CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT, CLASS STRUGGLES AND SEXUAL POLITICS

Martha E. Gimenez

Department of Sociology

University of Colorado

Boulder, Colorado 80309

FIRST DRAFT: DO NOT CITE OR QUOTE WITHOUT

THE AUTHOR'S PERMISSION

Paper presented at the Pacific Sociological Association Meeting,

Denver, Colorado, April 9-12, 1985.

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CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT, CLASS STRUGGLES AND SEXUAL POLITICS

The aim of this essay is to explore the changing relationship

between capitalist development, class consciousness, and sexual

politics in order to assess the extent to which present feminist

theory and politics are compatible or incompatible with working

class interests in the United States. Changes in capital accumu-

lation, because they affect the articulation between the mode of

production and the mode of social and physical reproduction, have

been historically experienced and continue to be experienced, at

the level of empirically observable social relations, as detrimen-

tal and stressful changes in the organization of work, working

conditions, the labor market, family relations and family struc-

ture. This means that, while class consciousness and the formula-

tion of class interests may vary, historically, in their degrees

of specificity and clarity, they will, however, manifest themsel-

ves in forms that include, necessarily, a strong component of se-

xual politics because it is at the levels of working conditions

and family relations where class exploitation is primarily expe-

rienced. I will examine these phenomena as they took place in

England between late 18th and mid-19th century and will compare

them with present conditions in the United States. In addition to

elucidating the connections between capitalist development, class

struggles, and sexual politics, this analysis will contribute to

the development of feminist theory through the critical and

judicious integration of marxist and sociological theoretical

insights.

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The process whereby the development of capitalist forces and rela-

tions of production undermined the earlier forms of family economy

reached its culmination in England between the late 18th and mid-

19th centuries. The traditional family economy, in which kinship

and economic relations were relatively undifferentiated, was sub-

verted by emergent capitalist forms of productive organization

based on the private ownership of the means of production, and on

technology designed to increase productivity while depriving

workers from control over the production process and the supply of

labor. Capitalist exploitation, experienced at the place of work

and in the context of family relations, led to working class agi-

tation for better wages and working conditions aimed at preserving

the traditional economic and family relations between parents and

children. During a transitional period, the family worked inside

the factory where fathers trained and imposed labor discipline

over their children and continued to supervise them in other res-

pects. But this situation was inherently transitory given the

overall needs of the capitalist economy for flexibility in its use

of labor and constantly increasing productivity. Eventually, these

processes resulted in the separation between industrial production

and family life which continues today. In those years, the class

struggle reached acute dimensions; the concerns voiced by workers

coincided in many respects with those expressed by politicians,

bourgeois economists and religious leaders. Besides complaining

about low wages and working conditions highly detrimental to the

health and well being of all workers, regardless of age and sex,

workers also expressed dissatisfaction with what they saw as moral

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evils affecting women and children in the factories. Bourgeois

concerns were similar, accusing the factory system of undermining

workers health, of denying them a decent standard of living, and

of destroying traditional relations between parents and children

and between the sexes. The attainment of the family wage among the

better organized sectors of the working class by mid-19th century,

together with protective legislation for women in certain occupa-

tions, consolidated the proletarianization process and the trans-

formation of family relations in the working class. Males became

the main breadwinners and women domestic activities became focused

primarily on the care and socialization of children and on family

maintenance while their labor force participation became subor-

dinate to the family life-cycle.

It is, of course, impossible to sum up such a complex processes in

a brief and acceptable manner, but this will have to suffice for

the purposes of this presentation, to establish the ground for the

discussion that follows.

These processes have been interpreted differently according to the

political orientation and academic training of the interpreters.

Many of those interpretations arose in polemical relationship with

earlier ones and this essay will be no exception. It is my conten-

tion that these different viewpoints are not merely the outcome of

an individual's exceptional insight; they are historical products,

grounded in different experiences and class interests. As such,

they disclose different dimensions of social reality that must be

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taken into account to attain a full understanding of these issues.

Here I will compare sociological, marxist and feminist views.

From a marxist standpoint, working class agitations during the

late 18th and early 19th century were the result of the unbearable

conditions in which the working class lived and worked. Workers

expressed their resistance through strikes and other forms of re-

sistence and articulated their demands not only in economic terms

but also within the framework of dominant ideologies about the

family which enabled them to gain the support of other social

classes in their struggle. Capitalist assault upon the domestic

economy unavoidably entailed the disruption of traditional family

relations. This fact was reflected in workers grievances as new

forms of economic exploitation were experienced also as forms of

family disorganization.

Sociological analysis, developed as a partial answer to Marxist

theory, denies the role of capitalist exploitation in determining

working class struggles at that time. Sociologically, what was

really going on was a process of structural differentiation which

separated the father's economic from his socializing roles and un-

dermined male dominance. What determined workers' violent reaction

was not exploitation but the loss of traditional family roles in

which economic and non-economic family functions were still undif-

ferentiated. This is an empiricist explanation limited to descri-

bing the surface of history, overlooking the causal significance

of qualitative changes in the relations of production underlying

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structural differentiation. It severs the connection between class

exploitation and family problems but it is not entirely useless;

the concept of structural and functional differentiation is a

valid characterization of the visible outcome of class struggles

and captures the essence of an important method of "conflict

resolution" under capitalist conditions.

The dominant feminist interpretation of those events is one that

sees "patriarchy" as the determinant factor. The demand for the

family wage, protective legislation for women, the exclusion of

women from certain occupations, etc. are viewed as the product of

"patriarchy" within the capitalist and the working class (see, for

example, Hartman, 1976). As Jane Humphreys (1977) has so clearly

demonstrated, such interpretation is hopelessly flawed because it

ignores the economic, political and social importance of the fam-

ily for the working class. It is the case that by mid-19th century

restrictions on the employment of children and women were in the

interest of the capitalist class because they coincided with the

relative decline in the demand for labor brought about by changes

in the organic composition of capital and the replacement of human

labor by machines. But those restrictions were also in the inter-

est of the working class because they reduced the supply of labor,

increased working class bargaining power, and ensured a better

quality of life for workers, male and female, and their children.

Workers'earliest struggles were for the preservation of a family

economy doomed by overwhelming forces of change; later struggles,

on the other hand, were designed to hasten the process of change

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to surmount the unbearable conditions imposed by the cheapening

of labor power and the need to pool the wages of everyone, chil-

dren included, to make ends meet. Humphreys stresses the impor-

tance of the reduction in the value of labor power as the major

factor in shaping working class responses: "...the working class

has always resisted alternatives to the family recognizing in the

erosion of traditional family structures an infringement of its

standard of living and a deterioration in the position from which

it engages in class struggle" (Humphreys, 1977:245). It is the re-

lationship between the working classes' relative bargaining power,

their quality of life, and the family that feminists have ignored

when they blamed the male chauvinism of workers and capitalists in

the process of analyzing working class history and the struggle

for the family wage. The fact that the working class used sexist

ideology to legitimize its claims and that its strategies had ne-

gative effects upon individual women workers does not detract from

the advance for the working class as a whole, of which women are

also part, the the new legislation and wage levels brought about.

One must recognize not only the detrimental effects of that class

strategy for the attainment of sexual equality but also its posi-

tive effects on the quality of life of the working class as a

whole: "...to condemn this strategy out of hand is to be insen-

sitive to the material conditions of 19th century labor"

(Humphreys, 1977: 253).

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Having presented these three different interpretations of past

class struggles I will now turn my attention to the present situa-

tion in the United States to assess how well these perspectives

allow us to understand present conditions and what kinds of inter-

ests they serve.

Sociologically, one may say that the processes of structural dif-

ferentiation have advanced a great deal in the U.S. Changes in

capital accumulation have led to a relative decline in the demand

for skilled labor and to the demise of the family wage. Today few

are the male workers that earn it; it takes two wages to keep many

families above the poverty level or to maintain a standard of li-

ving previously obtained with only one wage. The welfare state and

its bureaucracy have taken up functions previously fulfilled by

the family among those sectors excluded from employment or earning

less than what is required for minimum subsistence. The state re-

places the father among some of the permanent and the temporary

unemployed, and it replaces children and kin among the elderly

poor. In spite of record high rates of unemployment, the connec-

tion between work and income remains unchanged; the state primari-

ly helps single mothers and the elderly, leaving young and adult

men and women to fend for themselves, thus creating the conditions

for further exploitative relations between the sexes. Differentia-

tion has also occurred at the level of the articulation between

mode of production and mode or physical and social reproduction;

while the number of families supported by only one breadwinner is

dwindling, the number of dual pay-check families leading a hard

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life and affluent dual-career families is increasing and, growing

faster than other kinds of household are single parent households,

primarily headed by women, the majority of which are poor.

The fact that many of those families are on welfare and that a

large proportion are black has rekindled public interest in ille-

gitimacy and teen-age fertility. This situation, plus the growing

ruling class realization that while economic recovery does not

always entail growth in the demand for labor, the population of

the unemployed and the unemployable continues to grow, has led to

a great deal of concern with the sexual life of the poor, with the

growing number of families headed by women, and the increased

labor force participation of married women. Sexual politics are no

longer primarily associated with feminist politics; they are to be

found among the concerns of the two major parties and are central

to neo-conservative and New Right politics.

If one compares present conditions with the 19th century, we can

make the following observations. While the family wage was never

available to all male workers, its presence, particularly during

times of economic prosperity, made employment a choice, rather

than a necessity, for vast numbers of women, thus leading to the

emergence of what Tilly and Scott (1978) call the family "consumer

economy." Today, more than ever in the history of this country,

working class women's employment is a necessity, not an option.

Proletarianization has reasserted itself through the decline in

real wages and the incorporation of greater numbers of women into

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the economy while, at the same time, large numbers of male workers

(particularly skilled blue collar workers) are losing their jobs

or see their employment threatened and their gains, won through

painful and protracted struggles, gradually eroded as employers

increasingly insist on pay cuts and lower benefits packages at the

time of renegotiating contracts. While child labor is illegal, pe-

riodic discussions about the potential benefits of special zones

where adolescents would be employed by industry at less than the

minimum wage make it clear that the process of cheapening of labor

power has not yet reached its full potential development.

Deep changes in the structure of the U.S. economy have changed the

conditions determining the access of working class women and men

to the conditions necessary to their physical and social reproduc-

tion on a daily and generational basis. At the level of empirical-

ly observable social phenomena, this is manifested in changes in

the quantity and quality of the demand for labor, the level of

wages, women's labor force participation, the absolute increase in

the number of poor people, and changes in household composition.

Working class reactions to these phenomena range from strikes and

other forms of more or less violent activity, to despair and self-

destructive behavior ( alcoholism, domestic violence, suicide, and

even the death of the entire family). Given the prevalence of se-

xism, women's employment often generates domestic problems in

spite of the obvious need for the income they provide, because it

threatens traditional sources of male self-identity and authority;

this means that even in the best of cases, when both husband and

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wife are employed, there is likely to be strife in the family.

Furthermore, the amount of time women spend outside the home redu-

ces the amount of domestic labor they can do and their energies to

do it, thus lowering further the overall quality of life of the

family who now depends increasingly on market goods and services

to satisfy its needs. It is true that there may be fortunate work-

ing working class families who have kept and perhaps improved

their standard of living during the last ten years. But the over-

whelming majority is placed under stressful conditions which are

an important cause of separation, divorce, and domestic violence.

Even bleaker than the situation of the poorest dual-paycheck

families is the situation of single mothers, particularly those

who must support themselves only with welfare. The consequences

of present socio-economic changes are aggravated by sexism and

this introduces a cleavage in working class consciousness and

politics that has profound impact upon working class political

behavior and its future direction.

Under these conditions, it is to be expected that the traditional

family, dependent on a male breadwinner, may appear to many as a

lost dream, as a desirable situation that would be important to

recapture, as a solution to present problems. As the forces of

economic and social change make it more difficult for increasingly

larger numbers of people to experience that dream, the dream

appears more appealing and is extolled by politicians as something

people should strive to regain. It is in this context that it is

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possible to understand the appeal of the New Right to the working

class and working class hostility to feminist politics.

Liberal feminism, has been very vocal in publicizing the negative

consequences, for women and children, of the present conditions

and of current and future changes in funding for social services.

Feminist theory has developed important analyses of the oppressive

dimensions of the traditional nuclear family, disclosing the vio-

lence and the exploitation that can take place in it. Furthermore,

feminist research has documented the oppressive nature of sex

roles and the importance of changes in the dominant ideologies

about femininity, masculinity, and sexuality in order to foster

more egalitarian and fair relations between the sexes. In my view,

while feminists have been sensitive to the variety of sexual, psy-

chological, social, economic, racial, and political forms of op-

pression that affect women, they have been relatively insensitive

to the class dimensions of exploitation because analysis rests on

the premise that the oppression of women is caused by men. This

view is carried to the social realm where the notion of " public

patriarchy" is used to describe institutionalized sexual inequa-

lity.

This men vs. women problematic has had profound theoretical and

political consequences. Theoretically it endows men with powers

they do not possess; men, like women, are the creatures of history

and owe their relative advantages to historically specific struc-

tural conditions that have to be changed if sexual inequality is

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to be abolished. This theoretical shortcoming has led to the

production of theory and research stressing the oppression of wom-

en while overlooking the many ways in which men are oppressed and

exploited, and the linkages between their exploitation and their

relationship with women and children. More importantly, for the

purposes of this presentation, this perspective led to an analysis

of the family that stressed its negative dimensions, overlooking

its economic and emotional significance for people in spite of its

very real problems. And it is here that the problem lies. Pressing

for equality for women is a worthy goal; but when put forth in a

context of shrinking opportunities for everyone, male and female,

the political unintended consequences of this standpoint can be

disastrous for the cause of women as well as for the cause of the

working class as a whole.

Feminist sexual politics, no matter how much as academics we may

write about our concern for poor and working class women, reflect

the interests and immediate problems of middle and upper middle

class women and can be perceived as a threat from the standpoint

of women for whom their marriage and family are their major basis

for identity, and economic and emotional support. According to

Eisenstein (1982), women in these troubled times need "... to

marshall the liberal demands for individual self-determination,

freedom of choice, individual autonomy, and equality before the

law to indict capitalist patriarchal society" (Einsenstein,1982:

98). These demands address the concern of relatively privileged

and educated women; working class women as well as women with less

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education and personal resources are less likely to find those

individualistic demands appealing, particularly when they have

children. The ideal of autonomy and individual self-determination

in a context of diminishing opportunities, crumbling personal

relationships and growing immiseration acquires unmistakable

elitist overtones. The strength of the New Right and its ability

to mobilize voters in campaigns designed to roll back affirmative

action, abortion rights and other programs which protect women and

poor families resides in its ability to speak to the family con-

cerns of the average person. The New Right, in defending the tra-

ditional family speaks to the interests of millions of working

class families who are desperately trying to make ends meet

through the employment of both parents. It also speaks to the

interests of women who would like to be in a family and are not

single mothers by choice but because their men are unable to find

employment. By blaming men for the situation - the so called

"patriarchy"- feminists are also insensitive to the fact that the

vast majority of male workers are powerless at work, that they

have no job security, that many have no jobs at all and are unable

to establish any firm commitment to a woman and their children,

and that their wives or companions know it. To blame the problems

women face on the "patriarchy" (which means all men are, in a way,

"patriarchs"), is not only shortsighted as a form of theoretical

analysis but also politically destructive because the notion of

patriarchy is just as offensive as the use of matriarchy by

Moynihan to refer to Black women heads of households. In fact,

both perspectives are in a way mirror images; both overlook the

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structural factors that shape the relations between men and women

in production and in reproduction.

The New Right, objectively against the interests of the working

class, speaks ideologically in terms that contemplate their inter-

ests and aspirations while feminists, who are concerned with the

welfare of all women have, by identifying men as the primary enemy

and by pursuing the interests of women as individuals (or as a

class in opposition to men), developed perspectives about men and

the family that make them appear, ideologically, in opposition to

the interests of the working class in general and of working class

and less privileged women in particular.

It is true that feminists struggle for better jobs and better pay

for women, for equality of opportunity, and for childcare centers

and services that will allow poor women to work and support them-

selves and their children with dignity. But an unintended conse-

quence of feminist struggles for women's rights in competition

with men's rights is the appearance, at the level of ideology, of

their being in support of the differentiation of household struc-

tures now in progress. Neo-conservatives and the new Right would

like to turn the clock back by dismantling the welfare state and

sending women back to their homes to provides services for their

children, husbands, and the elderly, while restoring the traditio-

nal nuclear family and the breadwinner role for men. Their pro-

family politics are profoundly anti-working class and anti- femin-

ist, although they may appeal to the working class, and to those

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social sectors for which present conditions are a source of emo-

tional and economic stresses whose origins can be mistakenly

attributed to the problems of the welfare state, feminism, and the

implementation of affirmative action.

The processes of structural differentiation institutionalized in

the welfare state and different household structures cannot be re-

versed in the absence of radical changes in the organization of

production. It is obvious, however, that the New Right and the

neo-conservatives would like to do it by instituting, through

budget cuts and retrenchment in affirmative action, a process of

"de-differentiation" that would restore the traditional family and

strengthen sexual inequality. To the extent that feminists conti-

nue to blame "patriarchy", either in itself or in some form of

"interaction" with capitalism, feminist ideology and feminist

politics are likely to have the unintended political consequence

of reinforcing opposition to reforms, policies, and programs that

may appear to benefit working women and single mothers to the de-

triment of working men and of families.

A marxist feminist theoretical analysis that highlights the links

between class relations and sexual inequality, the class basis of

feminist consciousness, and the connections between the exploita-

tion of men and women workers, can provide the basis for demands

that not only further the interests of working women but the

interests of working men as well. In addition to demands for a

living wage, a wage that can allow a man or a woman to support a

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family singly or jointly, feminists could struggle for a guaran-

teed minimum income that would ensure family formation and main-

tenance independently from the vagaries of the labor market. This

means that, besides seeing work as a source of self-fullfilment

and advancement, as a basis for the survival of individual women

(with or without children), and as the means through which married

women contribute to the well being of their families, feminists

should also look at work as the material basis for family forma-

tion and development. The class that controls the means of pro-

duction controls also men's and women's access to the conditions

of their own physical and social reproduction and the conditions

for family formation. It is not "men," therefore, but changes in

those conditions brought about by changes in the development of

capitalism which place men and women in unequal and inherently

contradictory relationships. Feminists should therefore struggle

not only for the interests of women but also for changes in the

organization of production and in the articulation between produc-

tion and reproduction that can allow men to be better husbandas

and fathers. It is true that the struggle for civil rights and

equality of opportunity can show, in the long run, the inability

of the system to meet the demands of women (and minorities) parti-

cularly now, when the economy is in flux and real wages have de-

clined. While this kind of pressure can ultimately show the limits

of the system, in the absence of a coordinated strategy uniting

the workers across sex lines, the intensification of individual

competition among workers can make the situation worse for every-

one concerned and may pave the way for the success of extreme

page 17

right, anti-feminist and anti-working class policies. Feminist

theory and research, in spite of some shortcomings, has been

instrumental in revealing the importance of sexual politics in the

development of class consciousness historically and in present

times. But, to the extent that the pursuit of sexual politics is

isolated from class politics and appears in clear opposition to

it, it will reinforce the fragmentation of the working class and

its powerlessness in the long run, although it may improve the

status of relatively privileged women in the short run.

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page 19

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