Marxist feminism is a philosophical variant of feminism that incorporates and extends Marxist theory. Marxist feminism analyzes the ways in which women are exploited through capitalism and the individual ownership of private property. According to Marxist feminists, women's liberation can only be achieved by dismantling the capitalist systems in which they contend much of women's labor is uncompensated. Marxist feminists extend traditional Marxist analysis by applying it to unpaid domestic labor and sex relations.
Because of its foundation in historical materialism, Marxist feminism is similar to socialist feminism and, to a greater degree, materialist feminism. The latter two place greater emphasis on what they consider the "reductionist limitations" of Marxist theory but, as Martha E. Gimenez notes in her exploration of the differences between Marxist and materialist feminism, "clear lines of theoretical demarcation between and within these two umbrella terms are somewhat difficult to establish."
Marxist feminism is an offshoot of Feminist theory that argues that capitalism is the main contributor to women's oppression. Marxist feminists typically see capitalism and patriarchy as interconnected systems that mutually reinforce one another. In this framework, capitalism relies significantly on the unpaid domestic labor performed by women, which is often undervalued and neglected. This exploitation is seen as perpetuating and strengthening the patriarchal structures embedded in our society. By highlighting how women's labor is essential to the functioning of capitalist economies, Marxist feminism reveals the impact of gendered inequalities and calls for a critical examination of both economic and social systems. Marxist feminism continues to be relevant today for examining the intersection of gender and political economy, particularly in how the social reproduction of individuals and communities perpetuates capitalism.
Elizabeth Armstrong proposes that Marxist feminism theorizes subjectivity and possibilities for an anti-capitalist future with key elements such as imperialism, primitive accumulation, theft of land, resources, and women's unpaid labor to the reproduction of lives and generations. Marxist feminism challenges the precedence of capitalist value to regulate social values including the exchange value in wages and profit by making the value of reproductive labor visible.
Theoretical background in Marxism Marxism follows the development of oppression and class division in the evolution of human society through the development and organization of wealth and production, and concludes the evolution of oppressive societal structure to be relative to the evolution of oppressive family structures, i.e., the normalization of oppressing the female sex marks or coincides with the birth of oppressive society in general.
In The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884), Friedrich Engels writes about the earliest origins of the family structure, social hierarchy, and the concept of wealth, drawing from both ancient and contemporary study. He concludes that women originally had a higher social status and equal consideration in labor, and particularly, only women were sure to share a family name. As the earliest men did not even share the family name, Engels says, they did not know for sure who their children were or benefit from inheritance.
When agriculture first became abundant and the abundance was considered male wealth, as it was sourced from the male work environment away from the home, a deeper wish for male lineage and inheritance was founded. To achieve that wish, women were not only granted their long-sought monogamy but forced into it as part of domestic servitude, while males pursued a hushed culture of "hetaerism". Engels describes this situation as coincidental to the beginnings of forced servitude as a dominant feature of society, leading eventually to a European culture of class oppression, where the children of the poor were expected to be servants of the rich.
Engels and Marx in 1846 had written: "The first division of labor is that between man and woman for the propagation of children." Here he reframes this to say: "The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male."
Gender oppression is reproduced culturally and maintained through institutionalized inequality. By privileging men at the expense of women and refusing to acknowledge traditional domestic labor as equally valuable, the working-class man is socialized into an oppressive structure which marginalizes the working-class woman.
The original Marxist theory was not centered around the specific challenges faced by women. However, over time, it became evident that within a capitalist system, women experienced a distinct form of exploitation. This exploitation entailed reproductive and emotional labor, where women were often unrecognized and unpaid for their vital contributions. Their roles in caregiving, nurturing, and sustaining family life were rendered invisible, highlighting a critical oversight in the traditional Marxist discourse on labor and value. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels described the relationship between women and labor as reproductive labor having social forms that consist of marriage and the family, with the labor itself as biological. Additionally, women who performed this labor were established as biological beings who are unable to effect changes in these social order, arguing that social reproduction as labor that exists within the relations of capitalism. As a result of patriarchal norms in society, women did the majority of all reproductive labor in the household under the control of men, therefore reproducing workers, including themselves, to return day after day ready to sell their labor to the capitalist; with that being said, the exchange value women's labor in the household amounts to nothing.
Marxist feminist critiques of other branches of feminism Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontai were opposed to forms of feminism that reinforce class status. They did not see a true possibility to unite across economic inequality because they argue that it would be extremely difficult for an upper-class woman to truly understand the struggles of the working class. For instance, Kollontai wrote in 1909: For what reason, then, should the woman worker seek a union with the bourgeois feminists? Who, in actual fact, would stand to gain in the event of such an alliance? Certainly not the woman worker.Kollontai avoided associating herself with the term "feminism" as she deemed the term to be too closely related to that of the bourgeois feminism that shut out the capability of other classes to benefit from the term.
Kollontai was a prominent leader in the Bolshevik party in Russia, defending her stance on how capitalism had shaped a rather displeasing and oppressing position for women who are part of its system. She recognized and emphasized the difference between the proletariat and bourgeois women in society, though it has been expressed by Kollontai's thought that all women under a capitalist economy were those of oppression. One of the reasons Kollontai had a strict opposition of the bourgeois women and proletariat or working-class women to have an alliance is because the bourgeois was still inherently using the women of the working class to their advantage, and therefore prolonging the injustice that women in a capitalist society are treated. She theorized that a well-balanced economic utopia was ingrained in the need for gender equality, but never identified as a feminist, though she greatly impacted the feminist movement within the ideology of feminism within and throughout socialism. Kollontai had a harsh stance on the feminist movement and believed feminists to be naive in only addressing gender as the reason inequality was happening under a capitalist rule. She believed that the true issue of inequality was that of the division of classes that led to the immediate production of gender struggles, just how men in the structure of the classes shown a harsh divide as well. Kollontai analyzed the theories and historical implications of Marxism as a background for her ideologies, which she addressed the most profound obstacle for society to address be that of the gender inequality, which could never be eradicated under a capitalist society.
As capitalism is inherently for private profit, Kollontai's argument toward the eradication of women suffrage within society under a capitalist rule also delved into how women cannot and will not be abolished under a capitalist society because of the ways in which women's "free labor" has been utilized. Kollontai criticized the feminist movement as also neglecting to emphasize how the working class, while trying to care and provide for a family and being paid less than that of men, was still expected to cater to and provide for the bourgeois or upper-class women who were still oppressing the working-class women by utilizing their stereotypical type of work. Kollontai also faced harsh scrutiny in being a woman leader in a time of a male dominated political stance during the Bolshevik movement. In keeping with her unusual position during her time, she also kept diaries of her plans and ideas on moving towards a more "modern" society where socialism would help uproot that of capitalism and the oppression that different groups of gender and class had been facing. Kollontai was a great example of a woman who was indeed still oppressed by the times and was removed from her own ideologies and progress for the mere fact she was a woman in times when being so in a powerful position was frowned upon and "great women" were only allowed to be placed alongside "great men" in history. Kollontai's most pertinent presence in feminist socialism was her stance on reproductive rights and her view on women being allowed the same luxuries that men have in finding love not only to be stable and supported, and to also be able to make their own money and be secure on their own two feet. She focused her attention on opening up society's allowance of women's liberation from a capitalist and bourgeois control and emphasizing women's suffrage in the working-class.
Critics like Kollontai believed liberal feminism would undermine the efforts of Marxism to improve conditions for the working class. Marxists supported the more radical political program of liberating women through socialist revolution, with a special emphasis on work among women and in materially changing their conditions after the revolution. Additional liberation methods supported by Marxist feminists include radical "Utopian Demands", coined by Maria Mies. This indication of the scope of revolution required to promote change states that demanding anything less than complete reform will produce inadequate solutions to long-term issues.
Productive, unproductive, and reproductive labor Marx categorized labor into two categories: productive and unproductive.
Productive labor is labor that creates surplus value, e.g. production of raw materials and manufacturing products. Unproductive labor does not create surplus value and may in fact be subsidized by it. This can include supervisory duties, bookkeeping, marketing, etc.