Measured conventionally, very little about today’s politics makes sense.

Many
attempts to explain the chaos point to political partisanship or regional animosity,
but we believe that the chaos is a sign of something deeper: the death of one
worldview and the ascent of another.

The neoliberal ideal—that markets would create both economic and political
freedom and that our economy and politics should therefore privilege individual
private choice and profit-driven private-sector companies above all—has
dominated our thinking in the US and around the world for decades. The
empirical results are clear though: Neoliberalism has failed, decimating
economic growth and stability, driving racial and gender inequality, and
hollowing out democracy itself.

As we awaken from the neoliberal trance, what we need is a coherent worldview

that encompasses a new set of common understandings: about how our economy
can work for more people, how our politics and society can solve problems, and
how we can live our values.

In The Emerging Worldview: How New Progressivism Is Moving Beyond

Neoliberalism, Roosevelt President and CEO Felicia Wong reviews the work of
over 150 thinkers across a range of disciplines and finds the signs of a new
progressivism as a promising alternative to neoliberalism.

“The data, the research, and the policy proposals show a path toward a healthier,
more balanced economy and democracy,” she says. “Whether and how
progressives get there will depend on the politics and on their ability to develop a
common language and make common cause across a wealth of thinking that
believes, most of all, in the public good.”
Over the last five decades, an empirical revolution in economics has undermined
many of the assumptions of “neoliberalism,” the reigning approach to economic
policy. Many of the guiding assumptions underlying neoliberal policymaking no
longer speak to what is going on in the economy or our country more broadly.

In “The Empirical Failures of Neoliberalism,” Mike Konczal, Katy Milani, and

Ariel Evans elevate five of the leading arguments made by advocates of
neoliberalism and explore their theoretical claims. Ultimately, the authors debunk
neoliberals’ arguments, tracking them against recent research by leading scholars
of economic inequality to show how neoliberalism has failed to deliver its
promises of increased economic growth, equality, and mobility.

By elevating the leading empirics that turn neoliberalism’s theoretical claims on

their head, this issue brief aims to energize a thoughtful reevaluation of the
dominant—but failed—ideology. Konczal, Milani, and Evans lay the foundation
for a new set of economic policies that are capable of building a stronger, more
inclusive economy and democracy—by curbing the concentrated power in our
economy and political system while also building on the strengths of government
to directly address both the individual and collective challenges facing our
nation.

We’ve known about climate change for an entire generation, yet decades of
research about the climate crisis and the threat it poses have largely fallen silent
in Washington. Recently, this has begun to change. Led by youth activists and
environmental justice groups, environmental politics are swiftly shifting. Rather
than offering tweaks to the existing system, people are fighting for fundamental
changes to achieve deep decarbonization, but we must first understand the root
causes of this predicament.
 Climate activists increasingly point to the role of ideology in creating our climate
crisis. They have argued that we must transcend neoliberalism, and perhaps even
capitalism, to address climate change.

In Transcending Neoliberalism: How the Free-Market Myth Has Prevented

Climate Action, Mark Paul and Anders Fremstad of Colorado State University
present a coherent account of how neoliberalism has contributed to inaction. To
do so, they explore three tenets of neoliberal ideology that have stymied action to
address the climate crisis:

1. Decentralize democracy: A feature of the neoliberal order in the US has been the
systematic decentralization of government. Neoliberals have promoted federalism to
address “government failure” and subject the state to market forces, exacerbating the
race to the bottom in climate policy.
2. Defund public investment: Neoliberals dismantled the Keynesian consensus that
the state has a major role to play in providing public goods, stabilizing the
macroeconomy, and solving coordination problems. In the neoliberal order,
government investments are rejected as expensive and wasteful, crowding out
productive private investments.
3. Deregulate the economy: Neoliberalism has launched a concentrated attack on
government’s ability to regulate the economy. Ignoring the ability of regulations to
positively shape markets, neoliberals dismiss government intervention as “red tape”
that merely increases the cost of doing business.

Deep decarbonization will require that policymakers shed this neoliberal

straitjacket and use the federal government to pursue large public investments
and binding climate regulations. Much remains uncertain, including the optimal
mix of market-based policies that place a price on carbon and state-based policies
that regulate private industry and invest in the green economy, while ensuring a
just transition for all workers and communities. However, as the excitement
builds around a Green New Deal, it is clear that confronting climate change will
require us to confront the ideological system that helped create it.
After a few decades’ absence, industrial policy is back in the national
conversation, with support from leading academics, grassroots movements, and
politicians ranging from Sen. Elizabeth Warren to Sen. Marco Rubio. Despite its
dormancy in the public debate, industrial policy and planning lie at the heart of
many capitalist economies—and both should anchor the future of an inclusive
American economy.

In Industrial Policy and Planning: What It Is and How to Do It Better, Todd

Tucker defines industrial policy and planning and explores its success around the
world. Dismantling the myth that the US has no industrial policy, Tucker
delineates the ad hoc measures that have advantaged the privileged few across
industries and examines how racism, legalism, and neoliberalism have hindered
the development of comprehensive industrial planning.

To compete with the rest of the world, our government must think bigger than
tariffs and implement comprehensive, democratic industrial policy and planning.
By rewriting the rules, we can create a more effective and sustainable economy
—for all.

America’s political landscape and economic thinking are shifting. The 2016
election—and the rise of powerful movements over the past decade—has shown
us that Americans are calling for change. They want a diagnosis of our economy
to help make sense of what’s gone wrong and to suggest ways to make things
better. In New Rules for the 21st Century: Corporate Power, Public Power, and
the Future of the American Economy, Nell Abernathy, Darrick Hamilton, and
Julie Margetta Morgan argue that the future of the American economy and our
democracy depend on a new way of thinking about markets and a new way of
thinking about the role of government. With a renewed commitment to
transforming corporations, restructuring markets, reviving democratic
institutions, and reimagining the role of government, we can respond to our
current political moment. Ultimately, we want to restructure our economy to
make both the private and public sectors better serve more Americans.

The report includes a foreword by Roosevelt Chief Economist Joseph E. Stiglitz.

“In many ways, abuses of growing corporate power—both in the public and
private sphere—and the diminution of public power are at the core of our current
predicament,” he says.

Despite more work hours and headline economic growth, wages are persistently
low. Wealth inequality threatens our shared economic prosperity and our
democracy. The basic building blocks of a safe and secure life, such as quality
education and accessible health care, are increasingly out of reach. Climate
change is destroying the health of our planet, and it’s set to imperil the economy
—and our lives. Progress made toward economic inclusion in the wake of the
civil rights and women’s rights era has been held back, while overt racism is
gaining momentum in our public discourse. Our democracy is in peril like never
before. The challenges we face may seem disparate, but they share common
roots: The problem is an approach to policymaking based on the flawed belief
that markets are the only efficient way to achieve public goals. This has
dominated our politics and policymaking for the past 50 years.
 The Roosevelt Institute is offering a progressive one-two punch: We must curb
corporate power and reimagine public power, which means reimagining the role
of government. We can do this by:

 Rethinking the contemporary markets-first approach in favor of a more

pragmatic assessment: when and how to deploy the power of government to directly
provide goods and services and tackle the challenges our nation faces;
 Restructuring the economy by writing new rules that strike at the heart of
today’s concentrations of wealth and power; and
 Reforming our political institutions, so that we can make both the private sector
and the government work for all of us again.

Over the last four years, this structural argument about remaking American
institutions in the public good has been ascendant, but it is far from victorious.
Reining in extractive corporate power. Deploying government power in new and
expansive ways. Both are needed to build an inclusive economy and meet our
country’s pressing needs. Progressives who are willing to punch back at 50 years
of distorted policy choices have empirics, morality, and the American people on
their side.

Companies today are not working the way that most Americans, policymakers, or
the media think that they do. To fight inequality, we need to rewrite the laws that
guide corporations. We must first, however, change the way that people
understand the role of the American firm in our economy and explore how we
can deploy public power, via the government, to foster corporative behavior that
serves the collective good.

In “Rejecting the Theory of the Firm,” Nell Abernathy explains how a

comprehensive restructuring of markets—which will first require a fundamental
shift in commonplace assumptions held by the public—can help build a more
equitable and productive economy.

In the middle of the 20th century, it came to be believed that “a rising tide lifts all
boats”: economic growth would bring increasing wealth and higher living
standards to all sections of society. At the time, there was some evidence behind
that claim. In the ensuing economic and political debate, this “rising-tide
hypothesis” evolved into a much more specific idea, according to which
regressive economic policies—policies that favor the richer classes—would end
up benefiting everyone. Resources given to the rich would inevitably “trickle
down” to the rest.

Today, the trend to greater equality of incomes which characterized the postwar
period has been reversed. Inequality is now rising rapidly. Contrary to the rising-
tide hypothesis, the rising tide has only lifted the large yachts, and many of the
smaller boats have been left dashed on the rocks. This is partly because the
extraordinary growth in top incomes has coincided with an economic slowdown.

This chapter, “Inequality and Economic Growth,” looks critically at both

claims. It argues in favor of alternative explanations of inequality, with particular
reference to the theory of rent-seeking and to the influence of institutional and
political factors, which have shaped labor markets and patterns of remuneration.
And it shows that, far from being either necessary or good for economic growth,
excessive inequality tends to lead to weaker economic performance. In light of
this, it argues for a range of policies that would increase both equity and
economic well-being.
Over the last 40 years, corporate influence and trickle-down ideology have
pervaded the tax code, resulting in large tax breaks for corporations and the
wealthy. These low rates have failed to deliver the widespread growth that was
promised, and the results for the typical American have been disastrous: Wealth
at the top skyrocketed with no equivalent boom in growth. At the same time,
median wages have remained largely stagnant, and the United States now ranks
10th out of 13 OECD countries in upward mobility. To correct our current
trajectory, America needs a wholesale reconsideration of tax incentives and their
impact on various economic activities.

In this brief based on previously published work by Roosevelt Institute Chief

Economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, we propose a new paradigm for thinking about the
tax system: Rather than rewarding bad behavior and using the tax and transfer
system to redress poor outcomes after the fact, the tax code should be structured
to encourage productive economic activities and a more equitable pre-tax
distribution. The tax code can be used to adjust incentives and curb shortsighted,
risky, and otherwise undesirable economic behavior. Loopholes should be closed,
high taxes should be levied on harmful activities, and tax cuts and subsidies
should be focused on productive investment that promotes inclusive growth and
general well-being.

Our proposal aims to bring about inclusive growth through tax reform built
around progressivity and positive incentives.

How Unscientific is the Labor Theory of

Value?
Ingo Stützle October 1, 2020

PDF
 Alberto Giacometti, Homme qui marche I (1960)

In any Capital course, the question of whether the labor theory of value is still valid is a
much discussed issue, one that extends to the third volume, as the transformation
problem (which I won’t go into at all) shows.  The point of departure for my elaboration
is a podcast that is currently popular in Germany that deals with Marx’s Capital, and the
reaction by listeners in a Twitter thread.  I wanted to keep my response short, but my
two observations are too long for Twitter.

In my opinion, Marx does not formulate a substance theory,1 because that which is

referred to as substance, value, is purely social.  He also does not intend to prove that
labor underlies value (see his letter to Kugelmann); rather, he poses the question of why
labor, under the reign of the capitalist mode of production, takes on the forms of value.
In the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (an earlier work from 1859), he
makes it more explicit by writing that he only examines commodities that are products
of labor (and not those that aren’t products of labor – which means conversely that he
must be able to explain how something that is not a product of labor obtains a price,
such as untilled soil).

Marx is often readily placed in the tradition of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Yes and
no, I’d say. Smith may be the one who wanted to investigate value in abstraction from
utility, but he is much closer to a subjective theory of value than Marx’s theory. That’s
why the neoclassical mainstream regards Smith as much better than Ricardo. Ricardo is
the first one to break with all that. He no longer accepted the then-prevailing circular
argument that the value of commodities is, among other things, whatever is paid for
wages, whereby the follow-up question must of course be how the value of the means of
subsistence is determined. Ricardo is the first economist who traces value back to the
expenditure of labor-power, but he got entangled in many contradictions (which not
only Marx struggled with, but which Samuel Bailey pointed out with relish; Bailey was
a harbinger of the theory of marginal utility, whose elaborations forced Marx to refine
his analysis of the value-form). Although Ricardo remained a dominant figure for a long
time after his death, his theory would soon enter a crisis – and the “journey backwards”
began.  Modern neoclassical economics is not interested in value theory, only in price
formation. Its predecessor, the theory of marginal utility, at least still attempted a theory
of value, but fell behind Smith, ending up right back at use-value. Even John Maynard
Keynes could not evade the questions that plagued Marx. Although Keynes was not
interested in value theory, he agreed with classical political economy (which he called
“pre-classical”) that the “basis” of value was labor (thus distinguishing himself from
neoclassical economics): “I sympathise, therefore, with the pre-classical doctrine that
everything is produced by labour.”2 Keynes even touched upon the question of the
possibility of the homogeneity of labor and its measure, but – like the classical political
economists – could not solve the problem. Keynes’ break with classical political
economy (which he sees in the constitutive relevance of money) thus remains at least
ambivalent.

According to an often-formulated accusation, Marx’s theory of value is “unscientific”: it

can’t be “experienced” or “measured.” “Unscientific” is a harsh judgment – and one can
formulate the question of why this applies to Marx, but not to physics, since no
theoretical concept of physics can be observed either. We can observe the movement of
bodies and then conclude that certain forces are at play. When this way of viewing
things becomes predominant, it is then said that such forces can be observed and
measured, which, strictly speaking, is not at all true. Only the movement of bodies is
measured, not the forces. With the differing notions of what constitutes these forces,
what can be measured also changes: for example, Einstein cleared away Newton’s
concept of gravitational force. Something that was previously measurable suddenly no
longer existed.  Instead of a spectral long-distance effect (Newton), the force is now
explained by the curvature of the four-dimensional space-time continuum (Einstein) –
not exactly directly accessible to human imagination either, but: if Marx’s value theory
is accused of not being scientific, then that should also apply to physics. But the
opposite is the case: we need the concepts in order to understand the interrelations. As
in physics – where the various paradigms that have asserted themselves as the
predominant explanations for certain phenomena represent scientific progress – so in
political economy: whereby the neoclassical school is only capable of laughing at Marx
(and Keynes constitutes an additional third paradigm).  

The replacement of a social theory, or a change in its significance, has much to do with
social relations or conflicts, and little to do with scientific progress. Thus Ricardo
remained a dominant figure for a long time after his death, but his theory soon entered
into a crisis – and the “journey backwards” began, sometimes driven by circles that had
no interest in Ricardo’s theory being used by socialists to denounce the exploitation of
workers and claim a right to the entire product of labor. At the time, the idea that there
were socialist implications to Ricardo’s theory sounded politically transparent, if one
listens to what contemporary economists or publicists were saying. It is, according to
the economist Samuel Read, a “mischievous and fundamental error” that labor is the
source of wealth, and only expresses a hostility to entrepreneurs. Ultimately, according
to the geologist and economist Poulett Scrope in 1833, it does not recognize how much
time the owner of capital sacrifices for its application. The North American economist
Thomas Cooper wrote in 1830: “If these be the proposals that the mechanics combine to
carry into effect, it is high time for those who have property to lose, and families to
protect, to combine in self-defense.” The economist Mark Blaug, writing from the
perspective of the history of theory, summarizes: “It is significant that the writers who
attacked the views of the ‘labour theorists’ - Scrope, Read and Longfield - were also
among the first to advance the abstinence theory of profit [according to which profit can
be traced back to saving]. In this sense, the theoretical innovations of the ‘neglected
British economists’ were not unrelated to the nature of the class struggle after 1830.” So
the polemics of neoclassical economists against Marx’s theory of value – that it’s
ideology, not science – can be confidently held up as a mirror to their own tradition.

Conversely, however, it is also my opinion that a certain reading of Marx does not
recognize the break that Marx – albeit insufficiently – marks with classical economics
when he is simply placed in the lineage of Smith/Ricardo, and the claim is made that
value and abstract labor can be quantified.  I would dispute that. Concrete labor can be
measured with the stopwatch, not abstract labor.  Neither can value.  That brings us
back to physics and the concepts that make it possible to measure something.  In the
case of force fields, for example, in order to measure field potential, something like a
calibration value has to be determined (for example, how the height of a mountain is
determined by the arbitrary assumption that sea level is zero). In order to be able to
“measure” value, what is required is: money. Money is the only tangible form of value
(the objective form of money also marks a difference from physics, in which concepts
do not take on objective form); through money, “the individual carries his social power,
as well as his bond with society, in his pocket.”3 Unlike Marx, neoclassical economics is
only interested in price formation, not in what a price actually is, and why in capitalism
money must exist alongside commodities (why not directly measure labor?).

For the economic mainstream and everyday common sense, supply and demand play the
central role: if a commodity is in great demand or very scarce, the price is high, since
the market quickly indicates how much can be demanded for it. Industrially
manufactured products, however, are anything but scarce under capitalism. They are
only scarce in terms of money, i.e., in terms of who is able to pay, not as a state of
nature, as the mainstream assumes. Value “regulates” social production, and Marx
demonstrates that the market authorizes the conditions in which commodities are
produced, which is why prices are so important under capitalism: those who pay wages
that are too high, or allow work to be performed in too unproductive a manner, will not
survive on the market for long. Accordingly, value can indeed be experienced – as a
compulsory social nexus. The price form, according to Marx, is the appropriate form for
a mode of production “whose laws can only assert themselves as blindly operating
averages between constant irregularities.”4 The movement of prices of commodities on
the market thus assumes very specific social relations, interconnections, and economic
mechanisms that make prices necessary in the first place, and determine their
movements. Commodity-producing labor is a central determining factor, which was
clear to Marx, but which neoclassical economics wants to know nothing about, and
which Keynes prevented himself from understanding.

– Translated by Alexander LocascioReferences

Ingo Stützle (https://stuetzle.cc/) is managing editor of PROKLA – journal for critical

social science. His books available in English include (with Stephan Kaufmann)
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century: An Introduction, and (with
Valeria Bruschi, Antonella Muzzupappa, Sabine Nuss, and Anne Steckner)
PolyluxMarx: A Capital Workbook in Slides.

ORIGIN OF THE
FAMILY, PRIVATE
PROPERTY AND THE
STATE
May 12, 2008

Elizabeth Schulte explains how Frederick Engels' classic book identifies the

source of women's oppression in the development of class society.

"OBEDIENCE IS the most necessary ingredient to be required from the

child," wrote neanderthal Rev. Jack Hyles in his book How to Rear Children.
"This is especially true for a girl, for she must be obedient all her life. The boy
who is obedient to his mother and father will some day become the head of a
home; not so for the girl.

"Whereas the boy is being trained to be a leader, the girl is being trained to be
a follower...This means that she should never be allowed to argue at all. She
should become submissive and obedient. She must obey immediately, without
question, and without argument."
 This is, of course, one of more grotesque expressions of the sexist adage "a
woman's place is in the home," and many people believe it is exceptional--
that, by and large in society, such ideas have fallen out of favor.

But the reality is that women's oppression is alive and well. If we are ever to
abolish it, pinpointing the source of that oppression is key.

DESPITE THE myths that people like Hyles try to propagate about it--as well
as the prevailing common wisdom--the nuclear family and women's role in it
haven't always been the norm in the history of human society.

SERIES

TEN SOCIALIST CLASSICS

SocialistWorker.org writers introduce 10 of the most important writings by

leading thinkers in the revolutionary socialist tradition.

The Communist Manifesto

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

The Civil War in France

The Mass Strike


 Reform or Revolution

State and Revolution

What Is To Be Done?

Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism

Permanent Revolution

Frederick Engels wrote The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State with the purpose of providing a materialist analysis of how the family as
we know it came to be with the rise of class society--and with it, the
oppression of women.

This groundbreaking book was written in the context of the abysmal status of
women in Victorian society. In the U.S. in the year the book was published,
1884, Susan B. Anthony was called a fanatic for speaking before Congress on
behalf of women's suffrage. The movement for an eight-hour day also began
that year.

The book came out only 25 years after Charles Darwin presented his theory of
evolution in The Origin of Species and only a few years after The Descent of
Man.

While Origin of the Family was written after Karl Marx's death in 1883, it was
largely based on notes that Engels and Marx made on the research of
anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, who had published Ancient Society in
1877, making him one of the first to apply a materialist analysis to tell the
story of how human social organization had evolved over time.

WHAT ELSE TO READ

 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto
 Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
 Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State
 Karl Marx, The Civil War in France
 Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike
 Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution
 Vladimir Lenin, State and Revolution
 Vladimir Lenin, What Is to Be Done
 Vladimir Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
 All three works by Vladimir Lenin can be found in Essential Works of
Lenin: "What Is to Be Done?" and Other Writings
 Leon Trotsky, Permanent Revolution

When Morgan observed the Iroquois Indians in upstate New York, he saw
kinship relationships totally different from the family relationships considered
"normal" during the Victorian era. He found that in more than one case,
Native American men and women were organized in communities of relative
equality, and that women had a status that would be unfamiliar to readers in
Morgan's supposedly more civilized day.

Today, some of Morgan's data is considered outdated, but newer evidence has
been uncovered to support his general arguments. Anthropologist Eleanor
Burke Leacock, for example, who wrote a 1971 introduction to Origin, has
made several contributions to further Engels' work, in part to combat a
prevalent idea in her time that men "naturally" dominated over women.

In Origin, Engels uses the materialist method--looking at actual developments

in the history of human society--to expand on Morgan's ideas and argue that
the family as we know it is not a staple of all human societies, but the result of
the rise of class society. Like the state, the family comes about in the interest
of a small ruling class seeking to maintain control over their property.

The book provides examples of ways that human beings organized themselves
which were nothing like the monogamous family of Engels' day--pre-class
societies where women and men enjoyed a degree of sexual freedom, and
where there was a totally different conception of family.

Engels retells the story of an American traveling in Brazil who, "when he was
introduced to the daughter, he asked after her father, presuming him to be her
mother's husband, who was fighting as an officer in the war against Paraguay;
but the mother answered with a smile: 'Nao tem pai, e filha da fortuna' (She
has no father. She is a child of chance)."

Engels quotes the American as saying,

It is the way the Indian or half-breed women here always speak of their illegitimate
children...without an intonation of sadness or of blame...So far is this from being an
unusual case, that...the opposite seems the exception. Children are frequently quite
ignorant of their parentage. They know about their mother, for all the care and
responsibility falls upon her, but they have no knowledge of their father; nor does it
seem to occur to the woman that she or her children have any claim upon him.

Engels hilariously takes on the proponents of the traditional family of his time
who used comparisons with the animal kingdom to prove their points (not
unlike the so-called evolutionary biologists of today).

Engels writes, "[E]xamples of faithful monogamy among birds prove nothing

about man, for the simple reason that men are not descended from birds. And
if strict monogamy is the height of all virtue, then the palm must go to the
tapeworm, which has a complete set of male and female sexual organs in each
of its 50-200 proglottides, or sections, and spends its whole life copulating in
all its sections with itself."

WITH A change in the social forces, Engels argues, comes a change in the
conception of the family. The domestication of animals and the advent of
agriculture made it possible for human beings to create more than the bare
minimum that they needed to survive. For the first time, there was an
accumulation of surplus, or wealth.

With the rise of class society came the rise of inequality--between those who
accumulated wealth and those who did not, and also between men and
women.

In pre-class hunter-gatherer societies, a sexual division of labor existed--with

women usually in charge of the gathering and growing of crops. The work
performed by women was central to the group's survival, and therefore valued
highly. Men for their part took care of the hunting of large game, and later,
with the domestication of animals, oversaw that work. Systematic inequality
between men and women did not exist.

The rise in inequality came with the rise in private property, as men came to
control the sphere of production. The monogamous family became the means
by which property could be passed down from generation to generation.
Marriage became little more than a property relationship.

As the demand for surplus increased, so did the demand for labor. Women
were now in the position of having to produce more children to perform more
labor. In this way, the women became tied to the household. In other words,
the division of labor between men and women didn't change, but production
was moved out of the household. As Engels wrote:

The legal inequality of the two partners, bequeathed to us from earlier social conditions,
is not the cause but the effect of the economic oppression of the woman. In the old
communistic household, which comprised many couples and their children, the task
entrusted to the women of managing the household was as much a public and socially
necessary industry as the procuring of food by the men.

With the patriarchal family, and still more with the single monogamous family, a
change came. Household management lost its public character. It no longer concerned
society. It became a private service; the wife became the head servant, excluded from all
participation in social production.

Regarding changes in the family under capitalism, Engels rightly makes the
argument that women entering the workplace was a positive development,
taking them out of the isolation of the household.

But Engels overestimates the positive impact this has for working-class
women, and in some ways has a rosy picture of the working-class household.
Engels writes, "Here, there is no property, for the preservation and inheritance
of which monogamy and male supremacy were established; hence, there is no
incentive to make this male supremacy effective."

In this passage, Engels underestimates the powerful role ideology plays in

perpetrating the false idea that women are as less than equal to men. This is
especially important among workers, where capitalism depends on the
division of men and women to keep them from uniting and overthrowing the
system. He also misses the fact that working-class women suffer oppression
more severely than ruling-class women.

Much has, of course, changed since Engels wrote Origin of the Family. A

solid majority of women now have jobs outside the home. Single mothers
make up an increasing part of the workforce. And while technological
advances have made housework less time-consuming than in Engels' time,
women carry a heavy double burden of work inside and outside the
workforce.

Fundamentally, though, Engels' Origin is as useful as ever. By locating the

source of women's oppression in class society, he locates the source of its
possible demise.

As Engels concludes,
What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered
after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character,
limited for the most part to what will disappear.

But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown
up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a
woman's surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of
women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other
considerations than real love, or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of
the economic consequences.

When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today
thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding
public opinion about the practice of each individual--and that will be the end of it.