File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9712, message 330


Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 09:17:37 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: M-FEM: All Work and No Play? No Way!



It's morning and after reflection I think I have formulated a response to
JB's antifeminist rant. I will decline his invitation to perform fellatio
upon him, however. What I have to say will not persuade him, but it is
useful to have to state precisely wht Marxism needs feminism.

Maexism is a theory of the emancipation of wage labor. It advocates
universal human emancipation from all forms of oppression, not just
exploittaion, but the specific evil at which March Marxist theory and
socialist practice is directed is class exploitation in capitalist
society. It does not have an elaborated account of the nature of other
forms of oppression or a theory of what emancipation from them would look
like.

JB admits this in the context of womens' oppression, a topic that did not
much exercise Marx. As I remarked, there's a page of sketchy theory and
rather inadequate theory in the Manifesto, and very little else. JB
comments that in Capital and elsewhere Marx decries the exploitation of
women and children in industry, which is true, but of course this
addresses women as workers, and displays an unconsciously patriarchical
assumption in linking women and children in that context, as well as in
regarding the exploitation of women in factory labor as somehow peculiarly
horrible (defenseless creatures in need of protection that they are). In
any case these comments of Marx do not address women's oppression in
capitalist society as something distinct from class exploitation. Thi in
part reflects Marx's Victorian sensibilities, as evinced in his preference
for "submissiveness" or "weakness" (I'll look up the German later) as the
best virtue in "woman." This is a preference which JB says he shares, at
least for weakness. I will let taht speak for itself, remarking only that
I do not share it myself.

As I said and as JB remarks, the later Marxist tradition did somewhat
better, but not much, in dealing with women's oppression. Engels attempted
a sort of theory of the family, which was a reasonable first go, although
inadequate for various reasons, but Marxism in the classic tradition did
not advance much beyond Engels. Bebel's famous book is probably the most
systematic treatment in the classical tradition, and it's old and rather
sexist. JB says he thinks Bebel had a point: it would be better for women
to stay at home with the kids and pay the man a family wage. Well, a
family wage would be nice, but why should it be the woman who is expected
to stay home with the kids? Why not havea  set of expectations that allows
people to choose without gender role expectations? 

Besides, we are talking about women under _socialism_, where there will be
no wages. Any socialism taht consigns women to the home (as opposed to
letting parents choose whether to do primary childcare or not in a
non-sex-specific way) is a failure in addressing wiomen's oppression, part
of which is precisely the strong expectation taht childcare is their
"natural role."

Kollontai had a theory of specifically _sexual_ emancipation of women, but
it never gained much currency outside a narrow circle of Left
Oppositionists. Incidentally JB thinks it was quite appropriate for the
male old Bolsheviks to not treat K as "one of the boys" because she was,
after all, a girl. This speaks for itself, and it shows the limits of the
not inconsiderable improvements in women's lives produced by the
Bolsheviks. Women got the vote and various other advantages, but they were
never be admitted to positions of real power and responsibility, just
because they had XX chromosomes. 

Marxist treament of race oppression and racism is similarly shallow, by
the way. Marx has a few remarks in letters about English racist attitudes
towards the Irish that have theoretical significance, and he himself was
antiracist, except towards the Slavs. But despite the existence of slavery
and the prevelevance of racial oppression and theories of scientific
racism in his day, despite the huge racial compoenent of Britsh
colonialism in India and in the latter part of Marx's life in Africa, this
proponent of universal human emancipation has almost nothing to say about
racism except that he's "agin" it. Later Marxist theory here is not much
better than its treatnment of women's oppression. The classical discussion
is cast in terms of the "national" question, influenced by specifically
Russian conditions, but nationalities oppression is really a distinct
phenomenon.

So, what would feminism be and what has it to offer to Marxism? First,
what feminism isn't. It's not confined to the liberal feminist idea taht
women whould be treated the same as men in capitalism. It's not confined
to the radical feminist idea that gender oppression is the central
contradiction, or (in Adrea Dworkin's version) that all men are evil
rapists and women should have no dealings with them; that feminists must
be lesbians and that nomen can be feminists. These are currents in
feminism, but Stalinism is a current in Marxism too. As is, I guess, the
Living Marxism line, which recalls the academic Marxism of late 19th C
Russia, praising Marxism because it lauds capitalist development in less
developed countries.Marxism and feminism are broader than that.

Feminism is also not "wimpiness" if men advocate it any more than it is
manhating if women do. For men, feminism does not involve any special
deference to women's preferences just because they are women. It does not
mean going along with bad ideas, or ideas you think are bad, because their
proponents are female and you (a male here) feel guilty in some
unspecified way. It's not wimpy to insist on justice, to call for equal
consideration and respect of people regardless of their gender, and to
work for their emancipation from oppression because of their gender. In
fact, it often takes a good deal of backbone to stand up for justice and
freedom when your "adequacy as a man" is attacked because you do so. I
don't say that I'm any sort of a hero for standing up to JB here; I have a
friendly audience. But in many contexts the audience is not so friendly.I
would add that I don't think it's particularly "manly" to be a male
chauvinist pig. I myself don't identify maniless with dominance and
strength and womanliness as the opposite, unlike JB.  

Feminism is, one, a theory, or a reserach program for developing theories,
of the oppression and emancipation of women. Just as the exploitation of
workers requires a great deal of hard analytical work to get a handle on
it, as does the theory of an alternative to wage labor, so the specific
characteristics of the oppression of women need analysis taht Marxism has
not given it. Women's oppression is not just the exploitation of women as
wage workers. It also involves the exploitation of nonmarket domestic
labor, which, contrary to JB's implied suggestion, probably adds as much
value, if one can speak in value terms of nonmarket labor, as wage labor
to the world's wealth. In addition it involves the sterotyped social
expectations and attitudes that consign women to the home, encourage their
submuissiveness or "weakness" with respect to men, exclude them from
positions of power and responsibility because they are women, and
centrally, give them an enforced monopoly on child care. It also has a
sexual dimension, in treating women as merely sexual beings, Madonnas or
Whores, that is associated with, at the worst, rape. This complex of
practices, institutions, and attitudes requires theoretuical analysis.
That's the job of feminist theory.

JB brushes off the authors I mentioned--I should have also listed among
socialist feminists Anne Richardson and Sandra Lee Bartky--he's read them
and sees nothing there. It would be constrictive, though probably not with
JB, to discuss some particular concrete ideas of some of these figures in
the way we discuss value theory or socialism and ecology. I'd be up for
talking about the rexcent exchange between Iris Young and Nancy Fraser in
New Left Review about the dimensions of recognition and economic equality
in feminist theory, for instance.

Part of feminist theory, and this is linked to feminist and Marxist
parctice, is also thinking through waht the emancipation of women would
consist in. If I am right, it requires more than just the abolition of
wage labor plus the bourgeois feminist goals of equal treatment at work,
which is apparaently as far as JB is willing to go, if that far. But what
more is required? For example, some feminists--Richard Wasserstroma nd
Alison Jaggar come to mind, advocate androgyny as a goal, the abolition of
all sex-based gender roles. Is this desirable? I have my very serious
doubts, but is it possible to have gender differentiation without
subordination? Why think so or not? Or again, if we reject the patriarchal
model that women have exclusive responsibility for the kids, what is our
conception of an emancipated family? Blueprints are not called for, but
discussion of the issues is.

Practically speaking, feminism is the concrete struggle against women's
oppression and for women's emancipation. JB is right that Marxists have
generally done better than many political orientations here. I would say
that even where they have rejected the feminist label they have often been
practical feminists. The goals we evolve in our feminist theorizing and
struggle have to be put into practice, in our own groups and in the policy
proposals we develop and fight for. We have to regard issues that are of
importance to women's interests as no less central than those which are
important to workers' interests. ABortion comes tomind, and JB would
doubtless be horrified to learn that I consider active support of
abortion rights to be parctical feminism. 
    
Marxism needs this theory and practice. It needs the theory because it
doesn't have a good theory of women's oppression and emancipation. Without
articulating such a theory its claim tobe a theory of universal human
emancipation and not just of emancipation of wage labor is idle. Good
practice doesn't make up for this theoretical lacuna. It needs the
practice because Marxist practice has only been half good, as women in
Marxist groups can tell you, and as the greater responsiveness of women in
the working class to feminism than to Marxism in part (though not fully)
testifies. We need to work practically to advance the interests of women
as such, and not just as workers. They are half the working class and half
the human race, and a theory and practice that does not do these things is
only a half theory and  half practice of human emancipation.

In Sorority,

Justinb



On Wed, 10 Dec 1997, jurriaan bendien wrote:

> 
> Justin objects when I say 
> 
> > "However to > me you claiming to be a feminist is just plain silly to me,
> > an admission of your personal inadequacy as a man."
> 
> Justin argues this is evocative of
> 
>  deep "insecurity",  suggests I am calling him a "gender traitor", and
> proceeds to amalgamate me with those who call white supporters of Black
> equality as "nigger lovers" who want to allow big Black bucks to ravish
> their sisters and daughters. 
> 
> It is funny when Justin with his impeccable bourgeois background he has
> described, who steeped in rational thought, goes frothing at the mouth when
> you object to the  labels with which they style themselves.  A knee-jerk
> reaction I would say. I stand by my view, while rejecting any idea that I
> am calling Justin a gender-traitor or that I call white supporters of black
> equality nigger lovers.  At most Justin is a whimp, but that isn't proved
> at this stage. For this we need further whimpological analysis.
> 
> Justin writes:
> 
> But the fear and anger in the personal attack are really hard to escape.
> 
> I am not attacking Justin at all, I am indirectly criticising him for
> attaching a label to himself which I think is inappropriate, silly and
> ridiculous. If however Justin shows consternation about "being attacked", I
> presume this is due to his personal feelings of inadequacy as a man.  
> 
> Justin says:
>  
> I find it very disappointing that JB responds this way. 
> 
> I find his response disappointing, and it indicates to me that he does feel
> personally inadequate, otherwise he would not need to slander me. 
> 
> Justin says:
> 
> I think it's good evidence of how desperately Marxism needs to be
> supplemented with feminism that a Marxist on Marxist politics list could
> even conceive of this being an appropriate thing to say. It's sad.
> 
> That's not a very good line, Justin, and you know it.  You would be better
> off explaining what motivates you to attach the label"feminist" to yourself
> and what it means.
> > 
> One reason we need theory is to organize our experience, to
> > explain it in terms of the collective experiemce of humankind, correcting
> > for personal distortions. 
> 
> If a man calls himself a feminist then in my opinion he is suffering from a
> personal distortion.  Okay if he wants to tell the world, it's fine with me
> but then let us discuss it further on a psychotherapy list and not on these
> lists.
> > 
> > > Justin writes:
> 
> > Very good. So what's the problem?
> 
> Get off the grass, Mr schoolmaster.  I don't have a problem, you have the
> problem, you are calling yourself a feminist.
> > 
> > > Justin writes:
> > > 
> > >  But there are also socialist feminists (among others) like Yoshie and
> me,
> > > who think that the liberation of women requires but is not exhausted by
> the abolition of private property.
> 
> Well the abolition of private property is bound to exhaust me, I can tell
> you that now. 
> 
>  
> Justin writes re Abolition of private property that: 
> > 
>  there's nothing in that slogan that itself
> > suggests anything about the emancipation of women. Elsewhere in the
> > Manifesto Marx does have a discussion of this topic--it's almost his only
> > sustained treatment of the topic in 50 volumes of collected works,w hich
> > should tell you something. 
> 
> Marx had attitudes to women which were appropriate in his own historical
> situation as a bourgeois intellectual living in Victorian England and so
> on.  Those attitudes are in many respects no longer appropriate today.  He
> could not write much about women, because he didn't know much about them. 
> He wasn't in a very good position to theorise about women as a separate
> subject, because he wasn't a woman for a start.  However, in the 1844
> manuscripts he does suggest that the quality of relationships between the
> sexes is a sort of index of the level of civilisation human beings have
> reached, and that is not a small thing to say.
> > 
> > And it's not very adequate. It looks at women exclusively as sexual
> > beings.
> 
> I dispute that most strongly, although I think it is to Marx's credit he
> looked at women as sexual beings - Marx wasn't boring in that sense.  Check
> out for a start all that schmalzy poetry he wrote for Jenny.  Then check
> out the passages in Capital and elsewhere where he fulminates about the
> exploitation of female wage labour and child labour. 
> 
> Marx wants to free working class women of prostitution (literal) and
> > bourgeois women of prostitution (figurative). That's good. 
> 
> I disagree.  Marx's view of prostitution, though well-intended, wasn't
> nuanced, historical materialist or based on the real experience of it. 
> Some prostitution is good, most prostitution is bad.
> 
> Justin:
> 
> But oddly enough, women have more to them than sex. 
> 
> We all know that, but you don't have to call yourself a feminist for that.
> 
> Justin:
> 
> That's really not something Marx ever considered.
> 
> Bullshit.
> 
> Justin:
> 
>  In his answer to Elenor Marx's questionaire, he said that his favorite
> virtue in woman was submissiveness. That's bad. 
> 
> I believe in that questionnaire he said not "submissiveness" but
> "weakness".  I am not sure of the German translation (somebody else can
> check it out), but I presume he meant vulnerability or acquiescence.  But
> even if he did write "submissiveness" I would agree with Marx (I will leave
> the moralising to Justin).  When you've been with a lot of stroppy women as
> I have, then you know as a man that the greatest virtue in your partner is
> when she knows when to back down.  That says of course nothing about the
> other virtues women can have, which are many, and which we could on the
> psychotherapy list.  
> 
> > > Justin writes:
> > > 
>  Marxism purports to be a theory and programme for universal human
> emancipation, in which the emancipation of wage labour is central.
> But the theory is a theory of the emancipation of wage labor. 
> 
> True, that is the central concern.  Do you know the proportion of wage
> labour in the labour force of modern society, Justin ?  
> 
> Justin:
> 
> Marx himself has no real treatment of the emancipation of women. 
> 
> I would say that.  But he was abaove all concerned with the working
> classes, not with the category of women in general.
> 
> Justin:
> 
> Engels, who was a sort of proto-feminist, did somewhat better.
> 
> Engels was not a proto-feminist and he never to my knowledge used the term
> feminism.  He ably wrote for instance The Origin of the Family, Private
> Property and the State, the intelligent use of which provided, and
> continues to provide, marital bliss for many communists.
> 
> Justin:
> 
>  But  there are a lot of problems with his theory. 
> 
> I would say there is bound to be, since - judging by the anthropological
> stuff I have read - anthropology has come a long way since Morgan.
> 
> Justin:
> 
> I recommend here Catherine
> > MacKinnon's brilliant interrgation of Engels in her Feminist Theory of
> the
> > State. She's a person with whose positive views I have little sympathy,
> > but her treatment of Engels is very effective.
> 
> I worked for the New Zealand Government, and I cannot say the feminist
> theory of the state has a lot going for it.  It meant really that (1) women
> had their own little bureaucracy in the state, (2) women should be promoted
> because they were women, and (3) that male bosses were the problem. 
> However, my experience was that (1) women's bureaucracies were just as bad
> as male bureaucracies at serving the needs of working class women, insofar
> as they weren't a tokenism, (2) incompetent women were promoted to their
> level of incompetence, (3) female bosses were just as bad as male bosses. 
> So I don't think much of the feminist theory of the state, apart from the
> sex.  Most feminist critiques of Engels are rather dimwitted, straw-man
> stuff with the benefit of hindsight and McKinnon undoubtedly falls in that
> category as well, although I will be honest and say I haven't read the
> stuff.
> > 
> >  Marxists starting with
> > > good old Engels, Bebel and so forth
> > 
> > The Second International developed some pretty good positions on The
> Woman > Question, as the put it. But Bebel, whose Women and Socialism was
> the best-selling Marxist book at the turn of the century--my old edition is
> > the 39th printing (1911)--clearly envisages women's position in socialism
> > to be homemakers and mothers. 
> 
> At the time that was probably pretty progressive, given the fierce
> exploitation of working class women as wage labour at the time.  What do
> you think is more "progressive", one income sufficient to support a family
> household, or two incomes half the size supporting a family household ? 
> That's where we have been going.
> 
> The Bolsheviks gave women the vote and got rid of a lot of bad laws. But
> the rael feminist among them, Kollontai, was regarded as bit of a freak and
> never taken altogether seriously or treated as one of the boys, as it were.
> 
> 
> Kollontai to my knowledge did not call herself a feminist, and she wasn't
> one of the boys because she was a woman.  She was a bit of a hippy and the
> Soviet Government packed her off to Spain to work in the embassy there for
> a while.  This also because of her previous involvement in the first
> Workers Opposition with Shliapnikov and others. The Bolsheviks were often
> sexually rather boring and prudish.  But their initial legislation on women
> was in many respects revolutionary and far in advance of what bourgeois
> parliaments delivered.
>  
> Stephanie Coontz, a friend and at least sometime comrade of mine, who
> unequivocally considers herself to be a feminist.
> 
> I haven't heard her say that, but if it is true she must have lost
> confidence in Marxism like so many other ex-SWP members (I am not endorsing
> the SWP, I don't like that model of organisation).
> > 
> Justin:
> 
> > Agreed that a Marxist who doesn't recognise the interests of women as
> women is simply a fool who hasn't grown up. . Which is why Marxists have to
> feminists.  
> 
> That doesn't follow at all.  What follows is that some Marxists should grow
> up.
> 
> Justin:
> 
>  >  you do show your ignorance of the theory. There is a large literature
> > on, e,g,. Marxist feminism (Evelyn Reed), Dual systems theory (Heidi
> > Hartmann, Nancy Hartsock, formerly Zillah Eistenstein), socialist
> feminism
> > (Alison Jaggar), left postmodern socialist femimisn (Nancy Fraser, Iris
> > Young), addressing exactly this issue. I myself am working on a Marxist
> > feminist analysis of the exploitation of women's labor building on my
> > previous work on exploitation.
> 
> Good luck for your theory.  As Marx said, "ignorance never helped anybody".
>  Many years ago in New Zealand I immersed myself in the literature you
> mention (I am not ignorant as Justin alleges), but I found almost all of it
> to be bunk and the political practice which came out of it (not much) was
> bunk as well. 
> > 
> > Even if feminism is often a vehicle for upward mobility by middle class
> women treading on guilt feelings, it does not mean that there is no need
> for a
> > theory uniting the insights of Marxism and feminism.
> 
> Here we are back to the old refrain of the "need for a theory" which rarely
> actually sees the light of day, and when it does, satisfies no one.
> 
> Justin:
> 
> > Wha? Are you actually saying that I, or men who advocate feminism, do soi
> > because we can't get laid? Or that women who insist on it are ugly broads
> > who can't get a man?
> 
> No, I am making no presumptions about your sexual propensities at all, nor
> am I suggesting a strong positive correlation between ugliness and
> feminism.  But in my personal experience many feminists were simply
> sexually incompetent, and when they became sexually competent the feminism
> dropped off.
> 
> Justin:
>  
> you do owe women equal respect and concern because they are
> > people. 
> 
> You ought to have become a schoolmaster, with this sort of pompous stuff !
> 
> And men owe them special respect and concern as members of a
> > historically and currently oppressed group, indeed a group whom even
> > progressive men necessarily take advantange of, even they don't want to,
> > because of the real and objective existence of male privilege.
> 
> Well suck my dick !
> 
>  I have a measurable advantage over my women classmates in getting jobs and
> better pay as a lawyer even if they are equally as qualified in terms of
> grades and other measures of academic achievement. That means that as a
> Marxist and a feminist I have a special responsibility to fight the system
> atht
> > gives me undeserved advantages just becuase I have XY chromosomes.
> 
> Just "as a Marxist" will do too.  After all Marxists have been in the
> forefront of equal pay struggles.  But if the struggle is just about equal
> pay, it's economism, a struggle for parity in competition and exploitation.
>  That's not yet a Marxist intervention.
> 
> Justin:
> 
> >  Women can screw up men's lives just as badly as men can screw up women's
> lives.... Well, so?
> 
> So ? So I am not grovelling to women in general like you are Justin, and
> certainly not woman lawyers insofar as I can avoid them, which I will try
> my darnedest to do.
> 
> Justin:
>  
> > Political correctness is a bore. So is stupid sexism. I'm happy you get
> > laid a lot. I wish it had improved your views and mental stability a bit
> > more. 
> 
> I am not getting laid a lot !  I used to do it every day, but I am
> certainly not now !  I am hoping more good stuff will come into view soon !
>  
> 
> Justin:
> 
> I myself don't identify myself as a male Marxist, but as a Marxist
> > feminist. I happen to be a male, but that's neither here nor there. 
> 
> If your maleness is neither here nor there, then you are a whimp.
> 
> As you said, it's political position that matters, not (I would add)
> biology.
> 
> Biology matters too, it matters very much indeed, but in a different
> context.  Incidentally a girlfriend of mine here is a qualified biologist.
> 
> Justin:
>  
> > In Sorority,
> > 
> > Justin
> > 
> You're being a whimp Justin. 
> 
> 
> 
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