Marx On Gender And The Family: A Critical Study

Heather Brown Ph.D. (2009), Purdue University, is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Westfield State University. Her research interests are in modern and contemporary political thought especially involving the intersections of gender, race and class.

Acknowledgements

1. Introduction
Reevaluating and developing Marx for feminist theory today
Overview of the book

2. The Early Writings on Gender and the Family
The 1844 Manuscripts
Labour and alienation
Gender in the 1844 Manuscripts
Women’s alienation in capitalist society
Modes of production and the course of history
Alienation, bourgeois morality and suicide
Revisiting the nature/culture and man/woman dualisms
Conclusion

3. Political Economy, Gender, and the ‘Transformation’ of the Family
Engels’s ‘Principles of Communism’ in relation to gender and the family
The Communist Manifesto
Nature and society in Capital
The political economy of Capital, Volume I
Gender and the family in Capital
Conclusion

4. Marx’s Journalism and Political Activities
The Preston strikes and women’s labour
The Bulwer-Lytton scandal
Women and the First International
Marx and the Kugelmanns
Women and the Paris Commune
After the Commune
Conclusion

5. Patriarchy, Women’s Oppression and Resistance: Comparing Marx and Engels on Gender and the Family in Precapitalist Societies
Marx’s notebooks and the history of The Origin of the Family
Separating Marx from Engels
Marx’s notebooks in historical context
Morgan’s Ancient Society
Marx’s notes on Morgan
Engels’s Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
Engels’s uncritical acceptance of Morgan and Bachofen on women’s position in clan-societies
Comparing Marx and Engels on gender

6. The Family, the State and Property-Rights: The Dialectics of Gender and the Family in Precapitalist Societies
Maine’s Lectures on the Early History of Institutions
Marx’s notes on Maine
Marx’s notebooks on Ludwig Lange’s Römische Alterthümer
Conclusion

7. Conclusion
Evaluating Marx’s work on gender and the family for today

References
Index