with the children in question be impersonal? Even today, caretakers in kindergartens and so on are not impersonal. You're assuming a lot, then get angry and start insulting people when they call your assumptions out.


These have nothing to do with what you're proposing though.

That would have been news to the socialist movement that first proposed these measures. See e.g. Lenin:

'We must all admit that vestiges of the bourgeois-intellectual phrase-mongering approach to questions of the revolution are in evidence at every step, everywhere, even in our own ranks. Our press, for example, does little to fight these rotten survivals of the rotten, bourgeois-democratic past; it does little to foster the simple, modest, ordinary but viable shoots of genuine communism.

Take the position of women. In this field, not a single democratic party in the world, not even in the most advanced bourgeois republic, has done in decades so much as a hundredth part of what we did in our very first year in power. We really razed to the ground the infamous laws placing women in a position of inequality, restricting divorce and surrounding it with disgusting formalities, denying recognition to children born out of wedlock, enforcing a search for their fathers, etc., laws numerous survivals of which, to the shame of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism, are to be found in all civilised countries. We have a thousand times the right to be proud of what we have done in this field. But the more thoroughly we have cleared the ground of the lumber of the old, bourgeois laws and institutions, the clearer it is to us that we have only cleared the ground to build on but are not yet building.


Notwithstanding all the laws emancipating woman, she continues to be a domestic slave, because petty housework crushes, strangles, stultifies and degrades her, chains her to the kitchen and the nursery, and she wastes her labour on barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-racking, stultifying and crushing drudgery. The real emancipation of women, real communism, will begin only where and when an all-out struggle begins (led by the proletariat wielding the state power) against this petty housekeeping, or rather when its wholesale transformation into a large-scale socialist economy begins.


Do we in practice pay sufficient attention to this question, which in theory every Communist considers indisputable? Of course not. Do we take proper care of the shoots of communism which already exist in this sphere? Again the answer is no. Public catering establishments, nurseries, kindergartens -- here we have examples of these shoots, here we have the simple, everyday means, involving nothing pompous, grandiloquent or ceremonial, which can really emancipate women, really lessen and abolish their inequality with men as regards their role in social production and public life. These means are not new, they (like all the material prerequisites for socialism) were created by large-scale capitalism. But under capitalism they remained, first, a rarity, and secondly—which is particularly important —either profitmaking enterprises, with all the worst features of speculation, profiteering, cheating and fraud, or "acrobatics of bourgeois charity", which the best workers rightly hated and despised.


There is no doubt that the number of these institutions in our country has increased enormously and that they are beginning to change in character. There is no doubt that we have far more organising talent among the working and peasant women than we are aware of, that we have far more people than we know of who can organise practical work, with the co-operation of large numbers of workers and of still larger numbers of consumers, without that abundance of talk, fuss, squabbling and chatter about plans, systems, etc., with which our big-headed "intellectuals” or half-baked "Communists” are "affected". But we do not nurse these shoots of the new as we should.'


("A Great Begninning")


Since the first thing you mention is in the past, it's not worth discussing, however actually I concede we do have a minor problem with anti sex witch hunts, I mean we did pass this Draconian and easily abused campus rape law that will most likely be used by women to punish men they slept with and got angry with, but this is hardly representative of society at large and is one minor example. You can't exaggerate this.

It is worth discussing, as it demonstrates a pattern of official homophobia that was only ended by budget cuts in the Reagan years. There are still "psychiatrists" in the US who try to "cure" homosexuality, camps where parents can send their gay children, assault and murder of homosexuals and transsexuals is routinely ignored by the state, and so on. But sure, there is no sexual repression in California.


Or they just find elderly pornography gross. Also the elderly get the most benefits in our society so clearly this isn't the case. Your ideology is totally out of touch with reality.

Many people also find obese people having sex gross, but they're not the subject of shock sites. The general sentiment is that old people are not supposed to have sex; it offends people. As for the notion that the elderly get "the most benefits", this is somewhere on the border of laughable and offensive. Pensions go down, social security is slashed, homes for the elderly are operated as for-profit enterprises with numerous instances of abuse... but you say I'm the one who's out of touch with reality. Oh dear, one that that bubble you live in is going to burst and it's not going to be a pleasant experience.

[cyu]

Maybe the people who had happy childhoods argue in favor of the nuclear family. Maybe people who had unhappy childhoods argue against it. Maybe people who had so-so childhoods think they can see "both" sides.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

"love" is abstract bullshit, much like the "soul". It's a spook, to use Stirner's language. After capitalism we're going to fuck other people and not feel possession over them, read up on your Alexandra Kollontai. Monogamy, in any form, is the direct result of private property. Kill one, you kill the other.


Oh, so edgy:rolleyes:. Sorry, I love my wife not out of some mythical romantic metaphysics, but because i have a profound attachment to her and don't feel enthused about the idea of sleeping with other people.

The fact is that people have emotional or psychological tendencies that make them want one partner, and some that make people want multiple partners. Of course these tendencies are influenced by social norms, but we cannot make any assumptions that they will simply vanish without those norms. Obviously bourgeois society imposes certain norms, but it doesn't mean that removing those norms means that their opposite (Poly for everyone) will arise. People should be free to chose who they have sex with and why, and not be judged by others. It's no more totalitarian to assume and impose a universal standard of monogamy on everyone than it is to do the same with polyamory. The whole idea of polyamory is that it is a mutually agreed upon relation by both partners. It's not meant to be forced upon society, and we shouldn't assume that there won't be many people who feel no motivation to live a polyamorous lifestyle.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

Has anyone ever heard the phrase "Family of Choice"?

People who grew up as either orphans or victims of child abuse, as they grow up, will gather around themselves a group of individuals who essentially become a surrogate family. These can be lovers, friends, acquaintances, etc. who are very loyal to the abused person and to each other. The reason this happens is because either they never had any known blood relations to begin with, or they mentally can only associate blood relations with pain and fear.

What this shows is that a real family, a TRUE family, is not necessarily based around blood relation. It is based around LOVE and LOYALTY.

This, I believe, will be the form that the family shall take in the future communist society. The family will be diverse. And it will be LARGE.

And besides.....the idea of being a child where you have a whole bunch of mommies and daddies who love and take care of you? That sounds like heaven to me!:grin:

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Polyamory sounds exhausting. I do not think it is for everyone.

Let's not pretend monogamy isn't exhausting!

I imagine polyamory is intensely less exhausting than either monogamy or polygamy.

[cyu]

If society tries to force you to be monogamous, it tempts you to cheat.

If society tries to force you to have sex with many people, it makes you not want to have sex with anybody.

Reverse psychology in action. Those who are rebellious by nature would resist more openly. Those who are less rebellious may obey out of fear, but they won't like it.

[maxaitor]

I think monogamy will disappear as "old ideas" disappear.

[Comrade Jacob]

It would be a lot more common (but I can hardly get one partner lol) because of sexual-liberation.
Some will chose to have only one partner tho.

Anyway some people are that now.

[cyu]

In many ways, poverty locks people in relationships they don't want to be in, so without the threat of poverty, there would likely be some kind of reconfiguration. I remember a survey about the top things people would do after winning the lottery, the top 2 answers were start a business, and get a divorce.

On the other hand, the historical past also saw harems and concubinage - and I would assume many of the people involved were also locked in undesired relationships due to the threat of poverty.

[Sibotic]

If society tries to force you to be monogamous, it tempts you to cheat.

If society tries to force you to have sex with many people, it makes you not want to have sex with anybody.

Reverse psychology in action. Those who are rebellious by nature would resist more openly. Those who are less rebellious may obey out of fear, but they won't like it.
Well, I mean, 'temptation' is a bit of a weird phrase, people can't be 'tempted' not to have sex in general terms. That monogamy might constitute a temptation to cheat is one thing, because obviously it's an arbitrary and unfounded division in something which is by nature multiple and generic, but obviously the equivalent to someone being hemmed in to having sex with one person and then having sex with another with people being expected to have sex with multiple people would not be to have sex with - nobody, now apparently treated as a person outside of the 'multiple people.' Unless, of course, you mean that it is a form of individuation or interest in a person being outside of these 'multiple people' which can motivate not having sex, but that's different.

People can hardly be 'rebellious' by nature (which is by nature to not be rebellious), they can be rebellious people but then that's fairly tautological, obviously people who rebel against something are rebelling against that thing. Generally speaking it might be more accurate to say that when 'having sex with multiple people' loses its air of subversion, which in a sense it never did per se because, like capitalist 'greed' or negative 'freedom,' it always had to cling on to some such conceit even if it was a norm, then it loses any real appeal it might have, but as with capitalist negative freedoms which had gone on under the guise of 'rebelliousness' (and can we say in brief that they were not and socialists were) to take a stand against this is still to take a determinate stand and not as it were a simply instinctive or given transition. This may imply that leftists who were too concerned about such things shouldn't have pushed too hard their opposition to bourgeois right and other, similar concepts, which ultimately underpinned and became the only ideological statements of that movement. In any case it says very little to say that, 'If you stigmatise a thing then some people will react in one way and some people will react in another way,' unless you pretend that most of these people just have a problem with 'stigmas' generally, in which case this seems more instinctive than concrete or thought-out and is likely to resolve for them on the side of sexual promiscuity and so on rather than otherwise.

Viewpoints aren't entirely interchangeable.


I imagine polyamory is intensely less exhausting than either monogamy or polygamy.
That might occur until someone's polyamorous friend got them in trouble again.

[cyu]

I'm not sure how much of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance_%28psychology%29 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_psychology you've studied (I don't have the patience to read the whole thing either), but if you haven't checked them out much, it might be helpful, especially if getting involved in politics requires some knowledge of human psychology.

[Sibotic]

I'm not sure how much of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance_%28psychology%29 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_psychology you've studied (I don't have the patience to read the whole thing either), but if you haven't checked them out much, it might be helpful, especially if getting involved in politics requires some knowledge of human psychology.
Politics doesn't require the reading of Wikipedia, which is generally poor in that field because it if anything was just going to report the popular views of people in the political sciences for instance, or economics, which are generally poor like Wikipedia on these matters. You doubt that most dictators required 'some knowledge of the human field of psychology' (which is governed by human psychology while pretending to be neutral, so that's about the worth that you could attribute to it - but I'm sure that psychologists would report that that psychology was more accurate than they generally held, say, Marxism or socialist theories to be.), so perhaps that only becomes more requisite the closer a government approximates bourgeois democracy, which is in any case a lack of authority (so to speak in this context) and form of servitude to the point where you'd question the point.

A bit of a weird post to respond to, of course. Politicians are known for 'buzzwords' and use of popular phrases in a generic context, so you would hope you meant 'reverse psychology' in the popular or loose sense, rather than as a technical term in the context. That's certainly how it came across, hence my not feeling the need to engage with the term. Which in this thread, having phrased it that way, I shall now feel obligated not to do.

[Vee]

"love" is abstract bullshit, much like the "soul". It's a spook, to use Stirner's language.

That is just ignorant. love is an emotion like any other. Do you believe we will become robots with no emotion after capitalism? love, like any other emotion, is a natural feeling that humans have. will joy also fade away? how do you even define love? love is not feeling possession over someone. i would say that being possessive is the opposite of what you would do if you truly love someone. if you really love someone, you will trust and respect them.

[cyu]

See also http://www.revleft.com/vb/whats-your-mind-t193119/index.html?p=2839284#post2839284

[Note the following isn't based on any rigorous research]

I think there may be two kinds of romantic love, one is more supportive, the other is more needy. There some different ways to make people feel good about themselves:

1. You can boost their self-esteem independent of any relationship to you.
2. You can boost their self-esteem by comparing them favorably to yourself (thereby lowering your own status).
3. You can boost their self-esteem while at the same time raising their respect for you.
4. You can make their self-esteem based on being with you ("You should feel lucky to be with someone as high status as me.")

#4 leads to neediness. #2 might make them happy, but they may lose their respect for you. #1 is probably the most supportive - #3 throws in an element of selfishness, but isn't all bad.

[Vee]

See also

[Note the following isn't based on any rigorous research]

I think there may be two kinds of romantic love, one is more supportive, the other is more needy. There some different ways to make people feel good about themselves:

1. You can boost their self-esteem independent of any relationship to you.
2. You can boost their self-esteem by comparing them favorably to yourself (thereby lowering your own status).
3. You can boost their self-esteem while at the same time raising their respect for you.
4. You can make their self-esteem based on being with you ("You should feel lucky to be with someone as high status as me.")

#4 leads to neediness. #2 might make them happy, but they may lose their respect for you. #1 is probably the most supportive - #3 throws in an element of selfishness, but isn't all bad.
I believe that love is more than just a strong attraction. A strong attraction with nothing else will usually be a very selfish and messy relationship. anyway if you want to discuss it further we should probably take this to another place because the topic is about monogamy under communism, not love or emotions in general.