Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism

Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism

Cover of the first paperback edition
Editor Zillah R. Eisenstein
Subject Feminism, political philosophy
Publication date
 1978
Media type Print (hardcover and paperback)

Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism is a collection of essays assembled and anthologized by Zillah R. Eisenstein in 1978.

Sociologist and Academic Rhonda F. Levine cites Eisenstein's work as a "superb discussion of the socialist-feminist position" in her anthology Enriching the Sociological Imagination: How Radical Sociology Changed the Discipline.[1] Levine goes on to describe the book as " one of the earliest statements of how a Marxist class analysis can combine with a feminist analysis of patriarchy to produce a theory of how gender and class intersect as systems of inequality."[1]

"Eisenstein defines the term 'capitalist patriarchy' as descriptive of the 'mutually reinforcing dialectical relationship between capitalist class structure and hierarchical sexual structuring"[2]

She believes that "The recognition of women as a sexual class lays the subversive quality of feminism for liberalism because liberalism is premised upon women's exclusion from public life on this very class basis. The demand for real equality of women with men, if taken to its logical conclusion, would dislodge the patriarchal structure necessary to a liberal society."[3]

The Combahee River Collective Statement, a well known milestone in the development of Identity Politics had its initial publication in the anthology.

References

  1. 1 2 Levine, Rhonda F. Legacies of the insurgent sociologist in Enriching the Sociological Imagination: How Radical Sociology Changed the Discipline, Brill Press, 2004, 978-9004139923, p8
  2. ↑ Madsen, Deborah L. Feminist Theory and Literary Practice, Pluto Press, 2000, ISBN 0-7453-1601-8, p193
  3. ↑ Eisenstein, Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, cited in Feminism and Philosophy: Essential Readings in Theory, Reinterpretation, and Application, eds: Nancy Tuana, Rosemarie Tong, Westview Press 1995, ISBN 0-8133-2213-8, p5


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