Faculty panel, October 26, 2001

 

Marxism and Feminism – Simona’s comments

Introductory comments:

  1. The attempt to relate Marx and Marxism to anti-racism, anarchism and feminism is first and foremost a debate about the relationship and contradictions between theory and practice.
  1. While every theory can be subjected to scrutiny across time and context, one rise beyond a critique of Marx for not using the language that is used today in debates about oppression and liberation.

Main Arguments:

Theory

    1. The problem with privileging class over other constructs/systems of inequality. The argument is that only the eradication of Capitalism is likely to end gender discrimination.
    2. Marxism can explain why there would be a reserve pool of unemployed persons and that there would be a division of labor within the home, but it cannot explain why that reserve pool of unemployed persons is overwhelmingly female. Marxist also have no explanation for why the division of labor in the home is a gendered one
    3. Marx’s emphasized wage-labor, therefore analyzing mostly a male-dominated terrain. He also employed what is clearly a gendered distinction between productive and reproductive labor without recognizing that it is so and definitely without criticizing sexism
In search of a standpoint for feminist politics: The debate between Socialist feminists and Marxist Feminist on these questions

Praxis

  1. One cannot mobilize a mass-movement these days by mobilizing class (ONLY). Class could be an entry point but it must be connected to other marginalized identities/subject-positions/movements.

Quote from Ehrenriech:

“people who meet . . . with an agenda of discovering the connections between everything – sex and class, housework and factory work, the family and the state, race and gender, sexuality and profits – can no longer be dismissed. If capitalism plus patriarchy was too easy an answer, at least we (socialist feminists in the 1970s) asked the right questions.”

2. Sexism and Racism on the Left: the difficulty of dealing with privilege on SYSTEMIC rather than INDIVIDUAL basis.

Quote from Listserv: Yoshie Furuhashi on leadership

Resources:

http://csf.colorado.edu/authors/Gimenez.Martha/marx.html

An overview article by Martha E. Gimenez. Originally Pulblished in Frontier:
A Journal of Women's Studies. Vol 1, No 1, Fall, 1975. 

http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/marxism/m-f/

an email discussion forum for the discussion of marxism and feminism.

http://www.marxist.com/women/marxism_v_feminism.html

Marxism versus feminism: The class struggle and the emancipation of women

By Alan Woods

http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/

Marxist Internet Archive: Women and Marxism – includes many links to classical texts which dealt with the issue as well as to other relevant sites

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/mar.html

An overview article about Marxis/Materialist Feminism

http://pers-www.wlv.ac.uk/~le1810/ws3000r1.htm

A syllabus with readings on Feminism, Materialism and Postmodernism

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/feminism/terms/

An overview of feminist terminology

http://www.nd.edu/~remarx/aesa/pdf/ruccio4.pdf

Beyond Economic Man – A great syllabus on feminist economics and the relationship between Marxism and feminism

Interesting and fairly recent articles on the topic

http://www.newyouth.com/womenandmarxism.asp

http://www.xs4all.nl/~aboiten/gvppolit.htm

Cyber Marxism Links (includes links to activism inspired by Marxism around the world and to women leaders)