Woman's Estate by Juliet Mitchell; Penguin 1971, 25 p.
In the last few months three books on women's liberation movement have been published in paperback editions which are being widely read in and around the women's liberation movement.! Greer and Millett write as radical feminists, seeing the oppression of women as the primary form of oppression; for Millett the problem is that the half of the population which is female is controlled by that half which is male*, for Greer women are the true proletariat'. Millett writes out of her experience in the American movement, Greer's recipe for liberation is of an anarcho-individualistic kind. Having written a book on the repressive up bringing of women, Greer is now writing for the Woman' page of the Sunday Times. Mitchell's book speaks for and reflects certain trends in the women's movement, outlines a theoretical framework for analyzing women's oppression and discusses it's current development. Those of us who have been arguing against Greet and Millett in trying to develop a marcist theory and practice in relation to women's liberation s find ber book disap pointing. The theoretical out ine which Mitchell offers is a re-working of bez artick Women-the Longest revolution? but the additions and reformulations undermine the more radical framework of the 1966 article. Mitchell considers both radical feminism and socialism as the basis for theory and practice; she tries to look both ways and succeeds in focusing nowhere. Radical feminism is criticized because of its inability to move from the recognition that women have been oppressed throughout history to an understanding of the particular form of oppression in the capitalist society of today. Shulamith Firestone's attempt to 'develop a materialist view of history based on sex itself"3 is criticized for throwing out both historical and dialectical method. On the other hand, Marxist theory has given too inadequate attention to the oppression of women hence a proper Marxist theory of this question remains to be constructed. In addi but this does not mean that they lack class tion, the practice of most left wing and revolutionary groups simply reflects the subordination of women in society. So far there is little to disagree with what Mitchell is saying; the problem arises in the next stage in the argument. non's at Cleator Moor have developed a very The trouble springs from her belief in the way in which a Marxist theory of women's position must be developed: We should ask the feminist questions, but try to come up with some Marxist answers' (p.99). But what this leads to is not an integrated theoretical and political analysis but to a watering down of Marxism with a heary dose of feminism. We are told that, in order to understand the situation of women at any time in history, four elements-production, reproduction, sexuality and socialization of childrenmust be examined, each having 'its own autonomous reality though each is ultimately determined, but only ultimately, by the economic factor' (p. 101). Her method is to describe the four elements more or less independently but when she comes to examine their fusion we are offered only confused banalities. Her failure at this crucial stage is due to the poverty of her theoretical framework, that is, to a mechanical application of second-hand Althusserian theses. The lynch-pin of the inherent weakness of her discourse is her inability to see each of these 'elements' as a set of social relationships open to a revolutionary intervention. The point is, of course, that to get Marxist answers you must ask Marxist questions. Thus, for example, she uses the analogy of peasantry to illustrate both the economic nature of woman's work (centered around the family) as well as certain aspects of her ideology that spring from it. Her case for feminism is based on the fact that all women share this. But, using the same analogy, would one therefore, defend and insist upon a need for "peasantism', a political theory and practice more 'natural' to peasantry of the kind suggested by Narodniks in pre-revolutionary Russia, or should one approach the question of radicalization of peasantry (or women) on the basis of Marxism-Leninism? There is no place for feminism in a scientific analysis of wotan's estate" nor is it possible, as her book clearly illustrates, to base a revolutionary strategy on the weak terrain of an essentialist ideology.
The position of women at work is examined only in terms of their position as womenwhose "real place", according to social ideology. Is in the home. Thus, at work, she argues, "there is no possibility of comradeship or unity in struggle the relationship of women workers is simply the counterpart of their loneliness of the home, it is friendliness or its opposite. Because the economic role of women is obscured (its cheapness obscures it) women workers do not have the pre-condition of class consciousness' (p. 139, my italics). Women suffer first, last and always because they are women, The task therefore is to develop feminine consciousness. But Mitchell does not seem to understand that the basic pre-condition for working class consciousness is being a worker, selling one's labour in a capitalist society. Her conclusion above is tendentiously drawn from her empirical investigations, from talking to a number of women. Such an investigation would most likely condemn a great number of male workers as well. Women workers may relate subjectively to their work situation in a different way from male workers consciousness, rather, that the logic of development of their consciousness will be different-the fact to which one must relate one's political strategy. Women on strike at Branhigh degree of solidarity and militancy in a strike which began on 3rd of June this year, and still continues. The film Women and the Bill' made earlier this year illustrates the way in which women workers become conscious both of their position as workers, fighting the Industrial Relations Bill, and of their position as women, struggling to achieve equal pay. History teaches us that women workers have at times been in the vanguard of class struggle. Actually, the section on women in production which includes Mitchell's contacts with women workers is perhaps the best part of her book mainly because she gives an account of the male-chauvinist ideology not only of male fellow workers but also of shop-stewards and trade-union officials. There is no doubt that the trade-union movement has done next to nothing to unionize women and raise demands on their behalf. There is an element of truth in what Mitchell tries to say: women workers tend to be much more militant as workers if they understand the specific nature of their exploitation. In this respect one can argue that the big wave of unionization of women that came around the time of the First World War was directly influenced by the suffragette struggle and their ideology. This poses the women's movement with specific political tasks, a conclusion which Mitchell does not care to derive. In fact, her book is most remarkable for the absence of any concrete suggestions for action these are replaced by empty rhetoric. Because women's 'primary identification is as maintained persons within the family due to which they cannot become class-conscious, the task of Marxists in the movement, she argues, is to develop feminist consciousness". In the home the social function and psychic identity of women as a group is found. Class differences at work (which anyway never produce class consciousness) are here obliterated for status differences: "wealthy, 'middling", "poor'. This is not to underestimate these. But the position of women as women takes precedence: oppressed whatever their particular curcumstances. Hence importance of fe Women' Liberation' (end of the book). Readers of The Red Mole may be amused by Mitchell's description of the groups to the left of the Communist Party as 'sectarian. This description does not come, naturally, from any knowledge of the political programmes or activities past and present of these groups-it is a label in the true tradition of secterian abuse. These Trotskyists have "always" been there, because they have never been there. There is a sort of expansive tolerance in their position, a timelessness (one of Mitchell's favourite workds) which makes room for everything-except another sect, or an actual revolution'. Maoism is described in even harsher terms that is, if the accusation of counter-revolution can Trotskyism is only matched by eternal chameleonism of Western Maoism.' Sylvia Pankhurst speaking in the East End of London in the early Twenties One may argue that some of the theoretical difficulties of the women's movement in Britain today (or, rather, its total lack of theory) comes from its inability to deal with the political situation in which the movement is to function. The women's movement has necessarily to be a broad movement of women united against the injustice and discrimination perpetuated by this society. It will therefore be the site of many different political ideologies. But one can predict a hard ideological battle ahead the stake of which is the correct theory necessary for their struggle. Unlike the early years of this century when the suffragette movement represented the radical wing of the British bourgeois intelligentsia and which, by taking to the streets, politically split that intelligentsia, the situation today is quite different. Counterposed to feminism is no longer Fabian socialism but Marxism and, in spite of the complex nature of the ideological battle to come, they will be the two main protagonists. In the time-honoured style of the British labourist intelligentsia which minist consciousness in any revolution... Hence, has always been only too eager to marry Marxism off to the first populist ideology that came its way, Mitchell argues that the women's movement has produced a new type of politics, specifically women's politics, an opposite to male politics. It is against such notions that Marxist militants will have to fight tooth and nail inside the women's movement with the aim to politicize women in Leninist principles.
denny Linden FOOTNOTES.
1. Germaine Greer: The Female Eunuch; Kate Millett:
Sexual Politics; Juliet Mitchell: Woman" Estate. be surpassed. In fact: "The grey timelessness of 2. Juliet Mitchell: Women- The Longest Revolution", New Left Review 40. 3. Shulamith Firestone: The Dialectics of Sex.