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Marxism and the family, Origin of the family - Coggle Diagram
Marxism and the family
Eli Zaretsky
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Evaluation of Zaretsky
Jennifer Somerville (2000) argues that Zaretsky is exaggerating when he speaks about the importance of family when escaping the life in a capitalist society. She adds that he ignores 'the extent of cruelty, violence, incest and neglect' within families. This doesn't apply to every family but the fact Zaretsky doesn't comment on the matter, it does bring a sense of invalidity to his claims/beliefs.
Jennifer also states that Zaretsky exaggerates the extent to which the family life is separated from work. She says that women had to take paid work to provide for the family financially but a few stayed at home being full-time housewives.
There is no doubt that Zaretsky is right about the consumption of families being important in contemporary capitalist societies as without it, the economy will not be able to be profitable.
Friedrich Engels :
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Evaluation of Engels
Modern research shows Engels beliefs could've just been figures of his own imagination as monogamous marriage and nuclear families are found in hunting and gathering bands - disproves his comment about 'the promiscuous horde'.
Although Engels views were seen as incorrect, in 1972, Gough stated that Engels did identify the general direction in which family life had evolved. When individuals marry, they take on a series of duties and obligations to their spouse's kin. And the group character of wider kinship groups gradually weakens with the development of private property.
Arlie Russell Hochschild
Emotional life, commodification and alienation
Commodification:
Hochschild believes Marx's theory that capitalism is commodified (turned into something that can be bought and sold). Capitalism seeks profit wherever it can and expands into new areas when profits cannot be raised in existing markets. An example of emotional life that has become a commodity is finding love. There are now agencies to join that require a payment to 'find love'. From this commodity, people have become alienated from their actual emotions/feelings towards others.
Alienation:
Alienation is 'detaching' yourself or others from something. Apart from Marx believing that capitalism has caused people to think of themselves as 'workers' not 'people' and stating that they did not own the products of their labour, Hochschild believed that alienation is increasing and causing people to be alienated from their own feelings and from their connections to others, including family members.
Examples of alienation:
- Personal service workers included birthday party planners (who freed parents of the emotional responsibility of entertaining their children and their friends.
- Love coaches who advise people on falling in love.
- Care workers who were 'paid to love'.
- Boat captains paid to scatter ashes of relatives after cremation.
- Surrogate mothers that detach themselves not only from their 'clients' but their own womb just to get money.
Evaluation of Hochschild
Hochschild's findings shows how family life has become part of consumer capitalism with emotion work in the form of services (love coaches etc.)
She believes individuals cannot escape from work and avoid alienation in their personal, intimate and family life. Emotional labour pervades all aspects of social life in capitalist societies.
Louis Althusser
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Evaluation of Althusser
Althusser ultimately believed that families and children passively accept ruling class ideology as its what is 'normal' nowadays. 'Exploitation is normal'
This can be contradicted in today's society as people think we are way less exploited e.g. child labour isn't as common as it was but it still happens.
Although child labour is much less common, Althusser backs his point about the ideological state. He claims that the education system is one of these institutions as there is not only a formal curriculum but a hidden one. This suggests we aren't being taught all that we should know and just what the state thinks we should.
Origin of the family
As Engels believed there was no such thing as 'family', it lead people to have multiple partners as they wished. At this time, he said they lived in what he called the 'promiscuous horde'.
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Engels believed that during the early stages of human evolution, the forces of production were communally owned and the family as such didn't exist