Gender, the family and political thought: Revisiting Marx's work

Heather Anne Brown, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation is the first book-length study devoted exclusively to Marx’s unique perspectives on gender and the family. It offers a fresh look at this topic in light of twenty-first century concerns. Although Marx’s writings on gender sometimes exhibit sexism, especially through the naturalization of certain female social functions, much of the time his work transcends these kinds of limitations often discussed in the feminist theoretical literature on Marx. I argue that Marx’s discussion of gender extended far beyond merely including women as factory workers. Although Marx did not write a great deal on gender, and did not develop a systematic theory of gender, it was for him an essential category for understanding the division of labor, production, and society in general. I study those published writings that take up gender, as well as his 1879-1882 notebooks on non-Western and precapitalist societies, some of them still unpublished. Through a study of the whole of this material, it becomes clear that Marx, although he never fully developed these ideas, gave important indications toward a theory of gender and society. A systematic study that addresses all of Marx’s writings on gender and does not conflate Marx’s position with Engels’s more deterministic Origin of the Family Private Property and the State has yet to be done. This study attempts to fill this significant gap in the literature on Marx and, it is hoped, offer some more general insights into the intersectionality of gender and class.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Carroll, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Political science

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