between man and woman. She roots the Oedipus complex in the universal patriarchal culture. However, culture is defined for her in terms of an exchange system which primarily exists in ideological form today. For Mitchell, patriarchy precedes capitalism through the universal existence of the Oedipus complex. I contend, however, that patriarchy precedes capitalism through the existence of the sexual ordering of society which derives from ideological and political interpretations of biological difference. In other words, men have chosen to interpret and politically use the fact that women are the reproducers of humanity. From this fact of reproduction and men’s political control of it, the relations of reproduction have arisen in a particular formulation of woman’s oppression. A patriarchal culture is carried over from one historical period to another to protect the sexual hierarchy of society; today the sexual division of society is based on real differences that have accrued from years of ideological pressure. Material conditions define necessary ideologies, and ideologies in their turn have impact on reality and alter reality. There is a two-way flow: women are products of their social history, and yet women can shape their own lives as well.
For socialist feminists, historical materialism is not defined in terms of the relations of production without understanding its connection to the relations that arise from woman’s sexuality—relations of reproduction.38 And the ideological formulations of these relations are key. An understanding of feminist materialism must direct us to understanding the particular existence of women in capitalist patriarchal society. The general approaches of both Marxists in terms of class and radical feminists in terms of sex obfuscate the reality of power relations in women’s lives.
2. Pioneers in Feminist Materialism: de Beauvoir and Mitchell
Simone de Beauvoir confronts the interrelationship between sexuality and history in The Second Sex. While for her “the division of the sexes is a biological fact, not an event in human history,”39 nevertheless she says “we must view the facts of biology in the light of an ontological, economic, social, and psychological context.”40 She understood that women were defined by men and as such cast in the role of the “other,” but she also realizes that the sexual monism of Freud and the economic monism of Engels are inappropriate for the full analysis of woman’s oppression.41 De Beauvoir’s initial insights were further developed by Juliet Mitchell, who offered in Woman’s Estate a rigorous criticism of classical socialist theory, criticizing it for locating woman’s oppression too narrowly in the family.42 She rejected the reduction of woman’s problem to her inability to work,43 which stresses her simple subordination to the institutions of private property44 and class exploitation.
Instead, woman’s powerlessness in capitalist society is rooted in four basic structures, those of production, reproduction, sexuality, and socialization of children. Woman’s biological capacity defines her social and economic purpose. Motherhood has set up the family as a historical necessity, and the family has become the woman’s world. Hence, woman is excluded from production and public life, resulting in sexual inequality.
The family under capitalism reinforces woman’s oppressive condition. The family supports capitalism by providing a way for calm to be maintained amidst the disruption that is very much a part of capitalism. The family supports capitalism economically by providing a productive labor force and supplying a market for massive consumption.45 The family also performs an ideological role by cultivating the belief in individualism, freedom, and equality basic to the belief structure of society, although they are at odds with social and economic reality.46 Mitchell concludes that by focusing on the destruction of the family alone, woman’s situation will not necessarily be substantially altered. For Mitchell “socialism would properly mean not the abolition of the family but the diversification of the socially acknowledged relationships which are forcibly and rigidly compressed into it.”47
The importance of Mitchell’s analysis lies in the fact that she focuses on the powerlessness that women experience because they are reproductive beings, sexual beings, working individuals, and socializers of children—in all the dimensions of their activities. She makes it clear that woman’s oppression is based in part on the support the family gives the capitalist system. Power is seen as a complex reality. We are still left, however, with the need to clarify the relationship of the family and the political economy in capitalist patriarchal society. What Mitchell has supplied us with is an understanding of the family in capitalist society.
3. The Sexual Division of Labor and Society in Capitalist Patriarchy: Toward a New Feminist Theory
One of the problems in trying to analyze the interconnections of patriarchy and capitalism is that our language treats the family and the economy as separate systems. The sexual hierarchical division of labor cuts through these two, however. Patriarchy and capitalism operate within the sexual division of labor and society rather than within the family. A sexual division of labor and society that defines people’s activity, purposes, goals, desires, and dreams according to their biological sex, is at the base of patriarchy and capitalism. It divides men and women into their respective hierarchical sex roles and structures their related duties in the family domain and within the economy.
This statement of the mutual dependence of patriarchy and capitalism not only assumes the malleability of patriarchy to the needs of capital but assumes the malleability of capital to the needs of patriarchy. When one states that capitalism needs patriarchy in order to operate efficiently one is really noting that male supremacy, as a system of sexual hierarchy, supplies capitalism (and systems previous to it) with the necessary order and control. This patriarchal system of control is thus necessary to the smooth functioning of the society and the economic system and hence should not be undermined. This argument is to underscore the importance of the system of cultural, social, economic, and political control that emanates from the system of male supremacy. To the extent the concern with profit and the concern with societal control are inextricably connected (but cannot be reduced to each other), patriarchy and capitalism become an integral process; specific elements of each system are necessitated by the other.
Capitalism uses patriarchy and patriarchy is defined by the needs of capital. This statement does not undermine the above claim that at the same time one system uses the other, it must organize around the needs of the other in order to protect the specific quality of the other. Otherwise the other system will lose its specific character and with it its unique value. To state this as simply as possible one could say that: patriarchy (as male supremacy) provides the sexual hierarchical ordering of society for political control and as a political system cannot be reduced to its economic structure; while capitalism as an economic class system driven by the pursuit of profit feeds off the patriarchal ordering. Together they form the political economy of the society, not merely one or another, but a particular blend of the two. There are problems with this oversimplified statement. It severs relations which exist within both spheres. For instance, capitalism has a set of controls which emanate directly from the economic class relations of society and their organization in the workplace. And it seems to assume a harmony between the two systems at all points. As we move further into advanced capitalism, we can see how uneasy this relationship is becoming. As women increasingly enter the labor force, some of the control of patriarchal familial relations seems to be undermined—the double day becomes more obvious. But the ghettoization of women within the labor force at the same time maintains a system of hierarchical control of women, both sexually and economically, which leaves the sexual hierarchy of the society intact. Deference to patriarchal hierarchy and control is shown in the very fact that the search for cheap labor has not led to a full integration of women into all parts of the labor force. Although women’s labor is cheaper, the system of control which maintains both the necessary order of the society and with it the cheapness of women’s labor must be protected by segregating women in the labor force. Nevertheless, the justification for woman’s double day and unequal wages is less well-protected today.
It is important to note the discrepancy between patriarchal ideology and the reality of
