AS Sociology

Families & Households

Studyguide 3

Marxism and the Family

Whereas functionalists generally see the family as good for both society
and the individual, Marxists are much more pessimistic about the role of
the family. They suggest that the family is used by the capitalist class to
ensure that the extreme inequalities in wealth and income produced by the
capitalist economic system are never challenged by the working-class or
the poor.

The similarities between Marxism and Functionalism

Marxism and Functionalism are both examples of macro or structural theories. They
are mainly interested in how the family contributes to the overall running of
society rather than how people experience family life on a daily basis. Like
functionalists, then, Marxists are keen to find out what the overall purpose or
function of the family is for society.

The Marxist theory of capitalist society

Marxists reject the functionalist view that society is based on value consensus and
therefore operates for the benefit for all. Instead they argue capitalist society is
organised around conflict between social classes and exploitation rather than
social order (as functionalists believe).

The most important part of capitalist society, according to Marxists, is the economy
which they call the ‘economic infrastructure’. Marxists note that capitalist
societies are based on competition. Members of the capitalist class or
bourgeoisie compete with each other to produce manufactured goods via factory
production. This elite controls the wealth or capital of society and consequently
owns the ‘means of production’, i.e. the factories, the technology and machines
etc.

However, the capitalist class needs the labour power of the majority class, i.e. the
working class or proletariat. Marxists argue that the relationship between the
capitalist class and the working class (known as the social relations of production)
is characterised by exploitation because the wages of the working class do not reflect
the true value of the work that they do for the bourgeoisie. The difference between the
wage paid and the true value of the work done by the proletariat is known as surplus
value. This is pocketed by the capitalist class and is the source of their great wealth.
The capitalist infrastructure therefore is characterised by great class
inequalities in income and wealth.

This exploitation is a potential problem for the capitalist class because if the working
class become conscious that they are being exploited, they may rise up in

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violent revolution against the capitalist class.

Marxists argue that the bourgeoisie has created something called the
‘superstructure’ to deal with this potential problem. The superstructure is made up of
social institutions such as the family, the education system, the mass media,
religion and the political system. The main function of the superstructure is
to socialise people into ruling class or bourgeois ideology – a set of ideas
that convince those at the bottom of society that

 Capitalist society is fairly organised.

 That those at the top of society deserve their success.
 That those at the bottom of society are there as a result of their own
shortcomings, e.g. they have not worked hard enough, they are not
bright enough etc.

These ideas are presented as ‘facts’ but in reality they are falsehoods
because the capitalist system is organised by the capitalist class to benefit
themselves and their children.

Marxists therefore argue that the working class are kept in a state of false class
consciousness – they are never aware of the true extent of their exploitation and are
encouraged instead to focus on improving their standard of living through working
harder, and through consumerism and materialism. They are discouraged from thinking
about changes to the capitalist system, e.g. by insisting on a fairer distribution of
society’s wealth and resources.

From a Marxist perspective, the family is part of the superstructure of capitalist

system and therefore it functions to socialise children into norms and values
that result in them becoming passive law-abiding citizens and workers who
are happy to accept their lot at the bottom of society. In other words, the family
functions to transmit ruling-class ideology.

Marxist theories of the family

(1) The origins of the family: Friedrich Engels

The first Marxist writer on the family was Friedrich Engels who examined the way in
which the family had evolved and changed throughout history. Engels divided
the history of humanity into two main eras:

(1) The era of primitive communism - Engels claimed that during the early
stages of human evolution there was no private property and the family as we
know it today did not exist. Human beings lived in 'promiscuous hordes' or
tribes. There were very few rules limiting sexual relationships, e.g. marriage as
we know it today also did not exist. Children were brought up by the whole tribe
rather than parents.

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(2) The era of capitalism - Engels claims that the nuclear family based on
monogamy (marriage between one man and one woman) only developed
with the emergence of capitalism which led to the accumulation of
private property and wealth. Engels claimed that the monogamous nuclear
family was adopted by capitalists because it provided the most efficient way
of ensuring that wealth and private property was inherited by a
person’s direct descendants. If there is only one husband and one wife in a
family, questions about the paternity of children, or about which wife’s children
should inherit were unlikely to arise. A man therefore could be sure he had
legitimate children with a clear right of succession to inherit his wealth.

Evaluating Engels

 There is strong historical evidence showing a connection between the

growing popularity of monogamous nuclear families and the rise of
capitalism in Western societies such as Britain. However, there is also
evidence of large numbers of nuclear families existing throughout history. For
example, the social historian, Peter Laslett found that most families in medieval
Britain were nuclear because of the low life expectancy and high infant
mortality that existed in this period.

 There is also no historical evidence of an era of primitive communism. It is pure

speculation on Engels’ part.

 However, anthropologists (people who study primitive tribal societies) such as

Kathleen Gough have supported the notion of free sexual relations in primitive
human societies by examining the behaviour of our nearest relatives –chimpanzees
-who live in promiscuous tribes.

(2) Eli Zaretsky

Zaretsky’s ideas on the functions of the family are not very different from the
functionalist sociologist Parsons. However, Zaretsky claims that instead of the family
benefitting social order and promoting stability and consensus in society, the family in
capitalist society benefits the ruling class (bourgeoisie) for the following
reasons:

 Socialisation of children

Zaretsky argues that the family as part of the superstructure of capitalist society
socialises children, especially working-class children, into norms and values
that are useful to the capitalist ruling class. In other words, the family is an
ideological agent of the ruling-class.

For example, it is within the family that the child learns obedience and respect for
those in authority. This in turn means that individuals can be exploited later in life by
the ruling class because when these children grow up to be adults, they are
more

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likely to view the power and authority wielded by the capitalist class
authority as ‘natural’. Zaretsky notes that by socialising children into ruling-class
values, the family ensures that these children will grow up to become uncritical
conformist citizens and passive workers who accept their lot with little or no
complaint.

Note that Zaretsky’s ideas present a very different view to Parsons’ account of the
primary socialisation of children where norms and values learned within the family are
simply seen to benefit social order.

 Psychological outlet

Zaretsky argues that the family acts as a comforting device for the worker against
the hardships of an oppressive and exploitative workplace. The problems,
pressures and frustrations at work such as alienation (i.e. not being able to identify with
the job because it is so dull etc.), lack of control over one’s job, poor pay, the stress of
working long and unsociable hours etc. - all features of working in and being exploited
by a capitalist economy - can be forgotten in the home as the worker spends
quality time with his wife and children. The worker can then return to work the
next day to be freshly exploited!

Zaretsky also notes that the frustrated worker is very unlikely to engage in
behaviour which threatens the nuclear family set-up. Workers may therefore be
willing to put up with exploitation and inequality because they want to ensure a certain
standard of living for their families. They may therefore be less willing to
complain about their working conditions or to take industrial action. There is
evidence that companies such as Ford would only employ married men in the 1980s
because these types of men were more reluctant than single men to take strike action
because they felt that their main responsibility was to their wives and
children rather than their fellow workers.

Again, note that Zaretsky’s version is more critical than that presented by Parsons who
saw the family as a comforting institution. In Zatetsky’s version, the family as a
psychological outlet for stress is still comforting but this mainly benefits the
capitalist class.

 Economic Function

Zaretsky argued that the family is the main institution through which the
majority of consumer goods and services are consumed, i.e. it is the major unit
of consumption of manufactured goods and therefore is essential to the success
and especially the profitability of the capitalist system.

Zaretsky notes that the family is encouraged by ruling class ideologies transmitted
by advertising and other types of mass media to “keep up with the Jones’ ” and
to buy more and more consumer products.

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The Marxist writer, Herbert Marcuse noted that the profitability of capitalism depended
on the family spending money on ‘false needs’. These are consumer goods which are
mainly bought to be conspicuously consumed, i.e. their ownership is noticed by others
because these are ‘trendy’ or high-status items. However, the logic of capitalism
dictates that these items quickly become obsolete as they are replaced by
improved technology or more fashionable items. Capitalist ideology transmitted
by advertising and the mass media, and aimed at the family ensures that family
income continues to be spent on such items. This ensures that the capitalist class
continues to make vast profits. Consequently, the family performs a vital economic
function for the capitalism.

(3) Pierre Bourdieu

The Marxist Pierre Bourdieu argues that the family is an important cause of the
social class differences that continue to characterise capitalism. He argues
that class inequalities are reproduced generation after generation within
families.

He argues that it is difficult for bright working-class children to experience upward

social mobility into well-paid middle-class jobs because working-class families
often lack the economic capital that their middle-class counterparts take for granted.
Working-class families are often on the edge of poverty and find it difficult to find the
extra resources needed to invest in educational success, e.g. money for school trips,
extra private tuition etc. Consequently, working-class children are three times
more likely to leave school at 16 than their middle-class peers.

On the other hand, middle-class children succeed because their parents give them
economic capital in the form of material supports, e.g. computers, private
education and tutors etc. However, Bourdieu notes that middle-class parents are also
able to pass on other advantages to their children such as:

 Cultural capital, i.e. the ‘right’ attitudes and forms of knowledge, e.g.
because their own experience of education was a positive one, middle-class
parents may convey certain positive expectations to their children such as the
right to a university education. Working-class parents, who left school at the age
of 16, may not consider the possibility of university education and therefore this
idea may never be seriously considered by their children. Another aspect of
cultural capital is that middle-class children may be more likely to possess
the speech patterns, manners and experiences valued by middle-class
teachers compared with working-class children.

 Social capital, i.e. this refers to important social contacts that professional
middle-class parents are likely to have which may benefit their child’s education,
e.g. a parent may arrange for their child to have a work placement in a situation
which may enhance their CV and their chances of gaining a university place.

Bourdieu is therefore arguing that through no fault of their own or their parents, many
working-class children experience a cultural deficit - the education system does
not value their experiences, attitudes, knowledge and skills, and consequently

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they are more likely to be labelled failures by teachers, placed in bottom sets or
streams, and leave education at the age of 16.

(4) Marxist-Feminism

Marxist-feminists are critical of traditional Marxists because they believe that Marxism
has failed to highlight the particular way in which females are exploited by
capitalism and how this exploitation contributes towards the reproduction of class
inequalities in wealth and income.

Marxist feminists argue that most nuclear families are patriarchal or male dominated.
For example, many sociological studies show that females perform the majority of
childcare and domestic tasks in the home.

The Marxist-feminist, Margaret Benston argues that the position of females in the
nuclear family benefits capitalism in the following four ways:

(1) Mothers reproduce the next generation of workers and they socialise children
into capitalist norms and values. This is all done at no extra cost to the
bourgeoisie or capitalist class.

(2) Women are responsible for the majority of domestic tasks. They do not get
paid for this and provide capitalism with a free service. For example, the UK
2000 Time Use Survey released by the Office for National Statistics estimated
that if housework was paid, it would cost the economy £700 billion –
which is three-quarters of current wages for paid work.

(3) Female domestic labourers ensure that male workers are healthy and
efficient (and therefore profitable) workers by ensuring they return to clean
homes, by providing them with meals, looking after them when they are ill etc.

(4) Women, especially mothers of children, form a reserve army of labour - a

stock of low-paid and often part-time casual workers who can be hired
when the economy is strong but who will be the first to be fired during
economic recession. However, these exploitative practices are rarely
questioned because capitalist ideology makes clear that a woman’s main
responsibility is to her children, husband and home (rather than to a job
or career).

Finally, the Marxist-feminist Fran Ansley suggests that the wife acts as a ‘safety
valve’ for capitalism. The alienated male factory or office worker may return to his
home and family frustrated by both his lack of power and the feeling that he is being
exploited at work. However, rather than taking that frustration out on the ruling-class
or in the workplace in the form of industrial action, his anger is directed inwards to
the home and especially his wife.

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Ansley describes married women as ‘takers of shit’ in the form of domestic
violence. From Ansley’s perspective, domestic abuse soaks up the frustration
caused by the powerlessness experienced by working-class men which might
otherwise be directed at the ruling class and the capitalist system.

Evaluation of the Marxist Theory of the Family

Overall strengths

 Engels has shown us that the nuclear family is not as natural, as universal or
as indispensable as functionalists would have us believe - it is something
that may have developed for the first time under capitalism.

 Like functionalists, Marxists see the nuclear family as performing vital functions for
society. However, whereas functionalists argue that the nuclear family is good for
society and benefits all of its members Marxists such as Engels and Zaretsky have
shown us how it may be the ruling class who benefit the most from the way the
nuclear family is organised in the UK.

 There can be little doubt that the family is a key unit of consumption for capitalist
goods and services and is therefore essential in terms of the profits made by
capitalist enterprise.

Overall weaknesses

 Marxists may be guilty of over-emphasising how the family is shaped by the

needs of capitalism. Marxists have done little research to find out whether
members of families actually do have this relationship with capitalism.

 Interactionist sociologists are critical of Marxism because they argue that

Marxists ignore the meanings families have for individuals.

 Marxism presents us with an over-socialised view of humans – it sees

socialisation as a one-way process where children are simply ‘pumped full of
ruling-class or capitalist culture’. It never considers that working-class parents
and children may resist this process.

 Marxists may over-focus focus on the negative aspects of the family and ignore
the real satisfaction it gives people. Positive experiences of being a housewife
and mother, for example, are dismissed as capitalist ideology and false
consciousness, regardless of how real these feelings may be for the individuals
concerned.

 Marxists and Marxist feminists focus on the nuclear family (by showing how it
meets the needs of capitalism). However, Marxists ignore recent economic and
educational changes which seem to have resulted in a radical change in
women’s attitudes towards careers (i.e. genderquake). Moreover, Marxists
rarely acknowledge that very few women in 2013 are full-time mother-housewives.

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 These changes have also led to a diversity of family forms such as dual-career
families, lone parent families, single-person households, gay couples etc.
These alternative types of family do not fit so neatly into the Marxist analysis of the
UK family.

Essential Names! Essential concepts

Engels Infrastructure, superstructure,
Zaretsky means of production, proletariat,
Marcuse bourgeoisie, ideology, surplus
Bourdieu value, false class consciousness,
Benston primitive communism, monogamy,
Ansley false needs, economic capital,
cultural capital, cultural deficit,
patriarchal, reserve army of labour