Gender as a Capitalist Category: Structural Separation, Forms of Domination, and The Organization of Violence Open Access
Bruder, Ashley (Spring 2022)
Published
Abstract
This article aims to further develop a current in Marxist-Feminist thought which understands gender as a historically-specific category of capitalist society, insperable from the logic of value. Through close reading and comparative critique of some of the most promising works to emerge from this current, this article shows that they allow for a non-reductionist synthesis of a theory of gender and theories concerned with state violence, racialization, and social antagonism. Marxist-Feminist thought can therefore move past theories which understand various experiences of violence, coercion, and unfreedom as products of patriarchy considered as an autonomous system of social power. It can also avoid implicitly conceiving of certain forms of violence as an irrational remainder disconnected from wider social logics. Furthermore, a theory of this kind shows that an emphasis on impersonal domination need not ignore the continued role of direct force in society. Contrarily, it is only through a robust theory of negative circumscription that particular violent acts can be differentiated from each other according to their distinct roles in reproducing capitalist social relations. This article attempts to describe these distinctions through attention to the concept of outlawed need alongside the production and management of surplus populations, showing that a system of production organized around a principle other than the satisfaction of need necessarily produces various forms of conflict and social antagonism. In light of this dynamic, the political possibility and necessity of abolishing value and gender is emphasized.
Table of Contents
Section 1: Introduction..................................................................................................1
1.1 A Note on Sex, Gender, and Bodily Difference............................................................4
1.2 Differentiation, Intersections, and Totality................................................................5
Section 2: Outlining A Marxist Theory of Gender.............................................................7
2.1 Lise Vogel, Labor Power, and Surplus Value................................................................7
2.2 Value-Theory and Gender as a Real Abstraction........................................................11
Section 3: Negative Circumscription, Social Antagonisms, and Value................................18
3.1 Antagonisms as a Product of Outlawed Need............................................................19
3.2 The Organization of Time and Value as a Measure of Wealth......................................23
Section 4: Ascending Further Towards the Concrete: Social Antagonisms and the State......26
4.1 Reassessing The Reification of Desire: Masculinity and Worker Differentiation............27
4.2 Absorption and Management of Social Conflict by the State........................................30
4.3 Debt, Surplus Populations as Raw Material, and Labor Ontologism..............................36
4.4 Slavery, Race, and the State.......................................................................................41
Section 5: Conclusion......................................................................................................50
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