Marxist Feminism

Marxist Feminism is a sub-type of feminism that promotes the dismantling of capitalism to liberate women. As per Karl Marx, the root of women's oppression is economic inequality, dependence, political confusion and unhealthy social relations between men and women in the social economy.

This type of feminist theory and politics takes its theoretical roots mainly from Marxism, which revolved around the idea that the world is divided evenly between rich and poor: workers on the one hand, and wealthy capitalists who exploit and profit from the labour of workers on the other.
Marxist feminists believe that the capitalist economic system is the root cause of women’s oppression. They claim that empowerment and equality for women cannot be achieved within the framework of capitalism.
Marxism is a political, social, and economic theory that focuses on the struggle between capitalists and workers.
Under capitalism, Marxists define a class society as one in which one class controls the means of production. It means that the workers receive their wages, capitalists take the profit from their work, and those who reproduce daily and generational life, are not recognized for their labour either in terms of wages or in social value.
The Marxist feminists believe that:
Women became the property of men due to the introduction of private property and became the first oppressed class.
Women were oppressed because of their economic dependency on the family and the job, keeping them under labour force.
Traditionally, women work unpaid in the home as housewives and also hold the lowest-paying jobs.

So, in light of all of these, Marxist Feminist propose that
Women must have equal participation within the economic production process.
They also propose wages for housework. They believe in developing a system for paying women directly for their household work.

Criticism
Marxist feminism analyses the ways during which women were exploited through capitalism and the individual ownership of personal property.
Marxist feminists contend that women can achieve liberation only by dismantling capitalism, during which much of women's labour goes uncompensated.
One Criticism of Marxist Feminism is that oppression of girls within the family existed before capitalism and in communist societies.
Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontai were against all sorts of feminism that reinforce class status. They didn't see a real possibility to be united across economic inequality because they argued that it might be extremely difficult for an upper-class woman to understand the struggles of the working class.
Kollontai criticized the feminist movement for failing to affirm that the working-class women, who struggled to care for their families earned less than their male counterparts and were still expected to cater and supply for bourgeois or upper-class women by using the stereotypical sort of work.

Some Important and Influencers Marxist Feminism are:
Mary Harris or “Mother Jones” (1837–1930) and Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) were among the first-wave Marxist feminists.
Jones and Kollontai were labour organizers who focused on the situation of the working class and poor women. They drew attention to the situation of working-class women as workers by exposing exploitative working conditions and proposing policies that address gender imbalances within the public and private sectors.
Furthermore, Kollontai stipulated that the ordinary women must join the proletarian (working-class woman) revolution in solidarity with working-class men to overthrow capitalism.
Then, comes the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, whose findings brought a great deal in Marxism.
In 1848, Marx argued that women were oppressed by the ruling class, who treated them as second-class citizens.
In 1884, Frederick Engel’s ‘The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State’ laid out the evolution of social relations of production and reproduction.
Under capitalism, Engels argued that household management lost its public character and is no longer a concern for society.
Hence, it became kind of a private service: the wife became head servant, excluded from all participation in social production.


Recommended Books and Journals
Frederick Engel’s | The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State | 1884
Heidi Hartmann, Ann R Markusen| Contemporary Marxist Theory and Practice: A Feminist Critique| Academic Journal| July 1, 1980
Lise Vogel| Marxism and the Oppression of Women | Academic Journal|1983
Mohammad KhosraviShakib| Marxist feminism and postmodernism| Academic Journal|2010
Silvia Federici| Marx and Feminism| Academic Journal| Dec 25, 2019


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