A Critique of Marxist Feminism free essay sample

It is a common error to associate all feminists with that movement’s radical left wing. The radical feminists are but one part of the feminist movement. Because they are extreme and very vocal, the media have overemphasized their importance to the point where the broader term â€Å"feminism† is associated with them alone. Many women, especially conservatives, avoid identifying themselves as feminists for fear of being lumped together with the radicals. The feminist movement is, in fact, composed of different groups with different beliefs. What all feminists share is the belief that women have the right to be more than just homemakers, which is hardly a radical notion. It is unfair to portray all members of any political movement as adherents of the same radical ideology. It is possible to identify the three main currents within feminist thought as liberal, radical, and Marxist. Each responds to women’s oppression in a different way. Liberal feminism is concerned with attaining economic and political equality in a male-dominated society. Radical feminism is focused on men and patriarchy as the main causes of the oppression of women. And Marxist feminism is a theoretical position that uses Marxist theory to understand the capitalist sources of the oppression of women. In the early period of the contemporary feminist movement, feminists searched for a grand theory to explain the sexual inequality, hierarchy, and domination that defined entirely the experience and organization of gender and sexuality. Some theorists saw women as trapped by â€Å"their own reproductive anatomy, the objectification of their bodies, the mothering relation or the marriage relation. † Others theorized that gender oppression was inherent to capitalism and the â€Å"relations of work and exploitation† (Chodorow 1). This essay will focus mainly on the latter of the two viewpoints. I agree with most of the ideas in this theory, the Marxist approach to feminism. Throughout history the exploiting classes have sustained and imposed the theory of the â€Å"deficient feminine nature,† that, for centuries, has served to justify women’s oppression. Male philosophers have often argued that women are subordinate to men intellectually, socially, and even morally. In Book 5 of Emile, for example, Jean Jacques Rousseau explains that women serve mainly a supportive function in the lives of men and the education of women should reflect that function accordingly: â€Å"On women too depend the morals, the passions, the tastes, the pleasures, aye and the happiness of men. For this reason their education must be wholly directed to their relations with men. To give them pleasure, to be useful to them, to win their love and esteem, to train them in their childhood, to care for them when they grow up, to give them counsel and consolation, to make life sweet and agreeable for them: these are the tasks of women in all times for which they should be trained from childhood† (Rousseau 135). Although views like Rousseau’s are largely rejected today even by men, feminists point out that women continue to be oppressed. This oppression is most clearly seen through the fact that men still occupy the top positions in politics, business, and finance. Organized feminist movements did not take off until the 20th century. During World War I and World War II, millions of female workers were incorporated into the economy to substitute for the men mobilized to the front. This pushed the mobilization, organization and politicization of women, and the creation of the feminist struggle. Marxism, the ideology of the working class, conceives the human being as a set of social relations that change as a function of the social process. Marxism is absolutely opposed to Rousseau’s notion of human nature as an eternal, indisputable reality outside the frame of social conditions. Just as Marxism considers the human being as a concrete reality historically generated by society, it also does not accept the theory of the deficient and inferior nature of women. According to Marxism, women, as much as men, have adapted and changed as a function of societal changes. Woman is a product of society, and her transformation therefore requires the transformation of society. An extraordinary example of this viewpoint is seen in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, by Frederick Engels, who, pointing to the substitution of mother right by father right as the start of the submission of women, wrote: â€Å"Thus on the one hand, in proportion as wealth increased it made the man’s position in the family more important than the woman’s, and on the other hand created an impulse to exploit this strengthened position in order to overthrow, in favor of his children, the traditional order of inheritance. This, however, was impossible so long as descent was reckoned according to mother right. Mother right, therefore, had to be overthrown, and overthrown it was. This was by no means so difficult as it looks to us today. For this revolution—one of the most decisive ever experienced by humanity—could take place without disturbing a single one of the living members of a gens. All could remain as they were. A simple decree sufficed that in the future the offspring of the male members should remain within the gens, but that of the female should be excluded by being transferred to the gens of their father. The reckoning of descent in the female line and the matriarchal law of inheritance were thereby overthrown, and the male line of descent and the paternal law of inheritance were substituted for them† (Engels 119-20). Engels goes on to say that the overthrowing of mother right was the greatest historic defeat of the female sex throughout the world. Afterwards, Man took control of the house and woman saw herself degraded; turned into a servant, an object of man’s lust, and a mere instrument of reproduction. This represents the fundamental theory of Marxist feminism. It explains that the oppression attached to the female condition has its roots in the formation, appearance, and development of the right to ownership over the means of production. Engels explains that on this basis the monogamous family was instituted. It was the first form of family not based on natural conditions, but on economic conditions instead. Rather than providing a higher form of family, it offers the enslavement of one sex by the other. The establishment of the exclusive supremacy of man shows its effects in the patriarchal family. The word â€Å"family† actually comes from the Latin famulus, a domestic slave, and familia, the total number of slaves belonging to one man. This is precisely what a family was. The man was the head of each family unit and he maintained complete authority over his wife and children. This early form of social organization remains, to an extent, even in modern society. There are many cases today where the husband is still the one earning a living and supporting the family. That alone gives him a position of supremacy over his family, without the need for special titles and privileges. Engels and other Marxist feminists believe that real social equality cannot exist until the monogamous family is abolished as the economic unit of society. According to feminist Evelyn Reed, many feminists today â€Å"respect the Marxist analysis of capitalism and subscribe to Engel’s classic explanation of the origins of women’s oppression† (Jaggar and Rothenberg 170). There is, however, a considerable amount of confusion surrounding certain Marxist positions. This confusion has led some feminists to go off course and blame biological and sexual differences, ather than capitalism, as the root of women’s oppression. The Marxist approach to feminism holds that it is the capitalist system, not man, who is the prime enemy of women. â€Å"Although the struggle against male chauvinism is an essential part of the tasks that women must carry out through their liberation movement, it is incorrect to make that the central issue† (Jaggar and Rothenberg 173). I tend to agree with the Marxist feminist approach. I believe that the causes of male domination and women’s oppression are strictly historical and cultural, and not natural by any means. It is true that the ruling powers in society are the ones to benefit from discrimination and oppression, but male supremacy over woman was not in existence until the establishment of the private property system. Marxism uses anthropology (the study of prehistory) to show that women were not always the oppressed sex. Primitive societies practiced tribal collectivism where men and women recognized each other as equals. The change in women’s social status came out of the transition from an economy based on hunting and gathering to one based on agriculture, livestock, and skilled crafts. A more complex social division of labor replaced the primitive division of labor between the sexes. As labor became increasingly efficient, society became increasingly stratified. The need to organize the vast labor forces inadvertently brought about the formation of a hierarchy. Those at the top of the hierarchy were able to keep the surplus of wealth as their private property. Then, through monogamous marriage, the woman was brought under the complete domination of her husband and the man was assured of legitimate sons to inherit his wealth. This sums up the Marxist approach to the origins of women’s oppression. Her subordination is in no way based on a natural or inherent deficiency. It is the result of revolutionary social changes, which led to the creation of â€Å"a patriarchal class society that, from its birth, was stamped with discriminations and inequalities of many kinds, including the inequality of the sexes† (Jaggar and Rothenberg 171). Gender inequality is just one part of a larger system of oppression associated with the way capitalism exploits the labor market. One widespread belief surrounding Marxist feminism is the assumption that to be a feminist means to be anti-capitalist. What Marxists say is that we live under an international class system. It would require a class struggle of all the oppressed (male and female) to achieve liberation. It is incorrect to characterize women as a special â€Å"class. † Women belong to all levels of society. They may be defined as an â€Å"oppressed sex† in regards to men, but like men, women are a multi-class sex. Marxist feminism relies on the connection between capitalism and the oppression of women, but someone does not have to be Marxist to be a Marxist feminist.