sex and marriage

Chapter 20 Family and Country

The family, though of biological origin, is, in a civilized society, a product of the legal system.Marriage is governed by law, and parents' rights to their children are clearly defined.Since children belonged exclusively to the mother, the father had no rights without marriage.Although the starting point of enacting the law is to protect the family, it is now gradually interfering in the relationship between parents and children, against the will of the law makers, and has increasingly become one of the main factors that undermine the family system.The reason for saying this is that we cannot trust immoral parents to care for their children the way society generally thinks they will.In fact, not only those parents who are immoral, but also those parents who are extremely poor should be restricted by the state to ensure that their children are not misfortune.

In the early 19th century, proposals to interfere with child labor in factories were strongly opposed on the grounds that it would reduce parental responsibilities.English law, while not allowing parents to kill their children quickly and painlessly, as in ancient Rome, did allow parents to slowly take the life of their children with drudgery.This sacred right is upheld by parents, employers, and economists.But the morality of the society resented this abstraction, and the so-called Factory Act was passed.

The next step is even more important, and this step is to start compulsory education.This is undoubtedly a serious interference with the rights of parents.For most of the day, except for holidays, children must leave the house to learn what the state thinks they must know, while parents have no legal sanction on the matter.Through the school, the state has gradually expanded its dominance over the lives of children.The state has to look after the health of the children, even if their parents are medically illiterate.If children are physically handicapped, they are sent to special schools; if they are underfed, they are given free food; if parents cannot afford to buy shoes for their children, the state can supply them; Parents are likely to be punished for showing signs of parental abuse.In the past, parents were entitled to the money their children earned as long as the children were underage.Now, while it may be difficult for children to actually keep the money they have earned, they have the right to do so, and can exercise that right whenever circumstances require them to do so.Among wage earners, one of the few rights reserved to parents is to teach their children superstitions common to most parents in the same neighbourhood.But even this right is taken away from parents in many countries.

It is uncertain to what extent the state can replace the father.The state assumes the father's function, not the mother's, because the state provides the father's financial assistance to the child.In the upper and middle classes of society, this almost never happens, so richer fathers are more important than poorer fathers, and richer families are stronger than poorer ones.Wherever socialism is valued, as in the Soviet Union, it is considered an important and urgent matter to abolish or completely reform the educational system previously established for the children of rich families.It's hard to imagine something like this happening in the UK.I have seen the leaders of the British Socialists get very angry at the suggestion that all children should go to primary school.They cried out, "What? Let my children mingle with the children of the slums? No!" It was strange that they did not know how closely the divisions between classes were connected with the educational system.

The present tendency in various European countries is towards increasing state interference in the power and function of fathers in the wage-earner classes, but without corresponding interference in other classes (except in the USSR).As a result, two distinct situations emerged between the rich and the poor: on the one hand, poor families declined; on the other hand, rich families remained unchanged.

I think.The notion of humanitarianism towards children has produced, and will produce more and more interference by, the state.The fact, for example, that many children in the slums of London, and in the industrial towns of the North, are afflicted with rickets should be widely noted.No matter how hard poor parents try, it will be useless against this disease, because it requires good food, fresh air, and plenty of sunshine, which poor parents cannot afford to provide.It is not only cruel to allow children to be physically abused when they are young.And it's not economical either.Because, if human beings have more knowledge of hygiene and diet, children will not be harmed unnecessarily.Indeed, all such proposals have met with political backlash.The wealthy of London's boroughs banded together to hold back the momentum of these events.That is to say, they are trying to prevent the kind of behavior that reduces the disease and suffering of the poor.In Poppler, for example, local officials were thrown in jail when they took concrete steps to reduce infant mortality.But opposition from the rich has been thwarted, and the health of the poor has continued to improve.We therefore have every confidence that in the not-too-distant future the role of the state in caring for the children of wage earners will be strengthened rather than diminished, and that of fathers will be correspondingly diminished.The father's biological role is to protect the children when they are helpless, so when this role is replaced by the state, the father loses his existence.

Thus, in capitalist societies we end up seeing a gradual differentiation of society into two classes: on the one hand, the wealthy who preserve the old family system; the poor.

In the Soviet Union, more drastic changes took place in the family.Since 80 percent of the people are peasants, among whom families are still as strong as in medieval Western Europe, the theory of communism may affect only a minority of urban dwellers.therefore.We shall see that in the Soviet Union and in the capitalist countries the exact opposite is the case, that is, the upper class which abolishes the family and the lower class which preserves the family.

A woman's desire for financial independence is another powerful factor that drives cancellation in the father's direction.So far, women who have frequently expressed their political opinions have been unmarried, but this situation is likely to be temporary.Married women in the UK are currently far more abused than unmarried women.A married female teacher is treated in much the same way as a male teacher who has made mistakes.Even a woman had to be unmarried to be an obstetrician.As for the reason for this situation, it is not because married women are unsuitable for work, nor is it because they have legal obstacles to employment. On the contrary, a law passed a few years ago expressly stipulates that women should not be Reduced ability to work.The whole reason married women can't find jobs is because men want to maintain their economic power over women.Women would probably not be willing to submit to such tyranny forever.Of course, women may have a hard time finding a party to solve their problems, because the Conservative Party loves the family and the Labor Party loves the worker.However, once women are in the majority of voters, they are not willing to remain in the background forever.If their rights are recognized, these rights are likely to have a profound impact on the family.Married women can become financially independent in two ways: One way is by continuing to do the jobs they did before marriage, which would require them to leave their children in the care of others, so this would lead to a massive increase in nurseries and kindergartens.And the corollary of this is that not only the importance of the father, but also the importance of the mother will disappear completely from the mind of the child.Another way is that women with children can get a salary from the state as long as they are willing to look after the children themselves.Of course, it is not enough to do this alone. It must also be stipulated that when the children grow up to a certain age, women can go back to work.This practice was beneficial because it enabled women to take care of their children themselves and not have to be servilely dependent on men.

We must admit that this is even more the case now, when it comes to children, at first they are only the result of sexual gratification, and later they become an inescapable responsibility.Since the children do not belong to the parents, but belong to the interests of the state, their expenses should be paid by the state instead of letting this heavy burden fall on the parents.What this latter approach advocates is family allowances, which are gaining recognition.But the claim that this payment to the child should go only to the mother has not been accepted so far.However, the working-class feminist movement would recognize this and enshrine it in law.

If such a law is certain to pass, its effect on family morals will depend upon the circumstances in which it was drafted.When the law was drafted, it might have been said that a woman could not get the fee if her child was illegitimate.Also, it may be made that if it is proved that a woman has committed adultery even once, the fee should go to her husband and not to herself.If the law really stipulates this, it will become an important duty of the local police to visit every married woman to find out their moral status.The result may be very purifying, but I doubt that every purified appreciates it.I think that in the near future we should introduce a demand to stop police interference and at the same time stipulate that even mothers of illegitimate children should receive government subsidies.If this is really achieved, the family may no longer belong to both parents, the economic power of the father in the wage labor class will be completely lost, and the identity of the father will not be more important than cats and dogs.

However, in today's era, women regard housework as a terrible thing.I feel that most women would rather continue to work in their pre-marriage jobs than look after their own children for subsidies.A considerable number of women may prefer to leave their families to care for children in kindergarten because it is a specialized job.And I also think that most working women, given the choice, would voluntarily go out and do their pre-marriage jobs for a wage, rather than seeing the subsidized stay-at-home childcare benefits as a pleasure.Of course, this is purely speculation, since I dare not claim to have conclusive evidence.In any event, however, if what we say has any truth, it is likely that the development of feminism among married women will, in the not-too-distant future, even in capitalist Apart from paternity, all rights to care for the children will be lost.

The movement of women against male domination is practically complete in a purely political sense, but in its broadest sense it is still in its infancy.This movement is going to gradually have a more far-reaching impact.Now, the so-called woman's emotions.It's just a man's interest and emotional response.When you read male novelists, you think women get a physical pleasure from breastfeeding their babies.In fact, if you ask any woman you know who has had children, you will feel that this is not the case.But no man thought of doing it until woman got the vote.All in all, maternal emotions have long been dominated by men, because men unconsciously feel that control of maternal emotions is an instrument of their domination over women, so it takes considerable effort to get women's true feelings.

Until recently, it was thought that all decent women should love children and hate sex.Many men, even now, would be surprised if a woman said frankly that she didn't like children.Indeed, modern men generally regard it as their duty to instill this kind of preaching in women.As long as women are in a subservient position, they must not dare to face their emotions, but only express them according to the expectations of men.Therefore, we cannot take as our starting point what we have imagined before as a woman's normal attitude towards children.For we shall find that, generally speaking, once women have been completely emancipated, their emotions will be quite different from what we have previously imagined.

I think that civilization, at least as it has hitherto existed, would greatly diminish a woman's sense of motherhood.A high level of civilization will probably not be maintained unless women are given a large subsidy for childbearing, so that they feel that childrearing is a lucrative business.Of course, even if this step is achieved, it should not be a career for all women, or most women.Of course, these are just speculations.The only certainty among them is that the full development of feminism may have had a profound effect on breaking down the patriarchal family, which has always represented the victory of man over woman in prehistoric times.

In general, the current practice in the West of replacing fathers by the state is a huge step forward.This practice has greatly improved the health of people and raised the level of education in society as a whole; it has put an end to cruelty to children and made the suffering of David Copperfield a thing of the past; The practice promises to continue to improve the health and intelligence of the people, especially in eradicating the evils that stem from the dysfunctional family system.However, the substitution of the state for the father is also extremely dangerous.Parents are usually fond of their children and do not want to see them as mere appendages of the political system, which is never the case with the state.Individuals who have physical contact with children in various institutions, such as school teachers, also maintain the personal affection that parents have if they are not overworked and underpaid.But teachers don't have much power, power belongs to administrative officials.Those administrators never met the children whose lives they dominated.So as a managerial type (otherwise, they wouldn't get the position they occupy), they are perhaps especially conditioned to see people as some kind of building material rather than an end.Moreover, those administrators tend to like uniformity, because uniformity facilitates statistics and classification, and, when the uniformity which is considered correct is achieved, it means that a large number of people become what they want.Therefore, all children who are disciplined by administrative agencies are probably of the same type, and the few who are different are bound to be persecuted.This persecution comes not only from their partners, but also from the administration.It means that those of exceptional ability will be tortured and ravaged to the point of total insanity; It is absolutely impossible for these people to listen to any new suggestions.What's more, as long as the world is divided into competing militaristic states, replacing parents with public bodies in education means strengthening so-called patriotism, so long as the government orders it.People would not hesitate to throw themselves into killing each other.There is no doubt that so-called patriotism is the greatest danger facing civilization at present, and therefore anything that increases the poison of civilization is more terrible than plague and disaster.

Nowadays, the loyalty of young people is two-sided: on the one hand, they must be loyal to their parents; on the other hand, they must be loyal to the country.If they are only loyal to the country in the future, the world is likely to become more cruel and brutal than it is now.Therefore, I think that as long as international problems remain unresolved, it is extremely dangerous for the state to continue to intervene too much in the education and care of children, and it may well be to the detriment of the real interests of the country.

At the same time, the situation would be very different if an international government could be established that could use law rather than force in ethnic disputes.This government can dictate that the educational curriculum of any country must be stripped of that absurd nationalism.This government can insist that any region must take loyalty to the international superstate as the content of education, and must inculcate internationalism as a belief to replace the current people's loyalty to the country.Thus, while the danger of too much unity and of too severe persecution of dissidents remains, the danger of inter-national wars will be eliminated.Indeed, superstate control of education would be a positive means of preventing war.

The conclusion drawn from this is that, if the country is internationalist, the country's replacement of the father will help the development of civilization, but if the country is nationalistic and militaristic, this practice will increase the harm to civilization due to war.Today, the family institution is rapidly declining, while internationalism is growing very slowly.Therefore, this situation deserves our great attention.Of course, the situation is not hopeless, because internationalism may develop more rapidly in the future than in the past.Fortunately, perhaps we cannot predict the future, so we can hope that the future is better than the present.

(End of this chapter)