>Charles: Monogamy is a pillar of capitalism and all class socieities since
the origin of the patriarchal, monogamous family, private property and the
state (See Engels _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State_). Capitalism needs monogamous families. Free love is deadly to
capitalism.
We hardly have Monogamy anymore. We have the *ideal* of monogamy, certainly not monogamy in practice--least not as Engels understood it as an institution that guaranteed the generational transmission of private property and that provided unpaid *reproductive labor* necessary for the sustenance and reproduction of labor. There is *nothing* to rebel against and so free love can hardly be deadly to capitalism. Indeed, i'd argue that it is, in fact, productive for the contemporary variant of capitalism.
Capitalism today needs the postmodern family: the end of het, nuclear monogamy and the proliferation of varieties of families within the context of political contestation over "the" family. Families that create new ways of living together--counter to the het monogamous couple--in order to sustain the vagaries of capitalism. While Carol Stack's All Our Kin is often upheld as a wonderful exposition of the alternative families created in poor Black neighborhoods, if you read her closely it's not at all clear that this ought to be celebrated because, in fact, these alternative family practices actually sustain and support capitalism. When white scholars run around applauding these alternatives in the name of smashing to bits the het nuclear monogamous family I am utterly apalled at how they romanticize all of it as somehow liberating.
Furthermore, where would capitalism be without the demise of monogamy as Engels knew it. Where would capitalism be without a high divorce rate which necessitates two family homes or apts (hah! we hope) & two of each major consumer purchase? Where would capitalism be without that pool of recently divorced women and their children dashed into poverty, women willing to work at any job(s) in order to make a living? Where would capitalism be without these folks who, increasingly pressed for time, turn toward the fast food restaurant, convenience foods, the dry cleaner/laundries, the one-stop-everything-you-need-and-more grocery store?
Where we capitalim be w/o weekend warrior fathers cavorting off to theme parks and blowing their kash on the kids? Where would capitalism be without the movement of mothers into the workforce contributing to the proliferation of this service economy to meet the needs of the overworked and underpaid?
The attack on Monogamy --the breadwinner father/homemaker mother model of Monogamy --was initiated by men in the 50s, its first manifesto found in the pages of Playboy--the "Bible of the beleaguered male" and its first real rebels were the Beats. Its psychology and even biological necessity was theorized in the human potential movement and by a medical establishment obsessed by cardiac arrests, thought to be some unique male health problem brought on by the drudgery, heart attack inducing agony of being a Husband.
So, again, it's just not clear to me how "free love" in and of itself is any sort of threat to capitalism.
Kelley