yet similar expressions in feudalism and in capitalism. The expression of women’s oppression is distinct though related in these two time periods. As Marc Bloch has noted:
The sentimental importance with which the epic [feudal] invested the relations of the maternal uncle and his nephew is but one of the expressions of a system in which the ties of relationship through women were nearly as important as those of paternal consanguinity. One proof of this is the clear evidence from the practices of name giving.11
Children could take the name of either father or mother. There seem to have been no fixed rules about this and as a result the family seems to have been unstable as generations switched names. According to Bloch it was this very instability which feudal relations had to address. With the development of capitalism, and its necessarily new forms of economic relations, the family came to be defined more as the source of cultural and social stability. The family calmed the days of early competitive capitalism,12 whereas feudal relations themselves compensated for the unstable family order.
We must take into account two processes. One is history defined in terms of class—feudal, capitalist, socialist. The other is patriarchal history as it is structured by and structures these periods. For instance, motherhood, housewifery, and the family need to be understood as expressions of patriarchy at various historical moments because they are defined and structured differently in precapitalist and capitalist societies. These historical moments, however, are also part of an historically and culturally continuous reality, which doesn’t become concrete and real until it is understood in its particular form. Otherwise it becomes an abstraction and as such, a distorted generalized notion. This is not to disclaim the importance of understanding that patriarchy has an existence which cuts through different class history. Although patriarchy takes on specific qualities at specific moments, it cannot be understood fully, divorced from its universal existence. The universal elucidates the specifics and the specifics give reality to the universal.
If it is true that all social change begins with the leftovers of the previous society, then we must learn exactly what maintains patriarchal hierarchy. Today’s matrix of power exists through the particular constraints that capitalism can use to maintain the sexual hierarchy, but at the same time, the relations of capitalist patriarchy derive in part from precapitalist patriarchy, most specifically, feudal patriarchy. Any understanding of the relations of patriarchy has to treat them in their particular historical frame and any statement of the universal or unifying elements becomes an abstraction, albeit a necessary level of abstraction if we are to understand the unifying elements of patriarchal history. Both the specificity and universality of the relations of power must be defined to encompass the particular dynamic of male supremacy.
It is important, in a capitalist society, to understand both the enduring likenesses and differences between feudal patriarchy and capitalist patriarchy. The likenesses are important if we are to try to ensure that they do not continue in a new society. If the capitalist relations of patriarchy are connected to precapitalist forms, we need to challenge the precapitalist elements that are maintained in capitalist society. A ready example is the sexual division of labor. It has been maintained in capitalism and defined in a capitalist context while not specifically deriving from capitalist needs. The maintenance of these precapitalist forms constructs patriarchal history for us. For structuring life in the transition from capitalist patriarchy to feminist socialism, we need a theory of the revolutionary family which no longer accepts the birthmarks of the patriarchal family and sexual hierarchy.13
Beginning Notes on the Social Relations of Power
Let us begin with the question of how and why women are exploited and oppressed in capitalist patriarchy.14 We focus on these questions because understanding women’s oppression requires examining the power structures existing in our society. These are the capitalist class structure, the hierarchical order of the masculine and feminine worlds of patriarchy, and the racial division of labor which is practiced in a particular form in capitalism but with precapitalist roots in slavery. Capitalist patriarchy as an hierarchical, exploitative, oppressive system requires racial oppression alongside sexual and class oppression. Women share an oppression with each other; but what they share as sexual oppression is differentiated along class and racial lines in the same way that patriarchal history has always differentiated humanity according to class and race. Clearly, the black woman of American slave society experienced patriarchical oppression, but this experience was complicated by the other power structures to which she was subjected. As a laborer she was allowed no feminine “fragility,” as a woman she was “raped” into submission,15 and as a slave she endured a subhuman status. Instead of seeing sex or class, or race or class, or sex or race, we need to see the process and relations of power. If we direct ourselves to the process of power we can begin to learn how and why we are oppressed, which is the first step in changing our oppression.
None of the processes in which a woman engages can be understood separate from the relations of the society, which she embodies and which are reflected in the ideology of society. For instance, the act of giving birth to a child is only termed an act of motherhood if it reflects the relations of marriage and the family. Otherwise the very same act can be termed adultery, and the child is “illegitimate” or a “bastard.” The term “mother” may have a significantly different meaning when different relations are involved—as in “unwed mother.” It depends on what relations are embodied in the act. Similarly, what is defined as sexual love and marital bliss in one set of relations is prostitution in another, rape in still another. What one woman does in the home of another, or what she does when hired by a man is seen as domestic work and is paid, but what a woman does as wife or mother in her own home is considered a labor of love, is not defined as work by the society, and is not done for direct wages.
Thus the social relations of society define the particular activity a woman engages in at a given moment. Outside these relations “woman” becomes an abstraction. A moment cannot be understood outside the relations of power which shape it and the ideology which defines, protects, and maintains it. In describing these moments, understanding the ideology of a society becomes crucial because the social relations of capitalist patriarchy are maintained through the ideologies of liberalism, male supremacy, and racism. Here one finds the interpretation of any particular moment that is necessary to the maintenance of capitalist patriarchy.
The Relations of the Family
The family is a series of relations which define women’s activities both internal and external to it. Because the family is a structure of relationships which connect individuals to the economy, the family is a social, economic, political, and cultural unit of a society. It is historical in its formation, not a simple biological unit. Like women’s roles, the family is not “natural”; it reflects particular relations of the society, particular needs to be filled.
What are some of the relations that define the family? First, woman is a reproducer of children who become workers for the economy and members of the society. She also socializes these children for their roles in the work world and the society as a whole. She labors to feed, clothe, and care for these children, and for her husband. In these capacities, the mother is a domestic laborer within the economy and a nurturer of the social world as well.16
Second, within her role in the family woman is a consumer. Consumption is the other side of production.17 She buys the things the family needs and the economy has to sell. She cares for these goods—by laundering a new dress or preparing a meal. As a consumer, woman is working to select, prepare, and maintain the goods. A woman is importantly intertwined with the economy and society. She is doing what is absolutely necessary for the economy—consuming.
Although motherhood includes the activities we have called domestic labor, it should not be reduced to them. Motherhood should be understood as a more complex reality than domestic labor within the relations of capital—rather, as a patriarchal institution not reducible to any class reality. Domestic labor and housewifery may be
