The bourgeoisie as a class profits from the basic arrangement of women’s work, while all individual men benefit in terms of labor done for them in the home. For men, regardless of class, benefit (although differentially) from the system of privileges they acquire within patriarchal society. The system of privileges could not be organized as such if the ideology and structures of male hierarchy were not basic to the society. It is this hierarchy which protects the sexual division of labor and society along with the artificial needs that have been created through the class system.
The ruling class desire to preserve the family reflects its commitment to a division of labor that not only secures it the greatest profit but that also hierarchically orders the society culturally and politically. Once the sexual division of labor is challenged, particularly in terms of its connection to the capitalist order, one of the basic forms of the organization of work (especially affecting the home, but with wide ramifications for the entire society) will be challenged. This challenge endangers a free labor pool, which infiltrates almost all aspects of living, and a cheap labor pool, as well as the fundamental social and political organization of the society, which is sexual hierarchy itself. The very order and control which derive from the arrangements of power implied in the sexual hierarchy of society will be destroyed.
If we understand that there are basically two kinds of work in capitalist society—wage labor and domestic labor—we can see that we must alter the way we think about workers. What we must do is begin to understand what class means for women. We must not just reexamine the way women have been fit into class categories. We must redefine the categories themselves. We need to define classes in terms of woman’s complex reality and her consciousness of that reality.
Presently class categories are primarily male-defined, and a woman is assigned to a class on the basis of her husband’s relation to the means of production; woman is not viewed as an autonomous being. According to what criteria is a woman termed middle-class? What does it mean to say that a middle-class woman’s life is “easier” than a working-class woman’s life when her status is significantly different from that of a middle-class male? What of the woman who earns no money at all (as houseworker) and is called middle-class because her husband is? Does she have the same freedom, autonomy, or control over her life as her husband, who earns his own way? How does her position compare to that of a single woman with a low-paying job?
Clearly a man who is labeled upper- or middle-class (whatever, precisely, that may mean) has more money, power, security, and freedom of choice than his female counterpart. Most women are wives and mothers, dependent wholly or in part on a man’s support, and what the Man giveth, he can take away.51
I do not mean by these questions to imply that class labels are meaningless, or that class privilege does not exist among women, or that housewives (houseworkers) are a class of their own. I do mean to say, however, that we will not know what our real class differences are until we deal with what our real likenesses are as women. I am suggesting that we must develop a vocabulary and conceptual tools which deal with the question of differential power among women in terms of their relation to men and the class structure, production and reproduction, domestic and wage labor, private and public realms, etc. Only then will we see what effect this has on our understanding for organizing women. We need to understand our likenesses and differences if we are to be able to work together to change this society. Although our differences divide us, our likeness cuts through to somewhat redefine these conflicts.
A feminist class analysis must begin with distinctions drawn among women in terms of the work they do within the economy as a whole — distinctions among working women outside the home (professional versus nonprofessional), among houseworkers (houseworkers who do not work outside the home and women who are houseworkers and also work outside), welfare women, unemployed women, and wealthy women who do not work at all. These class distinctions need to be further defined in terms of race and marital status. We then need to study how women in each of these categories share experiences with other categories of women in the activities of reproduction, childrearing, sexuality, consumption, maintenance of home. What we will discover in this exploratory feminist class analysis is a complicated and varied pattern, whose multigrid conceptualization mirrors the complexity of sex and class differentials in the reality of women’s life and experience.
This model would direct attention to class differences within the context of the basic relationship between the sexual hierarchy of society and capitalism. Hopefully, the socialist feminist analysis can continue to explore the relationships between these systems, which in essence are not separate systems. Such a feminist class analysis will deal with the different economic realities of women but will show them to be defined largely within the context of patriarchal and capitalist needs. Women as women share like economic status and yet are divided through the family structure to experience real economic class differences. Such an examination should seek to realize woman’s potential for living in social community, rather than in isolated homes; her potential for creative work, rather than alienating or mindless work; her potential for critical consciousness as opposed to false consciousness; and, her potential for uninhibited sexuality arising from new conceptions of sexuality.
4. Some Notes on Strategy
What does all of the preceding imply about a strategy for revolution? First, the existing conceptions of a potentially revolutionary proletariat are inadequate for the goals of socialist feminism. Second, there are serious questions whether the potential defined in classical Marxist terms would ever become real in the United States. And, although I think the development of theory and strategy should be interrelated, I see them as somewhat separate activities. Theory allows you to think about new possibilities. Strategy grows out of the possibilities.
This discussion has been devoted to developing socialist feminist theory and I am hesitant to develop statements of strategy from it. Strategy will have to be fully articulated from attempts to use theory. When one tries to define strategy abstractly from new and developing statements of theory, the tendency to impose existing revolutionary strategies on reality is too great. Existing formulations of strategy tend to limit and distort new possibilities for organizing for revolutionary change.
The importance of socialist feminist strategy, to the extent that it exists, is that it grows out of the daily struggles of women in production, reproduction, and consumption. The potential for revolutionary consciousness derives from the fact that women are being squeezed both at home and on the job. Women are working in the labor force for less, and they are maintaining the family system with less. This is the base from which consciousness can develop. Women need to organize political action and develop political consciousness about their oppression on the basis of an understanding of how this connects to the capitalist division of labor. As Nancy Hartsock says: “the power of feminism grows out of contact with everyday life. The significance of contemporary feminism is in the reinvention of a mode of analysis which has the power to comprehend and thereby transform everyday life.”52
We must, however, ask whose everyday life we are speaking about. Although there are real differences between women’s everyday lives, there are also points of contact that provide a basis for cross-class organizing. While the differences must be acknowledged (and provide political priorities), the feminist struggle begins from the commonality that derives from the particular roles women share in patriarchy.
Many socialist feminists were radical feminists first. They felt their oppression as women and then, as they came to understand the role of capitalism in this system of oppression, they became committed to socialism as well. Similarly, more and more houseworkers are coming to understand that their daily lives are part of a much larger system. Women working outside the home, both professional and nonprofessional, bear the pressures and anxieties about being competent mothers and caretakers of the home and are becoming conscious of their double day of work.
Male leftists and socialist women often say that women as women cannot be organized because of