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Home , Barbara Ehrenreich, Marxist feminism, Socialist feminism

Socialist— : An Appraisal Ruth Connell

The Women’s Liberation Movement is argued that women were not at least nearing the end of its first decade of activity. responsible for the home, whatever potential What has particularly distinguished this they might develop in addition to this. (2) second wave of from its nineteenth Many feminists certainly recognised that and twentieth century counterparts is its the source of inequality was the patriarchal awareness that a program of democratic society they lived in. Yet their analysis of rights plus integration into social production this, and their plans for its change was is not sufficient to establish full equality mainly based on economic independence for between the sexes. This is also what women. distinguishes the feminist political perspective from the traditional socialist , a remarkable program for women’s emancipation. feminist theorist and bolshevik, saw The traditional socialist program relied personal relationships as an essential part of heavily on the work of Engels (1884) who each individual’s experience, and as such, argued: central to the struggle of each individual for a better life. ... the emancipation of women and their equality with men. are impossible and The three basic circumstances distorting must remain so long as women are the modern psyche — extreme egoism, excluded from socially productive work the idea that married partners possess and restricted to housework, which is each other, and the acceptance of the private. The emancipation of women inequality of the sexes in terms of becomes possible only when women are physical and emotional experience — enabled to take part in production on a must be faced if the sexual problem is to large, social, scale, and when domestic be settled. duties require their attention only to a minor degree. (1) But Kollontai still held that entry into social production was the answer. The first period of feminism was also influenced by classical liberal philosophy Only a change in the economic role of such as that of John Stuart Mill. Essentially women, and her independent this projected the granting of certain legal involvement in production, can and will and economic rights to women but with the bring about the weakening of these understanding that childbearing and mistaken and hypocritical ideas. (3) privatised childrearing was a vocation and The position of the early feminists has one that was necessarily feminine. been summarised by Ellen Du Bois: Many early feminists argued that women We should understand the inability of were capable of both home and work; few nineteenth century feminists to develop solutions adequate to the of relations of domination and submission women less as a failure of their political which exist between other social groups, imagination or boldness than as a such as classes and ethnic groups. By its reflection of the of historical insistence on a politics which embraces both development of and of male the “private” and the political/economic supremacy. (4) sphere, feminism points the way to a more With the examples of several decades of comprehensive socialist politics for the socialist states, contemporary feminists, industrial capitalist countries. (8) while recognising the many advantages Eisenstein argues that socialist women have, still point to the many has a political and intellectual commitment important shortcomings as evidence that to understanding the problems of women’s economic and legal liberation do not oppression in terms of a real synthesis necessarily entail feminist liberation, i.e. full between the traditions of marxist analysis sexual equality. and feminist theory. has detailed the three This doesn’t mean merely adding one major kinds of evidence of the persistence of theory to the other, but rather redefining sex inequality as: each through the conflict that derives from and between both traditions. (9) 1. by sex; 2. ; From the outset it becomes important for feminists to have a clearly defined analysis 3. low representation of women in of the term ‘’. positions of political leadership. (5) established that ‘patriarchy’ is a*‘universal The other reason for the dissatisfaction of (geographical and historical) mode of power contemporary feminists with traditional relationships’ and domination. According to theories of equality has been the “ successes” this thesis, writes, of capitalism — at the time of the emergence ... patriarchy is the of a the socialist whereby men establish their power and program of “integration into social maintain control. All societies and all production” had been achieved to a social groups within these are sexist in significant extent within capitalism. the fundamental sense that their entire Thus contemporary feminism began organisation, at every level, is predicated on the domination of one sex with the realisation that the solutions to sexual inequality lay not only in the by the other. Specific variations are less realm of political , but in an significant than the general truth. (10) area which had so far received little The term ‘patriarchy’ has been further attention from political movements — refined as part of our particular the realm of private life. (6) historical/political conjuncture to ‘capitalist patriarchy’ — a term which emphasises the Betsey Stone (1970) states that in particular, mutually reinforcing dialectical relationship between capitalist class structure and The rise of , with its hierarchical sexual structuring. (11) questioning of every aspect of society, was key in creating a political climate in If the division of labor is based in which ... deep prejudices about women capitalism then the sexual division of labor could be unmasked. (7) reflects both this basis and that of patriarchy. What has been important is that marxist theory has been subjected to reappraisal by The sexual division of labor and society the feminist movement in its search for expresses the most basic hierarchical strategy for action. Socialist feminists division in our society between within the women’s liberation movement masculine and feminine role. It is the have seen women’s liberation as an issue basic mechanism of control for which transcends class. patriarchical . It designates the fact that roles, purposes, activity, one’s Feminism offers important insights into labor, are determined sexually. It expresses the very notion that the The ‘true’ women and the ‘true’ biological distinction, male/female, is are images of peace and plenty: in used to distinguish social functions and actuality they may both be sites of individual power. (12) violence and despair. (17) Eisenstein argues that to the extent that Historically and cross-culturally, women’s the concern with profit and the concern with mothering has become a fundamentally societal control are inextricably connected determining feature of social organisation. (but cannot be reduced to each other), Nancy Chodorow argues that just as the patriarchy and capitalism become an actual physical and biological requirements integral process; specific elements of each of childbearing and childcare were declining, system are necessitated by the other. (13) women’s mothering role gained Nancy Hartsock contends that, at bottom, psychological and ideological significance feminism is a mode of analysis. The power of and came increasingly to dominate women’s the method feminists develop grows out of lives, outside the home as well as within it. the fact that it enables women to connect (18) their everyday lives with an analysis of the Chodorow argues that women’s mothering institutions which shape them. creates ideological and psychological modes By calling attention to the specific which reproduce orientations to, and experiences of individuals, feminism structures of, male dominance in individual calls attention to the totality of social men and builds an assertion of male relations, to the as a superiority into the very definition of whole. (14) masculinity. (19) This feminist mode of analysis makes necessary, leads to an integration Talcott Parsons claims that the of theory and practice, and leads to a ‘stabilisation and tension-management of transformation of social relations. (15) adult personalities’ is a major family function. Chodorow argues that the more This type of assertion makes it imperative correct reading is that the wife/ does that socialist movements/parties re- the tension-management and stabilising evualate programs and strategies which rely and the husband/father is thereby soothed only on a class-based analysis of capitalism. and steadied. This focus on women’s Feminist analysis will continue to challenge social/emotional role leads us away from the traditional socialist formula and insist noticing that this ‘role’ is work. (20) on a new kind of politics embracing both the ‘private’ and the ‘public’, the cultural and the Even today few recognise that housework economic. (16) as we know it was born in advanced industrial society, reflecting the This feminist assertion obviously does not transformation of women who had been go unchallenged by left/socialist groups. Yet manufacturers, farmers, skilled teachers, socialist feminists believe that until a and healers into small-scale janitors. (21) feminist analysis of patriarchy is part of the marxist analysis of capitalism, any Much analysis has focussed on women in revolution would end much as has already the home, as unpaid worker, socialiser of been observed. Feminists are thus children, stabiliser of other workers, and as developing and refining theory with the goal reproducer. The biological function of that to understand the process is to reproduction has in turn been more understand the way the process may be thoroughly analysed from the perspective of changed. women’s sexuality and the demand for control over her body. Juliet Mitchell has written that the of ‘’ presents her as an A large movement has centred on women’s undifferentiated whole. Likewise the ‘family’ unpaid housework. This has resulted in is presented as a unit that ensures across thorough analysis of women in the family, time and space. Within its supposed and political demands for wages for permanent structure, eternal women finds housework. This movement seems to be her place. particularly strong in the UK and North America, its impact in Australia seems to be women’s specific function within the slight. capitalist division of labor and, most importantly, the specific forms women’s in arguing the case for attack must take against it. (23) wages against housework says that not only has housework been imposed on women, but Cox and Federici argue that the family is it has been transformed into a natural essentially the of attribute of female physique and personality, women’s wageless labor, of women’s an internal need, an aspiration, supposedly wageless dependence on men, and coming from the depths of the female consequently, the institutionalisation of a character. Its unwaged condition has been division of power which has successfully the most powerful weapon in reinforcing the functioned in disciplining women and men common assumption that housework is not as well. (24) work. As well, housework involves a peculiar One result of this is that women become combination ot physical, emotional and repressive figures, disciplinarians of all the sexual services which women are performing members of the family, ideologically and basically for . psychologically. (25) Federici argues that to demand wages for The essence of capitalist ideology is to housework is to expose the fact that glorify the family as a ‘private world’, the hoaseworK is already money for capital: last frontier where men and women ‘keep that capital has made and makes money (their) souls alive’. This ideology opposes the out of our cooking, smiling, fucking. (22) family (or the community) to the factory, the personal to the social, the private to the Recognition of housework, which is still public, productive to unproductive work. It is the primary identification of women, as a totally functional to women’s unpaid work in moment of capitalist production, clarifies that it makes it appear as an act of love. But the way the wage relation has to the household, and this largely determines mystified the social function of the the distribution of households into family is an extension o f the way capital neighbourhoods; at the same time capital mystifies waged labor and the organises distribution of particular goods subordination of all social relations to and services to particular areas. the ‘cash nexus’. (26) Weinbaum and Bridges go on to analyse However, Eisenstein doesn’t believe that the revolutionary potential of community- the major argument is whether domestic based struggles around consumption labor can be squeezed into the pre-existing demands. They view these demands as categories of wage labor, and threatening bourgeois ; although ‘productive’ work. Rather, she argues, they may be accommodated, they serve as a women’s revolutionary potential emanates practice in self-management, an important from the very nature and organisation of the component in the socialist alternative. They work as domestic work — both in its demonstrate that the possibilities of patriarchal and in its capitalist elements. organised action show the constraints on political activity within capitalism. To the degree domestic labor is a sexual Community and household-based demands, organisation of economic existence, it is they believe, insist that production and a cross-class reality that affects all provision of services be oriented to social women. This is the feminist, political needs, and thus embody values antithetical concern which is left out of much of the to capitalist production. (30) discussion of domestic labor when the pre-existing analytical categories of However, they make it quite plain they are class take priority. (27) not so naive as to believe that all housewives Weinbaum and Bridges introduce another are politically active, much less consideration of women’s domestic labor resolutionary! when they argue that the emphasis is not on Just as wage laborers may feel housework as a kind of ‘production’. Rather ‘inadequate’ because their earnings are it is that housewives’ activity is largely a low or because they are not promoted, so reflection of the fact that capital organises housewives may internalise the manufacture of goods and the provision contradictions which are structural. (31) of services. Their analysis focusses on consumption: Weinbaum and Bridges provide another alternative to the argument that women The work of consumption, while subject must enter the productive sphere to become to and structured by capital, embodies revolutionary. One feels that their analysis the needs — material and non-material is particularly important because it provides — most antagonistic to • capitalist marxists with a necessary link in organising production; and the contradiction the revolutionary potential of women between private production and socially determined needs is embodied in the each locked in her family as the activities of the housewife. (28) chrysalis in the cocoon that imprisons itself by its own work, to die and leave They argue that housewives’ work is silk for capital. (32) scheduled by capital and the state. They must work in relation to schedules developed Women’s involvement in the workforce elsewhere — and unco-ordinated with each presents problems or contradictions which other. The consumption worker unlike the are based in women’s role in the home. wage laborer, has no singular and obvious Women have traditionally moved into areas antagonist, but many: the state, the of work which represent extensions of their supermarket, the landlord, etc. (29) ‘private’ life — in service industries and boring, repetitive, low-paid work. This makes mockery of the oft-repeated cry ‘housewives are their own boss!’ argues that job segregation by sex is the primary However, women’s role in consumption is mechanism in capitalist society that constructed by capital in complex ways: maiontains the superiority of men over capital organises the distribution of income women, because it enforces lower wages for women in the labor market. Low wages keep explain the cultural subordination of women. women dependent on men because they Without attempting to present Freud’s encourage women to marry. Married women theories, or those of Lacan, it is relevant to must perform domestic chores for their husbands. This domestic division, in turn, present some marxist-feminist debate on their importance. acts to weaken women’s position in the labor market. Thus the hierarchical domestic Criticisms of Freud’s work are probably as division of labor is perpetuated by the labor diverse as its interpretations. Eva Figes market, and vice versa. (33) argues that the one serious criticism that must be levelled at Freud is his inability to Hartmann cites the anthropological work see beyond the immediate social situation, so of Sherry Ortner: “female is to male as that he is constantly confusing cause and culture is to nature” , culture devalues nature; effect, and his obstinate refusal to recognise females are associated with nature in all that his own present day was itself and are thus devalued. This view is transitional. In a very real sense he appears compatible with Rosaldo, whose emphasis is to have subscribed to a view of human on the public/private split, and Levi Strauss progress in which the here and now was the who assumes the subordination of women ultimate goal and seems to have excluded during the process of the creation of society. any idea of further change beyond his own (34) lifetime. (38) Hartmann posits that the ability of men to Campioni argues that the basic tenets of organise themselves played a crucial role in the science of psychoanalysis are without limiting women’s participation in the wage- any doubt scientific, and it depends on the labor market, i.e. guilds; the rise of male and interpretation of these how far we can keep the elimination of female professions during these free from the intervention of sex/class the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. interests. She views this task as pre­ Through the formative period of industrial eminently one for marxist feminists — to capitalism, men appear to have been better salvage the important scientific concepts able to organise as wage workers, this from idealist or sexist interpretations. The organisational knowledge growing out of important scientific concepts being primal their position in the family and in the repression and the castration complex. (39) division of labor. (35) All that can be said is, as women, we This argument has a little of the chicken cannot accept the specificity of this and the egg in it. However, Hartmann argues concept, since it refers to an anatomical that, with the separation of work from the destiny and an invariant patriarchal home, men became less dependent on women structure, which are clearly determined for industrial production, while women by economical/political/ideological became more dependent on men considerations and which are economically. Men increased their control unacceptable to any feminist. (39) over technology, production and marketing, as they excluded women from industry, Campioni insists on a historical education and political organisation. (36) materialist perspective in examining the theory of psychoanalysis to come to an Zaretsky also follows this line of analysis understanding of the nature and function of but concludes that capitalism exacerbated ideology: the sexual division of labor and created the appearance that women work for their It is not psychoanalysis which husbands. In reality, women who did ultimately explains the oppression of domestic work at home were working for women (in their function of bearers of capital. (37) specific sexed relations, i.e. ‘wives’ and ‘’ and ‘daughters’), but their All these arguments lead back to a social relations which explain their consideration of patriarchal culture, for the psychology. (40) reasons why the inequality of the sexes became part of our society. Marxists and While there is still debate over specific feminists have in the past few years turned to resolution of issues for women — both as a rereading of Freud in their attempts to issues which must be confronted within capitalism, as issues facing socialist is losing its perspective of growth and societies, and, ultimately, as questions becoming very diverse. facing future communist societies — there does exist a feminist consensus on certain What must not be lost sight of are the principles. These may be summarised as questions of the relationship between the follows: personal and the political, of the importance placed on group process and means, and of 1. The establishment of women’s the importance of theory being tied to reproductive freedom and physical practice. These all reflect the basic issue of integrity as inalienable rights (this how feminism and can be includes the rights to abortion and synthesised in practice. (42) contraception regardless of population policy). Petchesky sees four critical relationships, and within these, the dynamic 2. A social commitment to the interconnections between the public and the eradication of male dominance in all its private, production and reproduction, are manifestations — authoritarian surfacing in a concrete and historically relations within the family, the sexual precise way. These are: objectification of women, stereotyped images of women in the media and 1. The relationship between kinship, or the family, and clan structure. The culture and so on. various ways that family and kinship 3. Reappraisal of women’s domestic systems both reflect and help to reshape labor, aimed at an increased social social relations outside the family. valuation of women’s necessary and productive work within the home giving 2. The relationship between control economic security to women, an over the means of reproduction increased sharing of domestic labor (specifically sexuality and childbirth) between the sexes, and the socialisation and male power. An important of functions which can be more instrument of patriarchal and effectively and satisfactorily performed capitalist/imperialist domination. outsid the home. 3. The relationship between 4. Democratic control over the patriarchal ideology and the state, its ensemble produced for form and its legitimacy. We are domestic and private consumption with beginning to learn how patriarchy regard to quality, intrinsic use value and underwrites state power. This involves ideological content. (41) the functions of dominant anti-woman 5. An end to all economic exploitation such as the ‘double standard’, misogynistic pollution taboos, cults of and discrimination against women, including full access to all occupations, motherhood, etc., as major legitimations for the ancient and modern bourgeois backed up by provision of full community-based childcare. state. In attempting to weave together various 4. The relationship between all this analyses of society and future demands of a and women’s consciousness and the nature of revolutionary socialist society it is easy to impart the impression of general agreement between transformations. (43) feminists. This is far from the truth. Not only Feminist analysis is an ongoing debate. do sharp and, at present, irreconciliable This debate is critical to the further divisions exist between various groups development of the marxist-feminist (especially along party political lines) but analysis of women’s position under socialist feminists within the women’s capitalism and their position under the liberation movement are divided on strategy that we are yet to achieve. proposals. How the will ultimately This in many ways reflects the position unite organisationally, we don’t know. We do women are in through the current economic know that up to now many of us have been ‘crisis’, when many of their gains are being told to forget our own needs in some wider eroded and the women’s movement generally interest which was never wide enough to include us. And so we have learnt by bitter Housework; A Perspective on Capital and experience that nothing unified and the Left, Falling Wall Press, Bristol, p. 6. revolutionary will be formed until each 24. Ibid, p. 7. section of the exploited will have made its 25. Dalla Costa, M. and James, S. 1972), The own autonomous power felt. (44) Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, Falling Wall Press, Bristol, p. 47. 26. Cox and Federici (1975), p. 9. 1. Engels, F. (1884), “The Origin of the Family, and the State” , in Marx-Engels: 27. Eisenstein (1979), p. 169. Selected Works, II, 1962, p. 311. 28. Weinbaum, B. and Bridges, A., “The Other 2. Guettel, C. (1974), Marxism and Feminism, Side of the Paycheck: and the Canadian Women’s Educational Press, Toronto, Structure of Consumption” , in Eisenstein (1979), pp. 5-7. pp. 193-4. 3. Kollontai, A. (1972), Sexual Relations and 29. Ibid, p. 195. the Class Struggle, translated by Alix Holt, 30. Ibid, p. 201. Falling Wall Press, Bristol, p. 9. 31. Ibid, p. 205. 4. Du Bois, E., “The Nineteenth Century Woman Suffrage Movement and the Analysis of Women’s 32. Dalla Costa and James (1975), p. 48. Oppression” , in Eisenstein (1979), p. 149. 33. Hartmann, H., “ Capitalism, Patriarchy and 5. Ehrenreich, B. (1977), “Contemporary Job Segregation by Sex” , in Eisenstein (1979), p. Feminism and Socialist Movements”, in 208. Australian Left Review, No. 63, 1978, p. 9. 34. Ibid, p. 209. 6. Ibid, p. 10. 35. Ibid, pp. 215-6. 7. Stone, B. (1970), Sisterhood is Powerful, 36. Ibid, p. 217. Pathfinder Press, New York, p. 4. 37. Ibid, p. 237. 8. ^Ehrenreich (197ZL c. 13. 9. Eisenstein, Z.R. (ed.) (1979), Capitalist 38. Figes, E. (1970), Patriarchal Attitudes, Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Virago, London, pp. 136, 139. Feminism, Press, New York, p. 39. Campioni, M. (1979), “ Psychoanalysis and 1. ” , in Working Papers in Sex, 10. Mitchell, J. (1971), Women’s Estate, Science and Culture, VI, No. 2, 1979, pp. 55-56. Penguin, London, p. 65. 40. Ibid, p. 35. 11. Eisenstein (1979), p. 5. 41. Ehrenreich (1977), pp. 12-13. 12. Ibid, p. 17. 42. Eisenstein (1979), p. 350. 13. Ibid, p. 27. 43. Petchesky, R., “ Dissolving the Hyphen: A 14. Hartsock, N., “ Feminist Theory and the Report on Marxist-Feminist Study Groups 1-5” , in Development of Revolutionary Strategy”, in Eisenstein (1979), p. 377. Eisenstein (1979), pp. 58-61. 44. James, S. (1975), Sex, Race and Class, 15. Ibid, p. 64. Falling Wall Press and Race Today Publications, 16. Ehrenreich (1977), p. 16. London, p. 19. 17. Mitchell (1971), p. 100. Also: 18. Chodorow, N., “ Mothering, Male Dominance Benston, M., The Political Economy of and Capitalism” , in Eisenstein (1979), p. 90. Women’s Liberation. No publication 19. Ibid, p. 95. information. 20. Ibid, p. 97. Comer, L., The Myth of Motherhood, Spokesman Pamphlet, No. 21, Nottingham. 21. Gordon, L., “The Struggle for Reproductive Freedom: Three Stages of Feminism”, in Gibson S. and Stevens, J., (1978), “ Into the Eisenstein (1979), p. 111. Socialist-Feminist Swamp” , in Scarlet Woman, 7, August 1978. 22. Federici, S. (1975), Wages Against Housework, Falling Wall Press, Bristol, p. 5. Study Group, Menstrual Taboos, Community Press, London. 23. Cox, N. and Federici, S. (1975), Counter- Mitchell, J. (1974), Psychoanalysis and Planning from the Kitchen: Wages for Feminism, Penguin, London.