Part II

Marxism, Liberalism, and “The Women’s Question” A Historical View and Distinction of Marxist Feminism

[Picking up where we left off in Part I, we begin this article by discussing radical feminism].

Radical Feminism

Contrary to other liberal feminist traditions and Marxist feminism, so-called “radical feminism” treats women as their own class. This understanding of women as a separate class stems from patriarchal theory, which sees it as a separate system of oppression of men over women. From the 1960s to the 1980s, many radical feminists chose to organize in women’s only groups. At a time when women were often not allowed to have their own bank accounts, married women had to have the authorization of their husband to be able to take a job, abortions were not broadly available, and rape inside of marriage was not criminalized, women started organizing to liberate themselves from the blatant expressions of patriarchy. 

Radical feminists also helped to foster many anti-violence groups that still operate today. The MLF (Mouvement de libération des femmes) groups in France and other European countries, inspired by the American Women’s Liberation Movement, which started forming in the early 1970s, were decidedly non-mixed groups, meaning that men were not allowed. The first reason is that the groups were designed to facilitate dialogue between women about women's sexuality, the violence women faced, women’s bodies, and reproductive rights. Many women were and continue to be uncomfortable discussing these things with men, so radical feminist groups formed new groups that excluded men from the conversation. The second reason is that the women who founded these activist groups had been active in the so-called ‘new left’ or communist circles and had negative experiences with gender dynamics, as well as with their issues not being taken seriously enough or being outright dismissed. This led them to turn their back on the new left movements or communist organizations completely, and some opted to be active in both women-only groups and other political organizations. For example, some lesbians organized in broadly homosexual groups left them for explicitly feminist groups because they felt like they did not get enough space within the broader groups. In France, the “Gougines Rouges” joined the MLF after splitting from the Front homsexuel d’action révolutionnaire (FHAR) because the MLF’s idea of political lesbianism appealed to women left out of the decision-making. But the “original lesbians” felt invisible in contrast to those who claimed lesbianism as a political statement. This part of feminist history explains to some degree why many radical feminists to this day prefer women-only groups compared to queer feminists (more below) who often prefer some kind of heterogeneity in their organizations, often excluding only cis heterosexual men. 

Still, despite its seemingly factional history, there is no doubt that radical feminism helped to build some of the organizational and theoretical pillars of feminist thought and action. One of the main subjects of radical feminists is violence against women, which doesn’t stop at awareness raising but focuses on direct help to the victim. Many domestic violence institutions today have been founded by radical feminists, and they extend beyond domestic violence to include campaigns against pornography such as the PorNo campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s, and more recently the campaign to expose human trafficking and sexual abuse on pornographic websites. 

Alice Schwarzer, certainly the best-known German (radical) feminist, is a good example of radical feminist positions. As a journalist who lived in Paris during May ‘68, she described the movement as way less revolutionary than it is remembered because women's liberation was not taken seriously enough by most vocal student activists, who were predominantly men. She organized with MLF in Paris and exported the 343 manifesto against the abortion ban to Germany with 374 German women stating “Ich habe abgetrieben!” (I had an abortion!) to raise awareness about how common abortion is despite its illegality, and to fight for legal access to abortion for all women. 

So with all of the successes and practical advances made by radical feminists, and considering their focus on women as a separate class, what separates radical feminism from Marxist feminism? For one thing, the radical feminist view emphasizes patriarchy as a force that is separate from capitalism. As a result, radical feminism does not think critically enough about the origins of women’s oppression, and when it does it tends to narrow in on biological differences. Instead, radical feminists have centered their analyses around existing patriarchal structures and how they are reinforced through cultural practices. Some will go as far as to argue that violence is inherent to men and that peace can only be achieved with female leadership. Furthermore, the emphasis on women as a separate class advances an exceptionalist argument that takes heterosexual women as the centre d'intérêt at the expense of non-cishet women. Some radical feminists overemphasize the importance of biological sex in their analysis of oppression and see transgender women as fundamentally different from cisgender women. Paired with the belief that men are biologically more violent, some radical feminists take it to the next level and voice fears of “men” gaining access to women-only spaces and rendering them unsafe for cisgender women through adopting a transgender identity. 

Some of these tensions came to a head in the 1980s through a debate amongst feminists best known as the “Feminist Sex Wars.” The question of sex work created a rift in the feminist movement with radical feminist militants on one side organizing campaigns against pornography and the violence that women face in the sex trade, and “sex-positive” feminists criticizing the movement as sexual puritanism and anti-free speech. 

Anti-porn feminists based their critique within the framework of male-dominated sexual relations, best exemplified in pornography made by men for men. The argument states that pornography depicts explicit and implicit forms of male dominance that have lasting harmful effects on male perception of women and female well-being, as there are not only victims of assault during the production of pornography but also the internalization and normalization of the misogynist practices by the viewers. Radical feminists like Robin Morgan go as far as to claim that "pornography is the theory, rape is the practice" to put an accent on the dual relationship between producers and viewers of pornography. 

Pornography–or sex work more broadly–as the commodification of sex, makes sense when it is understood in light of the capital’s need to expand into new markets. As Sinead Kennedy wrote, “Under capitalism, sex is turned into a commodity that can be bought and sold. It becomes abstracted from human relationships leading to alienated and contradictory expressions of sexuality. Women get caught in a double bind: they are expected to look a certain way but when they do, they are treated like a sex object.” Thus, the sex-positive feminist view is premised on the liberal notion of freedom, which is contingent on market relations and measured by one’s place in the market. As David Harvey put it, using Karl Polanyi’s understanding of ‘freedom’ in liberal societies, “Freedom is a double-edged sword. Laborers in a capitalist society, Marx says, are free in a double sense. They can freely offer their labor power to whomsoever they want in the labor market. They can offer it on whatever conditions of contract they can freely negotiate. But they are at the same time un-free because they have been “freed” from any control over or access to the means of production. They have, therefore, to surrender their labor power to the capitalist in order to live.” We might easily replace ‘laborer’ here with ‘women’ and argue that ‘breaking the glass ceiling’ fails to re-negotiate access to the means of production, but rather replicates systems of class and gender inequality and un-freedom. 

The sex work debate in the 1980s, coupled with the market possibilities made available by the internet led to a proliferation of pornography and a turn and co-optation of sex-positive feminist ideas by the mainstream media and pop culture. This is best illustrated by Ariel Levy, who wrote in 2005, “Only thirty years ago, our mothers were burning their bras and picketing playboy, and suddenly we are getting implants and wearing the bunny logo as supposed symbols of our liberation.” It seemed to many as though the “Feminist Sex Wars” were concluded in favor of (mostly men) who made access and profitability more widespread. Co-oping past signs of women’s oppression like porn, beauty, and body modification became for some a form of empowerment, except this new culture replicated stereotypes and leud images of women more than liberated them. Plastic surgery, designer brands, BBL’s, and breast implants-–all seen as fulfilling the desire for women to look and determine how they would like– represent instead a new and intense relationship between feminism and consumerism, tied to the advertising of feminist imagery previously mentioned. As Nina Power argues, “The desire for emancipation starts to look like something wholly interchangeable with the desire to simply buy more things.” As a result, the radical feminist movement of the late twentieth century not only fell short of success but paved the way for another form of liberal feminism that embraced sex-positive, identity-based affiliations, known today as queer feminism. 

For the Girls, Gays, and Theys

The theories of Judith Butler, a professor of comparative literature, emerging out of a blend between radical feminist tradition, and post-structuralism, have certainly shaped what we know today as queer feminism the most. Butler sought to deconstruct gender and by this the subject of “womanhood.” They documented how gender identities and sexual identities are formed to fit into bourgeois regulatory practices, where only clearly defined female or male and heterosexual identities are tolerated as a form of social control. In Gender Trouble, they wrote, “If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.” 

Butler considered how binary gender identity is defined through a process of negation towards the other, both outside and inside of itself. As soon as an individual differs from these predefined identities, they have to fear social ostracization and alienation. Out of fear, the individual negates and ignores homoerotic desires or opposite-sex parts of themselves, but only as a facade, as these desires or traits are not socially constructed but inherent. This conflict inside of the individual often leads to hate and even violence against women, homo-, trans- and intersexual people. This is why queer feminists do not base their feminist subject on the liberation of women only – they want to flip the whole binary gender world and heterosexual hegemony on its head, considering that patriarchy oppresses women and queer people alike. 

So far so good, but at some point the process of undoing heteronormative gender identities gets more complicated. By trying to break free of the oppressive norms of gender binary and heterosexuality, the explosion of “new” terms to label queer identities emerges only by negating other identities. So instead of doing what Butler initially intended–deconstruction–it seems as if more and more identities are being constructed and heterosexual and binary gender norms are being reproduced by negation. 

As socialists, as soon as we ask why the gender binary and heteronormativity came into existence, we see how it historically serves the reproduction of the workforce. The easiest way to keep reproducing workers is by splitting production and reproduction into “nature-given” gender categories: putting men into the productive sphere and women into the reproductive sphere. Queer feminists are right as far as the construction of the gender binary and heteronormativity goes, but sadly it often ends there. The opportunity to create a new gender taxonomy afforded by queer feminist theory makes it so easy for capitalism to incorporate at least some parts of queer feminism into an individualist credo of self-discovery. The most obvious examples are brands using ‘representation’ and ‘empowerment’ as marketing tools: ‘not only heterosexual men drink beer, but also queers drink beer, slay!’ Just like that, magically, a new market has been acquired to sell more products to accumulate more profits for the capitalists.

Butler is by no means the only voice to articulate queer feminist theory, but their works are the most frequently read. Historically, queer feminism emerged out of both the tradition of critical theory (Butler having received the Adorno prize in 2012), and in that tradition deals most comprehensively with the role that culture plays in determining social relations. This understanding of gender as culturally constructed is reinforced in universities across the West that have incorporated ‘Gender studies’ into the curricula, which disproportionately relies on cultural analysis. Thus, missing from the queer feminist credo is a more fixed understanding of political economy within the genesis of queer identity. Other theorists like Eme Flores and Vikky Storm tried to blend queer feminism with socialism by arguing that “gender” is the earliest class system, defining “queer” people vaguely as “all those who relate differently to the division of reproductive labor assigned to them by patriarchy.” What we end up with is a confusing effort to isolate one’s class from economic conditions and the history of capitalism. Like other cultural theorists, the materialist analysis gets lost in abstract notions of aesthetic and social identity. 

More specifically, because queer feminism fails to operate within an adequate class analysis, its lingering focus on identity sees its practitioners frequently re-package classical liberal identity politics. Thus, the commercialization of sex is a process tied to queer feminism in the sense that, by the 1990s, some believed that the ability to control one’s nude body, and even the power to alter that body, constituted a feminist success.

Once again, the sex industry illustrates the point better than any other. With the support of queer feminist activists, in the early 2000s the phrase “sex work is work” argued that, so long as it was safe and dignified, women could engage in sex work. In recent years, the profits from the sex industry in the United States have exceeded 2 billion USD, evincing a robust industry that men largely preside over. In response, radical feminists, instead of engaging with the queer feminist acceptance of the sex industry, argued that men are the problem because they are the main consumers of sex. Rather than accepting that the sex industry is inseparable from capitalism, advocates from both sides of the debate seek to find the culprit either in men paying for sex or the state oppression pushing women deeper into more vulnerable situations. Overall, the mere criminalization of men does little to address the structural reasons that women enter the sex industry to begin with, and sex-positive advocacy from queer feminists sidesteps the structural criticism that some radicals have defined in the 1980s and 1990s. 

Overall, queer feminism has really taken over the cultural zeitgeist in recent years because it checks several boxes for people struggling for recognition and equality. In so far as queer feminism has empowered several identities, it centers on the individual and the individual’s experience has a vital component of one’s experience of oppression. Critics have termed this process the “oppression Olympics,” whereby each identity is entitled to articulate and fight to overcome their victimized position, but the reality is that many feel like highlighting one’s oppression comes at the cost of downplaying another’s. Intersectionality, as theorized by people like Kimberlé Crenshaw and bell hooks argues that discrimination encapsulates an overlap of interconnected, individualist racial, classist, spiritual, sexual, and gender identities. As Marxists, we agree with the basic premise of intersectionality but take issue with the way it downplays or ignores the role od capital in the system of oppression. Intersectionality is, in many ways, radical and queer feminism coming full circle in realizing that oppressed people across a spectrum of identities have more in common with each other than they do with the one percent of rich people, regardless of their identity. To put it simply, a poor cishet white male has more in common with a poor queer black woman than he does with Jeff Bezos. 

Materialist/Marxist Feminism

As we have been suggesting throughout this article, a Marxist understanding of feminism, and what was previously referred to as “the women’s question” has undergone many changes. Although such an archaic phrase is not used anymore, the outline of the question remains the same: what is the relationship between the oppression of women and capitalism? The question is a historical one that requires Marxists to dig deep into the history of human societies to try to pinpoint the moment when men became the dominant sex. 

In The Origins of the Family and Private Property, Fredrich Engels and Karl Marx argued that insofar as the material world shapes ideas, patriarchy arose out of specific material conditions. Their goal was to examine the organization of production and reproduction in early human societies, citing the historical evolution of a sexual division of labor within post-hunter-gatherer societies. Women were central to the production process of pre-class societies, and elder women enjoyed relatively high status. This changed with the introduction of private property. With more settled forms of human social organization, the labor process was more and more divided along sexual lines. With the accumulation of capital brought on by intensified forms of settled agriculture and trade, men imposed institutional rights and obligations for inheritance, ensuring that private property passed to male offspring. The only obstacle to the smooth transition from one generation to another was the mother, whose loyalty could move between their kin and that of the husbands. This last vestige, referred to as the “mother right” had to be overthrown by the subjugation of women to a strict monogamous system. As Engels wrote, “The overthrow of the mother right was the world historic defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude; she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children.” Thus, according to Marxists, the source of women’s oppression is located in their reproductive role within the family and in the family’s role as an economic unit. 

Marx and Engels’ applied their historical materialist framework to understanding the oppressed status of women, but subsequent theorists expanded on their analysis. Marxism is a historical interpretation of history, and as such Marxists believe that in order to overthrow existing conditions, the historical roots of those conditions must be clearly understood. For example, historian Silvia Federici, who focuses on witchhunts, applied a Marxist understanding to the persecution of women within the institutionalization of private property. She wrote,  “[W]omen were those most likely to be victimized because they were the most 'disempowered' by [changes in the family], especially older women, who often rebelled against their impoverishment and social exclusion and who constituted the bulk of the accused. In other words, women were charged with witchcraft because the restructuring of rural Europe at the dawn of capitalism destroyed their means of livelihood and the basis of their social power, leaving them with no resort but dependence on the charity of the better-off at a time when communal bonds were disintegrating and a new morality was taking hold that criminalized begging and looked down upon charity, the reputed path to eternal salvation in the medieval world.” In other words, women did not obediently accept the process of subjugation, and right from the start, the history of capitalism is filled with moments in which men employed violence to suppress resistance to patriarchal property relations and male inheritance. The most egregious expressions of male violence materialized when women sought to contest property relations and economic subservience. 

After 1990 and the “end of history,” feminist writers continued to develop Marxist feminism but were largely overshadowed by the expansion of queer feminist thought. For example, in 2013 a group of scholars republished Lise Vogel’s 1983 work, Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory arguing that the original went largely unnoticed because Marxist analysis began its descent from academic and activist prominence. Vogel offered a simple yet important addition to Marxist feminist thought by arguing that capital and the state needed to regulate the biological capacity of women to produce the next generation of laborers so that labor power was available for exploitation. In recent years more literature was published again on feminist economics with a focus on the value of reproductive work in our society. A highly recommended work is the 2019 published book by Bettina Haidinger and Käthe Knittler Feministische Ökonomie - Eine Einführung dissecting one by one the different feminist subjects of Marxist economics such as the debates on care work and reproductive work. 

Not all radical or queer feminist theory is dismissible by materialists; certain forms of queer feminism are worth integrating into Marxist feminism. In particular, scholars like Koschka Linkerhand, who edited and wrote Feministisch Streiten (Feminist Quarreling: Texts on Reason and Passion Among Women), sought to overcome divisions within the broader feminist movement by bridging the different traditions. To eliminate the biological reductivism of traditional radical feminism, Linkerhand argued, “On the other hand, a materialist-feminist analysis must cultivate a utopian or even communist concept of emancipation that negotiates the abolition of the capitalist form of society and the associated misogynistic gender relations.” In her text Das politische Subjekt Frau (the political subject Woman) Linkerhand calls for a dialectic approach between feminist theory and feminist practice in the contemporary political context as a way of building a communist future: “For most areas of materialist-feminist practice, however, it makes sense [...] to ask how identity politics and social criticism, that is, feminist passion and feminist reason, can be fruitfully mediated with one another.”

As one can see, and as we’ve tried to illustrate, Marxist feminism deviates from the more widely accepted liberal and radical traditions that tend to rely on biological identity at the expense of focusing on socio-economic class. As Alexandra Kollontai wrote in response to liberal feminism, “In their demands for political equality our feminists are like their foreign sisters; the wide horizons opened by social democratic learning remain alien and incomprehensible to them. The feminists seek equality in the framework of the existing class society, in no way do they attack the basis of this society. They fight for prerogatives for themselves, without challenging the existing prerogatives and privileges. We do not accuse the representatives of the bourgeois women’s movement of failure to understand the matter; their view of things flows inevitably from their class position.” Thus, liberal feminism is more palatable for bourgeois women because it does not challenge the social aspiration for capital and ownership of the means of production, but rather seeks to replace men as the dominant social hegemon. 

Our goal in this article has been to clarify what socialist feminism is within the context of a broader feminist history. The collapse of the USSR and the disappearance of communist regimes in Eastern Europe nearly relegated socialist feminism to the dustbin of theoretical discourse, but the astronomical wealth inequality created by neo-liberalism has forced many to re-examine whether it would make a difference if a woman or man were president. The increasing scarcity of resources and our steady movement toward climate catastrophe means that the ruling class–who controls the means of production and access to goods–seeks to maintain its power as a class regardless of what other identity they were born into. Recently there seems to be a welcomed new interest in Marxist feminism and this article aims to push a materialist approach to “the “women's question” of today. The different forms of liberal feminisms as described above, will never, even if they adopt some anti-capitalist slogans, achieve true emancipation if they don’t apply Marxist analysis to our feminist practice. Let us build a strong workers' movement, let us build a strong women workers' movement.

“Women will only become free and equal in a world where labor has been socialized and where communism has been victorious.” Alexandra Kollontai