elimination of capitalism. Contemporary socialist feminism has inherited a close historical relationship to the political Left, but cooperation is also fraught with difficulties. People may forget, in this regard, that the second feminist wave was indeed marked by ‘a structural critique of capitalism’s androcentrism, its systemic analysis of male domination and its gender-sensitive revisions of democracy and justice’ (Fraser, 2013: 1). But it was also triggered in reaction to the sexism and bullying of the Left-wing men who had automatically elected themselves leaders of the 1960s political and cultural revolution. As Ellen Willis put it ‘The women’s liberation movement was created by women activists fed up with their subordinate position in radical organizations. Their first goal was to take on an equal active part in the radical movement instead of being relegated to secretarial and other service chores’ (2000 [1970]: 513). The Left confused the human with the male proletariat.
Confined to the classical role of handmaids – albeit of a radical community – serving food and drinks and providing sex-on-demand, 1970s feminists took a stand against Left-wing patriarchal domination and split from it. This is how feminist separatism was born and feminism turned into a revolutionary movement of its own. This foundational moment was captured by Helke Sander in the classic feminist film The Subjective Factor (1980). Using a combination of fictional and newsreel footage, the iconic filmmaker documents the sexism of Leftist male leaders and traces the origins of feminist communes. Although much has changed since the 1970s, the Marxist Left has yet to fully overcome its masculinist tradition.
Historically, the socialist feminist agenda focused on liberating women’s sexuality and reproductive labour within patriarchal capitalism. Arguing that the origins of women’s exploitation lay in the usurpation of their reproductive capacities and the appropriation of their offspring, they placed these issues at the core of their political programme. As early as 1966, British feminist Juliet Mitchell was writing on the radical force of the feminist revolution and its impact on the political Left. Combining her Marxist background with psychoanalytic theory, Mitchell produced path-breaking analyses of both the material and the psychic foundations of female sexuality (1973). Sheila Rowbotham (1973) stressed the materialist roots of the women’s revolution and the dual structure of their oppression, as the underpaid reproductive workers of the world. Postcolonial ecofeminists Mies and Shiva (1993) added the impact of colonial exploitation of both women and natural resources as key factors in primitive capitalist accumulation. By intersecting this socio-economic dimension with the analysis of persistent patriarchal and racist violence against the women, in both capitalist and colonial regimes, they moved beyond the parameters of classical Marxist analysis.
Socialist feminists reject liberal capitalist ideology because it erodes ‘the core of human essence everywhere by destroying women and nature with an unsustainable growth model’ (Mies, 2014 [1986]: 2). But they also take Marxist socialism to task for adopting a gender-neutral definition of ‘workers’, thereby concealing the active complicity between patriarchy and capitalism. Capitalism could not function without the ongoing exploitation of women’s reproductive labour, the unpaid work by farmers and colonized people, and the extraction of natural resources. To really support the liberation of women, a socialist agenda needs to be supplemented by the analysis of the sexual division of labour. Conversely, ‘the feminist movement cannot ignore the issues of class, the exploitative international division of labour and imperialism’ (Mies, 2014 [1986]: 1).
In her commentary on Mies’ work, Silvia Federici (2014) criticizes especially the process of ‘housewifization’ of women, their unpaid domestic work and the emotional work of care, and revives the Italian activist tradition of wages for housework (Della Costa and James, 1972). Federici shares Mies’ contention that capitalism accelerated the destruction of the planet’s natural wealth and the demise of the people who live closest to it. In relation to the current technological revolution, Federici argues that the real heroes of our times are not the male computer programmers, but the millions of women who are paid less than $1 a day as the labourers of the digital revolution.
Socialist feminists today are also the most consistent critics of capitalism and its liberal apologists. For socialists, mainstream feminism has become a useful ‘handmaiden of capitalism’ (Fraser, 2009) and complicit with its liberal economics (Eisenstein, 2005). All-too-familiar patterns of social and economic inequality, social exclusion and symbolic disqualification on the grounds of class, race, ethnicity, religion, age and body abilities persist unchanged and are even becoming exacerbated. Fraser argues that liberal feminism, despite its claims, actively enforces capitalist injustices by forcing women into part-time work and flexible practices of low-waged services. This has resulted in increased precarization and racialization of the workforce and, in the long term, more poverty and inequalities.
Moreover, liberal feminism has become hyper-individualistic and prone to the commodification of everyday life through the ideology of well-being, health and fitness. Liberals sabotage state intervention and welfare support and replace them with a more entrepreneurial approach, which legitimizes the expansion of a market economy. Fraser calls for a return to feminist solidarity and a redistributive sense of justice. She also campaigns for economic equality, not only in terms of waged work, but also of unpaid care work.
Critical questions were raised, however, about Fraser’s selective account of feminism (Funk, 2013). Moreover, socialist-minded feminists do not fall neatly into party lines. Many contemporary socialist movements are led by citizen activists and journalists (Baker and Blaagaard, 2016), as, for instance, is the case with the French ‘gilets jaunes’ (yellow vests) movement. It was started by Priscillia Ludosky in protest at rising fuel prices and the impact on people living and working outside the public transport networks of urban areas. Yet, the movement transformed into a broader social organization in defence of workers’ rights, tax reform in favour of the working class, and general political resistance to the government.
Socialist feminist energies run high in the second decade of the new millennium and are not confined within any specific political formations. Other important contemporary movements that are socially minded and quite radical are the successful #MeToo movement that was started in 2006 by Tarana Burke, a Black feminist educator and activist. The ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement was founded by three activists with a strong feminist profile: Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors have a background in gender and queer studies, and Opal Tometi in immigration and anti-racism studies.
Patriarchal power is a prominent notion for socialist feminism, the focus being on the systemic economic and social injustices and the unfair distribution of income and power between men and women across the class system. A basic optimism supports the revolutionary politics of the socialist feminist movement: egalitarian changes will come, and equality will eventually be achieved, if women and men work together to bring about a socialist system first.
For socialist feminists, authentic humanity has been perverted by capitalist greed and ‘Man’ cannot fully come into his own in the oppressive and unjust capitalist patriarchal system. The point of socialism is precisely to liberate and deploy the human potential that was previously harnessed to the profit economy, and thus repressed. The inferior social conditions of women and other minorities will be automatically adjusted once the new socialist system is in place. Feminists are socialist co-workers and travelling companions in the struggle to precipitate the end of the capitalist system, which is taken as the main source of their oppression. In this view, feminism is a revolutionary movement to the extent that it works alongside a larger socialist revolution, in a form of double militancy and a fight against double oppression.
Feminist Black Humanism: Race Equality
Gender, class and race are never too far apart from each other in the intersectional mode pioneered by feminist race theory (Harding, 1993; Crenshaw et al., 1995; Brah, 1996). Black feminist critical theories have a distinguished tradition of rethinking the human, building on African anticolonial activism and theory. Some of the most vocal criticism of European humanism has been produced by Black, Indigenous and decolonial feminist theorists. They have historically advanced
