in its economic and social role and examine how it helps perpetuate the existing relations of production.
Today it is very popular for those influenced by Louis Althusser and others to brand this approach as В«reductionistВ». It is useful to quote LukГЎcs here again, as he can hardly be accused of covering his back after this objection was raised. В«The category of totality does not reduce its various elements to an undifferentiated uniformity, to identity В». And В«the interaction we have in mind must be more than the interaction of otherwise unchanging objects. В»
Marx's proposition В«men make their own history, but they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves В», sums up the interaction we must look for between the ideas women and men use to justify their actions and responses to social events and the material and economic circumstances in which they operate. This differs radically from the theoretical framework of patriarchy theory. The most common versions take two forms. There are those like Juliet Mitchell who see patriarchy in psychological and ideological terms: В«We are dealing with two autonomous areas, the economic mode of capitalism and the ideological mode of patriarchy. В»If you make such a distinction between the economic and ideological, then you cannot explain anything about the development of society. Why do some ideas dominate? And why do some dominant ideas change? p> However I do not intend answering these ideas more fully because the arguments which seem to offer a more serious challenge to Marxism are not these but the other version of patriarchy theory argued by writers like Heidi Hartmann. She criticised Juliet Mitchell: В«Patriarchy operates, Mitchell seems to be saying, (In Psyche/analysis and Feminism) primarily in the psychological realm ... She clearly presents patriarchy as the fundamental ideological structure, just as capital is the fundamental economic structure. В»Hartmann concludesВ« although Mitchell discusses their interpenetration, her failure to give patriarchy a material base in the relation between women's and men's labour power, and her similar failure to note the material aspects of the process of personality formation and gender creation, limits the usefulness of her analysis. В»
However, Hartmann's own attempt at a materialist analysis is not grounded in the concept of society as a totality in which production forms the basis for all social relations.
This is a decidedly un-Marxist formulation, for all Hartmann's pretension to Marxist categories. It has much more in common with structuralist and post-structuralist theories which take a mechanical view of society as a series of social structures which can exist side by side. They do not attempt to unite the social structures into a coherent whole. In fact, they are often hostile to the very concept of society as a totality, preferring a view of society as fragmented and chaotic. В«All attempts to establish a working framework of ideas are regarded with the deepest suspicion. В»
Hartmann, while at pains to distinguish herself from the feminists who tended towards a psychoanalytical explanation of women's oppression, uses fundamentally the same approach.
This framework fits neatly with Hartmann's view of society as both capitalism and patriarchy. And along with all those who have taken on board elements of this method, Hartmann downgrades class as the fundamental determinant - Because in the end you can't have two structures. One has to be primary, so her analysis does not treat patriarchy and capitalism as two systems in partnership. She argues that it was a conspiracy between male workers and capitalists which established women's oppression under capitalism. In other words, patriarchy is more fundamental than capitalism. This is an inbuilt confusion in theories which claim to В«marryВ» Marxism and patriarchy theory. Again and again, they have to read their own prejudice into historical facts to fit the abstract and mechanical notion of patriarchy.
We can agree with feminists such as Hartmann that the family is the source of women's oppression today. But their analysis of how and why this came about is fundamentally flawed. Summers says В«the institution (of the family) confers power on men В». The argument goes that, because men supposedly wanted to have women service them in the home, they organised to keep women out of the best jobs. A conspiracy of all men was responsible for women being driven into the role of wife and mother, working in the worst paid and least skilled jobs - if they were able to work at all.
Actually, we don't need a conspiracy theory of any kind to explain why women are oppressed under capitalism. Women have been oppressed since the division of society into classes. The capitalist family was established as the result of the partic...
