Gender,Production, and ‘the Transition to Capitalism’: Assessing the
Historical Basis for a Unitary Materialist Theory
Gary
Blank
York
University
ABSTRACT:
When socialist feminists discussed the potential and pitfalls of Marxism in the
“domestic labour debate,” the
specific relationship between patriarchy and capital emerged as a defining
concern. While offering a trenchant critique of
orthodox Marxism, the tenor of the debate was highly abstract and theoretical,
and largely ignored the question of capitalism’s origins.
Political Marxists, in contrast, have devoted fastidious attention to this
question in their own attempt to
renew historical materialism; but their dialogue has dedicated little attention
to questions of gender, families, and social reproduction
in the feminist sense. This paper makes an initial attempt at closing the
analytical gap between these two historical
materialist traditions. It departs from an unresolved theoretical impasse
within the socialist feminist tradition: how to
conceive of the imperatives of capital accumulation and class in a way that
avoids both reductionism and dual-
ism. I
argue that this tension stems principally from an inadequate historicization of
capitalism. A critical assessment of Wally Seccombe historical work illustrates how political Marxism can be deployed to
correct this deficiency, while also revealing
the extent to which these concepts must be rethought in light of materialist
feminist concerns. A synthesis of
the two
traditions offers a more complete and effective account of the transition,
while providing a basis for a unitary materialist
theory.
KEYWORDS:
Brenner debate, materialist feminism, political Marxism, primitive
accumulation, social reproduction, socialist
feminism, transition from feudalism to capitalism
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