Marx, Engels and the Abolition of the Family: Woken Promises: Episode 21

When the Marxist organization Black Lives Matter claimed on their website that part of their goal was "to disrupt the nuclear family," it ended up creating more backlash than they could handle. Where did they ever get such an idea? Well, the idea of abolishing the nuclear family was clearly delineated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in several of their works, including Das Kapital, Die Deutsche Ideologie, and Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats. But the truth is the idea to destroy the nuclear family runs even further back, to two of the Utopian Socialists. The Frenchman Charles Fourier (1772 – 1837) and Welshman Robert Owen (1771 – 1858) both held Christian marriage in contempt and devalued the rearing of children. It was these early thinkers who created the basis for Marx and Engels vision of the ultimate form of family – the communist family. In this episode, we take a look back in time to see how the plan to destroy the nuclear family has been preserved for the last 200 years.