Gender and Class in the REcent Development of Feminism

As we review the gender/class relationship in feminist theory, liberal feminism can be summarized with some rapidity. This type of feminism, associated with liberal philosophy in general, uses the vocabulary of post-Enlightenment thought to press for the individual rights (including equal access to the public sphere) denied women in the development of postindustrial societies. Liberal feminism thereby represents one pole along a possible continuum of responses to the theoretical query posed: according to its perspectives, equality for women is a potentially satisfiable goal within the framework of a reformed and enlightened capitalism. Since liberal feminists do not question the existence of economic stratification, their viewpoint amounts to a belief that gender equality is achievable within an unscathed framework of stratified classes.

As a matter of self-interest, the claim is not especially contradictory when we take into account the class (usually middle to upper) and race (usually white) of most liberal feminists—a limited range of backgrounds for which they have been frequently called to task. A generally liberal feminist organization like the National Organization for Women (NOW) has promoted political and economic reforms largely of benefit to its own class- and race-specific constituency. However, such an interpretation of liberal feminism is too simple and mechanistic. As Zillah Eisenstein has provocatively suggested in discussing its "radical future," liberal feminism is internally split, because its own partial interests cannot be served without reference to the structurally disenfranchised position of women as a whole.^[4] Paradoxically, for middle- and upper-class women to realize a position of equity with men of their own class requires more than entree to previously closed professions and the achievement of economic parity (more than just "equal pay for equal work," in other words). In The Second Stage (1981), a book imbued with her characteristically liberal feminist spirit, the homemaker/career woman envisioned by Betty Friedan cannot function unless both the domestic and corporate worlds have been at least slightly reorganized to embrace her. Friedan called for businesses to provide career women (and men) with flexible hours and reasonably accessible child care in order for feminism to be practicable in and beyond the workplace.^[5]

Other changes, too, would flow from a reformist demand for equality. How can women become competitive actors in the public sphere if they do not also possess reproductive rights (including, of course, abortion on demand), as well as legal and economic protection from sexual harassment, rape, and domestic violence? These problems, too, have long been and continue to be raised by NOW. Thus, liberal feminism has taken stands of eventual—though perhaps unintended—benefit to all women, even across dividing lines of race and class; in this respect, blanket criticisms of it have been unjustified. To be sure, many liberal feminists do endorse measures that would to a degree relieve the discriminatory excesses of class. For instance, it is not surprising (either in theory or practice) to find liberal feminists favoring the removal of legislative restrictions on federal funding for abortions, a class-biased measure that has been in place since the Hyde Amendment of 1976 . Other liberal feminist stands approve of more generous provision of jobs and child care for women who are poor. Nonetheless, virtually by definition, liberal feminists hold that such reforms are realizable within

the framework of a capitalist economy. Even if its stands may have cross-class consequences, liberal feminism is not inclined to confront capitalism head on.

But this critique of liberal feminism's limitations, and the relatively privileged class position of its proponents, is by now standard in the growing lexicon of feminist theory. Not so well known are radical feminist attitudes toward capitalism, perhaps a topic more deserving of attention since the two groups' overlapping class and race backgrounds have occasionally caused their ideas to be misleadingly aligned. For example, while bell hooks's critiques of contemporary white feminism in Ain't I a Woman? (1981) and Feminist Theory (1984) have supplied sharp and important correctives to class and race biases in liberal and radical feminist texts alike, she and other critics have sometimes too readily dismissed the importance of differences in the two strands' evaluations of capitalism.^[6]

For there are three reasons for claiming that radical feminism—unlike its liberal counterpart—is, as a brand of feminist thought, at least implicitly anticapitalist and cognizant of class. First, for a number of women, association with 1970s radical feminist groups such as Red-stockings and the Feminists in itself demonstrated a conviction that one was in principle against all types of oppression. Feminism's appeal was that it recognized gender as a form of dominant/subordinate relationship that other social movements—especially those of the Left—were determined to deny and with which they were often (consciously or unconsciously) in collusion. But that recognition did not render invalid those different movements' claims about class or racist or heterosexist discrimination in American society; on the contrary, for many early radical feminists, it was virtually a given that these other oppressions also had to be addressed and somehow gotten beyond.

The second reason for arguing that a latent anticapitalist orientation characterizes radical feminist thought can be culled from its early theoretical writings. An often-noted example is The Dialectic of Sex (1970), premised around Shulamith Firestone's assertion that a "sex class" system between men and women constitutes the deepest and most fundamental form of enslavement. Firestone came to this conclusion after having first objected to Friedrich Engels's Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State in what is likewise, by now, a well-worn critique. Firestone did not take Engels to task because he emphasized class, but because his insights into class were not thoroughgoing enough .

Even if capitalist relations of production were overthrown, she posited in this early reading, relations of reproduction that maintain women in a secondary position would not necessarily follow suit. She argued that sexual politics are rooted in biology; they are not connected with the level of the economic by any simple relationship of causality. By extension, Marx and Engels were incorrect and indeed naive to presume that any critique based on class alone—even on the nearly universal expropriation of workers' wealth—could eliminate oppression in general: contrary to their imaginings, labor is not a sufficiently inclusive category to bring about this desired goal.

Instead, Firestone substituted the alternative proposition that full abolition of the sex class system would bring broader human liberation in its wake. Sexual subordination precedes that of labor, she reasoned, and thus may be the paradigmatic model out of which all future relations proceed . Why, then, wouldn't a more universal (and generalizable) radicalism be one based on calling for the complete elimination of gender as an elementary structure of social organization? With this interpretation, Firestone emerges as perhaps the first "standpoint theorist" of second-wave American feminism, convinced that the overthrowing of unacceptable conditions as experienced from the position or perspective of women would lead beyond capitalism to a genuinely more classless world.^[7]

Finally, a third anticlass interpretation can be culled from radical feminism, albeit (again) indirectly. In a similar vein as Firestone, Ti-Grace Atkinson's Amazon Odyssey (1974) set forth the notion that women are a class by a particular set of criteria that unites this group in certain respects despite other social differentiations like economic class, race, ethnicity, nation, age, or sexual orientation. In so doing, not only did Atkinson seek to advance feminist theory, but she also rebelled from a Marxism that devalued gender by according legitimacy only to economic differentiations of "class."^[8] But while Atkinson did not make the connection plain (and may not have been interested in doing so at a time when the concept of gender seemed so much more deserving of attention), the vision she associated with women-as-a-class could not be achieved unless there were also major alterations in the capitalist class system indicted by Marxists. Just as liberal feminists are forced in spite of themselves to fall back on a radical feminist concept like treating women as a group (because pressing for their partial interests requires referring to the structural situation of women generally), so a

radical feminist like Atkinson would have to invoke economic class—whether or not she actually did so—for her theoretical argument in favor of gendered class to be consistent.

Just as Eisenstein titled her thesis about political paradoxes within feminism The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism , so I might analogously call my argument "The Socialist Future of Radical Feminism." For if women really are in some respects conceivable politically as a class, and feminism à la Atkinson seeks for women to be "liberated" as such, then measures to eradicate discrimination suffered by all that class's members—women across economic class, women of color, women of different sexual orientations—would have to be included in any genuinely radical feminist program. Given the concerns that continue to be more and more pressing in the 1990s, there can be little doubt that such a program would have to address poverty as it affects huge numbers of women. Logically, wouldn't it minimally have to include day care and health care made universally available at some reasonable level of quality, affordable housing guaranteed, family allowances provided to single mothers now in onerous dilemmas that foreclose their chance to feel free, viable long-term alternatives offered the millions of battered women who currently have nowhere to go, and prostitution legalized and no longer frequently chosen as a matter of economic survival? Clearly none of this would be possible without commitment to a fairly substantial redistribution of class resources such as socialists.

But even if radical feminist theory is thus presumptively anticapitalist, there are good reasons to object that this position needed, and needs, more explicit articulation. It makes little sense to recognize, as did most radical feminists, that leftist men downplayed sexism by subordinating women's concerns to calls for class solidarity but not also to acknowledge that radical feminism was similarly at risk of (unconsciously) subsuming class and race bias under the theoretical aegis of women-as-a-class. In both cases, injury is done when reflexive analysis stops short of itself, when we treat as obvious what can only become fully clarified by being brought quite self-consciously to our attention. Thus, allowing anticapitalist beliefs to remain largely implicit depoliticizes radical feminism by contributing to an overly general and nonspecific usage of the word "patriarchy." If women really are a class, then the programmatic question of what needs to happen for all women to enjoy a collectively greater share of social wealth is too important for radical feminists to leave obscure or taken for granted.

A further disadvantage of leaving this issue unexamined becomes clear when we ask another question: what about men? A problem with deriving anticapitalist leanings solely from our third interpretation—from Atkinson's positing of women-as-a-class—is that there is then no justification for asserting that radical feminists would also support socialism because men should likewise be its beneficiaries. Would this branch of feminism advocate large-scale redistribution of income even if it could be shown that such a change would affect women's interests only minimally? If indeed radical feminists are opposed to all oppression, then the answer will be yes. Yet to arrive only indirectly, secondarily, at the oppressiveness of economic class leaves radical feminist theory vulnerable to a problem of essentialism also faced by other social movements that base themselves on what has come to be called "identity politics"—namely, how does one get from the interests of the part to the whole? For if a conceptual foundation for moving from specific to generally human concerns is not explicitly laid at a movement's inception, how will it ever arise? And how does a movement avoid maintaining or creating other forms of human suffering in the course of eradicating its own?

These issues are pertinent for any leftist—say, a male—insofar as incorporating them would also place him on firmer theoretical ground. For him, a related set of considerations includes awareness of the following. First, it cannot implicitly be presumed that other modes of discrimination like gender and race will disappear with a dissolution of class stratification. For attaining socialism cannot be counted on to dispel these other forms of discrimination more generally or in any simple manner. Second, social movements are most internally consistent when desirous of their own eventual eradication, when they wish that the "other," as a party inimical to themselves, will one day disappear. In the leftist's case, this latter consideration contains the idea of some mutual human ground being an ongoing potentiality even between "capitalists" and "workers" as currently constituted. And it might also include the open airing of concerns about excessive repression during periods of social transition, repression that should be avoided so that new rounds of resentment are not reproduced and a sense of common humanity precluded or destroyed.

An analogy can also be made between the radical feminist and a minority group member—again, perhaps, a male—who sees his primary political identification as based on race. He, too, is unable to presume that any automatic relation exists between class- and race-based forms

of discrimination (or, for that matter, between gender- and race-based forms of discrimination). Clearly, eliminating the former bias relates to, but is not identical with, overcoming the latter. Yet the same pitfall arises for this person were he to support socialism only because it could improve the lives of minorities, and not because of advantages that bring potential benefits to all human beings across race as well. In the example of race, too, we need to find formulations that fulfill several simultaneous requirements. Certainly identity politics have legitimacy: after all, minorities and other discriminated-against groups designate "others" because they themselves have been so designated and are obviously the persons most affected by, and likely to challenge, the particular "ism" of race. But it is also important to reflect on how theories constructed in response about "race" (or "gender" or "class," for that matter) can explicitly include provisions aimed at allowing for these concepts to themselves eventually pass away.

Coming back to radical feminist thought, this analysis may itself help in clarifying this brand of feminism's general perspective on the relationship between gender and class. The promulgation of notions like a "sex class" system (Firestone) and "women-as-a-class" (Atkinson) have been crucial—probably indispensable—to feminism's theoretical development into a social movement grounded in experiences of oppression shared by women as a group. Without ideas such as these, little basis exists to distinguish the contents of gender- from class-related movements. But while most radical feminists were also implicitly anticapitalist, this opposition to economic structures needed elaboration for an insistence on ending oppression in general to be most consistent.

For there is always a leap required, for any social movement, between believing in particular and in general interests—between the possibility of ever forging common human ground between women and men, between the economically dispossessed and the possessors, between one subordinated race and another—which can only be resolved in one (or both) of two ways. Either a given social movement admits that being against oppression in general requires moving beyond narrow definitions of self-interest, or it redefines self-interest in a way that encompasses a general humanity. It may attempt to do both at once, though such theoretical efforts are not difficult. In this respect, a weakness of standpoint theories (whether as implied in Firestone, or later explicitly framed in the writings of Nancy Hartsock, Sandra Harding, or Patricia Hill Collins) may be a tendency to seek conceptual solutions that avoid confrontation with the apparent impossibility of ever entirely

closing this gap between self-interest and the interests of an other. For it may be useless, like aiming at an infinitely regressing target, to search for the "deepest" oppression, the person who has been most victimized, or the perfect standpoint that—once eliminated or attained—will eliminate all isms in a domino effect: the problem is that some "deeper" oppression can always be found. When we come back to the instance of our gender/class relationship, therefore, it is critical to insist in this present case of radical feminism on both the validity of women-as-a-class and the recognition that human well-being requires a much more equitable redistribution of resources than currently exists in our class-and race-divided society. Both explicitly specified beliefs have to coexist as components of a radical feminist theory serious about its opposition to women's and human oppression .

But it was precisely into this relative omission within radical feminist theory—this apparent lack of explicitness—that Marxist and socialist feminists leapt by calling for the class side of the gender/class balance to be addressed more overtly. Without doubt, neither Marxist nor socialist feminisms can be faulted for failing to acknowledge the importance of class. On the contrary, a major goal of both strands was to compensate for the relative silence about class in the liberal and radical feminisms that came before them (one of their corollary goals, conversely, being to compensate for the absence of gender in the priorities of Marxism and socialism). Marxist as well as socialist feminists underlined a need for integrating class- and gender-related perspectives, and each agreed on what they mutually took to have been radical feminism's chief flaw: its inattention to issues of "historical specificity." By this they meant that radical feminist references to male-dominated societies were objectionable not so much because of any lack of specificity about "patriarchy" and its programmatic ramifications, but because the term had been employed as though universally valid to describe a transhistoric feature of societies across space and time.

Against this usage, Marxist and socialist feminists counterposed their commitment to examining how patriarchy has operated in historically specific settings, and especially how it has meshed with those societies' varying class structures. These branches have been highly influential in the history of feminist theory itself, bequeathing an emphasis on difference that has continued to be a dominant theme of the feminist movement as a whole in the 1980s and 1990s. In contrast to radical feminism, though, this approach concentrates less on the differing experiences that separate women-as-a-group from men and is relatively

more focused on differences between women. In the opinion of Marxist and socialist feminists, a problem with radical feminism was that it did not discuss, as Rosemary Tong puts it, how "The wife of a Carrington (Dynasty ) does not experience patriarchy in the same way as an Edith Bunker (All in the Family ) or a Claire Huxtable (The Bill Cosby Show )."^[9] Not only consciousness of class but race as well are thereby brought quite explicitly back into feminism, both by virtue of these groups' clearly anticapitalist positions and through their concern about recalling that indeed the needs of all women do not equate with the needs of those who are upper class and white.

But important differences exist between Marxist and socialist feminists themselves, as well as within socialist feminism. For one thing, Marxist feminism has been criticized for having gone so far in the direction of remembering class that it loses the distinctively gendered rationale for its existence. It is a criticism that seems justified insofar as Marxist feminists have taken on more class- than gender-related causes—for example, a campaign in favor of "wages for housework" and, later, the issue of comparable worth.^[10]

From this theoretical angle, Marxist feminists have also been accused of recycling Engels's reductionism, which dates back to The Origin of the Family . Like his work, theirs echoes the claim that public ownership of property would uproot gender subordination to a greater degree than seems reasonably supportable. From this reiteration, perhaps, comes Marxist feminists' tendency to devote more attention to issues of production than to those of reproduction, sexuality, biology, and the body. And, though undoubtedly concerned about Marxism's reliance on allegedly gender-blind categories, this branch of feminism does not question the efficacy of the categories themselves. Thus, the older concept of "labor"—was opposed to sex, say, as argued by radical feminism—continues to be placed in an elevated and primary position. To be sure, Marxist feminists do incorporate earlier feminist reservations about the nuclear family into their analyses, attempting to increase the value accorded women's labor in private as well as public spheres. Still, the overall effect may have been to turn back in the direction from which radical feminism initially rebelled when it broke away from Engels and the Left. From radical feminism's vagueness about issues of class that are partially separable from those of gender, Marxist feminism reverts to lack of specificity about gendered issues that are partially separable from those of class.

I should observe that the above critique is hardly my own but one

proffered by other feminists, particularly "socialist feminists" who have therefore attempted to differentiate themselves somewhat from their Marxist sisters. For many socialist feminists, a major problem of Marxist feminism was that it did not take the persistent endurance of patriarchy seriously enough . Within socialist feminist writings, then, one finds the development of the concept of "capitalist patriarchy,"^[11] employed in such a way that it serves several distinguishing functions. By reinserting the emphasis on "patriarchy" taken from radical feminist thought into its own gender/class equation, socialist feminists sought to move an unstable theoretical pendulum closer to the middle. Their desire was this time to correct for that relative inattention being paid by the Marxist strand to specifically gender-based notions like those set forth in earlier works by Firestone, Atkinson, or Kate Millett.^[12] Probably, they suspected that to omit in-depth study of sexuality and the body—of reproductive and sexual controls exerted by men over women—tripped Marxist feminism of most of what could be dubbed distinctively (or radically) "feminist" about it.

At the same time, the idea of capitalist patriarchy attests to socialist feminists' wish to theoretically meld together the two traditions of class-and gender-based analyses, particularly since the concerns of each were thought to intersect and overlap in actual social life. Yes, patriarchal structures seemed to reappear across cultures and class systems, perhaps more repetitively than feminists intent on emphasizing "difference" admitted. But these structures nonetheless assumed historically distinct forms, with varying consequences for women and men in different positions. Consequently, the proper focus of socialist feminism ought be on patriarchy's incarnation in its specific interaction with capitalism: we live neither solely under patriarchy, nor under capitalism, but within a social system that is a hybrid form. One result of this focus is speculation within socialist feminist writings about "dual" versus "unified" systems theory—a debate that has been resonant of doctrinaire disputes, slightly reminiscent of analogous arguments over textual interpretations between (usually male) Marxists. For some, as exemplified in Juliet Mitchell's psychoanalytically influenced interpretation, patriarchy is taken to be more ideological or psychological than material in comparison to capitalism. For others, as Heidi Hartmann's account demonstrates, both patriarchy and capitalism are viewed as materially grounded structures.^[13]

In addition, dual and unified systems theorists differed over the degree to which they saw patriarchy and capitalism operating together or

apart. If they are so intertwined as to be inseparable, as on one side Iris Young suggests, shouldn't there be unifying concepts that reflect this merging (such as taking the term "division of labor" to describe the simultaneously class and gendered forms of work as it is experienced in both the public world of jobs and the domestic world of families)?^[14] Or, as Hartmann contends, perhaps it is more significant to note that even if gender and class oppression overlap, they are still based in "dual systems. "Without this addendum, Engels's reductionism might be repeated not only among Marxist but among socialist feminists as well. The significance of this last point should be emphasized, since it relates to practical questions of strategy in addition to theory. An advantage of Hartmann's argument is that by insisting on a dyadic approach (and thereby on the mutual irreducibility of gender and class), socialist feminism still preserves the conceptual distinction Marxist feminism threatened to blur. And since the roots of capitalist patriarchy are taken to be dual, theoretical legitimacy is accorded the strategic tenet that feminist organizations will continue to require autonomous status for quite some time in any pre- or postsocialist society. (Paradoxically, it may be the very ease with which a given society accepts this autonomy—not just in relation to feminism but for any social movement that similarly has suffered past discrimination—that indicates preconditions for a movement's eventual obsolescence in a pre- or postsocialist world.)

Socialist feminism, then, deserves credit for coming closer to giving adequate expression to the two sides of a gender/class relationship than one finds in the respective versions proffered by liberal, radical, or Marxist feminisms. Liberal feminists, it may be recalled, believe gender liberation possible within capitalism; radical and Marxist feminists would not, though for different reasons that have different strategic implications. For radical feminists, the question is absurd because gender liberation, if achieved, would already have pointed beyond capitalism; for them, one should focus on the need to eliminate patriarchy in order to be rid of capitalism and women's subordination. Marxist feminism, however, tends to rely primarily on eliminating capitalism to overcome patriarchy's ills. For both, attacking one system first is hoped to bring down the other later . But for socialist feminists, it is capitalist patriarchy that must be transcended: the two systems interrelate, and therefore must be simultaneously and mutually opposed in order for gender-based oppression to end.

On the other hand, I am not sure that the "unhappy marriage" between Marxism and feminism, a union Hartmann and Young criticized

in a volume of the same name, really ends up all that much happier after divorce and remarriage with socialist feminism. For one thing, references to the workings of "capitalist patriarchy" instead of "patriarchy" do not go very far toward a concrete definition of what it means to desire the undoing of either or both forms of social organization. It is unclear whether "patriarchy" is clarified, or made even vaguer, by being re-wed with class in a way that is arguably rather mechanical. And regardless of their undoubtedly good intentions, did socialist feminists' writings about "capitalist patriarchy" really constitute the substance of a new theory, unified or otherwise? Or perhaps instead of a whole new theory they offered a perspective , one constituted mostly by juxtaposing two traditions' previously more developed sets of ideas within a worldview opposed to both capitalism and patriarchy.

Moreover, it is unclear whether socialist feminist formulations in fact succeeded at redressing Marxist feminism's proclivity to place more emphasis on the "Marxist" than "feminist" part of its name. Again, such redress was certainly socialist feminists' intention. But language found in such formulations as even Hartmann's definition of patriarchy could be taken to signify otherwise: "we define patriarchy as a set of social relations which has a material base. . .. The material base of patriarchy is men's control over women's labor power. That control is maintained by excluding women from access to necessary economically productive resources and by restricting women's sexuality ."^[15] The quotation suggests that the issue of women's sexuality is contained within that of their labor power by asserting that "restricting" the former is part of a larger project aimed at controlling the latter. But while in one sense this is true (and Hartmann immediately adds that this control includes "access to women's bodies for sex"), it is also the case that the statement's form reproduces the same subordination of gender to class that was its very purpose to avoid.

Moreover, why is patriarchy's "material basis" control over women's labor power rather than, say, control of and over their/our bodies? The implications of the two contentions would not be identical, though in a sense Hartmann is right. Sex can and does often involve women's labor. This is true indirectly, as at a workplace where harassment is experienced, but also directly: in marriage and other intimate noneconomic relations that often provide services revolving around housework and child rearing as well as "access to women's bodies"; and in economic relations (in which women are "sex workers" or models in pornographic or commercial enterprises) aimed at providing similar access.

Yet sex goes beyond this as well, as would the meaning of an alternative definition of patriarchy if it also included the element of controls exercised over women's bodies . For such controls are likewise exerted by virtue of the phenomenon of objectification, the reification of women's bodies that is the opposite of labor, entailing not doing but treatment as though one were a thing . Sexual domination includes what has been called the male "gaze" coming to pervade the images of, and life under, patriarchal culture; it involves delimiting women's reproductive and sexual freedom and choices, including their/our access to each other's bodies; it entails violence actual or threatened that may take place outside as well as within homes or jobs—all of which relates to, but is not exhausted through, the concept of labor. This suggests that it would have been more theoretically defensible to subsume labor under sex rather than the other way around—sex in this regard appearing to be the more overarching category. That instead sex is made once more a subset of labor (as gender had been made a subset of class) hints at socialist feminist ideas, too, having been influenced more by the dominant assumptions of traditional Marxism than by radical feminist thought. In spite of socialist feminism's criticisms of Marxist feminism and of its conscious intentions, then, even here the "socialist" half may have come to take precedence over the "feminist"—leaving the gender/ class split not so equally distributed after all.

Of course, and again in socialist feminism's defense, an analysis of several authors' essays does not necessarily reveal the characteristics of a strand of feminism as a whole. Moreover, topics addressed by socialist feminists did tend to include feminist concerns related to sexual as well as economic controls, expressed not only theoretically but through political activism. A case in point was CARASA (Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse), a New York City-based socialist feminist group with which I was involved for a short period of time in the late 1970s. CARASA sought to link two issues originating obviously from more feminist than socialist concerns—the right to abortion and the right not to be sterilized—under the common rubric of guaranteed reproductive freedom for all women. Consciousness about gender, class, and race was thereby incorporated through the recognition that forced sterilization has very disproportionately affected poor (and minority) women, reflecting attitudes that go back in American history to the eugenicist leanings of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger herself. Simply noticing this problem markedly differentiated CARASA from pro-choice organizations of liberal feminist leanings like NOW

and NARAL (then the National Abortion Rights Action League), as did the socialist feminist group's early and consistent concern about the class-skewed consequences of the halt in federal funding for Medicaid abortions.

However, while "socialist" and "feminist" impulses were both commendably apparent in such political-theoretical efforts, it again strikes me that the "socialist feminist" form is somehow intrinsically problematic. Not only does the conjunction still appear to favor the socialist side, but it also subtly dilutes the strength of its radical feminist contents. To the extent such dilution in fact takes place, it clearly does so without intention—but why does it occur at all?

I can think of two causes that may be more important, because more deeply rooted, than reasons already mentioned. The first could be characterized as more political, the second as theoretical in character. Returning to the reproductive rights activism example just cited, we might note that NARAL has had relatively greater staying power and influence over time than a group like CARASA, which dissolved. Certainly, one obvious explanation for this relative marginality is that CARASA was handicapped to some degree right from the start: neither socialism nor the plight of poor women attracts much sympathy in the United States; moreover, the comparable affluence of their constituency overall tends to accord organizations like NARAL or NOW increased social influence and power. But I believe that national groups such as NOW and NARAL reap additional benefits simply from being built around unadulteratedly feminist platforms . Perhaps their relatively more direct stress on issues of major concern to women, such as sexuality and sexual freedom, has worked much to their advantage.

Indeed, it is difficult to imagine some advantage not accruing from emphasizing women-as-a-group, particularly when feminist theory and practices are surveyed in the developmental context I have been sketching. If feminism has been distinctive in its insistence on structural characteristics of women's experience that unite women's experience across other categories like economic class, race, or ethnicity, then that very focus on commonalities rather than differences was the sine qua non for the movement's emergence and initially constituted its most radical core. After all, a fundamental criterion for becoming a movement—any movement, arguably—is escaping the influence of ideologies inculcating the belief that one's situation is merely individual, one among many outcomes, and not a sign of collective tendencies and structures that can be generalized. In the case of feminism, women had to break from

the particular mythologies of patriarchy—but the same principle should hold true for any attempt to escape conditions imposed by a dominant group on subordinates who are encouraged to perceive only their separateness.

Therefore, historically speaking, the importance of having managed to achieve a common identity means that reintroducing considerations of difference would have to be undertaken with some degree of caution lest doing so reproduce, play into, or somehow (however unconsciously) feed this ideological desire of parties in power to prevent the relatively powerless from realizing their similarities with one another. In no way does this statement imply that just as careful attention ought not have been paid—as it has—to opposing interests between women (as in the case of divergences of class, race, or sexual orientation among various feminists themselves). To the contrary, confronting these issues is and has been a historically important necessity. Nor should this be taken to suggest that feminist theory should not be rich and diversified in the currents it contains (a very positive aspect of the evolutionary stress on difference), or that feminists do not need to organize separately in many instances precisely because women's experiences diverge in highly significant ways.

Rather, what I am contending is simply that the legitimacy of difference needs to be insisted on in such a way that the radical moment of asserting commonality is also neither lost nor diluted. In order to preserve second-wave feminism's original power, then, the women's movement may have to acknowledge (as here) its commitment both to ending class and race oppression and to an some overarching framework that continues to declare the conceptual necessity of women-as-a-group.^[16] With regard to the gender/class relationship focused on here, then, there is an advantage to referring to this movement as (radically) feminist and socialist, rather than as relying on the labels "Marxist feminist" or "socialist feminist" per se.

Otherwise, there is a risk that in its eagerness to correct for past omissions (say, its relative inattention to issues of class, traditionally defined), the movement may also fall into an old habit of apologizing for having at last realized some sense of common cause. Ironically, for women, this "mea culpa" mode is overdetermined, reinforced by the debilitating processes of gender socialization itself. At the same time, not surprisingly, such apologies threaten to weaken feminism politically. For the 1980s and 1990s backlash so thoroughly depicted by Faludi can also be viewed as a slightly shaken male-dominated order defending

itself against fledgling gains made collectively by women-as-a-class during the 1960s and 1970s; a countermovement came into being determined to deny the truth of a commonality that had been perceived and acted on.

Given this contemporary context, it seems especially critical for feminists to be sensitive toward the possibility of this enormous backlash seeping into feminism itself in extremely subtle ways. Optimally, however, it seems possible to understand "difference," politically as well as theoretically, in a way that neither (a) dilutes the power of women acting in concert for their collective interests, (b) denies the importance of accepting and politically acting on the significance of simultaneous differences, nor (c) reinforces the confidence of a male-dominated and capitalistic society in its ability to perpetuate the gender, class, and race divisions maintained between people in general that it finds so useful.

But there is one other subtle reason why, as a political matter, referring to a movement as radical and socialist may have advantages over the conjunction "socialist feminist." This last consideration takes us back one more time to theory and to Engels's Origin of the Family , as well as toward some concluding thoughts.