Class Analysis Part 5: Splits Within Splits

Let’s talk about the law. Shall we? On the 7th August, the Bulgarian parliament (which, by the by, is representative of merely thirty-nine percent of the voters, to give you an idea of the shining success of free market liberal democracy freedom et cetera) passed unanimously an addition to the law for public education, that states,

“In the system of pre-school and school education, it is forbidden to engage in activities, connected with:

[...]

(3) Engaging in propaganda, popularising or inciting in any way, directly or not, of ideas or views, connected with a non-traditional sexual orientation and/or determining a gender identity, differing from the biological.” \[Translation author’s\]

I’ll read out a different law, which will bring us back into the 90s. Steady yourselves.

“Prohibition on promoting homosexuality by teaching or by publishing material.

(1)A local authority shall not—

(a)intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality;

(b)promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.”

That was the infamous Section 28 law in Britain, passed in 1991, although its direct origins were in prior homophobic education, and the escalation of homophobic rhetoric that Margaret Thatcher engaged in from 1987. Now, of course, historically, there are differences: the main struggle was around what councils, with their relative power to decide curriculum, could teach in schools – that sort of autonomy does not exist here at all. But, more importantly, that was when the AIDS crisis was raging, or rather, the crisis that Western governments willfully agreed to let fester. And this is one element of how it was handled, by cornering, segregating gay people into a forbidden corner, where all of their vile diseases and pederasty could exist. This, to hide the true, great scandal of AIDS, which in itself is a biological banality: that a sexually transmitted disease does not, actually, discriminate by sexuality in any way or form. Indeed: this is where we can actually draw a similarity between the two laws, as they both occur in the realm of a social crisis – AIDS and the arrival of neoliberalism; and the destruction of the Bulgarian welfare state and total takeover by the comprador rulers in Bulgaria. The hatred is created to hide the simple truth anyone with eyes can see, that this government fundamentally rules in the name of Western, imperialist interests, and no one else’s.

Of course, one will perhaps come and say, but Britain did get rid of it – in 2003 in England, which is practically, within living memory, and there may even be people who are amongst the audience who have lived thorough it, albeit there are still some confusion, as to whether teachers are actually still allowed to teach about gay peoples – that is the long shadow of the law. [Tangentially, it is perhaps worth noting that Margaret Thatcher may turn out to be more progressive on the question, as Section 28 does not, in fact, mention transgender people. Or perhaps she’d not be able to tell the difference. It is the sole innovation that its successors have brought.] My aim here, is not so much to besmirch the good name of the United Kingdom, something that is done at ease every day without my help, but rather, to bring out the point that patriarchy has nothing to do with some imagined backwardness, a heritage of “totalitarianism”, and so forth. If Russia, Hungary and Bulgaria could “learn” from the U.K, this tells us something about the worldwide nature of the phenomena. I’m sure, in due time – or, perhaps, it is already happening – we’ll too see transphobia of Western import, although, I fear that will be one cultural influence that will not see resistance by traditionalists.

What binds today Bulgaria and the U.K and Russia and so many other countries, outside of patriarchy, is crisis, in fact. That crisis of social reproduction does not know “backwardness”, “forwardness”, and so forth. While it is most clear in Bulgaria, where from 1989 to 2020, something to the tune of two million people have left the country – however, this can be tracked down to deliberate choices and policies, not a mythical need to catch up with the West. Crisis, in fact, actually characterises the relationship between patriarchy under capitalism. Let me illustrate with a broad history.

Prior to the dawn of imperialism, at the middle parts of the 19th century, the presently-existing family found itself on the brink of collapsing, due to the pressures of industrialisation. This was a dire threat to capitalism: the possibility of a total, wide-ranging failure of social (and perhaps, even, biological) reproduction. With women and children being thrown into the factories, their labour cheaper, more easy to exploit, that meant they found themselves in a double-bind. On one hand, while there were still extant forms of pre-capitalistic family arrangements, the pressure of factory work was eroding them, as the simple, physical necessity of the male worker to reproduce himself began to take over. This, combined with the complete dispossession of proletarians, meant that she found herself in an increasingly more subservient role. But, on the other hand, this was a breakthrough for the woman, as she found herself outside of the private sphere of maintaining a petty plot of land. This, both feminists and communists realized as the potential to become a citizen on equal basis with the rest of men. The scope of this first crisis can be understood in the fact that the British government of the time actually enacted laws that gave right of education to minors, so that they’re not predated upon by their exploitative parents, who were forced to either wander in seeking work, or were actively selling out their own children to prospective employers.

But with the growth of imperialism in the latter part of 19th century, we have a new engagement. With the relative excess and increasing mechanisation of industry, there could now be a new schematic for the family, what we can now recognisably call the nuclear family, with the breadwinner model firmly in place. This was, naturally, unequally distributed – there are likely families at the end of the 19th century who surely have not noticed the dawn of the new era, and certainly not the workers coming in from all over the world to work in the U.K did so. But enough workers have been entwined in the new imperial system, particularly in the new trade unions, which primarily enticed more specialized labourers, who were better off – this was one more enticement for them to keep the peace, as they now had a family to rule over. And this is one peculiarity we can immediately see under capitalist patriarchy. The proletarian, previously dispossessed, now under a breadwinner model, is owning not land, but his wife’s labour-power, and even her wages, if she’s working and not taking care of his children. Though the double-bind of caretaking and wage-labour was all too common. The equality of misery that may have been the case (though mind the above paragraph about the sale of women and children) previously, has now been broken.

That patriarchal utopia was destroyed by WWI, with millions of men dead, and women taking a far more prominent space in the workspace as replacements home (although, it must be note, the prominence of this narrative has been so distorting, it sometimes feels as if historians believe that prior to WWI, women never worked in factories), and the subsequent interwar era of political and economical chaos throwing things in deep relief. Nor is that all. The charged atmosphere of the era meant that there were new communities that were outside the family – the new, radical unions, and of course, the various Communist Parties popping around the world, alongside older social-democratic institutions (most importantly, the S.P.D) taking people away from what is “traditional”. The family was, once more, in steep danger – but this time, not merely of death and deprivation, but that the people might abandon it for a different structures. The following period from 1930s to the late 70s is the golden age of the welfare state – universal healthcare, handouts, kindergartens, the works. Notably, of course, a lot of it was patronizing and coercive in many ways, aiming to control the way the household was structured, so that the family was maintained in a proper way where the husband knows his part, and so does the wife. That said, it was also a period of gain for the latter, as white collar jobs at last opened for her, beyond merely being the boss’s secretary. It was a time of affluence and peace, if you don’t look outside one’s house.

All that is good has to come to an end. This is where we return to the “villain” of this story, namely, the United Kingdom, and specifically, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. It has been often said that the neoliberal (a terribly overused term I only reluctantly am forced to employ here) era was produced by the crisis of profitability induced by the multiplying crises – most cited, the oil embargo by the OPEC. I’d like to point to another cause, and one that Mrs. Thatcher wouldn’t have denied. That is to say, the welfare state began to produce the “wrong” kind of things, the wrong kind of people. In specific, we got British rock music, homosexuals, transgender people, and, worst of all, I think you can all agree on that, the first wave of British punk rock. The homosexuals and the transgender people were an “aberration”, where the nuclear family was considered, and the welfare system meant that they could live relatively independent lives, and even sever contact from their families. Therefore, in this context, the family had to be disciplined. Far more harsh restrictions and policing of welfare was enacted; and then, later on, reformed into nonexistence. This has had a devastating effect on the family cohesion, as parents had to work harder; children received less benefits; poverty mounted – I say all of this in past tense, but it is really something that is still present, to this day. We are, in fact, living in yet another crisis of the nuclear family, as around its decay, we see various parasitic phenomena grow around this – whether it’s predatory lending, apps to do deliveries and/or surveil your children, charter schools, and so on.

Let us leave the neoliberal family – and neoliberal society – in their freefall, for a moment. We should look at Bulgaria now, here, in a more historical context. We won’t drag you at this late part of the hour through the entirety of modern Bulgarian history, but rather start from 1944, the year when communists began their rule. Just like most Balkan countries of the time, it was a massively rural country – at the time, the ratios were 90% rural, 10% urban populations. That means, largely, that the bulk of the peoples were in one form or another, still peasantry, even as the process of land centralization within the hands of private owners had been long underway. Of course, the events in 1944 put an end to that. Following closely the Soviet model, land was collectivised, quickly in the urban areas, but with far greater difficulty in the rural areas, for reasons that are probably quite obvious. The Bulgarian government, of course, pursued in addition to collectivisation, a process of rapid industrialisation, with the help of the USSR. That has had some deeply stark effects. By 1989, the ratio above had been effectively reversed – 60% urban, 40% rural , as work moved primarily into the cities, while the actual amount of labour needed in agriculture dropped precipitously (though, it ought to be noted that these numbers are at least partially skewed by the fact that Bulgaria engaged in effectively ethnic cleansing against its own Turks, leading to a dip in rural peoples). This amounts to at minimum three million people totally uprooting and changing their lives, and adjusting to a totally new way of life. This, the more starker, as thorough the years, a heavy industry was (inefficiently) created, which requires a further migration, as unlike light industry, it cannot be founded just anywhere. That, naturally, also means all of the growing pains of stark industrialization that we’ve noted; the need for a continually expanding city (and, like all communist states, this even meant the creation of whole new cities, with most important being Dimitrovgrad), with all of the strains that can entail.

What this uneven development really meant for the family was that, in the period of 45 years, it went through the three stages outlined in the history above – simultaneously – all the while having to struggle with the “old” patriarchal remnants that were obsolete, but inherited from the peasantry! In one part, we have the proletarian family as it is engaging into a process of primitive accumulation – that was particularly acute during the housing shortages as urbanisation hit and during the industrializing process; the nuclear/breadwinner model of more well-set in white collar and professional workers; and the welfare model that was broadly applied across society, even if it sometimes racist and prejudiced. All of these were in fits and starts, as you can imagine, with a wide diversity across the country, you could find yourself being in any of those quite broadly sketched positions. In fact, I suppose one may say that the status of one’s family can be just as easily described as a class relation in a set – beyond extreme situations as in Bulgaria. That is to say, the nature of the familial operation may be very well dependent on where you are in the ladder – here, I mean, within the proletarian class in itself. That may be obvious, but a lot of things you think are such may not really be.

But you know what is coming up next. In fact, not quite – rather, that the Bulgarian family already got a foretaste of neoliberalism. The early 1980s brought a slow marketization reform within the Bulgarian economy, but also, by the aftereffects of perestroika, a limitation of direct aid from the USSR. That effectively meant that there were frequent electricity rationing, less goods, less welfare, a soft-ish form of austerity. This is the period when black market activity truly began to take immense heights, as well. It is this time that’s most engrained, amusingly enough, as the evils of socialism, when it was in crisis. But eventually the bottom fell out, as they say, and in 1989, we said goodbye to all of that, and we embraced…more crisis. The family was sent into the wilds of the 90s, with decollectivisation, in particular, having the odd effect of actually landing families with petty, dotted plots – however, since at least two generations had passed since then, quite detached from that land. This transformed them either into the pettiest, littlest rentiers, having to outsource the actual working of the land in exchange for a pittance of the income, or that it was snapped up by the bigger, badder landlords. Of course, then you also have the sundering of connections, as the enormous factories were privatised, closed up and sold for nothing – communities around them withering about. In this transitional period, the family, which was, anyway, still mired in patriarchy, mutated into something dysfunctional: family abandonment, families breaking apart, the “sacred” connection increasingly becoming more distant, so forth. As you can see, crisis sets the tone – and crisis creates the individuals, including yours truly, in many ways.

Laws. The United Kingdom. Bulgaria. The family. What can we say binds all of these things? Well, on one hand, that the state, thorough the years, intervened in the specific ways that the family functioned, often, to restrain the very impulses of the capitalistic classes that it operates in the name of. This is so that social reproduction of a specific type of workers – ones bound to the nuclear family, and therefore to capitalism & consumerism in specific. But that’s not necessarily a positive relation, and in fact, it usually is not. For every welfare act, restrictions of abuse, we have laws like Section 28 and the 7th August law – if anything, the latter outnumber by far the former. For the state uses repression to make sure that everyone’s in the correct roles, that order rules the day. In the West, you like to pretend that this is all behind you, and that it is really, only in the backwards, underdeveloped (by whom, we should ask) countries. That is not so, and as the current freefall of the family continues to accelerate, you will see all too soon that progress is never guaranteed, that all gains can be snatched away, and given only to those with the means to pay. For the rest of us devils, the struggle continues.