Karl Marx recognized that church and family represented obstacles to societal reordering. He therefore proposed the destruction of family structure and religion as preconditions for that reordering. “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is a demand for their true happiness,” Marx suggested.27 The Communist Manifesto called for the abolition of family in order to “replace home education by social,” and castigated the institution of family as “bourgeois,” a place of “exploitation of children by parents,” and a place of degradation for women.28
