4.1.3 Marxism, the family and capitalism

Engels: the family, the bourgeoise and private property

Engels – there are two main eras of history of humanity

-        The era of primitive communism

- There are no families existing in primitive tribes; children were raised by the whole tribe.

-        The era of capitalism

-   Engles believes that nuclear family based on monogamy is based on the emergence of capitalism, led to accumulation of private property. And nuclear families ensure that bourgeoisie were able to pass their legacy to their direct descendants.

 

Criticism to Engles

-        There is evidence of the large numbers of existence of nuclear family in pre – capitalism.

-        Feminism believes that there is no evidence of the primitive communism era, this could be pure speculations.

 

Zaretsky – Family as an ideological agency

-        Family is responsible for the ideological control of the suppression of ideas that may challenge the current capitalist system.

n  By involving children learning obedience, conformity, showing respect to authority, turning children into passive, false conscious workers and make then uncritically except the inequality produced by capitalism.

-        Family worsens the stability of an adult’s personality because its real function is to help workers manage their resentment in the workplace. Research by Beynon found that companies would only employment married men in 1980s since they are less likely to participate into strike actions because they are unlikely to engage in actions which threaten their income and therefore their family’s standard of livings.

-        Some Marxist believes that extended family are not encouraged because it has socialist ideas such as collectivism and selflessness rather than capitalist values.

 

 

Ansley – powerlessness in the workplace leads to domestic violence as men attempt to assert power.

-        Wives acts as a safety valve for capitalism because it makes the workers to not directly spreading his anger to the real cause of their problem – the nature and organization of capitalism.

 

 

Neo-Marxist Marcuse – Family creates ‘False needs’

 

 

Criticism to Marxist view of Family

-        Interactionist believes that Marxist rarely consider that working class parents may teach their children values of working-class culture and empowering their children with knowledge of capitalist inequality.

-        Interactionists argue that Marxism may be guilty of ignoring the very real emotional and social satisfaction that people get from being members of a family. The Marxist tendency to write off such satisfaction as the product of capitalist ideology is both too simplistic and patronizing.