prostitution and marriage

[glevy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Actually, I agree with Tracy Quan that Marx's analogy of prostitution and
marriage is not entirely satisfactory.

It seems to me that there are important theoretical, historical, and
political questions that could be asked regarding the social institution
of marriage in bourgeois society. On a theoretical level, there is the
whole question of the reproduction of labour power and domestic labour (a
fairly comprehensive survey of that question appears as an "Appendix" in
Ben Fine's _Women's Employment and the Capitalist Family_, London,
Routledge, 1992). An older work which surveys the literature related to
this question is Natalie J. Sokoloff's _Between Money and Love: The
Dialectics of Womens' Home and Market Work_ (NY, Praeger, 1980). A good
reader is Kate Young, Carol Wolkowitz, and Rosalyn McCullagh _Of Marriage
and the Market: Womens' subordination internationally and its
lessons_London, Routledge & Kegen Paul, 1984 (the first edition was
published under a different title by CSE Books).

A person who seems to extend the marriage/prostitution analogy into a
more developed analysis is the Italian Marxist, Leopoldina
Fortunati (_The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labor
and Capital_, NY, Autonomedia, 1995). Curiously, the Forunati book is
conspicuous for its lack of references to the conditions of women in
contemporary capitalism and, essentially, attempts to further develop an
analysis from her reading of the _Grundrisse_. Another analogy has been
suggested by Michael A. Lebowitz in _Beyond Capital: Marx's Political
Economy of the Working Class_ (NY, St. Martin's Press, 1992). Mike
*initially* suggests that the marriage relationship in capitalist society is
one akin to the relationship between slaveowner (husband) and slave (wife).
He goes on to analyze how the changing role of women in the labor force
and how the feminist movement have changed the above. [BTW, I think this
general topic is related to the thread on "working class subjectivity"].

Other important questions concern:

* the differing roles of women in the labor force and the institution of
marriage internationally (Tracy alluded to this). A good reader related
to this question is June Nash and Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly ed.
_Women, Men and the International Division of Labor_, Albany, SUNY Press,
1983.  Although not written from a Marxist perspective, I would also
recommend Jeanne Vickers _Women and the World Economic Crisis_, London,
Zed Books Ltd., 1991

* how feminism has altered the understanding of women and men in
different cultures regarding the institution of marriage and the "roles"
of women in and outside of the family.

* the question of "freedom" and the family it seems to me is related to
the questions of civil society and the state. Clearly, we have seen the
formal understanding of the legal rights of women change in many
countries (in large part due to the feminist movement). Yet, I believe
that while there are more formal rights, there are also both persistent
inequalities and a distinction between formal, legal rights and actual
conditions that should be made. (Perhaps an analogy to the ending of
slavery through emancipation can be made?).

* the question of prostitution is itself an important question that we
could discuss. Issues such as the legality of prostitution, its
relationship to other social institutions (the family, religion, the
state, etc.), and its future are other topics that could be discussed as
well.

It occurs to me that there has been precious little discussion of
feminism and Marxism on this l*st. Perhaps that reflects the gender
composition of this li*t?

Any bites?

Jerry


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