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Marx and the gendered structure of capitalism

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

I argue that Marx's central concern, consistent throughout his works, is to challenge and overcome hierarchical oppositions, which he considers as the core of modern, capitalist societies and the cause of alienation. The young Marx critiques the hierarchical idealism/materialism opposition, in which idealism abstracts from and reduces all material elements to the mind (or spirit), and materialism abstracts from and reduces all mental abstractions to the body (or matter). The mature Marx sophisticates this critique in his theory of the commodity fetish, in which exchange-value (the mind) abstracts from the use-value (the body) of the commodity. Although Marx aims to challenge capitalism by abolishing the hierarchical relation among binary oppositions, I show that in his early as well as his later writings on the working-class woman he reinforces hierarchical binaries, which points at the gendered unconscious structure of capitalism.

Key Words: abstraction • alienation • binary oppositions • early Marx • late Marx • working-class woman

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