[PEN-L:8792] Re: Woman as the Other of Philosophy

[Rod Hay <rodhay@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

There is no doubt in reading any biography of Marx that he held very
Victorian middle class views of women's place in society. And a comparison
of his attitudes with Engels show Fred to be much more sympathetic to women
(although not above a little exploitation). John Stuart Mill a slightly
older contemporary was also very sympathetic to women's issues.

On race, it more difficult to say. Marx uses the derogatory slang terms of
the day and some of the stereotypes. (And remember that his family and
friends called him Moor, because of his dark complexion) But, he also
supported political movements for political and social rights without regard
to skin colour or background.


----Original Message Follows----
From: "Michael Hoover" <hoov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


Marx was a Victorian guy, thus, he tended to view such things as 'race' and
family as
natural categories (although, in his case, historically contextualized).
...Marx writes of the benefits of European colonialism *and* denounces
its violence...he critiques the peasantry *and* prefigures dependency
theory...

re. women...Michelle Barret asserts that Marx:
'cannot be "let off the hook" by saying that gender inequality had
yet to be discovered at the time he lived and wrote... To exonerate
Marx by an appeal to a supposedly "pre-feminist" culture is both to
underestimate the currency of feminist ideas in the nineteenth
century and to underestimate the usual level of perception of Marx.'
("Marxism-feminism and the Work of Karl Marx," in B. Mathews (ed.),
_Marx: A Hundred Years On_, 1983, pp. 199-200)...   Michael Hoover



Rod Hay
rodhay@xxxxxxxxxxx
The History of Economic Thought Archives
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