Family’s Role in Capitalist Economic System Essay Example

Marxism has critical views of the role of the family and how it serves the needs of the elites in society and impacts on the working class. Marxism also adopts a system approach to understanding the family’s relationship to the economy but emphasises conflict rather than agreement. In this approach, the family’s general role is to support a capitalist economic system. 

The first way in which the family supports this is through ideological control. Families spread ideas favourable to both capitalism and the ruling class. Althusser (1970), for example, argued that the family is an ideological state apparatus through which children learn norms and values broadly supportive of the economic and political situation. The ideological state apparatus controls behaviours of the working class through social institutions such as family. Elites suggest the ways in which family life should be organized and this is passed through social institutions, such as family, socializing children into acceptable behaviours. 

Other sociologists criticise Athusser’s argument as it is based on no research evidence and is deemed an assumption. Althusser’s argument also ignores the meaning that people assign to their own actions as individuals’ interpretations of the norms and values of families that are displayed differ. Zaretsky (1979) argued that socialization involves the passing on of a ruling-class ideology. This encourages a largely unquestioning acceptance of the capitalist system and the rights of the ruling class through beliefs about competition, the importance of the work ethic and needing to obey the authority. 

Another way in which the family supports a capitalist system is economically. It is argued by Marxists such as Zaretsky that the family ‘props up capitalism’. This can be explained as the unpaid labour of women in the household props up capitalism, as it allows workers to focus on the task in hand. Families in the modern era can also be described as ‘a unit of consumption’ and families in the pre-industrial era as ‘a unit of production’. This can be explained as the family consumes goods, feeding the profits of the bourgeoisie and requiring workers to continue their labour in exchange for wages for these goods. This favours capitalism as it is embedded in our society that in order to survive, we as a society need to work for our bosses to provide for ourselves and our family, this idea is then passed onto the next generation which keeps the exploitation of the proletariat class ongoing for generations to come.

The next way in which the family supports a capitalist system is politically. It is argued that the family acts as a steady and stabilizing force that helps maintain the political order needed for companies to function profitably. Family members must work in order to support each other and their children financially. This responsibility for family members also acts as a political stabilising force. It is argued by Zaretsky that the growth of the privatised nuclear family encourages family members to focus on private problems rather than wider social concerns such as social inequality. The privatised nuclear family is a structure that is home-focused, children-centred and built on emotional relationships between adults and children. The family is therefore becoming a release for adult frustrations. Most men are relatively powerless in the workplace, but this is disguised by the power they exert economically, psychologically, and occasionally physically over their family. This idea is described as the ‘warm bath theory’ by Functionalists such as Talcott Parsons. He argues that the family provides emotional security for the adult members after a long day of being exploited at the workplace. These actions stabilise personalities and provide a sense of fulfilment.

Marxist feminists take a different approach and instead challenge gender roles at home, examining the unpaid labour of women and the expectations of society on women to look after their husbands. They combine the insights of both feminism and Marxism and are particularly interested in the world of work. They point out that men have always been able to work long hours to make profits for the bourgeoisie because women have been doing the domestic work. Marxist feminists emphasise female exploitation through the idea of a dual burden. A dual burden, also known as a double shift, is the idea that women perform ‘two shifts’, one inside the home as domestic labourers and one outside the home as paid employees. Duncombe and Marsden (1993) argued that women perform a triple shift, the third element being the time and effort women invest in the psychological well-being of family members. A triple shift is where a female double shift refers to women’s roles as domestic and paid labourers, a third element of female responsibility is the emotional work they do; investing time and effort in the psychological well-being of family members.