* An earlier version of this essay was presented to the University Seminar in the History of the Working Class, Columbia University, in October, 1983.

1. The single study which has profoundly shaped the present essay is Give Us Bread, But Give Us Roses. Working Women's Consciousness in the United States, 1890 to the First World War by Eisenstein, Sarah (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1983).Google Scholar

2. As a matter of stylistic convenience, Marx alone (and not Marx and Engels) will be referred to as the originator of this theory.

3. See Evans, Richard J., The Feminists (London: Croom Helm, 1977), pp. 153–159Google Scholar; Malmgreen, Gail, Neither Bread Nor Roses. Utopian Feminists and the English Working Class, 1800–1850. (Brighton: John L. Noyce, 1978), pp. 27–35Google Scholar; Moon, S. Joan, “Feminism and Socialism: The Utopian Synthesis of Flora Tristan,” in Boxer, M.J. and Quataert, J.H. (eds.), Socialist Women (New York: Elsevier, 1978), pp. 43–45Google Scholar; Rowbotham, Sheila, Women, Resistance and Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1974), Chapters 2–3Google Scholar; Taylor, Barbara, Eve and the New Jerusalem (New York: Pantheon, 1983), pp. 22, 284–285Google Scholar; and Weeks, Jeffrey, Sex, Politics and Society (London: Longman, 1981), pp. 167–171.Google Scholar

4. See Eisenstein, , Give Us Bread, pp. 49–50, 55–112Google Scholar; Hall, Catherine, “The Early Formation of Victorian Domestic Ideology,” in Burman, S. (ed.). Fit Work for Women (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979), pp. 21–31Google Scholar; and Weeks, , Sex, Politics and Society, pp. 38–56, 67–80.Google Scholar

5. Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” in Collected Works, VI (New York: International Publishers, 1976), p. 494.Google Scholar

6. Marx' theory legitimized this self-conception by supporting the demand of working men to maintain their position as the household providers of a sufficient “family wage.” See Marx, Karl, Capital, I (New York: International Publishers, 1967), pp. 395–396.Google ScholarHumphries, Jane in “The Working Class Family: A Marxist Perspective” in Ehlstain, J.B., ed., The Family in Political Thought (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1982), pp. 216–222Google Scholar, implicitly recognizes the necessary equation in Marx' doctrine of working-class interests with the interest of male workers in securing a “family wage.” Humphries is not, however, prepared to acknowledge the full implications of the “family wage” demand for the position and needs of working class women. See the critiques of Humphries' analysis in Barrett, Michelle and McIntosh, Mary, “The ‘Family Wage,’” Capital and Class 11 (Summer 1980). pp. 59–68Google Scholar and Sen, Gita, “The Sexual Division of Labor and the Working Class Family,” The Review of Radical Political Economics 12, 2 (Summer 1980), pp. 78–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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11. Marx, and Engels, , “Manifesto,” pp. 515–17.Google Scholar Owen himself adapted his strategic conception to the vehicle of working class cooperatives and trade unionism for a brief period (1829–34). Harrison, John F.C., Quest for the New Moral World, (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1969), pp. 195–197.Google Scholar

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13. The Morning Star. January 13, 1840, cited in Taylor, , Eve, p. 29.Google Scholar

14. Tristan, , Workers' Union (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1983), pp. viii, 38–39, 76;Google Scholar: Tristan, Flora, London Journal, 1840 (Charlestown, MA: Charles River Books, 1980), pp. 60–61Google Scholar; Johnson, , Utopian Communism, pp. 84, 93–94;Google Scholar; and Malmgreen, , Neither Bread, p. 19.Google Scholar

15. ‘Editorial’ (by Frances, and Morrison, James), The Pioneer April 12, 1834Google Scholar, cited in Taylor, , Eve, p. 75. See, also, pp. 101–117.Google Scholar

16. Morrison, James in The Pioneer, April 5, 1834Google Scholar, cited in Malmgreen, , Neither Bread, p. 28.Google Scholar See, also, Tristan, , Workers' Union, pp. 92–93Google Scholar and Taylor, , Eve, p. 114.Google Scholar

17. Marx, , Capital, I, p. 367.Google Scholar

18. Tristan, , Workers' Union, pp. 78–83.Google Scholar

19. The Union Ouvrière (Workers' Union) was intended to be a universal (i.e., international) association for the emancipation of working class men and women. Tristan propounded her conception and program in a book with this same title, and spoke to meetings of workers on her “tour” of France during 1843–44 until a fatal illness prevented her from continuing. See Tristan, , Workers' Union, pp. 83–89.Google Scholar

20. Thibert, Marguerite, “Féminisme et socialism d'après Flora Tristan,” Revue d'histoire économique 9 (1921), pp. 122–125, 136.Google Scholar See, also, Agulhon, Maurice, Une Ville Ouvrière au Temps du Socialisme Utopique (Paris: Mouton, 1970), pp. 154–163Google Scholar; Moon, , “Feminism and Socialism,” pp. 37, 41–45Google Scholar; Puech, , La Vie, pp. 329–357Google Scholar; and Strumingher, , Women, pp. 48–50.Google Scholar

21. Marx, and Engels, , “Manifesto,” pp. 501–502, 505.Google Scholar See, also, Engels, Frederick, “The Condition of the Working Class in England,” Collected Works, IV (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), pp. 437–439.Google ScholarMarx, and Engels, were familiar with Tristan's Workers' Union. See “The German Ideology,” pp. 19–20.Google Scholar

22. See the works cited in footnotes 12 and 20, and also Harrison, John F.C., Quest for the New Moral World (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1969), pp. 92–139, 212, 216.Google Scholar While Agulhon assesses Tristan's reception among male workers more positively than Moon does, he does not consider the specific impact of her ideas on women. Une Ville Ouvriere, pp. 161–163.Google Scholar

23. Hufton, Olwen, “Women in Revolution, 1789–1796,” in Johnson, D., (ed.), French Society and the Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 153.Google Scholar See, also, Rudé, George, The Crowd in History, 1730–1848 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1964), pp. 115–117, 195, 206–208, 219–220Google Scholar; Mathiez, Albert, After Robespierre (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1965), pp. 156, 205Google Scholar; Thomas, and Grimmett, , Women in Protest, pp. 28–64, 88–89, 136–137Google Scholar; Thompson, E.P., “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, 50 (02 1971), pp. 115–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar and The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage, 1963), pp. 62–68, 473.Google Scholar

24. It came into play at peak moments of working class mobilization, and was more tenacious in France than in England. See Prothero, lowerth, Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth Century London (Folkestone, Kent: Dawson, 1979), p. 160Google Scholar; Thomas, Edith, The Women Incendiaries (London: Secker and Warburg, 1967), pp. 43–58Google Scholar; Tilly, , “Paths of Proletarianization,” pp. 411–413Google Scholar; and for general discussions in other contexts, Benenson, Harold, “Review Essay: The Reorganization of U.S. Manufacturing Industry and Workers' Experiences, 1880–1920,” The Insurgent Sociologist 11, 3 (Fall 1982), pp. 73–74Google Scholar and Kaplan, Temma, “Female Consciousness and Collective Action: The Case of Barcelona, 1900–1918,” Signs 7, no. 3 (Spring 1982), pp. 545–566.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. See Foster, John, Class Struggle in the industrial Revolution (London: Methuen, 1974), pp. 52–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, , Eve. pp. 261–275Google Scholar; Thomas, and Grimmett, , Women in Protest, pp. 58–59Google Scholar; Thompson, Dorothy, “Women and Nineteenth Century Radical Politics,” in Mitchell, J. and Oakley, A., The Rights and Wrongs of Women (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), pp. 136–138Google Scholar; and Bezucha, Robert J., The Lyon Uprising of 1834 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 163–171CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for discussions of varied transitional forms of protest.

26. Prothero, , Artisans and Politics, pp. 28–50, 64–67, 159–171, 210–217, 300–307Google Scholar; Thompson, , The Making, pp. 251–259, 500–521Google Scholar; Turner, H.A., Trade Union Growth Structure and Policy (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1962), pp. 50–138Google Scholar; Agulhon, Maurice, La République au Village (Paris: Plon, 1970), pp. 128–134Google Scholar and Une Ville Ouvríere, pp. 116–177Google Scholar; Aminzade, Ronald, “French Strike Development and Class Struggle,” Social Science History 4, no. 1 (Winter 1980), pp. 60, 73Google Scholar; Bezucha, , The Lyon Uprising, pp. 50–57, 60–61, 96–121Google Scholar; Moss, Robert H., The Origins of the French Labor Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 8–14, 32–35, 46, 51–55Google Scholar; Sewell, William H. Jr., “Response to J. Rancière,” International Labor and Working Class History 24 (Fall 1983), pp. 18–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Work and Revolution in France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 201–211.Google Scholar

27. See the works by Turner Agulhon, Moss and Sewell cited in n.26 and Burgess, Keith, The Origins of British Industrial Relations (London: Croom Helm, 1975), pp. 17–18, 31–32, 101–102, 107–112, 178–184Google Scholar; Lewenhak, Sheila, Women and Trade Unions (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977), p. 51Google Scholar; Soldon, Norbert C., Women in British Trade Unions 1874–1976 (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978), p. 9.Google Scholar

28. See the works by Lewenhak, Prothero, Morgan, Taylor and Agulhon cited in nos. 12, 26 and 27, and by Stearns and Thomas, cited in n. 42.

29. Turner, , Trade Union Growth, p. 185Google Scholar See, also, Lewenhak, , Women and Trade Unions, pp. 49–51Google Scholar; Morgan, , Working Class Women, pp. 304–309Google Scholar; and Boston, Sarah, Women Workers and the Trade Unions, (London: Davis-Poynter, 1980), pp. 47–55.Google Scholar

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32. Prothero, , Artisans, pp. 68, 65–67.Google Scholar

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51. Ibid., pp. 18–23,30–31.

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55. Marx, , Capital, I, p. 489Google Scholar and Marx, and Engels, , “Manifesto,” pp. 501–502.Google Scholar

56. “Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle [in modern society] and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: 1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production …” Marx, Letter to Weydemeyer, J., 03 5, 1852Google Scholar, in Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Selected Correspondence (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1955), p. 69.Google Scholar

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64. Marx, , Capital, I, p. 394.Google Scholar My analysis of Marx' discussion of male and female employments in terms of physiological differences, and (below) of the impact of machinery on the value of the labor power of the adult male, follows that of Veronica Beechey's “Critical Analysis of Some Sociological Theories of Women's Work,” in Kuhn, A. and Wolpe, A. (eds.). Feminism and Materialism (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 182–183Google Scholar, which first advanced these arguments.

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66. Marx, , Capital, I, p. 394.Google Scholar

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