An Introduction to Feminism

The last chapter examined the issue of pornography, an issue that divides liberal and radical feminists, and tried to show how we might resist the misrepresentations, double standards and the attempts at ‘de-radicalisation’ which characterise the usual discussions of that issue. In the process, surprisingly strong affinities emerged once again between the emphases and habits associated with ‘radical feminism’ and with the Marxist-influenced tradition of ‘critical theory’ respectively. The quick-yet-convoluted dismissals of the empirical case against porn in the dominant liberal discourse, as ingenious as they are seemingly inevitable, cry out for a critique in terms of the notion of (patriarchal) ideology – and that is exactly what they get, in effect, from figures like Catharine MacKinnon. In the attempt to resist what I regarded as the reduction of the critique of porn to a matter of lifestyle-policing, I also stressed another point that is of central importance to critical theorists: the need to critique society as a totality, recognising the interconnectedness of social life and the pervasiveness of its oppressive character, rather than attempting to break it up into isolated fragments, patches of light and dark. I stressed the links and parallels between the critique of porn and the critique of capitalism, the limitations of ‘atomistic’ approaches centred on doomed attempts to live individual lives that are politically unproblematic and morally squeaky-clean under a system which is anything but. As Adorno puts it, ‘Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.’

So whilst the issue of porn is most usually regarded as a battlefield between ‘liberal’ and ‘radical’ feminists, central themes from socialist and Marxist feminism hover unavoidably in the background. What I want to do next is to drag those themes into the foreground, and focus more closely on the relationship between feminist ideas and left-wing critiques of capitalism. I already said a little, in Chapter 6, about the historical clashes and affinities between Marxists (or other socialists) and feminists. In this chapter, I take a different tack, and consider a face of feminism that is very rarely seen or acknowledged: anarchist (or ‘anarcho-’/‘anarcha’-) feminism. By giving anarchist ideas the consideration they deserve, I suggest, we can get a clearer view of the vexed question of the relationship between feminist and socialist ideas: we may better see where there is a war, and where there isn't.