"An accessibly written distillation of two centuries worth of reproductive class struggle a
revived vision of revolutionary 'beloved community' for an age of climate catastrophe. Spread
this book around and start communizing care!" Sophie Lewis author of Abolish the Family
"Stunningly urgent and timely ... Through an exhilaratingly accessible narrative O'Brien
moves effortlessly between history current specificities and future possibilities to show
that communized care is not a far-off fantasy" Lara Sheehi Assistant Professor George
Washington University For some of us the family is a source of love and support. But for
many others the family is a place of private horror coercion and personal domination. In
capitalist society the private family carries the impossible demands of interpersonal care and
social reproductive labor. Can we imagine a different future? In Family Abolition author
M.E. O'Brien uncovers the history of struggles to create radical alternatives to the private
family. O'Brien traces the changing family politics of racial capitalism in the industrial
cities of Europe and in the slave plantations and settler frontier of North America explaining
the rise and fall of the housewife-based family form. From early Marxists to Black and queer
insurrectionists to today's mass protest movements O'Brien finds revolutionaries seeking
better ways of loving caring and living. Family Abolition takes us through the past and
present of family politics into a speculative future of the commune imagining how care could
be organized in a free society. M.E. O'Brien writes on gender and communist theory. She
co-edits two magazines Pinko on gay communism and Parapraxis on psychoanalytic theory and
politics. She is co-author of the novel Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New
York Commune 2052-2072 and tweets @genderhorizon.
