Women's Oppression Today — Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis by Michele Barrett. Verso and NLB, £3.95.
The relationship between Marxism and feminism is an uneasy one. Class and gender, which are central [illegible] and theoretical [illegible] relationship to one another. [illegible] domination and capitalism do not appear to coincide. Within capitalism the reality of sexism within the working class is both oppressive to women and undermines class unity [illegible] the struggles for equal pay and work for women. The creation of socialism carries no guarantee of women's liberation and there is no agreement about the priority of women's [illegible] recognition that problems must be identified and confronted if the development of a Marxist feminist analysis and practice is to be advanced. She carefully works through different areas of analysis which have been developing over the past ten years or so and which bear on these problems, examining two basic questions: 'Can we [illegible] oppression [illegible] capitalism [illegible] independent [illegible] general — of the capitalist [illegible] of production? Do we [illegible] taking place exclusively at the level of [illegible] through the different sections of [illegible] relevance of Freud, work, cultural production, [illegible] education, domestic labour, the sexual division of labour, the ideology of the family and the organisation of the household, and the state. The way into these arguments first seems [illegible] putting to some people who are not familiar [illegible] of this [illegible] education and a historical analysis of the rise of 'familial ideology'.
The book makes no claims to have resolved the difficulties of Marxist feminist analysis [illegible] so much to respond to in this book that it's almost impossible to decide what points to [illegible] in a short review. Michele argues against the proposition that women's oppression today can be reduced to the 'needs of capitalism' — for the reproduction of labour power through the privatised domestic labour of women in the home, for the reserve of cheap wage labour which women provide. The relation between women's oppression and capitalism is analysed historically rather than seen as logically necessary to capitalism. Thus, in practice, the development of capitalism involved an assimilation and exacerbation of pre-capitalist sexual divisions which become related not only to forces internal to capital but also to struggles within the working class between women's interests and men's. Of course this does not mean that the links are superficial. The development of capitalism was only 'gender blind' in that it simply accepted already existing assumptions of male dominance. Moreover the ideology of gender is structured into subjective identity not just as a difference between male and female but as 'division, oppression, internalised inferiority for women' (p. 113). Hence the importance, not well established in Marxism, of developing an understanding of the construction of subjectivity. However it is important to emphasise that the development of capitalism brought new contradictions to women's situation, pushing them into economic dependency within the bourgeois ideal of the family, pulling some of them into paid labour with some (limited) potential for independence from the family position. Through that contradiction feminist movements have emerged, reflecting at times, in their ambiguous relation to class politics, women's dual relation to the class structure.
The position of women as domestic labourers in capitalism has other contradictions attaching to it. Thus while women engaged in housework, child care etc. are involved in the reproduction of labour power on a day to day and generational basis, they are at the same time involved in the reproduction of human beings — themselves and those with whom they are most intimately related (Unfortunately this does not mean that by choice we can turn families into breeding grounds for feminists and socialists). But it does mean that [illegible] and conditions of our own reproduction and survival. How far have material improvements in working class conditions of life compared to 150 years ago [illegible] of women? How far did women 'collude' in this? How far have there been alternatives? These questions are relevant to the debates about the significance (for the working class and for women) of working class support through the 1840s for protective legislation, the consolidation of the sexual division of labour in production, the struggle for a family wage. Historically it's necessary to see this in relation to the degree of exploitation and oppression which was being resisted at this period; and to recognise the gaps and tensions between consciousness of class interests and consciousness of women's interests.
It also seems that an exploration of these contradictions should be linked to the development of a 'more sympathetic and perceptive account not only of how or why a dominant meaning of femininity has been constructed, but how or why women have sought consciously and unconsciously to embrace and desire it.' (p. 251) Michele rightly argues that such developments are necessary if feminism is to reach out to wider groups of [illegible].
She also emphasises the importance of the historical analysis of women's oppression, arguing carefully against the analysis of ideology divorced from its material conditions and historical circumstances, and against the idea that women's oppression can be located solely at the level of ideology. She argues against the concept of patriarchy (except to mean precisely 'rule by the father'). I am unsure of her conclusions here. Certainly there has been great confusion about the definition of the concept. Its use (especially as 'patriarchy') to refer to some timeless universal form of women's oppression is untenable.
However patriarchy has also been used as a general concept, referring to gender relations defined in terms of male dominance. There does seem to be a political point to retaining this general use. Firstly it points to the persistence of male dominance (and its capacity to take new forms) despite transformations of the mode of production, and thus the different historical dimensions involved in trying to relate gender and class. In addition it should point us to a more sensible recognition of biology as a material reality, although one always experienced and given meaning in culturally specific and non-universal ways. Much Marxism and some feminism, in avoiding biological determinism, have tended to talk about men and women as if they had no bodies at all. I'm not certain that these arguments make a strong case for the concept of patriarchy. However the issues raised illustrate some of the problems of developing a clear and rigorous language of Marxist feminist analysis which is built from the tensions between them. Women's Oppression Today is a book which should be read, argued about and worked from.