Natural and Involuntary

According to Marx and Engels, the father-mother-child arrangement constitutes a basic 'natural' association. Furthermore, their 'natural'-'voluntary' antithesis implies that 'natural' = 'involuntary'. But, if so, then they have no way of distinguishing the involuntariness of the existence and the behavior of the baby, from the conduct of the parents. Likewise, on their proposed generalization, they have no way of distinguishing the involuntariness of the subservient classes in a pre-Communist, i. e. 'natural', society, from that of their bosses. So, at the outset of their methodical presentation of the distinction between Capitalism and Socialism, disambiguating definitions of key terms such as 'nature' and 'voluntary', each of which have a complicated history, might serve them better than the dubious, as has been previously discussed, characterization of one concept of the nuclear family as 'natural'.