On Radio Four this morning, the old Communist (at the height of the Cold War) turned Guardian columnist, Martin Kettle, let the cat out of the bag: the Spirit of 1968 was the spirit of opposition to the State as the benevolent force that had delivered such fripperies as the National Health Service, slum clearances and universal secondary education in the Forties and Fifties.
Engels correctly identified the family, private property and the State as having a common origin, and as being mutually dependent; anyone who has ever opened a Bible could have told him that anyway, as could anyone who has ever really thought about the matter at all.
But he saw them as bad things, and their relationship as the ultimate bad thing. Marxists have always hoped for the withering away of the State, which they have sought to bring about by destroying the family and private property.
However, from 1968 onwards, much of Western Marxism changed tack, seeking instead to bring about the withering away of the family and of private property by destroying the State. Such were the agenda of those, ageing soixante-huitards that they were, who rallied first to Margaret Thatcher and then to Tony Blair.
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