The Working Class Family, Women's Liberation, and Class Struggle: The Case of Nineteenth Century British History

Abstract

Recent Marxist analyses have focused on the working class family as the arena of domestic labour and the context of the reproduction of labour- power. The effect has been to view the family in terms of the functional prerequi sites of capitalism, and to locate its reproduction in the reproduction of capital. But to look only from the perspective of capital is to neglect the role of class struggle. This paper attempts to redress this bias by arguing that in certain per iods of capitalist development labour's defence of the family, a defence moti vated by the family's role in the determination of the standard of living, the development of class cohesion and the waging of class struggle, was an important reason for its survival.