Family : Marxist - Views

• Marx believed that the economy was the driving force in society, this determined the nature of social institutions, and people's values and beliefs. Marxism sees the structure of society divided into two main parts:

  * The economic base, or infrastructure, which underpins and determines everything else in society; this consists of:

  • the means of production
  • the relations of production

  * The superstructure such as the family, education, the media, religion and the political system and beliefs, which Marx saw as primarily determined by the economic system.
• In a capitalist society, the means of production are privately owned, and most people depend on the owners for employment. Marx argued that workers produce more than is needed for employers to pay them their wages - this 'extra' produced by workers is what Marx called surplus value, and provides profit for the employer. In a burger chain, only half the burgers the workers sell are necessary to cover production costs and pay their wages. The rest of the sales provide profit for the owners. This means that the workers are exploited.
• Marx argued that there were two basic social classes in capitalist industrial society; a small wealthy and powerful class of owners of the means of production- the bourgeoisie and a much larger, poorer class of non-owners- the proletariat. The proletariat had no means of living other than to sell their labour, or labour power as Marx called it, to the bourgeoisie in exchange for a wage. The capitalists exploited the working class by making profits out of them by keeping wages as low as possible instead of giving the workers the full payment for the goods they'd produced.
• Marxism

  For Marxists, the system we live in (which he called capitalism) divides everyone up into two basic classes: bosses and workers. Marx called the bosses the bourgeoisie or ruling class (because they controlled society), and the workers he called the proletariat or working class. The ruling class benefit in every way from how society operates, while the workers get far less than they deserve.

  Like functionalism, Marxism is a structuralist theory - that is, it sees the individual as less important than the social structure of society.
• Marxism

  Marxism sees the economic organisation of societies as responsible for the behaviour of individuals. This is because Marxism claims that individuals are the products of the class relationships that characterise economic life.
• Bourgeoisie or capitalist class

  A ruling class owning the means of production, exploiting the working class and controlling their ideas through the dominant, or ruling class, ideology.
• Proletariat or working class

  Non-owners of the means of production, who sell their labour to the capitalist class, are exploited by them, and are kept in a state of false consciousness by the power of the dominant ideology.
• Views

  Marxists generally see the nuclear family as serving the interests of the ruling class because it mainly promotes capitalist values and so discourages dissent and criticism of inequality and the way capitalism is organized.
• Views

  The nuclear family unit is seen as an ideological apparatus that promotes values and ways of thinking essential to the reproduction and maintenance of capitalism. It helps to ensure that the working class remain ignorant of the fact that they are being exploited by the capitalist system.
• Views

  Marxists argue that the working-class extended family has been deliberately discouraged by the capitalist ruling class, because its emphasis on a mutual support system and collective shared action encourages its members to be aware of their social-class position and hence inequality. such class consciousness is regarded as threatening, because it may eventually challenge the wealth and power of the capitalist class.