Marxist Perspectives on the Family

7 Key excerpts on "Marxist Perspectives on the Family"

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  The Family

  • Liz Steel, Warren Kidd, Anne Brown(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  For example, micro-sociologists argue that all social life – including the family – is meaningful to those involved in it, and that individuals do have a degree of free will and independence. We are not always passive victims of control, surveillance and ideology. We do not always live under false consciousness and can often see society for what it is. These claims about the amount of freedom from domination that people may or may not have can be seen as being answered by the neo-Marxist idea of hegemony: the notion that we go along with our own domination because it seems ‘natural’, even though we are aware of it at the time. To summarize the strengths of the Marxist approach to the family: Marxism offers a critical alternative to more ‘consensus’ oriented theories – such as functionalism the family is not seen as a private place but, rather, the object of wider, controlling, social forces the family is seen as supporting and reinforcing the interests of the powerful Marxism challenges the notion that the family is universal or natural. Weaknesses the approach is largely Western-centric: it is highly deterministic – it reduces all aspects of family life to matters of economic class it tends to concentrate on class at the expense of gender. Exercise 4.4 The following passage summarizes the main points of the Marxist view of the family K U in capitalist society. However, some of the words are missing. Your task is to complete I A the passage by filling in the gaps with the words listed at the end. The context of each sentence should show you clearly which word belongs in which gap. Like the functionalists, Marxists adopt a ........ perspective of the family, but see it as dominated by the ........ sector. According to Engels, the origins of the family lie in the need to establish a line of inheritance of property . ........ marriage was 54 The Family therefore seen as essential to establishing the ........

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  Patriarchal Precedents

  Sexuality and Social Relations

  • Rosalind Coward(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  5 The concept of the family in marxist theory

  Introduction

  In the previous chapter it was argued that in the rejection of evolutionist doctrines and some of their theoretical premises, some forms of interrogation of the family and the position of women became virtually impossible. The form taken by cultural relativism in these critiques rendered them problematic for developing general theories about the social position of women. Social divisions, antagonisms and change disappeared as objects of inquiry in the development of ideas of social structure. Yet where relations of domination were considered, they were often thought of in the same terms as previously, that is, as relations of intersubjective domination. Because these were thought to arise spontaneously or naturally, they were, to some extent, exempt from theorisation.

  Surely such criticism could never be levelled at marxist thought, a factor which would appear to constitute its appeal?

  Unlike those theories considered in the previous chapter, marxist theories have attempted to deliver a rigorously deterministic account of social relations and divisions. According to marxist thought, divisions and antagonisms within the social structure do not just arise spontaneously; they have definite historical conditions of existence and can therefore be overcome.

  This is one of the reasons why marxism has had a constant engagement with feminism. Not only has equality between the sexes been an integral aspect of the formal beliefs of socialism, but within the theoretical works there has been a commitment to understanding the origins and forms of subordination between the sexes. This understanding has been very firmly tied to an investigation of the family which was crucial in the development of marxist political theory at the turn of the century. It provided an account of the relationship between ‘civil society’ and the state in a class-divided society.

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  The Marriage and Family Experience

  Intimate Relationships in a Changing Society

  • Bryan Strong, Theodore Cohen, Theodore Cohen, Theodore Cohen, Bryan Strong(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Studying Marriages and Families 47 perspectives representing thinking across the femi- nist movement. All of the viewpoints share an inte- grating focus relating to inequality between women and men in society and, for present purposes, espe- cially in family life. As with their critique of conflict theory, some fam- ily scholars criticize feminists’ focus on power and inequality as a description of how people experience and construct their family relationships. So, for ex- ample, the ways in which feminists address the in- equities that befall full-time housewives or women in traditional families fails to recognize the degree to which some women desire and choose to be house- wives. Although feminist perspectives are also some- times criticized for ignoring the experiences of men, much of the research on men and masculinity was inspired by work done by feminist researchers. Finally, some criticize feminist family theorists’ emphasis on actively promoting change. Micro-Level Theories The four micro-level theories discussed next look at families from a different angle. They emphasize what happens within families, looking at everyday behavior, interaction between family members, patterns of com- munication, and so on. Rather than attempting to analyze “the family,” they are more useful for examining what happens between individuals in “families” that accounts for the relationships we form and maintain.

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  Sociological Interpretations of Education

  • David Blackledge, Barry Hunt(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Part II The Marxist Perspective Passage contains an image

  6 The Marxist Perspective – An Introduction

  Our purpose in this chapter is to provide an introduction to the main ideas and issues within Marxist theory as a basis for an understanding of the Marxist perspective on education.

  Marxist theory can be divided into two parts. First there is the theory of society and history that is usually referred to as 'historical materialism'. It is a conception of how society changes and how the various parts of society are related to one another. Second there is the Marxist concept of man or human nature, which is interwoven with a theory of the 'good society'. The notions of 'alienation' and 'communism' are here central.

  Historical Materialism

  The starting-point of a Marxist analysis is the view that it is what people do to keep alive or maintain themselves in existence that really matters. The basic fact about society is how men and women produce the means to live. It is therefore economic activity, or production in a wide sense of the word, that is fundamental. Everything else that people do and that goes on in society is in some way related to or derived from this. Hence Marxists see society as composed of two major parts: (1) the economic structure or 'base' or 'foundation' and (2) the 'superstructure' of other social institutions and practices such as politics, education, religion, family life, and men's ideas, beliefs and values.

  However, over and above this short statement one enters into areas of controversy. For, as Kolakowski points out: 'There is scarcely any question relating to the interpretation of Marxism that is not a matter of dispute.'1 In what follows we shall explore some of these disputes.

  Base and Superstructure

  First there is the 'base/superstructure' issue and the related controversy of 'determinism versus voluntarism' in Marxist thought. For, although Marxists believe that everything that goes on in the superstructure of society is in some way related to economic activity (or the base), they differ in their views as to the nature of that relationship. On the one hand there are those who believe that the economic base determines the superstructure in the sense that, for example, a society's educational system, or its form of government, or the type of family prevalent at any particular time is a direct consequence of the nature of its economic system. Furthermore, as the economic base changes, so too do these other social, political and cultural institutions. As Marx himself says: 'With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.'2

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  Family Boundaries

  The Invention of Normality and Dangerousness

  • Caroline Knowles(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • University of Toronto Press

    (Publisher)

  Family sociology is quite clearly a moral regulatory discourse. Standard Canadian family texts (see, for example, Ward 1994, Ramu T H I N K I N G T H E O R E T I C A L L Y A B O U T T H E F A M I L Y [26] 1993, Ishwaran 1989) generally avoid the more explicit moral and reg-ulatory messages. They concentrate instead on being theoretically inclusive: reviewing the family in terms of the standard offerings of modern sociological perspectives such as political economy, functional-ism, systems theory, developmental theory, and feminist approaches. While these texts offer a theory menu for the family, they are mostly rather abstract in that they rarely ground the theories they review in concrete research. Nor do they attempt to establish which theoretical paradigms are embedded in concrete social policy decisions relating to the family, such as changes in taxation, attempts to trace absent fathers or the impact of reproductive technologies. Because theories of the family are not concretely related to anything, students of the family are given no sense of the social and political implications of using one the-oretical interpretation over another. On the contrary, students are given the impression that theoretical accounts of the family are a matter of choice or preference. But theoretical perspectives have real social and political outcomes in the ways in which we understand people's lives. Margrit Eichler (1988) recognizes this in taking a more concrete look at the family through social policy changes. Feminist perspectives, for example, bring into focus labour force participation by mothers of young children. Functionalist perspectives, on the other hand, fre-quently overlook this in favour of women's nurturing role in sustaining the family. Both theories have political implications. As feminists high-light the need for daycare provision, functionalists favour other priori-ties supporting women at home.

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  Family Politics

  The Idea of Marriage in Modern Political Thought

  • Scott Yenor(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Baylor University Press

    (Publisher)

  The mythical private realm is a distrac-tion used by the bourgeois oppressors to maintain their rule. Oppressors invented the institutions of family life, religious life, cultural attractions, the ideology of property rights, and so on as part of their effort to protect wealth and power. Marx and Engels, however, are writing at a time when the bourgeois oppressors no longer need to support the family as much as they once had. Marx and Engels seem, at first, to present themselves as defenders of the tra-ditional family. 3 Their early writings suggest that they want to insulate the family from an excessively individualist, corrosive ideology. Early in Marx’s career, he seems taken with Hegel’s idea of the family unity representing ethical love; he seems worried that the material and spiritual rug is being pulled from under the unified family or that the idea of two becoming one has become a lie that people tell themselves to cover up their own misery. Marx penned a newspaper article against a liberalized divorce bill, arguing that marriage is an ethical relationship that should not be reduced to the standpoint of contract. Marriage, writes Marx, “cannot be subordinated to [a man’s] arbitrary wishes; on the contrary, his arbitrary wishes must be subordinated to marriage.” 4 Capitalists, with their typically egoistic stand-point, sought to reform the family so that individuals would be influenced more by the money culture than a culture based on love. Capitalists turned against the indissoluble family because it was in their interests to produce more wage-earners and to perpetuate their oppression by dividing society further into powerless individuals. The family, which stood as one form of resistance to the capitalist state, would no longer be such an obstacle. The bourgeois need more workers, so they would find it necessary to tear children away from their parents by employing them cheaply in factories.

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  The Politics of Everybody

  Feminism, Queer Theory, and Marxism at the Intersection

  • Holly Lewis(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Zed Books

    (Publisher)

  We are squarely in the territory of Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. But family legacy is entirely different for the bourgeoisie (bankers and industrialists), the traditional petit bourgeoisie (i.e. shopkeepers), and landed peasants than it is for the working classes struggling to give their children a stable present, let alone a future. It is this notion of family that queer opponents of marriage equality have in mind: the bourgeois family of means clinging to their private belongings and the moral and ideological pressure the upper classes instill in working-class people and the poor using the family form. But there is a difference between the politically motivated ideolog- ical image of the family generated by capital and actually existing people arranged into genetic or affective kinship groups. And as we 163 Marxism and gender have seen above, striving to dismantle the family under capitalism does not threaten capitalism in the least. Fighting for reforms that help people socially reproduce themselves – whether in families, non-traditional groupings, or as individuals – this is where push- back against capital begins. An additional aspect of moralizing attached to capitalist produc- tion is the sense that a worker’s value is tied to their production of things valuable to capitalism (note how the word ‘value’ here has a double meaning). Having a job affirms that one creates value; being returned a piece of that value reaffirms personal worth; the fact that one can support oneself with wages suggests that one has social value. The fact that the economic system requires an enor- mous underclass supports the supposition that a certain cluster of behaviors, a certain way of genuflecting at the system, is how one achieves the financial stability one desires. The random status to which one is born, of course, has nothing to do with it.

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