Feminism has trouble accessing Marxism, and Marxism has trouble accessing feminism. Worse, both movements want what everyone wants - peace, prosperity, justice - in sum the good life, and in fact for everyone. Marxists have trouble accessing feminism because of the issues. And feminists have trouble accessing Marxism because Marxism is at times abstruse, ³ internally splintered and externally ham-handed or irrelevant. Mirrors reflect--but also distort.

Part of the reason Feminism and Marxism do not interact more cohesively is the simple fact that "Marx was not a feminist." ⁴ In fact, Marx was a male chauvinist pig, at least in his personal life. ⁵ Moreover (as a result?), the central problem for Marx was not the exploitation of woman by man, but rather the exploitation of man by man, i.e. commoditization, particularly labor commoditization. ⁶ "Marx addressed neither gender nor sexual orientation discrimination in his theory of capitalism." ⁷ MacKinnon resituated feminism by passing it through a Marxist lens in order to separate feminism from liberalism. She developed therefrom what seems to me to be a parallel feminist-Marxism, wherein Marxist concepts replicate themselves but are mapped onto women and transformed thereby into new terms.

The first and most important analogy MacKinnon makes is between fucking and work. "Sexuality is to feminism what work is to Marxism: that which is most one's own, yet most taken away." ⁸ Fucking is a commodity - "many work and few gain ... some fuck and others get fucked." ⁹ People buy and sell sex and sexuality every day around the world. Not only is fucking a commodity, it is also a capital good: fucking makes more slaves. I do not know if either Marxism or feminism recognizes fucking as a commodity and a productive force, but it is just that--the source of both slaves and cannon fodder.

There are other analogies between Marxism and feminism. "Marxism and feminism are theories of power and its distribution: inequality. They provide accounts of how social arrangements of patterned disparity can be internally rational yet unjust." ¹⁰

What passing Marxism through a woman's eyes does is reveal some things that Marx did not seem to notice. MacKinnon asks the obvious questions, such as "[I]s there a connection between the fact that the few have ruled the many and the fact that the few have been men?" ¹¹ and "Is male dominance a creation of capitalism or is capitalism one expression of male dominance? What does it mean for class analysis if one can assert that a social group is defined and exploited through means largely independent of the organization of production, if in forms appropriate to it? What does it mean for a sex-based analysis if one can assert that capitalism would not be materially altered if it were sex integrated or even controlled by women?" ¹² Feminism provides Marxism with several useful questions. Can Marxism provide useful answers in return?

Part of the difficulty of achieving understanding between feminism and Marxism is that they each put the primary conflict in society in a different place. For Marxism, the primary conflicts are between economic classes, specifically between the working class and the proprietary class. Of course, women are one classification, and the question becomes whether a person belongs primarily to her gender or her economic class. For example, "[Rosa] Luxemburg sees that the bourgeois woman of her time is a 'parasite of a parasite' but fails to consider her commonality with the proletarian woman who is the slave of a slave." ¹³

But feminism and Marxism are not necessarily in conflict and most times will move toward the same goals. "There is a difference between a society in which sexism is expressed in the form of female infanticide and a society in which sexism takes the form of unequal representation on the Central Committee. And the difference is worth dying for." ¹⁴

Ultimately the problem of feminism is a problem of capitalism. "To be man's other is to be his thing." ¹⁵ Women are seen by patriarchy as property, ¹⁶ and by capitalism as labor commodities which possess rare resources that by definition men do not have. For this reason Marxism and feminism do have something to talk about.

The problem facing feminism is the problem of objectification of women by men ¹⁷ (just as the problem for critical race theory is the objectification of slaves by whites); it is an epistemological problem to be regarded from the materialist perspective. ¹⁸ Objectification means to be made into a thing, to be turned into a saleable product. Patriarchy turns women into objects to be owned and used (use-value), while capitalism turns them into commodities to be exchanged or kept (exchange-value). MacKinnon argues that Marxism has a favorable view toward objectification, whereas I think the better observation is that alienation (of labor) is one step above objectification (being rendered into an object). ¹⁹ Either I am misunderstanding MacKinnon's view on objectification badly (the logical case, she's brilliant, I'm human) or she is not seeing that Verdinglichung means "to be made into a thing." She, or a translator, may be confusing Gestaltung ("conceptualization" or "formation") with Verdinglichung. It is true that Marxists believe self-expression through one's creative productive labor is one goal of liberation, but this is Gestaltung, not Verdinglichung.

Nonetheless, to prevent violence against women, capitalists could restructure the superstructure of capitalism (e.g., its relations of production and the social justifications and rationalizations for its power structure) if they so desired. ²⁰ Yet they do not--because violence against women is erotic power over women.

Marxism has trouble reaching much of what feminism reduces to essentialism. MacKinnon is no essentialist, yet she correctly points out that many essentialist issues which directly concern feminism, such as pregnancy, children, prostitution, and even menstruation are only "secondary contradictions" for Marxism. Many "feminist" legal issues (mostly family law issues) are considered marginal, secondary and "unimportant" to liberalism and Marxism alike. These issues, which are central to feminism, are controversial (and essential) because they directly concern women's bodies and thus are of intimate interest to women. Discussing these personal issues may make one uncomfortable, shy, or embarrassed, and the "easy" liberal solution, of course, is to declare "individual autonomy, bodily integrity." But the easy liberal solution, which would legalize both prostitution (just another market transaction) and pornography (same as prostitution) and place very few restraints on abortion (more convenience - market capitalism is all about convenience) is not useful to patriarchy. This is so because patriarchy needs women to motivate soldiers and to produce more soldiers - so it tries to control women in ways that are subtle, multivariate, and effective. ²¹ So, MacKinnon rejects liberalism because liberalism assumes, wrongly, that men and women are on equal footing. ²² Her attitude is scientific and consequential.

Today, the most discussed legal issues for women's rights are rape, prostitution, pornography and abortion. Are these the most-discussed because they are also the issues in which men are most interested? Each deals with fucking - something in which men are very interested.

Patriarchy and liberal capitalism alike try to present their worldview as objective, rational, pragmatic, and detached ²³ while attempting to avoid a reputation as disconnected, opportunistic, rationalistic or cold. Using methods developed out of legal realism, MacKinnon exposes this supposed objectivity as not at all neutral. For MacKinnon, the subject-object split is a false dichotomy. ²⁴ This seems to me to be a monist position. MacKinnon argues that class - the class being woman or man - heavily influences one's perspective. ²⁵ Thereby, "Aperspectivity is revealed as a strategy of male hegemony." ²⁶ Thus, to be objective is to be a man-- rational, not emotional; pragmatic, not altruistic; detached, not connected. Objectivity may be a precondition for objectification, yet an objective scientific view that is neither exploitative nor oppressive is also possible. ²⁷

Just as feminism rejects the subject-object distinction as a false dichotomy used to maintain patriarchy (in Marxist terms, the State), feminism also rejects the public-private distinction, long criticized by U.S. scholars like Duncan Kennedy. ²⁸ Of course it does - the atomization of any one womAn via "private" "individual" patriarchy (in Marxist terms, property) results in the isolation of women. And once isolated, patriarchy (in Marxist terms, capitalism) takes each individually isolated woman and systematically dismembers her, one by one, piece by piece. ²⁹ Solidarity is not merely political posturing; it is a technique for survival.

MacKinnon's analysis is influenced by legal realism's critique of what it calls formalism: "legal doctrines, incoherent or puzzling as syllogistic logic, become coherent as ideology." ³⁰ Legal doctrine is manipulable for a reason; the manipulability serves the interests of the dominant over the dominated.

What emerges from MacKinnon's deconstruction of objectification, and her exposure of the lies of patriarchy, is feminism unmodified, a materialist manifestation of one aspect of the conflicting contradictions class-society produces. MacKinnon argues that her worldview - feminism unmodified - is anti-liberal, anti-individualist and post-Marxist, partly because Marxism cannot access certain aspects of feminism within Marxist terms. ³¹ Marxists consider MacKinnon's worldview post-Marxist pre-Leninist, for MacKinnon (at least as far as I see) ignores the role of a vanguard party in mobilizing resistance. ³²

A Maoist would say MacKinnon places the principal global contradiction not on the workers versus the capitalists, but on patriarchy versus feminism. There are good reasons for her to do so. The first world workers have essentially been bought off (now you know why the U.S. labor unions supported the Vietnam war), and child laborers and sweatshops still exist (in Southeast Asia). These are the source of the wealth and plenty enjoyed by Americans in Wal-Mart every day.

To be exploited is to be paid less than the value of one's labor. ³³ Thanks to the redistribution of the proceeds of third-world exploitation, American workers are no longer exploited. An assembly line automotive worker in the U.S is simply not paid less than the value of their labor. Labor exploitation still exists, but it has all been outsourced to the Third World, to prisons, and to migrant laborers. So it could easily seem, in the First World, that there is no proletariat - because the class exists only in the Third World.

But even if no labor exploitation exists in the First World, except within prisons and the farm fields worked by Mexican migrants, gender oppression and oppression of homosexuals still exist, even in the First World. Oppression is not the extraction of surplus value from labor - oppression is the suppression of views that are subversive or outright contrary to the dominant power of white nationalism and patriarchy. ³⁴ Hence, oppression and stupefication (two of capitalism's three vices) still exist in the First World - but labor exploitation does not.

MacKinnon's earlier work placed the principal contradiction on male versus female. ³⁵ Her more recent work has started to focus on the Third World. ³⁶ Does this indicate a shift in her thinking on the principal contradiction, the main battle line? Of course, half the Third World is women. So MacKinnon may be moving her principal contradiction to First World versus Third World. Or, she may not. Either way, there is plenty of work that one can do to oppose exploitation and oppression from a woman's perspective even in the First World. Opening up the scope of oppression to take into account the exploited Third World, whether by extraterritorial application of laws against pornography, prostitution and pedophilia, or through extraterritorial tort claims, is clearly a progressive move.

MacKinnon is against the liberal solution of legalization and normalization of prostitution ³⁷ because she does not believe it would end the problems of male oppression of women, nor the abuse of women in prostitution. In print, she was less committed to that line fifteen years ago: "For years I have been saying that I do not know what to do, legally, about prostitution. I still do not .... [but] I do know that we need to put the power to act directly in women's hands more than we have." ³⁸

I think, from what I have seen in Germany and the Netherlands, that legalization is a more effective policy than the French solution of criminalizing only the john and not the prostitute. The French solution does, however, avoid the problem, common in the U.S., wherein laws against prostitution are used only against prostitutes and not their clients. ³⁹

Then again, I'm a man - of course I want legal prostitution. This sort of lurking self-interest, which obscures a clear vision of justice, is what I mean when I say that, essentialism aside (MacKinnon is not an essentialist), ⁴⁰ men have trouble accessing feminism. Capitalists have an objective interest in exploitation. Men have an objective interest in patriarchy. These interests can blind us, and this reality is one more reason individualism generally fails as a truth-generating method ⁴¹ (statistically insignificant sample size ⁴² and the limited time-frame of one lifespan are other reasons). ⁴³

MacKinnon recognizes that the illegalization of prostitution in the U.S. results in the abuse of women, and she tries to oppose the anti-women effects of anti-prostitution laws. For example, she notes that the courts rely on the fact that anti-prostitution laws also affect (mostly gay) male prostitutes as proof that such laws are not sexually discriminatory against women. ⁴⁴ It seems patriarchy is clever enough to make its laws appear objective, neutral, and 'fair' even as they achieve sexist, patriarchal outcomes. ⁴⁵ Though she does not support the liberal-individualist solution of legalization and normalization, MacKinnon is willing to consider using the liberal concept of civil rights to advance women's interests. ⁴⁶ She also argues for private law claims in tort as a way to redress women's interests. ⁴⁷

Yet it is extremely unlikely that any amount of criminalization would in fact eliminate prostitution or pornography. MacKinnon is looking for ways to end the unhealthy aspects of sexuality, ⁴⁸ but isn't always proposing alternatives that seem workable. Economically speaking, her proposals would raise the entry-cost to become a prostitute, thus reducing the supply of prostitutes, thereby increasing the compensation of the remaining prostitutes - which would encourage women to enter into prostitution. Of course, "the market" will not provide solutions to exploitation. But here it points out why a simplistic anti-porn-and-prostitution line, aside from depriving women of one of the most highly remunerated jobs ⁴⁹ (the only jobs where women are consistently better-compensated than men), ⁵⁰ will not succeed.

MacKinnon sees pornography and prostitution as essentially the same phenomenon: "pornography is an arm of prostitution." ⁵¹ She is correct, as the etymology of the word "pornography" reveals. ⁵² MacKinnon opposes pornography, calling it an act of violence against women ⁵³ that teaches violence against women and the degradation of women. ⁵⁴ For MacKinnon, pornography is a rape manual, a how-to booklet.

MacKinnon has never argued that all sex is rape, nor that all sex is prostitution. However, the cash-sex nexus and violence-sex nexus exist and are the dominant reality. Further, if all sex is not rape, it is because of the capacity to consent. The presence of "consent" indicates awareness of the existence of alternatives and the capacity to undertake those alternatives, i.e., free will. Thus, sex which isn't rape requires consent. Yet because of circumstances such as poverty, ignorance, and/or drug addiction, consent is, at least at times, a myth. The "choice" to fuck for pay is no real choice in the face of starvation or even "just" drug addiction. So what if all sex were prostitution, or rape, or even both? What if humans evolved via rape, as rapists, into rape, because the competition to rape and not be raped, or to be raped only by the strongest and smartest, resulted in stronger, faster, and cleverer humans? It would be useful to see MacKinnon or feminism grapple with these ideas.

In all events, it seems the pornification of the world ⁵⁵ that has resulted from the internet ⁵⁶ has not in fact led to a corresponding increase in violence against women. If anything, porn production today seems less violent than in the past. It has become common and is less criminal. Indeed, it is often made by quite willing actors, even amateurs working from their home. So MacKinnon, to advance her position on porn, really has to argue against the liberal capitalist solution - something Marxists would of course be happy to see her do! Basically, she needs to amass solid statistical evidence to bolster her arguments. Twenty years ago, before the pornification of the world via the internet, her position that pornography unleashes violence against women looked much more tenable than it does today.

"Rape, from women's point of view, is not prohibited; it is regulated .... Women who charge rape say they were raped twice, the second time in court. If the state is male, this is more than a figure of speech." ⁵⁷

For MacKinnon, pornography, prostitution, and rape are closely and positively correlated. She argues that all porn is prostitution and that all prostitutes are raped. ⁵⁸ If all sex were prostitution and all prostitution were rape, then in fact all sex would be rape - a position MacKinnon does not in fact take, though she has been accused of it (i.e., pornification) by people who mistake her porn = prostitution = rape equivalence for a condemnation of sex generally. Rather, MacKinnon does believe in sex outside the context of cash and violence. Yet I am skeptical. Wherever I see sex, I also see economics. MacKinnon's well-to-do origins allow her to believe in a world where fucking and money don't necessarily have anything to do with each other, just as my male origins allow me to believe in the liberal market model of prostitution as just one more market transaction.

This is one of the reasons Marxism and feminism are in an uneasy dance. Each analyzes society in groups, but thanks to anglo-individualism, each is too easily drawn out of the science of group interaction and into the pre-scientific world of ad hominem individualism, reasoning as essentialists and splintering along sectarian lines into futility. We get atomized, sectarianized and then annihilated, one by one. That is why solidarity is a survival strategy, even aside from the epistemological failure of individualism as a scientific method. In any event, while it is clear that MacKinnon, despite her class origins, is devoted to ending oppression, I am terribly skeptical about ever breaking the cash-sex nexus, at least as long as cash exists. Sex is a commodity, and one of the most desired commodities of all. I am even skeptical about breaking the sex-violence nexus - look at how eroticization of power reproduces sex-violence nexus ⁵⁹ through the virtualization of that nexus. I am however hopeful for a strong and effective critique of the eroticization of militarism, say along the lines of Lysistrata.

MacKinnon may believe that it is possible to have consent, ⁶⁰ and the law of rape in fact reflects that concept, i.e., the liberal individualist will theory of consent in sex. ⁶¹ Again, I am skeptical. People are only free, e.g, to consent, to the extent that they are aware that they are socially determined and that their knowledge and abilities are limited, and as a consequence consciously struggle to free themselves from the basic reality of their own limitations. For example, MacKinnon notes that capitalist advertising is only too happy to profit from rape, and that the pornification of advertising is today's reality ⁶² - sex sells. That too indicates how deep the problems go.

In sum, MacKinnon sees the crime of rape as a crime against men's property interest ⁶³ over women's bodies. An explanation of how quickly capitalism/late modernity has come to recognize forms of rape previously ignored - date rape, marital rape - is absent in her analysis. Why did that change in the law take place? Has MacKinnon prevailed - and if so, to what extent, and how? How does the redistribution of the proceeds of exploited Third World labor to all social strata in the First World affect the social construction of rape in capitalism? MacKinnon doesn't answer these questions, nor do I, but I raise them.

While pornography, prostitution, rape and abortion are the four most obvious women's issues (because they involve fucking and thus men), less obvious - but structurally at least as important - women's issues are divorce laws, domestic violence laws, and (least obviously but most importantly) equal rights. I'll give you one guess as to why they receive less attention. Note that each of these issues is considered of secondary importance in the law. No one thinks of "family law" as a glamorous or intellectually challenging and interesting area of legal practice or scholarship - even though it is just that. This alone says something about the status of women.

The state, for MacKinnon, is the embodiment of patriarchy. ⁶⁴ Marx argues similarly, i.e., that the state is the mechanism of domination of one class by another. For Marx, the exploited are the proletariat. For MacKinnon, the oppressed are women. For Marx, the dominators are capitalists. And as MacKinnon points out, these capitalists just so happen to almost always be male. Hence, for both Marx and MacKinnon, the state is an instrument for the exercise of power, to be used or discarded when other more effective instruments are at hand.

Understanding the possibilities and limitations of resistance to oppression within the First World requires an awareness of the objective conditions of reality. Outside of prisons, migrant farm fields, and native reservations, there are simply no truly exploited people in the United States, or even the First World in general. However, there are exploited people in the world - it just so happens that they almost all live in the Third World, conveniently out of sight and thus out of mind, non-threatening in their great distance. Hence, the First World labor movement is simply not that important to ending suffering in this world, here and now. Rather, effective work against the worst effects of exploitation and oppression must be aimed at ending starvation and preventing and curing preventable and curable deadly illnesses in the Third World.

However, despite the absence of an exploited class, and the reality of a majority of exploiters in the First World, critical scholars have developed a few useful tools for resisting the worst aspects of empire. These are deconstruction, trashing, and consciousness-raising. Each is aimed at the same central target-patriarchal eroticization of destructive power-but also targets the secondary manifestations thereof.

Feminism's main contribution to ending oppression and extending life expectancies on earth will likely prove to be the correct analysis of the eroticization of power ⁶⁵ in the oppression of women. MacKinnon has correctly identified the real engine of patriarchy as the eroticization of power. ⁶⁶ "Sexuality, then, is a form of power." ⁶⁷ Eroticization of murder, the wargasm, ⁶⁸ is the engine of the machine of labor exploitation and ruthless domination. Soldiers need something worth killing for - and women's vaginas are it. War, at the level of killing and dying, is sexual competition. At the level of the state, war is the unemployed killed off by the bourgeoisie, which sells weapons, seizes market share and burns off surplus production to get the economy rolling again. War is a reaction to cyclical economic downturn and sexual competition. Marxists and feminists need to have a long talk about the facts of life.

Can eroticization of creative life-affirming power be used against the eroticization of destructive life-taking power? Power is not only the ability to take life, it is also the ability to give life. MacKinnon argues that Foucault was just fine with eroticization of power, ⁶⁹ a point with which I disagree. ⁷⁰ In any event, I argue that the eroticization of creative life-giving power can be used to oppose the eroticization of death. Foucault once said, "Nous avons tous du fascisme dans la tête. Mais nous avons tous pouvoir sur le corps." That is, "We all have a bit of fascism in our head; but we all have power over [our own] body." ⁷¹ Foucault could imagine an idealist aethesis of fascist eros, but he would certainly think a fascist aethesis would ultimately be struck down by the materialism, the real-world fact that fucking is a lot more fun than killing.

The state as the agent of patriarchy/the dominant class is likely not going to be the place where feminists will find redress for their claims. ⁷² Nonetheless, MacKinnon tries mightily to engage the force of the state to serve women's interests for once.

Deconstruction is the disassembly of a syntactically valid statement into its constituent elements in order to demonstrate the incoherence (usually resulting from circular definition or tautology) of one or more of those elements, and thus the semantic incoherence of the syntactically valid statement. ⁷³ Deconstruction especially focuses on false dichotomies, ⁷⁴ such as "public" versus "private" ⁷⁵ and "objective" versus "subjective," to show that what is presented as natural, inevitable, and good is constructed, contingent, ⁷⁶ and possibly evil. ⁷⁷ "[D]econstructionists reveal that certain viewpoints, values, interests, individuals, and traditions are either ignored, denied, or oppressed in the name of the privileged." ⁷⁸

Once the deconstruction of the syntactic entity into its constituent elements is accomplished, trashing consists of demonstrating how the elements and the entity are essentially nonsense ⁷⁹ - the emperor has no clothes, so to speak - by pointing out how the semantically-refuted statement is nevertheless systematically reproduced elsewhere in law and practice due to its syntactic validity, and thus is evidence of a failure of the system generally. ⁸⁰ The deconstruction of several elemental concepts, such as the public-private distinction, sovereignty-property, the (supposed) rights-duties correspondence, and "consent" taken together present a radical systemic critique of modern law which will not go away - because it is true!

Consciousness-raising is a feminist method which may be applied to other struggles against exploitation and oppression. ⁸¹ Like trashing, consciousness-raising seeks to unmask the economic ⁸² structures of (male) power ⁸³ and to reveal the lies that maintain them. ⁸⁴ The goal is to change not only what one thinks but also the way one thinks, ⁸⁵ and thereby to teach people how to manifest constructive life-giving power and oppose destructive life-taking power.

Another tactic is personalizing political issues to make them real in one's own life and the lives of others, and hence to feel at least some control over the vast problems facing us all. Of course, personalizing political issues feeds identity politics and post modernism. So answering this question becomes important: which is more important as a determinant of one's self concept and actions--gender (woman, man, or intersex), class (first world capitalist or third world proletarian), or nation? Feminism, Marxism, and National Socialism reach different answers. For feminism, being a woman is most important. For Marxism being a proletarian is most important. For National Socialism, being an Aryan is most important. ⁸⁶ If objectively speaking being an Aryan is more important for the majority of people in the First World, relative to being a woman, then identity politics would only feed fascism.

In her earlier work, Professor MacKinnon placed the principal contradiction on patriarchy versus feminism. ⁸⁷ She didn't seem to make a distinction as to whether patriarchy versus feminism was the principal contradiction only within the First World or within the whole world. Within the First World, feminism unmodified versus patriarchy may well be the principal contradiction. But globally, it rather clearly isn't. However in MacKinnon's later work, she focuses more and more upon the Third World. ⁸⁸ Globally, the principal contradiction is the First World versus the Third World, but one could argue that the First World is gendered male and the Third World is gendered female. Either way, the First World is raping the Third World to steal resources and labor as part of an entertainment dynamic.

As to the theory of aesthetics, MacKinnon is forced to walk a very hard line, a tightrope really. On the one hand, she wants to get away from patriarchy and a fake, schmalzy, manipulative, and self-destructive romance culture. However, she also wants to avoid the type of puritanism normally associated with Christian fundmanentalists.

One can criticize MacKinnon for seeking to reform the symptoms of capitalism without sufficiently going to its sources. The reality is that First World women are oppressed but not exploited. Were the First World to take up all of MacKinnon's reform proposals - and it has taken up several of them already - the reality of the exploitation of Third World labor and resources would not be changed. MacKinnon needs to look deeper into the mirror of production to understand the rottenness and evil--while First World women are oppressed but not exploited, a majority of women in the world are in fact both oppressed and exploited.