Critical Theory of the Fami Pluto Press, hbk £8.50, pbk £3.95 THRASHING out a coherent Marxist theory of the modern family is one of most challenging problems facing the revolutionary movement On the one hand the relationship between revolutionary Marxism and the women's liberation movement "depends successful resolution of this problem. On the other, the entire intellectual • Interlace between Marxism analysis which seeks to explain and operate on individual experience such as existentialism, and psychoanalysis, as well as large issues of consciousness, culture, and ideology hinges around the problem of the family.
Large question marks hang over the continued vitality of the family in all social classes, even though it has been stripped of most of its economic • functions.
Where does the family come from la this tarasca of clarify the issues is welcome.
Poster's Critical Theory of the Family is just that. Tools theoretical ideological justification of the status historic which sociological discussion of the family by providing the theory. He also wants to avoid the fulminating foggy rhetoric of some of the anti-family writers. Instead Poster and wants to provide the theoretical tools to dig into and changing nature of the family and its relationship to society.
clear and acute survey of most of the main attempts to theorise how the family fits into society. demonstrates weaknesses, unsympathetic to Marxism, contribution of Marcuse and Horkheimer, Parsons, Lacan, Laing, Bateson and the family therapists'.
Poster rightly
Whose developing a theory to explain the differences in family form rather than the similarities, but he crucial question tending to differences have been wrought.
for analysing the static form of a family and relating it to the larger patterns of power in the society it SETTOES attempt Mark banal characterises much 'critical' WELL understand the Poster provides a comprehensive, The book the strengths and from a standpoint not ALLI Freud, Reich, , Erikson, focuses question.
evades the socialist historically The theoretical tools he offers are universalisation Isay be process imbich intabits. It offers no : of stod class family was formed in of the bourgeois fatally in the of the 191h and 20th centuries What the author •does Bol do how changes in the not just to class as a static but as a dynamic one. How the has been formed in different classe. capitalist stevelopment sinal eat struggle be explained by the critical theor some clues are suggested in ti four typological case studies offered employing the critical theory' of the bourgeois family, the pre-capitalist aristocratic, the peasant and the carty working class family.
Transformations Clearly, these different fami forms and the differing psychological constructions they tended to produce related to set of socia transformations To say that the history of the family enjoys a relative autonomy' from economic develoy ments, as Poster does; is to beg th If the historical dynamic of the bourgeois family is to be uncovered, and the appropriate response of the and feminist movements formulated, then discussion will need to be directed to the nature of the transformations which produced til the privatised nuclear familv in capitalist society. DAVID HOLLAND Socialist Challenge 10 January 1980 re 15