Liberation For the 99%
“intrinsic” rather than “incidental” to capitalism. 22 Overall, she uses the lens of
Marxist Feminism to critique capitalist society and examines it from a different
angle than traditional Marxism by incorporating race and gender into Marx’s
formulation of class relations under this exploitative economic model.
However, in contrast to Marxist feminist Angela Davis, Shulamith
Firestone’s central argument appears to be an inversion of Karl Marx’s economic
argument seen in his work The Communist Manifesto. Whereas Davis reads Marx
in the context of the hierarchy of economic dominance, Firestone interprets his work
in the context of the hierarchy of sexual domination. Despite these differences, both
Davis and Firestone would, nonetheless, agree with the two following principles: 1)
“Bourgeois feminists” or liberal feminists do not truly merit the title of “feminist”
because they remain instruments of the exploitative capitalist class. 2) Love,
marriage, family, and dating are social constructs created by men to give their own
lives meaning and “fulfill” them, while simultaneously oppressing women , a concept
introduced by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex. 23 The first principle can be
drawn from both theorists’ calls to dismantle the existing in favor of a less
exploitative economy. The second, on the other hand, is indicated via both theorists’
support of eradicating the gender binary and their obvious emphasis on the
distinction between sex and gender.
Neoliberalism, Performative Activism, and Amerikkka
This materialist conception of history can also be extended to Colonial America and
its transition from a mercantilist economic system to the capitalist system we see
today. Building off philosophy scholar Robert Mutch’s argument that Colonial
America’s white middle class led the American Revolution , I argue that the
transition to American Democracy after the American Revolution can be explained
via social and class relations. I then proceed by tying this argument to my larger
22 Angela Y. Davis, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, ed. Frank Barat (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016). 23 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex , trans. by Constance Borde (N.Y.: Vintage, 2011).
Volume VI (2023)
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