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"Matriarchal Missionary', Olivia Harris's article in Red Rag No. 12, raises criticisms of Evelyn Reed's Marxist feminist interpretations on anthropology which ment a reply. An important weakness in Olivia's article is that she fails to appreciate the importance of many areas of debate that have been initiated by Reed's theories. Like any theory, Reed's conclusions shouldn't be blindly accepted. But they needn't be summarily dismissed as Olivia seems to. She does this when she accuses Evelyn Reed of proclaiming the dogmas of an out-of-date Marxism' (p.30). This is exactly how the 20th century anthropologists dealt with the evolutionist pioneers.
Anthropology has never been in the hands of Marxists. It has remained an academic stronghold of bourgeois scholars. As such, the empirical, structural and functional schools are not only anti-historical — by rejecting the evolutionist approach; they are also positively hostile to feminist and Marxist interpretations. Students of anthropology find that their theories are 'validated" only if they adopt these dominant methods and employ the necessary amount of field-work data. What is ignored by these scholars is that most of the societies now studied are patriarchal (whether the lines of descent are traced through women or men) and that there are very few societies that have not been influenced — even in a limited way — by Western capitalist culture.
It is important to trace the effects of colonialism. Equally it is crucial to see why societies have become patriarchal. Mainstream anthropologists, in dismissing the historical approach, develop an analysis which is extremely limited, purely based on empirical comparisons. Feminist and Marxist anthropologists should combine, rather than separate, the different methods.
This is exactly what Evelyn Reed has done. It is reflected both in her methodology and in the data she uses. To say, as Olivia does, that her ideas do not seem to depend much on whether they are true or even plausible in the light of recent research' and that 'her writings use anthropological data in a highly sclective way' (p.29) is to fail to realise what Evelyn Reed herself says. She argues that 'the same data can be analysed differently when submitted to different methods of interpretation and this can lead to deep going theoretical conflicts'. (1) These are the theoretical conflicts" which Marxists and feminists need to take up in a challenge to the bourgeois academics who dominate the discipline. Evelyn Reed's methods, her use of data, and the ideas she pursues do represent such a challenge.
Much has been learned — not only from Engels, Morgan and Bachofen, but from Evans-Pritchard, Levi-Strauss and Leach as well. Their ideas and theories have been subject to positive critiques — through questioning, discussion, modification and extension. They should not be dismissed out of hand. To do so would be to fall into the same traps as the bourgeois anthropologists. Evelyn Reed's theories about such things as the matriarchal clan system and cannibalism should be similarly treated. Her years of research have raised debating points that are just as important as Malinowski's years amongst the Trobinard Islanders, or Durkheim's years with his library.
Olivia goes on to question whether we need Evelyn Reed's ideas. She even asks whether it is necessary for feminists today to know the former position of women. That point of view in itself
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represents a fundamental difference with the method adopted by Evelyn Reed. If feminists do not question why certain social relations have arisen — such as the family, the sexual division of labour, women's biological role — then the ability to develop a strategy for today which is based on a scientific approach is extremely limited. We have seen the political weaknesses of this failure in the article in Revolutionary Communist No. 5 (November 1976) on "Women's Oppression under Capitalism'. According to the Revolutionary Communist Group's theory, women's oppression emerges with capitalism — not class society. The economistic consequences for the RCG's strategy are extremely serious. They even reject the need for an independent women'smovement.
Evelyn Reed does not focus her analysis on the existence or otherwise of matriarchy. Her main area of analysis concerns whether women have been oppressed throughout pre-recorded and recorded history. She analyses why and how women's position has changed through society's evolution to its present mode of production — capitalism. In doing this, her contribution to both feminism and anthropology has been to question - and threaten — the so-called "absolute' concepts of the 'eternal" nuclear family and the 'truth' that "biology is a woman's destiny".
Evelyn Reed has not — nor does she claim to have — come up with complete answers. Most of her analysis is concerned with pre-recorded history. This is obviously subject to speculation. But her views certainly do provide a different point of view from those currently dominant, which expound the 'natural and therefore 'unavoidable" inferiority of women. And they are also diametrically opposed to those who think that the subject of "women" is totally irrelevant as a separate study. If Marxists and feminists are going to gain anything from these anthropological conflicts, then it is high time that serious anthropological critiques were made of all research done in this field extending as far back as the last century. This is the best guarantee for ensuring that the practice of the women's movement is rooted in a firm theory which can take the struggle for women's liberation forward. 1. Is the Nuclear Family Eternal?, Evelyn Reed (1973).