Notes
1. Sheila Rowbotham, in Women, Resistance, and Revolution (New York: Pantheon, 1972), makes clear that both the social relations of production and reproduction need to be dealt with in any revolutionary theory.
2. For our purposes dialectics help us focus on the processes of power. Hence, in order to understand power one needs to analyze the relations that define power rather than treating power as an abstract thing. Any moment embodies the relations of power that define it. The only way to understand what the moment is, is to understand it as a reflection of the processes involved in it. By definition, this requires one to see moments as part of other moments rather than as cut off from each other. Seeing things in separation from each other, as part of either/or options, is the dichotomous thinking of positivism. By trying to understand the elements defining the synthesis of power as it is embodied in any particular moment, one is forced to come to terms with the conflict embodied within it, and hence the dialectical processes of power. See Karl Marx, Grundrisse, trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Vintage, 1973) and Bertell Ollman, Alienation: Marx’s Conception of Man in Capitalist Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971).
3. For this discussion see Mariarosa dalla Costa, “Women and the Subversion of the Community” and Selma James, “A Woman’s Place” in The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (Bristol, England: Falling Wall Press, Ltd.); Ira Gerstein, “Domestic Work and Capitalism” and Lise Vogel, “The Earthly Family” in Radical America 7 (July-October 1973); Wally Seccombe, “The Housewife and Her Labour under Capitalism,” New Left Review 83 (January-February 1973); B. Magas, Margaret Coulson, H. Wainwright, “The Housewife and Her Labour Under Capitalism—a Critique” and Jean Gardiner, “Women’s Domestic Labour,” New Left Review 89 (January-February 1975), and, for the latter, in this volume.
4. I do not think the dichotomized view of the early “Hegelian Marx” and the later “materialist Marx” is a helpful distinction. Rather, I think the theories of alienation and exploitation are integrated throughout Marx’s work although they are given different priority in specific writings. The Grundrisse stands as persuasive proof of this position. See Marx, Grundrisse and David McLellan’s discussion of the importance of the Grundrisse in Karl Marx, His Life and Thought (New York: Harper and Row, 1973).
5. For a discussion of species being, see Karl Marx, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (New York: International Publishers, 1964); The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers, 1947); “On the Jewish Question,” in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, ed. Kurt Guddat and Lloyd Easton (New York: Anchor Books, 1967). See also Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1968); Richard Bernstein, Praxis and Action (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971); and Ollman, Alienation.
6. Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1963), p. 152. See also Capital, vol. 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1967).
7. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Chicago: Gateway Press, 1954), pp. 48–49.
8. Marx and Engels, German Ideology, p. 17.
9. Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” p. 246.
10. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, p. 133.
11. Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 50.
12. Friedrich Engels, The Early Development of the Family (a Free Press pamphlet), p. 65. The selection is also the first two chapters of The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (New York: International Publishers, 1942).
13. Marx and Engels, German Ideology, pp. 21, 22.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., p. 9.
16. Ibid., p. 20.
17. Engels, Origin of the Family, p. 65. Engels’ analysis in Origin of the Family differentiates three historical periods—savagery, barbarism, and civilization—in which he traces the evolution of the family.
18. Ibid., p. 66.
19. Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto.
20. See Eli Zaretsky, “Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life,” Socialist Revolution 13–14 (January-April 1973): 69–125 and 15 (May-June 1973): 19–71 for a discussion of the historical and economic changes in the family.
21. Engels, Origin of the Family, p. 57.
22. F. Engels in The Woman Question (New York: International Publishers, 1951), p. 11.
23. Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, ed. Eleanor Leacock (New York: International Publishers. 1972), pp. 71–72.
24. Ideology is used in this paper to refer to the ruling ideas of the society. (See Marx and Engels, German Ideology.) It is seen as a distortion of reality, protective of existing power arrangements. More specifically, ideology is used to refer to the ideas that protect both male and capitalist power arrangements. Although material conditions often do create the conditions for certain ideologies, ideology and material conditions are in a dialectical relationship. They are both involved in partially defining the other. For instance, the “idea” that women are weak and passive is both a distortion of women’s capacities and a partial description of reality—a reality defined by the ruling ideology.
25. The definition of liberal feminism applies to the reformist understanding of the sexual division of labor. It is a theory which reflects a criticism of the limitations of sex roles but does not comprehend the connection between sex roles and the sexual division of labor and capitalism. Limited by the historical boundaries of the time, early liberal feminists were unable to decipher the capitalist male power structure and instead applauded values which trapped them further in it. They were bound not only by the material conditions of the time (lack of birth control, etc.) but also by a liberal ideology which presented segmented, individualistic conceptions of power.
26. For classical versions of the sexual division of labor see J. S. Mill, On the Subjection of Women (New York: Fawcett, 1971) and J. J. Rousseau, Emile (London: J. J. Dent & Sons, 1911).
27. Although radical feminism is often called bourgeois by male leftists and socialist women, I think this is simplistic. First, radical feminism itself cuts across class lines in its caste analysis and in this sense is meant to relate to the reality of all women. Hence, in terms of priorities, the theory does not distinguish between working class and bourgeois women, recognizing the inadequacy of such distinctions. Further, the theory has been developed by many women who would be termed “working class.” It is inaccurate to say that radical feminists are bourgeois women. The “bourgeois” woman has not really been identified yet in terms of a class analysis specifically pertaining to women.
28. Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (New York: Doubleday, 1970), p. 24.
29. Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), p. 9.
30. Ibid., p. 8.
31. Some people may say that to be stronger is to be more equal, or that inequality exists biologically because men are stronger than women. But this is not Firestone’s argument. She argues that it is woman’s reproductive role that is