A New Study On The Problem Of Women's Oppression On The Basis Of Contemporary British And American Marxist/Socialist Feminism

The phenomenon of women's oppression had different forms in different countries and in different history periods, however,only in capitalist society, it was put forward and became the focus of all the feminist categories. Liberal feminism, radical feminism, Marxist/socialist feminism, and postmodern feminism, etc. gave their own answers to this problem.Probing into the origin of the women's oppression and the liberation of the women has the great significance. To women themselves, how to explain this problem relates to the change of their social status and final liberation; given the analogy between sex and other oppression, it is also a problem of great worth to other oppressed people; to all mankind it is important because in the patriarchal society men were tormented a lot even though they oppressed the women. In the lower and weak position, the women should understand their condition and how to change it, which is related to not only to the female but also to the male in the world, and this problem affects the development of the whole society.Since 1960s and 1970s, especially at the end of 20th century, the capitalist society has undergone dramatic changes. The economy moved forward to the globalization experiencing the constant recessions and the booming, which affected women's social status unavoidably. The social and political movement were through the great changes and went steady and which direction women's liberation would lead to became the core question. These changes constructed the new context of the problem of contemporary women's oppression. It was in this new context that Marxist/socialist feminism was produced, which shared the common thought origin, common theory foundation, and a general strategic and organizational perspective.This thesis probes into the contemporary British and American Marxist/socialist feminism's new researches into the causes of women's oppression and the approaches to women's liberation in the new context. The thesis comprises the introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, and the conclusion. Introduction discusses the raising and the new context of the problem of women's oppression. Conclusion gives comments on the new research of the contemporary British and American Marxist/socialist feminism. Chapter1, chapter2 and chapter3 discuss three viewpoints of the contemporary British and American Marxist/socialist feminism.The contemporary British and American Marxist/socialist feminism's first perspective of the cause of the women's oppression is the dual system theory, which argues that patriarchy and capitalism are distinct forms of social relation and distinct sets of interest, which, when they intersect, oppress women in particularly egregious ways. Women have to fight on two fronts, assaulting the two-headed beast of Capitalism and Patriarchy. Juliet Mitchell and Heidi Hartmann are the representatives of this viewpoint.Juliet Mitchell argued that the classical Marxist works on the analysis of the problem of women's oppression had stressed too much on the element of economy. In place of this monocausal explanation for women's oppression, Mitchell suggested that women's status and function were jointly determined by their roles in production and in reproduction, the socialization of children, and sexuality. She figured out that women's social status was determined by the different roles they played in these four fields. The element of capitalist economy functioned mainly in the production structure, while the ideology of the patriarchy functioned in the aspects of the child-bearing, sexuality, and the socialization of children. Emancipation of women faced the four features and a total strategy was needed which should focus on the economic change, accompanying other fields'changes.Whereas Mitchell views patriarchy as the ideological form of women's oppression, Heidi Hartmann views it as a structure of relations which have a material base. Hartmann defines patriarchy as a set of social relations between men, and which, though hierarchical, establish or create interdependence and solidarity among men that enable them to dominate women. The women's oppression resulted from the combination of the patriarchy and capitalism. Patriarchy and capitalism kept a strong and healthy partnership, and when the two interests had conflicts, the family wage and wage differential were designed to solve it. Heidi Hartmann argued that women must organize a practice which addresses both the struggle against patriarchy and the struggle against capitalism.The second perspective about that the cause of women's oppression argues that capitalist society can't be separated from the patriarchal society, so we have to develop a unified concept to analysis capitalist patriarchy. Iris Marion Young and Alison M. Jaggar are the representatives of this viewpoint.Iris Young claimed that the classical Marxist category"class"was a gender-blind category and the dual-systemes theorist category"patriarchy"wasn't independent of the mode of production and became parallel to it. In Young's view, the category"division of labor"was a core and adequate category to analyze the situation of women. Young advanced that the situation of women went worse as the development of capitalism, and the peripherization of women labor was indispensable in capitalist society. The capitalist society, which was always a patriarchal society, had gender prejudice, and the struggle which object to the phenomenon of women's oppression and the peripherization of women was object to capitalism.Alison Jaggar also advanced a concept other than the concept of"class". She identified"alienation"as the concept that would provide us with a theoretical framework to analyze the oppression of the contemporary women. In Jaggar's eyes, alienation was woman's main and general experience in capitalist society, and not only many women were alienated from their own sexuality and from the product and process of motherhood, they were also alienated form their intellectual capacities. The alienation of women was a special state in capitalist society, and it was the result of the unified system of the capitalism and patriarchy. Eliminating class and eliminating the gender discrepancy are the common destination of women's liberation.The third perspective argues that the class oppression is the bottommost oppression in the contemporary capitalist society, and women's oppression stemmed from the capitalism. The economic analysis and the class analysis aren't outdated. In this aspect, the classical works of the Marxist didn't provide the comprehensive analysis, and to make the improvement was goal-defined. Lise Vogel, Martha E. Gimenez and Teresa Ebert are the representatives of this viewpoint.Lise Vogel analyzed the problem of women's oppression in the context of the reproduction of labor power and overall social reproduction firmly within the Marxist tradition. She figured out that Marx's works offered the rudiments of a theoretical foundation for analyzing the situation of women from the point of view of social reproduction, but he himself didn't develop such an analysis in great details, while Engels offered the classical works with defects, and other writers'works in the late of nineteenth-century directed the socialist movement, whereas they exacerbated the analytical confusion. Vogel advanced it was the women's special role in the reproduction of labor force that offered the material foundation of women's oppression. The speciality of women's oppression in the capitalist society has two aspects: in the first place, women and men are differentially lacated with respect to important material aspects of social reproduction; in the second place, women, like many other groups in capitalist society, lack full democratic rights.Martha Gimenez put the emphasis on the capitalist mode of production. She argued that Marx's methodology was indispensable for analysising the women's oppression. Women's oppression was the structural result of the capitalist mode of production. The subordination of reproduction to production and the mode of reproduction to the mode of production in the capitalist society determined the unequal relations between men and women. The structural foundation for the capitalist mode of reproduction was not reducible to individual-level explanations and as long as capitalism rules, propertyless women would remain oppressed. Because of the limitations of political and legal changes, in order to end gender inequality, the changes of the social structure and the capitalism should be made.Teresa Ebert focused on the question of exploitation. She argued that canonical feminist understandings of gender and sexuality institutionalized by"post"theories, such as poststructuralism, postcolonialism, postmodernism, and postmarxism, were strategies for bypassing questions of labor and capital. In fact, however, the core question of the contemporary women's oppression was still the question of exploitation. The political strategy to liberate women must have the historical materialism as its theoretical base. The counterhegemonic agency is employees, and to end the exploitation we need revolutionary praxis.The contemporary British and American Marxist/socialist feminism was beyond the concept of economy and class, and promoted Marxist theory. It probed into the new development of the contemporary capitalist society and the new influences on women, which deepened the total criticism on capitalism. It also discovered and foresaw the way and future prospects of women's revolution. Though some interpretation deviated from Marxism, some analysis was deficient, some opinion removed from reality, it had brilliant rays of reason and intelligence which couldn't be covered up. Especially, the contemporary British and American Marxist/socialist feminism argued that it was impossible adequately to theorize exploitation and oppression, including the exploitation and oppression of women, outside the framework of Marxist theory. It stressed the continuing theoretical and political relevance of Marx's work for understanding the capitalist processes that affect the fate of working people the world over and, most importantly, the fate of women who comprise the majority of the world's working class. The significance of its theory and praxis deserves ours probe.