Conclusion: Professional work and personal life in capitalist and socialist societies

Abstract

I have attempted to explore the effects of work demands on family and friendship relationships. The question is crucial to the quality of living in any modern society. Its importance was recognized as early as in the work of the young Marx: alienation which, in its extreme forms, results from the organization of the capitalist mode of production, destroys the human qualities of man and thus the possibility for meaningful social relations outside work.¹ A second important condition contributing to a humanly fulfilled relationship between marriage partners is, at least in modern society, a fundamental equality. Here again, Marxists and other social thinkers of the nineteenth century not only recognized the importance of equality in marriage but understood how sexual equality and inequality are rooted in the organization of work and the conditions of production.