Women, Class, and the Feminist Imagination: A Socialist-feminist Reader [Hardcover ed.] 087722630X, 9780877226307

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Women, Class, and the Feminist Imagination A Socialist-Feminist Reader

l n the series Women in the Political Economy. edited by Ronnie J. Steinberg

Women, Class, and the Feminist Imagination A Socialist-Feminist R eader

Edited by Karen V. Hansen and Ilene ]. Philipson

TE M P L E UN I VE R SITY PRESS Philadelphia

Temple

Press, Pl!il~tdclphia 19122 '!J\)0 by Karen V. I bnsen and

Univer~ily

Copyright~

lleneJ . Philipson All right5 re!lerved f'ublished •990 Primed in the United States of America

The p:q)er use-d in this public:ation meets the mininuun requirements of AmcJ ican Nalional Standard for lnfonmuton Scicnccs-Perm ancnet of Paper fOr Primed Ubr••y Materials, ANSI Z39 ..t8·t984§

Library of Congress Cataloging in-Publication Dar> \\'omen. cia, ..., and the fcminio;;4 imagination. (\\'omcu in the.: poli[ical economy) Bibliography: p. 1. Feminism-Uni red St::ttcs. -u:. Socialism- United States. I. Hansen, Karen V. II. Philipson, Ilene J. Ill. S..rie ha>t! created in the Movement a microcosm of that oppression and are proud of it. ;\fanipulation and careerism and competition will not e\'aporate of theuaselves. Sisters, what we do, we ha,•e 10 do together. and we will see about them.' In 1967 and 1968 huge numbers of movement women left antiwar and civil rights activities to channel their energy, enthusiasm, experience, and wisdom into newly formed women-onl)' consciousness-raising (CR) groups. These autonomous women's groups were modeled after black power and revolutionary Chinese peasant organizations that asserted the need for oppressed people to work independently of their oppreosors. They proved tO be a supportive forum for discussing the liberation of women, personal and political experiences, fru~tration with movemems for social change that were supposed to be different from the res1 of the world, and insights about domination and oppression that had fallen on deaf ears in the new left. Women in CR groups belie,ed that hierarchy should be eliminated, that leadership and structure were oppressive to women. This belief was a cri· rique of and an auempt to combat the blatant sexism and subordination they had experienced as women in new left and civil rights organizations. The group~ allowed women to talk to each other and to discover that their expe riences were not unique; I heir problems were syswmic and caused by structural inequalities as opposed to individual idio~yncrasy or neurosis. The revolutionar y battle cry of the women's liberation mo,emem became "The personal is political." As women realized their shared oppression, comagious rage was unleashed at male comrades. In eosence, this pro· cess of "speaking bitterness'' transformed what had once been belittled as "women's problems" into legitimate political discourse. The vented anger went hand in hand with a sense of enthusiasm, awe, ancl iuspiration at wolllen's newfound sisterhood. Emergent feminist theori,ts assened that regardless of gender or race, everyone had the same

Women, Class, and the Ft mimstlmaginalion

7

pou:ntial as ever)•one else; '''omen needed only the opportunity to exercise and develop it. In an effort to trau~eud the disappointment resuhing from the false promise of the "participatory democracy" widely espoused in new left writing, women's liberationists ardently suppn•·ted leaderless groups. felt an antipathy to hierarchy, and developed an acute sensitivity to the potential abuses of power of a "star system." j oanne Cooke expressed her amazement at seeing these principles in operation at the first national women's liberation conference in Lake Villa, Illinois, in tg6g: f"or the first time, I heard women discussing alternative ways of solving their problems. Not one woman said. "Well, t.hat's how it is; what're you going to no ?" Nm one " Dear Abby" platitude. Not one woman apologized for complaints about het·lot. Not on ly were they goin g to do something about it, they were supporting each other, committing themselves tO helping each other in the process. Every woman was a sister and no sister's problem, idea or question was tOO trivial to be dealt with sympathetically. No one was in charge. No one was an expert. Women took turns chairing the larger rliscussions. We took turns driving to pick up late arrivals, we volu nteered to take shifts with the children, and we shared responsibility for the phone. Anyone with an idea or an imerest to discuss was free to speak up or to set up a workshop.' In hindsight, this practice was simultaneously liberati ng and undermining. On the one hand , these principles of group process transfoo·med woman's experience of working in social change organizations from that of silent lackey to empowered participant; on the other, the women were idealistic and politically naive insofar as they assumed the absolute good will and endless potential of all in the sistcr"l10od. Internally, this made them vulnerable to the "tyranny of sti"UCturelessness," whereby o.he irlcological emphasis on equality and Jack of hierarchy masked t.he exercise of excessive influence and power by some. It also left feminist groups and organizations open to disruption and takeover by hostile, more hierarchical groups.

The J:."mergtnu of Political Difference After the initial euphoria of discovering sisterhood and the exhilaration of acquiring a raised consciousness, interna l political divisions eml'rged within women's Iibcration and individual consciousness-raising groups. Within "radical fcminism"-the term used by women's liberation·

8 Introduction im to distinguish them~hcs from liberal feminists in organit.auons such as the National Organization for Women (NOW)-two hotly debated issues divided women along a political continuum: whether 01 nn1 10 work with men, and whether lO crcatc Hltcrnative institutions or work within existing ones. At one end of the cominuum were the wo1neu, o.hose dubbed the "feminists," who focused mostly on t.he personal dimension of women's opprc«ion and the active rOl(' of men and male-dominated institmions and values in maintaining that oppression. At the oppo~ite encl of the spectrum were the "politicos," who believed in women's liber.ttion but thought that feminists generally did nOt pay enough attention to the structural forces of oppr~•ion-capitalism and imperialism- that would remain, even with the .urccss of a feminist revolution. The "politiros" embraced tl1e political analysis of the new left but felt they had been betrayed and undermined by male radicals. Yet they often cominued 1.0 org;oniz~: with men, parl.icularly in efforts ag;.1inst the Vietnam war, because of their shared political perspective. In practice, feminists on both ends of the spectrum engaged in simil;or projects, sometimes distinguidt;oble only br their analysis of the forces leading to the need for the p•ojea. Both supported abonion on demand, women-centered health care, "'enty-four-hour free, quality day care. rape crisis centers and shelters for battered women. Those at the "feminist" end or the continuum, however, were more likely to look to person;ol and cu ltural avenues of social chang~: as opposed tn methods that required organ izing coll~:ctivities. A critical distinguishing featu1·e was the insistence of the "politicos" on the importance of class and wo1·kplace issues such as unioni7.ing clerical workers. Politicos were the women "ho evemuallr found their 'oice in socialist feminism. Increasingly, many began to think of thems\~m~t, Class, and lhr 1-emiui.lllmagination

9

and wlldt was happening to Third World women-in mind. Calling ourselves socialist feminists was a way of always remembering that.

Solidifying the Moot1Mflt Gradually, feminist organizations began to grow out of the CR groups and women's continuing discontent with the male-dominated new left-from Redstockings in New York to Cell t6 in Boston to Sudsafloppen in San Francisco. In 1969 two organiza1ions central to the developmen! of emerging socialist-feminist ideology and practice were founded: Bread and Ro;e; in Boston, and the Chicago Women's Libera1ion Union (CWLU). Though both were local organizations, each had an impact on 1he incipient nationwide mO\-ement as 1hey captured media attention and published literalUre for a national audience. B01h anempted to be umbrella structures embracing and sheltering a variety of activities that in· eluded consciousness-raising groups, aoortion referrals (before aoortion was legal), ;1 rape crisis hotline, demonstrations against sexist institutions and against the war. and, in Chicago, a women's liberation rock band. These organiz:nions and others initiated campaigns 10 organize working women, resurrected the celebration of International Women's Day, challenged sexis1 advertising, and attempted to revolutionize everyday lite by promo1ing feminist )Jrincivles iu the execu tion of housework (that is. getti ng men 10 do their share) and in the mode of wlking and relating to one another. Bread and Roses lasted only two years, but it in~pired many otller groups. CWLU purposely establ ished a more accountable and, some would claim, hierarchical leadership strunure and rode a more stable course, acl· ing as a model broad-based organization until its demise in •977· Croups of socialist feminists in twenty cities establ ished their own women's unions, beginning with Pittsburgh in 1970 and continuing lhrough 1975 when the Santa Cruz Women's Union was founded. The unions varied in structure, practice, and the degree to which they embraced Marxism. They all agreed, however, on the goal of striving toward a socialis1 and feminist futUI·e, even if they di!Tcred as to how democratic the socialism and how radical the feminism should be. T he New American Movemem (!\AM), founded as a ntep toward the l~test "revalu ation of women" and articulates the need for women's historians to provide examples, the '"balm of experience," for unr;n·eling the current dehatc and underst anding dte perrepti ons and contribu tions of women's w01 k o,·er time. Johann a Brenne r is more cautious about th~ potential of legislating a solution to women's economic disenfnt nchisem ent. In "Feminist Political Discourses," she reviews the liber-.!1 assumptions hchind political philoerspecti>·e. 6. Margaret Bcmton, ''The Political Economy of Women's Libcr.1tion" {originally published in MonthlJ Revfr..,, September 196g: ~prin1cd as a pamphlet by Bay Arc:a Rildical Education Project. which is the .aurcc cited here), 1, 4· 12. 7· Wally Secom be. "The Hou~"ife and Her Labour under C•pitalism; Net~~ Ujt Revi= No. 83 (1973): :;n., 7· g, '9· 8. Juliet Milchcl l. Womnr~s E.e Books, 1973), 14849 .

9· Maria ro1n Oalla Costa. "Women and the Suloversion of 1he Community," &dicnl Am•ricn 6 (july 1971): 68, 81, g6. lo. Sheila }lQwbotham, ~i-~11tan~~ Consciou.sne.!J, Mtm,'s World (1973~ Baltimore, Md.: Penguin nooks. •975), 119, 120. 11 . Barbara Ehrenreich, "Speeh," Soci11/ist Ret~~>lutiu" o(i (OciOber·-Occembcr

1975): 9' ' g2, 8!). 12. llnda Phelps. ''Patriarchy and Capitalism," QutJt 2, no. • {1975): 39· •3· Zillah F.iscnstein, "Constructing • Theory ofC:rr>italisl l'atriarchy and SocialisI Feminism;' in Eisrnstein, ed., CapiliJlisl PatrinfrhJ and tl1e Ccut for Soaalis.t Ftmit!i.sm (New York: Mon1hly Review Prans of conquest over natu•·e, which was denied to women. Once woman ..-as accorded the menial task~ involved in maintenan ce while man undertook conque.t and creation. she became an aspect of the things preserved: private propeny and children. All the socialist write•-s on I he subject memioned earlil'r-M arx, Engels, Bebel, Beauvoir- link the confirmatio n and continuatio n of woman's op· pression after the establishme nt of her physical inferiorit) for hard manual work with the advent of private property. But woman's physical weakness has nevriority is socially instituted, they are given the arduous task of tilling and cultivation. For this, coercion is necessary. In developed civilizations and more complex societies women's physical deficiencies again become relevant. Women are no use either lor war or in the- constructio n of ci1ies. But with early indu\trializ ation coer· cion once more becomes imponant. As Marx wrote: "Insofar as machinery dispenses with muscular power, it becomes a means of employing laboure• s of slight musculat· strength, and those whose bodily de,·elopme nt is incom· plete, but whose limb~ are all the more supple. The labour of women and children wa~. therefore, the first thing wught for by capitalistS who used machinery." u

Womm: The Longm Rewllllimt 51

lkne Dumom pomts out that in m,uay zones of tropical Africa today rncn are often idle, while women are forced to work all day.'6This exploita· aion has no "natural'' source whatever. Women may perl()rm their "heavy" duties in contemporar y African peasant societies not for feaa· of physical re· prisal by their men but because these duties are "customary" and built imo the role structures of the society. A further point is that coercjon implies a tuali ty, economic subsistence, and so on-even if this "structural differentiation" (to use Parsons' term) has been checked and disguised by the maintenance of a powerful family ideology. This differemiation provides the real historical basis for the ideal demands that should be posed; structural diHercntiation is precisely what distinguishes an advanced from a primitive society (in which all social functions are fused m bloc)." In practica l terms this means a coherent system of demands. The four elements of women's condition cannot merely be considered each in isolation; tl1ty form a structure of specific interrelations. The contemporary bourgeois family can be seen as a triptych of sexual, reproductive, and socializatory functions (the woman's world) embraced by production (the man's world)-precisely a structure that in the final instance is determined by the economy. The exclusion of wo men from production-social human activity-and their confinement to a monolithic condensation of functions in a unity, rJoe family, which is precisely unilied in the natural part of each function is the root cause of the contemporary so~ial definition of women as natural beings. Hence the main thrust of any emancipation movement must still concentrate on the economic element-the en try of women fully into public industry. The error or the old socialists was to sec the o ther elements as reducible to the economic; hence, the call for the entry of women into production was accompanied by the purely abstract slogan of the abolition

68 Tlu Pa.sl: Socialist-FnnilliSI Classics of the family. Economic demands are still pramary but must be accompanied by coherent policies for the other three element$, policies that may at particular junctures take over the primary role in immediate action. Economically, the most elementary demand is not the right to work or to receive equal pay for work-the two traditional reformist demands-but lhe rigill w equal work itself. At present, women JX:rform unskilled, uncreative service jobs that can be regarded as "extensions·· of their expressive familial role. They are overwhelmingly waitresses, office cleaners, hairdressers, clerks, typists. In the working class, occupational mobility is thus .omeumes easier for girls than boys-they can enter the white-collar sector at a lower level. But only two in a hundred women ar~ in administrati,·e or managerial jobs, and less than live in a thou~aud are in the professions. Women are poorly unioni~ed (25 percent) and receive less money than men for the manual work they do perform: in tg6• the average industrial wage for women was less thaH half that for men, which, even setting off part-tillle work, represents a massive incremem of exploitation for the employer.

Educalion

The whole pyramid of discrimination rests on a solid extraeconomic foundation-educ ation. The demand for equal work, in Britain, should above all take the form of a demand for au tf(lllrce forcapitalism,th~t women's generally low~r wages provide extrd surpl us to a capitalist emplo)er, that women sene the ends of capitalist consumerism in their roles as administrators of famil) consumption, and so fonh. However, a number of att icles ha1·e tried to do something much more ambitious-to locate the oppression of women in the heart of the capitalist dynamic by pointing to the relationship between housework and the reproduction of labor.• To do this is to place women squarely in the definition of capitalism, the proces; in which capital is produced by the extraction of surplus value from labor by capital. BrieRy, Marx argued that capitalism is distinguished from all other modes of production by its unique aim: the cr.-ation and expansion of capital. Whereas other modes of production might find their purpose in making useful things to sati\fy human needs, or in ptoducing a surplus for a ruling nobility, or in producing to ensure suRiciem sacrifice for the edifi· ca tion of the gods, capitalL~m produces capital. Capit~lism is a set of social relations-fonns of prope tty, and so forth-in 1vhich pmduction takes the

Traffic in Women 77 form -of turning money, things, and people into capital. And capital is a quantity of goods or money which, when exchanged for labor, reproduces and augments itself by cxtrdcting unpaid labor, or surplus value, from labor and into itself. "The result of the capitalist production process is neither a mere product (use-value) nor a commodi!), that is. a use-value which has exc hange value. Its result, its product, is the creation of surplus-value for capital, and consequently the actual tra11.s[ormation of money or commodity imo capital."• The exchange between capital and labor which produces surplus value, and hence capital, is highly specific. The worker gets a wage; the capitalist gets the things the worker has made during his Ol' her time of employment. If the total value of the things the worker has made exceeds the value of his or her wage, the aim of capitalism has been achieved. The capitalist geLS back the cost of the wage, plus an increment-surplus value. This can occur bccauS(! the wage is determined not by the value of what the laborer makes but by the value of what it takes to keep him or her going-to reproduce him or her from day to day, and to reproduce the entire work force from one generntion to the next. Thus, surplus value is the difference between what the laboring class produces as a whole and the amount of that total which is recycled into maintaining the laboring class. The capital given in exchange for labour powct· is convened into necessaries, hy the consumption or which the muscles, nerves, bones, and brains of existing labourers are reproduced, and new labourers are begouen .. .. The individual consumption of the labourer, whether it proceed within the workshop or oulsidc it, whether it be part of the process of produaion or not, forms therefore a fac· tor of the production and rcproduaion of capital; just as cleaning machinery does.& Given the individual, the production of labour-power consists in his reproduction of himself or his maintenance. For his maintenance he requires a given quamity of the means of suh~istence .... Labourpower sets itself in action only by working. But thereby a definite quantity of human muscle, brain, nerve, etc., is wasted, and these require to be o·estored.7 The amount of the difference between the reproduction of labor power and its products depends, therefore, on the determination of what it takes 10 reprodu ce that labor power. Marx tends to make that determination on the basis of the quamity vf commodities-food, clothing, housing, fuel - that would be necessary to maintain the health. life, and Strength of a

78 The Past. Socwlist-FetrttnLthir1g, 1md .rht /.ter and tlu tools necessaryfor that production; on the otlvr side, the production of human beirtgs tlltmselves, !he propagation of !he species. The social organization under which the people of a particular historical epoch and a particular country live is determined by both kinds of produc·

80

1M Past: SOCUllist-Femr~t Clnssrcs tion: by the stage of development of labor on the one hand, and of the family on the other."

This passage indicates an importa nt r•ecogni tion-tha t a human group must do more than apply its activity to reshapin g the natural world in order to clothe, feed, and warm itself. We usuall)• call the system by which element s of the natural world are transformed into objects of human consumption the "econom y.'' llm the needs that are satisfied by economic activity even in the ridtest Marxian sense do not exhaust fundam ental human Te(jUirements. A human group must also reprodu ce itself from generat ion to generat ion. The needs of sexuality and procreation must be satisfied ~s much as the need to eat, and one of the most obvious deductio ns to be made from the data of anthropology is that these needs are hardly e'·e•· ~at· isfied in any "natura l" form, any more than are the needs for food. Hunger is hunger, hut what counts as fnoci is culturally determi ned and obtaine d. Every society has some fotm of organized economic activity. Sex is sex , but what counts as sex is equally culturally determi ned and obtaine d. E\'ery society also has a sex/gen der system- a set of arrange ments by which the biological raw material of human sex and procreation is shaped by human, social intervention and satisfied in a conventional manner . no matter how bizarre some of the conventions may be." The realm of human sex, gender, and procrea tion has been subjected to, and changed by, relentless social activity for millennia. Sex as we korow it-gend er identity, sexual desire and fantasy, concepts of childho od-is it· self a social product . We need to underst and the •elations of it~ product ion and forget, for a while, about food, clothing, automobiles. and transisto r radios. In most Marxist tradition, and even in Engels's book, the concept of the '"second aspect of material life" has tended to fade into the backgro und or to be incorpo rated into the usual notions of ··material life." Engels's suggestion has never bee or followed up and subjectt~d to the refinem ent it needs. But he does indicate the existence and importa nce of the domain of social life that I want to call the sex/ gender system. Other names ha\'e been proposed for the sex/gen der sysu•m. The most common alu~rnatives are ··mode of n:product.ion" and "patriat·chy." It may be foolish to quibble about terms. but both of thcs•• ran lead to confusion. All three proposals have beer\ made in order to introdu ce a distinction hetwe~nge-including hostile ones -are ordered by this structure. The marriage ceremonies recorded in the ethnographic literature are moments in a ceaseless and ordered proces· sion in which women, children, shells, words, cattle na111es, lish, ancesto•-s, whale's teeth, pigs, yams, spells, dances, mats, and so on , pass from hand to hand, leaving as their tracks the ties that bind. Kinship is organization, and organitation gives power. But who is organized? If it is women who are being transacted, then it is

86

Th~ Past:

Socialist Nmuwt Classics

the men who give and take them who are linked, the '>oman being a con· duit of a relationship rather than a partner to it."l he exchange of women does not necessarily imply that women are objectified, in the onodern sense. since ol~jects in the primitive world are imbued with high ly personal quali · tics. llut it does imply a distinction hetween gift and giver. If women are the gifts, then it is men who are the exchange partner~. And it is I he partners, nm the presents, upon whono reciprocal exchange confers its quasi-mystical power of social linkage. The relations of this system ao e ~uch that women are in no position to realize the benefits of their own circulation. As long as the relations specify that men exchange women, it is men who are the beneficiaries of Lloe produn of such exchanges-social organization. The total relationship of exchange which constitutes marriage is not established between a man and a woman, but between two groups of men, and the woman figures only as one of the objects in the exchange, not as one of the partners.... This remains true even when the girl's feelings are taken into consideration, as. moreover. is usually the case. In acquiescing to the proposed union, she precipitates or allows the exchange tO take place. she cannot alter its nature.2-. To enter into a gift exchange as a p" litde patience. lie retains his initial libidi nal o rgaoiza· tion and the sex of his original love object. The social contract to which he has agt·eed will eventually recognize his own rights and pro,•ide him with " woman of hi:. own. What happens to the girl is more complex. She, like the boy. discovers the taboo against incest and the division of the sexes. She also discovers some unpleasant informatio n about the gender to which she is being assigned. For the boy, the taboo on incest is a taboo on certain women. For the girl, it is a taboo on all women. Since she is in a homosexual position vis-a-vis the mother, the rule of hete:osexuality that dominates the see· nario makes her position exc•·uciati ngly untenable. The mot her, and all women b)• extension, c.1n be properly beloved only by someone "with a penis" (phallus). Since the girl has no "phallu~ ... she has no "right" to love her mother or :mother woman, since she is herself destined to some man. She does not have the symbolic token that can be exchanged for a woman. If Freud's wording of this moment of the lemale Oedipal crisis is am· biguous, Lampl de Groot's formulation makes the context that confers meaning upon the genitals explicit: "If tk lilt~ girl comes to 1M conclusion tJuu such an orga11 is really indispmsabk to 1M /XJjSmum of the mo/l,.,r, she ex· perietau:s in addition to the naa·cissistic insults common to both sexes still another blow. namely afeelir~g of inferiority about her genitaLt."" The girl con· eludes that. the "penis" is indispensable for the possession of the mother because only those who possess the phallus have a "right" to a woman and the token of exchange. She docs not come to her conclusion because of the natural superiority of the penis either in and of itself, or a~ an instrument for making love . The hierarchical arrangeme nt of the male and female genitals is a rc~ult oft he dell nit ions of the situation- the rule of obligatory heterosexu ality and the relegation of women (those without tl•c phallus, castrated) to men (those with the phallus). The girl then begins to turn away from the mother, and toward the father. " To the girl, it [castration] is an accomplished fact, which is irrevo· ~able, bu t the recognition of which compels her llnally to renounce her first love object and to taste to the full the bitterness of its loss ... the father 2 is chosen as a love-object, the enemy becomes the beloved."• This recog· nilion of "c.astration '' forces the gi rl to redefine her relationshi p to herself, her mother, and her father. She turns from the mother because she does not have the phallus to give her. She tums from the mother also in anger and disappoint ment. because the mother did not give her a "penis" (phallus). Butt he mother, a woman in a phallic culwre, does not have the phall us to give away (having gone through the Oedipal crisis herself a generation earlier). The girl then

96 Tlu Past: So;;iah Horney considers these implications to be so farfetched that they challenge the validity of Freud's entire scheme. But it is certain ly plausible to argue instead that the creation of "femininity" in women in the cou rse of social· ization is an act of psychic brutal ity, and that it leaves in women an immense resentment of the suppression to which they were subjected. It is also pos· sible to argue that. women have few means for •·ca liziug and expressing their residua l anger. One can read Freud's essays on femininity as description s of how a group is prepared psychologically. at a tender age. to live with its opprc>siou. There is an additional element in the classic discussions of the attain· ment of womanhood. The girl first turns to the father because she must, because she IS "castrated" (a helpless woman). She then discovers that "cas· !ration" is a prerequisite to the father's love, that she must be a woman for him to love her. She tlterefore begins tO desire "castration;· and what had previously been a disaster becomes a wish. "Ana lytic experience leaves no room for d(lubt that the little girl's first libidinal relation to her father is masochistic, aud the masochistic wish in its earliest distinctively feminine phase is: 'I want to be castrated by my father: "•O Deutsch argues that such masochism may coutlict with the ego. causing some women to Ace the entire situation in rlefense of their self~ regard. Those women to whom the choice is "between find ing bliss in suffering or peace in renunciation" will have difficulty in att.tining a healthy attitude to intercourse and motherhood." Why Deutsch appears to consider such women to be special cases, rather than the norm, is not clear from her discussion. The p>ychoanalytic theory of femininity is one that sees female devel-

98 The Past: Socu:Wst-Fntmlisl Classics

opmcnt based largely on pain and humili~tion, and it tak~s some fancy footwork to explain why anyone ought to enjoy being a woman. At this point in the classic discussions, biology makes a triumphan t return. The fancy footwork consists in arguing that finding joy in pain is adaptive to the role of women in reproductio n, since childbirth and defloration are "pain ful." Would it not make more sen~e to question the entire procedure? If women, in finding their place in a sexual system, are robbed of libido and forced into a masochistic eroticism, why did t.he analysts not argue for novel arrangeme nts instctem must be reorganize d through political action. Finally, the exegesis of Levi-Strauss and F•·cud suggests a certain vision of feminist politics and the feminist mopia. It suggests thai we should aim not for the elim ination of men but for the elimination of tlw social system that creates sexism and gender. I personally find a vision of an Ama1on matriarcha te, in which men are reduced to ~cn•itude or oblil ion (depend· ing on t11e possibilities for parthenoge netic reproductio n), distasteful and inadequa te. Such a vision maintains gender and the divi~ion of the sexes. It is a vision that simply inverts the arguments of those who base their case for inevitable male dominance on incr.Jdicabk· and sig>.•ificant biological dif· ferences between the sexes. But we are not only oppressed .u "'omen: we are oppressed by having to bt women~r men, as the case ma)' be. I per· sonally feel that the femini>t movement must dream of even more !.han the elimination of the oppression of women. It must d ream of the elimination of obligatory sexualities and sex roles. The dream I find most compelling is one of an androgyno us and genderlt>~\ (though not sexlt>ss) society, in which one's sexual anatomy is irrele,ant to who one is, wh.tt one does, and with whom one makes love.

Traffic in WoiTU'n 103

The Political Economy of Sex h ••ould be nice to be able to conclude here with the implications for feminism and gay liberation of the overlap between Freud and levi-Strauss. Rut I must suggest, tentatively. a next step on the agenda: a Marxian analysis of ~ex/gender systems. Sex/gender systems are not ahistorical ctuanations of the human mind; they at·e products of historical human acdviLy. We need, lor instance, an analysis of the evolution of sexu:tl exchange ~long the lines of Marx's discussion in Cychical ConsCh. ·'Significance of Masochism." ••~· 47· Ibid., 231. 48. See al1surge>1t $()("iologist 7, no. 3 (Spring 1977). pp. 3·- r 7, by permission of the publisher. Critical Sociology, Sociology Dcpanmem, University or Oregon. Eugene. OR 97403.

C:on:.tn.'s dialectical revolu· tionary omology as it is presented in his theory of alienauon. Although the substantive discussion of alienation applies to women workers in the labor force and in qualified ways to nonpaid domestic workers as house· wives, l am panicularly interesred here in the method of analysis rather than in the content of Marx's discussion of ~lienation. By not reducing the analysis to class and class conflict as cxpre>sed in the theorl' of exploitation. we can extend the dialectical method present in the theor) of alienation to the particular revolutiona ry potential of women. Essentially this means that although the d1eo• y of alienation includes exploitation, it should not be reduc. The theory of alienation specifies the relationship between essente and exi~t ence. Without this, human beings would be exploited in capitalist relations, but they wou ld not necessarily be potentially I'Cvolutionary. Ex· ploitation- without the presence of these relations speciftcd in the theory of alienation and without the construction of the indi•,idual and the societ) that thi~ entails-would l!'avc us with an exploited person. But because of the potential for species life in rhe individual, the exploit I'd worker is also the potential revolutiona• y. Without the pot ential of ~pedes life we would have Aristotle's happy slave, not Mat·x's rcvolmionary pmletariat. And this potential existS in men and women, regardless of their position in the cla~s structure or their relation to exploitation. The actuali~ing of this potential, however, is differentia ted according to one's dass. With his rheory of alienation, Marx is critically probing the nature of capitalism. By capitalism, Marx ancl £ng(']s meant the o:ntirc process of commodity production . In examining the exploitation inherent in this p•O· cess, Marx developed his theory of pwer. Power or po"erlessn ess det ives

Cmutrucring a Theor)' 117 from one's cla>s position; hence, oppression is a result of capitalist organi>_ation and is based in a lack of power and control. Through productive labor capitalist society exploits the worker who creates surplus value for the bourgeoisie. The surplus labor, which is inherent in profit, is derived from the difference between the actual and necessary labor time of the worker. Productive labor, in its meaning for capitalist production, is wagelabor which, exchanged against the valuable part of capital (the part of the the present family, the bourgeois family, based?

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On·capit.al, on private gain . ... The bourgeois claptrap about the famil)• and ed ucation, about hallowed co-relation of parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting the more, by the action of modern industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and then children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.' The relations of private property become the mode of exchange. The development of these bourgeois priorities transforms the social relations in the family; and, as is apparent in The Gl!l'manldtnlogy, the family-which Marx sees as the only social relationship-bewmes a subordinate need.8 The concerns of private property and possession pervade man-woman relations. In "On the Jewish QueSLion" Marx writes: "The species relation itself, the relation between man and woman, etc., becomes an object of commerce. The woman i~ bought and sold." 9 The mentality of"ha,•ing" twists species relationships into those of ownership and domination, and marriage into prostitution. And so in the 1844 Manuscripts Marx writes: Finally, this movement of opposing universal private property to private propeny finds expression in the animal form of opposing to marriage (certainly afor111 of exclusive private pooperty) the COfiVIIm!ity of women in which a woman becomes a piece of communal and common property.... Just as woman passes from marriage to general p•·ostitution, so the entire world of wealth (that is, of man's subjective substance) passes from the relationship of exclusive marriage with the owner of private property to a state of universal prostitution with the community.'o Marx sees the problem of women as a riling from their status as mere instrumentS of production, and thus he sees the solution in the socialilt revolution. In the Mcmiftstu he writes that "the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e .. of prostitution, both public and private."" Given his analysis of woman's existence as reflective of dass relations that define society for he•· both within and outside of marriage, the destruction of capitalism would transform her condition. The bourgeois family is seen by Marx as an instmmenl of capitalist society, with no dimensions particular unto itself. Woman's oppression is her exploitation in a class society through bourgeois marriage and the family. Her powerlessness reflects capitalist arrangements. The sexual division of labor as tlle sexual definition of roles, purposes,

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activities, and so on, has no specific existence for Marx. Woman is perceived as just another victim, undistinguished from the prolet~riat in general, of the pernicious class division of labor. Marx saw no sexual distinctions and functions unique to this one group of producers as ultimately definitive of the power structure. He had litlle or no sense of woman's biologicalreproduction or maternal funCtions as critical in creating different varieties of a division of labor within tbe family. As a result, Marx perceiYed the exploitation of men and women as deriving from the same source and assumed that theio oppression could be understood in th~ same structural terms. Revolutionary consciousness is limited tO understandin g the class relarjon of exploitmion. We shall see later that it is only with the conceptual difleremiatio n of the hierarchical sexual ordering of society, as a phenomenon of patriardly, that women's oppression can he understood as connected to although distinct from the "genero~l" oppression of the proletariat. There is no reason to doubt that in Communist society (where aU are to achieve species existence), life wou ld still be structured hy a sexua l division of labor that would entail different life options for men and women. Sex roles would involve preassigned tasks for women, which would necessitate continued alienation and isolation. Essence and ex.istence would still not be one. Marx did not understand that tbe sexual dh·ision of labor and society organizes noncreative and isolating work particularly for women. The destruction of capitalism and capitalist exploitation does not ensure species existence-th at is, creative work, soda! communicy, and critical consciousness- for women.

Womtn s Exploitation in Ni.slol)

In Tile GerMan Ideology. Marx and Engels discuss the division of l;obor in early prccapitalist society in fami lial terms. ll is "a furl11eo· ex.tension of the natural division of labour imposed by the family. The soci.JI structure is therefore limited to an extension of the family; patriarchal family chieftains; below them the members of the tribe; finally sla,·es. ·1 he slavery latent in the family only develops gradually." o; ' I he division of lahor "imposed by the family" is spoken of as natu ral, and whether this means "necessary" or ''good," it i~ a clivision accepted by Marx and Engels. The division of labor in the family is not reAective of the economic society that defines and surrounds it-as in Tht Communist Maniftsli>--but rall1er at this early historir.al stage it structures the society and its tli•ision of labor. Marx and Engels's analysis of the family continues: "With these, there develops tlle division oflabouo· in the sexual act, t11en that division of labour

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whtclt de ..elops spomancou>ly or 'n•turall) ' b) virtue of natur-.tl predisposition (e.g., physical strength). needs, accidents, etc." u The first division of labor is the "natural" division of labor in the family through the sex act. The act of child breeding begins the division of labor." The activity or pro· creation dcvdops a division of labor, although the full dimensions of this division are ne,•er explored. It is through this act that 1he first appearance of property arises within the family. For Marx and Engels, this is when wife and child become the slaves of 1he husband. This latent slavery in the family, though still very crude, is the first property, but even at this early stage it corresponds perfectly to the definition of modem economists who call it the power· of disposing of the labor power of others. Division of labor and private propeny are moreover identical expressions." There are here seeds of an cady, albeit crude, insight into the sexual division of labor, although there is no discussion of it as such. What weakens and finally limits the insight is that for Marx and Engels this division of Jabot deriving from the sex act is coincidental and idnatit the problem of woman's exis· tence within the private domestic sphere--ou tside and opposed to social productio n-he sees this as reAecting the relations of production rooted in private property. Woman's activity in reproduction (which limits her activity in production) is not seen as problematic at this point. The family has become a microcosm of the political economy for Engel~. "It contains in miniaturf' a lithe contradictions which later extend through· out society and its state."tt The man is the bourgeoisie, the woman the pro· letariat. What is most intet·esting here is that Engels does not use the cate· gories of male as bourgeoisie and female as proletariat outside the family. People are assigned class positions in the larger society according to their relations tO the means of production , not their sex. He b using different criteria inside and outside the family to define membersh ip within a class. If these categories were built upon like bases of power, one could move in and out of the family with the same units of analysis being applicable. And if one wants tO say that ultimateZ, the usage of proiNariat lbourgeois ie by Engels within the family is economic, thf're are evidently still other con· siderations invoh•ed. If this were not so, then he would not have ( 1) class

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divisions in Lhe family as bourgeoisie/male, proletariat/ female and (2) class divisions in socrety in terms of ownership/nonowncrship of Lhe means of production. Even though, for him, these u/timtJte/y mean the same thing, what do they reflect i11i1ially about Lhe relations of tlre family and capitalism? It would seem Lhat these considerations have to do witlr power emanating from the sexual clilferences between men and women in their relations to rcprodu~tion. This was not grasped by Engels, however. Most of the time Engels works from his simple equation: oppression equals exploitation. Class existence defines powerlessness for· Engels, although he has the core for understanding that woman's oppression is more complex than the system of exploitation. Even though he recognizes that the family conceals domestic slavery, he believes at the same time that !here are no d ifferences (in kind) between domestic •lavery and rhe wage slavery of the husband. They both derive from capitalism. "'I he emancipation of woman will on ly be possible when woman can take part in production of a large-social scale and domestic work no longer claims anything but an insignificant amoum of her time."n The real equality of women will come for Engels with the end of exploitation by capital and Lhe transference of private housework to public indusu·y. Given the lack of understanding of the sex ual division of labor, however, even if domestic work were made public, it most probably would remain, for Engels, woman's work. In conclusion, then, we can see that the analysis sketched by Marx and Engels in Tire German llkology and then further developed by Engels in The Origin of the Family, Privau Property, and tlu State reveals their belief that the family, at least historically, structured the division of labor in societ)' and that in some sense this reflects the division oflabor in the sex act. Initially, the family structure defined in some sense the structure of society. According to the materialistic conception, the determining faaor in history is, in the final instance, the produaion and reproduction of immediate life. This, again, is of a twofold char.tcter: on tlte one side, the production of the means of existence, of food, clothing and shelter and the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The social organization under which the people of a particular historical epoch and a particular country live is determined by both kinds of production; by the stage of development of labor on the one hand and of the family on the other.ts T his analysis is lost, however. through the discussion of the family in capitalist society, where the family comes to be ,.jewed as just another part of the superstruct ure, totally reflective of class society. The relations of

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reproduc1ion become subsumed under the relations of prorluc1ion. The poim to be made is not that the fa•uily tloes not reflect ~ociety but that through both its patriarchal strunure and i1s patriarchal ideology the family and 1he need for reproductio n structure society as well. This reciprocal relationshi p, between family and society, producti011 and reproduction, defines 1he life of women. The study of women's oppression , then, must deal with both sexual and economic material conditions if one is lO understand oppression rather than merely understand economic exploitation.

While these criticisms are important in assessing the panicular contribution of Marx and Engels, they should by no means prompt one to reject either their class analysis or their onwlngical and historical method. The point rather is that the historical materialist method mus1 be extended to incorpordt e women's relations to the sexual division of labor and society as producer and reproclucer, as " ·ell as to incorporat e the idenlogical formulation of this relationship.t• Only then will her existence be understood in its true complexity and species life become available to her 100.

Antithesis : Woman as Sex PaJriarchy a11d the Radical Femini1ts Although radical feminism is conventionally dated with the recent Women'; Liberation Movement, around 1969-70, i1 has imponam historical ties to the liberal feminism of Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Harrie1 Taylor Mill. women who spoke of sexual poliliCs long before Kate Mil ieu did.» These women understood in their own fragmented way thai men have power as men in a society organized int o "sexual spheres." But while they spoke of power in caste terms, they were only beginning to understand the stmclm~ of pou'" enforced upon them through the sexual division of labor and society. The claim< of these feminists remained reformist l>e economic class org-•ni7ation of society, altltough she n·ali7es ltet~elf that economic suffering conu ibntcs to woman's oppt es~ion rough the

132 The Past: Socialist-Feminist Classics existence of the sexual ordering of society, which derives from ideological and political imerpretat.ions of biological difference. In other words, men have chosen to interpret and polilically use the fact that women are the reproducers of humanity. And given both this fact of reproduction and the political control of it, we have the relations of reproduction arising in a particular formulation of woman's oppression. Although there is a patriarchal culture carried over from one historical period to another to protect the sexual hierarchy of society, I question whether the Oedipus complex is reall)' the tool by which to understand this culture. Today the sexual division of society is based on real difFerences that accrue from years of ideological pressure. Material conditions define necessary ideologies, and ideologies in their turn have impact on reality and alter reality. There is a two-way flow here. Women are products of their social history, yet women can shape their own lives as well. In socialist feminism, historical materialism is not defined in terms of the relations of production without understanding its connection to t11e series of relations that arise from woman's sexuality, which are tied to the relations ofreproduction.$S Anrl the irleological formulations of these relations are key here. An understanding of feminist materialism must direct us to an understanding of the particular existence of women in capitalist patriarchy. The general approaches of both Marxists in terms of class, and radical feminists in terms of sex obfuscate the reality of power relations in women's lives.

Pim1ecrs in Feminist Materialism: de Beau voir at!d Mitchell Simone de Beauvoir confronts the interrelationship between sexuali ty and history in Tlte Seetmd Sex. She states that "the division of t11e sexes is a biological fact, not an event in human history." And yet she goes on to say that "we must view t11e fit~ts of biology in the light of an ontological, economic, social, and psychological context. She understands that women are definerl by men and as such cast in the role of the "other," but she also realizes that the sexual monism of Freud and the economic monism of Engles