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| Marxist feminists | |
|---|---|
| Name | Marxist feminists |
| Region | International |
| Founding date | 19th–20th centuries |
| Notable members | Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Clara Zetkin, Alexandra Kollontai, Rosa Luxemburg, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Georgi Plekhanov, Vera Zasulich, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Augusta Bebel, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Silvia Federici, Angela Davis, Sylvia Pankhurst, Kathleen Gough, Lise Vogel, Catherine MacKinnon, Nancy Fraser, Sally B.](disambiguation) |
Marxist feminists are scholars and activists who synthesize ideas from Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and related socialist traditions with feminist critiques to analyze the intersection of class exploitation and women's oppression. They argue that the dynamics of capitalism and class relations shape gendered divisions of labour, household structures, and reproductive roles, and they propose socialist transformation as central to women's liberation. Marxist feminist writing spans analytic theory, political praxis, and cultural critique across revolutionary movements, trade union struggles, and academic debates.
Marxist feminist thought emerges from the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and from the early labour movement tied to figures like Auguste Bebel, Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg, Alexandra Kollontai, and Vera Zasulich, and institutions such as the First International, Second International, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Social Democratic Party of Germany, and Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Key formative texts include The Communist Manifesto, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, and debates in journals tied to Iskra, Pravda, Die Gleichheit, La Révolution prolétarienne, and The Masses. Influences also trace to thinkers and activists linked with Paris Commune, Haymarket affair, Suffragette movement, Women's Social and Political Union, National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, and revolutionary contexts in Mexico, China, Spain, Italy, and Germany.
Marxist feminists analyze how class exploitation under capitalism structures gendered divisions of paid and unpaid labour, examining domestic labour through debates influenced by texts and organizations like The Second Sex, The Personal Is Political, Red Flag, Workers' Liberty, International Socialist Organization, Socialist Workers Party (UK), and trade unions such as Trades Union Congress and International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. They deploy concepts from Das Kapital, historical materialism, surplus value, alienation, primitive accumulation, social reproduction, and relations of production to explain women's wage labour, household work, and care work in contexts shaped by events like the Industrial Revolution, Great Depression, World War I, World War II, and policies from regimes like Soviet Union, People's Republic of China, and Cuba. Debates over the sexual division of labour engage figures associated with New Left, Second-wave feminism, women's liberation movement, Black Panther Party, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and theories developed in venues like Monthly Review, New Left Review, and Socialist Register.
Marxist feminism evolved through early socialist women's organizing in the 19th century and revolutionary movements of the 20th century, including the Russian Revolution, Spanish Civil War, Chinese Communist Revolution, and decolonization struggles in Algeria, Vietnam, India, and South Africa. It informed labor mobilizations such as May Day demonstrations, sit-ins at factories connected to General Strike traditions, and feminist campaigns allied with parties like Communist Party of Great Britain, Communist Party USA, Socialist Party of America, French Communist Party, Italian Communist Party, Partito Comunista Italiano, and revolutionary collectives like Zapatistas. Academic institutionalization occurred in departments influenced by journals and projects at University of Cambridge, London School of Economics, University of Oxford, Harvard University, Columbia University, University of California, Berkeley, New York University, University of Toronto, and research centers such as Institute of Social History and conferences like World Congress of Women.
Influential proponents and texts include early contributions by Friedrich Engels (The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State), activism and writing by Alexandra Kollontai (Woman Worker), essays by Clara Zetkin, polemics by Rosa Luxemburg, and later scholarship by Silvia Federici (Caliban and the Witch), Ellen Meiksins Wood (historical analyses), Lise Vogel (social reproduction theory), Nancy Fraser (recognition and redistribution), Selma James (Wages for Housework campaign), Angela Davis (prison-industrial complex critiques), Mariarosa Dalla Costa (domestic labour theory), Christine Delphy (materialist feminism), Heidi Hartmann (patriarchal capitalism), Shulamith Firestone (The Dialectic of Sex), Gerda Lerner (history of women), Victoria C. and other scholars in journals like Signs, Feminist Review, Socialist Studies, and publishing houses including Verso Books, Routledge, Cambridge University Press, and Oxford University Press.
Marxist feminism faces critiques from proponents of liberal feminism, radical feminism, poststructuralist feminism, intersectionality advocates associated with scholars like Kimberlé Crenshaw, bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, and from postcolonial theorists such as Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Homi K. Bhabha. Debates address perceived economic determinism raised by critics including Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler, tensions with identity politics mobilized by groups like National Organization for Women and Combahee River Collective, and disagreements over the roles of the state and socialist parties in projects of gender emancipation involving actors such as Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Nikita Khrushchev, Josip Broz Tito, and Fidel Castro. Scholarly disputes engage journals and institutions including New Left Review, Radical Philosophy, British Journal of Sociology, American Historical Review, Signs, and conferences at universities like University of California, Los Angeles and University of Michigan.
Marxist feminist analysis has influenced welfare policy debates, labour legislation, family law reforms, and campaigns for care infrastructure advocated by organizations like International Labour Organization, United Nations Women's initiatives, World Health Organization programs, International Monetary Fund critiques, World Bank social policy engagements, and NGOs such as Oxfam, CARE International, and Amnesty International. Contemporary movements integrating Marxist feminist ideas include strands within Occupy Wall Street, Fight for $15, Extinction Rebellion (care and climate justice linkages), Black Lives Matter, Me Too movement, Green New Deal coalitions, and left feminist currents in parties like Labour Party (UK), Democratic Socialists of America, Die Linke, Podemos, La France Insoumise, and social forums like the World Social Forum.