M.A.(Political Science) Part-II Paper-VIII (Option XI) Semester-IV Women and Political Theory

LESSON NO. 1.7 AUTHOR : SAMARDEEP KAUR

Socialist Introduction Socialist feminists arose in the late 1960’s. It is a branch of feminism that focuses upon both the public and private spheres of a woman's life and argues that liberation can only be achieved by working to end both the economic and cultural sources of women's oppression. It is a two-pronged theory that broadens 's argument for the role of capitalism in the oppression of women and 's theory of the role of gender and the . Although, it grew out of the same social ferment and the same consciousness raising groups that produced radical feminism yet it reject radical feminism’s main claim that patriarchy is the only or primary source of oppression of women. Rather, socialist feminists assert that women are unable to be free due to their financial dependence on males in . Women are subjects to the male rulers in capitalism due to an uneven balance in wealth. They see economic dependence as the driving force of women’s subjugation to men. Further, socialist feminists see women’s liberation as a necessary part of larger quest for social, economic and political justice. They draws upon many concepts found in Marxism; such as a historical materialist point of view, which means that they relate their ideas to the material and historical conditions of people’s lives. Socialist feminists thus consider how the sexism and gendered division of labor of each historical era is determined by the economic system of the time. Those conditions are largely expressed through capitalist and patriarchal relations. Socialist feminists, thus reject the Marxist notion that class and class struggle are the only defining aspects of history and economic development. Marx asserted that when class oppression was overcome, gender oppression would vanish as well. According to socialist feminists, this view of gender oppression as a sub-class of class oppression is immature and much of the work of socialist feminists has gone towards specifying how gender and class work together to create distinct forms of oppression and privilege for women and men of each class. For example, they observe that women’s class status is generally derivative of her ’s class or occupational status, e.g., a secretary that marries her boss assumes his class status. Thus, they attempted to produce a creative synthesis of radical feminism and Marxist feminism. No doubt, there way of make this synthesis is different. The problem of the subordination of women and the need for their liberation was recognized by all the great socialist thinkers in the nineteenth century. It is part of the classical heritage of the revolutionary movement. Yet, for M.A. (Political Science) PART II 91 PAPER VIII (Option XI) most of the mid-twentieth century, the problem became a subsidiary, if not an invisible element in the preoccupations of socialists. Perhaps no other major issue was so forgotten. Throughout the late 1960s and into the 1970s a resurgent women’s movement emerged across many parts of the world. This time women were fighting to go beyond the right to vote and for formal equality in law. Despite the gains their and grandmothers had made, women in the West still suffered clear discrimination in employment and education, as well as continued oppressive attitudes from the men in their lives. The right to vote had not changed this, and the lack of female representation or male politicians campaigning on women’s issues in most parliaments created a sense of anger and frustration. This became known as the second wave of feminism, after the first wave of struggles for the right to vote in the first half of the 20th century. Juliet Mitchell is one of modern socialists of United Kingdom. In her important book, Women’s Estate, Mitchell offered a rigorous criticism of classical socialist theory, criticizing it for locating woman’s oppression too narrowly in the and in an undifferentiated manner. She rejects the reduction of woman’s problem to her incapacity to work, which stresses her simple subordination to the institutions of private . According to her, “we are dealing with two autonomous areas: the economic mode of capitalism and the ideological mode of patriarchy.” She defines four basic structures in which woman’s powerlessness is rooted. These “structures” of (a) production, (b) reproduction, (c) sexuality, and (d) socialization of children define the four-dimensional existence of women in capitalist society. To be able to cope with the series of oppressions women experience, Mitchell thinks it first necessary to differentiate among them. Reproduction is the “natural” role in producing children. The biological function of maternity is a universal, a temporal fact which has come to define woman’s existence. Woman is socializer in that “woman’s biological destiny as becomes a cultural job in her role as a socializer of children.” The causal flow which Mitchell constructs of woman’s oppressive existence derives from woman’s capacity as reproducer and of its connected consequences for her social and economic activity. Woman’s biological capacity defines her social and economic purpose. Maternity has set up the family as an historical necessity, and the family has become woman’s world. Hence woman is excluded from production and public life, which results in sexual inequality and in woman’s resulting powerlessness. The four structures are meant to be inclusive of women’s activity. Production or work is activity which exists both within and outside the family. Reproduction most often takes place within the family structure, whereas the structure of sexuality affects women in all areas of life. The socialization of children which is done by mothers is located within the family, although socialization takes place at all times. Mitchell locates woman’s oppression through structures which, though

M.A. (Political Science) PART II 92 PAPER VIII (Option XI) not limited to the family, do not exclude it. Both the family and society in general are implicated in woman’s oppression. Thus Mitchell is led to conclude that, by focusing on the destruction of the family, one does not necessarily substantially alter woman’s situation. For Mitchell, “socialism would properly mean not the abolition of the family but the diversification of the socially acknowledged relationships which are forcibly and rigidly compressed into it.” Mitchell analyzes the family in capitalism as a supportive pillar to woman’s oppressive condition, in terms of its support both of capitalism and of the sexual division of labor and society. According to her, capitalism sees conflict and disruption as very much a part of people’s lives. The family provides the affection bonds and a medium of calm for life to be maintained amidst the disruption. The family supports capitalism economically in that it provides a productive labor force at the same time that it supplies the market with an arena for massive consumption. The family also performs an ideological role in that it cultivates the notions of individualism, freedom, and equality basic to the belief structure of society, even if they are at odds with social and economic reality. The importance of Mitchell’s analysis consists in her picturing of the different dimensions of woman’s activity without denying her sexuality or her class oppression. She focuses on the very powerlessness that women experience because they are reproductive beings, sexual beings, working individuals, and socializers of children. She makes it clear that woman’s oppression is based in part on the support the family gives the capitalist system in trapping woman in sexual and class oppression via these different structures. In this analysis, power is seen in its more complex reality. We are still left, however, with the basic problem of clarifying the relationship of the family and the political economy in capitalist patriarchal society. In spite of its title, which may put many sociologists off, her work Psychoanalysis and Feminism should be of interest to those who are concerned with the relationship of family structure to personality. Mitchell interprets Freud as saying that women's secondary status is not a result of their biology (in spite of his "anatomy is destiny" statement) but rather of structural features of human systems. Even though she is not a biological determinist, and argues convincingly that Freud was not one either, the implications of her analysis of sexism are pessimistic. She only hints at a positive solution while dwelling at length on Freud's concept of the unconscious, which she sees as embodying universal features of social structure. Although a Marxist, she explicitly states that women's oppression is based not on capitalism nor on private property but on the very features which distinguish human society from animal society. Basing her analysis on the work of Claude Levi Strauss, Mitchell argues that women's secondary status is rooted in kinship systems with their prohibitions on and related rules of

M.A. (Political Science) PART II 93 PAPER VIII (Option XI) . It is not the but the rules of exchange between kin groups that are the foundation of human society and women's oppression. Kin groups relate to other groups through . Marriage laws and the are set up not because incest is biologically bad, but because the establishment of society depends on solidify relationships being established between biological kin groups. Thus the point of the incest taboo is that it necessitates exchange with outsiders and the act of exchange and the reciprocity involved becomes the skeins which hold a society together. This in itself does not account for women's secondary status. The more fundamental point is that, according to Levi-Strauss, it has always been men who exchange women and not vice versa. His basic insight was that women rather than goods, etc. were the original and primary exchange objects in human society. He was not concerned with why it was women and not men who serve as objects. In contrast to Levi-Strauss, Mitchell briefly poses the question: why is it that it are always men who exchange women? In fact Mitchell assumes with him that if we have exchange (marriage) at all it will be the exchange of women by men; hence, the problem becomes how we may eliminate the necessity for exchange and with this the prohibition on incest. She says, "In industrial society if the family were not preserved, the prohibition on incest together with the already redundant demand for the exchange of women (except in the upper classes) would be unnecessary". Here she seems to be suggesting that if we do away with the family and marriage we can do away with sexism. But then again she reiterates that the Oedipus complex is universal and the unconscious is eternal. All that can change apparently is the structure of the kin relations in which our unconscious heritage is contained. It appears to me that she finally says that "mankind's" humanity does rest on exchange relations between kin who rest on the incest taboo which is reflected in the Oedipus complex which is unconscious and universal. All that can vary is the form which contains these universals. It is strange in one respect that Mitchell adopts Levi-Strauss' explanation of the incest taboo because his theory does not explain very well the type of incest that concerned Freud most, namely incest between and mother. Several critics have pointed out that Levi- Strauss' explanation makes more sense with regard to - incest than - incest. On the other hand, Mitchell was undoubtedly attracted to Levi- Strauss' work over that of other anthropologists because he consistently stressed the asymmetry of the relationship between the sexes. For example, he explains the rarity of finding matrilineal descent being paired with matrilocal residence on this basis. Thus while most feminists would criticize both Freud and Levi-Strauss for the importance they attribute to male dominance, Mitchell sees them as our best hope for understanding how that dominance operates and is perpetuated in all . Although most Marxist feminists will probably feel that Mitchell has betrayed them, she is, nevertheless, quite different from non- Marxist feminists.

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She seems in some almost perverse way to be accepting "the worst of Freud." Instead of stressing the baseness of the mother for both sexes as have Horney, Mead, Chodorow, and others and arguing that the male's "masculinity" is almost a reaction formation against the "femininity" acquired from the mother, Mitchell asserts with Freud that "masculinity" is basic, that "penis envy" is real, and thus in their view "feminity" becomes a mark of oppression. Although she lays great stress on Freud's recognition of the bisexuality of both sexes, the chief meaning of this for her is that women are at first predominantly "masculine" in their orientation until patriarchy renders them "feminine." Women at first are active and "masculine" but are forced to give up and reconcile themselves to "femininity." Most of the foregoing comments refer to Mitchell's concluding section in which she uses Freud and Levi- Strauss to analyze sexism. This is the heart of her theory but the book also contains three other sections. The first is an illuminating exposition, using many direct quotes from Freud's works, of his views on sex differences. She stresses that for Freud masculinity and femininity are not synonymous with male and female but are orientations present in both sexes which are differentially brought out within the family. This is a healthy answer to the misleading oversimplifications and downright errors concerning Freud's thinking that have been accepted both inside and outside of feminist circles. In Part II, Mitchell takes on Wilhelm Reich and R. D. Laing. She considers Reich's formulations to represent retrogression from Freud to biological determinism and Laing's existentialism to actually consist in shifting the blame from the patient to the parent without really freeing anybody. These latter analyses are well worth reading but are only imaginatively relevant to her discussion of the secondary position of women. Before stating her own conclusions about the bases of sexism she briefly criticizes the writings of a number of feminists including Betty Friedan, Shulamith Fire-stone, Simone de Beauvoir, and Kate Millett. In one way or another she accuses all of them of misunderstanding and misusing Freud. Obviously Mitchell has not solved the question of the secondary status of women, but she is perhaps at least looking for the answer in the right place, that is, in the patriarchal structure of the family in all cultures. She is not talking about the structure of any particular concrete family but rather about "the family in one's head" the system of pure cultural elements defining the realm of kinship including sex and generational roles. It has become very unpopular of late to talk about structural universals and yet ironically what we have in Juliet Mitchell is a radical feminist talking about precisely that. As she says, her message to women is "know the devil you have got" and that devil is the universality of patriarchy. To describe the family and its transmission in the unconscious is not to prescribe it forever; it is to understand it, in order to change it. And finally, precisely because human social structure is not a mere reflection of biology, it can be changed.

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With her first book, Women's Estate, Mitchell established herself as a Feminist-Marxist theorist of the highest quality. It was clear that she was at home in a Marxist framework, but it was equally clear that she was not afraid to challenge orthodox Marxist premises. She was able to both apply Marxism and go beyond it in her analysis of the situation of women. Long before its actual appearance it was rumored that, in her second book, Mitchell was going to attempt the same task with Freud. This, of course, was an interesting prospect. It meant a challenge to contemporary feminist analyses of Freud, as well as a new attempt by a first-rate theorist to develop a Marx-Freud synthesis. In Psychoanalysis and Feminism, Juliet Mitchell presents the theories of Freud and his critics, both feminists and non-feminists alike. She explains how Freud's critics all tend, in varying degrees, to deny anything other than present external reality, and thereby to deny the importance or existence of the unconscious. By so doing, they have all over-simplified the possibilities for social change. One is not simply dealing with the economic reality of capitalism, Mitchell tells us; one is also dealing with the historically more pervasive psychological reality of patriarchy. To understand and be able to analyze the psychological reality of patriarchy, one must also understand the unconscious and the effect of the internalized kinship patterns of patriarchy; that is, one must understand Freudian theory. In Psychoanalysis and Feminism, Mitchell gives her readers a clear, accurate, and extremely readable account of not only the major theoretical works of Freud, but also those of Wilhelm Reich and R. D. Laing. Further, for the first time we have a critical examination of six important feminists' works: The Second Sex by Simone de Beavoir; The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan; Patriarchal Attitude by Eva Figues; The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer; The Dialectics of Sex by Shulamith Fire-stone; and Sexual Politics by Kate Millett. Finally Mitchell offers us her own Marx-Freud synthesis, which, in the tradition of her first book, puts issues that are important to feminists within the context of a well-developed theoretical frame. Clearly this is an important book. It merits close examination and invites heated debate. With this in mind, one will proceed with a close, critical and, perhaps at times, overly harsh examination of the Mitchell book. In her presentation of Freudian theory, Mitchell is clear, accurate, and essentially uncritical. She warns us throughout not to interpret Freud's descriptive analysis as moral prescriptions. In relating psychoanalytic theory, Mitchell convincingly argues, with detailed footnotes, against the almost universal misrepresentation of Freud on three highly significant points. Her first premise is that there is a tendency, particularly by feminists, to view Freud out of historical context. It is not often recognized that in basing his theories on instinct, Freud was confined by the unavailability of a language of psychology. Mitchell tells us that he was aware of difficulties with the concept of instinct and tried to humanize it, as far as possible, to "transform the biological theory of instinct into a

M.A. (Political Science) PART II 96 PAPER VIII (Option XI) notion of human drives". Second, that when Freud used the concepts of masculine and feminine, he was using them to indicate activity and passivity, arguing that the mental life of both men and women was "psychologically bi-sexual." Thus, for example, to call the sexual drive "masculine" did not mean it was a male privilege. Finally, in Freud's later work, the stages oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital are no longer separate and strictly sequential stages, but rather they are flexible, often overlapping in time and space. Throughout her analysis, Mitchell is essentially uncritical of Freud's own theory, while thoroughly critical of those theorists known as Freudian. For example, she accepts Freud's concept of penis envy, and rejects any attempt to "reduce" penis envy or any other part of Freudian psychoanalysis to sociological explanation. Explaining penis envy in the little girl, Mitchell tells us, "her sexuality is at this stage phallic (Clitoral) and her attitude active and 'masculine,' she must have the same response to the high merit of the penis" (italics mine). By way of explanation why the girl must have this response, Mitchel quotes Freud who tells us that girls share their ' opinion of the value of the penis and feel themselves unequally treated. Boys, it seems, in their self importance, take the world to be male. Girls, who at first also transfer their own sexuality to men and boys, shortly, begin to assume a male world. Why girls give up their own self-important vision of the world is something Freud did not make clear. Karen Horney and Earnest Jones criticize Freud on this point, "to the entire detriment of the psychology of femininity". Freud, Mitchell tells us, was a scientist whose theories can be used for analysis, while the theories of the post-Freudians are ideologies that can be used, with varying degrees of accuracy, to describe a subjective reality. She first tries to substantiate this thesis by examining the psychoanalytic theories of feminity developed by Karen Horney and Helene Deutsch. Representing opposite ends of the political spectrum, these two Freudian analysts developed theories that, according to Mitchell, indicate a similar misunderstanding of Freud. This misunderstanding makes their analysis not only useless, but dangerous. Mitchell tells us that while Freud was using the term penis envy as a neutral concept, Horney mistakenly treated it as if it were a reproach. Horney tries to demonstrate that normal women experience penis envy and that it is realistic for them to do so not because of a particular biological constitution, but because of social reality. In short, Horney claims that it is male chauvinism that is responsible for the inferior feelings of women. Helene Deutsch similarly misunderstood Freud and although she supports him, "something has happened to the tone and implication”. Both Horney and Deutsch, it seems, have interpreted penis envy to imply a negative value judgment on womanhood. In Deutsch, femininity becomes completely identified with the female and masculinity with the male. Deutsch, in taking Freud's value-free words and reifying them into moral precepts, develops an analysis that clearly indicates the natural inferiority of

M.A. (Political Science) PART II 97 PAPER VIII (Option XI) women. Horney, in arguing against her similarly incorrect interpretation of Freud, claims that the so-called natural inferiority of women is not in accord with women's "true nature." Both Horney and Deutsch, according to Mitchell, have an underlining biologism to their theories: Deutsch in her natural inferiority of women; Horney in her search for women's "true nature." Mitchell tells us that while Freud viewed women as "created in culture" Horney viewed women as "created in nature". Therefore surely Horney would agree, and is in fact saying that "femininity reflects the system," the patriarchal system. We could easily interpret Horney's quest for woman's "true nature" as a search for womanhood, a nature not hampered by patriarchal culture. Even if we accept Mitchell's claim that Freud was not making a value judgment and that in Freud human nature was rooted in culture, we cannot accept her critique of Horney. It seems clear that Mitchell is intent on clearing Freud's name by putting "the blame" on the post-Freudians. To Mitchell, all Freudians, the left and the right, the "good" and the "bad," the feminist and the male chauvinist, are all guilty of misinterpreting Freud; all create theories that are ideologies rather than analytical tools. Iris Marion Young was a fighter for justice and against oppression. A strong commitment, a commitment there as long as any of us had known her, fueled her writing and her activism. Her feminism was part of that commitment to justice. Her attention and sensitivity to the oppression of others was informed by an acute eye to the ways she herself and all women have to face the threats of economic exploitation, social marginalization, powerlessness, cultural hegemony, and systematic violence. In the early essay “Throwing Like a Girl” Young used her own experience as a pivot to come out an understanding of the inhibitions that women internalize. Her entire writings influenced from the synergistic interaction of her apprehension of the experience of herself and others, her philosophical background and understanding, and her keen analytic insight. And in her recent work “Menstrual Meditations” (2005), she returned to the powerful, image-laden technique of “Throwing Like a Girl,” both to point out the implications of hiding one’s menstrual period and to craft alternate ideals for one’s body in the world. Young’s perspective and insight were often paradigm shifting. Early on in her work, for example, she criticized “dual systems theory” (in which two systems, patriarchy and capitalism, oppress women) on the grounds that its parallelism allows Marxist theory to remain unchanged. At the time, that theory had more or less grounded many thinking’s. Her essay produced the kind of rock-bottom conceptual jolt that leaves their thought forever changed. Her work on justice always had the oppression of real people at its center. She worked on the abstract questions of justice by forging intellectual tools that helped those who are marginalized or oppressed figure out their position and how to get out of it, and forced the more powerful to recognize how they oppressed others.

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The dominance approach to arises out of a Marxian background that models gender difference on class relations. The relation between manager and worker is not just one of “difference.” The manager and worker are situated within a system of social relations that unequally distributes money, power, status, etc. Likewise, men and women aren’t just “different,” but are categories of persons – like manager and worker – that are defined in terms of social relations that position them in a complex class/race/sex hierarchy. Given this background to the dominance approach, it is useful to consider a bit of the history of the relation between Marxism and feminism. According to Heidi Hartmann, a socialist feminist, Marxism and feminism are two sets of systems of analysis which have been married but the marriage is unhappy because only Marxism, with its analytic power to analyse capital is dominating. But according to her while Marxism provides an analysis of historical development and of capital it has not analysed the relations of men and women. She says that the relations between men and women are also determined by a system which is patriarchal, which feminists have analysed. Both historical materialist analysis of Marxism and patriarchy as a historical and social structure are necessary to understand the development of western capitalist society and the position of women within it, to understand how relations between men have been created and how patriarchy has shaped the course of capitalism. She is critical of Marxism on the women's question. She says that Marxism has dealt with the women's question only in relation to the economic system. She says women are viewed as workers, and Engels believed that sexual division of labour would be destroyed if women came into production, and all aspects of women's life are studied only in relation to how it perpetuates the capitalist system. Even the study on housework dealt with the relation of women to capital but not to men. Though Marxists are aware of the sufferings of women they have focused on private property and capital as the source of women's oppression. But according to her, early Marxists failed to take into account the difference in men's and women's experience of capitalism and considered patriarchy a left over from the earlier period. She says that Capital and private property do not oppress women as women; hence their abolition will not end women's oppression. Engels and other Marxists do not analyse the labour of women in the family properly. Who benefits from her labour in the house she asks not only the capitalist, but men as well. A materialist approach ought not to have ignored this crucial point. It follows that men have a material interest in perpetuating women's subordination. Hartmann concluded that there is no pure patriarchy and no pure capitalism. Production and reproduction are combined in a whole society in the way it is organized and hence we have what she calls patriarchal capitalism. Some other socialist feminists do not agree with Hartmann's position that there are two autonomous systems operating, one, capitalism in the

M.A. (Political Science) PART II 99 PAPER VIII (Option XI) realm of production, and two, patriarchy in the realm of reproduction and ideology and they call this the dual systems theory. Iris Young for example believes that Hartmann's dual system makes patriarchy some kind of a universal phenomenon which is existing before capitalism and in every known society makes it ahistorical and prone to cultural and racial bias. Iris Young and some other socialist feminists argue that there is only one system that is capitalist patriarchy. According to Young the concept that can help to analyse this clearly is not class, because it is gender- blind, but division of labour. She argues that the gender based division of labour is central, fundamental to the structure of the relations of production. 1. Dual systems: Capitalism and Patriarchy On the dual systems approach, capitalism and patriarchy are distinct systems whose interaction explains the oppression of women and workers. “Patriarchy “interacts” with the system of the mode of production i.e. capitalism – to produce the concrete phenomena of women’s oppression in society.” Young discusses two forms of the dual systems approach: (i) Patriarchy as a mechanism for gendering psychology: Patriarchy is an “ideological and psychological structure independent of specific social, economic and historical relations”. For example: “Mitchell understands patriarchy as a universal and formal structure of kinship patterning and psychic development that interacts with the particular structure of a mode of production.” Problems: a) It “dehistoricizes and universalizes women’s oppression.” b) Women are involved in work outside the home in gender-specific ways that the account misses. “Describing such differences...as merely “expressions” of one and the same universal system of male domination trivializes the depth and complexity of women’s oppression.” c) It creates a false hope for a “common consciousness among women.” And also makes patriarchy seem like a monolithic trans- historical phenomenon that cannot be stopped. d) It grants Marx’s idea that the “motor of history” is economic, and to be understood in Marxian terms. e) It “cannot explain how men in a particular society occupy an institutionalized position of superiority and privilege. For men can occupy and maintain such an institutionalized position of superiority only if the organization of social and economic relations gives them a level of control over access to resources that women do not have.” (ii) Patriarchy as a mechanism for gendering reproduction: Patriarchy is a ‘system of social relations of production (or “reproduction”) relatively independent of the relations of production that Marxists traditionally analyze.” For example, “Hartmann...maintains that patriarchy is a set of social relations with a material

M.A. (Political Science) PART II 100 PAPER VIII (Option XI) base that lies in men’s control over women’s labor and in women’s exclusion from access to essential productive resources.” The separation of the systems is explicated in terms of “separate spheres” – women in the private sphere and men in the public. Problems: a) The model of separate spheres seems to treat a capitalist form of family and work as universal. This obscures differences between capitalist and pre-capitalist societies. b) Capitalism infiltrates the private sphere. It controls the “private work of consumption” and “rationalizes sexual and affective relations for its own ends”. c) Focusing on the private sphere of women’s labor “diverts attention from a capitalism that increasingly exploits women in gender-specific paid work.” Therefore, “It would be much more direct to construct a theory of capitalist patriarchy as a unified system entailing specific forms of gender structuring in its production relations and ideology.” According to young, “We need not merely a synthesis of feminism with traditional Marxism, but also a thoroughly feminist historical materialism, which regards the social relations of a particular historical social formation as one system in which gender differentiation is a core attribute.” 2. as a Unified Theory Socialist feminism involves a commitment to “the practical unity of the struggle against capitalism and the struggle for women’s liberation.” In Marx, historical materialism is the view that the “moving force” of history consists in changes in the material conditions caused by the need to produce and reproduce what’s needed for survival. In order to be productive, humans organize themselves into social relations that situate them differently with respect to the material goods and means of production that create consumable goods. Young argues that a “feminist historical materialism” must have several features: a) It must be a “total social theory.” b) It must take seriously the idea that class and sex domination are intimately connected. c) It must be truly materialist. On her view, ...a materialist account [is] one that considers phenomena of “consciousness”...as rooted in real social relationships. This should not imply “reducing” such phenomena of consciousness to social structures and social relationships, nor does it even mean that the phenomena of consciousness cannot be treated as having logic of their own. Nor should it mean that phenomena like attitudes and cultural definitions cannot enter as elements into the explanation of a particular structure of social relationships. This requirement calls for a methodological priority to

M.A. (Political Science) PART II 101 PAPER VIII (Option XI) concrete social institutions and practices, along with the material conditions in which they take place. d) It must be thoroughly historical. “It must avoid any explanations that claim to apply to societies across epochs.” Her second article, “Is Male Gender Identity the Cause of Male Domination?” comes to similar conclusions. Young says male gender identity is not the cause of male domination; class domination and male domination can't be reduced to individual psychology. She suggests that the work of Chodorow, Nancy Hartsock, and Sandra Harding, among others, must be questioned because they seem to claim as much. Defining the differences between structural relations of labor and power and symbolic relations of culture, Young states that male domination is structural, while gender differentiation belongs to the cultural sphere. According to Young, DST argued that “women’s oppression arises from two distinct and relatively autonomous systems. The system of male domination, most often called “patriarchy,” produces the specific gender oppression of women; the system of the mode of production and class relations produces the class oppression and work alienation of most women.” Young states that DST seems inadequate and spells out the questions arising for her. She writes, “Socialist feminists agreed with the radical feminist claim that traditional Marxian theory cannot articulate the origins and structure of sex oppression in a way that accounts for the presence of this oppression as a pervasive and fundamental element of most societies. But they did not thereby wish to reject entirely the Marxist theory of history or critique of capitalism.” Iris Young quotes Linda Phelps’s 1975 essay “Patriarchy and Capitalism” as an early formulation of DST: “If sexism is a social relationship in which males have authority over females, patriarchy is a term which describes the whole system of interaction which arises from this basic relationship, just as capitalism is a system built on the relationship between capitalist and worker. Patriarchal and capitalist social relations are two markedly different ways that human beings have interacted with each other and built social, political, and economic institutions.” Young enthusiastically affirms, “Development of the dual systems approach has fostered major theoretical, analytical, and practical advances over traditional Marxist treatments of “the women question” and has contributed to a revitalization of Marxist method.” Young focuses her proposal with her own duality, “all socialist political work should be feminist in its thrust and … socialists should recognize feminist concerns as internal to their own. Likewise socialist-feminists take as a basic principle that feminist work should be anti-capitalist in its thrust and should link women’s situation with the phenomena of racism and imperialism. Once again, this political principle would best be served by a social theory that regards these phenomena as aspects of a single system of social relations.” She argues that

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“a feminist historical materialism must explore the hypothesis that class domination arises from and/or is intimately tied to patriarchal domination. It cannot be simply assume that sex domination causes class society, as most radical feminists have done. But the question must be taken seriously of whether there is a causal relation here, to what extent there is, and precisely how the causal relations operate if and when they exist.” One of the critical problems in trying to construct a persuasive argument about the interconnections of patriarchy and capitalism is that the language at hand (the family vs. the economy) treats them as separate systems. In order to avoid this false separation, Zillah Eisenstein, in her essay, “Constructing a Theory of Capitalist Patriarchy and Socialist Feminism” discuss how patriarchy and capitalism operate within the sexual division of labor and society, rather than within the family. As the most basic definition of people’s activity, purposes, goals, desires, and dreams, according to their biological sex, the sexual division of labor and society is at the structural and ideological base of patriarchy and capitalism. It divides men and women into their respective hierarchical sex roles and structures their related duties in the family domain and within the economy. This statement of the mutual dependence of patriarchy and capitalism not only assumes the malleability of patriarchy to the needs of capital but assumes the malleability of capital to the needs of patriarchy. In other words, when one states that capitalism needs patriarchy in order to operate efficiently one is really noting the way in which male supremacy, as a system of sexual hierarchy, supplies capitalism (and systems previous to it) with the necessary order and control. As such, this patriarchal system of control is necessary to the smooth functioning of society and of the economic system, and hence should not be undermined. This argument is to underscore the importance of the system of cultural, social, economic, and political control that emanates from the system of male supremacy. To the extent that the concern with profit and the concern with societal control are inextricably connected (but cannot be reduced to each other), patriarchy and capitalism become an integral process, with specific elements of their own system necessitated by the other. Strategy for women's liberation After tracing the history of the relationship between the left movement and the in the US, a history where they have walked separately, Hartmann strongly feels that the struggle against capitalism cannot be successful unless feminist issues are also taken up. She puts forward a strategy in which she says that the struggle for socialism must be an alliance with groups with different interests ( e.g. women's interests are different from general working class interests) and secondly she says that women must not trust men to liberate them after revolution. Women must have their own 48 separate organisations and their own power base. Iris Young too supports the formation of autonomous women's groups

M.A. (Political Science) PART II 103 PAPER VIII (Option XI) but thinks that there are no issues concerning women that do not involve an attack on capitalism as well. As far as her strategy is concerned she means that there is no need for a vanguard party to make revolution successful and that women's groups must be independent of the socialist organization. Jagger puts this clearly when she writes that, “the goal of socialist feminism is to overthrow the whole social order of what some call capitalist patriarchy in which women suffer alienation in every aspect of their lives. The socialist feminist strategy is to support some ''mixed" socialist organizations. But also form independent women's groups and ultimately an independent women’s movement committed with equal dedication to the destruction of capitalism and the destruction of male dominance. The women's movement will join in coalitions with other revolutionary movements, but it will not give up its organizational independence.” They have taken up agitations and propaganda on issues that are anti-capitalist and against male domination. Since they identify the mode of reproduction (procreation etc) as the basis for the oppression of women, they have included it in the Marxist concept of the base of society. So they believe that many of the issues being taken up like the struggle against rape, , for free abortion are both anti-capitalist and a challenge to male domination. They have supported the efforts of developing a women's culture which encourages the collective spirit. They also support the efforts to build alternative institutions, like health care facilities and encouraged community living or some form of midway arrangement. In this they are close to radical feminists. But unlike radical feminists whose aim is that these facilities should enable women to move away from patriarchal, white culture into their own haven, socialist feminists do not believe such a retreat is possible within the framework of capitalism. In short socialist feminists see it as a means of organizing and helping women, while radical feminists see it as a goal of completely separating from men. Socialist feminists, like radical feminists believe that efforts to change the family structure, which is what they call the cornerstone of women's oppression must start now. So they have been encouraging community living or some sort of mid way arrangements where people try to overcome the gender division in work sharing, looking after children, where lesbians and heterosexual people can live together. Though they are aware that this is only partial, and success cannot be achieved within a capitalist society they believe it is important to make the effort. Basically the main theoretical writings of socialist feminists are trying to combine Marxist theory with radical feminist theory and their emphasis is on proving that women's oppression is the central and moving force in the struggle within society. Some Socialist feminists by emphasizing reproduction are underplaying the importance of the role of women in social production. The crucial question is that without women having control over the means of production and over the means of producing necessities and wealth how can the subordination of

M.A. (Political Science) PART II 104 PAPER VIII (Option XI) women ever be ended? This is not only an economic question, but also a question of power, a political question. Though this can be considered in the context of the gender based division of labour in practice their emphasis is on relations within the heterosexual family and on ideology of patriarchy. On the other hand the Marxist perspective stresses women's role in social production and her withdrawal from playing a significant role in social production has been the basis for her subordination in class society. So concerns are with how the division of labour, relations to the means of production and labour itself in a particular society is organized to understand how the ruling classes exploited women and forced their subordination. Patriarchal norms and rules helped to intensify the exploitation of women and reduce the value of their labour. It is meant to be gender based division of labour has been a useful tool to analyse the patriarchal bias in the economic structure of particular societies. But the socialist feminists who are putting forward the concept of gender division of labour as being more useful than private property are confusing the point, historically and analytically. The first division of labour was between men and women. And it was due to natural or biological causes – the role of women in bearing children. But this did not mean inequality between them – the domination of one sex over another. Women's share in the survival of the group was very important - the food gathering they did, the discovery they made of growing and tending plants, the domestication of animals was essential for the survival and advance of the group. At the same time further division of labour took place which was not sex based. The invention of new tools, knowledge of domesticating animals, of pottery, of metal work, of agriculture, all these and more contributed to making a more complex division of labour. All this has to be seen in the context of the overall society and its structure, the development of and kinship structures, of interaction and clashes with other groups and of control over the means of production that were being developed. With the of surplus, with wars and the subjugation of other groups who could be made to labour, the process of withdrawal of women from social production appears to have begun. This led to the concentration of the means of production and the surplus in the hands of clan heads/ tribe heads begun which became manifest as male domination. Whether this control of the means of production remained communal in form, or whether it developed in the form of private property, whether by then class formation took place fully or not is different in different societies. The need is to study the particular facts of specific societies. Based on the information available in his time, Engels traced the process in Western Europe in ancient times; it is for us to trace this process in our respective societies. The full fledged institutionalization of patriarchy could only come later, that is the defense of or the ideological justification for the withdrawal of women from social production and

M.A. (Political Science) PART II 105 PAPER VIII (Option XI) their role being limited to reproduction in monogamous relationships, could only come after the full development of class society and the emergence of the State. Conclusion Hence the mere fact of gender division of labour does not explain the inequality. To assert that gender based division of labour is the basis of women's oppression rather than class still begs the question. If we do not find some social, material reasons for the inequality we are forced into accepting the argument that men have an innate drive for power and domination. Such an argument is self- defeating because it means there is no point in struggling for equality. It can never be realized. The task of bearing children by itself cannot be the reason for this inequality, for as we have said earlier it was a role that was lauded and welcomed in primitive society. Other material reasons had to arise that was the cause, which the radical and socialist feminists are not probing. In the realm of ideology socialist feminists have done detailed analyses exposing the patriarchal culture in their society, e.g. the myth of motherhood. But the one-sided emphasis by some of them who focus only on ideological and psychological factors makes them loose sight of the wider socio-economic structure on which this ideology and psychology is based. In organizational questions the socialist feminists are trailing the radical feminists and anarcha-feminists. They have clearly placed their strategy but this is not a strategy for socialist revolution. It is a completely reformist strategy because it does not address the question of how socialism can be brought about. If, as they believe, socialist/ communist parties should not do it then the women's groups should bring forth a strategy of how they will overthrow the male of the monopoly bourgeoisie. They are restricting their practical activities to small group organizing, building alternative communities, of general propaganda and mobilizing around specific demands. This is a form of economist practice. These activities in themselves are useful to organize people at the basic level but they are not enough, to overthrow capitalism and to take the process of women's liberation ahead. This entails a major organising work involving confrontation with the State – its intelligence and armed power.

Question : Discuss Socialist Feminism.

Suggested Readings :

Philosophical Trends in the Feminist Movement : Annuradha Gandhy Building on the strengths of the Socialist Feminist Tradition : Sue Ferguson