Joan Acker's Feminist Historical-Materialist Theory of Class

In: Monthly review: an independent socialist magazine, Band 64, Heft 2, S. 48-52

Abstract

Marxism and feminism are usually seen as divorced from each other today, following the breakup of what Heidi Hartmann famously called their 'unhappy marriage.' Yet, some theorists still show the influence of both. In my view, Joan Acker is both one of the leading analysts of gender and class associated with the second wave of feminism, and one of the great contributors to what has been called 'feminist historical materialism.' In the latter respect, I would place her next to such important proponents of feminist standpoint theory as Nancy Hartsock, Dorothy Smith, and Sandra Harding. These thinkers, as Fredric Jameson has rightly said, represent the 'most authentic' heirs of Lukacs's critical Marxist view articulating the proletarian standpoint -- giving this dialectical insight added meaning by applying it to gender relations. It is noteworthy that Acker's important theoretical work Class Questions: Feminist Answers appeared in 2006, one year before the onset of the Great Financial Crisis. This of course was no mere accident. Acker was deeply concerned about the waning of class analysis, particularly amongst feminist theorists. At the same time she recognized that class was becoming more important than ever, not only because of growing inequality but also growing instability in the capitalist economy. Class Questions: Feminist Answers provides a rich and insightful history of class analysis in the Marxian, Weberian, and feminist theory traditions, emphasizing the strengths and weaknesses of each. The uniqueness of Acker's work comes out in her critique of 'unreconstructed 'class" notions, particularly those that make race and gender invisible within the class conception (4-5). In exploring how class, race, and gender are 'mutually constituted' she not only criticizes Marxian and Weberian conceptions, but also questions popular feminist and sociological treatments of class, race, and gender in terms of intersectionalities. It is not so much that these conceptions are wrong as they are too crude, trying to reduce class (and along with race and gender) to particular spatial or structural locations/intersections, rather than emphasizing class as a fluid social relation, involving diverse practices and processes, including its gendering and racialization. In this respect, her work draws inspiration from the introductory discussion on class in E.P. Thompson's classic, The Making of the English Working Class -- a work that had a profound effect on Acker and other feminist historical materialists, as did Thompson's critique of structuralist Marxism. What Acker, then, is offering is a methodology that will allow us to look at class, gender, and race together in terms of their interrelational historical formations ('makings'), with all of the dialectical complexities that this implies. Referring to Rose Brewer, she insists that, 'race, class, and gender processes should be seen as simultaneous forces, and that theorizing must be historicized and contextualized'. Adapted from the source document.