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Notes -
There’s a very amusing irony to internet socialists claiming patriarchy is the result of capitalism.
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels discuss ‘patriarchy’ in an interesting and sometimes under-remarked upon way. They don’t support or criticize it, necessarily, but they analyze it. As most know, they say that patriarchy or the general form of family relations is essentially a form of property relationship that, in securing paternity, allows for the inheritance of private property (principally land).
Interestingly, Marx and Engels also argued that patriarchy was in terminal decline by the mid 19th century, because capitalism (a) made conditions so poor for proletarians that most had no property to pass on, reducing the power of the patriarch and (b) women increasingly had their own wealth because capitalism pressed them (and children) into the labor market, also reducing the power of the patriarch.
So the great irony is that while, yes, Marx and Engels weren’t ‘defenders’ of patriarchy and did indeed criticize the effect on women of socially conservative societal norms (especially in bourgeois society, where they were personally more comfortable), they actually considered many aspects of patriarchy to be in severe decline under capitalism due to the profit incentive and desire of capitalists to erode the traditional family to grow their workforce.
In other words, Karl Marx himself thought capitalism eroded patriarchy.
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