I’ve never said feminism is a sideshow to the ‘main event’ – a ‘real’ feminism is in fact an integral part of properly prosecuted class struggle. How, for example, can you ‘liberate’ just half the workforce without necessarily liberating women? It can’t be done. How can we restructure the entire economy to provide for social leisure if women are still chained to domestic servitude? It can’t happen.

That is not to say that all the demands of every type of feminism outside of socialist feminism cannot be accommodated by capitalism. I am arguing that they can. And if it is only socialist feminism which presents a threat to capitalism, then really what we’re talking about is just plain socialism, from the point of view of semantics.

If feminism is seen as a sideshow to the main event, class struggle, then your easy elision of ‘socialist’ and ‘feminist’ into one big Marxist tent is no comradely welcome, but a smothering, silencing embrace.

I agree that neither socialism or feminism can succeed without the other.

I am also glad you share my despair. and your solidarity.

I don’t think the formula that neither socialism nor feminism can succeed without the other is the best phrasing though; I prefer to think that a correct socialism will necessarily and naturally accommodate all forms of identity and their liberation.

But beyond that, being flippant does not indicate that one doesn’t take feminism seriously, any more than deep gravity in ones writing indicates that one is correct in one’s orientation.

Feminism/Socialism are inextrinctably linked in that neither can succeed without the other. Neither is more important than the other for that matter. Both can exist without the other but not be able to realize their fullest potential. I share HarpyMarx’s despair. The left needs to take feminism far more seriously than flippant posts. Somehow it’s different mocking the likes of new labour as its capitalist, bourgeous threat seems to be taken far more seriously by socialists.

Steph

Concessions to women, on the other hand, might upset the ‘patriarchal’ nature of some particular societies or systems – but it does not fundamentally change the relationship between capital and labour. Which is why there is always a ‘progressive’ element to capitalist democracy supporting existing property relations, but opposing the subjugation of women, or homosexuals or other colours and so on.

Is it possible that such a bourgeois element might ‘win’ this concession on the back of a powerful socialist movement, without actually overthrowing capitalism? I don’t truthfully know for sure – but I would argue yes. In any case, this is only one point of the issue at stake.

What is indisputable is that certain kinds of feminism exist outside socialism, and are less valid for that – the most successful feminist movements have been one of several ‘shock battalions’ thrown against capitalism during sporadic outbreaks of mass working class militancy. Thus when people mock these other strands of ‘feminism’, I think it’s a valid expression of political opinion which does not necessarily denote sexism.

I’m not convinced that the fact women got the vote means a form of capitalism that didn’t make use of patriarchy could evolve. Capitalism has made many concessions to the working class following class struggle, but that doesn’t change the fundamental relation of labour to capital.

Yet even acknowledging that link between class struggle and identity politics requires us to pull back and look at the methods that were used to pursue such identity politics – something that Paul frequently does here – and to critique those people who pursue methods that deny the link between class struggle and feminism (for example), as many feminists do.

Or the link between class struggle and LGBTQ freedom, as many people who self-define as one of those do. Which is my point; for those people, and here is the crux of Dave O’s lament, feminism has become detached from socialism. It can always exist detached from socialist theory or practice. Our goal, as ‘socialist feminists’ (or, as I prefer, just plain Marxists) is to reintegrate the prosecution of what is viewed as the ‘economic’ class struggle – i.e. on the picket lines – with, as Paul points out, the battles against the narratives, culture and practices of organised sexism.

Yet we must always realise that the only opposition capitalism cannot contain, given time, is the opposition between labour and capital.

As for the substantive issues here – Dave S is right to say that capitalism is adaptable, and maybe it’s possible to envisage a type of capitalism in which patriarchy played no role, but I don’t really see how that kind of capitalism would ever come into being. The ways patriarchy and capitalism work in practice are so closely intertwined that the means of defeating them and creating a new kind of society are pretty similar, and if you were able to organise a force that could defeat patriarchy, I don’t see that capitalism would be able to withstand it either. Similarly if we want a true socialism rather than replacing capitalism with another exploitative system, we need to defeat patriarchy too.

Capitalism requires divisions between workers (and especially that some workers are complicit in the exploitation of other workers), it requires hierarchies, it requires groups of workers who are easy to exploit – and patriarchy creates the conditions for all those requirements. It is just too convenient for capitalism to happily adapt to doing without.

Having said that, I’m fully aware that I have read none – absolutely zero – of the books on Janine’s list, linked to in the comments on Dave O’s post, so I perhaps ought not to pontificate without actually reading them first.