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Marxism and the Family - Coggle Diagram
Marxism and the Family
Engels - earliest view of the family from a Marxist perspective, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1972)
During the early stages of human evolution, the forces of production were communally owned and the family didn't exist.
- Primitive Communism - characterised by promiscuity (having as many sexual partners as they wanted) and lived in the 'promiscuous horde' - there were no rules limiting the sexual relationships and no institution of marriage
Although nuclear families and monogamous marriage exist in small-scale societies, they form a part of a much larger kinship group. The group of wider kinship groups gradually weakens with the development of private property.Chambers (2012) says feminist writers criticised Engels for emphasising economic relations of production over reproduction - he wasn't particularly concerned with the restrictions placed on women by the demands of housework and childcare, he concentrated on issues of private property.
Chambers believes that Engel's work was important at creating a study that linked production and reproduction and explored gender inequality in the family in terms of historical and political factors.
- It laid the groundwork for many later studies
Throughout human history, more restrictions were placed on sexual relationships and the production of children
- speculated that marriage and the family evolved out of promiscuity through a series of stages, from polygyny (men have more than one wife) to the monogamous nuclear family (one man is married to one woman)
Each stage placed more restriction on the number of sexual partners someone could have
Monogamous Nuclear Family - developed with the emergence of private property, specifically the private ownership of the forces of production and the introduction of the state
- the state instituted laws to protect the system of private property and to enforce the rules of monogamous marriage.
- marriage and the family developed to solve the problem of how private property should be inherited or passed on
In order for men to be able to pass down their property to offspring, they had to be sure of the paternity of their children
- they needed more control over women so there was no doubt about the father
- the monogamous family provided an effective device for this
"It is based on the supremacy of the man, the express purpose being to produce children of undisputed paternity; such paternity is demanded because these children are later to come into their father's property as his natural heirs." Engels, 1972
Evaluation - modern research suggests that many of the details from his schemes are incorrect, e.g monogamous marriage and the nuclear family are often found in hunting and gathering bands. The forms of group marriage may be a figment of his imagination as humanity has lived in hunting and gathering bands for most of its existence. Gough (1972) argues that Engel did identify the general direction in which family life changed
- family is part of the superstructure - shaped by the economic base
- form of the family tends to reflect the economic system of society - in unequal societies, the family benefits the ruling class
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sees the family as a major prop to the capitalist economy
- the system is based on the domestic labour of housewives who reproduce future generations of workers needed by capitalists.
believes the family has become a vital unit of consumption - family consumes products of capitalism which allows the bourgeoisie to continue producing profit.
only a more equal society will end the artificial separation of family private life and public life, allowing the possibility of personal fulfilment
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Althusser
saw the control of the family as being an ideological state apparatus, utilised by the bourgeoisie to ensure obedience and conformity of the proletariat
- ideas on how to raise children and the norms and values expected of family life were passed down by the bourgeoisie
- organisation of roles within the family and expectations of males and females in providing for their children
- parents would socialise their children in two different groups that would be determined by those with power in society
these behaviours were policed by other social institutions such as religion, education and the welfare state
- families were pressured to make sure they were bringing their children up properly and faced sanctions ranging from public disapproval and having their children removed from them
Evaluation - his ideas weren't based on factual ideas, they were only theoretical assumptions with no concrete evidence to back them up
- the extent to which parents are influenced in raising their children by the upper class can be debated - it's argued that within some lower classes, the subcultural values are stronger than the examples set by the bourgeoisie - this is seen in the different types of family structures that have become more common within British society
- his views are deterministic and ignore the meanings that people assign to their own actions, especially in contemporary society - many parents make judgements on the raising of their children based on their own values instead of the ones passed in a wider society