Marx's Theory Of Gender And Family

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Marx’s discussion on the matter of gender and family extends beyond just perceiving women as factory workers. The persistence of oppression in the bourgeois family as well as the notion for a new form of the family was noted by Marx. Even though not all of Marx`s writings on gender and the family could be applicable today, Marx discussions provide essential insights on gender and political reasoning especially with regards the topic of this research. Regardless of the fact that Marx did not develop a specific systematic theory of gender and the family, gender was an important category for understanding the division of labour, production and society as whole. Marx provided considerable insight into the gender relations of his own time, showing the need for a total transformation of society that would necessarily involve new relations between men and women. Even though he does not provide a complete full theory on gender his categories lead in the direction of a systematic critique of patriarchy that manifests itself in capitalism. Due to the absence of a concrete theory a number of Marx`s arguments on gender will be laid out followed by an elaboration on Engels writings.
In his work “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts”, Marx argues that women`s general position within society could be perceived as a measure of development of society as a whole.
The immediate, natural and necessary relation of human being to human being is also the relation of man [Mann][1] to woman