The attempts to convince society that the family must be abolished

 

Author Justas Stankevičius

During the coronavirus crisis, many of us felt how dear our loved ones are to us and how important family ties are. This is why Sophie Lewis’ article “The coronavirus crisis shows it’s time to abolish the family,” about how the pandemic is the perfect time to abolish the family as a model of community, came as a particular surprise. How did this idea come about? Who is driving such initiatives and why?

The Lewis article is published on a website funded by the George Soros Foundations. The author, Sophie Lewis, is a well-known writer and translator. Her most famous translations include Bini Adamczak’s Communism for Kids (2017) and Atnje Schrupp’s A Brief History of Feminism (2017). Perhaps her most famous book is Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism against Family (2011).  Lewis’s work, as its title suggests, is linked to the ideology of the political left, which is based on the principle of critical theory as formulated by the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School.

While classical Marxism speaks of the proletariat being captured by the upper class, one of the principles of critical theory is that all members of Western society are captured by Western cultural institutions. This theory is used as a smokescreen by the Frankfurt School in various aspects, one of which is its criticism of every pillar of Western culture – the family, the idea of the nation-state, the Church etc. It was believed that by criticizing these pillars, the (old) Western model of society would collapse.  To understand the attempt to disseminate the ideas of the Frankfurt School around the world, it is worth looking at Lewis’s text.

 

The author begins by pointing out that in order to flatten the curve of the pandemic, certain social practices (social distancing and sheltering in place) are being adopted.  She criticizes Covid quarantines themselves because they make people anxious about their income and health.  After touching on several minor positive and negative aspects of these distancing and sheltering, Lewis goes into a long discussion on the difficulty of implementing these practices.  She is especially critical of the shelter in place (for most persons – the “stay at home”) mandate.

 

Lewis states that, according to the World Health Organization, “domestic violence is the most widespread, but also the most under-reported, of human rights violations.” The author goes on to express her disapproval of a number of socio-economic aspects of the family and household:

1. The sexes have asymmetric roles in reproduction and housework;
2. Housing can only be acquired by rent or purchase through loans;
3. Children are often brought up in a family with patriarchal values (although it isn’t always the father who dominates the upbringing of children);
4. The author presents marriage as a self-evident evil without explaining it at all.

The article attempts to reject the family on the implicit assumption that marriage is fundamentally harmful.  Using ideological jargon, the author claims that the family is an example of the “mystification of the couple-form“. Arguing for the abolishment of the family as a goal for society, Lewis argues that “private property” (the home) is a dangerous place because it is defined by asymmetries of power rather than by the division and cooperation of family labor. The author distorts the relationship between the family and the home by describing it as a class struggle (as a gender power struggle).

In fact, marriage can be justified in terms of logical positivism, a philosophical system which the Frankfurt School denies. From a purely biological point of view, the family as a model is especially important for humankind, because humans have a long period of puberty compared to other animals (here, too, the economic aspect is important). It is also worth recalling Abraham Harold Maslow’s pyramid of needs hierarchy (1970), in which is posited that one of the fundamental needs determining human psychological well-being is that of love and belonging. Examples of these are family, friends, work, and religious community.

After listing these arguments Lewis rhetorically asks: “How can this ‘zone’ [family-J.S] help our health?” Intentionally or unintentionally, the author neglects to mention that the family is critical for psychological health. Social relationships (such as those within families) have been shown to reduce the likelihood of chronic and mental illness. Len Sperry, author of over ten scientific books on familial psychology and psychotherapy argues that marriage builds well-being by providing companionship, emotional support and economic security. Marriage is associated with physical health, psychological well-being and low mortality. There are many other sources confirming that Lewis is wrong in her evaluation of marriage.

Lewis then moves towards a critique of capitalism. She argues that physically frail people (old or young) in “capitalist homes” only exceptionally feel safe.  To evaluate this statement, it would be interesting and instructive to compare how physically weak people fared in socialist or labor camps.  Moreover, do most physically frail people suffer violence under capitalism in, say, Western countries like Austria?

Recipes for the Revolution

Lewis writes that a logical solution for safe, comfortable housing “… might be to open all hotels and private palaces, with spacious and light, sanitary (commodity) housing for all”.  Lithuanian society, which only recently emerged from under Soviet occupation, has experienced this “nationalize private real estate and distribute it to all according to need” concept in action during the Red Terror of 5-Sept-1918. Ask them what they think of such a plan.

Cavalierly, the author asks to “… release all prisoners and detainees”, ignoring that prematurely released prisoners are an additional and unwanted threat to public security.

The author’s call to “restructure care institutions as spacious villages living independently”, sounds as if she is proposing collective farms.  Such a suggestion comes across as a cheap advertisement for the socialist revolution, not something suitable for publishing on the Open Democracy page.

Domestic violence is misrepresented

Quite spontaneously, the author writes that it is almost dangerous to have private homes, because “most of them are not safe”. However, no figures, evidence or sources are given here backing that claim. Other considerations are based on figures that come from an article in The Guardian, which states that since the beginning of the pandemic, reports of domestic violence have tripled in Chinese police stations. However, this in no way means that the increase in domestic violence would have been avoided with different familial structures. It seems that the real problem may not be the family or marriage, but rather the fact that conflicts are more frequent when people are confined in small spaces for long periods of time.  In other words, violence would likely also have occurred among people who are not family members if they were confined to small spaces for long periods.

The article itself states that 90% of the causes of violence are linked to the COVID-19 epidemic. The author goes on to point out that the head of the US National Domestic Violence Hotline has observed that there have been instances where “abusers threaten to throw their victims out on the street so that they will get sick”. Mention of these extreme and infrequent cases are examples of attempts to scare the public. Fear being one of the most important propaganda tools.

After an avalanche of unsubstantiated claims, the author jumps to a recommendation: “In short, a pandemic is not the time to forget about the abolition of the family.” Up to this point, the governing logic of the article can be summarized as follows:  There is violence and inequality in families; these problems are exacerbated by quarantine, so let’s all give up on families.

Even if the home is safe, the family is still harmful

To save the reader’s time, we can summarize the five ways in which the author believes (even a healthy) family is bad.

 

1. Families reinforce gender roles;
2. Families enable people to engage in productive work;
3. The family makes us think we are independent;
4. Families contribute to efficient economic growth;
5. The family gives the impression that it is the main source of love and care.

The author’s value system seems so alien to a psychologically healthy person that it is difficult to see how her statements support the thesis that even healthy families must be abolished. After the statements that are meant to be considered as ‘arguments’, we find the following conclusions: We deserve better than family. The coronavirus is the perfect time to destroy the family.

She goes on to say: “In the lucent words of Anne Boyer ‘We [people who oppose the family model – J.S] have to live as daily evidence that we believe there is value in the lives of the cancer patient, the elderly person, the disabled one, the ones in unthinkable living conditions, crowded and at risk.’”

Is Lewis making an implicit assumption that people with families don’t care about all these groups of people? That sounds like cheap populism – a problem and a solution. The problem: people with families do not care about cancer patients, the elderly, etc. The solution – create something better than the family.

The author concludes by saying that the period of the epidemic is the perfect opportunity for a social and socialist revolution, and that she believes that it is in 2020, after the debris of the plague and the coming depression, that the dialectic against the family will intensify. However, it is unlikely that Ms. Lewis’s conclusions mean anything meaningful because, as we can see, the progressive author is basing the change in tradition on pseudoscience while ignoring the scientific consensus.

Her article is a good example for the need to be critical of the views of radical leftists, who often base their insights and conclusions on ideology. This ideology stems from the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, which denies logical positivism. And this illustrates why rational discussion with this type of person is not possible.

The same difficulty applies in discourse with other organizations that follow this ideology, such as the Open Society Foundations, on whose website Lewis’s article was published; or the radical Lithuanian organization Life is too Precious; or ANTIFA. Incidentally, the Open Society Foundations are active in Lithuania as well, and ANTIFA has people from our country in its ranks.  It is noteworthy that ANTIFA Facebook posts not infrequently also appear on Life is Precious pages.

Let us not be swayed by deceptive propaganda; let us think critically and let us maintain a barrier of rationality which must be convinced before accepting new conclusions.