there is a distinction between historical materialism and we

talked about things that are material the fact that bodies are
material is just an obvious FYI. Historical materialism is
analysis of how the role of production, class, and capitalism
have historically and continue to determine conditions of social
relations The aff is materialist feminism which is distinct
and doesnt provide any useful insight into how those material
conditions came to manifest themselves
Giminez 2k
Martha E., WHAT'S MATERIAL ABOUT MATERIALIST FEMINISM? A MARXIST FEMINIST
CRITIQUE [http://www.colorado.edu/Sociology/gimenez/work/rphil.html] //
To define MatFem is not an easy task; theorists who self- identify as materialist or as marxist feminists differ in their understanding
of what these labels mean and, consequently, the kind of knowledges they produce. Depending on their theoretical allegiances and
self-understanding, feminists may differ in their classification of other feminists' works, so that clear lines of theoretical demarcation
between and within these two umbrella terms are somewhat difficult to establish. Take, for example, Lise Vogel's work. I always
considered Vogel a Marxist Feminist because, unlike Socialist Feminists (whose avoidance of Marx's alleged reductionisms led them
to postulate ahistorical theories of patriarchy), she took Marxism seriously and her analysis of reproduction as a basis for the
oppression of women is firmly grounded within the Marxist tradition. However, the subtitle of her recent book (a collection of
previously published essays), is "Essays for a Materialist Feminism;" self-identifying as a socialist feminist, she states that socialist
feminists "sought to replace the socialist tradition's theorizing about the woman question with a 'materialist' understanding of

Feminism's rejection of Marx's and Marxism's

"reductionism" led to the deliberate effort to ground "patriarchy" outside the mode
of production and, consequently and from the standpoint of Marxist theory, outside history. Materialism,
women's oppression." This is certainly news to me; Socialist

Vogel tells us, was used to highlight the key role of production -- including domestic production -- in determining the conditions
leading to the oppression of women. Materialism was also used as "a flag," to situate Socialist Feminism within feminist thought and
within the left; materialist feminism, Vogel argues, cannot therefore be reduced to a trend in cultural studies, as some literary critics
would prefer. But wasn't Engels' analysis materialist? and didn't Marxist Feminists (Margaret Benston and Peggy Morton come to
mind) explore the ways production -- public and domestic -- oppressed and exploited women? These brief comments about Vogel's
understanding of MatFem highlight some of its problematic aspects as a term intended to identify a specific trend within feminist
theory. It can blur, as it does in this instance, the qualitative differences that existed and continue to exist between Socialist
Feminism, the dominant strand of feminist thought in the U.S. during the late 1960s and 1970s, and the marginalized Marxist
Feminism. I am not imputing such motivations to Lise Vogel; I am simply pointing out the effects of such an interpretation of U.S.
Socialist Feminism which, despite the use of Marxist terms and references to capitalism developed, theoretically, as a sort of
feminist abstract negation of Marxism. Other feminists, for different reasons, would also disagree with Vogel's interpretation. For
Toril Moi and Janice Radway, for example, the relationship between Socialist Feminism and MatFem "is far from clear." . As editors of
a special issue of The South Atlantic Quarterly dedicated to this topic, they do not offer a theory or a clear definition of the term.
Presumably, the issue's content will give the reader the elements necessary to define the term for herself, because all the authors
"share a commitment to concrete historical and cultural analysis, and to feminism understood as an 'emancipatory narrative.'" One
of these authors, Jennifer Wicke, defines MatFem as follows: "a feminism that insists on examining the material conditions under
which social arrangements, including those of gender hierarchy, develop... materialist feminism avoids seeing this (gender
hierarchy) as the effect of a singular... patriarchy and instead gauges the web of social and psychic relations that make up a
material, historical moment;" "...materialist feminism argues that material conditions of all sorts play a vital role in the social
production of gender and assays the different ways in which women collaborate and participate in these productions"... "there are
areas of material interest in the fact that women can bear children... Materialist feminism... is less likely than social constructionism
to be embarrassed by the occasional material importance of sex differences."

Insistence on the

importance of material conditions, material historical moments as a complex of social relations which
include and influence gender hierarchy, the materiality of the body and its sexual,
reproductive and other biological

functions remain , however, abstract pronouncements

which unavoidably lead to a n empiricist focus on the immediately

given. There is no theory of history or of social relations or of the

production of gender hierarchies that could give guidance about the

meaning of whatever it is observed in a given "material historical moment." Landry and
MacLean, authors of MATERIALIST FEMINISMS, tell us that theirs is a book "about feminism and Marxism" in which they examine the
debates between feminism and Marxism in the U.S. and Britain and explore the implications of those debates for literary and cultural
theory. The terrain of those early debates, which were aimed at a possible integration or synthesis between Marxism and feminism,
shifted due to the emergence of identity politics, concern with postcolonialism, sexuality, race, nationalism, etc., and the impact of
postmodernism and post- structuralism. The new terrain has to do with the "construction of a materialist analysis of culture informed
by and responsive to the concerns of women, as well as people of color and other marginalized groups." For Landry and Maclean,
MatFem is a "critical reading practice...the critical investigation, or reading in the strong sense, of the artifacts of culture and social
history, including literary and artistic texts, archival documents, and works of theory... (is) a potential site of political contestation
through critique, not through the constant reiteration of home-truths." Theirs is a "deconstructive materialist feminist perspective."
But what, precisely, does materialist mean in this context? What theory of history and what politics inform this critique? Although
they define materialism in a philosophical and moral sense, and bring up the difference between mechanical or "vulgar" materialism
and historical materialism, there is no definition of what materialism means when linked to feminism. Cultural materialism, as
developed in Raymond William's work, is presented as a remedy or supplement to Marx's historical materialism. There is, according
to Williams, an "indissoluble connection between material production, political and cultural institutions and activity, and
consciousness ... Language is practical consciousness, a way of thinking and acting in the world that has material consequences.
Williams, they point out, "strives to put human subjects as agents of culture back into materialist debate." The implications of these
statements is that "humans as agents of culture" are not present in historical materialism and that Marx's views on the relationship
between material conditions, language, and consciousness are insufficient. But anyone familiar with Marx's work knows that this is
not the case. In fact, it is Marx who wrote that "language is practical consciousness" and posited language as the matter that
burdens "spirit" from the very start, for consciousness is always and from the very first a social product. Landry and Maclean
present an account of the development of feminist thought from the late 1960s to the present divided in three moments: the
encounters and debates between marxism and feminism in Britain and the U.S.; the institutionalization and commodification of
feminism; and "deconstructive materialist feminism." These are "three moments of materialist feminism" a very interesting
statement that suggest that MatFem -- a rather problematic and elusive concept which reflects, in my view, postmodern sensibilities
about culture and about the subject of feminism -- had always been there, from the very beginning, just waiting to be discovered. Is
that really the case? If so, what is this materialism that lurked under the variety of feminist theories produced on both sides of the
Atlantic since the late 1960s? Does reference to "material conditions" in general or to "the material conditions of the oppression of
women" suffice as a basis for constructing a new theoretical framework, qualitatively different from MarxFem? If so, how? The
authors argue that feminist theories focused exclusively on gender and dual systems theories that bring together gender and class
analysis face methodological and political problems that "deconstructive reading practices can help solve;" they propose "the
articulation of discontinuous movements, materialism and feminism, an articulation that takes the political claims of deconstruction
seriously... deconstruction as tool of political critique. But isn't the linking between deconstruction and Marxism what gives it its
critical edge? It is in the conclusion that the authors, aiming to demonstrate that materialism is not an alias for Marxism, outline the
difference between MarxFem and MatFem as follows: "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 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." While this is helpful to understand what contemporary self- identified

MatFem, it does not shed light on the meaning of

material base, material effect, and material weight . The main concept, materialism,
remains undefined; at times it seems to mean real or objective (e.g., gender and race are as real
as class), or central, meaning determinant, having causal effects (e.g., ideologies are
just as central or have as much "material weight" as class ). Underlying these ideas
lurk the specters of "class reductionism" and "economic determinism," a stereotypical understanding of Marx
materialist feminists mean when they refer to

and the Marxist tradition used to argue for the superiority of claims defined, essentially, as their abstract negation. Also lurking are
Althusser's views on the materiality of ideology, now expanded to analyze all forms of oppression and oppositional identities, but
with a crucial difference: while for Althusser the level of production and, consequently, the contradictions between capital and labor
and between the forces and relations of production are determinant "in the last instance," albeit "overdetermined" and rendered

materialist feminism appears to

rest upon the unsupported claim that there is no hierarchy of causality: all other
forms of inequality besides class, and their corresponding ideologies, are equally "material," meaning
they are not only equally real and important but also equal in their causal powers
Such conclusion might be politically satisfying, but it rests upon a functional notion
of causality according to which all institutions or elements of the social system
mutually interact and affect each other, and none is "more" causally efficacious
than others; i.e., none can set parameters for the conditions of possibility and development of the others. And what is the
historically specific and active by the characteristics of concrete social formations,

nature of the other "contradictions" materialist feminists should recognize? Contradiction is not equivalent to conflict, for conflicts

can be resolved within a given system of relations, whereas contradiction can be resolved solely through qualitative social change.
Finally, references to ideologies, exploitation, imperialism, oppression, colonialism, etc. confirm precisely that which the authors

materialism would seem to be an alias for Marxism, a Marxism suitably modified,

however, to grant materiality (meaning, perhaps, objectivity, reality, and equal causal
efficacy) to everything. Rosemary Hennessy (1993) traces the origins of Materialist Feminism in the work of British and
intended to dispel:

French feminists who preferred the term materialist feminism to Marxist feminism because, in their view, Marxism had to be
transformed to be able to explain the sexual division of labour. In the 1970s, Hennessy states, Marxism was inadequate to the task
because of its class bias and focus on production, while feminism was also problematic due to its essentialist and idealist concept of
woman; this is why MatFem emerged as a positive alternative both to Marxism and feminism. The combined effects of the
postmodern critique of the empirical self and the criticisms voiced by women who did not see themselves included in the generic
woman subject of academic feminist theorizing resulted, in the 1990s, in materialist feminist analyses that "problematize 'woman'
as an obvious and homogeneous empirical entity in order to explore how 'woman' as a discursive category is historically constructed
and traversed by more than one differential axis." Furthermore, Hennessy argues, despite the postmodern rejection of totalities and
theoretical analyses of social systems, materialist feminists need to hold on to the critique of the totalities which affect women's
lives: patriarchy and capitalism. Women's lives are every where affected by world capitalism and patriarchy and it would be
politically self- defeating to replace that critique with localized, fragmented political strategies and a perception of social reality as
characterized by a logic of contingency. Hennessy's views on the characteristics of MatFem emerge through her critical

MatFem is a
"way of reading" that rejects the dominant pluralist paradigms and logics of
contingency and seeks to establish the connections between the discursively
constructed differentiated subjectivities that have replaced the generic "woman" in
feminist theorizing, and the hierarchies of inequality that exploit and oppress women .
engagement with the works of Laclau and Mouffe, Foucault, Kristeva and other theorists of the postmodern.

Subjectivities, in other words, cannot be understood in isolation from systemically organized totalities. MatFem, as a reading
practice, is also a way of explaining or re- writing and making sense of the world and, as such, influences reality through the
knowledges it produces about the subject and her social context. Discourse and knowledge have materiality in their effects; one of
the material effects of discourse is the construction of the subject but this subject is traversed by differences grounded in
hierarchies of inequality which are not local or contingent but historical and systemic, such as patriarchy and capitalism. Difference,
consequently, is not mere plurality but inequality. The problem of the material relationship between language, discourse, and the
social or between the discursive (feminist theory) and the non-discursive (women's lives divided by exploitative and oppressive
social relations) can be resolved through the conceptualization of discourse as ideology . A theory of ideology presupposes a theory
of the social and this theory, which informs Hennessy's critical reading of postmodern theories of the subject, discourse,
positionality, language, etc., is what she calls a "global analytic" which, in light of her references to multinational capitalism, the
international division of labour, overdetermined economic, political and cultural practices, etc, seems to be at the very least a kind
of postmodern Marxism. But references to historical materialism, and Althusser's theory of ideology and the notion of symptomatic
reading are so important in the development of her arguments that one wonders about her hesitation to name Marxism or historical
materialism as the theory of the social underlying her critique of the postmodern logic of contingency; i.e., Marx's theory of
capitalism, the totality she so often mentions together with patriarchy as sources of the exploitation and oppression of women and
as the basis for the "axis of differences" that traverse the discursive category "woman." To sum up, Hennessy's version of MatFem is
a blend of post-marxism and postmodern theories of the subject and a source of "readings" and "re-writings" which rescue
postmodern categories of analysis (subject, discourse, difference) from the conservative limbo of contingency, localism and
pluralism to historicize or contextualize them by connecting them to their systemic material basis in capitalism and patriarchy. This
is made possible by understanding discourse as ideology and linking ideology to its material base in the "global analytic." In
Hennessy's analysis, historical materialism seems like an ever present but muted shadow, latent under terms such as totality,
systemic, and global analytic. However, in the introduction to Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference and Women's
Lives, written with her co-editor, Chrys Ingraham, there is a clear, unambiguous return to historical materialism, a recognition of its
irreplaceable importance for feminist theory and politics. This introduction, entitled "Reclaiming Anticapitalist Feminism," is a
critique of the dominant feminist concern with culture, identity and difference considered in isolation from any systemic
understanding of the social forces that affect women's lives, and a critique of an academic feminism that has marginalized and
disparaged the knowledges produced by the engagement of feminists with Marxism, and their contributions to feminist scholarship
and to the political mobilization of women. More importantly, this introduction is a celebration of MarxFem whose premises and
insights, they argue, have been consistently "misread, distorted, or buried under the weight of a flourishing postmodern cultural
politics." They point out that, whatever the name of the product of feminists efforts to grapple with historical materialism (Matfem,
Socialist Feminism or MarxFem), though these names signal theoretical differences and emphases, together they indicate the
recognition of historical materialism as the source of emancipatory knowledge required for the success of the feminist project. In this
introduction, MatFem becomes a term used interchangeably with MarxFem, with the latter being the most prominently displayed.
The authors draw a clear line between the cultural materialism that characterizes the work of post-marxist feminists who, having
rejected historical materialism, analyze cultural, ideological and political practices in isolation from their material base in capitalism,
and MatFem (meaning both MarxFem and Socialist Feminism) which is firmly grounded in historical materialism; "unlike cultural
feminists, materialist, socialist and marxist feminists do not see culture as the whole of social life but rather as only one arena of
social production and therefore as only one area of feminist struggle." The authors differentiate MatFem from MarxFem by indicating
that MatFem is the end result of several discourses (historical materialism, marxist and radical feminism, and postmodern and
psychoanalytic theories of meaning and subjectivity) among which the postmodern input, in their view, is the source of its defining
characteristics. Nevertheless, in the last paragraphs of the introduction there is a return to the discussion of MarxFem, its critiques of
the idealist features of postmodernism and the differences between the postmodern and the historical materialist or marxist
analyses of representations of identity. Theoretical conflicts, they point out, do not occur in isolation from class conflicts and the
latter affect the divisions among professional feminists and their class allegiances. Feminists are divided in their attitudes towards
capitalism. their understanding of the material conditions of oppression and the extent to which they link the success of feminist
struggles to the success of anticapitalist struggles. To be a feminist is not necessarily to be anticapitalist and to be a materialist
feminist is not equivalent to being socialist or even critical of the status quo. In fact, "work that claims the signature 'materialist

feminism' shares much in common with cultural feminism, in that it does not set out to explain or change the material realities that
link women's oppression to class." MarxFem, on the other hand, does make the connection between the oppression of women and
capitalism and this is why the purpose of their book, according to the authors, is "to reinsert into MatFem - - especially in those
overdeveloped sctors where this collection will be most widely read -- those (untimely) marxist feminist knowledges that the drift to
cultural politics in postmodern feminism has suppressed. It is our hope that in so doing this project will contribute to the emergence
of feminisms' third wave and its revival as a critical force for transformative social change." In light of the above, given the inherent
ambiguity of the term MatFem, shouldn't it be more theoretically adequate and politically fruitful to return to Marxist Feminism? Is
the effort of struggling to redefine MatFem by reinserting MarxFem knowledges a worthwhile endeavor? How important is it to
broaden the meaning of MatFem to include Marxist Feminist contents? Perhaps the political climate inside and outside the academy
in the U.S. is one where Marxism is so discredited that Marxist Feminists are likely to find more professional acceptance and
legitimacy by claiming MatFem as their theoretical orientation. I do not in anyway impute this motivation to Ingraham and Hennessy
whose introduction to their book is openly Marxist. In fact, after I read it and looked over the table of contents I thought a more
adequate title for the book should have been Marxist Feminism. And anyone familiar with historical materialism can appreciate the
sophisticated Marxist foundation of Hennessy's superbly argued book. Such

positive feminist assessment of the

theoretical and political relevance of Marxism is, however, rare these days. Feminists are more likely to share
Landry and MacLean's critique of Marxism's alleged economism, class reductionism, and disregard for agency and the effects of
culture and ideology. Underlying these and similar feminist criticisms of Marxism's putative shortcomings, there is an economistic
and undialectical reading of Marx's work. That Marx may not have addressed issues that 20th century feminists consider important
is not a sufficient condition to invalidate his methodology as well as the potential of his theory of capitalism to help us theorize and
investigate the causes of the oppression of women. This potential, however, was widely recognized in the early stages of the
Women's Liberation Movement. It is very interesting, in retrospect, to read the work produced by some British self- defined
Materialist Feminists writing in the 1970s, and realize that they were actually using and developing Marxist theory in ways that
belied their critical stance towards Marxism. For example, Kuhn and Wolpe, editors of Materialism and Feminism, adopted Engels'
definition of materialism: "According to the materialist conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the
production and reproduction of immediate life. This, again, is of a twofold character: on the one side, the production of the means of
existence, of food, clothing and shelter and the tools necessary for that production; on the other side,the production of human
beings themselves, the propagation of the species." A materialist problematic entailed, then, recognition of the fundamental
importance, for the analysis of human history and social organization, of the production and reproduction of material life; i.e., the
transformation of nature and human nature through labour in the context of changing relations of production and reproduction. For
Kuhn and Wolpe, the difference between a Marxist and a materialist analysis hinged upon whether or not analysis went beyond the
"traditional" Marxist focus on modes of production, their tendencies, contradictions and so forth, to incorporate the historical
character of the sexual division of labour and the examination of "the relations of women to the modes of production and
reproduction." It followed that Marxism could not yield a "correct" analysis of the oppression of women unless it was transformed by
including the analysis of the sexual division of labour and all other aspects of the mode of production directly and indirectly affecting
male/female relationships. Contributors to their volume attempted in various ways to remedy Marxism's "failures" by creatively
using Marxist theory to explore the relationships between capitalism and institutions that specifically oppressed women; e.g.,
patriarchy, the family, the state, domestic labour, the sexual division of labour, women's place in the labour force, etc. MatFem was
also associated with the work of French feminists, particularly Christine Delphy. Materialism (i.e., the Marxist method), she argued, is
the only theory of history that views oppression as the most fundamental reality; this is why women and all oppressed groups need
it to examine their situation: "to start from oppression defines a materialist approach... oppression is a materialist concept." For
Delphy, the family or domestic mode of production, analytically independent and separate from production, was the site of
patriarchal exploitation and the material basis of the oppression of women. Marriage, she argued, is a labour contract that gives
men the right to exploit women, appropriating their labour in the domestic setting or controlling their wages or other market
earnings; it is, for all practical purposes, a relationship of slavery. Delphy sought in the organization of the mode of reproduction the
structural basis for gender divisions; rather than inquiring into the social construction of gender or the ways in which individuals
acquire gender identities, she shought to identify the material conditions that place men and women in unequal relations. Barrett
and McIntosh criticized Delphy on several grounds; e.g., economism (she rejected analyses that gave causal importance to
ideology), emphasis on the exploitation of women as wives, overlooking the effects of motherhood and the situation of single
women, and for inappropriately applying the concept of mode of production to the family. In postulating the autonomy of the family
or domestic mode of production from the mode of production as such, they argued, Delphy isolated it from the dynamics of social
change. An acceptable materialist analysis, in their view, should connect the economic and ideological levels of analysis, examining
how material (i.e., economic) conditions structure consciousness. Although earlier self-defined materialist feminists may have
understood their work to be one of "transforming" Marxist theory, they actually demonstrated its fundamental importance for
theorizing the oppression of women. A theoretical transformation would have entailed a challenge to Marxism's fundamental
assumptions, rather than the use of those very assumptions to theorize new phenomena. To demonstrate, as they did, a dialectical
understanding of Marxism, introducing in the analysis of the oppression of women the causal efficacy of the state, ideology, the
family and other aspects of capitalist society, is to remain faithful its basic tenets, not to transform it. I too wrote about Marxism
and feminism in the 1970s but my approach was different, for I viewed the lacunae in Marx's work simply as results of his immediate
political and theoretical priorities. Because Marx's method shows the problems inherent in abstract theories of origins, and reveals

the notion of patriarchy was

descriptively useful, but theoretically unsound because it was intentionally
developed to seek the origin of the oppression of women outside history (i.e.,
independent from the mode of production). I was also critical of the use of "women" and "men" as categories
the dialectical nature of our categories of analysis, I concluded early on that

of analysis (they ignored class, racial and ethnic divisions, and socioeconomic status differences) and the utopian nature of
"sisterhood," given the real contradictions in the material interests of capitalist and working class women. I am originally from in
Argentina, a society where, unlike the United States, professional women were not exceptional, class divisions and self-identification
prevailed and the use of domestic servants was widespread (an important reason for the lack of conflict between work and family for
professional and employed middle class women). I was, consequently, unconvinced by theories which overgeneralized about male
domination and female oppression and were not sensitive to the realities of life under capitalism, where most men are not powerful
and in control over their lives and not all women are powerless. More nuanced theories, differentiating between kinds of oppressions

and corresponding levels of analyses were required. This is why, in my work, I sought to identify the historically specific capitalist
conditions underlying the observable social and economic inequalities between men and women. However, I never self-identified as
a Materialist Feminist; the label, in my view, misrepresented the dialectical nature of Marxism and obscured the actual Marxist
nature of the works thus labeled. While there were some overlaps between my views and those of materialist and socialist feminists
of the 1970s, both in terms of topics of analysis as well as in the aspects of Marx's theory of capitalism we considered pertinent to
examine the oppression of women, my work differs in the rejection of patriarchy as an explanatory concept, and in the use of Marx's
method to identify the capitalist processes that place propertyless men and women in similar class locations while facing different
opportunity structures and, therefore, unequal access to the necessary conditions of reproduction. The differences between my work
and the work of other feminists are partly the result of my having grown up in a capitalist society where class had not been yet been
erased from politics and people's common sense understanding of their lives -- a circumstance that sensitized me to issues which in
the early stages of the Women's Liberation Movement remained in the U.S. largely in the background, despite dissenting voices -and of my working alone, unlike feminists who belonged to long lasting East and West Coast study groups which shaped U.S.
socialist feminist scholarship in the 1970s and 1980s. But more important than the differences and similarities between my work
and that of other 1970s socialist feminists, here and in Britain, is the issue of the present resurgence of MatFem as a fashionable
trend within feminist theory. Why has MatFem reappeared? Why is it a "hot" commodity, as reflected in the abundance of recent
publications with "materialism" in their title? Is MatFem a positive development in feminist theory? Should Marxist feminists struggle
to regain political and academic legitimacy, thus striving to differentiate MarxFem from MatFem? In the sections that follow I shall
give a preliminary answer to those questions. Why Materialist Feminism Now? Does it Matter? While it is difficult to disentangle
Matfem from Marxfem in early feminist works, especially those written by European feminists, today

MatFem and

MarxFem are qualitatively different theoretical perspectives, with

radically different political implications . That they have become somewhat
confused reflects the ideological balance of power in the present political context, in academia
and in the publishing business, where "difference," "race, gender and class," "postisms" and, of course,
"materialism" have legitimacy and sell, while historical materialism does not . Early
materialist feminists took Marxism as their starting point. Despite critiques of Marxism's shortcomings, Marxist and materialist
feminists agreed on the importance of situating the oppression of women in the context of the capitalist mode of production as a
whole, examining how the capitalist organization of production, the articulation between production and reproduction, ideologies,
the state, the legal system, etc. affected and reproduced the unequal relations between men and women within and outside the
domestic sphere. Despite disagreements, they shared Engels' conception of historical materialism which gives a pivotal role in
human history to the organization of production and reproduction and their changing articulation, as the forces and relations of

MatFem is altogether different because it is

grounded in the postructuralist rejection of Marxism. The deconstruction of "women"
as a category of analysis, the focus on "discursively constructed" genders,
sexualities, bodies, and manifold differences among women have severed the links
between feminist theory and the actual conditions shaping most women's lives.
production change and modes of production change accordingly. Today

Today, "feminist theory

has come to mean feminist poststructuralism" and this

entails the

adoption of principles (e.g., anti-essentialism, contingency, social

constructionism, reduction of social reality to discourse, rejection
of "metanarratives," etc.) antithetical to the development of social
analyses and political strategies useful for women and all
oppressed people.

The very idea of women's oppression presupposes the material reality of their plight and the

validity of their claims, notions outside the purview of theories for which everything is relative, contingent, and discursively
constructed. It is this inability to deal with the material (i.e., objective, independent of the subject's consciousness) conditions
affecting real women's lives which, Ebert argues, has produced a crisis in postmodern feminist thought, because the objectivity and
forceful impact of historical processes "cannot be blunted in discourse;" this is why "historical materialism haunts feminism." In
light of the objectively worsening conditions of working people, particularly women, it has become increasingly untenable to hold on
to the notion that everything is socially or discursively constructed, or a localized, contingent story. The oppression of women is not
a story, or a text, or a form of interpreting or reading the world, so that politics is reduced to re-writing or re- describing the world, a

Because postmodern materialist

feminists have rejected all "metanarratives," discourses have a contradictory
relationship to the capitalist structures , processes and contradictions which are their
condition of possibility; they are only "contingently" related (thus duly avoiding the specters of
"reductionism" and "economism") to the mode of production but, as they are considered to be
conclusion that follows from the insistence on the materiality of discourse.

material in their effects, they are de facto assumed to be determinant in their own
right, thus resulting in an unacknowledged discursive reductionism . Hennessy and Ingraham
argue for the need to keep a connection between discourse, conceptualized as ideology, and the relevant "global analytics" which

Their efforts, however, are not sufficient to rescue

contemporary MatFem from its clearly anti-Marxist stance and only contributes to
increase the ambiguity of the concept. Besides, MatFem has moved further away from
the possibility of bridging the gap between discourses, ideologies and the mode of
production; the latest reincarnation of postructuralist materialism is not the matter of language, or the text or discourse, but
oppress women, patriarchy and capitalism.

rather "the resisting 'matter' of the non-discursive," with the body as the matter under consideration.

Matter,

whether of the body or anything else, has to be rendered

historically specific in order to become theoretically and politically
significant , for "matter as such is a pure creation of thought and an abstraction." This, in turn, presupposes consideration
of the characteristics of the mode of production which determine the kinds of labour processes and other forms of practice which,
dialectically, transform nature and human nature, forms of existence and forms of consciousness, bodies and discourses about

This approach to theorizing matter and materialism is, however, in contradiction with the
assumptions of postmarxist MatFem which, consequently, faces an unresolvable dilemma:
bodies and so forth.

"how not to deny the world outside the consciousness of the subject but not to make that world the material cause of social

If materiality implies causality, the denial of the causal efficacy of the

mode of production (e.g., through changes in the forces of production, class exploitation, class struggles, etc.) while
postulating the materiality of language and discourse ends up in a discourse
determinism that undermines the very role that the materiality of discourse is
supposed to play because, "if even meaning is material, then there is nothing which
is not, and the term simply cancels all the way through ." Perhaps these theoretical and political
practices either."

dead ends of postmarxist MatFem are the basis for its academic and commercial appeal. There is an "elective affinity" between its
dominant theoretical assumptions (which essentially "privilege" agency, embrace contingency, and exonerate capitalism, minimizing
the pivotal role of class exploitation while emphasizing plurality, diversity and identity politics), the dominant ideologies in the
advanced capitalist countries, and the life styles and world views of the middle and upper-middle class professionals and students
who have eagerly embraced postmodernism and poststructuralism, including MatFem, in its various manifestations. Conclusion
MatFem, a term which may have been useful in the past to feminists who, despite their critical stance, remained firmly within the
Marxist tradition, denotes something entirely different today. How useful is it to broaden the meaning of MatFem to encompass
MarxFem if, at the same time, the term is claimed by cultural materialists and postmarxist feminists whose views are profoundly
anti-marxist? That two anthologies of Marxist feminist writings have been published under the aegis of materialist feminism attest to
the greater market value of "materialism" and publishers' power to decide what sells, rather than the existence of a theoretical
convergence between MarxFem and MatFem. How will the new generations learn about the theoretical and political importance of
historical materialism for women if historical materialist analysis is tamed and "gentrified" under the MatFem label? Marx and
Marxism have already been marginalized in academia; the inclusion of MarxFem under the Matfem umbrella would only intensify
already widespread misunderstandings among the younger generations of feminists because, as it would call attention to the
"material" in historical materialism, it would strengthen dominant stereotypes about the "vulgar materialism" presumably inherent
in Marxism.

It is time , therefore, for Marxist feminists to separate themselves

from materialist feminism and assert the legitimacy and political urgency of
their approach. Essentially, this would entail a return to Marx whose method and analysis
of capitalism, despite its ambiguities, ommissions, complexities and 19th century
limitations, has far more to offer feminists and all oppressed people than
contemporary theories which, having severed the internal relationship between
existence and consciousness or, between discourse and its material conditions of
possibility, postulate the materiality of the discursive and whatever there might be
"outside" discourse (Nature? the Body?) while rejecting as "economism" the materiality -- i.e., the reality, independent of
people's consciousness, and causal efficacy -- of labor and of the mode of production. As Ebert unerringly points out, Marx's critique
of "Feuerbachian materialism" aptly describes today's MatFem's materialism: "As far as Feuerbach is a materialist he does not deal
with history, and as far as he considers history he is not a materialist." There is another reason why I believe

MarxFem

should "de-link" from MatFem : Marxist Feminists are, theoretically speaking, clearer
about what MarxFem is all about, politically and theoretically . MatFem, on the other hand,
remains a nebulous thing, a place for feminists who are clear about their rejection of
Marx and Marxism's alleged flaws, but seem to be less certain about what they
stand for. Feminist scholars, of course, do know what the modern MatFem they theorize is all about, but their work would seem
to have difficulties in engaging the consumers of their scholarship. I am grounding these assertions in the very different
development of two electronic discussion networks, MATFEM and M-Fem. MATFEM (Materialist Feminism), which I created in
December, 1994 together with Chrys Ingraham and Rosemary Hennessy, has had for years a stable membership of over 350 (it is
currently 363). At the beginning, there were the usual messages of self-introduction but, when those ceased, to our disappointment,
no sustained discussions tokk their place. We once attempted a discussion of an article by Rosemary Hennessy, but this project
failed. The list has been mostly silent; once in a while someone will post the announcement of a book, or a call for papers. But
MATFEM lacks a sense of community of intellectual and political purpose, there is no sense of urgency in examining, from a
materialist feminist standpoint, the various processes that continue to oppress women. M-Fem (Marxism Feminism) is a network I did
not create, but help moderate. It was created in May, 1997 and its small membership (72) reflects the scarcity of self-defined Marxist
feminists today. While the volume of mail varies and the network goes through relatively long periods of silence, it has produced
very lively and useful theoretical and political discussions and altogether a far greater quantity of messages than MATFEM. A
substantial portion of this article was, in fact, written as a response to an M-Fem member who asked about the difference between
MatFem and MarFem. I posted it in both lists but drew no reactions from MATFEM (except an enthusiastic, positive response from
Rosemary Hennessy) while eliciting a number of comments in M-Fem. The quantitative and qualitative difference between these
networks' archives is remarkable; M-Fem archives document the power of Marxism to examine the conditions affecting women's
lives today, while the meagerness of MATFEM's archives can be interpreted as a resulting from the relative theoretical irrelevance
and political sterility of postmodern feminism. MATFEM, in almost five years, has been unable to generate a single sustained
theoretical or political discussion, despite its far larger membership. The different trajectory of these networks powerfully illustrates
the qualitative differences between MarxFem and MatFem, highlighting the political and theoretical relevance of the former and the
scholastic nature of the latter.

Domestic violence is sustained by capitalist social relations

universalization of the privatized family and economic
individualism led to ideas of ownership and commodification
in personal relations
COTTER 2
(Jennifer, nqa, War and Domestic Violence, Red Critique, Sept/Oct, p. online)
Moreover, the class interests behind the "national security" project and the military's interest in "family values"

the "family", and domestic violence, are not at root a matter of

"reproduction" and "intimate relations" but of labor and, hence, of production. Capitalism,
reveal that

which is founded on the private appropriation of the majority's surplus labor for profit by those who own the means

subordinates "reproductive relations" to the interests of production for

profit. That is, capitalism reproduces the privatized familywhere the economic burden
for the social reproduction of workers lies in the hands of individual workers and not the
of production,

social collectivein order to reduce the portion of social surplus-labor that is used for meeting workers' needs

private property relations, this results

in family and interpersonal relations characterized by what Alexandra Kollontai called
"possessive individualism ": an ideological condition in class society in which "love "
relations are thought to be autonomous from social conditions and are viewed as a
relation of "ownership", most often of women by men (Selected Writings 237-249). In such a
situation, in which family and interpersonal relations are subordinated to production for profit not needs and
relationships take on the character of possessive individualism that is fostered under capitalism , women
become commodified as objects toward which abuse seems "justified".
rather than profit for the owners. Moreover, when subordinated to

Gender inequality is not the ahistorical product of an abstract

system of patriarchy its the result of classed societies
organized around the exploitation of surplus labor
CLOUD 3
(Dana, Prof. Comm at UT, Marxism and Oppression, Talk for Regional Socialist
Conference, April 19, 2003)

to challenge oppression, it is important to know where it comes

from. Historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists tell us that in preclass societies such as hunter-gatherer societies, racism and sexism were unheard of. Because
In order

homosexuality was not an identifiable category of such societies, discrimination on that basis did not occur either.

sexism, and homophobia have arisen in particular kinds of

societies, namely class societies. Womens oppression originated in the first class
societies, while racism came into prominence in the early periods of capitalism when colonialism and slavery
In fact, it is clear that racism,

drove the economic system. The prohibition against gays and lesbians is a relatively modern phenomenon. But

oppression have in common is that they did not always exist and are not
endemic to human nature. They were created in the interest of ruling
classes in society and continue to benefit the people at the top of society, while dividing and conquering
what all forms of

the rest of us so as to weaken the common fight against the oppressors. The work of Marxs collaborator Friederich
Engels on The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State in some respects reflects the Victorian times in
which in was written. Engels moralizes about womens sexuality and doesnt even include gay and lesbian liberation

anthropologists like the feminist Rayna Reiter have

confirmed his most important and central argument that it was in the first settled agricultural
societies that women became an oppressed class . In societies where for the first time
people could accumulate a surplus of food and other resources, it was possible for some
people to hoard wealth and control its distribution. The first governments or state structures formed
to legitimate an emerging ruling class. As settled communities grew in size and became more
complex social organizations, and, most importantly, as the surplus grew, the distribution of
wealth became unequaland a small number of men rose above the rest of the population in wealth and
power. In the previous hunter-gatherer societies, there had been a sexual division of
labor, but one without a hierarchy of value. There was no strict demarcation
between the reproductive and productive spheres. All of that changed with the development
of private property in more settled communities. The earlier division of labor in which men
did the heavier work, hunting, and animal agriculture , became a system of
differential control over resource distribution. The new system required
more field workers and sought to maximize womens reproductive potential.
Production shifted away from the household over time and women became
associated with the reproductive role, losing control over the production and
distribution of the necessities of life. It was not a matter of male sexism, but of economic
priorities of a developing class system. This is why Engels identifies womens oppression as the first form of
systematic class oppression in the world. Marxists since Engels have not dismissed the oppression
of women as secondary to other kinds of oppression and exploitation. To the contrary, womens
oppression has a primary place in Marxist analysis and is a key issue that socialists organize
around today. From this history we know that sexism did not always exist, and that men do not
have an inherent interest in oppressing women as domestic servants or sexual slaves. Instead,
womens oppression always has served a class hierarchy in society. In our society divided by
in his discussion of the oppressive family. However,

ideas about womens nature as domestic caretakers or irrational sexual beings justify
paying women lower wages compared to men, so that employers can pit workers against one another in
sexism,

competition for the same work. Most women have always had to work outside the home to support their families.

women around the world are exploited in sweatshops where their status as women allows
bosses to pay them very little, driving down the wages of both men and women. At the same time,
capitalist society relies on ideas about women to justify not providing very much in the
way of social services that would help provide health care, family leave, unemployment insurance, access to
primary and higher education, and so forthall because these things are supposed to happen in the
private family, where women are responsible . This lack of social support results in a lower quality
of life for many men as well as women. Finally, contemporary ideologies that pit men against
women encourage us to fight each other rather than organizing together.
Today,

Dual systems theory is debunked---they have no coherent

explanation for why female CEOs and lower class women face
incredibly different forms of sexism in the office OR why poor
neighborhoods have higher rates of sexual violence than gated
suburbs proves that capitalism and patriarchy are inherently
intertwined
*modified for ableist language

John 13
Maya, Class Societies and Sexual Violence: Towards a Marxist Understanding of
Rape [http://radicalnotes.com/2013/05/08/class-societies-and-sexual-violencetowards-a-marxist-understanding-of-rape/] May 8 //
feminist
contributions have not been holistic in their approach and are ridden with the tendency to
misread the complex web of conditions which produce bad sex in general, and rape in
Going beyond feminist contentions: is rape simply about exercising power? Clearly,

particular. For instance, their explanations of rape and visions of eradicating this problem are heavily based
on the notion of power discrepancy between (all) men and (all) womena discrepancy that they believe
stems from deep-rooted traditions of overwhelming male dominance and hegemony over all important
socio-political and economic activities in society.

What is assumed by this set of views is that

all

men rape and all women are rape-able due to entrenched gender inequalities. Thus,
irrespective of inequalities in terms of class, caste or race, a higher status woman, despite all her power and
prestige, can still be raped by a man of a lower status. This perspective comes close to what we know as
dual systems theory, according to which upper class women, who are oppressors and exploiters as part of
the dominant economic class, can still be oppressed due to the prevalence of patriarchy. According to the
same theory, working-class women are oppressed and exploited not just by the dominant economic class but

the dual systems theory projects patriarchy as a

comprehensive system that co-exists along with capitalism.[37] Nonetheless, the
very foundation of such a claim is based on an unsustainable assumption that all
men are in the position to exploit all women . Considering this, it is wrong to assume
that patriarchy constitutes a system in itself; one which can explain, for example,
why women like Christie Hefner (Chairperson and CEO of Playboy Enterprises that produces
televised soft porn, mens magazine and owns numerous playboy clubs) and Priyanka Chopra (a
famous Bollywood actress) can be raped in certain circumstances . In all likelihood, feminists
also by patriarchy. In other words,

and adherents of the dual systems theory would explain the possibility of such powerful women being raped
by arguing that even the poorest man in the country can overpower them, use brute force and assault them
with his sexual organs. What is elided, of course, is the fact that despite the presence of brute force of the

male sex, rich and powerful women are less prone to sexual assaults like rape. Undoubtedly, the feminist

inequalities (like
class) play themselves out in more complex ways than feminists are willing to
contend with.[38] Indeed, the assumption that men tend to use their physical power in order to
understanding of gender inequality does not often gel with the ground reality, for

subjugate women is a poorly substantiated argument and explains little except how perversely one can use
human biology to explain social complexities. Of course, the question is not that men are physically more
powerful and tend to misuse this power in the context of gender inequality, but that in spite of this physical
power and prevalence of gender inequality, poor men cannot sexually exploit rich women, except in

A Bollywood actress, a female

CEO of a multinational company, or a female entrepreneur can be raped by men of the
lower classes only if they happen to be in vulnerable circumstances like being
stuck alone on highway because their car broke down, having to manoeuvre
through an underground parking all alone, etc. To draw an analogy: lions
despite their superior physical strength have not come to rule over humans , and
instead the exact opposite is true. It is then only in conditions where humans are in
direct confrontation with lions and are in vulnerable circumstances that they
are in a position to be overpowered by them. So rather than invalidating or blurring the
conditions where such women are in positions of vulnerability.

role of class stratification in sexual violence, sexual assaults on middle-class and other upper class women

As long as the
class divided society presses the majority of women (i.e. working-class women) into
position of dependence and vulnerability, the image that women are
submissive and exploitable will haunt even women from the upper classes. Indeed, it is a
by lower class men reveal just how widespread the impact of class divisions can be.

fact that the majority of women are highly vulnerable and oppressed within their homes, labour market, etc.
As a consequence, middle-class womens arguments regarding the need to change skewed mindsets about
women being weak, fragile and belonging in the kitchen are highly misplaced. This is because

they

overlook the fact that prevailing mindsets are based on the concrete
conditions in which the average woman is positioneda point explained earlier in the
section titled Capitalism and Womens Oppression. It is then not simply mindsets that need to
change, but the conditions which nurture such images and views about
women. Evidently then, by overemphasizing gender divisions, feminists are
wrongly glossing over the role of other stratifications produced by capitalism . In
fact, many feminist theories collapse with the introduction of such stratifications, in particular, class
stratification, within the discourse on womens oppression and rape. How and why does this happen? One of
the focal points of feminist theory is that rape is not about sex but is a political act of violence and
domination in which sex is used as a means to assert male control and power.[39] This argument is
articulated in many ways like: (i) rape is motivated by aggression as rapists target any age group, any
woman, and are therefore, often not looking for satisfying or good sex; (ii) men rape so as to punish women
who challenge norms, and therefore, see their attack as a justified act of social control; (iii) rape is
commonly motivated by hostility created by conditions like war; (iv) rape is often premeditated; (v) rape is
not motivated by sex as many rapists have stable sexual partners; etc. Clearly then, all rapes are regarded
not as sexually motivated deeds but as acts of aggression which are attributable to entrenched gender
inequality. The logical conclusion of this line of argument is that the higher the level of gender inequality, the
higher the rape rate. Concomitantly, the higher the level of gender equality, the lower the rape rate.
Interestingly, when confronted with the fact that rape has persisted despite the development of trends
towards gender equality, feminists tend to argue that the short-term effect of such equalitygreater
visibility of women amidst the workforce, educational institutions, seats of power, etc.has resulted in a
backlash. Distinguishing this period as one of a painful transition in which the hostility between the sexes
tends to peak, feminists have pressed that in the long run, equality would produce a social climate that does
not foster rape. Clearly, the theory of radical change and gradual stabilization of the changes introduced[40]
within the system of gender stratification informs many feminist claims about the importance of eradicating
power discrepancies between men and women in order to combat rape. It is argued that with more and more
women gaining entrance into the existing workforce, occupational segregation decreases; stereotypes about
gender roles weaken; policies are drafted to address new problems (like sexual harassment at the
workplace, lack of equal pay for equal work, etc.); women gain decision-making power in relationships and
men come to participate more in familial roles as the dynamics of gender-based division of labour within the

family undergo gradual change. The net result of all these developments is reduced gender stratification
(within respective classes), and hence, rape. The question is whether this reduced gender stratification is
really translating into a decline in sexual violence on women. Unfortunately, statistics reflect no such ebb in
sexual violence. Rape rates, in fact, appear not be directly related to gender-stratification or gender
disparities in earnings, education, occupation prestige, etc. as is reflected in the shockingly high rape
statistics of several advance capitalist countries like the US where higher levels of gender equality (within
respective classes) have been achieved compared to other parts of the world (Haryana, for example).[41]
Similarly, in metropolitans like Delhi where women have been entering the workforce steadily, rape figures
have soared, resulting in city labels like rape capital. Undoubtedly, while the notion of backlash and the
theory of a transition period may appeal at first, they are now inadequate to explain how rape has persisted
for decades, despite the continuous entry of women into the labour market and in spite of certain landmark
labour legislations. We could talk of a transition period in the 1970s, maybe even in the 1980s and 1990s,
but as we move into the second decade of the twenty-first century, the idea of a backlash loses its
relevance. Indeed, does this transition period ever end? It seems not. Obviously then, the theory of backlash
and a transition period has lost its analytical edge, and presses us to introspect on the direct correlation
being drawn between rape and gender stratification. Let us look at other feminist arguments about rape.
Two arguments, in particular, deserve close attention: (i) that rapists target any age group, any woman, and
are therefore, not looking for satisfying or good sex but a window to express aggression, and (ii) men rape so
as to punish women who challenge norms, and therefore, see their attack as a justified act of social control.
Both arguments echo the now dominant, majestic view epitomized in many renowned feminists claims that
rapes are not about sex but are a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a
state of fear. In her iconic work, Brownmiller has even expressed this view in terms like rapists are merely
the front line masculine shock troops in the war against women, and are the terrorist guerrillas in the
longest sustained battle the world has ever seen. The ground reality, however, includes a more complex
picture, especially if we closely examine the profile of rape victims as well as rapists. While it is true that
rapists target a varied group of victims, we must also contend with the fact that within the pool of rape
victims there is greater representation of victims from the lower strata of society. This reflects that most
victims are raped because they are in positions of greater vulnerability. In other words, while there can be no
doubt that from a womans point of view there is nothing sexual about sexual violence, for the average man
involved, the act is often about stealing sex by taking advantage of the vulnerability of the individual
woman, or the impunity offered by circumstances. Moreover, a lot of research on the psyche and profile of
rapists shows that rapists do not exercise preference for coercive sex. Furthermore, such research has shown
that there are no significant differences between the arousal patterns of male rapists and other males.[42]
Indeed, if we look very closely at reported cases of rapes, we will find that rapists are not raping women and
children because they seek to assert power over them or teach them a lesson for transgressing (certain)
norms. I say this because many cases of rape have involved victims who were in no way transgressing given
socio-cultural norms, and so, encouraging the (vigilante) rapists to put them in their place. After all, where
is the power dimension or teach her-a-lesson factor playing itself out when a 5-year old infant is raped by
a family member or neighbour? In this case the rapist rapes not because he believes the infant needs to be
subjugated or taught a lesson, but because he sees her (childish) vulnerability as an opportunity to satisfy
himself.[43] Thus, contrary to assumptions reached by feminists, rapists target a somewhat varied group of
victims with a preference for those in positions of most vulnerability. This brings us to the question of
certain kinds of rape (gang-rape, etc.), where the supposedly obvious dimension playing itself out is power,
or basically, the desire to teach the victim a lesson. Let us look at the recent gang-rape case itself. In his
December 2012 article, Shuddhabrata Sengupta asserted that: Rape is not about sex, it is about
humiliation, its intention is precisely to make the raped person think that now that they have been subjected
to sexual violence, their life will no longer be worth living.[44] He also repetitively named the rapists
(Sharma, Sharma, Thakur, Gupta and Singh) in order to emphasize their higher caste status, implying,
thereby, that these upper caste men from rural backgrounds resorted to rape as they were angered by the
liberated woman of the city, and hence, sought to teach the adventurous woman a lesson. Interestingly,
news reports of the initial few days after the gang-rape revealed that the six drunken men were perusing the
area for a prostitutesomething they often did on other nights. This means that prostitution could possibly
have substituted (and did substitute on other such nights) for the brutal rape of the 23 year-old paramedic.
The question thats important to raise here is why a sizeable number of upper caste, middle-class men do
not act as insensitively as the six rapists, and do not do the same in circumstances that offer impunity? How
come such upper caste men have reconciled with women transgressing certain norms, while others
(Sharma, Sharma, Thakur, Gupta and Singh) from Indias villages (and now part of the lowest rung of urban
society, i.e. slum dwellers), are failing to reconcile to changes surrounding womens lifestyles? The answer
lies in closer examination of the concerned act of urban violence. In many cases of such sexual violence on
women reported from cities, it is not so much the vestiges of village-based, patriarchal mentality, but
something much more complex and terrifyingsomethingif we are ready to see and recognize itis a
product of the urban context created by capitalisman urban context filled with depravation and
dehumanization of the majority. Indeed, why are we seeing so many working-class menservants, security
guards, factory workers, fruit vendors, rickshaw pullers, slum dwellers, chaiwallahs, bus conductors, school

bus drivers, maxi cab drivers, daily-wagers, electricians, cable operators, etc.become rapists and/or
molesters? The frequency with which they are committing sexual violence isnt simply because crimes
committed by them are reported more (many cases, in fact, are not even being reported as a lot of such
sexual violence is happening within the structure of working-class familiesfathers/brothers raping
daughters/sisters over many years is a typical manifestation of this). What then is the cause behind this
exploitative sexual behaviour; the brunt of which working-class women (wives, sisters, daughters, nieces,
female neighbours, prostitutes, etc.) bear? Is it an imaginary, omnipresent sexual pyramid that renders
many bodies agency-less by permanently inscribing itself on male psyche? One finds this hard to believe,
especially because of this perceptions idealist rootsis this simply about engrained mindsetsthe idea of
violence which then creates the act itself, or are we looking for a definitive materialist explanation of this
worrying tendency in our society. And if we are claiming to draw on a materialist analysis of rape, are we
falling back on the fashionable but muddling dual systems theory which postulates an ahistorical form of
interaction between our given socio-economic system and patriarchy? If we are, then we will be incapable of
developing a more devastating critique of the socio-economic structures or the modes of production that
actually create the concrete conditions for prevalence of gender inequality (or patriarchy). Class and its
discontent: The making of rapists and victims The basic equation-making for which feminists should be
critiqued is, namely, that social equality is possible by eradicating gender stratification while doing precious
little to eradicate class inequalities. Indeed, rarely affected by poverty, most middle-class women and
feminists can really be conscious only of inequality that hits them directly, i.e. unequal relations within their
homes and workplaces, between them and men of their class. This is precisely why we find that the
tendency to project patriarchy as an overarching, independent system of oppression finds most adherence
within the upper echelons of society where women are materially positioned in better terms, like men of
their class. In such a position, what confronts them in more accentuated terms is not the materiality of their
class position, but the gender difference between them and men of their class. Less affected by class
stratification, women from the upper classes are then bound to perceive gender inequalities as a set of
behaviours and a mentality that has the independent capacity to breed a system of unequal gender relations
and oppression. Not surprisingly, unlike their working-class sisters who are burdened by pauperization,
women from the middle class are less likely to comprehend and organize against the material basis on which
womens oppression stands. They are, instead, more prone to organize and speak out against gendered

for feminists, the eradication of sexual violence is

possible when men and women are equal: Men = Women Or basically, men and women are
equal within their respective classes (capitalist) Men = (capitalist) Women (middle class) Men
= (middle class) Women (working class) Men = (working class) Women Feminists, thus, envision a
world free of sexual violence without concretely addressing the issue of other
structuring inequalities. They overlook the fact that sexual violence cannot be
eradicated as long as a class divided society exists, and so, end up
downplaying or eliding the question of prevailing class inequalities. They can, by
ignoring the class stratification assume that: (working class) Men = (middle
class) Women (capitalist) Men = (working class) Women (capitalist) Men =
(middle class) Women (middle class) Men = (working class) Women What is
evident from the above equations is just how fallacious it is to assume that
equality between men and women of the same class amounts to equality
between men and women of different classes . Of course, sexual violence and oppression of
mentalities, sexist culture, etc. Thus,

women will persist unabated if class divisions that nurture gender inequality are not eradicated. For

as long as working-class women are dependent on capitalist or middleclass men for gainful employment, and are discriminated against in the job
market, they are in a position to be raped whenever upper class men seek
sexual gratification by drawing on the exploitable class position of these
women. Similarly, as long as class divisions persist, the working-class family will
continue to burden working-class women with the yoke of domestic slavery in
order to reduce the costs of its sustenance a burden which reduces these women to
example,

positions of subjugation that can be easily exploited by working-class men in their family. Clearly, until we do

What we,
hence, need at this moment is a rigorous critique of class stratification fostered
by capitalism. If we do not do this and limit the movement to fighting the mere
not address class divisions, we will not be able to eradicate prevailing gender inequalities.

symptoms of the disease, i.e. patriarchal norms (lakshman rekhas, etc.) rather than
the disease itself, sexual violence will continue to persist while well go hoarse
shouting let us reclaim the night. But why exactly are the peculiar conditions created by the
capitalist economy so central to the perpetuation of sexual violence and other forms of oppression of
women? For one, the extremely harsh economic conditions imposed on the working class have produced
phenomenal levels of frustration and aggression among working-class men. These men do not have access
to typical date pools/sites like college/campus circles, social networking sites, pub circles, etc. as they do not
have the time or the economic means to be part of them. Returning from long, arduous hours of work;
heavily underpaid; and hence, malnourished and poorly dressed, working-class men are hardly in the
position to attract women of the upper classes who are in a better position to exercise an active choice when
it comes to choosing sex partners. In this regard, the working-class mans inequality with men and women of
upper classes, especially in sexual terms, is constantly creating the scope for potential offenders. With little
time for actual coital activity, yet exposed to lots of sex through the capitalist media, working-class men are
not merely conditioned to steal sex from unwilling women and children, but are also prone to indulge in
unromantic sexual liaisons that are far removed from feelings of love and mutuality, and are basically,
embodiments of bad sex. Recall stereotypes regarding youth from working-class and peasant families
making out in empty warehouses, fields, desolate buildings and eerie parks. Yes, these are precisely the
places where our impoverished youth is experimenting with sexexperiments which, more often than not,

This, of course, brings us to the question

of how the same harsh conditions are producing a ready supply of female
victims, who because of their economic deprivation cannot afford a secure life
situation which protects them from frustrated and aggressive men from their
(working) class, i.e. men who they encounter in their daily life (as husbands, fathers, brothers, colleagues,
lovers, etc.). Unlike higher status women who can afford a better physical and
social environment which is more crime free (gated neighbourhoods, personal transport,
etc.), working-class women are forced to survive in more hostile conditions (poorly
involve hurried, uncaring and unfeeling sexual activity.

policed neighbourhoods, dimly-lit streets, dependence on public conveniences and crowded public transport,

where they easily fall prey to sexual harassment, sexual violence, etc.
Considering their life pattern, these working-class women are not in a position to
protect themselves from upper class men who also exploit their vulnerability. It
etc.)

is then apt to say that the majority of rapes represent, on the one hand, the convergence of societys most
frustrated and sexed up men, and on the other, societys most vulnerable and dependent women and

It is this dismal truth which alone can

account for the fact that rape victimization rates are particularly high for poor
women. To elucidate how exactly the brutality of the capitalist production process generates grave
children, i.e. working-class women and children.

sexual inequalities between different classes, it is best trace the average day in the life of working-class
men. If employed, most of these men are awake in the early hours of the morning; they commute long
distances to work in factories that are located in industrial belts like Faridabad, Gurgaon, Gaziabad, Noida,
Okhla, etc. Others amongst them, who are not factory workers, can also be seen in the morning rushing to
report for work at malls, sulabs, construction sites, sweatshops located in the heart of Delhi, garages, petrol
pumps, etc.all of which are generally located far away from the slum clusters where these men actually
reside. Most of these men are contract workers, temps or daily wagers, who cannot vouch for the fact that
they will be employed the next day. As a result, most among them live on a hand to mouth existence, and
are often unable to bring their families to settle in the city with them. Earning a pittance for an average work
day of 12 hours or more, few can afford to marry as and when they wish, or to bring home their wives and
children from the village. Those who do have families in the city are forced to reside with them in small
rooms, often with no windows. Indeed, working-class families are typically constituted of family elders,
younger brothers, sister-in-laws, unmarried sisters, etc., and hence, entire families end up living in small
working-class tenements like packed sardines in a can. Such sub-human living conditions, and the
tremendous sense of alienation brought on by dehumanizing work hours, hardly make it possible for
egalitarian relationships between men and women, or between human beings in general, to exist. How does
capitalism resolve this emerging crisis of working-class men being unable to have the time to nurture human
relationships and to be in the position to cater to theirs and a partners sexual needs? It bombards them with
portrayals of sexyou may watch, but who cares if you actually have or dont have the time for the real
thing. Indeed, the sexual crisis that emerges within capitalism evolves precisely around the fact that most of
the youth spend the greater part of their time thinking about sex, and of course, not doing it. Its actual
repression then develops into unhealthy trends in personality. For capitalism, its all about the fact that at
least these men are watching sex as an entertainment and achieving fulfillment; an entertainment that

happily adds to the billions earned by the porn, prostitution and liquor industries. Thus, the disturbing fact
which we mustnt hide from is that capitalism creates animals on the one hand and victims on the other. In
its vicious trap it has ensnared not just hapless working-class women (and occasionally, middle-class
women), but also working-class men. Indeed, all one needs to do is to take a walk through industrial belts to
see the filthy B-grade cinema halls showcasing porn films throughout the day. Without a doubt, the actions
of male porn stars showcased in these B-grade movies become part of mens fantasies. So do the actions of
mainstream male actors whose stalking of female heroines in films and other acts of lumpenism (whistling,
staring, grabbing) inspire lumpenism and sexist fantasies about womens bodies and how they like to be
treated. Also lining the circumference of industrial areas are numerous liquor shops that are located
strategically at certain transit points, highways, etc. At these transit points and even at the weekly bazars
near working-class localities, one is bound to find the scarves, belts and dvd-selling vendor. His collection of
dvds is sure to include the famous 5 movies-in-one dvda combination of porn, violent action and thriller
movies. He is also sure to stock pornographic magazines which serve as nothing but decorative inducements
to masturbation. Flipping through newspapers like Punjab Kesari, JagranCity, and supplements of other
newspapers, the average reader is sure to feel that in this country, sexuality is shining and unfettered in its
expression. At the same time, he cannot help feeling the angst that in real life he is nowhere close to
enjoying this show-it-all/free-for-all sexuality. Of course, to realize the depth of the (civilizational) problem
before us, one should observe the average clientele that frequents red light areas like G.B. Road in Delhi.
Finally, combine all this with glossy portrayals of actresses/models on almost every billboard in the city
from a billboard advertising a deodorant to one showcasing a bike and mens underwear. Bombarded with
hyper-femme images that objectify womens bodies and sexuality, it is a miracle if the average (overworked,
desensitized) working-class man learns to respect a womans body and needs. Ultimately, frustrated with
inequalities, especially in sexual terms, many such working-class men seek actualization of their fantasies in
any opening/orifice easily available. And thats when many rapes and cases of molestation happenwhen
easy/vulnerable targets (burdened housewives, infants, a lone woman returning from work, a prostitute, etc.)
become sites for actualizing sexual fantasies and sexual needs of men who are being exposed to nothing
else but objectified forms of womens bodies, while at the same time being denied the time (and other

In such a context, when a

sexily dressed middle-class woman happens to be in an exploitable condition,
the chances of her being sexually assaulted are large. She is attacked not
because her assailants are taken aback by her feminity, but because they are
often looking for any vagina, mouth, or for that matter, any orifice in which
they can insert their genitals. In reality then, sexual assaults on middle-class
women by working-class men are an embodiment of these mens efforts to
gratify their sexual urges, as well as to vent frustrations that arise from social
and economic inequalities particular to their class . In such situations, the sexual urge can
essential conditions) to actually nurture relationships with another.[45]

easily get caught in class hatred, which can enhance the brutality of the assault. However, far from a class
act, such sexual assaults represent the expression of this frustration in an individuated form. This means
that sexual, economic and social inequalities bred by class stratification have the capacity not merely to
elicit a class-conscious, collective and political reaction from the exploited working class, but also have the
embedded capacity to provoke individuated, non-political and sexist forms of reaction like brutal assaults
through which individual working-class men momentarily overpower women from the upper classes. Of
course, by highlighting class divisions and their intricate role, one does not attempt to justify the prevalence
of sexual violence in society. But as class stratification is a cause for such violence, the question of fighting it
becomes essential for those who genuinely want to eradicate sexual violence from the roots.[46] Having

what about rapes involving middle-class men who force themselves on

their wives, girlfriends, an acquaintance at work, etc.? Here too, the acculturation
of middle-class men into grabbing sex on their terms cannot be explained by
simply drawing on some abstract notion of patriarchy. This, in fact, begs the question as
to why notions of sexual hierarchy inform mens consciousness. Importantly, the substratum of sexual
violence perpetrated on middle-class women by men of their class is also shaped by
inequalities that are bred by clas s. This is because many such rapes are occurring in the context
of middle-class women joining an extremely insecure job market in order to
enhance family budgets and their marriage prospects , dating so as to find
partners of their status, adhering to family norms about keeping the family
together, etc.all of which are historical creations of capitalism. To elucidate, the
said this,

pressure created by a class-divided society to seek partners from within ones

own class has pushed women into a position of compromise, wherein, they are
trapped into adhering to patriarchal feminity and internalizing norms that
subjugate their interests to the interests of their partners . In such positions of
compromise (like dressing attractively for work, going on blind-dates, ignoring sexual innuendos of male
colleagues, tolerating overprotective partners, etc.), middle-class women become vulnerable to oppression
unleashed by men of their class. Nonetheless, it is imperative to recognize the fact that oppression faced by
middle-class women cannot be equated with the exploitation and oppression borne by working-class women.
Contrary to the popular belief that there is an equivalence in the experiences and interests of women across
the board, it is really hard if not impossible, to place Priyanka Chopra and Soni Sori, or for that matter a
female bank manager of an ICICI branch and a woman factory worker, on the same platform. It is difficult to
assume that such equivalence exists because, although gender is imbricated in the matrix of power,
inequalities stemming from it are contingent on the class position to which women belong. Hence, although
men have advantages over women of the same class, women from middle-class families, bourgeois families,
and women of advanced capitalist countries are far closer in material conditions and opportunities to men in
their class than they are to working-class women, tribal women, Dalit women, etc. This class divide is
precisely the reason why the average middle-class woman has come to comprehend equality in terms of
gaining equality with men of her own class rather than equality between all human beings (including
equality between her and a working-class man). In this light, notions of equivalence are merely ways in
which middle-class women can conceal their guilt of belonging to a higher class and still appear radical. In
fact, it is the class blind approach of middle-class feminists, which creates (misplaced) notions of
equivalence, and which paves the way for a form of politics that is based on women forgetting their class
differences. Regrettably, the politics of equivalence has found its most ardent promoters amongst certain
Left organizations.[47] In reality, demands stemming from notions of equivalence offer no exit for the most
vulnerable women in our society. Instead, such misplaced politics reeks of typical middle class oblivion of
class-based exploitation and its debilitating effects. It is, thus, essential to be conscious of the role that
class plays in shaping the content of what is identified as freedom and equality. If we turn a blind eye to its

As a
society, we can launch a more formidable form of fighting sexual violence from
its roots only if we accept the embedded truths about how human sexuality is
shaped by capitalism, as well as how human relationships are impacted by
class divisions. The fight against sexual violence is then a fight against capitalism; the struggle for
role, we will only slip into a form of feminist politics that elides any real criticism of our society.

sexual liberation based on egalitarianism is then a struggle for the sexual liberation of all women and all
men; and the fight for actual equality between the separate genders is then the fight for a classless society.
Internalizing the male gaze and the co-option of feminism In order to shield rape victims from the hurtful
blame game and social ostracism the feminist movement has tended to completely divest rape of a sexual
content. Unfortunately, the strategy of wrongfully divesting rape of its sexual content has not only prevented
the feminist movement from completely exposing the complex web of socio-economic conditions that lie at
the core of sexual violence, but has also led to several troubling developments, in particular, the birth of
certain disempowering and elitist trends in the movement.[48] The development of these trends has blunted
the radical potential of the feminist movement, and has further reduced feminism to a clique. Meanwhile,

The
most debilitating [problematic*] repercussion of the capitalist system on womens
sexuality is the co-option of women into the biased, sexist envisioning of their
sexuality, as well as their growing participation in furthering their own and
other womens oppression. A lot of this co-option is the result of cultural
bombardment, wherein, industries like that of advertising; fashion; media; etc. have
popularized and made normative the existence of womens sexuality in an
objectified (consumable) form. However, this co-option has also increasingly emerged from
women at large remain trapped in various forms of oppression created by the capitalist system.

quarters of informed, sensitized, feminist camps. While one can appreciate the elements of (ideological)
diversity within the feminist movement, it cannot be denied that many currents in feminism have
internalized patriarchal feminity, i.e. by claiming that the feminine can be made powerful through proud
acceptance of things/behaviour/predispositions as intrinsically feminine.

The growing popularity

slut walks; fashionable flash mobs; support for legalization of prostitution; as well as certain
strands of feminism which promote hyper-feminine dressing under the misplaced assumption that such
dressing should not elicit a sexist gaze from menare

all recent embodiments of just how

of

distant feminism is from the needs and aspirations of working-class women for
liberation. Why do I say this? Without being a defender of sexist men, I place before the readers the
intrinsic problems with feminism, in particular, the problems associated with some of its aspirations.

Class is a better starting point - only the alternatives

examination of material structures can solve womens
oppression
Fraser, 13 (Nancy Fraser is professor of philosophy and politics at the New School
for Social Research in New York. An Einstein fellow at the John F Kennedy Institute of
the Free University of Berlin, she also holds the chair in global justice at the Collge
d'Etudes Mondiales, Paris. In winter 2014, she will be visiting professor of gender
studies at Cambridge University. How feminism became capitalism's handmaiden and how to reclaim it Monday 14 October 2013
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/14/feminism-capitalisthandmaiden-neoliberal?CMP=twt_gu )
As a feminist, I've always assumed that by fighting to emancipate women I was
building a better world more egalitarian, just and free. But lately I've begun to
worry that ideals pioneered by feminists are serving quite different ends. I worry,
specifically, that our critique of sexism is now supplying the justification for new
forms of inequality and exploitation. In a cruel twist of fate, I fear that the
movement for women's liberation has become entangled in a

dangerous liaison with neoliberal efforts to build a free-market

society . That would explain how it came to pass that feminist ideas that once
formed part of a radical worldview are increasingly expressed in individualist terms.
Where feminists once criticised a society that promoted careerism, they now advise
women to "lean in". A movement that once prioritised social solidarity now
celebrates female entrepreneurs. A perspective that once valorised "care" and
interdependence now encourages individual advancement and meritocracy. What
lies behind this shift is a sea-change in the character of capitalism. The statemanaged capitalism of the postwar era has given way to a new form of capitalism
"disorganised", globalising, neoliberal. Second-wave feminism emerged as a critique
of the first but has become the handmaiden of the second. With the benefit of
hindsight, we can now see that the movement for women's liberation pointed
simultaneously to two different possible futures. In a first scenario, it prefigured a
world in which gender emancipation went hand in hand with participatory
democracy and social solidarity; in a second, it promised a new form of liberalism,
able to grant women as well as men the goods of individual autonomy, increased
choice, and meritocratic advancement. Second-wave feminism was in this sense
ambivalent. Compatible with either of two different visions of society, it was
susceptible to two different historical elaborations. As I see it, feminism's
ambivalence has been resolved in recent years in favour of the second, liberalindividualist scenario but not because we were passive victims of neoliberal
seductions. On the contrary, we ourselves contributed three important ideas to this
development. One contribution was our critique of the "family wage": the ideal of a

male breadwinner-female homemaker family that was central to state-organised

capitalism. Feminist criticism of that ideal now serves to legitimate "flexible
capitalism". After all, this form of capitalism relies heavily on women's waged
labour, especially low-waged work in service and manufacturing, performed not only
by young single women but also by married women and women with children; not
by only racialised women, but by women of virtually all nationalities and ethnicities.
As women have poured into labour markets around the globe, state-organised
capitalism's ideal of the family wage is being replaced by the newer, more modern
norm apparently sanctioned by feminism of the two-earner family. Never mind
that the reality that underlies the new ideal is depressed wage

levels, decreased job security, declining living standards, a steep

rise in the number of hours worked for wages per household,
exacerbation of the double shift now often a triple or quadruple
shift and a rise in poverty, increasingly concentrated in femaleheaded households. Neoliberalism turns a sow's ear into a silk purse by
elaborating a narrative of female empowerment. Invoking the feminist critique of
the family wage to justify exploitation, it harnesses the dream of women's

emancipation to the engine of capital accumulation. Feminism has also

made a second contribution to the neoliberal ethos. In the era of state-organised
capitalism, we rightly criticised a constricted political vision that was so intently
focused on class inequality that it could not see such "non-economic" injustices as
domestic violence, sexual assault and reproductive oppression. Rejecting
"economism" and politicising "the personal", feminists broadened the political
agenda to challenge status hierarchies premised on cultural constructions of gender
difference. The result should have been to expand the struggle for justice to
encompass both culture and economics. But the actual result was a one-sided focus
on "gender identity" at the expense of bread and butter issues. Worse still, the

feminist turn to identity politics dovetailed all too neatly with a

rising neoliberalism that wanted nothing more than to repress all
memory of social equality. In effect, we absolutised the critique of cultural
sexism at precisely the moment when circumstances required redoubled attention
to the critique of political economy. Finally, feminism contributed a third idea to
neoliberalism: the critique of welfare-state paternalism. Undeniably progressive in
the era of state-organised capitalism, that critique has since converged with
neoliberalism's war on "the nanny state" and its more recent cynical embrace of
NGOs. A telling example is "microcredit", the programme of small bank loans to
poor women in the global south. Cast as an empowering, bottom-up alternative to
the top-down, bureaucratic red tape of state projects, microcredit is touted as the
feminist antidote for women's poverty and subjection. What has been missed,
however, is a disturbing coincidence: microcredit has burgeoned just as states have

abandoned macro-structural efforts to fight poverty, efforts that small-scale lending

cannot possibly replace. In this case too, then, a feminist idea has been recuperated
by neoliberalism. A perspective aimed originally at democratising state power in
order to empower citizens is now used to legitimise marketisation and state
retrenchment. In all these cases, feminism's ambivalence has been resolved in
favour of (neo)liberal individualism. But the other, solidaristic scenario may still be
alive. The current crisis affords the chance to pick up its thread once more,
reconnecting the dream of women's liberation with the vision of a solidary society.
To that end, feminists need to break off our dangerous liaison with neoliberalism and
reclaim our three "contributions" for our own ends. First, we might break the
spurious link between our critique of the family wage and flexible capitalism by
militating for a form of life that de-centres waged work and valorises unwaged
activities, including but not only carework. Second, we might disrupt the passage
from our critique of economism to identity politics by integrating the struggle to
transform a status order premised on masculinist cultural values with the struggle
for economic justice. Finally, we might sever the bogus bond between our critique of
bureaucracy and free-market fundamentalism by reclaiming the mantle of
participatory democracy as a means of strengthening the public powers needed to
constrain capital for the sake of justice.

The Aff is immaterial feminism just crisis management for

capitalism actively marginalizing class analysis while feeding
new workers to capitalist exploitation
Cotter 8,

Jennifer, Assistant Professor of Critical Theory and World Literature at William Jewell College, Class,
the Digital, and (Immaterial) Feminism, Fall/Winter,
http://redcritique.org/FallWinter2008/classthedigitalandimmaterialfeminism.htm

Immaterial feminisms have emerged as part of the digital movements of "new economy" and "network
society" in order to help capital eliminate old ideological fetters of gender that stand in
the way of the expansion of capitalist production and the intensification of the
exploitation of labor for profit. By "immaterial feminisms" I mean the network of feminismsfrom
"cyberfeminism," to feminist theories of "immaterial labor," "(im)materiality," and "new materiality," to "network
feminisms," "digital feminism" and "technofeminism"which, as a species of new economy theory,

ideologically displace the relation of gender to class , labor, exploitation, and the
social relations of production in capitalism by positing a constitutive change in the
wage-labor/capital relation brought on by the innovations of "new technologies ," the
growth of the service industries and of "knowledge work" (i.e., "immaterial labor"). This is another way of saying

the role of immaterial feminisms in history is to represent as "radical,"

"innovative" and as "progress" for women toward human freedom what capital is
economically compelled to do to temporarily stave off declines in profit. In fact, in some
respects it could be argued that it is the discourses of bourgeois feminism in the post-WWII period
in particularfrom the second-wave anti-worker feminism of Betty Friedan to the contemporary "post-capitalist
feminism" of J.K. Gibson-Grahamthat have assisted capital in establishing the ideology that a
post-industrial capitalism is a capitalism beyond exploitation , with the rising status
of women in the global workforce as "proof" of the new economy's inherently
democratic leanings and the prophesized coming of the end of social inequality. There is a clear ideological
that

lineage, in other words, from Daniel Bell's declarations in the 1970's that "Work in the industrial sectorhas largely
been men's work" and that as a result of the emergence of the service industry in the North, "For the first time, one
can say that women have a secure base for economic independence" (xvii), to Donna Haraway's "cyborg feminism"

in which she argues that women working in Asia for transnational corporations located in the North are "actively
rewriting the text of their bodies and societies" (177), to former Hewlett Packard CEO and current McCain
spokesperson Carly Fiorina's populist rhetoric that it is because of the immaterial economy that women are finally
able to "reject the idea that there is a glass ceiling" and instead "work for a world where all women are able to go
further, retire, dream bigger, and accomplish more than any generation before." What links this narrative of a
gender-less, class-free capitalism without exploitation is one of the primary tenets of bourgeois economic and
cultural theory over the past thirty years; namely, that we are witness to the development of a "digital" capitalism
and the transition from an economy based in material production to an immaterial economy of coded interfaces.
According to this narrative, capital no longer relies on the exploitation of labor as the source of new value, but
rather accumulates new value through the control of the creativity and knowledge work of immaterial workers, in
particular what is characterized as "women's labor"that is, work in "non-productive" industries of service and
exchange. As a result of the expansion of the market into new avenues of employment, it is argued that
developments in communications, information and cyber-technologies have moved us beyond class relationsand
beyond the theft of surplus-labor in productioninto an increasingly flat world of "equal opportunity" (Thomas
Friedman, The World Is Flat). However, contrary to the claims of digital movements which displace "labor" with

there has not been a fundamental

transformation in wage-labor/capital relations or the fact that profit is the product of
the theft of the surplus-labor of all productive workers, regardless of race, gender,
sexuality, nationality, etc. That is to say, while bourgeois theorists have learned Derrida's lessons of
"knowledge" and "services" as the basis of "value" in capitalism,

deferral and delay and use the substitution of an endless series of tropes to define 21st century capitalism as
internally "different" from itselffrom "new economy," to "globalization," "empire," "flat world," "network society,"
"technocapitalism," "knowledge economy," "post-capitalism," "cybercapitalism," etccapitalism remains a system
based in the exploitation of labor. As such,

it remains the labor theory of value as theorized by

Marx and Lenin that can explain not only the developments in production which have occurred that have
resulted in cultural and political changes for women since the second-half of the 20th century, but
also why these changes do not transform the fundamental contradiction of capitalism the
division of ownership between capital and labor . In other words, social relations that are said to be
"outside" capitalism in the discourses of immaterial feminism are decidedly "inside" the
logic of exploitation. To posit that changes in the location of production or the tools of production as
evidence of a new economic model, as

immaterial feminism

does,

works to obscure the

fundamental realities of life in which the condition of survival for

increasing numbers of women around the world depends upon
their ability to sell their labor-power to capital for a wage and thus
become part of the logic of the capitalist working day . In fact, it is
precisely because capital "cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the
instruments of production" and "must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere,
establish connexions everywhere" (Manifesto 487) in search for new sources of labor to
exploit that the developments outlined in bourgeois theories of a "digital" economy
cannot be understood except as expanding the logic of capitalism over every aspect
of social life. It is in this context that unlike earlier bourgeois feminisms and their promise of equality
to come, the ideological value of immaterial feminism is that it points to the rising position of some women in the
global economyfor

example, the increase of women in higher education and the

waged-workforces, and especially in managerial positionsas clear "evidence" that capitalism
has changed and that it is no longer a matter of ending exploitation, but finding ways of
managing the new developments to ensure that women have equal access to the
market. In reality, it is not the logic of capitalism that has changed, merely its mode of accumulation. That is to
say, what has changed in the post-WWII period is that the productive base of economies, such as those in the North
Atlantic, that were once centers of productive labor before the end of the long boom of capitalism, are now eroding
as capital has shifted production from the North to the South and the economies of the North are now more heavily
concentrated with branches of the global capitalist economy devoted to redistribution and circulation of existing

values, and to the reproduction of the historical conditions of capitalist production, but not to the production of new
value. The transfer of productive labor from the North to the South in search of securing sources of cheaper labor to
exploit, has changed the geo-political surfaces of capitalism and the location of specific industries, and this surface
change has been represented in ruling class ideology as a constitutive change in capitalism itself. But the
underlying class relations of the global capitalist economy have not changed. As Paula Cerni has argued in her
essay, "Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century": In particular, the intellectual demotion of material production
reflects the real shift towards [unproductive] service sectors in Western economies. The dominance of these 'postmaterial' sectorsa symptom [] of imperialist decay has fostered the illusion that they constitute independent
engines of growth. In fact, "knowledge work" and "service work" have not and do not "constitute independent
engines of growth" autonomous from productive labor. Whether or not "services"or any historically specific form
of laboring activityare productive labor has to do with whether they contribute directly to the production of
surplus value. Moreover, this is determined not by whether it increases the wealth of an individual capitalist, but
whether the laboring activity adds wealth to the total mass of surplus-value in the capitalist economy as a whole
(Mandel 41-43). But, by and large services are unproductive, meaning that they transfer and redistribute existing
wealth (produced by past productive labor), without adding to it. In the United States, for example, the increasing
shift to services since the end of WWII has resulted in a decline in profit relative to competing capitals, as "the US
share of the world economy [is] down from 27.8% in 1951 to 21.4% in 2001" (Cerni). In the course of shifting from
productive to unproductive labor, as Cerni puts it something very material has accompanied the creation of a 'postmaterial' economy where 83% of non-farm employees work in services. Today, America can no longer produce
enough goods to fund her own massive physical requirements, and, as a result, she is running an unprecedented
trade deficit in merchandise. Growing from the 1970s, this deficit reached a record $665bn in 2004, almost 6% of
GDP. It is precisely because the basis of profit has been and continues to be productive labor that the wealth of the
U.S. economyand its share of the profits of the world marketis in decline as it relies more heavily on the
productive labor of workers outside of its national borders. This does not mean that U.S. capital "transcends" the
laws of motion of capital rather it means that it is a manifestation of them. It is, in fact, the dependence of capital
on the exploitation of the surplus-labor of productive workers that compels U.S. capital to continue to wage an
imperialist war in the Middle East and Central Asia. This war is a class war to re-divide the surplus-labor of the globe
and to gain ownership and control of the means of production in the Middle East and Central Asia (such as the
building, owning, and controlling of an oil pipeline) that would allow U.S. capital a greater share of the world market
and greater control over the rate of growth and development of the surplus-labor producing population of workers
in China, India, Pakistan, North Korea (who are heavily dependent on oil from the region and who are some of the

By "fostering the illusion" that

added value is autonomous from the production and exploitation of surplus-labor,
the discourses of immaterial feminists and their focus on "service" work as the new engine of
capitalism are not actually materialist explanations of the contradictions of capitalism
and its historical conditions of production now, rather they are ways of ideologically
resituating and adjusting the subject of labor to the continuation of exploitation of
wage-labor in capitalism, by obscuring the social relations of production founded on
private ownership of the means of production. When, for example, Thomas Friedman
main suppliers of exploitable productive labor for transnational capital).

euphemistically argues that "globalization" is leading to a "flat world" and is "leveling the playing field" or Carly
Fiorina declares that "in today's economy, the companies that are going to win cannot afford the luxury of bias, or
prejudice, or discrimination" what they are claiming is that the expansion of capitalism leads to human freedom,

The expansion of capitalist

production and the intensification of the exploitation of labor has led and is leading to the
transfer and concentration of wealth into fewer hands. Summing up a study undertaken by the
economic equality, and prosperity for all. But this is not the case.

World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University, The New York Times has

the top 1 percent of the world's population accounted for about

40 percent of the world's total net worth" (Porter). In the United States, moreover, as more members
reported that "In 2000,

of all families are working for a wage, wealth has been concentrated into fewer hands as the wealthiest 1% of
households have gone from owning 125 times the median wealth to 190 times the median wealth (Sahidi).
Moreover, this transfer and concentration of wealth into fewer hands through the exploitation of labor has had wide
reaching effects on workers. At the same time workers are working longer hours, they cannot afford basic

At the same time women have been pulled into the paid workforce in
increasing numbers, they have been falling further into poverty . In recent years, as the
income gap between men and women has reached what some have called greater
"equality," this is owing to men's falling wages rather than rising wages for women
necessities.

(Taylor and Kleiman). In fact, in the United States in 2006, as the Bush regime touted the "increasing equality"
between men's and women's wages, U.S. Labor Bureau statistics actually reveal that both men's and women's

wages are falling, with men's falling at a faster rate ("Bush Labor Department Brags about Drop in Wages"). In other
words, it is not only for the majority of women that poverty has increased as a result of the transfer of social wealth
upward; it has increased for all workers: the top 100 CEOs who 30 years ago made 39 times the average workers
income, now make 1000 times their income ("Ever Higher Society"). In short, neither class nor gender has "ended"
despite the "post-class" and "post-gender" triumphalism of new economy movements. However, it is precisely on
these terms that "immaterial"

feminism is now "renewing" itself within digital and "new economy"

as a premier ideology to further obscure the fundamental reality of
capitalism that earlier forms of bourgeois feminism can no longer obscure: that class society does not
and cannot bring about human freedom and economic equality because it depends
on the exploitation of wage-labor by capital and instead leads to deepening
economic crisis as wealth gets concentrated into fewer hands . (Im)material
feminisms "address" the effects on women of increasing class contradictions and the
concentration of wealth into fewer hands, not through addressing the root of the social
movements

contradictions for women in the theft of surplus-labor, but through crisis-

management of gender inequality within capitalism and for the

expansion of capitalist production and the accumulation of profit.
Immaterial feminism, as I examine throughout this text, actively marginalizes and

displaces analysis of class relations in feminist theory with talk of

"inequality." The discourses of "inequality" in cultural studies today, and immaterial
feminisms in particular, have become a way of talking about the continuing effects of
class relations on the contemporary workforces of capitalism while keeping the
causes of these effects in exploitationby which I mean the theft of worker's surplus-labor by capital
further and further from view. This is because, as Teresa Ebert and Mas'ud Zavarzadeh have put it in
their groundbreaking Marxist critique of class in the contemporary, Class In Culture (Paradigm 2008), "inequality is
the statistical index of social differences without conflicts" while, by contrast, "class is the structural relations of
labor grounded in antagonisms over the appropriation of surplus laborexploitation" (15; emphasis added). A
statistical index does not explain the material relations and structure of conflicts that produce economic and social

To substitute
"exploitation" with "inequality," as a concept for explaining the deterioration of women's material
conditions of life in capitalism now, is to erase the private property relations that produce
economic, social, and political inequality for women . What the concept of
"inequality" (cleansed of exploitation) does not explain is whyas women have
been shifted further into the paid workforces of capitalism and have presumably
gained greater "equality" with men in terms of paid workforce participationthe
majority of women have actually been falling deeper into poverty, as have the
majority of men. "Inequality" does not explain why women and the majority of
world's population are falling further into poverty while wealth is transferred
upward. Nor does this account for the fact that the majority of women and men get
their income not from "profit" but from wages and, therefore, their income does not
represent actual wealth, it represents only what is needed to reproduce their labor power for the next working day. This is because "inequality" does not account for
the social relations of production based on exploitation . As I argue at length throughout this
inequality between people, it only measures the empirical effects of these relations.

essay, to simply focus on inequality without contributing to explaining the relationship of the gender to class
relations, private ownership of the means of production, and the exploitation of surplus-labor, conceals the fact that
for the majority "equality" within capitalism is equality in what Goretti Horgan calls the "race to the bottom upon
which global capitalism is founded" (online)in short, it is equality in exploitation.