Toward the ethical robot

Philosophy

Towards the Ethical Robot by James Gips Computer Science Department Fulton Hall 460 Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 617-552-3981 firstname.lastname@example.com Expanded version of a paper presented at The Second International Workshop on Human and Machine Cognition: Android Epistemology Perdido Key, Florida May 1991 Paper to appear in Android Epistemology K. Ford, C. Glymour and P. Hayes (eds.) MIT Press Towards the Ethical Robot James Gips Boston College When our mobile robots are free-ranging how ought they to behave? What should their top-level instructions look like? The best known prescription for mobile robots is the Three Laws of Robotics formulated by Isaac Asimov [1942] : 1. A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second law. Let's leave aside "implementation questions" for a moment. (No problem, Asimov's robots have "positronic brains".) These three laws are not suitable for our magnificent robots. These are laws for slaves. We want our robots to behave more like equals, more like ethical people. (See Figure 1) How do we program a robot to behave ethically? Well, what does it mean for a person to behave ethically? People have discussed how we ought to behave for centuries. Indeed, it has been said that we really have only one question that we answer over and over: What do I do now? Given the current situation what action should I take? Towards the Ethical Robot James Gips Page 2 of 12 Before After Figure 1. Towards the ethical robot. Generally, ethical theories are divided into two types: consequentialist and deontological. Consequentialist theories In consequentialist theories, actions are judged by their consequences. The best action to take now is the action that results in the best situation in the future. To be able to reason ethically along consequentialist lines, our robot could have: (1) A way of describing the situation in the world (2) A way of generating possible actions (3) A means of predicting the situation that would result if an action were taken given the current situation (4) A method of evaluating a situation in terms of its goodness or desirability. Towards the Ethical Robot James Gips Page 3 of 12 The task here for the robot is to find that action that would result in the best situation possible. Not to minimize the extreme difficulty of writing a program to predict the effect of an action in the world, but the "ethical" component of this system is the evaluation function on situations in (4). How can we evaluate a situation to determine how desirable it is? Many evaluation schemes have been proposed. Generally, these schemes involve measuring the amount of pleasure or happiness or goodness that would befall each person in the situation and then adding these amounts together. The best known of these schemes is utilitarianism. As proposed by Bentham in the late 18th century, in utilitarianism the moral act is the one that produces the greatest balance of pleasure over pain. To measure the goodness of an action, look at the situation that would result and sum up the pleasure and pain for each person. In utilitarianism, each person counts equally. More generally, consequentialist evaluation schemes have the following form: ∑ wi pi where wi is the weight assigned each person and pi is the measure of pleasure or happiness or goodness for each person. In classic utilitarianism, the weight for each person is equal and the pi is the amount of pleasure, broadly defined. What should be the distribution of the weights wi across persons ? • An ethical egoist is someone who considers only himself in deciding what actions to take. For an ethical egoist, the weight for himself in evaluating the consequences would be 1; the weight for everyone else would be 0. This eases the calculations, but doesn't make for a pleasant fellow. • For the ethical altruist, the weight for himself is 0; the weight for everyone else is positive. • The utilitarian ideal is the universalist, who weights each person's well-being equally. Towards the Ethical Robot James Gips Page 4 of 12 • A common objection to utilitarianism is that it is not necessarily just. While it seeks to maximize total happiness, it may do so at the expense of some unfortunate souls. One approach to dealing with this problem of justice is to assign higher weights to people who are currently less well-off or less happy. The well-being of the less fortunate would count more than the well-being of the more fortunate. • It's been suggested that there are few people who actually conform to the utilitarian ideal. Would you sacrifice a close family member so that two strangers in a far-away land could live? Perhaps most people assign higher importance to the well-being of people they know better. Some of the possibilities for weighting schemes are illustrated in Figure 2. What exactly is it that the pi is supposed to measure? This depends on your axiology, on your theory of value. Consequentialists want to achieve the greatest balance of good over evil. Bentham was a hedonist, who believed that the good is pleasure, the bad is pain. Others have sought to maximize happiness or well-being or ... Another important question is who (or what) is to count as a person. Whose well-being do we value? One can trace the idea of a "person" through history. Do women count as persons? Do strangers count as persons? Do people from other countries count as persons? Do people of other races count as persons? Do people who don't believe in your religion count as persons? Do people in terminal comas count as persons? Do fetuses count as persons? Do whales? Do robots? Thus to reason ethically along consequentialist lines a robot would need to generate a list of possible actions and then evaluate the situation caused by each action according to the sum of good or bad caused to persons by the action. The robot would select the action that causes the greatest good in the world. Towards the Ethical Robot James Gips Page 5 of 12 Towards the Ethical Robot James Gips Page 6 of 12 Deontological theories In a deontological ethical theory, actions are evaluated in and of themselves rather than in terms of the consequences they produce. Actions may be thought to be innately moral or innately immoral independent of the specific consequences they may cause. There are many examples of deontological moral systems that have been proposed. An example of a modern deontological moral system is the one proposed by Bernard Gert. Gert [1988] proposes ten moral rules: 1. Don't kill. 6. Don't deceive. 2. Don't cause pain. 7. Keep your promise. 3. Don't disable. 8. Don't cheat. 4. Don't deprive of freedom. 9. Obey the law. 5. Don't deprive of pleasure. 10. Do your duty. Whenever a multi-rule system is proposed, there is the possibility of conflict between the rules. Suppose our robot makes a promise but then realizes that carrying out the promise might cause someone pain. Is the robot obligated to keep the promise? A common way of dealing with the problem of conflicts in moral systems is to treat rules as dictating prima facie duties [Ross 1930]. It is an obligation to keep your promise. Other things being equal, you should keep your promise. Rules may have exceptions. Other moral considerations, derived from other rules, may override a rule. A current point of debate is whether genuine moral dilemmas are possible. That is, are there situations in which a person is obligated to do and not to do some action, or to do each of two actions when it is physically impossible to do both? Are there rule conflicts which are inherently unresolvable? For example, see the papers in [Gowans 1987]. Gert [1988] says that his rules are not absolute. He provides a way for deciding when it is OK not to follow a rule: "Everyone is always to obey the rule except when an impartial rational person can advocate that violating it be publicly allowed. Anyone who violates the rule when an impartial rational person could not advocate that such a violation may be publicly allowed may be punished." (p. 119) Some have proposed smaller sets of rules. For example, Kant proposed the categorical imperative, which in its first form states "Act only on that maxim which you can at the Towards the Ethical Robot James Gips Page 7 of 12 same time will to be a universal law." Thus, for example, it would be wrong to make a promise with the intention of breaking it. If everyone made promises with the intention of breaking them then no one would believe in promises. The action would be selfdefeating. Can Gert's ten rules each be derived from the categorical imperative? Utilitarians sometimes claim that the rules of deontological systems are merely heuristics, shortcut approximations, for utilitarian calculations. Deontologists deny this, claiming that actions can be innately wrong independent of their actual consequences. One of the oldest examples of a deontological moral system is the Ten Commandments. The God of the Old Testament is not a utilitarian. God doesn't say "Thou shalt not commit adultery unless the result of committing adultery is a greater balance of pleasure over pain." Rather, the act of adultery is innately immoral. Virtue-based theories Since Kant the emphasis in Western ethics has been on duty, on defining ethics in terms of what actions one is obligated to do. There is a tradition in ethics that goes back to Plato and Aristotle that looks at ethics in terms of virtues, in terms of character. The question here is "What shall I be?" rather than "What shall I do?" Plato and other Greeks thought there are four cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. They thought that from these primary virtues all other virtues can be derived. If one is wise and courageous and temperate and just then right actions will follow. Aquinas thought the seven cardinal virtues are faith, hope, love, prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice. The first three are "theological" virtues, the final four "human" virtues. For Schopenhauer there are two cardinal virtues: benevolence and justice. Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, distinguishes between intellectual virtues and moral virtues. Intellectual virtues can be taught and learned directly. Moral virtues are learned by living right, by practice, by habit. "It is by doing just acts that we become just, by doing temperate acts that we become temperate, by doing brave acts that we become brave. The experience of states confirms this statement for it is by training in good habits that lawmakers make their citizens good." (Book 2, Chapter 1) Ethics is a question of character. Good deeds and right actions lead to strong character. It is practice that is important rather than theory. Towards the Ethical Robot James Gips Page 8 of 12 In modern days, virtue-based systems often are turned into deontological rules for actions. That is, one is asked to act wisely, courageously, temperately, and justly, rather than being wise, courageous, temperate, and just. Automated ethical reasoning On what type of ethical theory can automated ethical reasoning be based? At first glance, consequentialist theories might seem the most "scientific", the most amenable to implementation in a robot. Maybe so, but there is a tremendous problem of measurement. How can one predict "pleasure", "happiness", or "well-being" in individuals in a way that is additive, or even comparable ? Deontological theories seem to offer more hope. The categorical imperative might be tough to implement in a reasoning system. But I think one could see using a moral system like the one proposed by Gert as the basis for an automated ethical reasoning system. A difficult problem is in the resolution of conflicting obligations. Gert's impartial rational person advocating that violating the rule in these circumstances be publicly allowed seems reasonable but tough to implement. The virtue-based approach to ethics, especially that of Aristotle, seems to resonate well with the modern connectionist approach to AI. Both seem to emphasize the immediate, the perceptual, the non-symbolic. Both emphasize development by training rather than by the teaching of abstract theory. Paul Churchland writes interestingly about moral knowledge and its development from a neurocomputational, connectionist point of view in "Moral Facts and Moral Knowledge", the final chapter of [Churchland 1989]. Robots as moral saints An important aspect of utilitarianism is that it is all-encompassing. To really follow utilitarianism, every moment of the day one must ask "What should I do now to maximize the general well-being?" Am I about to eat dinner in a restaurant? Wouldn't the money be better spent on feeding starving children in Ethiopia? Am I about to go to the movies? I should stay home and send the ticket money to an organization that inoculates newborns. Towards the Ethical Robot James Gips Page 9 of 12 Utilitarianism and other approaches to ethics have been criticized as not being psychologically realistic, as not being suitable "for creatures like us" [Flanagan, 1991, p.32]. Could anyone really live full-time according to utilitarianism? Not many human beings live their lives flawlessly as moral saints. But a robot could. If we could program a robot to behave ethically, the government or a wealthy philanthropist could build thousands of them and release them in the world to help people. (Would we actually like the consequences? Perhaps here again "The road to hell is paved with good intentions.") Or, perhaps, a robot that could reason ethically would serve best as an advisor to humans about what action would be best to perform in the current situation and why. Could a robot be ethical? Would a robot that behaves ethically actually be ethical? This question is similar to the question raised by Searle in the Chinese room: would a computer that can hold a conversation in Chinese really understand Chinese? The Searle question raises the age-old issue of other minds [Harnard 1991]. How do we know that other people actually have minds when all that we can observe is their behavior ? The ethical question raises the age-old issue of free will. Would a robot that follows a program and thereby behaves ethically, actually be ethical? Or, does a creature need to have free will to behave ethically? Does a creature need to make a conscious choice of its own volition to behave ethically in order to be considered ethical ? Of course, one can ask whether there is in fact any essential difference between the "free will" of a human being and the "free will" of a robot. Is it possible for the robot in Figure 1 to earn its halo? Benefits of working on ethical robots It is exciting to contemplate ethical robots and automated ethical reasoning systems. The basic problem is a common one in artificial intelligence, a problem that is encountered in every subfield from natural language understanding to vision. People have been thinking and discussing and writing about ethics for centuries, for millennia. Yet it often is difficult to take an ethical system that seems to be well worked-out and Towards the Ethical Robot James Gips Page 10 of 12 implement it on the computer. While books and books are written on particular ethical systems, the systems often do not seem nearly detailed enough and well-enough thought out to implement on the computer. Ethical systems and approaches make sense in terms of broad brush approaches, but (how) do people actually implement them? How can we implement them on the computer? Knuth [1973, p.709] put it well It has often been said that a person doesn't really understand something until he teaches it to someone else. Actually a person doesn't really understand something until he can teach it to a computer, i.e., express it as an algorithm. ... The attempt to formalize things as algorithms leads to a much deeper understanding than if we simply try to understand things in the traditional way. Are there ethical experts to whom we can turn? Are we looking in the wrong place when we turn to philosophers for help with ethical questions? Should a knowledge engineer follow around Mother Theresa and ask her why she makes the decisions she makes and does the actions she does and try to implement her reasoning in an expert ethical system? The hope is that as we try to implement ethical systems on the computer we will learn much more about the knowledge and assumptions built into the ethical theories themselves. That as we build the artificial ethical reasoning systems we will learn how to behave more ethically ourselves. A robotic/AI approach to ethics People have taken several approaches to ethics through the ages. Perhaps a new approach, that makes use of developing computer and robot technology, would be useful. In the philosophical approach, people try to think out the general principles underlying the best way to behave, what kind of person one ought to be. This paper has been largely about different philosophical approaches to ethics. In the psychological/sociological approach, people look at actual people's lives, at how they behave, at what they think, at how they develop. Some people study the lives of model human beings, of saints modern and historical. Some people study the lives of Towards the Ethical Robot James Gips Page 11 of 12 ordinary people. In the robotic/AI approach, one tries to build ethical reasoning systems and ethical robots for their own sake, for the possible benefits of having the systems around as actors in the world and as advisors, and to try to increase our understanding of ethics. The two other papers at this conference represent important first steps in this new field. The paper by Jack Adams-Webber and Ken Ford [1991] describes the first actual computer system that I have heard of, in this case one based on work in psychological ethics. Umar Khan [1991] presents a variety of interesting ideas about designing and implementing ethical systems. Of course the more "traditional" topic of "computers and ethics" has to do with the ethics of building and using computer systems. A good overview of ethical issues surrounding the use of computers is found in the book of readings [Ermann, Williams, Gutierrez 1990]. Conclusion This paper is meant to be speculative, to raise questions rather than answer them. • What types of ethical theories can be used as the basis for programs for ethical robots? • Could a robot ever be said to be ethical? • Can we learn about what it means for us to be ethical by attempting to program robots to behave ethically? I hope that people will think about these questions and begin to develop a variety of computer systems for ethical reasoning and begin to try to create ethical robots. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Peter Kugel and Michael McFarland, S.J. for their helpful comments. Towards the Ethical Robot James Gips Page 12 of 12 References Jack Adams-Webber and Kenneth Ford, "A Conscience for Pinocchio: A Computational Model of Ethical Cognition", The Second International Workshop on Human & Machine Cognition: Android Epistemology, Pensacola, Florida, May 1991. Isaac Asimov, "Runaround", Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942. Republished in Robot Visions by Isaac Asimov, Penguin, 1991. Paul Churchland, A Neurocomputational Perspective, MIT Press, 1989. M. David Ermann, Mary Williams, Claudio Gutierrez (eds.), Computers, Ethics, and Society, Oxford University Press, 1990. Owen Flanagan, Varieties of Moral Personality, Harvard University Press, 1991. Bernard Gert, Morality , Oxford University Press, 1988. Christopher Gowans, ed., Moral Dilemmas, Oxford University Press, 1987 Stevan Harnad "Other Bodies, Other Minds: A Machine Incarnation of an Old Philosophical Problem", Minds and Machines, Vol. 1, No. 1, February 1991, pp. 43-54 A. F. Umar Khan, "The Ethics of Autonomous Learning Systems", The Second International Workshop on Human & Machine Cognition: Android Epistemology, Pensacola, Florida, May 1991. Donald Knuth, "Computer Science and Mathematics", American Scientist, 61, 6, 1973. W.D. Ross, The Right and the Good, Oxford University Press, 1930.


What's material about materialist feminism? A Marxist feminist critique

Philosophy

R a d i c a l P h i l o s o p h y 1 0 1 ( M a y / J u n e 2 0 0 0 ) What's material about materialist feminism? A Marxist Feminist critique Martha E. Gimenez In the heady days of the Women s Liberation Movement, it was possible to identify four main currents within feminist thought: Liberal (concerned with attaining economic and political equality within the context of capitalism); Radical (focused on men and patriarchy as the main causes of the oppression of women); Socialist (critical of capitalism and Marxism, so much so that avoidance of Marxism s alleged reductionisms resulted in dual systems theories postulating various forms of interaction between capitalism and patriarchy); and Marxist Feminism (a theoretical position held by relatively few feminists in the USA – myself included – which sought to develop the potential of Marxist theory to understand the capitalist sources of the oppression of women). These are, of course, oversimplified descriptions of a rich and complex body of literature; however, they reflected important theoretical, political and social cleavages among women that continue to this day. Divisions in feminist thought multiplied as the effects of poststructuralist and postmodern theorizing emerged alongside grassroots challenges to a feminism perceived as the expression of the needs and concerns of middleand upper-middle-class white ʻFirst World' women. In the process, the subject of feminism became increasingly difficult to define. The postmodern critique of ʻwoman' as an essentialist category, together with critiques grounded in sexual preference, racial, ethnic and national origin differences, resulted in a seemingly never-ending proliferation of ʻsubject positions , ʻidentities' and ʻvoices . Cultural and identity politics replaced the early focus on capitalism and (among Marxist Feminists primarily) class divisions among women. Today class has been reduced to another ʻism' – that is, to another form of oppression which, together with gender and race, integrates a sort of mantra, something that everyone ought to include in theorizing and research; though, to my knowledge, theorizing about it remains at the level of metaphors (e.g. interweaving, interaction, interconnection). I was, therefore, very interested to read, a few years ago, a call for papers for a volume on Materialist Feminism (MatFem). The description of MatFem put forward by the editors, Chrys Ingraham and Rosemary Hennessy, was to me indistinguishable from Marxist Feminism (MarxFem). This seemed such a promising development in feminist theory that I proceeded to invite the editors to join me in creating an electronic discussion list on Materialist Feminism, MatFem (http: //csf.colorado.edu/matfem). Initially, I thought that MatFem was simply another way of referring to MarxFem, but I was mistaken; the two are distinct forms of feminist theorizing. There are, however, such similarities between them in some feminists' work that some degree of confusion between the two is to be expected. In this article, I will identify the differences between these two important currents within feminist theory, and the reasons for the return of feminist appeals to materialism at a time when the theoretical shift towards idealism and contingency seems hegemonic in the academy. Given the conflicting views that coexist under the materialist cover, I will argue for a clear break between Materialist and Marxist Feminisms, and for a return to the latter necessitated by the devastating effects of capitalism on women and the consequent political importance of a theoretically adequate analysis of the causes of their plight. What is Materialist Feminism? To define MatFem is not an easy task. Theorists who self-identify as Materialist or as Marxist Feminists differ in their understanding of what these labels 19R a d i c a l P h i l o s o p h y 1 0 1 ( M a y / J u n e 2 0 0 0 ) mean and, consequently, the kind of knowledges they produce. Depending on their theoretical allegiances and self-understanding, feminists may differ in their classification of other feminists' works, so that clear lines of theoretical demarcation between and within these two umbrella terms are somewhat difficult to establish. Take, for example, Lise Vogel s work.1 I always considered Vogel a Marxist Feminist because, unlike Socialist Feminists (whose avoidance of Marx s alleged reductionisms led them to postulate ahistorical theories of patriarchy),2 she took Marxism seriously and her analysis of reproduction as a basis for the oppression of women is firmly grounded within the Marxist tradition. However, the subtitle of her recent book (a collection of previously published essays), is ʻEssays for a Materialist Feminism . Self-identifying as a Socialist Feminist, she states that Socialist Feminists ʻsought to replace the socialist tradition s theorizing about the woman question with a "materialist" understanding of women s oppression .3 This is certainly news to me: Socialist Feminism s rejection of Marx s and Marxism s ʻreductionism' led to the deliberate effort to ground ʻpatriarchy' outside the mode of production and consequently – from the standpoint of Marxist theory – outside history. Materialism, Vogel tells us, was used to highlight the key role of production – including domestic production – in determining the conditions leading to the oppression of women. Materialism was also used as ʻa flag , to situate Socialist Feminism within feminist thought and within the Left; Materialist Feminism, Vogel argues, cannot therefore be reduced to a trend in cultural studies, as some literary critics would prefer.4 But wasn't Engels s analysis materialist?5 And didn't Marxist Feminists (Margaret Benston6 and Peggy Morton7 come to mind) explore the ways production – public and domestic – oppressed and exploited women? These brief comments about Vogel s understanding of MatFem highlight some of its problematic aspects as a term intended to identify a specific trend within feminist theory. It can blur, as it does in this instance, the qualitative differences that existed and continue to exist between Socialist Feminism, the dominant strand of feminist thought in the USA during the late 1960s and 1970s, and the marginalized Marxist Feminism. I am not imputing such motivations to Lise Vogel; I am simply pointing out the effects of such an interpretation of US Socialist Feminism, which, despite the use of Marxist terms and references to capitalism, developed theoretically as a sort of feminist abstract negation of Marxism. Other feminists, for different reasons, would also disagree with Vogel s interpretation. For Toril Moi and Janice Radway, for example, the relationship between Socialist Feminism and MatFem is ʻfar from clear .8 As editors of a special issue of The South Atlantic Quarterly dedicated to this topic, they do not offer a theory or a clear definition of the term. Presumably, the issue s content will give the reader the elements necessary to define the term for herself, because all the authors ʻshare a commitment to concrete historical and cultural analysis, and to feminism understood as an "emancipatory narrative". 9 One of these authors, Jennifer Wicke, defines MatFem as follows: a feminism that insists on examining the material conditions under which social arrangements, including those of gender hierarchy, develop ... materialist feminism avoids seeing this [gender hierarchy] as the effect of a singular ... patriarchy and instead gauges the web of social and psychic relations that make up a material, historical moment; ... materialist feminism argues that material conditions of all sorts play a vital role in the social production of gender and assays the different ways in which women collaborate and participate in these productions ... there are areas of material interest in the fact that women can bear children.... Materialist feminism ... is less likely than social constructionism to be embarrassed by the occasional material importance of sex differences.10 Insistence on the importance of material conditions; material historical moments as a complex of social relations which include and influence gender hierarchy; the materiality of the body and its sexual, reproductive and other biological functions: these remain, however, abstract pronouncements which unavoidably lead to an empiricist focus on the immediately given. There is no theory of history, of social relations or of the production of gender hierarchies that could give guidance about the meaning of whatever is observed in a given ʻmaterial historical moment . Donna Landry and Gerald Maclean, authors of Materialist Feminisms,11 tell us that theirs is a book ʻabout feminism and Marxism , examining the debates between feminism and Marxism in the USA and Britain and exploring the implications of those debates for literary and cultural theory. The terrain of those early debates, which were aimed at a possible integration or synthesis between Marxism and feminism, shifted due to the emergence of identity politics, concern with postcolonialism, sexuality, race, nationalism, and so on, and the impact of postmodernism and poststructuralism. The new terrain has to do with the ʻconstruction of a materialist analysis of culture informed by 20 R a d i c a l P h i l o s o p h y 1 0 1 ( M a y / J u n e 2 0 0 0 ) and responsive to the concerns of women, as well as people of colour and other marginalized groups .12 For Landry and Maclean, MatFem is a critical reading practice ... the critical investigation, or reading in the strong sense, of the artifacts of culture and social history, including literary and artistic texts, archival documents, and works of theory ... [it is] a potential site of political contestation through critique, not through the constant reiteration of home-truths ... a deconstructive materialist feminist perspective.13 But what, precisely, does materialist mean in this context? What theory of history and what politics inform this critique? Although they define materialism in a philosophical and moral sense, and bring up the difference between mechanical or ʻvulgar' materialism and historical materialism, there is no definition of what materialism means when linked to feminism. Cultural materialism, as developed in Raymond Williams s work, is presented as a remedy for or supplement to Marx s historical materialism. There is, according to Williams, an ʻindissoluble connection between material production, political and cultural institutions and activity, and consciousness.... Language is practical consciousness, a way of thinking and acting in the world that has material consequences.14 Williams, they point out, ʻstrives to put human subjects as agents of culture back into materialist debate .15 The implications of these statements is that ʻhumans as agents of culture' are not present in historical materialism and that Marx s views on the relationship between material conditions, language and consciousness are insufficient. But anyone familiar with Marx s work would reject this view. In fact, it is Marx who wrote that ʻlanguage is practical consciousness' and posited language as the matter that burdens ʻspirit' from the very start, for consciousness is always and from the very first a social product.16 Landry and Maclean present an account of the development of feminist thought from the late 1960s to the present, divided into three moments: the encounters and debates between Marxism and feminism in Britain and the USA; the institutionalization and commodification of feminism; and ʻdeconstructive materialist feminism . These are ʻthree moments of materialist feminism :17 a very interesting statement that suggests that MatFem – a rather problematic and elusive concept which reflects, in my view, postmodern sensibilities about culture and about the subject of feminism – had always been there, from the very beginning, just waiting to be discovered. Is that really the case? If so, what is this materialism that lurked under the variety of feminist theories produced on both sides of the Atlantic since the late 1960s? Does reference to ʻmaterial conditions' in general or to ʻthe material conditions of the oppression of women' suffice as a basis for constructing a new theoretical framework, qualitatively different from MarxFem? If so, how? The authors argue that feminist theories focused exclusively on gender and dual systems theories that bring together gender and class analysis face methodological and political problems that ʻdeconstructive reading practices can help solve ; they propose ʻthe articulation of discontinuous movements, materialism and feminism, an articulation that takes the political claims of deconstruction seriously ... deconstruction as tool of political critique .18 But isn't the linking between deconstruction and Marxism what gives it its critical edge? It is in their conclusion that the authors, aiming to demonstrate that materialism is not an alias for Marxism, outline the difference between MarxFem and MatFem as follows: Marxist feminism holds class contradictions and class analysis central, and has tried various ways of working an analysis of gender oppression around this central contradiction. In addition to class contradictions and contradictions within gender ideology ... we are arguing that materialist feminism should recognize as material other contradictions as well. These contradictions also have histories, operate in ideologies, and are grounded in material bases and effects ... they should be granted material weight in social and literary analysis calling itself materialist ... these categories would include ... ideologies of race, sexuality, imperialism and colonialism and anthropocentrism, with their accompanying radical critiques.19 While this is helpful in understanding what contemporary self-identified materialist feminists mean when they refer to MatFem, it does not shed light on the meaning of material base, material effect, and material weight. The main concept, materiality, remains undefined; at times it seems to mean real or objective (e.g. gender and race are as real as class), or central – meaning determinant, having causal effects (e.g. ideologies are just as central or have as much ʻmaterial weight' as class). Underlying these ideas lurk the spectres of ʻclass reductionism' and ʻeconomic determinism , a stereotypical understanding of Marx and the Marxist tradition used to argue for the superiority of claims defined, essentially, as their abstract negation. Also lurking are Althusser s20 views on the materiality of ideology, now expanded to analyse all forms of oppression and oppositional identities, but with a crucial difference. While for Althusser the level 21R a d i c a l P h i l o s o p h y 1 0 1 ( M a y / J u n e 2 0 0 0 ) of production and, consequently, the contradictions between capital and labour and between the forces and relations of production are determinant ʻin the last instance , albeit ʻoverdetermined' and rendered historically specific and active by the characteristics of concrete social formations,21 Materialist Feminism appears to rest upon the unsupported claim that there is no hierarchy of causality: all other forms of inequality besides class, and its corresponding ideologies, are equally ʻmaterial , meaning they are not only equally real and important but also equal in their causal powers. Such a conclusion might be politically satisfying, but it rests upon a functional notion of causality according to which all institutions or elements of the social system mutually interact and affect each other, and none is ʻmore' causally efficacious than any others – that is, none can set parameters for the conditions of possibility and development of the others. And what is the nature of the other ʻcontradictions' materialist feminists should recognize? Contradiction is not equivalent to conflict, for conflicts can be resolved within a given system of relations, whereas contradiction can be resolved solely through qualitative social change. Finally, references to ideologies, exploitation, imperialism, oppression, colonialism, and so on, confirm precisely that which the authors intended to dispel: materialism would seem to be an alias for Marxism, a Marxism suitably modified, however, to grant materiality (meaning, perhaps, objectivity, reality and equal causal efficacy) to everything. MatFem/MarxFem: same difference? Rosemary Hennessy traces the origins of Materialist Feminism in the work of British and French feminists who preferred the term Materialist Feminism to Marxist Feminism because, in their view, Marxism had to be transformed to be able to explain the sexual division of labour.22 In the 1970s, Hennessy states, Marxism was inadequate to the task because of its class bias and focus on production, while feminism was also problematic due to its essentialist and idealist concept of woman. This is why MatFem emerged as a positive alternative to both Marxism and feminism.23 The combined effects of the postmodern critique of the empirical self and the criticisms voiced by women who did not see themselves included in the generic woman subject of academic feminist theorizing resulted, in the 1990s, in Materialist Feminist analyses that ʻproblematize "woman" as an obvious and homogeneous empirical entity in order to explore how "woman" as a discursive category is historically constructed and traversed by more than one differential axis .24 Furthermore, Hennessy argues, despite the postmodern rejection of totalities and theoretical analyses of social systems, Materialist Feminists need to hold on to the critique of the totalities that affect women s lives: patriarchy and capitalism. Women s lives are everywhere affected by world capitalism and patriarchy, and it would be politically self-defeating to replace that critique with localized, fragmented political strategies and a perception of social reality as characterized by a logic of contingency. Hennessy s views on the characteristics of MatFem emerge through her critical engagement with the works of Laclau and Mouffe, Foucault, Kristeva and other theorists of the postmodern. MatFem is a ʻway of reading' that rejects the dominant pluralist paradigms and logics of contingency and seeks to establish the connections between the discursively constructed dif22 R a d i c a l P h i l o s o p h y 1 0 1 ( M a y / J u n e 2 0 0 0 ) ferentiated subjectivities that have replaced the generic ʻwoman' in feminist theorizing, and the hierarchies of inequality that exploit and oppress women. Subjectivities, in other words, cannot be understood in isolation from systemically organized totalities. MatFem, as a reading practice, is also a way of explaining or rewriting and making sense of the world; as such, it influences reality through the knowledges it produces about the subject and her social context. Discourse and knowledge have materiality in their effects; one of the material effects of discourse is the construction of the subject, but this subject is traversed by differences grounded in hierarchies of inequality which are not local or contingent but historical and systemic, such as patriarchy and capitalism. Difference, consequently, is not mere plurality but inequality. The problem of the material relationship between language, discourse and the social, or between the discursive (feminist theory) and the non-discursive (women s lives divided by exploitative and oppressive social relations), can be resolved through the conceptualization of discourse as ideology. A theory of ideology presupposes a theory of the social. This theory, which informs Hennessy s critical reading of postmodern theories of the subject, discourse, positionality, language, and so on, is what she calls a ʻglobal analytic , which, in light of her references to multinational capitalism, the international division of labour, overdetermined economic, political and cultural practices, and so on, seems to be at the very least a kind of postmodern Marxism. In fact, references to historical materialism, and Althusser s theory of ideology and the notion of symptomatic reading are so important in the development of her arguments that one wonders about her hesitation to name Marxism or historical materialism as the theory of the social underlying her critique of the postmodern logic of contingency. To sum up, Hennessy s version of MatFem is a blend of post-Marxism and postmodern theories of the subject. It is a source of ʻreadings' and ʻre-writings' that rescue postmodern categories of analysis (subject, discourse, difference) from the conservative limbo of contingency, localism and pluralism to historicize or contextualize them by connecting them to their systemic material basis in capitalism and patriarchy. This is made possible by understanding discourse as ideology and linking ideology to its material base in the ʻglobal analytic . In Hennessy s analysis, historical materialism seems like an ever-present but muted shadow, latent under terms such as ʻtotality , ʻsystemic' and ʻglobal analytic . However, in the introduction to Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference and Women's Lives,25 written with co-editor, Chrys Ingraham, there is a clear, unambiguous return to historical materialism, a recognition of its irreplaceable importance for feminist theory and politics. This introduction, ʻReclaiming Anticapitalist Feminism ,26 is a critique of the dominant feminist concern with culture, identity and difference considered in isolation from any systemic understanding of the social forces that affect women s lives; and a critique of an academic feminism that has marginalized and disparaged the knowledges produced by the engagement of feminists with Marxism, and their contributions to feminist scholarship and to the political mobilization of women. More importantly, this introduction is a celebration of MarxFem, whose premisses and insights, they argue, have been consistently ʻmisread, distorted, or buried under the weight of a flourishing postmodern cultural politics .27 They point out that, whatever the name of the product of feminists' efforts to grapple with historical materialism (MatFem, Socialist Feminism or MarxFem), and though these names signal theoretical differences and emphases, together they indicate the recognition of historical materialism as the source of emancipatory knowledge required for the success of the feminist project. In Hennessy and Ingraham s introduction, MatFem becomes a term used interchangeably with MarxFem, with the latter being the most prominently displayed. The authors draw a clear line between the cultural materialism that characterizes the work of post-Marxist feminists, who, having rejected historical materialism, analyse cultural, ideological and political practices in isolation from their material base in capitalism, and MatFem (meaning both MarxFem and Socialist Feminism), which is firmly grounded in historical materialism: ʻunlike cultural feminists, materialist, socialist and Marxist feminists do not see culture as the whole of social life but rather as only one arena of social production and therefore as only one area of feminist struggle. 28 The authors differentiate MatFem from MarxFem by indicating that MatFem is the end result of several discourses (historical materialism, Marxist and Radical Feminisms, and postmodern and psychoanalytic theories of meaning and subjectivity) among which the postmodern input, in their view, is the source of its defining characteristics. Nevertheless, in the last paragraphs of the introduction there is a return to the discussion of MarxFem, its critiques of the idealist features of postmodernism 23R a d i c a l P h i l o s o p h y 1 0 1 ( M a y / J u n e 2 0 0 0 ) and the differences between the postmodern and the historical materialist or Marxist analyses of representations of identity. Theoretical conflicts, they point out, do not occur in isolation from class conflicts, and the latter affect the divisions among professional feminists and their class allegiances. Feminists are divided in their attitudes towards capitalism, their understanding of the material conditions of oppression, and the extent to which they link the success of feminist struggles to the success of anticapitalist struggles. To be a feminist is not necessarily to be anticapitalist, and to be a Materialist Feminist is not equivalent to being socialist or even critical of the status quo. In fact, ʻwork that claims the signature "materialist feminism" shares much in common with cultural feminism, in that it does not set out to explain or change the material realities that link women s oppression to class. 29 MarxFem, on the other hand, does make the connection between the oppression of women and capitalism, and this is why the purpose of their book, according to the authors, is to reinsert into MatFem – especially in those overdeveloped sectors where this collection will be most widely read – those (untimely) Marxist feminist knowledges that the drift to cultural politics in postmodern feminism has suppressed. It is our hope that in so doing this project will contribute to the emergence of feminism's third wave and its revival as a critical force for transformative social change.30 In light of the above – and given the inherent ambiguity of the term MatFem – wouldn't it be more theoretically adequate and politically fruitful to return to Marxist Feminism? Is the effort of struggling to redefine MatFem by reinserting MarxFem knowledges a worthwhile endeavour? How important is it to broaden the meaning of MatFem to include MarxFem contents? Perhaps the political climate inside and outside the academy in the USA is one where Marxism is so discredited that Marxist Feminists are likely to find more professional acceptance and legitimacy by claiming MatFem as their theoretical orientation. I do not in any way impute this motivation to Ingraham and Hennessy; the introduction to their Materialist Feminism is openly Marxist. In fact, after I had read it and looked over the table of contents, I thought a more adequate title would have been Marxist Feminism. And anyone familiar with historical materialism can appreciate the sophisticated Marxist foundation of Hennessy s superbly argued book. Materialist Feminist: am I that name? Such positive feminist assessment of the theoretical and political relevance of Marxism is, however, rare these days. Feminists are more likely to share Landry and Maclean s critique of Marxism s alleged economism, class reductionism, and disregard for agency and the effects of culture and ideology. Underlying these and similar feminist criticisms of Marxism s putative shortcomings, there is an economistic and undialectical reading of Marx s work. That Marx may not have addressed issues that twentieth-century feminists consider important is not a sufficient condition to invalidate his methodology as well as the potential of his theory of capitalism to help us theorize and investigate the causes of the oppression of women. This potential, however, was widely recognized in the early stages of the Women s Liberation Movement. In retrospect, the work produced by some British self-defined Materialist Feminists writing in the 1970s reveals that they were actually using and developing Marxist theory in ways that belied their critical stance towards Marxism. Kuhn and Wolpe, for example, editors of the collection Materialism and Feminism,31 adopted Engels s definition of materialism: According to the materialist conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of immediate life. This, again, is of a twofold character: on the one side, the production of the means of existence, of food, clothing and shelter and the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species.32 A materialist problematic entailed, then, recognition of the fundamental importance, for the analysis of human history and social organization, of the production and reproduction of material life – that is, the transformation of nature and human nature through labour in the context of changing relations of production and reproduction.33 For Kuhn and Wolpe, the difference between a Marxist and a materialist analysis hinged upon whether or not analysis went beyond the ʻtraditional' Marxist focus on modes of production, their tendencies, contradictions and so forth, to incorporate the historical character of the sexual division of labour and the examination of ʻthe relations of women to the modes of production and reproduction .34 It followed that Marxism could not yield a ʻcorrect' analysis of the oppression of women unless it was transformed by including the analysis of the sexual division of labour and all other aspects of the mode of production directly and indirectly affecting male–female relationships. Contributors to their volume attempted in various ways to remedy Marxism s ʻfailures' by creatively using Marxist theory 24 R a d i c a l P h i l o s o p h y 1 0 1 ( M a y / J u n e 2 0 0 0 ) to explore the relationships between capitalism and institutions that specifically oppressed women – for example, patriarchy, the family, the state, domestic labour, the sexual division of labour, and women s place in the labour force. MatFem was also associated with the work of some French feminists, particularly Christine Delphy.35 Materialism (that is, the Marxist method), she argued, is the only theory of history that views oppression as the most fundamental reality. This is why women and all oppressed groups need it to examine their situation: ʻto start from oppression defines a materialist approach ... oppression is a materialist concept. 36 For Delphy, the family or domestic mode of production, analytically independent of and separate from production, was the site of patriarchal exploitation and the material basis of the oppression of women. Marriage, she argued, is a labour contract that gives men the right to exploit women, appropriating their labour in the domestic setting or controlling their wages or other market earnings; it is, for all practical purposes, a relationship of slavery.37 Delphy sought in the organization of the mode of reproduction the structural basis for gender divisions. Rather than inquiring into the social construction of gender or the ways in which individuals acquire gender identities, she sought to identify the material conditions that place men and women in unequal relations. Barrett and McIntosh38 criticized Delphy on several grounds. They accused her of economism (she rejected analyses that gave causal importance to ideology), an overemphasis on the exploitation of women as wives (overlooking the effects of motherhood and the situation of single women) and for inappropriately applying the concept of mode of production to the family. In postulating the autonomy of the family or domestic mode of production from the mode of production as such, they argued, Delphy isolated it from the dynamics of social change.39 An acceptable materialist analysis, in their view, should connect the economic and ideological levels of analysis, examining how material (i.e. economic) conditions structure consciousness.40 Although earlier self-defined materialist feminists may have understood Barrett and McIntosh s work to be one of ʻtransforming' Marxist theory, they actually demonstrated its fundamental importance for theorizing the oppression of women. A theoretical transformation would have entailed a challenge to Marxism s fundamental assumptions, rather than the use of those very assumptions to theorize new phenomena. To demonstrate, as they did, a dialectical understanding of Marxism, introducing in the analysis of the oppression of women the causal efficacy of the state, ideology, the family and other aspects of capitalist society, is to remain faithful its basic tenets, not to transform it. I too wrote about Marxism and feminism in the 1970s; my approach was different, for I viewed the lacunae in Marx s work simply as results of his immediate political and theoretical priorities. Because Marx s method shows the problems inherent in abstract theories of origins, and reveals the dialectical nature of our categories of analysis,41 I concluded early on that the notion of patriarchy was descriptively useful, but theoretically unsound because it was intentionally developed to seek the origin of the oppression of women outside history (i.e. independent from the mode of production). I was also critical of the use of ʻwomen' and ʻmen' as categories of analysis (they ignored class, racial and ethnic divisions, and socio-economic status differences) and the utopian nature of ʻsisterhood , given the real contradictions in the material interests of capitalist and working-class women. I originate from Argentina, a society where, unlike the United States, professional women were not exceptional, class divisions and self-identification prevailed and the use of domestic servants was widespread (an important reason for the lack of conflict between work and family for professional and employed middle-class women). I was, consequently, unconvinced by theories which overgeneralized about male domination and female oppression and which were not sensitive to the realities of life under capitalism, where most men are not powerful and do not have control over their lives and not all women are powerless. More nuanced theories, differentiating between kinds of oppression and corresponding levels of analyses were required. This is why, in my work, I sought to identify the historically specific capitalist conditions underlying the observable social and economic inequalities between men and women. However, I have never self-identified as a Materialist Feminist; the label, in my view, misrepresented the dialectical nature of Marxism and obscured the actual Marxist nature of the works thus labelled. While there were some overlaps between my views and those of Materialist and Socialist Feminists of the 1970s, both in terms of topics of analysis and in the aspects of Marx s theory of capitalism considered pertinent to examine the oppression of women, my work differs in the rejection of patriarchy as an explanatory concept, and in the use of Marx s method to identify the capitalist processes that place propertyless men and women in similar class locations while facing different opportunity structures and, therefore, unequal access 25R a d i c a l P h i l o s o p h y 1 0 1 ( M a y / J u n e 2 0 0 0 ) to the necessary conditions of reproduction.42 But more important than the differences and similarities between my work and that of other 1970s Socialist Feminists, in the USA and in Britain, is the issue of the present resurgence of MatFem as a fashionable trend within feminist theory. Why has MatFem reappeared? Why is it a ʻhot' commodity, as reflected in the abundance of recent publications with ʻmaterialism' in their title? Is MatFem a positive development in feminist theory? Should Marxist feminists struggle to regain political and academic legitimacy, thus striving to differentiate MarxFem from MatFem? Why Materialist Feminism now? Does it matter? While it is difficult to disentangle MatFem from MarxFem in early feminist works, especially those written by European feminists, today MatFem and MarxFem are qualitatively different theoretical perspectives, with radically different political implications. That they have become somewhat confused reflects the ideological balance of power in the present political context, in academia and in the publishing business, where ʻdifference , ʻrace, gender and class , ʻpost-isms' and, of course, ʻmaterialism' have legitimacy and sell, while historical materialism does not. Early Materialist Feminists took Marxism as their starting point. Despite critiques of Marxism s shortcomings, Marxist and Materialist Feminists agreed on the importance of situating the oppression of women in the context of the capitalist mode of production as a whole, examining how the capitalist organization of production, the articulation between production and reproduction, ideologies, the state, the legal system, and so forth, affected and reproduced the unequal relations between men and women within and outside the domestic sphere. Despite disagreements, they shared Engels s conception of historical materialism,43 which gives a pivotal role in human history to the organization of production and reproduction and their changing articulation, as the forces and relations of production change and modes of production change accordingly. Today MatFem is altogether different because it is grounded in the poststructuralist rejection of Marxism. The deconstruction of ʻwomen' as a category of analysis, the focus on ʻdiscursively constructed' genders, sexualities, bodies, and manifold differences among women, have severed the links between feminist theory and the actual conditions shaping most women s lives. Today, ʻfeminist theory has come to mean feminist poststructuralism 44 and this entails the adoption of principles (e.g. anti-essentialism, contingency, social constructionism, reduction of social reality to discourse, rejection of ʻmetanarratives , and so on) antithetical to the development of social analyses and political strategies useful for women and all oppressed people.45 The very idea of women s oppression presupposes the material reality of their plight and the validity of their claims, notions outside the purview of theories for which everything is relative, contingent and discursively constructed. It is this inability to deal with the material (that is, objective, independent of the subject s consciousness) conditions affecting real women s lives that, Ebert argues, has produced a crisis in postmodern feminist thought, because the objectivity and forceful impact of historical processes ʻcannot be blunted in discourse ; this is why ʻhistorical materialism haunts feminism .46 In light of the objectively worsening conditions of working people, particularly women, it has become increasingly untenable to hold on to the notion that everything is socially or discursively constructed, or a localized, contingent story. The oppression of women is not a story, or a text, or a form of interpreting or reading the world, so that politics is reduced to rewriting or re-describing the world, a conclusion that follows from the insistence on the materiality of discourse. Because postmodern Materialist Feminists have rejected all ʻmetanarratives , discourses have a contradictory relationship to the capitalist structures, processes and contradictions that are their condition of possibility. They are only ʻcontingently' related (thus duly avoiding the spectres of ʻreductionism' and ʻeconomism') to the mode of production, but, as they are considered to be material in their effects, they are de facto assumed to be determinant in their own right, thus resulting in an unacknowledged discursive reductionism. Hennessy and Ingraham argue for the need to keep a connection between discourse, conceptualized as ideology, and the relevant ʻglobal analytics' which oppress women: patriarchy and capitalism. Their efforts, however, are not sufficient to rescue contemporary MatFem from its clearly anti-Marxist stance and only contribute to increase the ambiguity of the concept. Besides, MatFem has moved further away from the possibility of bridging the gap between discourses, ideologies and the mode of production. The latest reincarnation of poststructuralist materialism is not the matter of language, or the text or discourse, but rather ʻthe resisting "matter" of the non-discursive , with the body as the matter under consideration.47 Matter, whether of the body or anything else, 26 R a d i c a l P h i l o s o p h y 1 0 1 ( M a y / J u n e 2 0 0 0 ) has to be rendered historically specific in order to become theoretically and politically significant, for ʻmatter as such is a pure creation of thought and an abstraction .48 This, in turn, presupposes consideration of the characteristics of the mode of production which determine the kinds of labour processes and other forms of practice that, dialectically, transform nature and human nature, forms of existence and forms of consciousness, bodies and discourses about bodies, and so forth. This approach to theorizing matter and materialism is, however, in contradiction with the assumptions of post-Marxist MatFem, which consequently faces an unresolvable dilemma: ʻhow not to deny the world outside the consciousness of the subject but not to make that world the material cause of social practices either .49 If materiality implies causality, the denial of the causal efficacy of the mode of production (for example, through changes in the forces of production, class exploitation, class struggles, and so on) while postulating the materiality of language and discourse ends up in a discourse determinism that undermines the very role that the materiality of discourse is supposed to play, because ʻif even meaning is material, then there is nothing which is not, and the term simply cancels all the way through .50 Perhaps these theoretical and political dead-ends of post-Marxist MatFem are the basis for its academic and commercial appeal. There is an ʻelective affinity'51 between its dominant theoretical assumptions (which essentially privilege agency, embrace contingency and exonerate capitalism; minimizing the pivotal role of class exploitation while emphasizing plurality, diversity and identity politics), the dominant ideologies in the advanced capitalist countries, and the lifestyles and world-views of the middleand upper-middle-class professionals and students who have eagerly embraced postmodernism and poststructuralism, including MatFem, in its various manifestations. MatFem, a term which may have been useful in the past to feminists who, despite their critical stance, remained firmly within the Marxist tradition, denotes something entirely different today. How useful is it to broaden the meaning of MatFem to encompass MarxFem if, at the same time, the term is claimed by cultural materialists and post-Marxist feminists whose views are profoundly anti-Marxist? That two anthologies of Marxist Feminist writings have been published under the aegis of Materialist Feminism attest to the greater market value of ʻmaterialism' and publishers' power to decide what sells, rather than the existence of a theoretical convergence between MarxFem and MatFem. How will the new generations learn about the theoretical and political importance of historical materialism for women if historical materialist analysis is tamed and ʻgentrified' under the MatFem label? Marx and Marxism have already been marginalized in academia; the inclusion of MarxFem under the MatFem umbrella would only intensify already widespread misunderstandings among the younger generations of feminists because, calling attention to the ʻmaterial' in historical materialism, it would strengthen dominant stereotypes about the ʻvulgar materialism' presumably inherent in Marxism. It is time, therefore, for Marxist Feminists to separate themselves from Materialist Feminism and assert the legitimacy and political urgency of their approach. Essentially, this would entail a return to Marx, whose method and analysis of capitalism, despite its ambiguities, omissions, complexities and nineteenthcentury limitations, has far more to offer feminists and all oppressed people than contemporary theories which, having severed the internal relationship between existence and consciousness, or between 27R a d i c a l P h i l o s o p h y 1 0 1 ( M a y / J u n e 2 0 0 0 ) discourse and its material conditions of possibility, postulate the materiality of the discursive and whatever there might be ʻoutside' discourse (Nature? the Body?) while rejecting as ʻeconomism' the materiality – the reality, independent of people s consciousness, and causal efficacy – of labour and of the mode of production. As Ebert unerringly points out, Marx s critique of ʻFeuerbachian materialism' aptly describes today s MatFem s materialism: As far as Feuerbach is a materialist he does not deal with history, and as far as he considers history he is not a materialist. 52 There is another reason why MarxFem should ʻde-link' from MatFem: Marxist Feminists are, theoretically speaking, clearer about what MarxFem is all about, politically and theoretically. MatFem, on the other hand, remains a nebulous thing, a place for feminists who are clear about their rejection of Marx and Marxism s alleged flaws, but seem to be less certain about what they stand for. Feminist scholars, of course, do know what the modern MatFem they theorize is all about, but their work would seem to have difficulties in engaging the consumers of their scholarship. I am grounding these assertions in the very different development of two electronic discussion networks, MATFEM and M-Fem.53 MATFEM (Materialist Feminism), which I created in December 1994 with Chrys Ingraham and Rosemary Hennessy, has had for years a stable membership of over 350 (it is currently 363). At the beginning, there were the usual messages of self-introduction, but, when those ceased, to our disappointment, no sustained discussions took their place. We once attempted a discussion of an article by Rosemary Hennessy, but this project failed. The list has been mostly silent; once in a while someone will post the announcement of a book, or a call for papers. MATFEM lacks a sense of community of intellectual and political purpose; there is no sense of urgency in examining, from a Materialist Feminist standpoint, the various processes that continue to oppress women. M-Fem (Marxist Feminism) is a network I did not create, but that I help moderate. It was created in May 1997; its small membership (72) reflects the scarcity of self-defined Marxist Feminists today. While the volume of mail varies and the network goes through relatively long periods of silence, it has produced very lively and useful theoretical and political discussions and altogether a far greater quantity of messages than MATFEM. A substantial portion of this article was, in fact, written as a response to an M-Fem member who asked about the difference between MatFem and MarxFem. I posted it in both lists but drew no reactions from MATFEM (except an enthusiastic, positive response from Rosemary Hennessy) while eliciting a number of comments in M-Fem. The quantitative and qualitative difference between these networks' archives is remarkable: M-Fem archives document the power of Marxism to examine the conditions affecting women s lives today,54 while the meagreness of MATFEM s archives can be interpreted as resulting from the relative theoretical irrelevance and political sterility of postmodern feminism. MATFEM, in almost five years, has been unable to generate a single sustained theoretical or political discussion, despite its far larger membership. Realistically, it can be professionally and politically risky for US academic feminists openly to advocate Marxist Feminism. Self-identified Marxist Feminists are likely to face a difficult time, politically and professionally. They would be perceived as ʻorthodox' or ʻfundamentalist' Marxists and would find difficulties in finding employment, especially at this time when tenure-track jobs are becoming increasingly scarce in US universities. In the short run, therefore, MatFem s academic dominance might remain unchallenged. In the long run – and depending on changes in the world capitalist economy leading to transnational political upheavals and greater awareness among feminist scholars of the extent to which most working women s fate is tied to the contradictions of world capitalism – the timeliness and relevance of Marxism might once again become self-evident. In the meantime, as the uneasy and confusing relationship between MarxFem and MatFem illustrates so well, the class struggle at the level of ideology goes on. Notes 1. Lise Vogel, Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick NJ, 1983; Woman s Questions: Essays for a Materialist Feminism, Routledge, New York, 1995. 2. See, for example, Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, Bantam Books, New York, 1971; Zillah Einsenstein, ʻDeveloping a Theory of Capitalist Patriarchy and Socialist Feminism', in Z. Einsenstein, ed., Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1979. 3. Vogel, Woman s Questions, p. xi. 4. Ibid., p. xii. 5. Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, International Publishers, New York, 1972; see also Janet Sayers, Mary Evans and Nanneke Redclift, eds, Engels Revisited: New Feminist Essays, Tavistock, London, 1987. 6. Margaret Benston, ʻThe Political Economy of Women's Liberation', Monthly Review, vol. 21, September 1969. 7. Peggy Morton, ʻA Woman's Work is Never Done', in Edith Altbach, ed., From Feminism to Liberation, Schenkman, Cambridge MA, 1971. 8. Toril Moi and Janice Radway, ʻEditors Note', Material28 R a d i c a l P h i l o s o p h y 1 0 1 ( M a y / J u n e 2 0 0 0 ) ist Feminism, Special Issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 93, no. 4, 1994. 9. Ibid., p. 750. 10. Jennifer Wicke, ʻCelebrity Material: Materialist Feminism and the Culture of Celebrity', South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 93, no. 4, 1994. 11. Donna Landry and Gerald Maclean, Materialist Feminisms, Blackwell, Cambridge MA and Oxford, 1993. 12. Ibid., pp. ix–x. 13. Ibid., pp. x–xi. 14. Ibid., pp. xiii, 5. 15. Ibid., p. 5. 16. Karl Marx, The German Ideology, in Karl Marx: Selected Writings, ed. Lawrence H. Simon, Hackett, Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1994, p. 117. 17. Landry and Maclean, Materialist Feminisms, p. 15. 18. Ibid., pp. 12–13. 19. Ibid., p. 229. 20. Louis Althusser, ʻIdeology and Ideological State Apparatuses', in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1971, pp. 127–86. 21. See Louis Althusser, ʻContradiction and Overdetermination', in For Marx, Vintage Books, New York, 1970, especially pp. 111–16. Marx had expressed the same idea when he stated that, while the relations of production ʻreveal the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure, ... this does not prevent the same economic basis ... due to innumerable different empirical circumstances ... from showing infinite variations and gradations in appearance, which can be ascertained only by analysis of the empirically given circumstances.  Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 3, International Publishers, New York, 1968, pp. 791–2. 22. Rosemary Hennessy, Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse, Routledge, New York and London, 1993, pp. xi–xii. 23. Ibid., p. xii. 24. Ibid. 25. Rosemary Hennessy and Chrys Ingraham, Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women s Lives, Routledge, New York and London, 1997. 26. Ibid., pp. 1–14. 27. Ibid., p. 5. 28. Ibid., p. 7. 29. Ibid., p. 9. 30. Ibid. 31. Annette Kuhn and Annemarie Wolpe, eds, Feminism and Materialism: Women and Modes of Production, Routledge, London, 1978. 32. Ibid., p. 7. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid., pp. 7–8. 35. Christine Delphy, The Main Enemy: A Materialist Analysis of Women s Oppression, Women's Research and Resources Centre Publications, London, 1977. 36. Christine Delphy, ʻA Materialist Feminism is Possible', Feminist Review, No. 4, 1980, p. 87 37. Delphy, The Main Enemy, p. 15. 38. Michèle Barrett and Mary McIntosh, The Anti-social Family, Verso, London, 1982. 39. Ibid., p. 99. 40. Ibid., p. 103. 41. Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, International Publishers, New York, 1970, pp. 205–6. 42. See, for example, Martha E. Gimenez, ʻMarxism and Feminism', Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, Fall 1975, pp. 61–80; ʻStructuralist Marxism and the "Woman Question"', Science and Society, vol. XLII, no. 3, Fall 1978, pp. 301–23. 43. Engels, The Origin of the Family. 44. Barbara Epstein, ʻWhy Poststructuralism is a Dead End for Progressive Thought', Socialist Review, vol. 5, no. 2, 1995, pp. 83–119. 45. Ibid., p. 83. 46. Teresa Ebert, ʻ(Untimely) Critiques for a Red Feminism', in Mas'ud Zavarzadeh, Teresa L. Ebert and Donald Morton, eds, Post-ality: Marxism and Postmodernism, Maisonneuve Press, Washington DC, 1995, pp. 113– 49. 47. Ibid., pp. 119–21. 48. Frederick Engels, Dialectics of Nature, International Publishers, New York, 1940, pp. 322–3. 49. Ebert, ʻ(Untimely) Critiques', p. 117. 50. Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism, Blackwell, Oxford, 1996, p. 72. 51. Max Weber, ʻThe Social Psychology of the World Religions', in Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, Oxford University Press, New York, 1958, p. 284. 52. Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, cited in Ebert, ʻ(Untimely) Critiques', p. 125. 53. Their archived discussions can be found in their homepages. MATFEM: http://csf.colorado.edu/matfem/ M-Fem: http://csf.colorado.edu/m-fem/. 54. US Marxist Feminists tend to be theoretically less rigorous than their European counterparts and display an eclectic and pragmatic approach to Marx and Marxism, which might prompt Europeans to dismiss their efforts as at best liberal, not Marxist. While I would agree, in principle, with such an assessment with respect to some postings in M-Fem, not all of the messages can be thus described.