The word 'proletariat' comes from the Latin word proletarius, which means "maker of offspring". Women of child bearing age are proletarians in the true sense of the word. If women refuse to have children unless they are sure those children will enjoy a high material standard of living, then 'socially necessary labour time' embedded in commodities will have a higher value because workers have to remunerated a higher level. Thus, ceteris paribus, a country where women won't have babies unless the labour of the household is well remunerated, will have high per capita income. Sadly, if there is unrestricted immigration or if there is a military threat of invasion, this will not be the case.
One may say that, if migration is controlled and the country possesses a sufficiently strong military deterrent, then Feminism is part and parcel of Marxism- or vice versa- in that both aim to raise the material standard of living of the working class. The division of labour here is that Feminism reduces the supply of labour while Marxian policies (ideally speaking) improves the supply side conditions by promoting more efficient use of Land and Capital.
A different view is taken by contemporary feminists- more particularly those influenced by Judith Butler. Consider the following abstract from a recent academic paper-
Feminism and Marxism: Questions on the Field of Struggle Angela Dimitrakaki* *Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of Edinburgh
Opening with a discussion of the relationship and tension between Marxism and feminism, the article argues for the specificity of Marxist feminist analysis in relation to other currents of feminism on the left. Drawing on Susan Watkins, the article contends that capitalist strategy has contributed to shaping the intellectual trajectory of feminism as known today.
So, this article will ignore Feminism in Marxist countries. It will only focus on a type of analysis known to have failed and which remains ineffectual because it is practiced only in Western Liberal Democracies of a Capitalist type. This would be like looking at Jewish studies in the Ayatollah's Iran. It may be that such a thing exists but it keeps very quiet because Iran is not a country which is friendly to Judaism. There is no point focusing attention on it because whatever it might be, it is not successful or well respected.
This trajectory developed under a complex hegemony that entailed, among other things, the Cold War
which was good for Feminism because women's labour and brain power might make the difference between victory and defeat
and the end of Bretton Woods
which was brought about because former colonies or protectorates wanted a better deal for the export of vital commodities like petroleum.
in relation to postmodernism
which curled up and died when I was a young man
and cultural imperialism,
which does not exist. Hollywood heroines now beat each other up using Chinese Kung Fu. They maintain their slim figures by eating Sushi and doing Yoga.
ideological uses of the ‘middle class’,
which, in America, means Joe Lunch-pail.
and technologies that increasingly challenge the clear distinction between production and reproduction.
There are no such technologies. You can't order a baby off Amazon.
The analysis is specifically concerned with (a) how histories of reactionary but also progressive ideas formed under this hegemony
but Marxism failed completely. So did third wave Feminism. Why? One reason was that only very stupid people went in for them.
(b) the pull of/to immaterialityThis is Judith Butler's notion that 'the materiality of the body, including sex and gender, is not a pre-existing, natural reality,
in a perceived ‘post-industrial’ society,
not to mention the 'post-IQ' society which is to be found in Departments of Women Studies, Queer Theory, etc.
and the relevance of both to feminism.
The relevance is that female candidates- like Kamala Harris- can be accused of caring more about Transgender people than they do about ordinary voters who can't afford to pay their bills. Also, if you say I should not be allowed to attend a girl's boarding school, then you are a fucking TERF and should be cancelled.
The article revisits the debate of Judith Butler and Nancy Fraser from 1997
Butler thought Fraser was against Queer folk. Fraser denied this. The wider problem was that Marxism admits that both men and women gain when the latter are released from exploitation and are paid in a fair and equitable manner for the work that they do.
as encapsulating the roots of a divide within left feminism – one related to understandings of intersectionality, a popular concept also in Marxist feminism.
The question was whether the Lesbian Feminist- e.g. Audrey Lorde or Adrienne Rich- was superior to the heterosexual Feminist. Surely, true Feminism is about boycotting dicks? But where does this leave the woman who decides to go under the knife to get a dick or the man who gets his dick chopped off so as to get a vagina? The answer was- nobody fucking cares, mate. Marxism was about workers becoming better off. So was Feminism. It wasn't about crazy peeps saying 'boo to dicks! Dicks cause RAPE! Ban all dicks!'
Intersectionality brings together salient political categories (such as gender, race, class),
so as to constitute a circular firing squad. The privileged White woman who brings class action suits to raise the pay of female workers is clearly a Fascist cunt because she isn't a Lesbian and isn't disabled and isn't bleck. She should fuck off and die. All White peeps should do so. Turtle island must be returned to the disabled Lesbians of colour who used to graze on its vast prairies. White men came claimed they were buffalos and shot them. Fuck you White Men! Fuck you very much!
the question for Marxist feminism being: how?
In a useless manner. We need to explain to Queer Crips who are also obese and thus can't get a date that they are being oppressed by Capitalism just as much as the disabled buffalo of colour.
It is argued that intersectionality, coined at a specific moment of American cultural history and in relation to postmodernism’s spatialising imaginary, is not always and necessarily compatible with Marxist feminism’s focus on a social totality forming out of a mode of production and reproduction.
In other words, Queer Crips should just kindly fuck off rather than bore us to death with their stories about how being obese means they can't get into the best night-clubs.
To demonstrate this, the article concludes by considering Ashley Bohrer’s influential interpretation of intersectionality.
It is so influential that Donald Trump often quotes it to Elon Musk. Chairman Xi decided to undergo gender reassignment surgery after reading Bohrer.
Overall, the article argues for a Marxist feminism that attends closely to the key tendencies, possibilities and contradictions of 21stcentury capitalism and what hegemony consists of - as a first step towards re/thinking the priorities and specificity of struggle.
What struggle? That of the people of Ukraine? I suppose, Europe must ready itself to send more and more of its young people into that meat-grinder. Hopefully, disabled lesbian buffalos will be conscripted on an equal basis.
It must be said, the author being Greek, isn't utterly stupid. She understands that any economic regime will want to raise productivity and incentives for productivity. Can Marxism do this better than Capitalism? Sure, if it generates more rapid general purpose and total factor productivity. Moreover, it can probably take swifter action against 'repugnancy markets'- e.g. prostitution- and firmly put down reactionary religious or other misogynistic ideologies and practices. Indeed, Chairman Xi can 're-educate' millions of Muslims and work directly with Muslim women to raise their productivity and life chances.
Capitalism thinks it can achieve ‘parity’ between ‘women’ and ‘men’ in a few generations.
No. She herself quoted the World Bank as saying that at the current rate of progress it would take 123 years to close the gender gap in remuneration. It is obvious, that structural changes- e.g. the use of AI and robotics- may reverse gains made in recent years if employment in high value adding STEM subject fields remains disproportionately male.
It believes in ‘progress’. What does feminism think?
Feminism thinks feminism turned to shit because stupid professors stuck their oar in. Ignore it and get on with your life.
Feminism is divided. Even as feminism sees that capitalism generates a social reality where women are oppressed overall, many feminist currents cannot or won’t see that in capitalism women also exploit women.
This also happens in Lesbianism.
That is, such feminist currents cannot or won’t understand the meaning of class in its historical specificity.
So, this smart lady thinks Feminism should be a circular firing squad where women from poorer families scream abuse at those from richer families. I suppose the latter can retaliate by saying 'fuck off back to the stinky shithole you came from. Anyway, I'm Lesbian and thus better than you.'
I suppose, 'class antagonism' means the demand by poorer people that richer people pay much more in tax. The problem here is that some richer people can emigrate or otherwise avoid taxes. Marxian exploitation just means confiscation of 'economic rent' or 'consumer surplus'. But if supply and demand are elastic then there is no 'rent' or 'surplus' to confiscate. What Marxism and Capitalism and any other sort of Economic theory are about is raising general purpose productivity (in which case supply becomes more elastic and exploitation less possible) as well as total factor productivity (e.g. making the legal and financial and educational and administrative system more efficient).
In a recent book titled 'Judith Butler and Marxism: The Radical Feminism of Performativity, Vulnerability, and Care' Elliot C. Mason & Valentina Moro ask-
What would a Butlerian Marxism look like?
A can of worms. The woman is demented.
Marxist criticisms of Butler range from
saying she is stupid to saying she is ignorant, stupid, crazy and utterly useless
careful comparisons of forms to the total dismissal of an unpolitical, merely cultural anarchy.
Crazy lesbian pretending she is an 'intellectual'.
None of these criticisms, however, focuses on what seems to most closely unite these two projects: the universal abolition of the universal.
Which is like the bus that runs over itself.
While Marxist communism is focused on the abolition of value and property,
only after scarcity has ended. Otherwise it is about 'to each according to his contribution'. Ask Chairman Xi. He is a genuine Communist.
Butler is consistently concerned throughout their corpus with the abolition of the subject as the universal form of social relations,
There is no universal form of social relations. Moreover, social relations exist whether or not there is a subject. This is because they are abstract. Consider a Trust created under a Will which bequeaths money to a grandchild who has not yet been born. There is no such subject as that grandchild but the 'social relationship' between a person and a possible grandchild is well-defined.
an abolition staged by way of a relational ontology and ethics.
Neither have any power to 'abolish' anything. It isn't the case that if I want to abolish death, that I can get 'relational ontology' to do it for me. Indeed, even 'Ethics' is powerless to tell the Grim Reaper to fuck the fuck off. Moreover, 'relational ontology' obtains even with respect to imaginary or incompossible things. I can speak of the unicorn which I used to play with as a child and my fear that it has turned into a Trump supporter in its old age.
Their methodologies for achieving abolition, however, vary hugely.
No. The method is the same- viz. wishful thinking. On the other hand, I've told relational ontology to use its influence with Ethics to get Ethics to tell the Grim Reaper to fuck the fuck off. Thus, I can be sure I will never die.
While Butler sees the performativity of subjects
i.e. our ability to make things happen just by saying they should happen. Thus the reason I will live forever is because I told Death to fuck the fuck off.
and power as an opportunity for differential assembly,
we can disassemble death and turn it into a nice unicorn just by saying this should happen.
Marxists are primarily concerned with the working class as a revolutionary vanguard that withdraws its labor from production.
No. They know that withdrawing labour from production means labourers starve to death. The Capitalists decide not to invest their money. They go on a nice cruise instead.
The industrial proletariat could be a 'revolutionary vanguard' if it armed itself and travelled by train up and down the country machine gunning kulaks and confiscating their harvests and live-stock. Sadly, this did mean there would be famines and gulags and long queues to purchase a rotten turnip.
Judith Butler and Marxism explores the possibility of a Butlerian Marxism,
based on magical thinking. Did you know that by abolishing death, workers would not starve if they withdrew their labour? Also, we could disassemble death and create nice flying unicorns for ourselves. What's more, I could simultaneously be both Beyonce and a cute baby Panda. Everybody would like me and give me pressies if such were the case.
understood as abolitionist performativity,
e.g. saying 'Death, I abolish you! Fuck the fuck off!'
differential vulnerability,
I am differentially vulnerable to rejection by peeps who don't think I am Beyonce while also being a cute baby Panda. This is the fault of neo-liberalism. Fuck you neo-liberalism! Fuck you very much!
and generalized practices of care.
rather than individualized practices like wiping the bums of drunken hobos. Got to say, I'd rather go in for 'generalized practices' e.g. demanding that Neo-liberalism wipes everybody's bum.
The essays in this volume attempt to actualize the antagonistic persistence of social particulars,
like dudes who don't believe me when I say I'm Beyonce. Great precarity is caused to me by pretty girls who don't stroke and cuddle me because they reject the notion that I am a cute baby Panda.
pursuing the abolition of the domination and violence that pervade society with increasing brutality.
Butler is being anally probed with increasing brutality by neo-liberal unicorns. Fuck you neo-liberal unicorns! Fuck you very much!
The three sections of this volume are structured according to three pivotal political concepts in Butler’s corpus: performativity,
I'm Beyonce because I shake my booty and say 'look at me! I'm Queen Bey!'
vulnerability,
I am experiencing great precarity because girls don't think I'm a baby panda.
and care.
Neo-liberalism must wipe my arse.
Each essay contributes to a possible mutual development of Butler’s and Marxism’s concern with assembly, interdependence, and refusal, forming a revolutionary politics of care.
Marxism is still the governing ideology of China and Vietnam. It was once espoused by half the world. Butler's 'revolutionary politics of care' has had zero impact. At the margin, it has made a female POTUS less rather than more likely.
This is the first book to fully study the contentious link between the vastly influential projects of Judith Butler and Marxism.
Marxism was and is influential. Butler isn't. Why not admit it? The fact is, this availability cascade is being defunded. It attracts only imbeciles. Meanwhile, the Chinese are eating our lunch because their young women go in for STEM subjects. They don't waste their time on magical thinking and posing as revolutionaries.
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