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ABSTRACT:
Marx's methodology is indispensable for identifying a) the capitalist structural conditions and macro-level processes that are the foundations of the inequality between men and women in capitalist societies; and b) the limits of political and legal changes to end gender inequality. The oppression of women is the visible, observable effect (e.g., in the labor market, in socioeconomic stratification, the domestic division of labor, bureaucratic authority structures, etc.) of underlying relations between men and women determined by the articulation between the capitalist mode of production, and the organization of physical and social reproduction among those who must sell their labor power to survive. Feminism, to remain relevant to the majority of women, must, therefore, acknowledge that most women are working women whose fate, and that of their families, are shaped both by gender oppression and class exploitation.
SINCE THE END OF THE SOVIET UNION and the socialist bloc, capitalism has intensified its grasp over the entire world, unleashing processes of economic change that intensify and render increasingly visible the links between the fate of people in the advanced capitalist countries and the rest of the world's population. In this historical context, a return to an examination of the relevance of Marx for feminism makes sense - despite the now fashionable academic belief in its irrelevance - because, as long as capitalism remains the dominant mode of production, it is impossible fully to understand the forces that oppress women and shape the relations between men and women without grounding the analysis in Marx's work.
Like the social sciences, second wave feminist thought developed largely in a dialog with Marx; not with the real Marx, however, but with a "straw Marx" whose work is riddled with failures (e.g., failure to theorize childbirth, women's labor, the oppression of women), determinisms and reductionisms (e.g., class reductionism, economic determinism, vulgar materialism), disregard for "agency," "sex blind categories," and "misogyny."1 If Marx's work (and the Marxist tradition, by implication) were indeed substantively afflicted by all the shortcomings that social scientists and feminists attribute to it, it would have been long forgotten. But Marx's intellectual power and vitality remain undiminished, as demonstrated in the extent to which even scholars who reject it must grapple with his work's challenge, so much so...