Women and the Politics of Class

• Published in: Labour 2002, Vol.49 (49), p.319-321
• Main Author: Sangster, Joan
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Canada; Capitalism; Class; Economic conditions; Feminism; Gender; History; Industrial relations; Marxism; Oppression; Political activism; Poststructuralism; Reviews/Comptes Rendus; Social conditions; Women; Working class; Writing
• ISSN: 0700-3862; 1911-4842
• DOI: 10.2307/25149248

I was soon deeply engrossed, however, as Brenner's collection provides an interesting and thought-provoking view of the evolution of socialist-feminist concerns over the last twenty years. She has also updated the articles, with some new introductions, added references, and provided an overall introduction as well as a new essay at the end, drawing on "intersectional" analyses of race, class, and gender. She is cognizant of the important changes in feminist and socialist politics since the 1960s, and indeed, a central theme in the book is the way in which capitalist restructuring, the rise of neoliberalism, and the fact of globalization have altered the political playing field for activists in the US. In the 1960s and 1970s, in an expanding capitalist economy and secure welfare state, she notes, some liberal-feminist gains could be secured without challenging the distribution of wealth. That is now less likely, reinforcing the need to rebuild movements of working-class self-organization. Indeed, her writing, clear, lucid, and direct, is concerned not only with the more abstract realms of academic debate but always with the process of social transformation. Her explorations of history, theory, and politics are always constructed, as she puts it "with an eye to doing politics." (1) The book is devoted to articles that reflect Brenner's key political and theoretical concerns over the years: Marxist-feminist theory; welfare, social policy, and the state; the politics of the family; working-class self-organization; and feminist strategies. Brenner begins with her influential essay, written with Maria Ramas, challenging Michele Barrett's analysis of capitalism and women's oppression. Although I am still not entirely convinced of the centrality they give to the place of reproduction in that classic piece, I found their critique of Barrett's notion of ideology perceptive for they zero in on her tendency to see ideology as a "deus ex machina" acting on individuals, failing to integrate human agency and creativity into the construction of consciousness. Barrett's interests, of course, are now literally a galaxy away, but her subsequent intellectual evolution -- embracing post-structuralism -- may have been incipient in this earlier Althusserian ethos.