Feminism and Capitalism

[Redistribute the Rep]

Why did feminism arise at about the same time as capitalism? Is it because people were more urbanized and could organize easier? And also could it be due to the fact that women worked outside the home more and could meet more people to organize (before the industrial revolution the manufacturing was done mainly in the home or women would work on the farms, and were largely excluded from artisans guilds so could not acquire the skills needed for doing much work outside that). This is just speculation on my part, I'd like to hear what you guys think.

[Rafiq]

For the same reason Communism arose as a result of capitalism

[The Red Star Rising]

Feminism has a rather interesting history. In some ways in earlier feudal societies Women were freer than the later victorian era (not much of an accomplishment, the Victorian era sucked), but when the feudal structure was being torn down by the era of absolutist monarchs who sought to dispense with the troublesome nobles (the number one threat to the average king was not the peasantry, the church, or even foreign invasion, it was feudal power politics in the form of rival noble dynasties angling for more power or a spot on the comfy chair to end all comfy chairs) and make unified states a lot of these relative liberties for the peasantry were torn down. Note, I said relatively; though your average peasant actually had more days off than a modern worker and could choose his own hours, his life was easily the harder one than ours.

Anyway, in Feudal societies the whole family was expected to work on the fields. Lots of children meant lots of extra farm hands for example so a lot of babies were to be had (despite what anyone might tell you, the middle ages had quite the carnal underbelly), both women and men broke their backs to provide the grain, turnips, barley, flour, and livestock that would be taxed and tithed to the estates above them. With the coming of labour saving devices on a large scale came a lesser need to have the whole family work, and obviously as men were already the favoured gender in the social sphere, so women would start to increasingly remain home. When a more proper industrial revolution came, lower class women once again entered the work sphere, and so came a desire for more liberties and equality. What would be later called first wave feminism would find much of it's birth to be found here, in the women who manned the oceans of looms and other machinery deemed acceptable for the Victorian world to allow women to work with.

Simply put, the industrial revolutions that helped finally transition the world from the end stage of feudalism (the estates and so on) to the beginning of the industrial world and so helped bring women back to the work sphere in a big way. And with a return to work and the (grudging) acceptance of female education came greater awareness of their situation and how stacked the system was against them for the audacity of not having a bulge in their trousers. Although I will note that compared to modern third/fourth wave feminism, first wave feminism would still be considered very willing to maintain the status quo with the patriarchy outside of issues such as suffrage and the power to hold public office and access jobs usually reserved for men, not quite pushing for social as well as legal equality as fervently as watered down histories of feminism often say.

[Firebrand]

One of the factors has to be the fact that the community became increasingly centred on the workplace after the industrial revolution. People excluded from work or marginalised at work were not only economically disadvantaged, they were socially isolated. Social isolation is deeply damaging to humans and people will therefore go to great lengths to protect themselves from it.
In a pre-industrial society, while women did not have equal rights or fair employment, this was less of a concern because it did not limit their access to social networks. With the switch from an extended family to a nuclear family, and from village communities to factory towns, those who did not work were placed at a social disadvantage. Of course most women did work, despite the touted ideal of them staying home, but the very fact that the social ideal was for them not to work would have made the communities of women workers feel unwelcome or under attack, and thus feminism would have been a self defence mechanism. Just like people faced with starvation will fight to protect their food, so people faced with being socially isolated in the home will fight to defend the social networks they have developed in their workplaces.

[Blake's Baby]

What 'equal rights and fair employment' might mean in pre-capitalist society is somewhat mysterious. Are there examples anyone has in mind, from medieval Europe?

[Redistribute the Rep]

What 'equal rights and fair employment' might mean in pre-capitalist society is somewhat mysterious. Are there examples anyone has in mind, from medieval Europe?

Not sure about employment, but female infanticide was not uncommon as bearing sons could raise a family's status. I'm assuming it was unlikely in many cases for women to be allowed to own property.

[Blake's Baby]

I have no data on female v male infanticide rates, it would be good if you could supply some links.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Why did feminism arise at about the same time as capitalism? Is it because people were more urbanized and could organize easier? And also could it be due to the fact that women worked outside the home more and could meet more people to organize (before the industrial revolution the manufacturing was done mainly in the home or women would work on the farms, and were largely excluded from artisans guilds so could not acquire the skills needed for doing much work outside that). This is just speculation on my part, I'd like to hear what you guys think.

In order to reorganize production, capitalism has to destroy old ties, but then because capitalism is still an exploitative class society, it must create new ties and cages or adapt broken elements from the past into new cages. So, like you said, capitalist production destroyed old ties to land, commons, and feudal estates. This causes a lot of social unrest both because of the violence of forcing people off the land but also because social roles are in flux and contested.

So a bunch of different contradictions and conflicts about how bourgeois society should be socially ordered arose. On the one hand, bourgeois society in the early industrial era couldn't keep a workforce thriving in cities, people were getting killed or diseased or disfigured or not having babies. You also had working class women able to support themselves. You also had conflicts between bourgeois men and women because capital doesn't need a specific patriarch to control it.

These and more conditions led to new social movements being possible. For women, both working class movements of workers and working class families as well as movements of bourgeois women who wanted to be fully recognized and able to control wealth.

[Sewer Socialist]

What 'equal rights and fair employment' might mean in pre-capitalist society is somewhat mysterious. Are there examples anyone has in mind, from medieval Europe?

Sorry if I'm misreading you, but patriarchy is far, far older than capitalism.

From "Origin of the Family": "A simple decree sufficed that in the future the offspring of the male members should remain within the gens, but that of the female should be excluded by being transferred to the gens of their father. The reckoning of descent in the female line and the matriarchal law of inheritance were thereby overthrown, and the male line of descent and the paternal law of inheritance were substituted for them... The overthrow of mother-right was the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude, she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children. This degraded position of the woman, especially conspicuous among the Greeks of the heroic and still more of the classical age, has gradually been palliated and glozed over, and sometimes clothed in a milder form; in no sense has it been abolished."

He also writes, "Thus when monogamous marriage first makes its appearance in history, it is not as the reconciliation of man and woman, still less as the highest form of such a reconciliation. Quite the contrary. Monogamous marriage comes on the scene as the subjugation of the one sex by the other; it announces a struggle between the sexes unknown throughout the whole previous prehistoric period. In an old unpublished manuscript, written by Marx and myself in 1846, I find the words: “The first division of labor is that between man and woman for the propagation of children.” And today I can add: The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male. Monogamous marriage was a great historical step forward; nevertheless, together with slavery and private wealth, it opens the period that has lasted until today in which every step forward is also relatively a step backward, in which prosperity and development for some is won through the misery and frustration of others. It is the cellular form of civilized society, in which the nature of the oppositions and contradictions fully active in that society can be already studied."

[Blake's Baby]

Sorry if I'm misreading you, but patriarchy is far, far older than capitalism...

You must be because I didn't mention patriarchy at all.

I asked what 'equal rights and fair employment' might mean in pre-capitalist societies.

[Sewer Socialist]

Oh. I thought you were implying that feminism is only meaningful in capitalist societies. "Equal rights and fair employment" sounds like much more of a liberal slogan, really.

[Blake's Baby]

OK. I am implying 'feminism' as we understand it is only meaningful in capitalist societies (with theoretical 'rights of the individual', 'equal status under the law' etc).

So... when the majority of the population of Europe was an oppressed peasantry with very few rights, what does 'equal rights and fair employment' actually mean?

[Hexen]

So... when the majority of the population of Europe was an oppressed peasantry with very few rights, what does 'equal rights and fair employment' actually mean?

It doesn't mean anything since first of all the original context of 'rights' refers to the 'liberty of the ruling class' (Bourgeoisie, Monarchs, etc) to do anything they want without repercussions or responsblity for their own actions which none of this applies to peasantry/workers/etc because they're the productive classes which is how class/caste based societies works.

[Sewer Socialist]

Are you saying that "equal rights and fair employment" is the definition of feminism? Most feminism is pretty anti-patriarchal.

[Blake's Baby]

We're obviously talking past each other upthehunx, so I propose starting from a different point.

Do you think 'feminism' pre-existed capitalist society? If so, could you give me some examples of manifestations of this pre-capitalist feminism?

Do you agree with what Firebrand says here (what I was responding to originally)? Indeed, can you explain what firebrand means by "while women did not have equal rights or fair employment", by elucidating what these concepts - "equal rights" and "fair employment" - might mean, in a pre-capitalist context?


...
In a pre-industrial society, while women did not have equal rights or fair employment, this was less of a concern because it did not limit their access to social networks. ..

[RedMaterialist]

What 'equal rights and fair employment' might mean in pre-capitalist society is somewhat mysterious. Are there examples anyone has in mind, from medieval Europe?

Hmmm....Lady Macbeth comes to mind.

[RedMaterialist]

Why did feminism arise at about the same time as capitalism? Is it because people were more urbanized and could organize easier? And also could it be due to the fact that women worked outside the home more and could meet more people to organize (before the industrial revolution the manufacturing was done mainly in the home or women would work on the farms, and were largely excluded from artisans guilds so could not acquire the skills needed for doing much work outside that). This is just speculation on my part, I'd like to hear what you guys think.

Women and children were a lot cheaper to employ (as commodities) and they were better at operating complicated machinery, so the capitalists put them to work. The women became socialized and, finally, indispensable to the capitalist system. Thus, feminism as an ideology of the female executive. The ideas of the ruling class, etc. As soon as women gained political power they put an end to child labor and prostitution, for the most part. Even marriage as a patriarchal institution is beginning to crumble under the feminist assault. Who cares anymore if two of the three women on the Supreme Court are unmarried?

[RedMaterialist]

Sorry if I'm misreading you, but patriarchy is far, far older than capitalism.

From "Origin of the Family": "

Engels was talking about pre-historical, pre-written history-society. Patriarchy is only about 10-15K yrs old, so in terms of human history it is fairly recent.