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What is the Marxist view on family?

What is the Marxist view on family?

Marxists argue that the nuclear family performs ideological functions for Capitalism – the family acts as a unit of consumption and teaches passive acceptance of hierarchy. It is also the institution through which the wealthy pass down their private property to their children, thus reproducing class inequality.

What are the 3 functions of the family according to Marxists?

Thus, Marxists see the family as performing several functions that maintain capitalist society: the inheritance of private property, socialisation into acceptance of inequality, and a source of profits.

How does the Marxist view of the family contrast with the functionalist view of the family?

Marxists argued that the family can be seen as an ideological apparatus, helping to enforce a set of beliefs and values which ultimately benefit capitalism. Functionalists argue that the family socialises children into the acceptable norms and values of society and ensures that order is maintained and deviance reduced.

What did Marx mean by abolishing the family?

Marx and Engels believed that the abolition of private property and the introduction of socialism would bring in its wake a dissolution of the family. Fourier and Owen, on the other hand, saw the abolition of the family as part and parcel of their socialist proposals to ameliorate society.

What is the functionalist view on family?

Functionalists see the family as a particularly important institution as they see it as the ‘basic building block’ of society which performs the crucial functions of socialising the young and meeting the emotional needs of its members. Stable families underpin social order and economic stability.

What is the functionalist perspective on family?

For functionalists, the family creates well-integrated members of society and instills culture into the new members of society. It provides important ascribed statuses such as social class and ethnicity to new members. It is responsible for social replacement by reproducing new members, to replace its dying members.

What do Marxist feminist believe about the family?

Marxist feminists examine the family within the context of capitalist society. They argue that women’s exploitation within the family is due to the fact that women are encouraged to carry our unpaid work within the home. This helps capitalism to flourish.

What is the most important unit of social organization in Marxism?

Class structures are primary in determining the main social classes, the main forms of struggle within societies, and the life experiences of people in these classes.

What are the main differences between the Marxist and functionalist perspectives of the family?

Functionalists see the nuclear family as essential for social order. They view it as providing adequate socialisation and economic support essential for cohesion. The family therefore helps to maintain a harmonious society that functionalists value. However Marxists argue that the family reproduces oppression.

Did Karl Marx have a family?

The third of nine children, he became the eldest son when his brother Moritz died in 1819. Marx and his surviving siblings, Sophie, Hermann, Henriette, Louise, Emilie, and Caroline, were baptised into the Lutheran Church in August 1824, and their mother in November 1825.

Why did Plato abolish family?

Abolishment of the family is advantageous because it gets rid of people’s natural affection towards one’s own. In order for a society to progress, there must be people or groups of people that are better and more accomplished than others.

What is the conflict view of family?

The conflict perspective views the family as a vehicle to maintain patriarchy (gender inequality) and social inequality in society.

What is Karl Marx’s view of the family?

Class notes on Engel’s theory of the relationship between capitalism, private property and the family; and contemporary marxist views on the family. Marxists argue that the nuclear family performs ideological functions for Capitalism – the family acts as a unit of consumption and teaches passive acceptance of hierarchy.

Did Marx expect the absence of the family in a communist society?

Since Marx is here comparing the supersession of the family in communist society with the supersession of religion and the state, he must have expected the absence of the family in communist society, since he believed that religion and the state would eventually cease to exist.

What does Marxism have to do with the family?

Something else Marxists suggest about the family (like the Functional Fit theory) is that the family type generally changes with society – more specifically, the nuclear family emerges not because of the needs of industrialisation, but because of the needs of the capitalist system.

What is the new social order according to Marx?

In the new social order premarital and extramarital sex and adultery cease to have the same meaning because within the context of community, there is no private property and everyone belongs to everyone. The care of children also becomes a public affair in Marxist society.

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