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سرمایهداری، خانواده و زندگی شخصی
زندگی شخصی که در بستر خانواده شکل گرفت و عمری به قدمت توسعهی سرمایهداری دارد اصولا جندان محل اعتنا نبوده و تحلیلهای جامع دربارهی آن اندک است. منتقدان سرمایهداری، بدون توجه درخور به درسهای تاریخ، اغلب به همین اکتفا کردهاند که نوید دهند با دگرگونی زیربنای اقتصادی جامعه همهی مناسبات ازجمله مناسبات میانفردی و درون خانواده دگرگون خواهد شد.
ایلای زارتسکی، نوسندهی تاریخپژوه این کتاب، خوانندگان خود را از زاویهای دیگر به بازخوانی تاریخ خانواده و زندگی شخصی فرامیخواند. او هشدار میدهد که -خواه خانواده را کانونی گرم و زندگی شخصی را حریمی مقدس بدانیم و دوست بداریم، یا زندان بپنداریم و از آن بیزار باشیم- باید در نظریههای سیاسی و اجتماعی خود جایی درخور برای آنها درنظر بگیریم. سرمایهداری خانواده را دگرگون ساخت و سپهر زندگی شخصی را همچون «بهشتی در دلِ جهنم دنیای بیرحم» پدید آورد. آزادسازی فرد که از معنای دگرگونی برمیآید، هدفی نیست که تنها به لیبرالیسم تعلق داشته باشد.
ایلای زارتسکی، نوسندهی تاریخپژوه این کتاب، خوانندگان خود را از زاویهای دیگر به بازخوانی تاریخ خانواده و زندگی شخصی فرامیخواند. او هشدار میدهد که -خواه خانواده را کانونی گرم و زندگی شخصی را حریمی مقدس بدانیم و دوست بداریم، یا زندان بپنداریم و از آن بیزار باشیم- باید در نظریههای سیاسی و اجتماعی خود جایی درخور برای آنها درنظر بگیریم. سرمایهداری خانواده را دگرگون ساخت و سپهر زندگی شخصی را همچون «بهشتی در دلِ جهنم دنیای بیرحم» پدید آورد. آزادسازی فرد که از معنای دگرگونی برمیآید، هدفی نیست که تنها به لیبرالیسم تعلق داشته باشد.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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May 17, 2018
همونطور که از نام کتاب بر میاد ایده اصلی بر بررسی تاریخ ارتباط بین خانواده، نظام سرمایه داری و مفهوم زندگی بنا شده . نگارنده به شکل کلی در متن به دنبال اثبات این فرضیه هست که با پیدایش نظام های سرمایه داری شکافی بین خانواده به عنوان یک نهاد تولیدی در جوامع پیشاسرمایه داری با اجتماع به عنوان نهاد و متولی اصلی تولید به وجود امده که این شکاف بر برتری مردانگی بر زنانگی و بیرون بر درون تاکیدی عمیق داره . همچنین این شکاف و فاصله خانواده از شکل قدیمیترش باعث بوجود امدن روحیه ای (پرولتری ) جدید در خانواده شده که در کتاب این روحیه رو فردیت ، انتزاعی گری و تخیل دوستی معرفی میکنه . در نهایت اعلام میکنه که هدف فمینیسم باید تقلیل این شکاف برامده بواسطه بازگرداندن نظام خانواده به یک نهاد تولیدی همانند گذشته باشد تا زن نیز مجدد از برابری قدیمی خود با مرد اگاه شود . کتاب در چند بخش به توضیح نظریات فمینیسم رادیکال ، سپس روایت تاریخ سرمایه داری و برهمکنش ان با نظام خانواده و سپس مباحثی در باب نحوه تغییر فردیت در خانواده میپردازه .
June 22, 2019
Somewhat too brief and definitely dated, but nonetheless an important text of socialist feminist theory. Offers an historical account of the rise of a separate sphere of personal life and family under capitalism.
I really wish the author was much more critical of psychoanalysis. Zaretsky seems to think that that this form of thought (which he acknowledges is sexist, “bourgeois,” and ahistorical) is necessary to account for the subjective, sexual, and interpersonal aspects of human life. But what he has essentially done is slot in psychoanalysis where FEMINISM properly belongs. The more (failed) efforts to reconcile Marxism and psychoanalysis I encounter, the more clearly I recognize that this is basically what is happening each time. A wholly historically materialist feminist (derived from the early Marx rather than from psychoanalysis) would be a much better starting point for considering these issues in a Marxist framework.
I really wish the author was much more critical of psychoanalysis. Zaretsky seems to think that that this form of thought (which he acknowledges is sexist, “bourgeois,” and ahistorical) is necessary to account for the subjective, sexual, and interpersonal aspects of human life. But what he has essentially done is slot in psychoanalysis where FEMINISM properly belongs. The more (failed) efforts to reconcile Marxism and psychoanalysis I encounter, the more clearly I recognize that this is basically what is happening each time. A wholly historically materialist feminist (derived from the early Marx rather than from psychoanalysis) would be a much better starting point for considering these issues in a Marxist framework.
January 15, 2018
Feudalism, Capitalism, and then Socialism. The dialectical materialist progression from one form to another that move forward with all of the power of historical necessity. What can we learn from the Hegelian dialectic in an age so far removed from Marx? In an age where contest and contingency are high in the analytical saddle, what remains of progress?
What is left of the analysis that blends Marxism and Feminism to allow us insights into industrialization? A great deal, I think. It still forms a major part of what remains of the grand narrative framework into which we fit our history. Chapter 3, "Capitalism and the Family," recounts the now classic formulation in detail. As a heuristic device, it still works. In the early modern period, capitalism had freed the family from feudal constraints. Here the Puritan family can be understood as a breaking with the feudal past. Under petty bourgeois capitalism of the yeoman form, workers own the "means of production." With the rise of industrial production, they work for wages instead. As industrialization proceeds, women are relegated to the home away from wage labor. Feminism is then seen as a reaction against this condition, this degradation of female work. Here is a problem with his analysis, however, since recent scholarship has shown that it was the ideal of domesticity that fueled much of the 19th Century's feminist movement. As Christine Stansell has shown us, under the guise of moral reform women were empowered to seek roles in public.
Affected by an overarching sense of presentism, he begins with an overview of feminist literature and theory in Chapter 1, "Feminism and Socialism," instead of covering the material in part 3. Assuming a prior knowledge of at least the outlines of Chapter 3, Zaretsky wrestles immediately with the relationship that class has to the family in the United States. He notes that feminists brought the concerns that were considered private into the public sphere in the 1960s. He considers the works of Kate Millett (Sexual Politics, 1970), Shulamith Firestone (The Dialectic of Sex, 1970), and Juliet Mitchell (Women's Estate, 1971). They all point to a separation of the public and private (which we are supposedly supposed to know from current events), and feminists seek to overcome it, in much the same way as socialists of the same period did as well. His contends in Chapter 2,"The Family and the Economy," that in the 1960s and 70s both feminism and socialism called for the recognition of "socially necessary work." Housework is work as well, though devalued by capitalism. So long as women are relegated to the role of housewives and mothers, and men are kept in the workplace, there can be no socialism.
When we look at the sweep of the 19th century, we see tremendous diversity and uneven development. Yet, the transition from small shop production (closely tied at first to the home) to large scale manufacture did change the workforce in major ways. We exit the 19th Century a very different nation because of this process. In the 20th C we inhabited a nation where most people were working for wages -- selling their labor as a commodity. This was not the case in the first half of the 19th C. As with the earlier transition away from Feudalism, the family was intricately involved with capitalist production in providing the private support for workers who go out into the work force. Women's work in the home mad (and makes) men's work at the factory or office possible. The most telling comment in the book comes when he points out that the "yeoman" is really the collective labor of the household. (p. 34)
What does this transition to industrialism do to the family? In Zaretsky's words:
Since the rise of industry, however, proletairianization separated most people (or families) from the ownership of productive property. As a result 'work' and 'life' were separated; proletairianization split off the outer world of alienated labor from an inner world of personal feeling. Just as capitalist development gave rise to the idea of family as a separate realm from the economy, so it created a 'separate' sphere of personal life, seemingly divorced from the mode of production. (p. 30)
In a wage work world where it is difficult to find meaning in your job, the retreat to the "private" realm of the family or a personal life becomes possible.
It is not, however, until Chapter 6, that he returns to a consideration of "Proletairianization and the Rise of Subjectivity." Under the pressure of rising industrialism, "the transformation of bourgeois individualism" took place. As the 19th C progressed, society divided between workplace and the home. Home became the location of sentiment, subjectivity and individualism. Rugged individualism (in the Marxian phrase, petty bourgeois) resisted the impact of mechanization. The family's role was central to maintaining individualism against the loss of control over the means of production (apprenticeship, craft skills, etc.). As the artisans became wage workers, the family space assumed new meaning. "The proletarian family" now consisted of the proletarian worker, his "housewife," and the children. They met, not in the workspace, but in the family space of the home. In considering "personal life and subjectivity in the twentieth-century United States," Zaretsky points out that the idea of family issues being "personal matters" is one outcome of this separation. Objectivity belongs to the work of work. Freed of the personal, men can enter the 20th C workforce to sell their labor. 20th Century "Life" happens outside of work. And increasingly "Life" is a matter of consumption of the goods produced by industrial labor. Devoid of its role in production, the family becomes the center of consumption.
What is left of the analysis that blends Marxism and Feminism to allow us insights into industrialization? A great deal, I think. It still forms a major part of what remains of the grand narrative framework into which we fit our history. Chapter 3, "Capitalism and the Family," recounts the now classic formulation in detail. As a heuristic device, it still works. In the early modern period, capitalism had freed the family from feudal constraints. Here the Puritan family can be understood as a breaking with the feudal past. Under petty bourgeois capitalism of the yeoman form, workers own the "means of production." With the rise of industrial production, they work for wages instead. As industrialization proceeds, women are relegated to the home away from wage labor. Feminism is then seen as a reaction against this condition, this degradation of female work. Here is a problem with his analysis, however, since recent scholarship has shown that it was the ideal of domesticity that fueled much of the 19th Century's feminist movement. As Christine Stansell has shown us, under the guise of moral reform women were empowered to seek roles in public.
Affected by an overarching sense of presentism, he begins with an overview of feminist literature and theory in Chapter 1, "Feminism and Socialism," instead of covering the material in part 3. Assuming a prior knowledge of at least the outlines of Chapter 3, Zaretsky wrestles immediately with the relationship that class has to the family in the United States. He notes that feminists brought the concerns that were considered private into the public sphere in the 1960s. He considers the works of Kate Millett (Sexual Politics, 1970), Shulamith Firestone (The Dialectic of Sex, 1970), and Juliet Mitchell (Women's Estate, 1971). They all point to a separation of the public and private (which we are supposedly supposed to know from current events), and feminists seek to overcome it, in much the same way as socialists of the same period did as well. His contends in Chapter 2,"The Family and the Economy," that in the 1960s and 70s both feminism and socialism called for the recognition of "socially necessary work." Housework is work as well, though devalued by capitalism. So long as women are relegated to the role of housewives and mothers, and men are kept in the workplace, there can be no socialism.
When we look at the sweep of the 19th century, we see tremendous diversity and uneven development. Yet, the transition from small shop production (closely tied at first to the home) to large scale manufacture did change the workforce in major ways. We exit the 19th Century a very different nation because of this process. In the 20th C we inhabited a nation where most people were working for wages -- selling their labor as a commodity. This was not the case in the first half of the 19th C. As with the earlier transition away from Feudalism, the family was intricately involved with capitalist production in providing the private support for workers who go out into the work force. Women's work in the home mad (and makes) men's work at the factory or office possible. The most telling comment in the book comes when he points out that the "yeoman" is really the collective labor of the household. (p. 34)
What does this transition to industrialism do to the family? In Zaretsky's words:
Since the rise of industry, however, proletairianization separated most people (or families) from the ownership of productive property. As a result 'work' and 'life' were separated; proletairianization split off the outer world of alienated labor from an inner world of personal feeling. Just as capitalist development gave rise to the idea of family as a separate realm from the economy, so it created a 'separate' sphere of personal life, seemingly divorced from the mode of production. (p. 30)
In a wage work world where it is difficult to find meaning in your job, the retreat to the "private" realm of the family or a personal life becomes possible.
It is not, however, until Chapter 6, that he returns to a consideration of "Proletairianization and the Rise of Subjectivity." Under the pressure of rising industrialism, "the transformation of bourgeois individualism" took place. As the 19th C progressed, society divided between workplace and the home. Home became the location of sentiment, subjectivity and individualism. Rugged individualism (in the Marxian phrase, petty bourgeois) resisted the impact of mechanization. The family's role was central to maintaining individualism against the loss of control over the means of production (apprenticeship, craft skills, etc.). As the artisans became wage workers, the family space assumed new meaning. "The proletarian family" now consisted of the proletarian worker, his "housewife," and the children. They met, not in the workspace, but in the family space of the home. In considering "personal life and subjectivity in the twentieth-century United States," Zaretsky points out that the idea of family issues being "personal matters" is one outcome of this separation. Objectivity belongs to the work of work. Freed of the personal, men can enter the 20th C workforce to sell their labor. 20th Century "Life" happens outside of work. And increasingly "Life" is a matter of consumption of the goods produced by industrial labor. Devoid of its role in production, the family becomes the center of consumption.
July 6, 2022
The first time I encountered Eli’s take on the 70s debate between feminist theorists and socialist theorists (of course, this debate itself only existed for the very dual system theory that began to emerge in feminist circles) was in reading Hartmann’s starting essay on the Women and Revolution collection. Anyone who reads that essay will get one thing out of it: Zaretsky has no understanding of the position of women because he thinks that the solution for their oppression is based on “women [having] to identify with the working class”. Upon reading capitalism, the family, and personal life, one thing is clear: not only was Hartmann straw manning Eli, but the entire debate of the 60s, 70s and 80s feminism (up until now, if I may dare to say) is rendered superfluous by Eli’s work.
This book is the singular piece of so-called Marxist Feminism that has any closeness to Marxism and to reality, rather than utopian wishes that are misguided by a muddled understanding of society — what the marxist feminists see as a given, Eli understands as a form of appearance: Eli demystifies the public/private divide between production and reproduction, and shows us a very obvious point that has been left out of this scholarship, namely, that production and reproduction are interrelated and only appear as separate realms. At no point does Eli suggest that the new sphere of personal life is unrelated to its historical development— in fact, his account hinges on this recognition.
In a short book, Eli does more than 60 years of marxist feminist scholarship combined. Although Eli tries to focus on the family as a running thread of societies, which I must admit, I still am unsure if I buy it or not, his understanding of capitalism and women is sui generis in this scholarship. The meaning of “male supremacy” may have remained opaque, still, but I don’t think this is as important to his understanding of capitalism as the historical understanding he provides of women’s oppression in past societies, the effects of proletarianization on women, as well as the subsequent effect of capitalism as a crisis of bourgeois society, rendering the misrecognition of our society as “patriarchal” quite tangible.
I wonder whether this book isn’t taught in feminist/marxist courses because Eli is a man. I don’t doubt that. I recommend this book to anyone trying to dive deeper into “marxist feminism” — in these 141 pages you’ll get a better understanding of this relation between women, reproduction, and production than in the 60 years of marxist feminist scholarship that we have thus far.
This is the best piece of “feminist” writing that we have because this one actually makes some historical sense rather than the usual essentialist naturalization of gender oppression. I will note, although Eli is not explicit about his understanding of the difference between bourgeois society and capitalism, recent conversations with him have shown that he did in fact pressupose the latter as the crisis of the former.
Only if this piece had been taken more seriously within the debate it was part of… Perhaps we wouldn’t be swimming on a lake of academic incongruence, helplessness, and fiction.
This book is the singular piece of so-called Marxist Feminism that has any closeness to Marxism and to reality, rather than utopian wishes that are misguided by a muddled understanding of society — what the marxist feminists see as a given, Eli understands as a form of appearance: Eli demystifies the public/private divide between production and reproduction, and shows us a very obvious point that has been left out of this scholarship, namely, that production and reproduction are interrelated and only appear as separate realms. At no point does Eli suggest that the new sphere of personal life is unrelated to its historical development— in fact, his account hinges on this recognition.
In a short book, Eli does more than 60 years of marxist feminist scholarship combined. Although Eli tries to focus on the family as a running thread of societies, which I must admit, I still am unsure if I buy it or not, his understanding of capitalism and women is sui generis in this scholarship. The meaning of “male supremacy” may have remained opaque, still, but I don’t think this is as important to his understanding of capitalism as the historical understanding he provides of women’s oppression in past societies, the effects of proletarianization on women, as well as the subsequent effect of capitalism as a crisis of bourgeois society, rendering the misrecognition of our society as “patriarchal” quite tangible.
I wonder whether this book isn’t taught in feminist/marxist courses because Eli is a man. I don’t doubt that. I recommend this book to anyone trying to dive deeper into “marxist feminism” — in these 141 pages you’ll get a better understanding of this relation between women, reproduction, and production than in the 60 years of marxist feminist scholarship that we have thus far.
This is the best piece of “feminist” writing that we have because this one actually makes some historical sense rather than the usual essentialist naturalization of gender oppression. I will note, although Eli is not explicit about his understanding of the difference between bourgeois society and capitalism, recent conversations with him have shown that he did in fact pressupose the latter as the crisis of the former.
Only if this piece had been taken more seriously within the debate it was part of… Perhaps we wouldn’t be swimming on a lake of academic incongruence, helplessness, and fiction.
January 10, 2013
Another interesting attempt to marry psychoanalytic and Marxist concepts of personal and family life, which I think flounders despite its convincing theoretical approach for the formation of the personal sphere under capitalism. What is missing, I think, is a sense of how the personal sphere is structured by humans' social activity, and so it falls back on a rather thin reconfiguration of Freudian concepts.
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