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Marxist feminism is a branch of feminism focused on investigating and explaining the ways in which women are oppressed through systems of capitalism and private property. According to Marxist feminists, women's liberation can only be achieved through a radical restructuring of the current capitalist economy, in which much of women's labor is uncompensated.〔Ferguson, A. & Hennessy, R. (2010). (Feminist Perspectives on Class and Work ). ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.〕 == Theoretical background in Marxism == Influential work by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (1848) in ''The Communist Manifesto''〔Marx, K. & Engels, F. (1848). (), ''The Communist Manifesto.''〕 and Marx (1859) in ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'' laid the foundation for some of the early discourse about the relationship between capitalism and oppression. The theory and method of study developed by Marx (1859), termed historical materialism, recognizes the ways in which economic systems structure society as a whole and influence everyday life and experience.〔Marx, K. (1848). (), ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy''.〕 Historical materialism places a heavy emphasis on the role of economic and technological factors in determining the base structure of society. The base structure prescribes a range of systems and institutions aimed to advance the interests of those in power, often at the cost of exploiting the working class. Marx (1859) argues that these systems are set by the ruling class in accordance with their need to maintain or increase class conflict in order to remain in power. However, Marx (1859) also acknowledges the potential for organization and collective action by the lower classes with the goal of empowering a new ruling class. As Vladimir Lenin (1917) argues in support of this possibility, the organization of socialist consciousness by a vanguard party is vital to the working class revolutionary process.〔Lenin, V. (1917). ''The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State & The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution.'' ()〕 In 1884, Engels published ''The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State''〔Engels, F.(1884).(), ''The origin of the family, private property, and the state''.〕 According to Engels (1884), the shift from feudalism to private ownership of land has had a huge effect on the status of women. In a private ownership system, individuals who do not own land or other means of production are in a situation that Engels (1884) compares to enslavement - they ''must'' work for the owners of the land in order to be able to live within the system of private ownership. Engels (1884) explains that the transition to this type of system resulted in the creation of separate public and private spheres and assigned access to waged labor disproportionately to men. Engels (1884) argues that a woman's subordination is not a result of her biological disposition but of social relations, and that men's efforts to achieve their demands for control of women's labor and sexual faculties have gradually become institutionalized in the nuclear family. Through a Marxist historical perspective, Engels (1884) analyzes the widespread social phenomena associated with female sexual morality, such as fixation on virginity and sexual purity, incrimination and violent punishment of women who commit adultery, and demands that women be submissive to their husbands. Ultimately, Engels traces these phenomena to the recent development of exclusive control of private property by the patriarchs of the rising slaveowner class in the ancient mode of production, and the attendant desire to ensure that their inheritance is passed only to their own offspring: chastity and fidelity are rewarded, says Engels (1884), because they guarantee exclusive access to the sexual and reproductive faculty of women possessed by men from the property-owning class. As such, gender oppression is closely related to class oppression and the relationship between men and women in society is similar to the relations between proletariat and bourgeoisie.〔 On this account women's subordination is a function of class oppression, maintained (like racism) because it serves the interests of capital and the ruling class; it divides men against women, privileges working class men relatively within the capitalist system in order to secure their support; and legitimates the capitalist class's refusal to pay for the domestic labor assigned, unpaid, to women. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Marxist feminism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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