Post-Fordist capitalism both depends on and destroys the family

Evidence

The values that family life depends upon – obligation, trustworthiness, commitment – are precisely those which are held to be obsolete in the new capitalism. Yet, with the public sphere under attack and the safety nets that a ‘Nanny State’ used to provide being dismantled, the family becomes an increasingly important place of respite from the pressures of a world in which instability is a constant. The situation of the family in post-Fordist capitalism is contradictory, in precisely the way that traditional Marxism expected: capitalism requires the family (as an essential means of reproducing and caring for labor power; as a salve for the psychic wounds inflicted by anarchic social-economic conditions), even as it undermines it (denying parents time with children, putting intolerable stress on couples as they become the exclusive source of affective consolation for each other). — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 70

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illuminates the classic Marxist contradiction of capitalism requiring social structures it simultaneously destabilizes.
• XREF: connects to: Bipolar disorder is the mental illness proper to capitalism’s interior — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 75; Post-Fordist work conditions undermine the very family values they increasingly depend on — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 70; Decline of middle-class ownership eroded the family’s role and paternal authority (+8 more)

Related

• Capitalism both depends on and undermines the family simultaneously (similarity 0.95)
• Post-Fordist capitalism both needs and destroys the nuclear family (similarity 0.93)
• Post-Fordist work conditions undermine the very family values they increasingly depend on (similarity 0.86)
• Mass unemployment isolates families and weakens parental authority (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Capitalism’s reproduction requires family, education, and media apparatuses #expands (0.90)
• Mass unemployment isolates families and weakens parental authority #exemplifies (0.90) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 438
• Capitalism functions by redirecting social reproduction toward its own ends #expands (0.90) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 347
• Decline of middle-class ownership eroded the family’s role and paternal authority #corroborates (0.85)
• Male economic migrancy disrupts rather than reinforces patriarchal family structures #exemplifies (0.80) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 880
• Neoliberal welfare attacks racialized dependency and framed the family as women’s natural sphere #exemplifies (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 175
• Capitalism simultaneously destroys and expands human potential #expands (0.75) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 639