Thus Marxist feminists tend to follow Engels in seeing the
exploitation of women as being part of the capitalist phenomena of a
‘reserve army of labour’. Capitalists exploit an under-trained, under-
paid and often part-time female workforce in order to keep the more
organised and militant male workforce in order, allowing women to
come somewhere near to potential only in the absence of men at the
war-front. True emancipation can only come with the triumph of a
proletarian revolution – which will wipe away these repressive
mechanisms (together with the bourgeois view of the family as male
property). Other writers are less convinced that male domination is
associated with capitalism, pointing to the recurrence of a sexual
division of labour in many non-capitalist societies (Rowbotham,
1972) and the power accruing to males until recently from their
control of female reproduction (Firestone, 1971).
Most radical feminists have taken a line similar to the anarchists
(indeed Emma Goldman (1915) is a pioneer in both movements) that
revolution must begin in the private lives of those who are convinced
of its desirability. ‘The personal is the political’ is the slogan of many
radical feminists who argue that the centralised and authoritarian
imposition of a way of life is a male style of politics. A tiny minority
go one step further and argue that males will never voluntarily give
up their power – no ruling class does – so that only in separatist
lesbian communities can women achieve equality and freedom.
Feminist ideas can be seen as an application of liberal ideas on the
rights of all to self-development. Some feminists have been influ-
enced by Marxist doctrines about exploitation and ideology. The
mainstream of the women’s movement, however, has been very
much a series of autonomous self-help groups responding to the
personal and political situation of their members.
Liberalism
Liberalism may be understood in a broad or in a narrower sense. In
the broad sense, one can argue that liberal ideas of individualism and
constitutionalism form the basis of a constitutional consensus shared
by most of the mainstream parties in the states of the European
Union, the United States and many other ‘liberal democracies’.
In the narrower sense, liberalism is a doctrine professed by a
number of democratic parties distinguished from more conservative/
IDEOLOGIES 89