Marx And Engels' Marriage And Family Thoughts And Their Practical Enlightenment

Before Marx and Engels,Hegel's thinking of marriage and family was generally accepted.It believed that family was entity ethics based on “love”.Although Hegel's discourse of marriage and family also contained his opinions on children education and divorce issues,his thinking of marriage and family was not established on the basis of the materialist conception of history,failing to rationally explain the evolution of marriage and family forms existed in the history.Based on the thoughts of Hegel,Morgan,MacLennan,Bachofen et al regarding marriage and family,Marx and Engels analyzed the evolution process of marriage and family comprehensively and deeply by applying the materialist conception of history,enabling people to know that marriage and family is a category of the history and developed with progress of the productivity.Under the premise of inheriting and surpassing forefathers' thoughts,Marx and Engels combined the “human nature theory” and “two production theories” to more deeply interpret the theoretical basis of the thinking of marriage and family,further demonstrating their materialist conception of history.The thinking of Marx and Engels on marriage and family roughly includes the essence of marriage and family,family function and family evolution and development.First of all,love is the foundation for establishing marriage,it is also a advanced spiritual phenomena and ideology from human evolution,but more of main impetus for establishing marriage.With natural property and social attribute,love is a combination of spirit and body.But the social attribute of love embodies the essence of love,therefore the essence of love specifically embodies ideality and responsibility.According to the essence of love,we can find the moral characters of love including: desire,exclusiveness and persistence.As the foundation of marriage,the essential attributes of love embody its social attribute,and the essential attributes of marriage also embody its social attribute.Therefore,marriage is the freedom in a specific relationship,and it is also a social behavior under social customs and social system.Secondly,family is established based on marriage.Marriage is a longitudinal social relationship,but family includes longitudinal social relationships as well as lateral social relationships,so the role of family on individuals and the society mainly reflects the functions of family,including: economic function,reproductive function,emotional function.Finally,Marx and Engels explained the reasons of marriage and family evolution and its development process according to the “human nature theory” and “two production theories” and that there would be different family forms in the different periods.They can be roughly divided into three categories according to the system of ownership forms as follows: family under the original public ownership,family under private ownership and family in the future.There are mainly three reasons leading to development of these three family forms,including: natural factor,moral factor and economic factor.Finally,Marx and Engels considered the final ideal status and result of marriage and family development as free and comprehensive development of human beings.It also provided the scientific theoretical basis for establishing perfect and ideal marriage and family as well as theoretical guidance for guiding people to establish correct value on love and marriage,obtaining the family status with gender equality and improving personal quality to establish modern marriage and family.