Article contents
Victorian Sexual Ideology and Marx's Theory of the Working Class
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
Abstract
- Type
- Scholarly Controversies
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1984
References
NOTES
* An earlier version of this essay was presented to the University Seminar in the History of the Working Class, Columbia University, in October, 1983.
1. The single study which has profoundly shaped the present essay is Give Us Bread, But Give Us Roses. Working Women's Consciousness in the United States, 1890 to the First World War by Eisenstein, Sarah (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1983).Google Scholar
2. As a matter of stylistic convenience, Marx alone (and not Marx and Engels) will be referred to as the originator of this theory.
3. See Evans, Richard J., The Feminists (London: Croom Helm, 1977), pp. 153–159Google Scholar; Malmgreen, Gail, Neither Bread Nor Roses. Utopian Feminists and the English Working Class, 1800–1850. (Brighton: John L. Noyce, 1978), pp. 27–35Google Scholar; Moon, S. Joan, “Feminism and Socialism: The Utopian Synthesis of Flora Tristan,” in Boxer, M.J. and Quataert, J.H. (eds.), Socialist Women (New York: Elsevier, 1978), pp. 43–45Google Scholar; Rowbotham, Sheila, Women, Resistance and Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1974), Chapters 2–3Google Scholar; Taylor, Barbara, Eve and the New Jerusalem (New York: Pantheon, 1983), pp. 22, 284–285Google Scholar; and Weeks, Jeffrey, Sex, Politics and Society (London: Longman, 1981), pp. 167–171.Google Scholar
4. See Eisenstein, , Give Us Bread, pp. 49–50, 55–112Google Scholar; Hall, Catherine, “The Early Formation of Victorian Domestic Ideology,” in Burman, S. (ed.). Fit Work for Women (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979), pp. 21–31Google Scholar; and Weeks, , Sex, Politics and Society, pp. 38–56, 67–80.Google Scholar
5. Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” in Collected Works, VI (New York: International Publishers, 1976), p. 494.Google Scholar
6. Marx' theory legitimized this self-conception by supporting the demand of working men to maintain their position as the household providers of a sufficient “family wage.” See Marx, Karl, Capital, I (New York: International Publishers, 1967), pp. 395–396.Google ScholarHumphries, Jane in “The Working Class Family: A Marxist Perspective” in Ehlstain, J.B., ed., The Family in Political Thought (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1982), pp. 216–222Google Scholar, implicitly recognizes the necessary equation in Marx' doctrine of working-class interests with the interest of male workers in securing a “family wage.” Humphries is not, however, prepared to acknowledge the full implications of the “family wage” demand for the position and needs of working class women. See the critiques of Humphries' analysis in Barrett, Michelle and McIntosh, Mary, “The ‘Family Wage,’” Capital and Class 11 (Summer 1980). pp. 59–68Google Scholar and Sen, Gita, “The Sexual Division of Labor and the Working Class Family,” The Review of Radical Political Economics 12, 2 (Summer 1980), pp. 78–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7. On the conditions of these groups of women, see Alexander, Sally, “Women's Work in Nineteenth Century London,” in Mitchell, J. and Oakley, A., (eds.), The Rights and Wrongs of Women (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), pp. 82–83Google Scholar; Gittins, Diana, “Inside and Outside Marriage,” Feminist Review 14 (06 1983), pp. 30, 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hewitt, , Wives and Mothers, p. 13Google Scholar; Lown, Judith, “Not so much a Factory, More a Form of Patriarchy,” in Gamarnikow, E. et al. (eds.), Gender, Class and Work (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 42Google Scholar; Bythell, Duncan, The Sweated Trades (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978), pp. 143–149Google Scholar; Oren, Laura, “The Welfare of Women in Laboring Families,” in Hartman, M. and Banner, L.W. (eds.), Clio's Consciousness Raised (New York: Harperand Row, 1974), pp. 231–240Google Scholar; Pinchbeck, , Women Workers, pp. 199–200Google Scholar; Ross, Ellen, “‘Fierce Questions and Taunts,’” Feminist Studies 8, 3 (Fall 1982), pp. 575–602CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Strumingher, Laura S., Women and the Making of the Working Class. Lyon 1830–1870 (St. Albans,: VT Eden Press, 1979), pp. 32–35Google Scholar; Taylor, , Eve, pp. 200–205Google Scholar, Tilly, Louise A. and Scott, Joan W., Women, Work and Family (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978), pp. 123–136.Google Scholar
8. Beecher, Jonathan and Bienvenu, Richard, (eds.), The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 195.Google Scholar
9. Owen, Robert, The Marriage System of the New Moral World (Leeds: J. Hobson, 1838), pp. 20, 26–32, 54.Google Scholar
10. Beecher, and Bienvenu, , Utopian Vision, pp. 235–240Google Scholar; Owen, Robert, Report to the County of Lanark (Glascow: Wardlaw and Cunninghame, 1821).Google Scholar
11. Marx, and Engels, , “Manifesto,” pp. 515–17.Google Scholar Owen himself adapted his strategic conception to the vehicle of working class cooperatives and trade unionism for a brief period (1829–34). Harrison, John F.C., Quest for the New Moral World, (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1969), pp. 195–197.Google Scholar
12. Morgan, Carol Edyth, Working Class Women and Labor and Social Movements of Mid-Nineteenth Century England (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Iowa, 1979), pp. 169–221Google Scholar; Malmgreen, , Neither Bread, pp. 20–35Google Scholar; Taylor, , Eve, pp. 83–117Google Scholar; Thomas, Malcolm I. and Grimmett, Jennifer, Women in Protest 1800–1850 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982), pp. 111–137Google Scholar; Moon, , “Feminism and Socialism,” Puech, Jules.-L., La Vie et L'Oeuvre de Flora Tristan (Paris: Librarie Marcel Riviere, 1925), pp. 116–290Google Scholar; Johnson, Christopher H., Utopian Communism in France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), pp. 89–93, 173, 175.Google Scholar
13. The Morning Star. January 13, 1840, cited in Taylor, , Eve, p. 29.Google Scholar
14. Tristan, , Workers' Union (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1983), pp. viii, 38–39, 76;Google Scholar: Tristan, Flora, London Journal, 1840 (Charlestown, MA: Charles River Books, 1980), pp. 60–61Google Scholar; Johnson, , Utopian Communism, pp. 84, 93–94;Google Scholar; and Malmgreen, , Neither Bread, p. 19.Google Scholar
15. ‘Editorial’ (by Frances, and Morrison, James), The Pioneer April 12, 1834Google Scholar, cited in Taylor, , Eve, p. 75. See, also, pp. 101–117.Google Scholar
16. Morrison, James in The Pioneer, April 5, 1834Google Scholar, cited in Malmgreen, , Neither Bread, p. 28.Google Scholar See, also, Tristan, , Workers' Union, pp. 92–93Google Scholar and Taylor, , Eve, p. 114.Google Scholar
17. Marx, , Capital, I, p. 367.Google Scholar
18. Tristan, , Workers' Union, pp. 78–83.Google Scholar
19. The Union Ouvrière (Workers' Union) was intended to be a universal (i.e., international) association for the emancipation of working class men and women. Tristan propounded her conception and program in a book with this same title, and spoke to meetings of workers on her “tour” of France during 1843–44 until a fatal illness prevented her from continuing. See Tristan, , Workers' Union, pp. 83–89.Google Scholar
20. Thibert, Marguerite, “Féminisme et socialism d'après Flora Tristan,” Revue d'histoire économique 9 (1921), pp. 122–125, 136.Google Scholar See, also, Agulhon, Maurice, Une Ville Ouvrière au Temps du Socialisme Utopique (Paris: Mouton, 1970), pp. 154–163Google Scholar; Moon, , “Feminism and Socialism,” pp. 37, 41–45Google Scholar; Puech, , La Vie, pp. 329–357Google Scholar; and Strumingher, , Women, pp. 48–50.Google Scholar
21. Marx, and Engels, , “Manifesto,” pp. 501–502, 505.Google Scholar See, also, Engels, Frederick, “The Condition of the Working Class in England,” Collected Works, IV (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), pp. 437–439.Google ScholarMarx, and Engels, were familiar with Tristan's Workers' Union. See “The German Ideology,” pp. 19–20.Google Scholar
22. See the works cited in footnotes 12 and 20, and also Harrison, John F.C., Quest for the New Moral World (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1969), pp. 92–139, 212, 216.Google Scholar While Agulhon assesses Tristan's reception among male workers more positively than Moon does, he does not consider the specific impact of her ideas on women. Une Ville Ouvriere, pp. 161–163.Google Scholar
23. Hufton, Olwen, “Women in Revolution, 1789–1796,” in Johnson, D., (ed.), French Society and the Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 153.Google Scholar See, also, Rudé, George, The Crowd in History, 1730–1848 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1964), pp. 115–117, 195, 206–208, 219–220Google Scholar; Mathiez, Albert, After Robespierre (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1965), pp. 156, 205Google Scholar; Thomas, and Grimmett, , Women in Protest, pp. 28–64, 88–89, 136–137Google Scholar; Thompson, E.P., “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, 50 (02 1971), pp. 115–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar and The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage, 1963), pp. 62–68, 473.Google Scholar
24. It came into play at peak moments of working class mobilization, and was more tenacious in France than in England. See Prothero, lowerth, Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth Century London (Folkestone, Kent: Dawson, 1979), p. 160Google Scholar; Thomas, Edith, The Women Incendiaries (London: Secker and Warburg, 1967), pp. 43–58Google Scholar; Tilly, , “Paths of Proletarianization,” pp. 411–413Google Scholar; and for general discussions in other contexts, Benenson, Harold, “Review Essay: The Reorganization of U.S. Manufacturing Industry and Workers' Experiences, 1880–1920,” The Insurgent Sociologist 11, 3 (Fall 1982), pp. 73–74Google Scholar and Kaplan, Temma, “Female Consciousness and Collective Action: The Case of Barcelona, 1900–1918,” Signs 7, no. 3 (Spring 1982), pp. 545–566.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
25. See Foster, John, Class Struggle in the industrial Revolution (London: Methuen, 1974), pp. 52–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, , Eve. pp. 261–275Google Scholar; Thomas, and Grimmett, , Women in Protest, pp. 58–59Google Scholar; Thompson, Dorothy, “Women and Nineteenth Century Radical Politics,” in Mitchell, J. and Oakley, A., The Rights and Wrongs of Women (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), pp. 136–138Google Scholar; and Bezucha, Robert J., The Lyon Uprising of 1834 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 163–171CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for discussions of varied transitional forms of protest.
26. Prothero, , Artisans and Politics, pp. 28–50, 64–67, 159–171, 210–217, 300–307Google Scholar; Thompson, , The Making, pp. 251–259, 500–521Google Scholar; Turner, H.A., Trade Union Growth Structure and Policy (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1962), pp. 50–138Google Scholar; Agulhon, Maurice, La République au Village (Paris: Plon, 1970), pp. 128–134Google Scholar and Une Ville Ouvríere, pp. 116–177Google Scholar; Aminzade, Ronald, “French Strike Development and Class Struggle,” Social Science History 4, no. 1 (Winter 1980), pp. 60, 73Google Scholar; Bezucha, , The Lyon Uprising, pp. 50–57, 60–61, 96–121Google Scholar; Moss, Robert H., The Origins of the French Labor Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 8–14, 32–35, 46, 51–55Google Scholar; Sewell, William H. Jr., “Response to J. Rancière,” International Labor and Working Class History 24 (Fall 1983), pp. 18–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Work and Revolution in France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 201–211.Google Scholar
27. See the works by Turner Agulhon, Moss and Sewell cited in n.26 and Burgess, Keith, The Origins of British Industrial Relations (London: Croom Helm, 1975), pp. 17–18, 31–32, 101–102, 107–112, 178–184Google Scholar; Lewenhak, Sheila, Women and Trade Unions (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977), p. 51Google Scholar; Soldon, Norbert C., Women in British Trade Unions 1874–1976 (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978), p. 9.Google Scholar
28. See the works by Lewenhak, Prothero, Morgan, Taylor and Agulhon cited in nos. 12, 26 and 27, and by Stearns and Thomas, cited in n. 42.
29. Turner, , Trade Union Growth, p. 185Google Scholar See, also, Lewenhak, , Women and Trade Unions, pp. 49–51Google Scholar; Morgan, , Working Class Women, pp. 304–309Google Scholar; and Boston, Sarah, Women Workers and the Trade Unions, (London: Davis-Poynter, 1980), pp. 47–55.Google Scholar
30. Aminzade, , “French Strike Development,” pp. 73, 78Google Scholar; Moss, , Origins of French Labor, pp. 9, 20, 51–52Google Scholar; Guilbert, Madeleine, Les femmes et l'organisation syndicale avant 1914 (Paris: C.N.R.S., 1966), p. 29.Google Scholar See, also, Frader, Laura L., “La Femme et La Famille dans les Luttes Viticoles de L'Aude: Coursan, 1903–1913,” Sociologie du Sud-Est (Juillet–Octobre 1979), p. 38Google Scholar; Strumingher, , Women, pp. 98, 102, 111Google Scholar, and Tilly, and Scott, , Women, p. 132.Google Scholar
31. See the works by Lewenhak, and Guilbert, , cited in n. 27 and 30.Google Scholar
32. Prothero, , Artisans, pp. 68, 65–67.Google Scholar
33. Taylor, , Eve, p. 107Google Scholar, quoting Francis Place.
34. Ibid., p. 114; Hewitt, Margaret, Wives and Mothers in Victorian Industry (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975 reprint edition), p. 23.Google Scholar
35. Pinchbeck, Ivy, Women Workers in the Industrial Revolution 1750–1850 (London: Frank Cass, 1969), pp. 264, 265, 268.Google Scholar
36. Boston, , Women Workers, p. 18Google Scholar; Lewenhak, , Women and Trade Unions, pp. 38, 41, 53, 61.Google Scholar
37. Collins, Henry and Abransky, Chimen, Karl Marx and the British Labour Movement (London: Macmillan, 1980), p. 119. See, also, the works cited in footnote 30 above.Google Scholar
38. Gray, R. Q., The Aristocracy of Labour in Nineteenth Century Britain, c. 1850–1900. (London: Macmillan, 1980)Google Scholar, n.p., cited in Barrett, and McLntosh, , “The ‘Family Wage,’” p. 55.Google Scholar
39. Stearns, Peter, Lives of Labor (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1975), pp. 271, 274–275.Google Scholar
40. Thompson, D., “Women and Nineteenth Century Radical Politics,” pp. 131–134.Google Scholar
41. Marx, Karl, Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850 (New York: International Publishers, 1964), pp. 40, 55, 138.Google Scholar
42. Sewell, , Work and Revolution, pp. 208–210, 245Google Scholar; Johnson, , Utopian Communism, pp. 92–93Google Scholar; Stearns, Peter, 1948: The Revolutionary Tide in Europe (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), p. 178Google Scholar; Thomas, Edith, Pauline Roland (Paris: Librairie Marcel Riviere et Cie, 1956). p. 108Google Scholar: and Zeldin, Theodore, Ambition and Love. France 1848–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979). p. 345.Google Scholar
43. Hobsbawm, E. J., Labouring Men (New York: Basic Books, 1964), pp. 279–280Google Scholar; Moss, , Origins of French Labor, p. 15.Google Scholar
44. Marx, Karl, “The Poverty of Philosophy,” in Collected Works, VI (New York: International Publishers, 1976), pp. 206–211.Google Scholar
45. Marx, Karl, “Wage Labor and Capital,” in Tucker, Robert (ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), p. 216.Google Scholar I am indebted to Frank Roosevelt for calling this reference to my attention.
46. Mandel, Ernest, La formation de la pensee economique de Karl Marx (Paris: Maspero, 1967), pp. 42–46Google Scholar; Marx, , Capital, I, p. 14Google Scholar; Lukács, Georg, “The Changing Function of Historical Materialism,” in History and Class Consciousness (London: Merlin Press, 1971), pp. 228, 232.Google Scholar
47. Marx, Karl, “Preface,” in Tucker, Reader, pp. 4–5Google Scholar; Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, “The German Ideology,” in Collected Works, V (New York: International Publishers, 1976), p. 43Google Scholar; Marx, , Capital, I, pp. 489, 573.Google Scholar
48. Marx, , Capital, I, pp. 568, 394.Google Scholar
49. Marx, , Capital, I, pp. 399, 458, 464, 469, 498–499, 671, and 695Google Scholar and Marx, and Engels, , “Manifesto,” pp. 501–502.Google Scholar
50. Hall, , “The Early Formation,” p. 23 The following discussion summarizes parts of Hall's argument.Google Scholar
51. Ibid., pp. 18–23,30–31.
52. See Eisenstein, , Give Us Bread, pp. 55–112Google Scholar; Oakley, Ann, Woman's Work (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp. 43–45Google Scholar; and Pinchbeck, , Women Workers, pp. 312–316.Google Scholar
53. Beecher, and Bienvenu, (eds.), Utopian Vision, pp. 22–27, 51, 57–58, 110–112, 157. 172–178, 233–255Google Scholar and Harrison, , Quest for World, pp. 47–63.Google Scholar
54. Marx, , Capital, I, pp. 568–572, 395.Google Scholar
55. Marx, , Capital, I, p. 489Google Scholar and Marx, and Engels, , “Manifesto,” pp. 501–502.Google Scholar
56. “Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle [in modern society] and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: 1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production …” Marx, Letter to Weydemeyer, J., 03 5, 1852Google Scholar, in Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Selected Correspondence (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1955), p. 69.Google Scholar
57. Marx, Karl, Capital, III, part 2, pp. 871–873Google Scholar, cited in Bottomore, T.B. (ed.), Karl Marx: Selected Writings (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1956), p. 156.Google Scholar
58. Marx, and Engels, , “The German Ideology,” pp. 42–43.Google Scholar
59. Marx, , Capital, I, p. 177.Google Scholar
60. Marx, , Capital, I, p. 178.Google Scholar
61. Lukács, Georg, The Ontology of Social Being. Labour. (London: Merlin Press, 1978), p. 146.Google Scholar
62. My discussion of reproductive processes is indebted to the work of Petchesky, Rosalind. See Abortion and Woman's Choice. The State, Sexuality and Reproductive Freedom. (New York: Longman, 1984), pp. 8–13.Google Scholar For an analysis of Marxist theory and reproduction, see O'Brien, Mary, The Politics of Reproduction (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981).Google Scholar
63. Marx, , Capital, I, pp. 571–573.Google Scholar Marx' well-known reference to “the historical and moral element” which “enters into the determination of the value of labour-power” (p. 171) concerns the worker's level of consumption, and not the social relations of reproductive processes.
64. Marx, , Capital, I, p. 394.Google Scholar My analysis of Marx' discussion of male and female employments in terms of physiological differences, and (below) of the impact of machinery on the value of the labor power of the adult male, follows that of Veronica Beechey's “Critical Analysis of Some Sociological Theories of Women's Work,” in Kuhn, A. and Wolpe, A. (eds.). Feminism and Materialism (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 182–183Google Scholar, which first advanced these arguments.
65. Marx, , Capital, I, p. 420.Google Scholar
66. Marx, , Capital, I, p. 394.Google Scholar
67. Marx, , Capital, I, p. 395.Google Scholar
68. Marx, , Capital, I, pp. 212–216.Google Scholar
69. Marx, , Capital, I, pp. 231–235, 278–297, 315.Google Scholar
70. Karl Marx, “Inaugural Address of the Working Men's International Association,” in Tucker, , Reader, p. 517.Google Scholar
71. Marx, , Capital, I, p. 10.Google Scholar
72. Marx, , Capital, I, p. 519.Google Scholar
73. Marx, , Capital, I, pp. 367–368, 395, 402, 420, 433, 461, 472 and 635.Google Scholar
74. In this connection, note Marx' insistence (in the quotation cited above) that changes in family employment patterns altered (i.e., increased) “the degree of [working class] exploitation.” Capital, I, p. 395.Google Scholar
75. Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Program,” in Tucker, , Reader, p. 531.Google Scholar
76. Engels, Frederick, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York: International Publishers, 1972), p. 135.Google Scholar For discussions of the historical context and substance of Engels' arguments, see Evans, , The Feminists, pp. 153–159Google Scholar and Lane, Ann J., “Woman in Society: A Critique of Frederick Engels,” in Carroll, Berenice A. (ed.), Liberating Women's History (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1976), pp. 4–25, respectively.Google Scholar
77. Evans, , The Feminists, p. 156Google Scholar; Thonnessen, Werner, The Emancipation of Women (London: Pluto Press, 1969), p. 38Google Scholar; Clara Zetkin, “Proletarian Women and Socialist Revolution,” quoted in Draper, Hal and Lipow, Anne G., “Marxist Women versus Bourgeois Feminism,” in Miliband, R. and Saville, J. (eds.), The Socialist Register 1976 (London: Merlin Press, 1976), pp. 195–196.Google Scholar
78. In the “Manifesto” Marx and Engels expressed this claim of “Communist” (i.e., their own) theory and practice as follows: “The Communists … have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole …” (p. 497, italics added). In addition, they identified working class emancipation with the universal emancipation of humanity. See the “Manifesto,” p. 506, Karl Marx, “Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,” and Frederick Engels, “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,” in Tucker, , Reader, pp. 5 and 717, respectively.Google Scholar
- 11
- Cited by