Marx Was Not a Feminist,

So Why “Marxist Feminism”?

CC BY 4.0 (2022)

Feminism and Marx

• From ‘Feminist Political Theory: An Introduction’
• Valerie Bryson. 1992
• Ch 3 The contribution of Marx and Engle

Feminism and Marx

• Karl Marx was not a feminist
• Unlike J.S. Mill, he did not see issues of sexual oppression as interesting or important in their own right
• Never made sexual oppression a subject of detailed investigation

Marx had takes, tho

• the condition of women can be taken as an index of social progress. (‘the social position of the fairer sex (the ugly ones included)’ ← No Better than Sargon, really
• This was not a hot take by the mid-19th century
• Not evidence of Feminist insight into the structures of oppression

Feminism and Marx

• Later writers tried to apply Marxist critique to feminist issues
• Marxist perspectives were new and contributed an original perspective to the dominant liberal feminism of the time

Marx and Engle, distilled

• Saw the world as constantly changing and progressing
• liberal ideas of individual rights, justice, human nature are not universal, but products of a time and place in human history
• To understand the progress of historical developments lies in people’s physical productive activity

Marx and Engle, distilled

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• Complexity of production methods, division of labor and social organization is causally linked
• Increased production complexity linked to societal complexity.
• ‘The mode of production of material life conditions the social political and intellectual life in general. It is not the consciousness of men (sic) that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.’

‘Skip to the end!’

• In seeking to understand social political and legal systems and the beliefs that people have about them, Marx said that we must look first at the economic system on which they rest.
• for marx, this also severely restricts opportunity for socio-economic change
• ‘Men (sic) make their own history…. (kw-vorlesen) p. 69

• STOP! Discussion time

• What do YOU think of the usefulness of Marxist Take on how societies are structured?

Feminism and Marx

• Marxist implications for feminist theory
• 1) Places the role of family and relationships in historical context, ergo roles are the result of historical situation, not eternally given
• 2) Change will not be brought about by appeals to reason or to principles of justice - but ONLY as part of changes in conditions of production

• STOP! Discussion time

• What is your take on Marx’s claim that Change will not be brought about by appeals to reason or to principles of justice - but ONLY as part of changes in conditions of production?
• impact of women working in factories in WWII on the feminist movement in later years?

Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

• Engles rejected the idea the modern family is somehow ‘natural’
• Proposed earliest societies were highly promiscuous
• Engles did some weird fantasizing about ancient women (vorlesen p. 70 1st para)

Feminism and Engels

• Proposes early societies were egalitarian was changed by a new source of wealth for men in animal husbandry
• Men wanted more control over who inherited their wealth
• men must overthrow the traditional order (per Engle) to enforce monogamy on women who became possessions of their husbands
• This role come about because women were the source of production of heirs (vorlesen p. 70 2n para)

Feminism and Marx

• Engels predicted the changes in then-modern labor market, was changing relations between the sexes
• despite his opposition to capitalist exploitation, he saw women’s paid employment as a progressive force.
• Engels thought replacing a capitalist system with one based on common ownership would accelerate women’s liberation. (vorlesen p72 para2)

Marxism & Feminism

April 24 Lecture

Recap

• Marxism provides an account of women’s changing conditions as the product of economic processes
• women’s subordination started with private property and class-based societies
• proletariat class already chipping away at women’s subordination
• would disappear entirely in the socialist revolution

24 April Critiques of Engels

• Quote from p. 73

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24 April Critiques of Engels

• Sus anthropologic claims
• assumed universal pattern of family development from 1st human societies
• Asserts there was an ‘original condition of sex equality’
• Assumes early men’s desires to leave property to his heirs

24 April Critiques of Engels

• Sus Sexist Assumptions
• believed men must have created the 1st wealth
• Assumed an original & natural division between the sexes
• Assumed in a socialist society housework and childcare work would be collectivized and done only by women

24 April Critiques of Engels

• Blinded by sexism
• Engle’s focus on the sexual divison of labour meant he ignored women’s labour in pre-cap societies
• He acknowledged women’s problems of combining paid work with domestic responsibility
• But never analyzed the implications
• Never suggested the burden women face could be alleviated with men’s help

24 April Critiques of Engels

• Blinded by sexism
• Engles never considered the proletarian husband might be exploiting his wife by refusing to share household tasks
• Didn’t work to understand the sex-specific oppression of women as workers
• lower pay
• male opposition to female competition

24 April Critiques of Engels

• Blinded by sexism
• While he rejected the hypocrisy of chastity for women but adultery for men
• His suggestion that morality may be dependent on economic needs is a theoretical advance, but
• He constantly assumes men’s sexual needs are naturally greater than women’s without reflecting on whether that view is a reflection of social and material conditions

24 April Critiques of Engels

• Blinded by sexism
• Assumed women, not men, originally found group marriage ‘degrading’
• Constantly described a woman as ‘giving herself’ or ‘surrendering to a man’ - language that frames things in such a way that excludes reciprocal sexual enjoyment

24 April Critiques of Engels

• Blinded by sexism
• Operates from a heteronormative worldview
• His socialist ideal was homophobic
• described homosexuality as an abominable practice
• thought homosexuality would have no place in a socialist society

24 April Critiques of Engels

• Weird take
• Thought in a socialist society when childcare is the duty of the whole community there would no longer be anxiety about the ‘consequences’ which ‘today’ prevents a girl from giving herself completely to the man she loves.

24 April Critiques of Engels

• Reductionist
• Although the family serves an important economic function, reducing it to this is dubious
• ignores important psychological functions
• denies the possibility of oppression in proletariat families

24 April Critiques of Engels

• Internally inconsistent
• wrote how women were abducted in primitive societies but did not explain how that aligned with his claim those same societies were based on equality between sexes

24 April Critiques of Engels

• Blind to men’s complicity
• Never saw or criticized sexual assault as a way men wield power over women
• The Prol family was a source of oppression & sexual exploitation
• Said very little about domestic violence - which was a topic discussed by contemporary feminists

24 April Critiques of Engels

• Held a romanticized view of Proletarian marriage
• Saw as the freely chosen results of love and sexual attraction
• male brutality could not last long in a prol marriage because it no longer had an economic foundation and the wife was free to leave
• ignored the benefits husbands gain from wives’ sexual and domestic services, irrespective of love

Marxism & Feminism

May 1 Lecture

Before we start…

• Vote in the poll - lecture about quants (not scary, I promise) or Qual first?
• Your take on Marxism’s strength & weakness:
• Discussion point: List one important idea you think Marxism contributes to feminist critique AND one feminist critique of Marx & Engles' work that resonates with you.

Feminism and Marx

• Kristi’s take on explanatory theories
• specific is terrific - better to be precise about a small thing than imprecise about everything
• Where a theory fails can bring attention to previously ignored or unrecognized phenomena

Feminism and Marx

• Kristi’s take on explanatory theories
• Human behavior is complex - social science should actively reject the idea from Physics that a ‘theory of everything’ is either possible or desirable as a discipline goal
• ‘a hypothetical, singular, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe’ (wiki)

Lecture 3 on Feminism and Marx

• From ‘Feminist Political Theory: An Introduction’
• Valerie Bryson. 1993
• Ch 3 The contribution of Marx and Engle
• Summary: To understand the progress of historical developments lies in people’s physical productive activity

Recap

• Marxism provides an account of women’s changing conditions as the product of economic processes
• women’s subordination started with private property and class-based societies
• proletariat class already chipping away at women’s subordination
• would disappear entirely in the socialist revolution

Recap Feminism and Marx

• Marxist implications for feminist theory
• 1) Places the role of family and relationships in historical context, ergo roles are the result of historical situation, not eternally given
• 2) Change will not be brought about by appeals to reason or to principles of justice - but ONLY as part of changes in conditions of production

Recap 24 April Critiques of Engels

• Blinded by sexism
• Engle’s focus on the sexual divison of labour meant he ignored women’s labour in pre-cap societies
• He acknowledged women’s problems of combining paid work with domestic responsibility
• But never analyzed the implications
• Never suggested the burden women face could be alleviated with men’s help

Recap 24 April Critiques of Engels

• Reductionist
• Although the family serves an important economic function, reducing it to this is dubious
• ignores important psychological functions
• denies the possibility of oppression in proletariat families

Relevance of Marxist concepts

• Is Marxism able to see or understand non-economic sources of oppression
• M&E both saw production & reproduction as the basis of society
• Neither gave production and reproduction equal roles in the productive process

Feminism and Marx

• Engles thought only in pre class societies could family be shaped by the development of production
• Marx seemed to think reproduction was part of the material basis of society…. but could not be an independent source of change
• ergo Marx found women’s oppression theoretically uninteresting
• product of class society, not something worth understanding on its own/ in its own right

Feminism and Marx

• Consequence: M&E never explained ways that sexual relationships & family organization changed over time
• In their framing, the issue of women’s oppression tended to disappear
• the idea women, as a group, had shared interests that might be in opposition to men’s interest, never arose
• Exposes the lie spread by Anti-CRT types that Marxism has always been intersectional - T’wernt

Feminism and Marx

• Implications of this:
• For some Marxists this means ALL problems from sexism can be postponed until ‘After the revolution’
• Any attempts to improve the situation of women in the short term are
• at best a bourgeois irrelevance
• at worst a ploy to divide the working class & distract it from class struggle

Feminism and Marx

• modern feminists reject crude reductionism of ‘after the revolution’ solution to oppression
• For some Marxist feminists, reproduction is a key part of the material base which must be incorporated
• opens up possible causal interaction between production and reproduction
• recognizes interaction between class and sex struggles
• legitimizes challenging the sexism of men in left wing & working class movements

Feminist Critique of Marxism

May 8 Lecture

Feminism and Marx

• Critics of Marxism - key concepts of Marxist theory are NOT gender neutral
• like the liberal ideas of reason, autonomy & competition, Marx bases it on a male view of the world that excludes women’s needs & experiences

Feminism and Marx

• framing of ‘productive labour’ based on a paradigm of activity that ignores women’s domestic work
• at the same time it insists economic class interests & conflict are of overwhelming importance
• ignores common ties that may unite all women irrespective of economic status (family planning)
• ignores racial divisions in society

Defender of Marx, Vogel

• Marx never developed feminist implications but his economic categories point the way
• Provides framework for analyzing domestic labor & Women’s participation in capitalist economies
• Allows analysis for how prol family & Sexual division of labor is ‘reproducing the labor force’ to serve the needs of capitalism

Defender of Marx, Barrett

• Concept of alienation & feminism
• Vorlesen para 2 p. 78
• Dominant econ class imposes its worldview upon society
• Has implications for how men have maintained control over women through their control of ideas

Discussion question

• Do you agree? ‘men have maintained control over women through their control of ideas’

Discussion question

• Do you agree? ‘men have maintained control over women through their control of ideas’
• In my opinion, the invisible role of patriarchy upholding male domination, regardless of economic systems, does not receive sufficient attention because the loudest voices in the space are cis men’s

Feminism and the concept of alienation

• Hegelian notion
• Man loses control over what he himself has created
• As productive powers increase, individual control over production is lost
• ergo production is an alien activity imposed on men
• At the same time, technology improves life

Feminism and the concept of alienation

• All based on a male paradigm, may provide insights into pregnant people’s loss of control over reproductive process
• developments in contraception & Repro tech became a way to control, rather than liberate, bodies
• ‘Woman’ became a packaged, feminized, marketable commodity, alienated from her own self & own sexuality (<-- sus, kw)

Feminism and the concept of alienation

• Alientation reached an extreme form under capitalism
• Barrett applies it to ‘understand how people can create the conditions of their own oppression’ and ‘not as an arbitrary imposition, but as a process involving the oppress’
• Implications for women’s role in maintaining their own oppression, particularly through the family and socialization of children.

Feminist Marxist Critique of Liberalism

• Marxist Feminist analysis differs from Liberal feminist critiques:
• Marx distinguishes between political & human emancipation: former declares all men equal despite real inequalities in society (rank, wealth)
• Ergo, formal equality for all men only disguises the real inequalities on which the state is based

Feminist Marxist Critique of Liberalism

• Marxist Feminist analysis differs from Liberal feminist critiques:
• Real human emancipation requires a transformation of society to deny such differences their material bases, then presto the artificial distinction between state and society, citizens & private individuals disappears
• Implies women’s subordination will not be ended when equal rights regardless of sex is achieved
• Marxist theory sees political power as the result of economic conditions, political power is not an independent cause of social transformation

Feminism and Marx

• next time: the dispute between liberal and marxist feminists and their differing underlying ideas about human nature!

Feminist Critique of Marxism

May 15 Lecture

Feminist Marxist Critique of Liberalism

• Marxist Feminist analysis differs from Liberal feminist critiques:
• Marx distinguishes between political & human emancipation: former declares all men equal despite real inequalities in society (rank, wealth)
• Ergo, formal equality for all men only disguises the real inequalities on which the state is based

Feminist Marxist Critique of Liberalism

• Marxist Feminist analysis differs from Liberal feminist critiques:
• Real human emancipation requires a transformation of society to deny such differences their material bases, then presto the artificial distinction between state and society, citizens & private individuals disappears
• Implies women’s subordination will not be ended when equal rights regardless of sex is achieved
• Marxist theory sees political power as the result of economic conditions, political power is not an independent cause of social transformation

Feminism and Marx

• Need some Terms explained to understand this lecture:
• Essentialism
• Structure - agency debate

Feminism and Marx

• Essentialism - a belief that things have a set of characteristics which make them what they are, and that the task of science and philosophy is their discovery and expression; the doctrine that essence is prior to existence. (Oxford dictionary)

Essentialism

• ‘Historically, beliefs which posit that social identities such as ethnicity, nationality or gender are essential characteristics have in many cases been shown to have destructive or harmful results. It has been argued by some that Essentialist thinking lies at the core of many reductive, discriminatory or extremist ideologies.[6] Psychological essentialism is also correlated with racial prejudice.[7][8]’ - wiki

Structure - Agency debate

• In the social sciences there is a standing debate over the primacy of structure or agency in shaping human behavior. Agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.
• Structure is the recurrent patterned arrangements which influence or limit the choices and opportunities available.

https://psychology.fandom.com/wiki/Structure_and_agency

Structure - Agency debate

• The structure versus agency debate may be understood as an issue of socialization against autonomy in determining whether an individual acts as a free agent or in a manner dictated by social structure.

https://psychology.fandom.com/wiki/Structure_and_agency

Feminism and Marx

• Liberalism & Marxism have different outlooks on human nature
• Liberal take: Defining characteristic of men (sic), & basis for political rights, is their rationality
• Marxist take: Def char of men (sic) is purposeful, planned production activities

Feminism and Marx

• Liberalism & Marxism have different outlooks on human nature
• Marx also rejected idea of eternally give ‘human essence’
• ‘Man’ is the product of society & ‘human essence is not abstraction inherent in each individual. In reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.’
• Man’s (sic) productive activity creates his society, ergo he is a self-creator.

Feminism and Marx

• The idea of conscious creativity is an alternative to liberal alternatives
• Liberalism elevates mental activities above physical activities (reflects the worldview of its originators - KW)
• Marx saw this as an artificial separation will be overcome in future communist societies

Feminism and Marx

• In theory, this view should hold reproductive & domestic work as equal, not as inherently inferior to men’s intellectual activities under liberalism.
• Yet Marx & Engles devalue reproductive and domestic labor
• Bryson writes ‘... this was because of the way it was organized as a personal service, not because of its essential attributes’ p. 82
• That means it is possible for marxism to encompass a very positive view of reproductive & domestic labour

Concluding thoughts

• For Marxists, sex equality cannot be understood in terms of abstract principles, but only in an historical context
• Opposition to women’s emancipation is not simply the result of injustice
• Instead it reflects material interests & the structured economic needs of a society

Concluding thoughts

• For Marxists, sex equality cannot be understood in terms of abstract principles, but only in an historical context

For women, or any group, emancipation is not equated with political and equal rights

• empanciation can only be won by restructuring the whole economy to give full economic equality
• the material conditions for this goal requires objective circumstances plus self conscious revolutionary will and organization

Concluding thoughts

• For Marxists, sex equality cannot be understood in terms of abstract principles, but only in an historical context
• The struggle for sex (gender) equality is integrally connected to the economic class struggle
• If women are to become equal to men, they must achieve full economic independence, which in turn relies on a collectivization of housework and childcare.

Concluding thoughts

• Marxism does not allow for the possibility of oppression without an economic foundation
• has blind spot to non-economic conflicts, and denies that the patriarchy could exist outside of class society

Concluding thoughts

• ‘Modern feminists who wish to use Marxist theory in a less reductionist way are therefore left with the problem of how to understand the intersection of class and sex (*and gender - kw), patriarchy and capitalism.’ p. 83
• This gap generated a lot of debate in the coming decades and centuries

Next time!

• The Philosophy that underpins Social Science and Social Studies