Marxism

• Marxist argue that the family’s functions benefit capitalism.
• There are three ways that the family support capitalism: Inheritance of Property, Ideological functions and being a unit of consumption.
• Inheritance of property of refers to wealthy businesses staying in the hands of the bourgeois through inheritance, therefore, keeping the proletariat‘s poor.
• Engels calls the previous classless society ‘primitive communism,’ where everyone owned everything and worked together.
• Engels suggests that before we owned property, no one cared about whose family was who. This was what he calls a ‘promiscuous horde.’
• In Engels’ view, monogamy became essential after as production developed in society, leading to inheritance of private property.
• Ideological functions refers to the way that mothers socialize their child. One way marxists believe they do this is by teaching them to be accepting of hierarchy and power (ie. by teaching authority and parental power).
• Zaretsky believes that the family perform the ideological function by providing a haven for the father so when he returns to work he is refreshed and ready to be exploited.
• Fran Ansley (a Marxist Feminist) argues that women are the ‘takers of shit’ and take men’s frustrations so they can return to work and submit to their boss instead of taking their frustration out on the exploiters.
• Marxists argue that family are a unit of consumption through societal pressures like ‘pester power’ and ‘keeping up with the Jones’ or the fear of seeming poor. All these force W/C families to spend more money than they have to contribute to capitalism.
• What are the three ways Marxists argue the family support capitalism?

  Inheritance of property, Ideological functions and being a unit of consumption.