Marxism and Feminism

402 Pages·2015·1.353 MB·English

by  Shahrzad Mojab

About the editor
Shahrzad Mojab is professor in the Depart­
ment of Leadership, Higher and Adult
Education and is the former director of
the Women and Gender Studies Institute
at the University of Toronto. Her areas of
research and teaching include educational
policy studies; gender, state, diaspora and
transnationality; women, war, militariza­
tion and violence; feminism, anti­racism,
colonialism and imperialism; and Marxism,
feminism and revolution.

MARXISM AND FEMINISM
edited by Shahrzad Mojab
Zed Books
London
Marxism and Feminism was first published in 2015 by Zed Books Ltd,
7 Cynthia Street, London n1 9jf, uk
www.zedbooks.co.uk
Editorial copyright © Shahrzad Mojab 2015
Copyright in this collection © Zed Books 2015
The right of Shahrzad Mojab to be identified as the editor of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988
Set in ffKievit and Monotype Plantin by Ewan Smith, London
Index: [email protected]
Cover designed by Liam Chapple
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior
permission of Zed Books Ltd.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBn 978-1-78360-323-7 hb
ISBn 978-1-78360-322-0 pb
ISBn 978-1-78360-324-4 pdf
ISBn 978-1-78360-325-1 epub
ISBn 978-1-78360-326-8 mobi
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements | vii
1 Introduction: Marxism and feminism . . . . . . . . . .1
Shahrzad Mojab
Part one Class and race in Marxism and feminism
2 Gender relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Frigga Haug
3 The Marx within feminism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Frigga Haug
4 Building from Marx: reflections on ‘race’, gender
and class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102
Himani Bannerji
Part two Marxist-feminist keywords
5 Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Sara Carpenter
6 Financialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142
Jamie Magnusson
7 Ideology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Himani Bannerji
8 Imperialism and primitive accumulation . . . . . . . 181
Judith Whitehead
9 Intersectionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .203
Delia D. Aguilar
10 Labour-power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Helen Colley
11 Nation and nationalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .239
Amir Hassanpour
12 Patriarchy/patriarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .259
Kumkum Sangari
13 Reproduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .287
Michelle Murphy
14 Revolution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .305
Maryam Jazayeri
15 Standpoint theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Cynthia Cockburn
16 Epilogue: gender after class . . . . . . . . . . . . .347
Teresa L. Ebert
Recommended reading | 368
About the authors | 374
Index | 379
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This collection is the outcome of many conversations with the con­
tributors, sometimes one on one but most often collectively and over
many months, years and decades. I am enormously grateful to them
for enriching my feminist understanding of Marxism and Marxist
centring of class in feminism. Thanks are also due to graduate
students who prodded me to keep on organizing ‘radical’ or ‘Marxist’
reading groups where we discussed and thought through concepts/
keywords covered in the book. A summer Marxist theory group,
held in Europe over the last few years, has been a valuable reading
and discussion space. In this group, I learned to read dialectical
and historical materialism as science, philosophy, method and, most
significantly, as a mode of understanding and interpreting Marx and
feminism. My gratitude to all participants for sitting through hours of
debate and for their palpable love for humanity and revolution.
I am grateful to Stephan Dobson for his superb editorial work, his
intellectual generosity, his affection for books, and for always walking
in with yet another book for me to read! Shirin Haghgou’s diligent
work on the preparation of the manuscript was indispensable; I owe
her gracious thanks. Philip Taucher’s assistance with Frigga Haug’s
chapters is greatly appreciated. I am also grateful for his creative
contribution to the website ‘Marxism and feminism: research,
teaching, and praxis’ (www.oise.utoronto.ca/marxfem/index.html).
Special thanks are due to Karen Ruoff Kramer, who translated for
this volume the poem that begins Frigga Haug’s Chapter 3. Special
gratitude is due to Kim Walker, the enthusiastic and supportive editor
at Zed Books.
The constructive comments by anonymous reviewers on the
manuscript proposal certainly improved its content, for which I am
grateful. I also thank Palgrave Macmillan, publisher, for permission
to reprint Himani Bannerji’s chapter ‘Building from Marx: reflections
on “race”, gender and class’. I am indebted to Teresa L. Ebert for
advancing the theorization of materialist feminism and to Paradigm
Publishers for permitting the reprint of her chapter ‘Gender after
viii | acknowLedgementS
class’ as the Epilogue for this book. I am most grateful to Frigga
Haug, who kindly permitted us to publish her two important
chapters, ‘Gender relations’ and ‘The Marx within feminism’. With
all the support and assistance that I have received in preparing this
collection, certainly any errors remaining are mine.
1 | INTRODUCTION: MARXISM AND FEMINISM
Shahrzad Mojab
Histories, theories and possibilities
This book goes to press in 2014, the centenary of the ‘Great War’
in which capitalist states brought immense destruction of life and
property to every corner of the world. Another world war recurred
on a more destructive scale within the lifespan of a generation, and
it has continued to our day in an area extending from the Balkans to
the Middle East to Africa, and it threatens other parts of the world.
While states, media, academia and many non­state organizations
have a stake in commemorating the First World War, it is unlikely
that anyone will remember what Mary White Ovington (1865–1951),
a socialist and feminist, said four months before the launch of the
mass slaughter:
Socialism and Feminism are the two greatest movements of
to­day. The one aims to abolish poverty, the other to destroy
servitude among women. Both are world movements. No matter
how backward the nation may be that you visit, you will find your
revolutionist there preaching that poverty is unnecessary, and
that a great organization is working to destroy private capital and
to build a co­operative commonwealth. And throughout western
civilization, and even in the heart of the Orient, you also find the
woman revolutionist telling her enslaved sisters of the effort among
women to attain their freedom, to gain the right to live, not accord­
ing to man’s, but according to their own, conception of happiness
and right. Ideas fly swiftly about the globe, and we are learning to
think on the lines not of family or nation or race but of common
interests and common suffering. (Ovington 1914: 143)
Ovington emphasized that ‘the relation of Feminism to Socialism is a
matter of profound importance to many women Socialists …’ She was
right. Three years earlier, socialist women had launched 8 March as
International Working Women’s Day (IWWD), and three years later the