What Feminism Owes to Marx and What Marxism owes to Feminism? Cover Image

Šta feminizam duguje Marksu, a šta marksizam duguje feminizmu?
What Feminism Owes to Marx and What Marxism owes to Feminism?

Author(s): Andrea Jovanović
Subject(s): Gender Studies
Published by: Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju
Keywords: Marxist feminism; reproductive labor; naturalization; wage form; productivity

Summary/Abstract: Feminist issue and Marxist issue mainly meet under the question of reproduction of working class in capitalism. Among other things, the existence of capitalist system is conditioned by possibility of, how Marx put it, "worker to show up at factory's gates every day". Traditional Marxist analysis of this question entails taking wage as a main point. According to this position, reproduction of a worker is thought only through a wage as money paid to him for buying his/her labor force. It is at this point where feminist perspective help us see narrowness of traditional Marxist analysis by insisting on category of reproductive labor. Reproductive labor is unpaid housework that is mostly done by women. Nonetheless, introduction of this category is not just an addition to Marxist analysis since this labor is necessary for reproduction of capitalist system itself. It is a system that allocates labor in such a way that besides paid waged labor there also exists unpaid reproductive labor that is also crucial for existence of the system. This leads us to two complex problems: question of women's emancipation in capitalism and question of productivity of labor in capitalism.

  • Issue Year: 25/2014
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 186-202
  • Page Count: 17
  • Language: Serbian