This entry is exceptional - so many lines I want to share, I lost track, but...
"The question to be posed here is that 'If parents knew this was the deal, would they have bothered in the first place?' Spot on. I would not have. All around the world, in every language, there is a word for the kind of person who would continue to accept your unstinting kindness, care, assets and energy, long after they decided that they find you loathsome and worthy of nothing but contempt.
And yes, with this as the transactional standard, and with these obvious deficits in conflict resolution and loyalty, this will be repeated in the next generations.
I tend to agree with Whitney's quote—that parenting is thankless. That my children do not or did not ever "owe me" anything, as I chose to have them, care for them, meet their needs through college and beyond, prepare them for whatever world they would be living in, to be able to make sound judgments for their happiness and wellbeing...I made it clear that they were not obligated to care for me as I grow older—as I wanted them to focus on living their lives and not be a burden to anyone. And, yet, as adult children, I expected mutual respect, compassion, empathy, understanding, which in its own way is transactional, just not monetarily.
The estrangement ideology has nothing to do with Marxist thinking. The notion of complete autonomy and no responsibility to others is the complete opposite of socialism and other collective modalities. I really appreciate this series but don’t see the need for a critique of Marxist philosophy. It’s a stretch.
”...Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.
But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.
And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.
The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.”
This entry is exceptional - so many lines I want to share, I lost track, but...
"The question to be posed here is that 'If parents knew this was the deal, would they have bothered in the first place?' Spot on. I would not have. All around the world, in every language, there is a word for the kind of person who would continue to accept your unstinting kindness, care, assets and energy, long after they decided that they find you loathsome and worthy of nothing but contempt.
And yes, with this as the transactional standard, and with these obvious deficits in conflict resolution and loyalty, this will be repeated in the next generations.
I tend to agree with Whitney's quote—that parenting is thankless. That my children do not or did not ever "owe me" anything, as I chose to have them, care for them, meet their needs through college and beyond, prepare them for whatever world they would be living in, to be able to make sound judgments for their happiness and wellbeing...I made it clear that they were not obligated to care for me as I grow older—as I wanted them to focus on living their lives and not be a burden to anyone. And, yet, as adult children, I expected mutual respect, compassion, empathy, understanding, which in its own way is transactional, just not monetarily.
The estrangement ideology has nothing to do with Marxist thinking. The notion of complete autonomy and no responsibility to others is the complete opposite of socialism and other collective modalities. I really appreciate this series but don’t see the need for a critique of Marxist philosophy. It’s a stretch.
”...Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.
But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.
And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.
The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.”
Perhaps chapter 2 of The Communist Manifesto ....