In a message dated 6/22/00 4:11:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< Radical feminists do not find them perfect either. That being said,
however, they were the ones who first raised the question of Women in
Marxism. >>
>What about August Bebel, whose Woman Under Socialism is the all time best
>selling Marxist book of all time? My old copy was translated by Daniel de
>Leon. Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg would also be surprsied to hear
>that it
>took Shulamith Firestone to raise The Woman Question in Marxism. Mine,
>you
>gotta hit the books. --jks
I don't have time because I have sepent with this list more hours
than I expected nowadays. why don't you "hit" the books dear Justin?
Schulamit Firestone is traditionally known to be on the radical feminist
front (Alison Jaggar _Feminism and Human Nature_, chapter 3, 1982).
Schulamit's relation to Marx's dielectic in _Dialectics of Sex_ is not set
to raise The Women Question in Marxism per se. In fact, Schulamit refutes
historical materialist explanation of women's oppression, since she finds
it largely functional and inadequately addressing/reducing gender
inequalities to class. Her radical feminist _reading_ of Marx that the
driving force of history is *not* between classes but between sexes (which
is where the _Dialectics of sex_ comes from) is mistakenly intended to
show that inequalities between men and women lie in _biology_ (women's
reproduction). Rather than seeing gender inequality as an historical and
social product, including reproduction, as Marxist feminists do, Firestone
stresses the biological element in the final determination of
inequalities-- not social environment, not socialization, not marriage
institution, not capitalism, etc.. Correct biology! correct inequalities!
sort of biological reductionism! In a similar manner, for example, another
radical feminist, _Susan Brownmiller_ , conceives _rape_ as an outcome of
the structural predispositon of vagina and penis. Men are biologically
structured to rape women, so rape is inevitable and sex is rape...(I am
criticizing this holistic world view btw)
secondly, we were not talking about second wave feminist movement--women's
activism, 60s, whateever, when the woman question was translated into some
form of political consciousness. were we? we were talking about the
_classical_ architects of _Marxist feminism_ just as we were talking about
the classical architecs of liberal feminism (Mill, Taylor). that is
actually what we were talking about!!!
regards,
Mine
