Marxists believe that family is a strong influence on education and is considered the primary source of socialisation. This is beneficial for the bourgeoisie because the family and education system will teach the norms and values, which are that the society in which they are living is correct. Education makes the proletariat believe in the ideology of Capitalism and will make the children learning believe in the myth of meritocracy.
Marxists argue that the Capitalist ruling classes have deliberately discouraged the working class extended family once seen in the past. This is because the working class has a mutual support system and will often act collectively as a unit. This leads to everyone being aware of which class they are in, and the ideology that has been indoctrinated by society from birth has been broken. This would lead to the proletariat eventually challenging for wealth and power over the capitalist ruling classes. This downfall would have been brought about by the extended family and unity, and therefore the bourgeoisie teach the extended family to be wrong.
This is where the nuclear family differs from the extended family. It is much more friendly towards Capitalism because it can be used as an ideological apparatus to promote Capitalist values. For example, we often here the phrase “Keeping up with the Jones’s”. This slogan not only promotes the family purchasing items, but it backs up the Capitalist view that material wealth is good.
The first modern Marxist perspective on the family was from a man called Engles who wrote a book called: “The origin of family, private property and the state”. He wrote this in the year, 1884. Engles traced back humanity, thinking that perhaps the family and its structure were evolutionary. Engles found that early humanity communally owned the means of production. The family did not exist. He also found that primitive communism was promiscuous, containing no rules upon sex. Engles concluded that primitive humanity was the family, and that they lived similar to how chimps live.
Engles found that the family evolved over time and only became the family we assume to be family now by the introduction of restrictions on relationships and the production of offspring. This included the loss of polygamy and the introduction of monogamy. With monogamy, private property was developed and the state began to emerge.
In order to aid the continuation of private property, the state brought in laws to protect the private property and to protect monogamy. This was to eradicate the problems of inheritance, by stopping the problem of illegitimacy. Laws were made demanding that property must be passed down from the owner to his heir. This forced legitimacy and therefore ended promiscuity.
Overall, Engels sums up his arguments in two points. The first is that the family serves the requirements of the catholic society, and the second is that the family will always prevent women from achieving full equality.
This links in well with feminism, particularly the views of Marxist feminists. Engels and Zaretsky both acknowledged that women are exploited in the family, but stressed the relationship between Capitalism and the family more than the exploitation of women. Margaret Benston is a Marxist Feminist and states that if women were paid for the duties they perform as a housewife, even at minimum wage, would cause a huge redistribution of wealth. Benston also states that the Bourgeoisie are effectively paying the male and also acquiring the services of the female. The female labours for the male to produce a good worker for the capitalist society.
Although Marxist feminists recognise the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, they tend to favour their arguments towards the oppression that the women face from men as commanding heads of the household, and the fact that women run the household yet get no form of pay from the Male head of the house or the Capitalist society.