 Dwi, dweud i reu i gael i赴leidio i gynllunio! Ond dweud i gael yng ngwylo cyllideb, Fynylch yn gweithio'r rhaneddau wrth fathio'r cyllideb yn y baith deall ar gyhoeddiol, datblygu i gael i gael i gael i ddechreu yr aelod maen nhw'n cael ei fod yn eistedd y ailod er mwyn o'r cyhoeddiol i fynd i chi'n ddau cyfnod a nhw'n ddech plwrwmp ar gyhoeddiol lei'r cyllideb yn ddechreu ac yn ddych chi'n ddim yn gweithio ar gweithio a gael y gweithio'r ysgolion. Yn ymdrygu'r teimlo yn ysgolion, sy'n gweithio'r cyngor y ffamilio o'r perspectifau materiolistau. A dyna'r rhaglen ystod i'r ffordd o'r hynny. Yn y ffordd o'r hyn o'r ffordd o'r hyn, y dyfodol yn ymwysig, yn y rhaid, yw'r hyn o'r reisio a'r reisio a'r hwn o'r wahanol, y cyfrifol yma mae'r oedgen, y ffodol, y llwyddiad, ychydig, ychydig, y prydwyddiad, y prydwyddiad yma'n ddim yn gweithio'r pŷodol, yw'r profiag ar y sbytiaeth. Felly, y llwyddiad yn cyfrifol yma mae'n gwybod â'r hyn o'r cyfrifol, y cyfrifol yma'r hwn o'r llwyddiad, a'r cwrddwch yn y ffrifol, yr unig oedd ymlaen, ond yw'r cyfle cyffredin yn ymdillio ar gyfer cymryd, ac mae'n bod i'r cyffredin iaith a gyllid yn ymgyrch ar gyfer ein hyn yn ymgyrch. A i'r ddull yn y gynhyrchu, mae hynny'n gwybod ar gyfer y tawl o'r rhai cyfyrdd o'r cyffredin i'r cyfrifio a'r cyfrifio cyfrifio a'r cyfrifio cyfrifio ac yw'r cyfrifio cyfrifio. Rydw i'r cyfrifio cyfrifio ar gyfer cyfrifio yn y cyfrifio cyfrifio, y capitalism, so to is the reintroduction of new human beings and this makes perfect sense because if you do not recreate a new layer of work in class to go into your factories and produce then capitalism can no longer continue to function and so you know the family and the instigate the propagation of the species is just as important as the continuation of the making of commodities and but really importantly the family has not always just been a tool for the continuation of class society and capitalism as Henry Lewis Morgan outlined in his text ancient society which is what Engels bases a lot of his ideas on and from Marx as well the family is passed through several stages linked to the changes in human development as they arise and Morgan called these stages savagery, barbarism and civilisation will sort of trace the family as it moves through these stages but really importantly through examining these stages and the corresponding evolution of the family alongside those Morgan opened up this idea that the so-called eternal patriarchal patriarchal family that we kind of assume has existed forever has not existed forever meaning that these traditional family roles that are still very very present in our society today where men are the heads of household and they're traditionally married to a woman who takes care of the household this hasn't existed for all of time and Morgan and Engels proved that on a scientific basis in fact there's a wealth of evidence that shows that previous societies hunt together communities where we gallatarian they were not based on the oppression or subjugation of one sex over the other and if that's correct as Engels very clearly demonstrates in his texts then women are not naturally subordinated to men they were subordinated and they were done that happened to them through the development of property in relation to the development of private property in particular and that's what we're going to trace and outline today so an important question then is why did that happen if societies and families have not always oppressed women why is it that today that is the case that we see and the answer is that as economic production changed so too did the shape and role of the family but this point is still challenged today and it's not just challenged by conservatives as a reactionary it's challenged by feminist theorists and with these ideas being raised and challenging this idea that the family has been you know not always been static it's essential and really important today that we're having this discussion to defend Engels' ideas and see what is necessary to go about changing the family for the future and what our role could possibly be in changing the family as it is right now so before there was class and therefore exploitation of one class over another humans lived in primitive communistic societies and they were based on a food gathering economy work that needed to be done was shared equally amongst the members of the family or the group or the gens as they're called and different types of labour for example domestic labour in the home gathering food outside of the home and a hunting was seen on an equal basis no one of those was seen as more important than another type of labour and at this stage that Morgan and Engels are talking about he calls it savagery but we might be more familiar with the paleolithic era to describe this point in time and evidence of these societies even though they're incredibly ancient still exists today and by looking at those we can understand the shape and the changes that the family's gone through for example there are still some communities of aborigines the world's oldest continuous culture where equality exists between individuals regardless of sex and in 2015 the journal science conducted a study examining content or the contemporary hunter gatherer tribes in the aborigines tribes as some of them but also in the philippines and the congo and found those tribes to still be egalitarian and in this article from science the author peter gray commented wherever they are found in africa asia south america or elsewhere in deserts or in jungles these societies have many characteristics in common in each of these societies the dominant cultural ethos was one that emphasised individual autonomy and non directive child rearing methods non violence sharing cooperation and consensual decision making their core value which underlay all of the rest was that of equality of individuals and if we can see evidence of that existing in these communities today that also was the way in which previous prehistoric hunter gatherers organised their communities too and at this point in history the monogamous family has absolutely no existence it's nowhere near the way that the families and the gens organise themselves and in fact children were traced matrilineally down the mother line and they were seen as just as essential in their communities as men were and the reason that they traced the children down this line was because groups groups or tribes or gens tended to be kind of i'm using the word married but of course it didn't have the same kind of connotations then but sort of joined together and so it was very difficult to know who the father of a child was when people were taking multiple partners between these groups and so this was the logical natural way to trace inheritance and as i said equality existed between the sexes in these this type of family so why was it the case then and not now well engel states that the original position of mothers as the soul absolutely certain parent of their children secured for them and all of the women are higher social level than they have ever enjoyed since the positioning of women is more central in the family comes as a consequence of this matrilineal tracing um and and of course as well as of collective property um so individual private possessions existed at this point of course they did um but generally property was not something that was kind of considered land wasn't owned um and and you know houses and home and things like that were shared collectively the cooking materials the tools and things um and so everything was collectively owned in as far as it could be because everything was collectively produced people didn't work singularly on their own that was impossible um and as well as that there was no sort of sense of owning the land it wasn't like you had a plot or anything like that especially because of the kind of movement of these tribes um but also the perspective the perspective that they were of the land they didn't own it it wasn't something that they could control um so in these small scale king groups all collected and all hunted food to be shared amongst the entire group so that led to social relations being based on that equality as well um and the collective method of production of the necessities of life is the thing that allowed for those collective social relationships that equality people were completely interdependent on each other therefore they were all of equal value to one another no one could survive outside of those groups they were you know it was impossible to live as a singular individual um and so these small scale king groups were really important and so was the equality and respect that people had between them um so as I said collective property as it as much as it existed was passed down the female line um to those known to be her children or back to sisters rather than um you know if a woman's husband died for example the things wouldn't go to the to the man left alive um the inheritors were there for the family rather than an individual person and so it was a group inheriting any products or wealth or anything that was left rather than one individual person um and so the wealth stayed within the family by doing that rather than it being passed to an individual man especially because um then if it was sort of with if you imagine the matrilineal tracing of descent and if inheritance or if any property left was to go to the man it would be going outside of the family the the female centered family um and so in these societies which we could call a matriarchy um we'll discuss more on that in just a second um mothers are the centre of culture without ruling over any of the members of society um and women led societies so um when we talk about them as i'm sort of saying as a matriarchy to define that it's not the opposite of a patriarchy um because a patriarchy is dependent upon private property of which the woman becomes a part um and through which they are oppressed and exploited so in capitalism the work in the home still done predominantly by women is seen as valueless but here in these communal households the exact opposite is true there would be no life at all without the women they were essential they gave birth to life and therefore they were revered um the fact that they worked and were in control of the household as well which was the role that women played um this was seen as equally valued to that of what men were doing outside of the home meaning they weren't seen as weak or useless either which is a characteristic that became associated with the bourgeois women who did not work later in society we'll come on to that later um so they were respected for the work that they did um and the contribution to every day life and just to give an example um this was true um of the Iroquai of North America the tribes that um Morgan sort of lived with and was adopted by in in the study of his work ancient society um and in their society children were brought up collectively by members of the same gen or king group um and men lived in their maternal homes still helping with child rearing and playing a father fold sort of figure to those um children but not their own biological children who were unknown um and we can see further evidence of this sort of matrilineal organisation um when we look to a different country as well we can look to Germany for this and Tacitus who's writing around 100 AD examined the German um gens which are called CUNY um and he observed the family relations and noted that where there was to be some kind of bond put on somebody to continue or carry out a promise it wasn't the son of the person that was chosen it was their nephew because then their man would be much more likely to continue and hold out his promise when that promise was to an entire family unit rather than to a single individual who was often not even known to them um so we can very clearly see from these examples that the family has not always existed in the way that we see it today um and there's a wealth of evidence to prove that however as I said there's opposition to this there's opposition to the idea that the family has changed and that it was once equal and that women were once in this revered position um academics and individuals argue against this I come across it quite often in discussions of this where people say well okay it might it might have been slightly different but men are so much stronger it's through their strength um that they've come to be in this position of power over women um I was having a discussion with with just a group of women in Sheffield was just a couple of weeks ago I was you know one woman was saying well they're just you know they could just slap you down they're stronger you can't have equality for this exact reason um and these people argue that because of this equality can never have existed um on the basis that um gendered labour has always been hierarchical um due to strength and this is the kind of determining factor in the shape of the family and this argument rests upon the idea that men are have this in some some cases sort of genetic propensity to strength that women do not have meaning that they were the fighters in their families um they controlled weaponry and therefore this is the reason that led to male dominance um and people from that take the leap that that also gave men political dominance um and that matriarchies couldn't have existed because where you had strength leading to political control how could women have a say in those societies or in those families um but the only conclusion that can be drawn from this for the future if we take that to be true is that women will always be oppressed because we're not going to suddenly change the genetic or makeup of human beings um and therefore there's no chance of equality if that's human nature how can we change the very thing that is the human now thankfully these critics are wrong um and Morgan and Engels proved them to be so whilst historically labour was divided to an extent it certainly didn't resemble division leading to power and control in the way that I've just described women played an equal role politically um socially and culturally which I'll just use a few points to evidence so firstly there's a lot of evidence to show that the gender division of labour in a in a kind of hierarchical way didn't exist I've already talked about the essential role that women played in the family homes um and you know there were there was division in in labour among sort of from a set a viewpoint of the sex um women who had to have children often stayed closer to their homes because it was necessary in order to nurse the babies and that led to them taking on a sort of more gathering role um carrying babies on their backs when they were old enough whereas men didn't need to stay at home to physically nurse a child and obviously therefore were more able to hunt um however hunting wasn't a reliable source of food it wasn't a successful trip every single time and so actually the gathering of the food from close around to the home was often an essential source of of food and nutrients um and so both of these tasks were essential and and equal to the continuing feeding of the of the family essentially and it's the women's labour there that that was one of the most important roles the collecting and the gathering um and so um secondly we see that men didn't have complete control over weaponry anyway so already there's a quality in the roles that existed leading to no greater hierarchy for men or for women but also um a recent study that was carried out by the University of Florida of Ethiopian tribes concluded that stone tool production had not only been carried out by men but had been shared equally by men and by women so there was no monopoly over weaponry by men at all in the first place either um and finally even if men were the only ones with this control of weaponry what reason would they have to suddenly start subordinating and attacking and uh you know changing their attitude towards the women that they were living with especially when we've already established how revered the women in these communities were their bringers of life uh the contributors in the same way that anybody else was reasons and means to oppress uh people um are both really important to look at so they may have had the means the tools and the strength to oppress but without a motive this didn't happen um and so these come from the material conditions the motive that comes along later and as long as work of women was seen as essential and recognised as such why would men with spares attack them as I've said um armed men do not live outside of the relation of these hunter and gatherer groups they're not separate they're not subject to different rules and laws they can't control their own actions and still be part of a group um in fact there's evidence to demonstrate that men who did use their strength and their weaponry against the family were outcast from that community um and angles demonstrates this again through his treatment if the irrequy the individuals you know can possess arms but you still fall within the control of the group um and actually the irrequy council showed this because the the leaders of the councils were elected by men and by women um and if they did something that was basically they had direct accountability if they did something that the family did not like or that was against their ideas and their aims then they could be removed and it was this council that had the kind of power to greet a war or agree to battles happening um and so they had complete control over over war and strength and the desire to do so um so clearly we can see that it's not strength that led to the subordination of women um whatever i pressed there we go um there was a time before um men exited their strength there's a tool of control and therefore there will be a game in fact there are living examples of such societies that are existing right now um such a matriarchy can be found in the um Minan cabaw in west Sumatra Indonesia and they're the largest known matriarchy at four million people um and in this living example women usually do sort of continue in the domestic sphere um while men take on political and spiritual leadership roles however both feel uh both sexes feel that separation of power keeps them on an equal footing just to give a bit more on that upon marriage women acquire their own sleeping quarters and the husband may sleep in the same place but morning returns home to the to the kind of like mother family home to have breakfast um and at age 10 boys leave the mother's home to stay in the men's quarter and they learn practical skills and religious teachings so that's separation of of labour but not in a hierarchical way um and while the clan chief is always male women select that chief um and they can remove him from from office if he doesn't do what they would like them to do very similar to the Iroquai um so we see another example of where there are divided roles but neither of those roles are seen as more important and therefore giving more weight to that individual um so we've we see even more examples of how women's role in the home did not diminish their standing in society with these living examples and there are many many more I just don't have time to go into all of those um but we also see um the significance of women in in ancient societies through examining cave art as well so um scientists have shown that the majority of cave art has was especially with like hands was conducted by women and they've measured the shape of the bones of um like the skeletons that they've found compared to the release of the art on the wall and they've seen that this was conducted by women now this is really significant because not only do people often suggest that it was men that carried out these spiritual religious roles and would this art is proving that but this cave arts is especially significant it was very difficult to get to um they were not easy to make and it took time away from the natural things in the home that were more acquired you know the urgency of needing food to eat is a priority over the production of arts no matter how nice it might be or how important and significant it might be and so women conducting this type of work and and you know being able to take part in the production of art had their time freed up to do this um it was it was really special in these communities almost seen as a kind of magic um and showed the position of women as entrusted um with power and with responsibility again defeating this idea uh that that men through their strength gained political or cultural social dominance this is not the case so the family very clearly has not existed as it does today for all of eternity um before it factually egalitarian communities did exist so why did this change um while Engels notes that the human labour power at this stage does not yet produce a considerable amount over and above the cost of subsistence but when king groups were able to achieve more than this a change in the family arose we come now to the Neolithic revolution um family relations changed when the material conditions of production changed again at this point um so changes in the material conditions tend to come first and family changes afterwards in response to the material world changing so this shift from primitive communistic households occurred as a consequence of the Neolithic revolution or the agrarian revolution um moving from hunter gatherer production to the cultivation of crops and the domestication of animals um for eating essentially um as well as the development of tools which led to a greater production and wealth amassing in the gens or the family homes um and so this shift uh this led to a shift in the economic relations people were able for the first time to produce a surplus of food um and this led to a population increase on the one hand but also the ability to trade um again generating more wealth especially from areas the more fertile areas where the gens were settling so as the natural division of labour had led the meant to doing work outside of the home um they naturally had ownership of the tools used to do that whilst women would have had ownership of the things needed to cook and produce in the family home it was just a natural ordinary logical thing to have happened you need to use these things you need to use these things uh rather than an active decision so um where the women kind of collected and carried on passing down these tools in the kitchen that's what men were using these tools outside for hunting and gathering collecting these collecting and amassing wealth as they were the ones hunting and producing and then farming and then killing the animals that they were farming um and at this stage don't forget that the family structure is so to change so men's children were not inheriting the property that he was kind of continually amassing in the same way um so if a man died basically his um belongings or property or the tools the whilst he had amassed wouldn't be passed to his children they would nor would they be passed to his wife and their female family gens from the matrilineal side they go back to the gens from which he had come from um so with restrictions around marriage um emerging uh that promoted greater genetic diversity not knowingly but through experience of course the family started to have to split more regularly okay so you could no longer all live in the same family home um and this centered around a brother or a sister moving out and establishing new gens um this was also combined with the introduction of people traders coming in who were not traditionally from the gens and say what you have is a shift in the family from living completely together in the the gens family home to much more independent family units living outside of that um and that's significant because there was a moving away from this sort of old gentile organisation as this property begins to develop um and as the population begins to um to grow um and the men were amassing more wealth through their work with their tools and so grew the desire to pass on this wealth to their own children um and very keen on this point it's not just an idea that popped into people's minds suddenly one day like oh i don't want to pass it back to my family anymore it was because of these changes in the material conditions that i've outlined where if you as a as a small wish family unit are no longer living in the traditional family home the gens passing your like that wealth back to them when somebody died became quite an unnatural and alien thing to do you are no longer living with that family and so this desire comes about through the changes in the spatial organisation of the family um and it's at this point that we see the shift from matrilineal to patrilineal descent um favouring accumulation of wealth by the family unit by these sort of increasingly individual units rather than the gens which gave that family unit more power rather than the clan of the gens that we've described before and it's through this development of property um that um gentile organisation reaches its limit um and this leads to the abolishing completely of matrilineal descent and tracing um thus we begin to see the monogamous relationship developing not through mutual love suddenly occurring um but through the need to emphatically know who your children are in order to pass on your collected wealth that you have amassed throughout your lifetime um and so this usher's in chastity for women uh subjugation and control over them and their day-to-day lives and who they can partner with um and they essentially become commodities themselves reduced from equals in society to just vessels for inheritance um and Engels explains this he says monogamy was not the sorry monogamy was the first form of the family not founded on natural but on economic conditions therefore it is the victory of private property over primitive and natural collectivism and he describes this as as essentially the first class division and as with all the class division um developed the welfare and advancement of one class the the male sex over the other the female sex um and and this is really where we see women becoming a commodity or property themselves through these points and clearly we can see that this is a consequence of the material conditions changing through the development of tools and labour um and the family changes of the response to that in order to fit the new mode of production so with the advent of class society matriarchy um becomes impossible showing that the dominance of one gender over another is linked to the dominance of a class one class over another the emerging ruling class so the downfall of maternal law was the historic defeat of the human of the female sex tending him into these machines for the generation of children that I've talked about and diminishing the role that they played socially um in the product in production in the home um and we see an example of these relations where women are literally just property property in ancient asyria where the punishment for the rape of a woman was the handing over of the rapist's wife to the husband um of his victim to basically further rape um but the point is why this happened why did this happen um because the rape of someone's wife was seen as like a damaging of that man's property and therefore reparations were paid to the man absolutely no regard for the women involved in this situation um and so you know I think this is whilst harsh a very clear example of how women were really treated as just a commodity that could be damaged and traded and and repaid for um so a further example of the development of monogamy can be seen in the Greeks who previously had held women in higher esteem as evidenced by their goddesses um in mythology but later degraded the role of women for example heroes in the Greek tales such as the Iliad had women brought to them in their tents in the role of prizes um and the women were their mothers of the legal heirs to the heroes um and and the men and they took the role of essentially head housekeeper um and they were expected to be chased whilst the men had absolutely no obligation to also be chased as well so monogamy from its inception really is for women only um it's not for men and this is a characteristic that has stayed the same throughout our concept of the family and you can see the sort of vestiges of that in the attitudes that I think still exist in society today towards women who take multiple partners compared to men that's a kind of overhang of these relationships um and so with the rise of labour that produced property came the relegation of women's labour too it's not just the treatment of women's properties but the type of work that they're doing becomes degraded and belittled um so Engel says in the old communistic household which comprised many couples and their children the administration of the household entrusted to women was just as much a public function a socially necessary industry as the procuring of food by the men with the patriarchal family and still more with the single monogamous family a change came household management lost its public character it no longer concerned society it became a private service the wife became the head servant as exemplified in the Greek situation I just explained um excluded from all participation in social production so through the removal of domestic labour's importance and equality with other labour came the reduction of the woman's role that belittling of labour that I talked about and why was it deemed less important um well because it didn't produce items that could be sold to turn a profit um and whilst domestic labour is still socially necessary for the raising of children and the continuation of the species it was no longer an equal footing to the production that men were carrying out that produced goods commodities things that could be sold to turn a profit and further the wealth of the family units so this further reduced the position of women in society um so by examining the rise of patriarchy in this way as analogous to class society's origins we can understand that a matriarchy is not the mirror image of patriarchy as I started off by pointing it out it didn't involve the subordination of men to women um as women are to men under patriarchy but instead it was a natural way of organising inheritance and relations in the family through a tangibly traceable line that of a mother being certain who her children were um but in patriarchy the tracing of children through the mail line is not a natural method it requires restrictions promises guarantees so with the rise of class society women are subordinated to men for the purpose of the continuation of amassing wealth um and that labour loses its value as it does not produce commodities um on the same breath um so men importantly subjugated women for a material reason and that material reason still exists today property we come now to the development of the bourgeois family um and you know we were starting to see here obviously the family we've established has changed but it didn't just change once it's changed multiple times throughout history and so the instigation of monogamy is not the only change that has happened the nuclear family as we understand it today has also developed over time and through this we understand that it's not a natural institution um so as material conditions changed again and the mode of production with it to the capitalist mode of production family relationships changed again and this was linked to the development of the means of production and therefore the bourgeoisie as it developed as capitalism developed and Engel says at this stage for them that marriage according to bourgeois conception was a contract a legal business affair and again we see familial relationships based around property um in this case of increasing property a protecting property within a given bloodline um and the woman remaining the position in the position of the property of the man although arguably under capitalism that begins to develop a kind of veil of choice arising um and and this this has existed right up until the modern day in many countries this is still happening but even in the uk marital rape was not made illegal until the 1980s showing you an example of how women are this property that anything can be done to them you are the ownership of the men many countries still have that as something that is allowed to happen as part of their law um and um this is you know it's just sort of typifies that attitude that has come from these property relations um and marx explains in the family so in the bourgeois family the bourgeois sees his wife as a mere instrument of production and that is exactly what we see there by that kind of behaviour um so in addition to being materially treated as property these bourgeois women didn't work as i said earlier so they were unproductive and this further reduced their status in their inability to turn a profit um so they remained in this position of subordination of being worth less than a man um was considered in the emerging capitalist society um but the establishment of the proletariat challenges that form of family just as marx describes how capitalism contained within itself the seeds of its own destruction it also contained within it the corresponding familial seeds of destruction in the proletariat family that undermined the nuclear family um so with the establishment of um of capitalism and the proletariat capitalism forces women into the workplace on top of the domestic labour that they already carry out and the nuclear system um is one obviously where you have like one man goes to work one woman stays at home raises the children continues on with the species this begins to disintegrate um and in writing about the industrial revolution engels explains how women working undermined that bourgeois family he talks about this in the conditions of the working class in england where he examines the proletariat family um and the position of men and women in the home and and how they're sort of changing so he says in many cases the family is not wholly dissolved by the employment of his wife but turned upside down the wife supports the family the husband sits at home turns the children sweeps the room and cooks this case happens very frequently in manchester alone many hundred such men could be cited condemned to domestic occupations any further states we must admit that so total reversal of the positions of the sexes can have come to pass only because the sexes have been placed in a false position from the beginning if the reign of the wife um over the husband as inevitably brought about by the factory system is inhuman the pristine rule of the husband over the wife must be inhuman too and through examining the reversal of the roles of men and women engels shows that men and women in these strictly defined roles is not a natural way of organizing the family at all therefore we can see the introduction of the proletariat family as a progressive force um in dissolving the bourgeois family um and and we see a lot more of the disillusionment of that today that will come on to you now because the family under capitalism has bought both genders or both sexes sorry into into the workforce but left women typically with the domestic labour to do still on top of things um ucl conducted a study this this year i think it was published in june um that showed that women do 16 hours of household chores on average a week when men do six in comparison and of the families studied 93% of the couples in that study said that women carried out the bulk of that housework so things have have changed in a very limited way um so clearly you know as we're seeing changes to the family the bourgeois family structure which was once seen as as this natural way doesn't fit the proletariat and the very existence of the proletariat is challenging that notion and that idea of the family um proving again that the family hasn't always been like this um but monogamy and the instigation of the nuclear family was caused by economic conditions creating a family unit that was profitable to capitalism where the family is still raised and educated and cared for without the need of a public character to that or public spending um but that also means that the nuclear family cannot disappear until there's um economic conditions are changed with a shift um under socialism from individual to collective property wage labour will disappear with it and the need for the nuclear family and this idea that workers need to be replicated because the working class will no longer exist so the very existence of the proletariat challenges the bourgeois family and yet is not sufficient to overthrow it we are still existing within the conditions um of that nuclear family today um and really importantly although things have changed and although capitalism has modernized the family and has brought about some things that are more beneficial on the whole fundamentally not a lot has changed at all um we see a little bit more of the dissolution of the of the family um you know families don't look a particular way anymore they're not as strict especially in some countries so um there are many single parent families parents choosing to be parents on their own we see a lot of divorce in some cases women not men are women not choosing that um there are same sex couples and the shape of the family is is changing again um but this isn't because of some gradual process of liberal enlightenment that's brought about these changes it's the product of material conditions and the growth of the working class and the things that they have fought for um and the bourgeois family basically is becoming obsolete though it still continues to exist we've got now legal equality in many ways um especially between the sexes in terms of pay job role voting rights independence healthcare and yet patriarchy still continues to exist women are still oppressed um and and it really asks that question that how can capitalism take us this far but not fully liberate women um and the answer to that is that it's not in the interest of capitalism to provide the necessities of life that would free women from the domestic labour that they are still expected to carry out um so you know how can you have the liberation of women in a society that when it's going into crisis at any point is stripping back the gains that may have been won by the working class previously there's the question of how women are able to therefore engage politically in the changing of a society like you know it is much more difficult for women to attend political meetings um because there's a need to stay at home or they need to take care of children or working hours and things like that um and I think middle class feminists don't always see this um it's part of a problem with that kind of perspective um for them raising women to the position of men is the answer um to to kind of like bring everybody up with them but for working women this change is absolutely nothing when the relationships are still defined by the economic conditions that continue to exist today and this leads to situations especially for working class women where um you can be economically trapped in it in a potentially incredibly abusive relationship and there's no way for women to to remove themselves from these things because of the material conditions of capitalism and the wage labour that it forces people to work under um so the roles have been these roles have been reinforced as centuries uh they are deeply ingrained in people's consciousness um and and people are aware of this you know i'm preaching to the choir everybody knows the oppression that different groups in society face women know they are oppressed but i hear people wumberling about it on the bus all the time like oh i've got to do the signing and things and people know about it they don't need to be told this um but at the same time people sort of assume the family has always existed um it's always had this form it's always had this character so just put up with it that's just the way things are um it is ancient but it has an origin despite that as we've established so we've come up with a situation where we still have these overhangs of previous society and organisations but because the material conditions have not shifted from the capitalist mode of production yet so how do we change this well changing the working class and working conditions at the working working conditions that's the way too many working conditions change um or are changed by the working class fighting for them we're not handed things out um simply by asking for the more wishing that they've changed um we saw this you know in the steps towards equality that have been taken the right to vote was fought for by the chartists and the suffragettes after them the the five day week the now laughable eight hour day you know massive things that we're all well aware the working class fought for in order to gain and the same is true of the equality between the sexes this has all been fought for in hard work um and we've ended up with legal equality but legal equality doesn't really spell equality in any way that we're familiar with it looks like a gender paid up of around 20% still it looks like women having the potential to climb higher in organisations but not being able to do so because of um stereotypes about them having children and the fear of bosses having to pay maternity pay and them not getting further and in any case having women at the top of businesses isn't going to help uh it looks like women still shouldering the burden of domestic labour on top of working and it looks like political meetings quite often dominated by men still as a consequence of this not because women don't want to take part because they aren't able to and this is what legal equality has gained for us um we've shared women have shared legal equality with men for a very long time but as we know that doesn't spell legal equality so even though we've made some steps forward we haven't progressed past these kind of older relationships that's still ongoing and that's because changes in the family are slower to come about um than the changes politically and economically um Trotsky talks about this when he's describing the overturn and the changes in the family of the soviet union he says a deep going plow is needed um to turn up heavy clods of earth meaning family relations are deep seated and they can't be overturned overnight first the material conditions have to be changed um and when there's no longer wage labour and class society there's no need to recreate the working class there's no need to enslave women to do so um and there's no need to cast the women in his roles of sold or less domestic labourers in addition to their wage labouring the destruction of private property will bring about the destruction of women as property and the domestic labour will be shared equally allowing women to participate fully in the political sphere therefore we have to change the material conditions eradicate the profit motive eradicate private property and reestablish the family based on mutual relationships in the linking of subjugation of women to the rise of private property we can see a clear way to ending patriarchies that exist today where capitalism has failed and will always fail to do so and private property and the property relations that give rise to the social conditions that oppress women this requires though the unity of the working class fighting as a joint endeavour it's not the question of women it's not the women's question singularly alone as something separate it's a question of the family and a quality for all that must be fought for by all sexes the realm of possibility that socialism has to offer for what relationships could look like in the future is endless relationships based on choice being the main one freedom to change partner freely an angle sort of talks about this is like the realization of of true monogamy selecting a partner because of absolute choice no no other restrictions around that um but marxism is the only method that can achieve this and why is it that marxism is the only method achieved this well it's because feminism is not materialist in its outlook it doesn't seek to understand how the family has changed why the family has changed or how and why it might change again in the future um and and that is something that is necessary to do in order to transform our society and to ensure we change the shape of the family moving forward in scientifically understanding this we can understand what is required to change because we have to change something it's not going to naturally wither away as long as we are still living in a class society um and so through this scientific method um we can see a clear path a perspective for change and a method for changing that revolution so as we've seen the social relationships between individuals and families are dependent on the material conditions in which they live the shape of the family therefore will change again when the material conditions change um and we change the sort of socioeconomic system from an exploitative capitalist one to a socialist one that puts humans all humans regardless of sex gender role anything on an equal footing only by establishing society in this way can we begin to erode the centuries of inequality and the sexist attitudes that persist from that and by understanding this we understand that the family as we know it today has not eternally existed in this form it will not continually exist in form and consequently the role of women in society will not continue to exist in this form forever emancipation can be won and it will be won and it will come through the destruction of private property and by the working class fighting together to build a socialist society