Suchergebnisse

Nondeterminist Marxist & feminist theories are combined to develop a distinctive perspective on changing class & gender processes inside contemporary US households, which, it is argued, represent transformations that are both a result of & are influential on all other aspects of life in the larger society. It is contended that the typical modern household exemplifies the feudal form, with an adult male who leaves to participate in capitalist class processes & his wife, who remains home in the role of a serf, the use value of her labor appropriated by her husband. Nonclass social processes -- including cultural, political, & economic forces -- that contribute to the maintenance of this gender-divided feudal pattern are identified. Contradictions within the feudal household, which have increased in recent decades, & husbands' & wives' responses to them are described, focusing on the use of marriage rights & obligations to undermine the other spouse's authority, class position, or self-image. Ways that the marriage contract also helps to support the feudal system are identified. The relationship between feudal household structures & capitalist enterprises is examined, along with how increased tensions have recently given rise to the emergence of nonfeudal households. Two major forms of such class processes are identified: the "ancient" fundamental & the communist alternatives. Five commentaries follow. In Surplus Labor, the Household, and Gender Oppression, Julie Matthaei (Wellesley Coll, Mass) applauds this nonreductionist analysis of the importance of the household with the capitalist economy & its identification of the reltionship between gender & class oppression, but criticizes the description of the household & capitalist economy as separate modes of production, its view on gender oppression within marriage, & the downplaying of class differences. In Rejecting "Precise" Marxism for Feminism, Zillah Eisenstein (Ithaca Coll, NY) notes that there are only a few feudal households remaining in the US of the 1990s as they are defined here, & identifies problems with "precise" Marxist views of households as economic units unto themselves. The need to recognize women as a political -- not merely an economic or biological -- class is emphasized. In Constructive Marxian Theory, Kim Lane Scheppele (U of Michigan, Ann Arbor) explores the distinctiveness of this method of theory-making & connects it to the social analysis of Georg Simmel, then demonstrates how this type of Marxian analysis of the family can illuminate the class dynamics of other social sites. In The Persistence of Patriarchal Capitalism, Nancy Folbre & Heidi Hartmann (U of Massachusetts, Amherst) agree that gender & class inequalities are analogous, but argue that the interpretation of Marxist & socialist feminist theories offered here is mistaken, as is the optimism regarding the rise of communist or egalitarian households without a deeper appreciation of the systemic nature of patriarchy. In History and Family Theory, Stephanie Coontz (Evergreen State Coll, Olympic, Wash) contends that this analysis has not fully resolved problems that plague Marxist writing in general, & the value of centering a theoretical model on surplus labor is questioned, as is the description of the white, Victorian, nuclear family as feudal. A theory that can account for the mutual reinforcement of noncapitalist household processes & capitalist worksite ones is called for, along with a broader conceptualization of class relations. 183 References. K. Hyatt

Since 1917 analysts have debated what kind of economic system existed in the USSR and the PRC. They mostly juxtaposed `socialism' there to `capitalism' in Western Europe and the USA. The two sides were defined chiefly in terms of private versus state property and markets versus planning. We challenge this debate by means of Marx's focus on the organization of surplus labor. That is, we distinguish capitalism, socialism, and communism according to how these systems differently organize the surplus. They exhibit different ways of producing, appropriating, and distributing the surpluses generated in production. Not only does this approach yield a new and different analysis of the similarities between capitalism and socialism, it also conceives communism as more radically different from both of them than other approaches do. Finally, we indicate some current political implications of our approach and its conclusions.

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- Toward a Poststructuralist Political Economy -- Reading Marx for Class -- Exploring a New Class Politics of the Enterprise -- Ivy-Covered Exploitation: Class, Education, and the Liberal Arts College -- Nature and Class: A Marxian Value Analysis -- The Promise of Finance: Banks and Community Development -- ''After'' Development: Re-imagining Economy and Class -- Development and Class Transition in India: A New Perspective -- A Class Analysis of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 -- Sharecropping and Feudal Class Processes in the Postbellum Mississippi Delta -- Communal Class Processes and Pre-Columbian Social Dynamics -- Struggles in the USSR: Communisms Attempted and Undone -- References -- Contributors -- Index