Reading Wendy Brown's "Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution " In chapter 3 she is talking about Foucault and wanting to make adjustments. She talks a great deal about Aristotle, but she is citing Marx's "Capital" as her source. I guess maybe we could say that Aristotle is responding to the same sorts of insights that Plato was, it's just that Aristotle wanted to try and apply them in more moderate and practical ways? Well part of the problem with this is that while Plato wanted to abolish slavery and the family, Aristotle was willing to allow them to continue. So I know from other sources that there are areas where Marx finds it necessary to break with Aristotle. He and Engels certainly did not want to perpetuate slavery and the family. I'm looking for a forum to discuss Radical Left issues, and focusing on the abuses of the middle-class family, the mental health system and recovery movement, and how this relates to the perpetuation of our broken economic system. I want to become an activist in this arena. I already have experience helping to put a Pentecostal daughter molester into the state penitentiary. Nomadic99
The family is essential to the survival of the individual. It is a buffer between a person an an oppressive society.
Unfortunately it seems to work the opposite way, to expose the individual to the prejudices and hatreds of society, while wrapping itself in sentimentalism and romanticism. Nomadic99
In a primitive society it would be different. And in a traditional society too, it would be different. But in the industrialized nations, you really only have the middle-class family. And what is distinctive about that is that the middle-class are the first large group of people who really have a choice about how they live. But they don't want to admit that they have such a choice, so they live in Bad-Faith. And the brunt of this falls upon the children, those who are being used day in and out to give identity to the adults. Nomadic99
Those are some pretty vast generalizations. Anyone that has had to work to survive could challenge you on ,most of those points.
Well I think that is what makes an industrial society and the middle-class different. People work hard to stay housed and to keep up appearances and their reputation. But just to survive, in an industrialized society, no one works to do that. Actually the people with no money and no employment or income use more smarts in one day than the well-off use in a year. Life is about keeping up appearances, and this is how children are exploited. This is why they have children. Very different in a traditional society, and very different in a primitive society. The middle-class lives in Bad Faith. It is the first large group of people that has choices in how they live. But they don't want to admit this to themselves. The middle-class does not live up to its own values, but it does indeed use children. And as it stands to day, usually the children never have any redress available to them.
Maybe in your family. Mine was not like that. Again, IMO those are vast over-generalizations that reduce people to stereotypes.
Some times there are things which mitigate the middle-class family, open it up, break down its walls. But often not. What is unique about the middle-class is that while it is the first class which has had real choices, it lives in bad faith, and tries to avoid admitting that it has choices. The primary bearers of this system of lies, are the children, whether they understand this or not.
Any time you have an institutionalized system there is bound to be abuse, there's really no escaping it entirely. It is true that some systems are less prone to abuse than others though.
IMO you need to go live in a no limits anything goes state like maybe . Sudan? I think there you will be with more like minded people. If I understand you you are against families? I feel sorry for you in a way because you may be a product of a communist professor or worse. I hope you get well soon.
