Marxism and the family Flashcards
What are the two classes according to Marxism?
Bourgeoisie and proletariat
What are core Marxism beliefs?
- Bourgeoisie control productive forces (infrastructure), goods produced to sell for profit
- proletariat gain a living by selling their labor power to the bourgeoisie
- physical products or emotional labor (hochschild)
- directly exploitative relationship (pay below current selling or market price - surplus value)
Where did Instrumental Marxist beliefs stem from?
Middle 19th century
- analysis stems from European societies 150 years ago
> proletariat exploited by bourgeoisie
What did Hochschild say?
Emotional labor
- requirement to manage and regulate emotions to create a desired emotional experience for customers
- faking or suppressing = emotional exhaustion & potential emotional dissonance
(internal conflict between real vs fake emotions)
What are critiques of instrumental Marxism?
- too simplistic
- ignores gender inequality and others
- how much does it happen
- less exploitative (functionalists)
Who spoke about family being a safe haven?
Zaretsky
Explain how the family is a unit of consumption
Bourgeoisie make profit from the proletariat buying products they’ve created
- family: important market for the sale of consumer goods as advertisers urge families to ‘keep up with the jones’
(buying latest goods to prove their wealth to others)
Explain more about family as a haven
Family: ideological function by offering a haven from the harsh exploitative capitalist world
- illusion as models of capitalist world mirrored in family with unequal power hierarchy
How do children contribute to the family as a unit of consumption?
- Media target children to use ‘pester power’ to convince parents to spend more
- Particular bad in the UK (few legal restraints on ads aimed at children)
- children stigmatized and mocked by peers for not having latest goods
What do Marxists say about cycle of poverty?
- Capitalism led to children of the rich grow up in the wealth, children of the poor remain poor
- nuclear family benefits the bourgeoisie more than the proletariat
What did Althusser say?
- Capitalism survives through people must be taught how to think and behave
- Family (schools and the media) best mechanism for this - ideology and socialization = false class consciousness
- family: institutions that make up piece of ISA
What is the ideological state apparatus (ISA) in the context of families?
Family hierarchy teaches children to accept someone always being in authority who must be obeyed
- mirrors the hierarchy within the workforce (bosses and workers)
What did feminists say against marxism in the family?
Gender inequality precedes capitalism
- Vast majority of tribes in Africa and Asia are patriarchal.
- Women banned from owning property, no political power, doing most childcare and hard labor
- sex inequality exists in all families irrespective of social class
What do Marx and Engles say?
Inheritance
- Family: mechanism for private property to be passed down to heirs
- Parents in monogamous relationships for clear proof of paternity
- Women: second class in Victorian era, married for economic security in exchange for sex and providing heirs
What did Engles talk about?
Promiscuous horde
- Before capitalism, classless, tribal societies practiced a form of primitive communism (collective owned property, no family structures and no restrictions on sexual relationships)
