P. VALENTINE
The Gender Distinction in Communisation Theory
Communisation theory is primed to do what only a minority of Marxist feminists have attempted to do over the last 50 years of inquiry: re-articulate the capitalist mode of production as being constituted no less by the man/woman relation than by the class relation.2 What would ideally emerge from such a project is a ‘single system’ in which the
gender relation and the class relation are equally necessary elements within a totality, rather than the subsumption of one to the other, or the erection of a ‘dual system’ of two different and autonomous systems of patriarchy and capitalism. We say communisation is ‘primed’ for this project because one of the major interventions of communisation theory has been to theorize communism as the abolition not only of capitalists, but also of workers; of work itself and thus of value; of the wage labor relation itself and thus of the distinction between ‘work’ and ‘life’. This distinction is cast in a variety of terms including the conceptual dyads public/private; social/nonsocial; public/domestic, and is almost unequivocally understood by
gender theorists as a grounding element in the production of
gender.
Communisation’s very starting point is a demand for the abolition of fundamental material elements of the reproduction of
gender – the division of social life into two ‘spheres.’ This implies an analysis of the system of
gender and class as a unity, and because it focuses
on the
gender binary as a material relation of exploitation or oppression in which the two sides are produced rather than given, it also articulates the patriarchy in a way which opens avenues toward new and more rigorous theories of
gender oppression that are able to link the exploitation and oppression of women with violence and oppression based
on hetero-normativity and cis-normativity. However, until the work of Théorie Communiste (TC) and recently Maya Andrea Gonzalez, conversations around communisation had completely ignored
gender, or had merely added
gender to the list of things to be abolished through communisation, amounting to little more than buttering the toast of communisation with radical cultural
gender theory.3 A critique of the
gender binary, of the essentialist identities of ‘woman’ and ‘man,’ which could lead equally to their destruction or proliferation, is attached to a theory of communisation without affecting the concept of what constitutes the capitalist totality. The mere shift from women’s liberation to
gender abolition cast in these basic terms represents little advance in theory over the well-trodden ‘postmodern’ shift to de-essentialize
identity (an important move, but not particularly new or rare). As TC have written,
If the abolition of the gender distinction is necessary from the point of view of the ‘success’ of communisation, it is not in the name of the abolition of all the mediations of society. It is in its concrete and immediate character that the contradiction between men and women imposes itself on the ‘success’ of communisation, against what that relation implies in terms of violence, invisibilisation, the ascription to a subordinate position.4
Only a substantive theory of the production and reproduction of
gender in capitalism can give real non-idealist content to the abolition of
gender. The important questions are: what is ‘woman’ and ‘man’, what is the
gender relation, and what is its relation to class? The nascent forays into
gender theory from the communising tendency have tended towards two major elisions: avoiding the problematic of race and its relation to class and
gender, and displacing an analysis of sexual violence to the sidelines of the production and reproduction of the
gender distinction. We will here attempt a brief overview and assessment of existing communisationist
gender theory and point towards some of these obvious gaps.
...We believe that capital is a totality that is ‘classed’, ‘gendered’ and ‘raced’ by virtue of its own internal logic. These are not three contradictions that sit
on three thrones in the centre of the capitalist totality, homologous with one another, dictating its logic. We must reveal exactly how race and
gender are necessary social relations based
on particular material processes within the capitalist mode of production.28 Through the recent work of communisationist
gender theory, we have come to understand ‘women’ as the category describing those whose activity, unwaged and waged, is appropriated in their totality by society (‘men’). This relation inscribes two distinct ‘spheres’ that ground the
gender binary. The fact that the boundaries around these spheres are violently policed does not mean they are static – in fact their policing also involves a constant manipulation of the boundaries. We understand ‘proletariat’ as the category describing those who do not own the means of production, and are forced to either sell their labor to those who do (the ‘capitalists’) or are cast out to waste away. How are we to understand the category of ‘racialized,’ or perhaps of ‘black,’ or perhaps ‘ethnicized’? It seems possible that these categories are necessarily related to capital’s necessary overproduction of humans within the necessary movement of capitalist development, and its consequent need to kill, obliterate, remove and dispossess such bodies.29 But how do we structure this theory, and how does it relate to waged exploitation and to the two “spheres”? One fruitful direction for communisation theory to take might be to bring theories of surplus population (such as those articulated in the recent Endnotes 2) into dialogue with theorists of race and ghettos, prisons, and unemployment, in particular the work of Loic Wacquant, Ruth Gilmore, and the above-mentioned Wilderson. Communisation theory must also look to, critique, and expand upon the work
on race done by autonomist Marxists such as Selma James, Silvia Federici, and Harry Cleaver, all of whom emphasize the key role of race in reproducing stratification within the working class, constructing a hierarchy of labor powers, and providing the ruling class with a mechanism with which to fracture and divide proletarians.
For now, we note, especially for our European comrades (who continue to be more resistant to these questions than any other comrades we’ve encountered around the world), the obvious fact that the reproduction of racial and ethnic hierarchies affect, form and constitute every moment and place of capital’s reproduction. A range of feminists, from African-American feminists like Patricia Hill Collins to eco-feminists like Maria Mies, have noted and argued that
gender is produced through racialization, and that racialization is produced through
gender. Indeed, communisation’s theory of
gender is deeply flawed due to its failure to comprehend how
gender itself is fundamentally structured through systems of racialization. The work of Evelyn Nakano Glenn provides strong evidence of the way in which the female sphere of reproductive labor discussed by TC and Gonzalez is itself propped up by a racial division. The historical reliance of white women
on the paid reproductive labor of women of color has allowed white women to embody a feminine cultural ideal decoupled from dirtier and more physically demanding domestic tasks. The paid labor of women of color has also allowed white women to enter the labor force without forcing the burden of reproductive labor upon men. Glenn shows how this racial division of reproductive labor establishes a particular relationship between white women and women of color, in which racial hierarchy becomes the mechanism by which white women can offload some of the labor forced upon them by their husbands onto other women.30 These important insights must be a starting point for further theorization.
Communisation has now been able to say, there is never a proletarian who is not gendered, so we must also be able to say there is never a proletarian or a ‘woman’ or ‘man’ who is not raced. Communisationists can’t afford to turn a blind eye to these necessary processes of the capitalist totality.
And really with the Fed 