Karen Sacks (Brodkin): Engels revisited…(four pages of notes)
Reinterpretation of Engels’
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1891)
Materialist theory: explains the social phenomena on the basis of the economic and political
relationships
Engels’ point Sacks highlights :
the historical relativity of social position of women
(i.e. women was not always subordinate)
Focus of analysis : class societies versus non-class societies
Engels’ formulation:
egalitarian tribal order→ families as economic units → inequality of property
ownership → class societies
Engels’ analysis:
egalitarian tribal order:
productive resources owned communally
production for use (food to eat, no surplus)
household was NOT the basic economic and social unit
heredity was NOT individual but communal
men and women were equal
(absence of private property → equal social significance of male and female
work)
private property (Engels): goods and resources with productive potential, not goods owned
individually (e.g. domesticated animals & cultivated land = productive resources/
productive property)
productive means = tools (available to everyone)
Engels links changes in family form and gender relations to changes in material
conditions.
domestication of animals + the development of agriculture → surplus → necessity of
controlling the productive resources/productive property (in the hands of men as a result of
‘natural division of labour’) → rise of monogamous family (owner of the property became
the head of household i.e.men) → desire to transmit wealth to genetic offsprings (inheritance
within the family) → children became either private heirs or dependent workers →
technology + accumulation of wealth → property owners separated from their kinsmen→
allied with other property owners → end of the kin based society/class society
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Sacks revision/expansion of Engels’ concepts:
social work or public labour in non-class societies:
marriage between A-B → work in outside of natal group
work outside of one’s own household (single or in groups, tributary work for a chief)
production for exchange
impetus for production more than one’s own needs (surplus)?
equal access to means of subsistence
gift giving is an exchange: equivalent return is possible
gift giving→ equal return of gift → no dependency = NOT production for exchange
(I give you a plant, later you give me an equally valuable fruit)
unequal access to means of subsistence + privately owned
gift giving → return of the gift with service → dependency =Production for exchange
(I give you an apple, you have nothing of equal value, I ask you to work in my
garden. I give another apple to someone else knowing that they will not be able to
give me anything in return I can ask them to work in my garden)
Production for exchange : ‘the production of goods to gain control over the services of
others
Production for use: producing to meet consumption needs
Sacks questions
1. the way in which women are worse of in non-class societies (immediate determinants)
2. validity of assertion that women became subordinate as a result of male private
property (women are not the complete equals of men in nonclass socities lacking private
property)
Sacks’ analysis
private property and production for exchange → women’s domestication and subordination
Material and organizational foundations
deny women adult status
adult status: ability to give and receive food and items of social exchange
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In egalitarian societies
Performance of social labour → power (settlement of disputes decisions etc.)
In non-egalitarian societies
 relations in production for exchange
→

power
private property
Class: a form of social stratification in which allocation to, membership of and relationships
between classes are governed by economic considerations rather than law (as in
estate) or religion and ritual pollution (as in caste)
In class societies
male property ownership is NOT the basis for male supremacy
1. not all males own productive property
2. women also own property (female power over the husband)
3. domestic/public sphere dichotomy → domestic power is NOT translatable into social
power
4. economic and political autonomy of a household is restricted
Subordinate position of women in class societies
 is NOT a result of domestic property relation
 relations on the societal level, outside the household which deny women adult
social status
to maintain surpluses for the rulers
 work for men/ men are labourers (mobile, can be exploited more
intensively) = male work for exchange
 domestication for women = female work for family use
(women do not participate in large-scale forms of social production)
state legal systems (developed by ruling classes) convert differences between men and
women in terms of their roles in production →
men social adults, take the guardianship role
women are domestic wards
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consequences:
1. women are placed at the bottom of pecking order (those above subordinate the ones
down below)
2. women take the role of conservative force (due to isolation form the market place)
3. family becomes the only institution for consumption, daily reproduction (eating,
washing the clothes etc) and child rearing.
(Children are the future generation of exchange workers)
For system (in which there are rulers and need for exchange workers) to perpetuate itself
women have to perform their domestic role without compensation.
Women-wage work
women’s inadequacy for public labour (being defined that way) → cheap female labour



questionable adult status in the social sphere
wage work is an additional burden
no changes in their responsibility for domestic work
Sacks suggestion for solution for social equality:
same work for both men and women: the production of social use work values
how: production, consumption, child rearing and economic decisions should be in one
sphere
ergo ! ;-) private family work must become public work
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