Re: MatFem/MarxFem

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Martha,

Thank you for this essay.

I feel in substantial agreement with your critique of the history of these
schools of thought (after being informed as to what they have been by your
post). It doesn't seem necessary to retreat one iota from Marxism's
militant class struggle in order to elevate the status of feminist gender
struggle - feminist augmented marxism.

When  Landry and MacLean say:

"Marxist feminism holds class contradictions and class analysis
central, and has tried various ways of working an analysis of
gender oppression around this central contradiction. In addition to
class contradictions and contradictions within gender ideology...
we are arguing that materialist feminism should recognize as
material other contradictions as well. These contradictions also
have histories, operate in ideologies, and are grounded in material
bases and effects.... they should be granted material weight in
social and literary analysis calling itself materialist.... these
categories would include...ideologies of race, sexuality,
imperialism and colonialism and anthropocentrism, with their
accompanying radical critiques" (ibid, p. 229)."

I think "race , (racism -CB), imperialism and colonialism" are already
categories of Marxism and Leninism. So, there seems to be some misunderstan
ding of what they are adding to Marxism or what a new "materialism" ,
feminist or otherwise, would be filling in as inadequate in Marxist
materialism.


As you say:

    " While this is helpful to understand what self-identified
materialist feminists mean when they refer to their framework,
it does not shed light on the meaning of material base, material
effect, material weight.  The main concept, materialism, remains
undefined and references to ideologies, exploitation, imperialism,
oppression, colonialism, etc. confirm precisely that which the
authors intended to dispel:  materialism would seem to be an alias
for Marxism."
     >>>

In general, many critics and "discoverers beyond" Marxism , do not realize
that what they have discovered is already in Marxism. It is difficult to
be more of a materialist than Marx and Engels. However, in my opinion the
specific (and narrow) area of potential for augmentation of Marxist
materialsim on its own terms is to recognize the historical determinations
of the labors that have been historically gendered female. Just as Marx
and Engels changed historical science by replacing the big man theory of
history with the struggle between big men and little men theory of
history, and this was demonstrating a "material base", similarly we know
that it was big men struggling with little PEOPLE; and a battle of the
sexes (genders) was going on too. And that latter materially affected the
creation of human subjects from pregnancy to adult intimate relationships
to all caring labor which continuously shapes and "massages" our identities
 and subjectivities through our lives. To me this is the material base,
roughly speaking, of the profound effect of historically constituted
female gendered labor in making history. Subject creation is as materially
fundamental to history as object making in production. Human labor-power,
so important in Marx's labor theory of value, is created in caring or
reproductive labor in the main.

I agree with you when you say:

" I
understand Marxist Feminism as the body of theory produced by
feminists who, adopting the logic of analysis of historical
materialism, expand the scope of the theory while critically
incorporating useful insights and knowledges from non-marxist
theorizing, just as Marx grappled with the discoveries of the
classical economists and their shortcomings. Why should this
theoretical enterprise present itself under a different name,
especially one likely to elicit some degree of confusion among the
younger generations of feminists? Furthermore, the political cost
of doing, essentially, Marxist theorizing under the banner of
Materialist Feminism is likely to be exceedingly high. Why?
Because,  by overstressing the "materialist" aspect in historical
materialism it can contribute justify the dominant stereotypes
about Marxism: its materialism, meaning its alleged anti-agency,
anti-human, deterministic, reductionist limitations."


We should be trying to extract the rational kernels of non-marxist
theorizing, as Marx did not only with classical economists , but with
Hegel. It is interesting that emphasizing Marxism's materialism does play
right into the hands of the attacks of fancy scholars on Marxism as too
reductionist and vulgar. In the end, though I think we Marxists should
reclaim the designation of materialists and wear it proudly, for there is
no truer materialism than the Marxist guide to action.

Comradely,


Charles  Brown