# Introduction The authors will argue... - Marxist analysis provides a theory of history, especially of capitalist development. - However, marxist analysis overlooks the importance of gender. - Feminist analysis reveals the systemic relations between men and women. - However, it inadequately considers history and material conditions. (Instead focusing on ideas, culture, or interpersonal issues.) - Both marxism and feminism must be drawn upon to understand western capitalist societies and the issues women within them face. >We will argue here that while marxist analysis provides essential insight into the laws of historical development, and those of capital in particular, the categories of marxism are sex-blind. Only a specifically feminist analysis reveals the systemic character of relations between men and women. Yet feminist analysis by itself is inadequate because it has been blind to history and insufficiently materialist. **Part 1, Marxism and the Woman Question,** examines several marxist approaches to the 'woman question.' **Part 2, Radical Feminism and Patriarchy,** notes the limitations of radical feminist definitions of patriarchy, and then offers its own. **Part 3, The Partnership of Patriarchy and Capital,** uses the strengths of both marxism and feminism to make suggestions about the development of capitalist societies and the present situation of women. "In short, a partnership of patriarchy and capitalism has evolved." **Part 4, Towards a More Progressive Union,** argues that the _political_ relations of marxism and feminism account for the dominance of marxism over feminism. Therefore, a more progressive union is prescribed. # 1. Marxism and the Woman Question >Marxist analysis of the woman question has taken three main forms. All see women's oppression in our connection (or lack of it) to production. Defining women as part of the working class, these analyses consistently subsume women's relation to men under workers' relation to capital. 1. Early marxists (Marx, Engels, Lenin) saw capitalism drawing all women into the wage labor force and thereby destroying the sexual division of labor. 2. Contemporary marxists have incorporated women into an analysis of 'everyday life' in capitalism, wherein all aspects of our lives are seen to reproduce the capitalist system. 3. Marxist-feminists have focused on housework and its relation to capital, some arguing that housework produces surplus value. In _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_, Engels argued that traditional gender roles and the oppression of women were rooted in the family structure, where women’s labor was confined to the private, unpaid realm of the household. Engels (wrongly) thought that as women entered the capitalist workforce sex differences would wane and women would join men on equal footing against capitalism. Then, socialism would fully liberate women by unburdening them from their unequal housework. Early marxism failed to examine the unique oppressions men and women faced under capitalism, specifically how and why women were oppressed as women. In Eli Zaretsky's _Socialist Revolution_, he argues that capitalism has created a false separation between home (private) life and work (public) life, with women being more oppressed since they're not able to participate in the labor force on equal terms with men. Women must realize they too are part of the working class, even if performing domestic work. Men and women must therefore fight capital and not each other. While Zaretsky is inspired by feminism, he ultimately argues for a redirection of the movement. However, Zaretsky misses the mark and doesn't adequately explain why _women_ work in the home and downplays how misogyny is independent of, though reproduces, capitalism. >But his analysis ultimately rests on the notion of separation, on the concept of division, as the crux of the problem, a division attributable to capitalism. Like the 'complementary spheres' argument of the early twentieth century, which held that women's and men's spheres were complementary, separate but equally important, Zaretsky largely denies the existence and importance of inequality between men and women. >From our point of view, the problem in the family, the labor market, economy, and society is not simply a division of labor between men and women, but a division that places men in a superior, and women in a subordinate, position. >While Zaretsky thinks women's work appears to be for men but in reality is for capital, we think women's work in the family really is for men–though it clearly reproduces capitalism as well. Marxist feminists have also subsumed the feminist struggle into the struggle against capital. For example, Mariarosa Dalla Costa's analysis of housework is about the relation of housework to capital, not about the relations of men and women— centering anti-capitalism rather than feminism. Nevertheless, her political position that women should demand wages for housework has significantly increased women's consciousness. A materialist analysis must not ignore the fact that, while capitalists benefit from women's labor, so do men. Men have more luxury of consumption, leisure time, and personalized services. Therefore, **men have a material interesting in women's continued oppression.** >The focus of marxist analysis has been class relations; the object of marxist analysis has been understanding the laws of motion of capitalist society. While we believe marxist methodology can be used to formulate feminist strategy, these marxist feminist approaches discussed above clearly do not do so; their marxism clearly dominates their feminism. **While marxist analysis provides powerful insight into capitalist societies, it is sex-blind, failing to explain why _women_ are subordinate to _men_, and not the other way around.** #### Towards More Useful Marxist Feminism Both Juliet Mitchell and Shulamith Firestone suggest new directions for marxist feminism. Shulamith Firestone connects Marxism and feminism by grounding patriarchy in materialist terms, specifically focusing on sexual reproduction as the foundation of men’s power over women. However, her focus on biology is overly restrictive, as understanding gender (not just biological sex) requires examining the social and historical contexts of all women’s work, not just reproduction. Firestone's focus on men's dominance as the root of all oppression makes her work more aligned with radical feminism than with Marxist feminism. Zaretsky has dismissed Firestone's work as a "plea for subjectivity," focusing on the personal and experiential aspects of patriarchy, and therefore less materialist. However, Firestone contends that "the personal is political," insisting that private life is core to oppression and must be politicized. # 2. Radical Feminism and Patriarchy >The great thrust of radical feminist writing has been directed to the documentation of the slogan 'the personal is political'. >'The personal is political' means, for radical feminists, that the original and basic class division is between the sexes, and that the motive force in history is the striving of men for power and domination over women, the dialectic of sex. >Accordingly, Firestone rewrote Freud to understand the development of boys and girls into men and women in terms of power. Her characterizations of what are 'male' and 'female' character traits are typical of radical feminist writing. The male seeks power and domination; he is egocentric and individualistic, competitive and pragmatic; the 'technological mode', according to Firestone, is male. The female is nurturant, artistic, and philosophical; the 'aesthetic mode' is female. The fundamental error of radical feminist analysis is that it projects current gendered norms back into all of history. >Here lies the error of radical feminist analysis: the 'dialectic of sex' as radical feminists present it projects 'male' and 'female' characteristics as they appear in the present back into all of history. Radical feminist analysis has greatest strength in its insights into the present. Its greatest weakness is a focus on the psychological which blinds it to history. #### Towards a Definition of Patriarchy **Patriarchy is a system where men form a hierarchical interdependence and solidarity around a material base— most fundamentally, men's control of women's labor power.** Men's shared interest in controlling women unites them across social strata, where men from the lower levels can be bought off. Men maintain this control by excluding women from access to productive resources, such as well-paying jobs, and by restricting women's sexuality. >We can usefully define patriarchy as a set of social relations between men, which have a material base, and which, though hierarchical, establish or create interdependence and solidarity among men that enable them to dominate women. Though patriarchy is hierarchical and men of different classes, races, or ethnic groups have different places in the patriarchy, they also are united in their shared relationship of dominance over their women; they are dependent on each other to maintain that domination. Monogamous heterosexual marriage is a relatively recent and efficient means to control women's labor power for the purpose of serving men and rearing children. The gender hierarchy is reinforced by the way women's housekeeping and kinkeeping role is seen as inferior. Outside the home, women are also kept in inferior positions: churches, schools, armies, offices, the media, etc. The material base of patriarchy, therefore, rests on all the social structures that enable men to control women's labor, not merely child-rearing. According to Engels, both economic production and the production of people in the sex/gender sphere determine the social organization of a society. While changes in one does not necessarily entail changes in the other, history and common sense tell us that changes in one often creates shifts in the other. There is then no 'pure capitalism' or 'pure patriarchy,' they coexist and interact. >Economic production (what marxists are used to referring to as the mode of production) and the production of people in the sex/gender sphere both determine "the social organization under which the people of a particular historical epoch and a particular country live", according to Engels . The whole of society, then, can only be understood by looking at both these types of production and reproduction, people and things. >Capitalist development creates the places for a hierarchy of workers, but traditional marxist categories cannot tell us who will fill which places. It is crucial to examine how patriarchy affects both men and women differently according to class, race, nationality, marital status, sexual orientation, and age. All of the various elements of patriarchy, not just female childrearing, must be examined if we are to understand patriarchal capitalism >The crucial elements of patriarchy as we currently experience them are: heterosexual marriage (and consequent homophobia), female childrearing and housework, women's economic dependence on men (enforced by arrangements in the labor market), the state, and numerous institutions based on social relations among men-clubs, sports, unions, professions, universities, churches, corporations, and armies. All of these elements need to be examined if we are to understand patriarchal capitalism.