Marxism and Feminism: A critique of Lise Vogel’s social reproduction theory
Presentation to the Social and Political Thought Conference 2015: Feminism and
Critical Theory, University of Sussex, June 20th 2015.
Ross Speer
The Queen’s College, University of Oxford
ross.speer@queens.ox.ac.uk
This paper is a draft. Please do not cite without permission from the author.
I
This paper presents some criticisms of Lise Vogel’s recently republished book
Marxism and the Oppression of Women. I begin by setting out what I think is at
stake in the confrontation between Marxism and Feminism. Following that, I try
to provide some exposition of Vogel’s theory of social reproduction, before
making three points of criticism. Finally, I make use of the work of Michèle
Barrett, from her book Women’s Oppression Today and, in particular, it’s
Althusserian influenced approach, in order to provide the necessary
supplements to Vogel’s theory.
Both the thinkers in question here wrote in response to a 1970s milieu in which
the feminist movement had begun exposing issues with Marxist understandings
of women’s oppression. Engagement with Marxism by feminists demonstrated
a lack of convincing means with which to understand the oppression of women
in classical Marxism. Western Marxism, at this point only a recently entry into
the Anglophone world, had done little to take this up as an area of investigation
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in its right. However, it did, as we shall see, generate useful tools with which to
take up the problem.
The relevant concern here for Marxists was that if Marxism was unable to offer
a picture of what patriarchy is, where it came from, and how it could be
removed, then Marxism would have failed in its pretension to provide a
comprehensive metanarrative of the social world. If Marxists had once thought
it enough to tack on a theory of women’s oppression to already existing
Marxism, without permitting feminism’s influence to proliferate throughout the
theory, then it soon became clear that the problem was more intractable than it
had first appeared to be.
The issue hinged on whether it was possible to integrate a theory of the
oppression of women into historical materialism, or if patriarchy should be
understood as an independent structure. It could be the case that patriarchy
was indescribable by, and thus not understandable through, the categories of
class antagonism. This position became known as ‘dual systems theory’. The
alternative, that patriarchy and class antagonism could both be parts of a single
theory, and that proposed by both the authors under discussion here, was
dubbed ‘unitary theory’.
The problem here is not a peripheral one for Marxists, a place to which it has
sometimes been relegated. Accepting a dual systems theory – as has probably
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been the most common position amongst feminists inclined to the political left
– saddles Marxists with a profound problem. If it is true that patriarchal
relations operate separately from class relations then Marxism’s claim that the
working class is the uniquely privileged emancipatory agent is in trouble.
Women as women, rather than as workers, would be an equally important
emancipatory agency. Socialism could not be understood as a general solution
to oppression, but would be restricted only to the end of class antagonism
without affecting other areas of social life.
Integrating an explanation to the problem of the oppression of women is critical
if Marxism is to present itself as a viable and necessary political project to all
those in positions of subordination, and not just the working class. Additionally,
Marxism is unlikely to be able to succeed on its own terms, even if we allow for
a reduction in its scope, if it unable to knit together a collective agent that
encompasses the full array of subordinated groups. And yet a unitary theory has
proved to be an elusive piece of the puzzle.
There is also an immediate conjunctural concern. Too often it is taken for
granted that Feminism is a part of the left, when it is in fact incumbent on the
left to demonstrate that it can provide a route out of patriarchy. If Marxism is to
make headway within the Feminist movement it must be able to show why a
challenge to gender oppression is best articulated through a Marxist
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framework. It is not enough to suggest that because one is concerned with one
area of oppression one should then also be concerned with others for reasons
of ethical consistency. This may be persuasive for the purpose of theoretical
rigour, but it is hardly unreasonable that social agents seeking ways out of their
situations of oppression will concentrate their efforts on those that they
perceive to be harming them the most. What Marxists are obliged to do is to
show is that the oppression of women is intimately bound up with other forms
of oppression and exploitation, and in such a way as that it is by consequence a
strategic error to compartmentalise one off from the others and try to strike
out at it alone.
It is in this context that Vogel and the concept of social reproduction is gaining a
new lease of life.
II
Vogel’s idea of ‘social reproduction’, which draws on the concepts developed by
Marx in Capital, can be unpacked as follows. In any society where human labour
is still required to fulfil human needs, the individuals who make up the labour
force are subject to wear and tear and become too old or infirm to work and
eventually die. Thus for any system of production to endure over time there
must be a means by which the labour force is replenished. The usual way of
achieving this has been by biological reproduction. This is not the only way it
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can be done – and the concept of social reproduction has been fruitfully
deployed to analyse slave and immigrant labour that can replenish a society’s
labour force from outside. Biological reproduction is, however, the most
common means to achieve this replenishment. Additionally, the family unit has
been the dominant form in which biological reproduction takes place – although
the contours of this unit may differ significantly between times and places.
Within the family unit women are accorded a subordinate place because their
role in childbearing leaves them outside the value-producing labour force for a
period of time. Following from this, a division of labour emerges. Men assume
roles of material provision and women of domestic labour. There is no
biologically-given reason why women should then come to perform domestic
labour tasks. What gives them the greater responsibility for this, however, is the
form in which biological reproduction has generally taken place in class
societies: the patriarchal family.
From a ruling class point of view, social reproduction is riven by a contradiction.
On the one hand, reproduction must take place or else in the long-term the
prevailing relations of production will die out. On the other hand, labour freed
up from the process of production for that of reproduction yields no immediate
surplus-value. Therefore, the ruling class is forced to balance long-term and
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short-term considerations. In order to allow for reproduction some potentially
exploitable surplus-labour must be given up to the reproduction process.
Thus the ruling class seeks to minimise the value lost to the reproduction
process, and the family presents a stable format in which to attain a degree of
efficiency in reproduction. Men are assigned the role of obtaining the means of
subsistence for the family unit, and women take on the domestic labour tasks
which transform these means of subsistence into the required goods. What are
really roles that are only of temporary necessity become solidified and rendered
permanent through the family form.
For Vogel, social reproduction gives rise to women’s oppression on a
contingent, rather than necessary, basis because, whilst social reproduction
itself is necessary for the social system to function, the means by which it is
performed can assume a variety of forms. The forms that emerge are
influenced by the advantages they might hold for each of the contending
classes, who struggle with the others in order to establish the most beneficial
arrangement for themselves. The results are not a series of fixed absolutes, but
a vast variety of possible combinations.
This is, on the one hand, one of the great strengths of Vogel’s social
reproduction theory. On the other, however, it presents her argument with
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some difficulties. In what follows I will give three areas in which I think Vogel’s
argument requires modification.
III
The first is Vogel’s claim that although the cost to the ruling class imposed by
domestic labour and reproduction can be minimised via commodification,
which can free up labour from reproduction for surplus-value production, there
is a limit to the process. Certain aspects of domestic labour cannot be turned
into profitable sources of accumulation.
However, I do not think there is a good reason to believe that there are any
forms of domestic labour which could in principle be ruled out of
commodification. The emergence of new technology might, for example, make
previously unappealing areas of investment an enticing prospect for
accumulation. By driving down general living standards – or only allowing their
maintenance or increase via debt – it is possible for the ruling class to force
extra labour out of working families, which can be achieved by women entering
the workplace. In doing so, the capacity for women to perform domestic labour
is diminished whilst the need to purchase replacement services on the market is
consequently increased. Acquiring replacements for domestic labour on the
market could be accomplished either in the form of outsourcing the labour, or
through labour-saving devices purchased for the home. In such a way, it is
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possible to drive forward commodification, and this commodification of
previously uncommodified areas of social life is a common strategy of the
capitalist class as it seeks fresh sources of profit. This undermines the
endurance of the gender-division of labour, and destabilises that which was
posited as the root cause of women’s oppression.
It could also be the case that providing for women involved in reproduction
directly, by way of the state or commodified services, could be cost neutral
from a ruling class point of view. Enacting a general levy of working class
individuals to pay for this poses no fundamental difficulty, only the method of
distribution would be altered and not the total portion of the social product
controlled by each of the respective classes. If that were to be done, then there
would be no reason for the ruling class to continue to encourage patriarchy.
Indeed, European welfare states have taken steps in this direction and, whilst
appealing from the point of view of the left, they cannot be said to have dealt a
killer blow to patriarchal relations. Something else other than the matter of the
imposed cost burden on the ruling class must be at work here.
The second problem is that it does not seem plausible that merely by being
prevented from working for a few months at a time women come to assume
domestic labour so near permanently and universally. If ever a case for this
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could be made then it is certainly eroded with the arrival of reliable and widely
available contraceptive techniques.
The allocation of domestic labour to women is clearly one possible outcome of
the problem of how to divide up types of labour, but does not do well to explain
why the family is nearly everywhere in the contemporary world in a patriarchal
form. We are not given sufficient reason to believe that divisions of labour
should map on to gender divisions at all, and certainly not so persistently.
Third is the issue of the oppression of ruling class women. With the rise of
private property comes a need for some norm of transferring it after death.
What came to dominate was inheritance through the paternal line. Marriage, in
this reading, is a means through which to ensure that paternity and thereby
secure the line of inheritance. Here, though, the problem is that there is no
reason apart from the subordination of women that property should be passed
through the male line.
It seems that certain types of arrangements of social reproduction appear with
greater frequency would be the case in the absence of any additional pull-factor
in that direction. If contingency were the long and short of the matter we would
then expect to find rather more examples of matriarchy, or even
approximations of gender equality, than we do. We lack, then, strong reasons to
believe that social reproduction will be constituted so consistently on the basis
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of male domination. The process does not seem to demand that this should be
the case; it only suggests that it is one possible outcome amongst others.
That these combinations have tended towards having an additional unifying
feature, male domination, beyond what is necessary for the process in the most
general sense, and also beyond what is obviously advantageous for any of the
contending classes, implies that a supplementary force is at work. It is not far
from here to the resurrection of the dual systems theory.
IV
Barrett, too, is strongly influenced by the concept of social reproduction as a
means with which to reveal the articulation of capitalism and patriarchy. Her
source of attribution is, however, different from Vogel’s. Where Vogel invokes
the late Marx, Barrett appeals to the French philosopher Louis Althusser.
Althusser has enjoyed a long deployment in the service of Feminist theory, and
his theory of ideology is the most well-known component of his work, so I hope
I can afford to be brief in my exposition. Ideology here denotes not only ideas,
but accompanying practices and rituals through which it was substantiated. For
Althusser, ideology, as with other components of society, had a ‘relative
autonomy’ from the economy. Contrary to how Marx’s base/superstructure
metaphor has often been understood, Althusser sought to break with a
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determining role of the economy except ‘in the last instance’. The economy
structured the social whole, giving it a unity, but was not necessarily the origin
or cause of each of its components. Ideologies could arise independently of
economic causes, and become part of the conflictual unity that was a social
formation.
What Althusser permits Barrett to do is think about patriarchy as a semiautonomous phenomenon, preserving the features of dual systems theory that
seem to be persuasive, without breaking with the idea of the social world as a
unified whole.
Patriarchal organisation may be neither optimal nor even particularly useful for
the ruling class. It may only need lend itself to a state of affairs which is
adequate enough for the overall requirements of social reproduction. The
prevalence and persistence of patriarchy could be understood by its particular
effectiveness in its own reproduction, through the way it incentivises some
agents to secure its continuity.
What Barrett then does is endorse a conception of male privilege. To put it
more specifically, she thinks that men benefit from women’s oppression. This is
a move Marxists have often been hesitant to make. However, the case made
here is, I think, a compelling one.
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Barrett’s claim is that the beneficiary of domestic labour is not just the ruling
class but also men as a cross-class group, and that these men gain from the
privileges conferred on them by masculinity, which provides a more general set
of social advantages. This occurs independently of whether an individual man
actually wants these privileges; they are bestowed on him without his consent.
This does not happen, however, in a straightforwardly positive manner. Even
the privileged gender experiences negative consequences as a result of the
division. For example, the demands placed on men as breadwinners locks them
in to wage labour and limits access to their children.
Given that male privilege is not unambiguously beneficial to its recipients, the
door is left open for resistance to it. There is no doubt a cost incurred by
fighting against something that penetrates and constructs our very sense of
self; but it may well be possible to demonstrate that there is more to be gained
by doing so than is lost in the short term. What has often troubled Marxists
about this line of thought – that if men benefit by oppressing women it may not
be possible to construct a unified agency crossing gender lines – is not then as
problematic as has been assumed.
Vogel tentatively recognises some of this. She identifies the family-wage as a
possible form of male privilege. There is the occasional nod towards a notion of
male supremacy. The tendency, however, is to place all responsibility on the
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ruling class, for both the creation and perpetuation of patriarchy. Overall, Vogel
seeks to minimise the extent to which the ideological construction of patriarchal
forms of social reproduction emanates from within subordinated sections of
society, in particular the working class.
However, patriarchy as ideology is persistent because it is able to appeal to and
be taken up by large sections of the population. It crosses class lines, and even if
it could be shown to be a component of a particular class project originally it
cannot be compartmentalised in such a way any longer. It is not that Vogel
overtly rules out any of this, so much as it is that a restrictive conceptualisation
of historical materialism causes her to stop short of taking us in this direction.
Left to its own devices, Vogel’s concept of social reproduction can only deal
with the complex ideological construction of gender identities in a mechanical
and reductionist fashion. It is able to speak very little to, for instance, cultural
representations of gender as well as to the construction of gendered forms of
desire and subjectivity.
What does seem to be the case is that gender divisions that preceded
capitalism came to influence its development, in that the main proponents of
the bourgeois class project were males because of a preceding state of gender
inequality. Thus the ideology of patriarchy that the emergent bourgeoisie
already bore with them interfused with their direct class interests and thus the
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world which they set about constructing. The success of this project was
secured by the further penetration of patriarchal relations into the early
working class, who made them their own, so as to generate an additional
fracture within that class along gender lines.
Barrett provides examples of how male workers have sought to protect their
sectional interests against the advance of their female counterparts. Strictly put,
capitalism has no in-built necessity to divide up labour according to gender. A
capitalism born of Immaculate Conception may well not have done so, and
perhaps even ended up being more efficient from a ruling class point of view as
a result. The reality of our present vantage point is, however, that despite the
fact that the possibility of capitalism without gender inequality is theoretically
conceivable there is not much chance of now reconfiguring it in such a way as
to be gender blind in its workings.
Crucially, what is implied here is that the collapse of capitalism does not also
entail the collapse of patriarchy. What supplanting capitalism could do is erode
the basis on which patriarchy thrives, which is the contradictory nature of social
reproduction in class societies. The matter of patriarchy’s irreducibility to this
basis means that the advent of socialism is better understood as a condition of
possibility for the end of patriarchy rather than itself being coextensive with
that goal. Crafting a society which is not traversed by class struggle is a
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prerequisite to ending women’s oppression, but is insufficient by itself. There is
no automatic relationship between the two, for patriarchal ideology may persist
and potentially even find itself a new lease of life beyond any economic
rationale for its existence.
V
Whilst Vogel’s emphasis on the role of contingency in deciding the
configuration of social reproduction is valuable, she does not provide sufficient
reasons as to why the outcomes of these contingent events have trended
towards patriarchy. Vogel is hesitant to offer a comprehensive account of male
domination, and her argument suffers as a result. If patriarchy is more common
than contingency would alone allow for, her theory is in trouble because a
resort to dual systems is tempting. In return, I have argued that that it can be
rescued along the lines advanced by Barrett, via Althusser, who suggests that a
patriarchal ideology, which persists because men as a group do indeed benefit
from it, structures the social reproduction processes of contemporary social
formations. Importantly, this ideology is intimately related to class-societies and
cannot be viewed or understood apart from them. The logic of class antagonism
retains its analytical primacy in this schema. The crucial question that needs
answering is why it is women that nearly always end up in the subordinate,
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domestic labour, role. If there were historical reasons for this, it should be clear
that they have become significantly eroded. It does not seem to be the case
that the ruling class benefits from specifically from women being oppressed,
even if it might benefit from some form of gendered division of labour.
My charge, then, is that whilst not explicitly ruling it out Vogel is insufficiently
attentive to male supremacy as a cross-class project, and an account of this
must be integrated into her theory in order for it to do the work we need it to.
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