Alienation permeates all of life and all classes, though in different ways depending on their degree of social power. To understand its manifestations this philosophical theory must be concretised.
And to understand society, or any aspect of it we have to understand the totality of all the social relations which make it up. The parts of society cannot be understood abstracted out of that totality, but only as parts of the whole. So to understand women’s oppression and the resulting unequal relationships of women and men in the family, we have to find how they are part of the class society we live in. That is why I began with the way capitalism moulded the family, and how changes in the way production is organised brought changes and contradictions in women’s lives. To say that class is fundamental to an understanding of family violence is not to simplistically «reduce» women’s oppression to class, but to situate that oppression in capitalism, to show how gender oppression intersects with class oppression. They do not just «intersect» as separate aspects of society. Class exploitation gives rise to oppression and so they are fundamentally linked.
Ale question is frequently posed: why is it that men are the perpetrators of violence rather than women? Marxists and feminists agree the primary reason is because of the unequal relations between the sexes. However, it is worth remembering that most violence is actually carried out by men against other men. Under capitalism, people’s lack of control over their lives makes them frustrated, at times angry, at others passive and apathetic. Anger among workers can lead to trade union organisation and class actions such as strikes. But at an individual level, it can lead to lashing out at fellow workers. The divisions caused by sexism and racism create easy targets for this lashing out. This may mean at times attacking migrant or black workers who can be mistakenly blamed for unemployment or simply seen as inferior and easy victims. To call the relationship of the attacking worker one of «power» over the migrant or black is to miss the point of the real source of the violence: alienation, or lack ofpower.
It is easier to see the difference between the actions of the worker and those who possess real power if we look at racism and the ruling class. Ideologues such as Geoffrey Blainey actively campaign to have racist ideas accepted. He actually does have influence: access to journals, the media etc. At the time of writing, there is a conscious campaign by employers to convince workers that immigrants are the cause of unemployment, not the system of exploitation. Unlike workers, employers and governments have the means to propagate and establish these ideas as the accepted wisdom. The ruling class also gains from their acceptance: workers turn their anger against other workers instead of the government or the bosses. Workers lose from racist attacks, because it is more difficult to unite against their exploiters.
In the family, women are on the receiving end of alienated behaviour. Here, there is a whole ideology which lays the basis for it: women as sex objects, as bound to satisfy their husbands’ every demand, doing the housework and child care as well as working for a wage. When Marxists argue that it is the lack of power which underpins men’s violence to women, this does not deny the unequal relations between women and men, but locates the fundamental reason why individuals bash or rape other human beings in the first place. The oppression of women and the masculine stereotypes explain why it is overwhelmingly men who attack women, not the other way around. However, women do attack those less equal in their homes: their children. I have never found a feminist who will argue this is because of women’s power. To be consistent with the «male power» theories, this would have to be the explanation.
The problem with most research done on these questions is not only that the Marxist concept of class is not understood (often for instance, including white collar workers as middle class, blurring different class positions so that it is impossible to interpret the data in class terms); but also that most research actually sets out to discredit class theories, which affects the clues they look for and the way data is recorded. A survey in which women say their husbands battered them because theydid not provide meals on time or refused them sex does not disprove the theory of alienation. No-one, when asked why they drink heavily or indulge in other alienated behaviour will attribute it to «alienation». If it could be recognisedso readily, it would be easy to organise to rid ourselves of the cause of the alienation – capitalist class society!
However, analysing violence against women in class terms does not simply involve dividing society into classes and measuring the level of violence. The working class is not a homogeneous whole – there are all kinds of divisions,some of which (such as religious or ethnic) are often deliberately fostered by the ruling class, or are strengthened as workers look to these identities for solace and support in difficult circumstances. Others arise more directly from divisions in the workplace: white collar workers as a group have different traditions and see themselves differently from wharf labourers or coal miners. These divisions are not set and static. White collar workers identify much more as workers today then a few decades ago. Therefore any study which examined the incidence of violence would have to be sensitive to many varying factors, influences and sometimes rapidly changing situations. Workers involved in high levels of struggle are likely to exhibit less violence. This is often remarked on by participants in mass struggles, especially revolutionary movements. None of these factors is taken seriously in studies which are intent on proving the fundamental division is men against women.
The actions of men who assault women and those of the ruling class, both male and female, shows the difference between alienated behaviour, the result of powerlessness and the use of real power. The media barons actively promote sexist images. They are responsible for helping create the environment where women are attacked. But this is only part of thepicture. Employers use the oppression of women quite blatantly to employ them for lower wages in factories with the most appalling conditions and often humiliating practices designed to keep the women in their place. Women in the ruling class employ women as servants for low wages, reinforcing the unequal relations of men and women in the workforce. Prominent middle and upper class women such as Caroline Chisholm last century, Women Who Want to Be Women today, and women who edit women’s magazines for mass circulation, actively promote the sexual stereotypes. At a meatworkers’ picket in Albury in 1991, women played a prominent role trying to stop scabs. Wives of the meat bosses came to the picket and argued to the women workers that their behaviour was unfeminine, and they should not be involved in such disgusting activity. This incident highlights how the feminine stereotype benefits the ruling class. If women can be convinced that class struggle is unfeminine, it weakens workers’ ability to win concessions. On the other hand, the stereotype is not in the interests of working class men, an argument which is often won on picket lines with previously sexist workers. To compare the use of the stereotypes for profit of the ruling class with the violence of men with no social power, oppressed in the workplace and with few options in life is to completely confuse the idea of what social power is, and to let those responsible for the kind of society we live in off the hook. If we merely want to analyse people’s activity as a matter of academic interest, this remains an abstract question. If we want to change the world, it becomes of central importance.
The method adopted by Kirkby and Orr of attempting to distinguish between fundamental cause and less fundamental contributing factors is fair enough. The problem lies in their separation of gender oppression from class relations and their concern that giving any weight to the other contributing factors somehow will downgrade the importance of gender oppression. A Marxist approach is to attempt a concrete analysis in the framework of an understanding that alienation and class exploitation are fundamental. Then we can show how women’s own economic independence (or lack of it), changing (or static) attitudes regarding women’s role come together in the institution of the family.
For all their weaknesses, the most recent books at least focus on women’s experience in the most important institution for understanding women’s oppression – the family. The shift in emphasis from the«stranger danger» stressed by Brownmiller, to theendemic violence towards women in the family is welcome not simply becauseit moreaccurately reflects reality, but also becauseit has encouraged analysis of the family as an institution. For all the weaknesses of a book such as Family Violence, it avoids the sweeping generalisations of earlier feminists such as de Beauvoir and Brownmiller who shared a vision of women as universal victims of male dominance. Their books areimmensely influential and back up the widely held view in academic anthropology that women havealways been regarded as inferior to men. The most recent books do not explicitly support this idea. Nevertheless, theidea that society is fundamentally divided between men and women is so powerful that without a complete break from it any analysis ends up accepting some version of theideaof «male power». So it is necessary to establish the serious flaws in the work of writers who propound theories of patriarchy or male power and to show that women have not always been oppressed. This provides a sound basis on which to understand that class society is the fundamental causeof women’s oppression, and the fight for women’s freedom from violenceis bound up with the fight for socialism.
Marx explained the riseof classes as the result of the production of a sufficient surplus in society to enablea minority to be freed from work and to liveoff the labour of the majority. Friedrich Engels argued in TheOrigins of the Family, Private Property and the Statethat women’s’ oppression arose with the development of private property and this division of society into classes. In order to keep control over their property and right to exploit, it was necessary for men of the new ruling elite to exert control over women’s reproduction in a way previously unknown. This led to the family where women were subordinated to men. In order to oppress the women of the new elite, all women had to be controlled and regarded as inferior. Engels concluded from this that women’s oppression would only cease with theend of class society. Engels’ theory was grounded in the proposition that the way human society organises production is central to all other aspects of life, that ideas do not comeout of the blue, but are products of real material and social circumstances.
Brownmiller and de Beauvoir sharea glaring weakness; theenormity of their assertions compared to their research or analytical material. De Beauvoir, in a chapter on the supposed «Dataof Biology» writes about all mammals as though the sexual activity of whales and dolphins can tell us about human society. From this, the maleis the superior, aggressive, competitive being, while the femaleis «first violated … then alienated – she becomes, in part, another than herself’ by the fact of a lengthy pregnancy. In an attempt to deny her biological determinism, de Beauvoir appeals to theindividualistic theories of existentialism which in turn confirm woman’s «enslavement… to the species» Sheaccepts the reactionary concept «man the hunter» so common in anthropology and right wing popularised views of human nature: «In times when heavy clubs were brandished and wild beasts held at bay, woman’s physical weakness did constitutea glaring inferiority.»
So in spiteof her professed attempt to show that women’s position is defined culturally, she repeatedly returns to the concept of a fixed, unchanging human nature, and one which fits with reactionary views of humanity at that. It is not clear why, if this will to dominateis part of original human consciousness, thereis any point in discussing women’s oppression – surely it is inevitable.
Brownmiller has been very important in establishing theidea that men havealways been violent towards women. It is therefore worth looking at her argument at some length. The striking thing about the book is its complete lack of knowledgeof anthropological studies and complete lack of scientific enquiry in support of her sweeping generalisations. How do we know rapeis used by all men to intimidateall women? Brownmiller «believes» it.»
It was women’s «fear of an open season of rape» which led them to strike the«risky bargain» of «conjugal relationship» and was the«single causative factor in theoriginal subjugation of woman by man.» Since Brownmiller wrote, there has been a wealth of anthropological studies which throw serious doubt on theassertion that women havealways been oppressed and therefore have suffered male violence. She cannot be blamed for ignoranceof these (although those who continue to propagate her ideas can), however she was not ignorant of evidence which contradicted her statements, and even included it in the book.
For instance, someattempts to understand what theearliest human societies would look like have been based on studies of non-human primates, extrapolating from them to build a pictureof human evolution. Brownmiller quotes Jane Goodall, who studied wild chimpanzees and found the female did not accept every male who approached her. Even persistent males were not known to rape. Brownmiller also quotes Leonard Williams’ Man and Monkeywhich concluded «in monkey society thereis no such thing as rape, prostitution, or even passive consent.» Brownmiller claims that because human females are sexually activeany time, unlikeother primates, men are capableof rape. Theimplication is that monkeys and chimps are physically incapableof rape. However Sally Slocum found that non-human primates «appear not to attempt coitus (when the femaleis unreceptive), regardless of physiological ability.»
This might seem an esoteric discussion in an articleabout violenceagainst women today. However, theidea that men are violent by natureand women passiveand nurturing, always an ideaof the right wing, is now widely held in feminist circles. So we need to beaware thereare two quite distinct strands of feminist thought on the question. The right wing argument was backed up by theanthropological theory that the dawn of humanity was made possible by «man the hunter.» From the mid-sixties there were challenges to this interpretation. New research – much of it, but not all, by feminists – shows that thereis the possibility of humans living in harmony and that violence towards women is explained by social and material developments rather than by biology.
Theother strand, to which de Beauvoir and Brownmiller contributed, can sound radical becauseit criticises men’s violenceand stereotypes of masculineaggression rather than glorifying them. But let’s be clear, their ideas are just as reactionary as theold «man the hunter» myth because fundamentally they accept the same premise: men are naturally predatory and violent, more capableof dominating than women. Someof Brownmiller’s argument is simply dishonest. She quotes theanthropologist Margaret Mead about a society where rape was unknown; «theArapesh (do not) haveany conception of male nature that might make rapeunderstandable to them.» This clearly raises the concept of rapeas a social phenomenon and not simply the result of men’s physiological attributes, apart from the fact that it proves rape has not always been a featureof society. But Brownmiller blithely skips over this inconvenient fact to go on to societies where violence towards women is extreme with no attempt to explain the differences.
When she does attempt an explanation of theabsenceof rape, Brownmiller is not beyond repeating sexist, elitist attitudes to women’s experiences. Mrs Rowlandson, wifeof an ordained minister, was taken captive by American Indians in 1676.
She did well to add the last sentence, but it does not save her from the feminist author three centuries later. Brownmiller admits this story was «not atypical»; she quotes a historian of 1842 who concluded theIndians only learnt to mistreat women by contact with whites. But to admit that Indian men did not rapeand abuse women, even those from an invading, pillaging society, would be to admit rape may not beexplained by the fact that man discovered at the dawn of time«that his genitalia could serveas a weapon to generate fear.» Instead, she dismisses theevidence by an appeal to the prejudice Mrs Rowlandson foresaw: «the natural reluctanceon the part of women to admit that sexual abuse has occurred.» She does not attempt to explain why women were less reluctant in the later period. Sheeven upholds theold wowserist idea that women do not seek sexual activity, they only haveit thrust on them by disgusting males: she dismisses Fanny Kelly’s description of «several braves who went out of their way to do her favours» as «apparent innocence.»