ABSTRACT
The family is the site of the reproduction of human-beings. Economic production and human reproduction are the two activities without which any society cannot persist, and both activities are, each in its own way, equally fundamental. At the emotional level the family process may be seen to have two phases. The first phase involves learning by the infant to accept limitation on its desires and activities by others. The second involves learning on the part of the adult members to accept limitation on their desires and activities as the family’s children move towards independence and autonomy. Unequal exchange mediated by monetary payment is exactly the basis of production under capitalism. The social relations characteristic of the capitalist mode of production are thus reproduced within social institutions not part of that mode of production but which, being linked to it, are thereby ‘determined’ or in modern parlance ‘conditioned’ by it.
