1.1 marxist views of the family

Question 1

What did Friderick Engels argue about the family?

Answer 1

• in the early stages of human evolution there was an era of primitive communism = people had many sexual partner and lived in the promiscuous horde
• he speculates that marriage evolved out of promiscuity through a series of stages eventually leading to the monogamous nuclear family

Question 2

What does Engels say about inheritance?

Answer 2

• the monogamous nuclear family emerged with the development of private property/ownership of the forces of production + the introduction of the state
• the state instituted laws to protect the system of private property + enforce the rules of monogamous marriage
• monogamous marriage developed to solve the problem of how private property should be inherited

Question 3

Evaluation of Engels views on the family

Answer 3

• monogamous marriage/nuclear family are often found in hunting and gathering bands so the various forms of group marriage may well be figments of his imagination
  + Gough = Engels did identify the general direction in which family life changed; nuclear families exist in small-scale societies
• Deborah Chambers(2012) = feminists criticise the emphasis of economic relations over reproduction

Question 4

What did Eli Zaretsky argue about the family?

Answer 4

• argues that the family in modern capitalist society creates the illusion that the ‘private life’ of the family is separate from the economy
• people in capitalism don’t feel fulfilled at work where they were being exploited + family life seemed like a welcome escape
• believes that the family is unable to provide for the psychological + personal needs of individuals, the family may ‘cushion’ the effects BUT can’t compensate for the general misery caused
• the family becomes a unit of consumption = they consume the products of capitalism which allows the bourgeoisie to continue producing profit

Question 5

Evaluation of Zaretsky’s views of the family

Answer 5

• Jennifer Somerville(2000) = Zaretsky exaggerates the importance of family + underestimates ‘the extent of cruelty, violence, incest and neglect’ within families
  + there is no doubt that consumption by and in families is important in contemporary capitalist societies

Question 6

What were Arlie Hochschild’s view of the family?

Answer 6

• in capitalism almost every aspect of social life is commodified = it is turned into something that can be bought and sold
• emotional life has been commodified = things that used to be thought of as private, like dating, have become just another commodity to buy and sell
• To Hochschild, people are alienated from their own feelings and from their connections to others e.g. surrogacy is a form of emotional labour where women alienated themselves from their own bodies

Question 7

Evaluation of Hochschild views on the family

Answer 7

+ shows how family life has become part of consumer capitalism with emotion work in the form of personal services being bought and consumed by families
+ useful for explaining how alienation extends in to personal life
+ shows how emotional labour pervades all aspects of social life in a capitalist society