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Can Marxist Thought Successfully Accommodate

Radical Feminism?
By Bohdana Kurylo
2016, VOL. 8 NO. 10 | PG. 1/1 CITE REFERENCES PRINT 18

The relationship between feminism and socialism is extremely KEYWORDS:

Bohdana Kurylo graduated in 2017 with a Masters
degree in Political Theory from London School of intimate but also immensely intricate. According to feminist poet Marxism Feminism Critical Theory
Economics and Political Science in London, United
Adrienne Rich (1977, p. 285), ‘the repossession by women of Materialism Oppression Capitalism
Kingdom.
our bodies will bring far more essential change to human soci-
More By This Author:
ety than the seizing of the means of production by workers. Indeed, it is work that has a special signific-
Should Governments Negotiate With Terrorists?
ance in the socialist tradition, playing a key role in making people who they are and shaping social
relations. In the capitalist world, class becomes its structure, production its aim, and alienation its
consequence. In the alternative world of patriarchy, introduced by radical feminism, it is the female
FROM THE INQUIRIES JOURNAL BLOG
body that is the cornerstone for the relation of a woman to herself and ‘both territory and machine, vir-
gin wilderness to be exploited and assembly-line turning out life’ (Ibid., 286). Biology is its structure, re-
production its destination, and alienation its consequence (MacKinnon, 1989, pp. 3-4).

Yet, socialism and feminism inevitably diverge in their competition for whose issue at stake is more
fundamental, accusing each other or undervaluing their respective concerns (Bouchier, 1983, p. 74).
This essay offers a critique of the Marxist approach to sexual inequality from the perspective of radical
feminism. Indeed, the heavy Marxist focus on economics blatantly casts aside feminist concern with the
‘private’ sphere. Nonetheless, the latter half of the essay will show that Marxist historical materialism
can be a guiding methodology for analysing sexual oppression, supported by a number of feminists
 who combine Marxism and radical feminism. In fact, it is likely that the inability to change the attitude is
the main obstacle to the marriage of both theories.

Similar to feminism, Marxism is a theory about power and unjust social arrangements that debunks all
that is ‘natural’ about social, political and intellectual developments: ‘It is not the consciousness of men
that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness
(Marx & Engels, 1968, p. 182). Karl Marx further debates the extent of man’s agency:

‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please, … but
under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past’
(Bryson, 2003, pp. 57-58).

Regrettably, in his narrow use of the concepts of ‘economy’ and ‘production’, Marx fails to conceive of a
‘woman’ and its functions beyond nature, taking for granted the established relations between the
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sexes and the arising limitations to women’s agency. In fact, a reasonable interpretation of ‘mode of
Film & Media » Socialism production of material life’ would include all activities that contribute to the creation and sustenance of
Pottermania: Capitalist the physical existence of society, explaining why the ‘economy’ and ‘production’ should comprise child-
Eye-Candy Viewed bearing and childrearing as their part (Nicholson, 1987, p. 19).
Through a Neo-Marxist
Lens
According to Christine Di Stefano (1991, p. 156), he has first ‘denied and then re-appropriated the la-
bour of the mother in his historical and labour-based account of self-created man’, failing to recognise
Literature » Female Oppression that productive labour is impossible without reproductive labour. In his silence about the preconditions
Examining Oppression Through the Lives
for human labour, he mistakenly tries to explain the division of labour between the two sexes as devel-
and Stories of Sylvia Plath and Charlotte
oping ‘spontaneously or “naturally” by virtue of natural predisposition’ (Marx, 1972, p. 51). In her re-
Perkins Gilman
sponse to such confinement of women to the family, Catharine MacKinnon (1983, p. 643) also argues
that, while liberalism entrusts women to the state and law, Marxism abandons them to ‘rapists and
Economics » Marxism
Karl Marx and the Fair batterers’ in the private sphere. The private sphere becomes a shared female experience of ‘isolation
Trade Chocolate at home and intimate degradation’, it is the arena for ‘battery, marital rape, and women’s exploited
Industry in the Ivory labour’, which Marxist socialism fails to adequately address (Ibid., p. 657).
Coast
Political Science » Human Rights Consequently, the rise of radical feminism, which gained momentum with the Women’s Liberation
Human Rights and
movement in the late 1960s, came to challenge the deficiency of Marxist analysis of the women’s op-
Radical Social Change:
pression (Bryson, 2003, p. 163). Many of its members were previously active participants in the New
Liberalism, Marxism
Left movement, who soon became disenchanted with the predominant culture of masculinity in it, ques-
and Progressive
tioning whether the end of capitalism would truly bring the change to the women’s status (Rowbotham,
Populism in Venezuela
2000, p. 232).

Its revolutionary invention was that at the core of women’s oppression is patriarchy as the most funda-
mental and universal type of oppression, the eradication of which should begin with the ‘private’ as-
pects of life (Ibid.). The private sphere is, thus, political, as it speaks the language of dominance and
subordination, fitting to what Max Weber defined as ‘Herrschaft’ (Millet, 1969). Sharing the ideas of
both socialism and radical feminism, Juliet Mitchell (1966, p. 16) produced a constructive piece propos-
ing four main structures, including production, reproduction, sex and socialisation of children, the com-
bination of which has caused the women’s situation being ‘overdetermined’.

In his work, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Friedrich Engels takes a closer
step towards understanding women’s subordination, yet strictly limiting it to production. For him, the
subordination exists only in the specific type of the family, caused by the rise of the private property and
the polarisation of the society into classes. Engels suggests that it was during this time when women
lost control over the domestic sphere and became economically dependent on their husbands, and this
‘downfall of maternal law was the historical defeat of the female sex’ (Engels, 1902, p. 70).

However, the thinker does not question the existing sexual division of labour, stating that women’s
emancipation would be achieved as soon as they ‘are enabled to take part extensively in social
production, and when domestic duties require their attention in a minor degree’ (Phillips, 1997; Engels,
1902, p. 196). As a result, although more women may be brought into the workforce, the idea of ‘the
right to equal work itself’, as raised by Mitchell, will not be realised (Mitchell, 1966, p. 35). Perhaps, it
will also soften the structure of power within the family itself, but Engels’ over-optimistic and
economically-focused analysis of the oppression of women renders his solution reformist and
insufficient, since it maintains the status quo in other, more ‘private’ structures (Firestone, 1971, p.
212).
The Marxist depiction of prostitution as ‘only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the la-
bourer’ is often viewed as limited due to its economic focus (Marx, 1844). Carole Pateman (1988, p.
192) forcefully critiques that the distinction between alienation as the outcome of selling a worker’s la-
bour and selling a female body is blurred in Marxism. Accordingly, the exploitation of prostitutes is
wrongly perceived to be on par with the economic exploitation of workers under capitalism (Ibid.). She
claims that prostitution is the subjugation of a woman to a male customer, not an employer (Ibid.). The
interest of the employer is in produced commodities, whereas the man is interested in the direct sexual
use of the prostitute’s body (Ibid., 202-204).

The ignored question is why there is such a demand for a woman’s body to be sold as a commodity in
the market. The answer given by Marxism is impressively simplistic, stating that prostitution is ‘a phe-
nomenon which is closely linked with unearned income’, as proposed by a Communist revolutionary Al-
exandra Kollontai (1921). She then adds that ‘prostitutes … are those women who sell their bodies for
material benefit – for decent food, for clothes and other advantages; prostitutes are all those who avoid
the necessity of working by giving themselves to a man, either on a temporary basis or for life’, portray-
ing prostitution purely as a female problem (Ibid.).

It is true that prostitutes are usually women, but, by avoiding to scrutinise the role played by men in it,
one fails to see that prostitution allows women to earn a lot more money, compared to other jobs open
to them under patriarchy (Pateman, 1988, p. 194). A deeper question is also begged whether such use
of a woman’s body by a man solely for his satisfaction is truly natural, and not the result of established
culture of domination, since the satisfaction of sexual desires does not necessarily require the use of
one’s body (Ibid. 198).

Pornography is another example of the society where male sex-right co-exists with economic
exploitation. As MacKinnon defines it, pornography is ‘an industry that mass produces sexual intrusion
on, access to, possession and use of women by and for men for profit’, using women’s low economic
and sexual conditions for gain and, more importantly, the preservation of male supremacy (MacKinnon,
1989, p. 195). In short, prostitution and pornography are part of the many examples that prove that the
roots of ‘the Women’s Question’ do not lay purely in economics, verifying the radical feminist appeal to
view the struggle between sexes, at a minimum, as equal to that between economic classes.
Notwithstanding, it is the most recent postmodern form of feminism, as Teresa Ebert (1992-1993, p. 5)
calls it, ‘lucid’ feminism, that may bring reconciliation to radical feminism and Marxism by showing,
though unknowingly, the importance of materialism for feminism. Influenced by Jacques Derrida, Michel
Foucault and Judith Butler, lucid feminism challenges the idea of emancipation, by arguing that power
is a ‘multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute
their own organisation’ (Foucault, 1988, p. 103). Such diffused nature of power dispenses with the
need for organised revolution to overthrow dominant locus of power, making the idea of resistance
redundant, and poses a substantial challenge to the Marxist concept of ‘class’, as well as, to the idea of
patriarchal oppression of the body (Ebert, 1992-1993, p. 8). The body is no longer viewed a tool of pat-
riarchal exploitation but rather an abstraction isolated from socioeconomic relations on its own. This
analysis of power is clearly simplistic and ahistorical, which describes rather than explain the estab-
lished forms of coercion and shows no attempt to change exploitative social arrangements.

This bears a chance for radical feminism to enhance its strength by collaborating with Marxism to show
that the sexual oppression is the result of the division of labour that is historically determined by coer-
cive social relations and ideologically constructed gender differences. Labour, in this case, would mean
‘the human activity of transforming nature involved in the reproduction of human life itself as well as the
basic means to sustain that life’ (Ibid., p. 40). Writing from a socialist feminist perspective, Barbara
Ehrenreich (1976) shows that the two forms of oppression, capitalist and patriarchal, always interact
when analysed in the historical context. Marxism would, thus, help radical feminism depart from its
transfixion with male supremacy and its simplistic view of capitalism as one of its expressions
(Nicholson, 1987) In turn, so-called ‘mechanical’ Marxists with their economic determination, could also
expand their comprehension of ‘class’ to include the atomisation and exploitation of women (Ebert,
1992-1993, p. 40). In short, the theory of historical materialism has a potential to be applied in feminism
in order to explain the development of division within family, state and economy and their interplay.

At this juncture, it is worth mentioning an influential radical feminist Shulamith Firestone, who brings
Marxist methodology into radical feminism. First, she agrees with Engels that the sexual oppression ori-
ginated in the first division of labour, and, although the technological advances can no longer justify the
continuation of oppression, the consolidated power of the ruling class, in this case men, finds new
means of coercion (Firestone, 1971, p. 10). She also borrows Marxist solutions and employs them in
her theory. Since ‘procreation is at the origin of the dualism’, Firestone promotes the revolt of women
as the underclass and the seizure of control of reproduction (Ibid., p. 8). Her account culminates in the
statement that unless Marxism transforms the most fundamental, in her opinion, form of social organ-
isation that is ‘the source of psychological, economic and political oppression’ – the biological family -
exploitation in society will never be eliminated (Ibid., 212).

The reoccurring point of collision arises mainly when neither Marxism nor radical feminism, is willing to
agree to accept the concerns of each other as equally important, competing for the prevalence of one
concern over the other. For example, Firestone insists that historical materialism should seek ‘the ulti-
mate cause and the great moving power of all historic events in the dialectic of sex’, and not in ‘the
economic development of society’, as essentially put by Engels in his writing, Socialism: Utopian and
Scientific (Ibid., p. 12; Engels, 1901, p. 17). Although it would be ideal for both accounts to make a step
towards creating a common analysis of the interplay of capitalist and sexual forms of oppression, the
continuous mistake of both sides is to appropriate particular parts of each other’s analysis only to later
use it to make their own conclusions.

The logical solution proposed by some feminists, such as Mary O’Brien, is to modify Marx’s socio-his-
torical model, so as to make it accountable for both production and reproduction, creating so-called
‘feminist materialism’ (Nicholson, 1987, p. 27). This is also supported by the fact that radical feminism
is rarely anti-socialist, as well as socialism is rarely opposed to radical feminism (Bouchier, 1983, p.
74). Yet, it is doubtful whether such supplementation is a successful accommodation to feminism, as it
does not confront the current gender-neglectful nature of Marxism. Marx himself can be arguably ex-
cused for his failure, for it was a general reflection of his contemporary society. However, the fact that
Marxism has been reluctant to come to a consensus on the question of women’s subordination until
now, with the great majority of those who actively debate it being women, shows that the whole prob-
lem is in the attitude (Ibid.). Therefore, without the fundamental change in attitude, the dual systems
theory is only likely to reinforce the perception of the women’s oppression as ‘the Other’ and re-assert
its secondary importance for Marxism.

In conclusion, the autonomy of the economic has proven detrimental for the Marxist understanding of
gender. In consequence, the Marxist tradition has often been viewed as incompatible with feminism,
provoking an attack from radical feminists on many issues, such as prostitution and pornography.
Indeed, the fact that Marxists limited the definitions of ‘production’ and labour’ to economics has
caused them to lose sight of ‘private’ life as an arena for oppression. Yet, the recent move towards lucid
feminism within the feminist thought that has challenged both Marxism and radical feminism and shown
that Marxist materialism is likely to contribute to the issue of sexual oppression a lot more than initially
thought. The integration of radical feminism and Marxism can enhance both socialism and feminism by
providing a wider picture of the historical interplay of capitalist and patriarchal forms of oppression and
the ways for effective liberation from them. As a first step to developing a common understanding with
radical feminism, Marxism, nevertheless, needs to engage into re-thinking of its apathetic attitude to
gender issues. Ultimately, both theories ought to show more respect to each other’s concerns and re-
cognise the two forms of exploitation and oppression are not in isolation, but in a symbiotic relationship.

References
Bouchier, D., 1983. The Feminist Challenge: The Movement for Women's Liberation in Britain and the
USA. London: Macmillan Press.

Bryson, V., 2003. Feminist Political Theory: Introduction. 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

De Beauvoir, S., 1974. The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books.

Ebert, T., 1992-1993. Feminism, the Body, Performance, and Labour: Bringing 'Materialism' Back into
Feminist Cultural Studies. Cultural Critique, Issue 23, pp. 5-50.

Ehrenreich, B., 1976. Barbara Ehrenreich, 1976: What is Socialist Feminism?. [Online]
Available at: https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/ehrenreich-barbara/socialist-
feminism.htm
[Accessed 9 December 2015].

Engels, F., 1901. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. New York: New York Labour News Company.

Engels, F., 1902. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr &
Company.

Firestone, S., 1971. The Dialectic of Sex. New York: Bantam Books.
 Foucault, M., 1988. On Power. In: L. Kritzman, ed. Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other
Writings, 1977-1984. London: Routledge, pp. 96-109.

Kollontai, A., 1921. Transcript of the speech by Alexandra Kollontai to the third all-Russian conference
of heads of the Regional Women’s Departments, 1921. [Online]
Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1921/prostitution.htm
[Accessed 5 December 2015].

MacKinnon, C., 1983. Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence.
Signs, 8 (4), pp. 635-658.

MacKinnon, C., 1989. Toward a Feminist Thoery of the State. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Marx, K., 1844. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. [Online]

Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm
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Marx, K., 1972. The German Ideology. New York: International Publishers.

Marx, K. & Engels, F., 1968. Selected Works. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

Millet, K., 1969. Sexual Politics. London: Granada Publishing.

Monthly Newsletter Signup Mitchell, J., 1966. Women: the Longest Revolution. New Left Review, 1 (40), pp. 11-37.
The newsletter highlights recent selections from the
journal and useful tips from our blog.
Nicholson, L., 1987. Feminism and Marx: Integrating Kinship with the Economic. In: S. Benhabib & D.
Email First Name Cornell, eds. Feminism as Critique. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 16-30.

- Subscribe - Pateman, C., 1988. The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Phillips, A., 1997. What Has Socialism to Do with Sexual Equality. In: J. Franklin, ed. Equality. London:
Institute for Public Policy Research, pp. 101-122.
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Inquiries Journal in your daily feed. Rowbotham, S., 2000. Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties. London: Penguin Books.
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Stefano, C. D., 1991. Masculine Marx. In: M. L. Shanley & C. Pateman, eds. Feminist Interpretations
and Political Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 146-163

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