A Critical Approach to Marx and Feminism
Dangerous Relationships: Pornography, Misogyny and Rape by Diana E. H. Russell looks at the relationship between pornography and how its growth has fuelled the conditions for misogyny and rape to flourish. The text begins by picking apart the complex nature of defining pornography, and the various ways it manifests harm, using previous case studies, feminist... Continue Reading →
The ongoingcMegan Markle controversy reached new heights this week after her tell-all interview with American TV show host, Oprah Winfrey. After facing years of mounting hostility, Meghan is now considered an element hostile to the Royal family and has found herself the subject of a very British denunciation. In speaking publicly, Meghan is guilty of... Continue Reading →
A significant contributing factor to the current trend of conceptualising ‘gender’ as a standalone form of oppression is a lack of familiarity with its application throughout history as the intense ideological enforcement of material female oppression. Here, it is useful to explore periods of history where the significance of sex (as opposed to gender) is... Continue Reading →
Communists often hail the work of Alexandra Kollontai, holding her up as a decorated Marxist feminist and member of the Soviet Central Committee. In reality, Kollontai’s favour with the majority male leadership of the Soviet Union was highly dependent upon her compliance, and she spent much of her political career combatting the Communist Party’s disregard... Continue Reading →
The great significance of Friedrich Engels’s Origin of the Family, Private Property & the State is that it is one of the first Marxist analyses of development of family and origins of women’s oppression (the first was August Bebel’s Women & Socialism, 1879) — a subject in which most men were uninterested. A Short Summary... Continue Reading →
Part III: We cannot abstract labour from its social context ‘value converts every product into a social hieroglyphic.’ Marx, Capital Vol I In light of the enormous sex disparity between producers and consumers within the sex industry(majority female sellers; majority male buyers), prostitution and other 'sex work' cannot be considered outside of its historical, material,... Continue Reading →
Women’s economic dependence on men historically ensured that women married. Marriage was, and is still today, seen as aspiration for women and a way to access material wealth and secure basic sustenance. Though in the last half century due to the women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s, women’s ability to sustain themselves economically has... Continue Reading →
Part II: Can ‘sex work’ be considered ‘labour’? ‘all [commodities] are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract.’ Marx, Capital Vol I Marx tells us that ‘human labour power’ is expended in the production of commodities — that ‘human labour is embodied in them’ — and that it... Continue Reading →
Singletons, cynics and feminists unite! The 14th of February, as we all know, signifies the annual commercialisation of romantic love. As Marxist feminists, we at OTWQ see Valentine's Day as a homage to the bourgeois nuclear family — pah! Of course, we couldn't let it pass without criticism. With that in mind, we have ten... Continue Reading →
Part I: Can sex be considered a commodity? ‘A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.’ Marx, Capital Vol I In an attempt to move beyond the moralism that frequently surrounds... Continue Reading →