I was reading Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt and was reminded that I wanted to read A Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles for a while now and I have it on my shelf. And so I put down Ill Fares the Land and started reading A Communist Manifesto
I came across this sentence and found it misogynistic. "The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labor, in other words, the more industry becomes developed, the more is the labor of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labor, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex".
Not that I expected Karl Marx to be a feminist activist, but I was surprised to find this sentence nevertheless.
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1) I don't see how this comment is negative towards women. He is simply stating that human beings lose their individuality and even their sex through their commodification and alienation from themselves within a capitalist system. No longer man nor women, simply a tool to produce commodities (wealth for the capitalist).
ReplyDelete2) Let's take a look at Wikipedia in regards to marx and feminism.
In developing theoretical explanations for gender inequality, Engels would work within this framework following Marx, tracing the history of the institution of the family and its substance in law and mores to gender conflict between men and women rooted in their competing economic interests.
Engels and feminism
Marxist feminism's foundation is laid by Friedrich Engels in his analysis of gender oppression in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884). He argues that a woman's subordination is not a result of her biological disposition but of social relations, and that men's efforts to achieve their demands for control of women's labor and sexual faculties have gradually solidified and become institutionalized in the nuclear family. Through a Marxist historical perspective, Engels analyzes the widespread social phenomena associated with female sexual morality, such as fixation on virginity and sexual purity, incrimination and violent punishment of women who commit adultery, and demands that women be submissive to their husbands. Ultimately, Engels traces these phenomena to the recent development of exclusive male control of private property and the attendant desire to ensure that their inheritance is passed only to their own offspring: chastity and fidelity are rewarded, says Engels, because they guarantee exclusive access to the sexual and reproductive faculty of women possessed by men from the property-owning class.
As such, gender oppression is class oppression and the relationship between man and woman in society is similar to the relations between proletariat and bourgeoise[citation needed]. On this account women's subordination resembles class oppression, maintained (like racism) because it serves the interests of capital and the ruling class; men exploit the dominant social position afforded to them by existing conditions to reinforce that position and to maintain the conditions underlying it.
Is negative against women
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