The socialist materialist can look forward with unruffled serenity to the passing of religion, since his very definition of religion as "a popular striving after the illusory happiness that corresponds with a social condition which needs such an illusion,"[1] implies that it cannot pass away till it has ceased to be needful to human happiness.
From the point of view of this Socialist materialism, the monogamous family, the present economic unit of society, ceases to be a divine institution, and becomes the historical product of certain definite economic conditions. It is the form of the family peculiar to a society based on private property in the means of production, and the production of commodities for sale. It is not crystallized and permanent, but, like all other institutions, fluid and subject to change. With the change in its economic basis, the code of sexual morality and the monogamous family are sure to be modified; but, in the judgment of such socialists as Friedrich Engels and August Bebel, we shall prob-
- ↑ Marx in "Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechts Philosophie."
