A Marxist view of the Left's treatment of 'gc' women

My big take from Dierdre O’Neill’s article is not the minutiae of the Marxist analysis of capitalism and whether it holds true or not. We know there are many within the Left who do agree with this analysis and yet many of these very same people are also very firm adherents of gender ideology. It’s this apparent contradiction that I find interesting and also very, very sad because it’s these same left-leaning people who are prepared to vilify, silence, and ostracise women who hold GC views.

Although, in preindustrial times children worked at home with their parents. So boys would be with their fathers in the fields/cottage industry (forge, candle making, baking, etc) and girls with their mums in the house/cottage industry (spinning, sewing, etc).

All modern economic systems are anti-family based unpaid labour and seek to dissolve these preindustrial traditions. They seek to make as many people as possible economically active because the goal of modern economic systems is to generate riches for the owners of the means of production, whether they are private owners as in capitalism or the State as in communism, or a hybrid capitalist/socialist society which is what we currently have. This is because the stronger your economy, the more powerful and rich your nation State.

Don’t forget Marx appealed specifically to women by claiming that family was a patriarchal tool of oppression keeping women from the workforce. His proposed society was one where family was illegal. Men lived with men, women with women in large communal dormitories with shared kitchens, dining, etc. children would be raised in state run homes with the State as father and mother. Of course, being the sexist twat he was his communal utopia included women being sexually available to the men with no consideration for consent or emotion. And achieving compliance by brainwashing women into thinking they were “sexually liberated” and the more men that wanted them, the higher status and loyalty they had to the State.

That's what I was trying to ascertain, Onna, your actual argument. Thanks for expanding. I still think its arguable - perhaps unknowable, as I don't see how we could really tease out such intertwined and long histories as the long development of capitalism and the shifting meaning of 'labour' and paid work.

Well it won't happen on this thread with Onna's 'tude.

I would say the one of the most serious problems with capitalism is the opposite of a dependence on unpaid labour but rather the way it dissolves preindustrial social relations and relentlessly marketises everything. Consider the status of a mum who wants to stay at home with her kids

Which women did not do in pre-industrial times. Children worked and were productive members of the household and boys did men's work with the men past a certain age.

In upper-class households, children were raised by servants.

That’s the definition of independent variable- they co-exist and neither affects the other. So they are completely separate imho.

The only common ground between the two is both are subject to government/state regulation. So laws/regulations are often passed that impact both unpaid labour and the free market economy. So this is often a source of confusion into thinking that capitalism is impacting unpaid labour, or vice versa. When it’s really the state is affecting both at once by it’s actions.

I would say the one of the most serious problems with capitalism is the opposite of a dependence on unpaid labour but rather the way it dissolves preindustrial social relations and relentlessly marketises everything. Consider the status of a mum who wants to stay at home with her kids or elderly relatives spending their twilight years being cared for by strangers

I’m waiting for more Marxist tropes like the one about patriarchy being a feature of capitalism and capitalist societies….so feminists need to fight capitalism. 🙄

The thing about rabid Marxism is it basically takes all the ills of society, and blames it on capitalism in order to maximise recruitment of foot soldiers for the wished for revolution/class war.

This article is an attempt to recruit GC women into the Marxist struggle against capitalism by claiming for example that not only is unpaid labour by women a need of capitalism but also that socially constructed femininity is a limitation of capitalism.

You think this is accidental, I presume? That's arguable, but not the fact that our society depends upon it!

I don’t think this is arguable as history proves without a doubt that the co-existence of unpaid labour is independent of capitalism/communism as economic systems. Our society may still depend on unpaid labour, but that’s got nothing to do with capitalism. You get rid of capitalism, and unpaid labour isn’t going to miraculously evaporate.

We live in a capitalist society that relies on an enormous amount of unpaid labour; therefore this is a feature of a capitalist society.

No, it’s really not. You’re linking up two things that merely co-exist and claiming there is a correlation or causation relationship where there isn’t one.

It’s rather like arguing the opposite is true:

*We live in a communist society that relies on an enormous amount of unpaid labour; therefore this is a feature of a communist society”

Our society relies on a certain amount of unpaid labour, yes. This amount of unpaid labour while large, is the lowest it has ever been in human history. Unpaid labour as a feature of society predates capitalism (and communism) by millennia. Capitalism itself doesn’t rely on unpaid labour, nor does communism.

They are economic systems and the amount of co-existing unpaid labour is neither correlated to nor caused by either.

Ergo, unpaid labour is not a feature of a capitalist society. Unpaid labour is a societal feature that is independent of capitalism.

As a student in the 80s forced to always explain “the Marxist view” on bloody everything, I’m thrilled to the core that it’s still a Thing 40 years later! 😄

There's a massive need for unpaid labour:

Yes there is, but it’s not caused by or a feature of capitalism. That’s the issue. The article is GC with sprinkles of Marxist claptrap propaganda on top.

There's a massive need for unpaid labour: the childcare industry in the UK is huge but doesn't begin to cover the need most of which is covered by women and with consequences on the working capacity of women and increasingly many childcare facilities are running at a loss or going under because the funding need is higher than anyone can pay for.

Social care, particularly of the elderly, is also at an all time high and most LAs are barely able to afford the provision that's full of holes and not doing the job, the money is not raised or provided there. And much of the caring need that doesn't get covered through the paid labour and industry, despite the enormous, breaking budget, is picked up by women.

*plus the industry of elder care.

utter rot to suggest capitalism generates the need or has a need for unpaid labour. It most certainly doesn’t.

No, it would not. Unpaid labour has always existed and is at its lowest point ever in human society. Most of this trend has been with capitalism as our economic system.

Capitalism has co-existed during the historical periods whereby we went from over 25% of the population being slaves (worst form of unpaid labour) to today, where slavery is abolished and exists on the fringes with less than 2% enslaved. In addition, the unpaid labour of child/home care has similarly transitioned from never being paid labour to a whole industries of child care and home cleaning.

While I appreciate the message, she obviously has no idea what capitalism is. Typical of too many activists these days. It’s obvious there’s not been a single basic course on economics on the path to her PhD.

“the needs of a capitalist society for unpaid labour.”……there is no such need for unpaid labour in a capitalist society.

“The transgender movement is neither progressive nor radical because it has no wish to transcend the limitations of capitalism but rather to isolate the signifiers of a socially constructed femininity in order to reinforce and reproduce them.”…….capitalism is an economic system that has fuck all to do with social or human rights. TRA/GC- neither can “transcend the limitations of capitalism”. This is such bullshit misuse of the word capitalism.

“In a hierarchal capitalist society questions of power are essential,”. ….could have not put in “capitalist” at all as capitalism is entirely irrelevant to hierarchies and power.

“The multiple subject positions of left identity politics has fractured the left and allowed the existing social relations of capitalism to remain in place.”
Capitalism has no social relations…and I suspect the social relations she is referring to predated capitalism by millennia. Another stupid insertion of “capitalism” proving she hasn’t a clue as to its meaning.

“. That is why the trans movement must be situated within the wider context of social, institutional and structural relations and considered from the standpoint of the lived social relations of capitalism. Feminism, to be truly effective, must be part and parcel of the fight against capitalism.”. There are no lived social relations of capitalism, and no feminism doesn’t need to “fight capitalism” ffs.

That's because most Marxists, socialists etc are just larpers, they are in fact radical liberals.

Those who call themselves Marxists who have actually read Marx are unlikely to be radical liberals. The 'left', however, in Britain and a few other places has devolved itself from its Marxist roots and is, as you say, comprised of free-form radical liberals who have not read Marx, do not hold Marxist principles true and are also unlikely to be able to describe liberal democratic principles, such as, for example, the harm principle, what freedom of speech really means, the concept of rights and the social contract. Really they are rampant individualists, consumerists and libertarians with a hefty dose of misogyny mixed in.

To be fair, the fall of communism in the old East has a lot to do with this because it led to a withering away of the truly socialist/communist groups. The internet, blighted by American ideology and ideas about 'libertarianism' is another cause.

I have read another Marxist interpretation of the gender identity ideology earlier which argued that the oppression of women is based on material reality, not some unfalsifiable inner beliefs.

Yes, early Marxist feminists argued that whereas social class was important so was the material oppression of women by men. The main themes were the appropriation of women's household labour, sexual labour and reproductive labour by men.

Sheila Rowbotham is a good place to start if people want to explore second-wave Marxist/socialist feminism.

I always wonder why British second wavers are not more often talked about on this board.

And to dominate, control and dictate to females within those spaces, along with punishing females who do not perform the required cartwheels on command, which is increasingly including the right to behave unacceptably and in ways that females find intimidating and distressing with demands that females do not look, or show distress, or try to avoid - in fact requiring victims to behave nicely as commanded.

And to demand that females not only condone such actions but claim them as 'feminist' and part of women's liberation. In other words, 'camera obscura' style, to see our oppression as our freedom.

One of the key concepts in Marxist thought and in Marx's The German Ideology is ideology. Marx says that ideology is a "camera obscura" which turns the image on reality on its head. In other words, Marx holds that ideology reflects an inverted image of social reality, which is distorted and false (see False Consciousness). Marx, plainly speaking, says that the truth of reality and reality as it is conceived through ideology are opposed.

culturalstudiesnow.blogspot.com/2012/03/marxs-german-ideology-alienation-and.html

Yes I think so.

Might be misremembering (not completely sober..), but is she not one of the directors of the Adult Human Female documentary? (Attempted to view it in Nottingham. Apparently the Methodists don't do free speech any more.)

Oh Arabella I originally read your quote without the 'y' in those words... Whoops!