Mill, Marx, and Women's Liberation

Leslie Friedman Goldstein

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 18, Number 3, July 1980, pp.
319-334 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2008.0726

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https://muse.jhu.edu/article/227302/summary

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 Mill, Marx, and
Women's Liberation
LESLIE GOLDSTEIN

A RECENT SCHOLARLYCOMMENT on John Stuart Mill claims that his book The Subjec-
tion of Women "is unquestionably the most ambitious p l e a . . , in the English language
for the perfect equality of the sexes. ''~ Even those who would quarrel with this superla-
tive assessment of the book would nonetheless have to grant that Mill deserves his
reputation as a sincerely committed feminist.
There are allusions to women's equality in all of his practical works. 2 He was the first
major philosopher to write a book-length treatise 3 defending what he called the
"principle of perfect equality" between the sexes? His political career--beginning with
his arrest at the age of seventeen for the distribution of birth control pamphlets to work-
ing class women 5 and extending through his advocacy, during his tenure as Member of
Parliament, of the Married Women's Property Act, women's suffrage, and an end to
various legal disabilities afflicting women6--demonstrated a consistent and firm com-
mitment to the cause. Indeed, one generally highly sympathetic biographer characterized
his devotion to women's equality as "fanatical, "7 while another referred to Mill's
"extreme feminism" as a "disconcerting" and "eccentric limitation" in Mill's philos-
ophy. s Mill himself made statements about the significance of the woman question
which sound extreme even by today's standard of inflated rhetoric. For example, in
1850, at a time when the issue of chattel slavery was agitating the American scene,
when serfdom still prevailed throughout Russia, and while Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels,
and even Charles Dickens were detailing the miseries of the urban poor in England,
John Stuart Mill describes the subject of women's equality as "that of all practical
subjects the most important. ''9

i Wendell Robert Can', editor's introduction, The Subjection of Women (Boston: M.I.T. Press, 1970), p. v.
Cart is not alone in viewing Mill as a consummate women's llberationist. See e.g., William T. Blackstone,
"Freedom and Women," Ethws 85, no. 3 (April, 1975):244
2 These include On Ltberty, Utilitarianism, Principles of Political Economy, Representative Government,
and Mill's Autobiography.
3 Mill's The Subjection of Women was, of course, preceded by Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the
Rights of Woman (1796), but Wollstonecraft's work says almost nothing of legal and political equality; her
concern is almost exclusively women's education And she is not generally considered one of the world's
major philosophers.
4 Mill, The Subjectzon of Women (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer. 1869; reprinted, New
York: Source Book Press, 1970), p. 1; hereafter cited as Subjection,
5 Michael St. John Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill (New York: Macmillan, 1954), pp. 57-59.
6 See Packe for a full account.
7 Packe, p. 80.
8 Karl Britton, John Stuart Mill (1953, reprinted. New York. Dover Publications, 1969), pp. 37-38
9 Mill to Harriet Taylor, late October, Collected Works ~ifJohn Stuart Mill, ed. John M Robson (Toronto.
University of Toronto Press, 1963-79), vol. 14, Later Letters. 1849-1873. p. 49. In The Prmciples of Politi-

[319]
320 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Nevertheless, while Mill's reputation as a dedicated feminist is certainly deserved, the

ambitiousness of his plea for women's equality has been substantially overrated. The
standard version, justifiably misled by much of the tone of Mill's argument, portrays
Mill as advocating complete equality of opportunity for women, ~~ an equality which,
Mill clearly understood, would necessitate liberating women from the stereotyped sex-
roles toward which societal conditioning was then channeling them. Had Mill pursued
the logic of many of his own arguments, he would have ended up as an advocate of
women's liberation--that is, of women's liberation from their traditional sex-roles
within the family, which liberation is the central aim of the late twentieth-century femin-
ist movement. Mill, however, did not pursue the thrust of his own arguments; he
stopped dead short at the brink of radical alteration of the traditional marriage institu-
tion. t~ For this reason, Mill ended up not as an advocate of full equality of opportunity
for women, but only as an advocate of equality of legal rights for women.~2 In limiting
himself to the case for equal rights, Mill placed himself squarely within the parameters
of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century feminist movement; theirs was, strictly
speaking, a women's rights movement.
This article will argue that the movement for women's liberation, the feminist
movement of our day, has its roots not in the thought of John Stuart Mill, but in that of
Karl Marx. Marx is frequently dismissed by contemporary feminists on the grounds that
his theory encourages "a narrow concentration on economic variables. ''~3 While it is true
that Marx did not spend enough time or energy on the problems or condition of women
to deserve the label "feminist," he nonetheless did develop the theoretical principles
which laid the foundation of the contemporary women's liberation movement. Although
John Stuart Mill claimed to be advocating "the complete social and political equality" of

cal Economy, pubhshed in 1848, MIll expressed confidence that "ere long" women's legal and social inequal-
ity would be "'recogmzed as the greatest hindrance to moral, social, and even intellectual improvement"
(Collected Works, 3:765-66). Mill continued throughout his hfetlme to Insist on the preeminence of the
woman question, calling it (m a letter to J Giles, Aug. 24, 1871) "'the most vitally important political and
social question of the future," and explicitly elevating its importance above that of the struggle between "'labor
and capital," above the issue of proportional representation, and above "the land question" (Mill to C L
Brace, Sept 23, 1871, Collected Works, 17:1830, 1838).
~0 For the clearest articulation of this standard version, see Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Liber 0 and Liberal-
Ism (New York. Alfred A Knopf, 1974), pp. 171-75
H Mill did advocate many changes in the marriage restitution, these are detailed m Section I below My
point will be, however, that Mall's own arguments, as well as the concept of equality of opportunity itself, call
for a substantially more radical alteration of the marriage institution than Mill was wllhng to endorse
~2 Jean B. Elshtain in "The Feminist Movement and the Question of Women's Equahty" (Pohty 7, no. 4
[1975] :452-77) first (and in my opinion, correctly) distinguishes equahty of rights or legal equality from the
concept of equahty of opportumty; but then, unfortunately, she proceeds to blur them together, cla~mmg that
the former feeds into the latter (see esp. pp 465-67) As I shall indicate m the text below, I believe that there
is ample evidence in The Subjection of Women that Mill understood the differences between formal equality of
access, in the sense of a legal right to take a job or enter a school, and actual equahty of opportunity John
Rawls calls this the distinction between "formal equahty of opportunity" and "fair equality of opportunity" (A
Theor3.' of Justice [Cambridge, Mass : Belknap Press, 1971], pp. 72-74), but I wall generally refer to it as the
equal rights vs. equal opportunity distinction, because this formulation comports with ordinary usage
~3 Examples of this are legion The quoted phrase is from Alice Rossl, ed , The Femlnl3t Papers (New
York: Bantam Books. 1973l, p. 194. She makes the same point in her introduction to E,~say on Sex Equality
by
John Stuart Mall and Harriet Taylor Mill (Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1970). p. 59, Shulamith
Firestone, The Dialectic of Se~ (New York. Bantam Books, 1971 ), p 5; Susan Sontag, "'The Third World of
Women." Partisan Review 40. no 2 (1973). 183, 190. and Jane Flax, "'Do Femimsts Need Marxism ')'" Quest
3, no. 1 (1976):47 58.
 MILL, MARX, FEMINISM 321

women, 14 he in fact stopped far short of proposals that would yield such "social equal-
ity." By contrast, Marx, who made very little fuss about the matter, ~5 in fact did advo-
cate that complete social equality between the sexes which is the goal of the contempor-
ary women's liberation movement.
I shall elucidate these assertions first in terms of Mill's own arguments. Then I shall
use the case of Mill's views on women to explore the general limits of the classical
liberal conception of equality, and shall contrast that conception with the vision of
women's equality outlined by Marx.

I. Mill's Version of Women's Equality It is perhaps easiest to characterize

Mill's proposals for women's equality if we begin by describing the existing inequalities
against which he aimed his argument. The laws of Mill's day barred women from "the
greater number of lucrative occupations and from almost all high social functions," from
jobs that were legally open to "the stupidest and basest" of the male sex. 16 They, of
course, barred women from voting and from holding elective or appointive public of-
rice. At the time of Mill's death there was not a university in England that granted
degrees to women. 17 The laws of marriage did technically make of wives "slaves" (and
Mill used the term repeatedly). Wives were legally obligated to obey their husbands for
life. Marital separation, according to Mill, was granted only upon the husband's deser-
tion or the rarest occasions of very extreme phsycial brutality coupled with adultery.
Besides the right to beat her, the husband had the right to pocket any and all earnings or
other income of the wife (even if he was permitting her to live separately from him). He
legally owned all the children. Of course, in this context the husband's legal right to
take his wife sexually against her will was much more awesome than it is in these days
of easy divorce.IS
Mill argued for the abolition of every one of these formal inequalities. Or, to put it
positively, he argued that women be given the vote on the same terms as men; that they
be admitted to all professions and trades, including membership in Parliament, on the
same basis as men; that they be admitted to all educational institutions on the same basis
as men; and that all laws regulating marriage be made to apply equally to both sexes. In
short, as Mill promised on the first page of the essay, his book developed the argument
that "the legal subordination of one sex to the other--is wrong in i t s e l f . . , and ought to
be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the

~4 Mdl to C. L. Brace, Sept. 23, 1871, Collected Worka, 17: 1838.

15 Marx's specific references to the question of women's equality are scattered and fragmentary. Unhke
Mill, he wrote no single work thematically focusing on that subject. Engels, however, in his preface to the
Origin of the Famzly, Private ProperD' and the State, first published a year after Marx's death, indicated that
Marx had been planning to write a similar work (p. 71) Engels himself, at a variety of points m the Origin
calls for emancipating women from "private domestic labor" and turning "domestic labor" itself over to
"public industry" (see pp. 120-21, 128-29, 131, 137-39, 144-46, 221,234-37). But my argument is Section
II below hinges on the principles enunciated by Marx, rather than on the historic fact that Engels favored
women's liberation. The claim ts that Marx's own princtples point straight to women's liberation For a
thorough account of Marx's fragmentary references to the questmn of women's equality, see Hal Draper,
"Marx and Engels on Women's Liberation," in Robert Salper, ed , Female LzberaUon (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1972), pp. 83-107.
~6 On the SubJection of Women, p. 91. One "'high social function" from which, lromcally, they were not
barred, was the job of ruling England as her queen.
~7 Packe, p. 550, n. Women could attend certain colleges, however.
18 Subjection, pp. 55-60.
322 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

one side nor disability on the other." This was very clearly a brief for equal rights before
the law. The Equal Rights A m e n d m e n t could have c o m e f r o m M i l l ' s o w n pen. ~9
Mill, h o w e v e r , was too thoughtful a man to believe that the goal he dubbed "perfect
e q u a l i t y " could be attained by m e r e l y formal legal changes. He c o n d e m n s not just the
"legal subordination" o f w o m e n , but also their "social subordination," and at one point
in the essay, he refers to his goal as the "social and political e m a n c i p a t i o n " o f w o m e n . 2~
It is perhaps easier to grasp the broad sense of what Mill meant by "perfect e q u a l i t y " if
we e x a m i n e first what he saw as the p u r p o s e s o f that equalization. W h y bother equaliz-
ing the conditions of the sexes? M i l l ' s answer is essentially twofold. 2~ First, w o m e n
need to be e m a n c i p a t e d f r o m their "social and political subjection to m e n " because that
subjection conflicts with the m o d e m principle, the principle o f individual f r e e d o m . Mill
argues that all m o d e m progress, that " m o d e m life itself," aims at m a x i m i z i n g this prin-
ciple: "that h u m a n beings are no longer born to their place in life, and chained d o w n by
an inexorable b o n d to the place they are born to, but are free to e m p l o y their faculties,
and such favorable chances as offer, to achieve the lot which m a y appear to them most
desirable.'22
The principle is r e c o g n i z e d as valuable both for reasons o f social utility and for indi-
vidual happiness. 23 It is socially useful because it permits p e o p l e ' s best faculties to
b l o s s o m if they are self-starters, and it stimulates by e c o n o m i c competition the best
faculties o f other people:

Law and government do not undertake to prescribe by whom any social or industrial operation
shall . . . be conducted . . . . These things are left to the unfettered choice of individuals . . . .
The modem c o n v i c t i o n . . , is that things in which the individual is the person directly interested,
never go right but as they are left to his own discretion . . . . It is not that . . . all persons [are
supposed] to be equally qualified for everything; but the freedom of individual choice is now
known to be the only thing w h i c h . . , throws each operation into the hands of those who are best
qualified for it . . . . Freedom and competition . . . in modem social institutions [constitute] . . .
their fundamental law. 24

~9As one scholar put it, this book "remains the paradigm articulation of the 'equal rights' perspective"
(Elshtam, p. 466). And, indeed, the leader of the nineteenth-century women's rights movement in America,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, remarked that reading Mill's book left her with a feehng of "a peace and joy I never
felt before" (Alma Lutz, Created Equal A Biography of Elizabeth Cac(v Stanton [New York. John Day and
Co., 1940], pp, 171-72; cited by Alice Rossl in introductory essay to Essays on Sex Equality, p. 62, n. 84)
2o Subjection, pp. 36, 165.
2~ In fact, he lists several gains to be achieved by sex equality, m addition to the two that I detad m the text:
happier marriages; more intelligent employment by women of the moral influence that they wall always have
over their husbands, their admirers, and their children; an end to the brutalization of women that now goes on
within marriage; and an improvement (because women will be more intelligent) in the traditional women's
activities of education (of their own children) and organized charity (Subjection, pp. 146-88).
22 Subjection, pp. 29-30. Gertrude Himmelfarb's fascinating study of Mill's work, On Liberty and Liberal-
tsm, notes that the primary focus of Subjection is hberty rather than equality (pp. 171-81) She does not note,
however, a focus that seems to be at least as important as that of liberty, namely, the concern with justice and
human virtue.
23 Mill flirts briefly with a third rationale for this principle of individual freedom, arguing at one point that
all persons equally have a "moral f i g h t . . , to choose their occupations (short of injury to others), according
to their own preferences, at their own risk," seeking "their fair share of honor and distinction" (SubJection, p.
95). The argument that there is a moral fight to individual freedom is not developed any further, however.
24 Subjection, pp. 31-36. See also, pp. 3-4, 47, 49, 93, 95, 153-55, 185-86.
 MILL, M A R X , F E M I N I S M 323

As his second defense of the principle of individual freedom, Mill argues that "the
most direct benefit" of permitting a life of "rational freedom" is that it promotes "private
happiness." Next to food and clothing, he asserts, "freedom is the first and strongest
want of human nature. ''25 Mill means here not only freedom from the rule of others, but
also freedom to develop one's faculties through the active application of them to tasks of
social importance. He concludes the essay with the assertion that "every restraint on the
conduct of any of [one's] human fellow creatures (otherwise than by making them re-
sponsible for any evil actually caused by it), dries up p r o t a n t o the principal fountain of
human happiness, and leaves the species less r i c h . . , in all that makes life valuable to
the individual . . . . -26
Interestingly enough, Mill again harks to t h e m o d e m principle in order to explain
what seems to be his second basic purpose for seeking w o m e n ' s equality. But his time it
is a different principle that establishes the basis of modernity:

In modem life, and more and more as it progressively improves, command and obedience become
exceptional facts in life, equal association its general rule . . . . We have had the morality of
submission, and the morality of chivalry and generosity; the time is now come for the morality of
justice. Whenever, in former ages, [the value of equality was recognized], justice has asserted its
claims as the foundation of virtue . . . . [The] whole of modem history consists of the slow
process by which [barriers to equality have] been wearmg away. We are entering into an order of
things in which justice will again be the primary virtue . . . . 27

A quest for the human virtue of justice, then, is Mill's second aim in proposing
equality between the sexes. And his understanding of justice in this context is rather
close to that of K a n t ' s famous maxim. As Mill puts it, "The true virtue of human beings
is fitness to live together as equals; claiming nothing for themselves but what they as
freely concede to everyone else. ''28 For Mill, this maxim implies that command of any
kind will always be viewed as an exceptional necessity and will always be as temporary
as the exigencies that demand it. 29 And in the realm of "morals and politics" the maxim
implies also the principle that conduct alone merits respect and that inherited privilege is
intrinsically unjust. 3~ The vast impact of the inherited privilege of the male sex is so
damaging to human virtue that its extent cannot be imagined, let alone calculated. Its
"perverting influence" must be "of such magnitude, that it is hardly possible . . . to
raise our imagination to the conception of so great a change for the better as would be
made by its removal." "The moral regeneration of mankind will only really commence,
when the most fundamental of the social relations is placed under the rule of equal
justice . . . . -31

2~ Subjection, pp. 178-88.

26 Subjection, p. 188.
27Subjection, pp. 79-80.
28 Subjection, p. 81. Mill evidently means for this formulation to evoke the Golden Rule, for he states that
the "law of justice . . . is also that of Christianity" (p. 153).
2Q Subjectzon, p. 81. See also p. 95 and n. 23 supra, and pp. 148-53, 159; at p 147, Mill refers to a third
version of "the modem principle," namely, a belief that only checks on power itself wall stem abuses of
power.
30 SubJection, pp. 148-53. See also p. 142.
31 SubJection, pp. 152, 177. In addition to arguing that equality will promote virtue, Mill also argues that
324 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Equality for women, then, is desirable (1) because it will enlarge the total sum of
individual liberty available in society, and (2) because, since the principle of equality is
demanded by recognized principles of justice, men's acceptance of that principle in the
social arrangements of their daily lives will add immensely to their moral virtue. 32
Mill, of course, is aware that he has been preceded by other philosophers who ex-
tolled the values of liberty and equality, but who denied their applicability to women.
Rousseau and Hegel among others, had argued that the natural differences between
women and men were so fundamental as to make equal treatment of women quite inap-
propriate; and their arguments, of course, were endorsed by many men of lesser genius
in Mill's day. Thus, a major task of The Subjection of Women is to dispute the common
assumption that women were by nature so different from, and/or inferior to, men that
they benefitted (as children do) in being ruled by others.
Mill's basic approach to this task is to argue that we cannot know the nature of
women from their present character, because character, as too few recognize, is a malle-
able thing. It is, in fact, an artificial product, shaped by "custom," by "opinion," by
"circumstances," by "social inculcation," by one's daily occupations, by the structure of
social incentives, by "training and education," in short, "by the direct relations of hu-
man beings to society and life. ''33 Since we cannot know women's true nature, of course
Mill cannot prove that it is equal to men's. But Mill believes that if he can just convince
us that we cannot be certain that women's nature is unequal to men's, then we ought to
grant him his case. 34 The modern principles of progress are so clearly those of liberty
and equality that every benefit of doubt ought to go in their direction rather than against
them. 35 Thus, Mill's self-imposed task is to create that reasonable doubt. And his route
to that end is marked by repeated and emphatic assertions of the extent to which
"character" is merely the product of external circumstances. 36

freedom will promote virtue, but he does not develop the latter argument at any length. See p. 179 on "the
ennobling influence of free government."
32 In this context "the principle of equality" refers s,mply to the absence of vested privilege--asking no
special privilege for oneself that one would not concede to all others. (Mill, of course, excepts children from
this, and one presumes he would also exclude lunatics, etc.)
33 These specific terms or concepts occur respectively at Subjection, pp. 6, 34-35, 39-40, 118, 141, 118,
and 123, but the basic message of the "extraordinary susceptibihty of human nature to external mfluences"
absolutely pervades the book. To attempt to document every reference to ,t is superfluous; one can hardly read
for ten pages without coming to another statement of the point Himmelfarb, too, noted the pervasiveness of
this theme, but in a somewhat different context (see n. 22 supra). Even the slightest attention to this theme m
SubJection (not to mention other works of Mill) yields, I believe, the indisputable conclusion that Mill in-
tended to reform not merely formal education, but the whole process that today is known as "soc,alization "'
For this reason, I find totally untenable the common criticism that Mill put too much faith m education and
rational argument as cure-alls for the ills of mankind. See, e.g., Rossl, Femtmst Papers, p. 195. For a
sophisticated account of Mill's views on socialization, see Graeme Duncan, Marx and Mill (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 250-57.
3,* Occasionally, Mdl does slip away from this purity of assumptions about the difficulty of knowing the
natural. E.g., he asserts that women's character is more artificial than men's, that the English are the furthest
removed from nature of any people, and that "'perhaps" the mental tendencies of women (rather than those of
men) represent "'the normal and healthy condition of the human faculties" (Subjection, pp. 39, 46-47,
117-18, 124-25). How one can know what is normal if external circumstances shape us all from the moment
of birth is a question that Mill does not address.
35 See Subjectton, esp. chap. 1.
36 Indeed, sometimes these assertions are so extreme as to startle even those of us who live m the age of
B. F. Skinner. For example, "All the selfish propensities . . . which exist among mankind, have their source
and root in, and derive their principal nourishment from, the present constitution of the relation between men
 MILL, MARX, FEMINISM 325

This rhetorical path, whose direction is impossible for the reader to miss, carries a
certain logical momentum in respect to Mill's proposed solutions to the problems of
women's inequality. If custom, opinion, and the very structure of human social relations
shape w o m e n ' s character, and if w o m e n ' s presently distinctive character--that is, one
identified by such traits as "meekness, submissiveness, and resignation"3v-----constitutes
an independent source of her subjugation (in that it enables men to feel justified in
placing legal restrictions on her), then the alleviation of w o m e n ' s subjection (which
justice demands) requires an attack not just on law, but on custom, opinion, and on the
very structure of human social relations.
And Mill takes no chances in trusting this conclusion to the reader's inference. It is
not just law, he tells us, that must be changed, but rather law and "education, ''38 law
and "opinion, ''39 law and "social inculcation,''4~ not just the laws regulating family life,
but family life itself? ~ The passions themselves must be altered; human beings must
learn to love not subordinates and superordinates respectively, but rather they should
"learn to cultivate their strongest sympathy with an equal in rights and in cultivation. ''42
This alone will begin that moral rejuvenation which Mill seeks. And only this degree of
restructuring of human life will be adequate to liberate women from the bonds that
presently stunt their development as complete individuals.
Had Mill stopped here, we would have a picture of Mill as not only the advocate p a r
excellence of the w o m e n ' s rights movement but also as at least one of the progenitors of
the contemporary w o m e n ' s liberation movement. That is, Mill's arguments reach be-
yond that equality-before-the-law, which was the goal of the nineteenth- and early twen-
tieth-century feminist movement, 43 and point toward the equality of sex roles, both in
personal relationships and in the broader society, that seems to be the core goal of the
late twentieth-century feminist movement. 44
But Mill did not stop here. In fact, in very important respects, he proceeded in The
Subjection o f W o m e n to retreat from the advanced position I have just adumbrated.

and women" (Subjection, p. 148, emphasis added) Can Mill have really believed that equality for women
would bring an end to human selfishness?
37 Subjection, p. 28.
38SubJection, p. 117.
39SubJection, p. 34.
4o SubJection, pp. 4849.
41 SubJection, pp. 81-83, 169-77.
4z Subjectlon, p. 177.
43 See, e.g., the famous Seneca Falls Declarationof Rights in Miriam Schnelr, ed., Feminism: The Essen-
tial Historical Writing (New York: Vintage, 1972) pp. 76-82.
Jo Freemancharacterizes "the major feminist issues" of our time as "e.g., abolitionof marriage, continu-
ation of the nuclear family, payment for housewives, abolition of the housewife role, child care, abortion,
access of women to predominantlymale occupations, abolition of sex roles..." (The Pohtics of Women's
Liberatzon [New York: David McKay, 1975], p. 50, n. 22). I agree emphaticallywith her observationthat the
contemporary femimst movement ~s a women's liberation movementin this sense, and that it is a mistake
(albeit a commonone) to suppose that sedate organizationslike N.O.W., who avoid radical-soundingrhetoric,
support only women's "rights" and not women's "liberation." See also n. 76 infra.
It should perhaps be noted that the common core of these femimst issues of our day is a concern for
liberating women from the traditionalsex-based d~visionof labor w~thinthe family. This central concern cuts
across the various ideological divisions within the contemporary women's movement, it is the shared bond
among the various segments of that movement, whether they call themselves "liberal feminists," "socialist
feminists," "lesbian separatists," or "radical feminists." It ~s this concern, for example, that explains the
dedication of even "liberal femimst" groups to such issues as abortion and day care.
326 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Even within the contours of this single volume, it is possible to elaborate the case of
"Mill c o n t r a Mill. ''45 One side of the case has already been indicated: On the one hand,
Mill is m o v e d (by his recognition of the malleability of h u m a n character and by his
c o n c e m for individual freedom and for the justice of eliminating all non-merit-based
inequalities) to surpass the quest for equality of rights, adding to it a quest for g e n u i n e
equality of opportunity. 46 To be sure, it is still equality of i n d i v i d u a l opportunity: he
notes, in words that today carry a certain ironic p o i g n a n c y , that " n o b o d y asks for
protective duties and bounties in favor of w o m e n . ''47 G e n u i n e equality of opportunity
nonetheless does ask for some pretty radical things: a drastic change in the way w o m e n
are raised and in societal opinion about their proper place. If w o m e n are to have equal
freedom of opportunity, we cannot channel them by education, public opinion, and the
structure of e c o n o m i c and status rewards into the belief that they have but one useful
vocation in life: dutiful mother and obedient wife. W e must instead restructure our
"social institutions" to encourage "the same free d e v e l o p m e n t of originality in w o m e n
which is possible to men, ''48
The o t h e r side of the Mill c o n t r a Mill debate focuses on the marriage institution.
Although Mill warned that " m e n at present cannot possibly have the knowledge which
can qualify them to lay d o w n the law to w o m e n as to what is, or is not, their
vocation, ''49 he nonetheless proceeded, at least figuratively speaking, to do just that for
the vast majority of w o m e n . At a n u m b e r of points in the essay, and in an extended
discussion in the middle of i t : ~ Mill argues that "the c o m m o n arrangement, by which
the m a n earns the i n c o m e and the wife superintends the domestic expenditure, seems to
me in general the most suitable division of labor. ''5~ Mill argued that it was "not a
desirable custom, that the wife should contribute by her labor to the i n c o m e of the
family. ''52 It left the children poorly attended, and produced very poor household m a n -
a g e m e n t ) 3 Even families "so rich as to admit to delegating that task to hired agency"
should avoid such alternatives: they unavoidably produce "waste and malversation. T M
Mill, himself, sees no contradiction here with the rest of his argument; he is advocat-
ing freedom o f choice: "Like a m a n when he chooses a profession, so, when a w o m a n

45 1 borrow this phrase from Gertrude Himmelfarb.

~' He recognizes that differences of wealth and such "accidental" occurrences as "the injudiciousness of
parents . . . or the absence of external opportunities" may render th~s quest, for the foreseeable future, an
imperfect one. "But if circumstances which society is not yet skdlful enough to overcome, render [some]
failures often for the present inevitable, society need not itself inflect them." Some impediments to equality of
opportunity were, in Mall's eyes, inevitable, but some, such as those imposed by law and customs, we had the
power to remove. In those cases our duty was clear (Subjecnon, pp 186-87). See also pp. 154-55 where Mill
admits in passing that wealth will still hmit one's access to educauon; but cf. p. 34. "but wealth may be
striven for by any one, and is actually obtained by many men of the very humblest origin "
47 SubJection, p. 49. One does not have to look far these days to find defenses of the idea that equahty of
opportunity requires some sort of group sameness of results. See, e.g., Onora Nell, "How Do We Know
When Opportunities Are Equal," m M. Wartofsky and C. Gould, eds , Women and Phdosophy" (New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1976), pp. 334-446
48Subjection, p. 47.
49 Subjecnon, p. 48.
50 At the end of chap. 2, pp. 87-90. Other references are at pp 93, 136-37, 182-83, 187.
5~ Subjection, p. 87.
52 Subjection, p. 88.
53 Ibid.
54 Subjection, pp. 136-37, also p 90.
 MILL, MARX, FEMINISM 327

marries it may in general be understood that she makes a choice of the management of a
household, and the bringing up of a family, as the first call upon her exertions, during
as many years of her life as may be required for the purpose.'55 Mill estimated that this
period of maternal obligations would last until she were "forty or fifty," at which time
she would then be free to adapt the wisdom of her experience (perhaps "by the aid of
appropriate studies") to broader tasks; he specifically recommends, for example, public
administration. 56
Mill does technically abide by his own warning (against laying down the law to
women), in that he advocates no legal coercion that married women stick to their
"vocation." But he does in certain respects suspend his own concern about the fact that
women can be imprisoned not only "by actual law" but also "by customs equivalent to
law. ''57 For, although he urges that the shackles of such customs be lifted from unmar-
ried women and from women whose children have grown up and left home, he com-
placently relies on such custom to keep married women in their place! The sex-based
division of labor within marriage can be safely trusted to customary opinions and social
structures; opinion "rightly directed" will support it; women will by and large continue
to prefer "the one vocation in which there is nobody to compete with them"; and thus
they will continue to perform, for the most part, those tasks either which "cannot be
fulfilled by others, o r . . . [which] others do not think worthy of their acceptance. ''58
Although (as in any situation regulated by opinion and custom rather than by law)
there will be a few exceptions to the basic pattern, essentially married women for most
of their adult life would be precluded from working outside the home and from attaining
excellence in serious occupations like philosophy and art, which (although they can go
on at home) for "the highest e m i n e n c e . . , r e q u i r e . . , the concentration on them of the
chief interest of life. ''s9
For Mill it is unthinkable that men would want to manage their own households and
care for their children. Yet the jobs need doing. Women who bear the children and live
in the households will have a natural self-interest in doing the job well, and therefore
they will do a better job than disinterested hired hands. The solution, then, is to keep up
the public opinion that teaches women t h a t / f they marry, they are "freely choosing" the
duties of the "mistress of a family.'6~
Of course, the net result of these proposals is not hard to imagine, partly because it is
rather close to what in fact transpired. Woman gained many legal rights, including the
vote, approximate legal equality in marriage (including easy divorce, but still not the
right to refuse their sexual favors to the husband), and legal access to virtually all jobs
and all levels of higher education. But potential employers----especially when the jobs

55Subjection, p. 89. The patent inequality of requiring one sex to give up marriage if it wanted to pursue a
career, but requiting no similar sacrifice from the other sex, seems (astoundingly) not to have occurred to
Mill.
56Subjection, pp. 185-86.
5TSubjection, 187. For an elaboration of this point that focuses on Mill's utilitarianism, see Juha Annas,
"'Mill and the Subjection of Women," Philosophy 52 (1977): 179-94.
~SSubjection, cf pp. 183-87 with pp. 90, 93, and 187
59Subjection, pp. 89-90. These extraordinary few who are "exceptionally adapted" to other vocations, will
have to make some provision for the "inevitable . . . falling-short" m the usual tasks of the mistress of a
family. In any case, a woman will be required to perform those tasks (p. 136).
e~ p. 139.
328 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

were lucrative--and university admissions officers-----especially at the most prestigious

graduate and professional schools--for several decades persisted in asking that simple
question, But what if she gets married? And so for several decades women were denied
equality of opportunity, not on the grounds of prejudice about women's innate ability,
but on the grounds of assumptions about women's social role. In light of Mill's assump-
tions that most women would leave the professional world for the prime of their adult
life, this systematic discrimination against women was quite rational. Those assump-
tions have other consequences, too. To families with limited resources, faced with the
decision of which child gets to go to college, the correct choice was obvious: the son
will "need" the college degree more: the daughter will "just get married. ''6~ And these
are consequences only of a rough approximation of Mill's advice. If literally n o married
women below the age of "forty or fifty" had careers in a particular society, 62 it is highly
likely that young girls, who in the normal course of events would want to think of
themselves as sexually attractive (i.e., marriageable), would be discouraged from har-
boring serious career ambitions and therefore would have much less incentive than boys
to do well in their studies and would take their education less seriously. Thus, once
again, in the terms of its educative impact, the social pattern proposed by Mill ends up
denying the very equality of opportunity that he sought.
The restraints which Mill believed should be imposed on married women constitute a
major exception to his argument for equality of individual liberty between the sexes--an
exception so enormous that it threatens to swallow up the entire argument. This glaring
gap in Mill's feminism is frequently ignored 63 and rarely analyzed. 64 But it deserves
analysis, for it draws attention to the very serious practical limits of his argument.

6t Mill did argue that higher education will make of women better wives and mothers.
62 Mill was totally silent on the possibdity that a woman might marry and have no children. Perhaps this
reticence is due to the enormous social, even penal, sanctions that were then in force against discussions of
birth control. See Packe, pp. 55-59.
63 See, e.g., introduction to The Subjectton of Women, pp. v-xxix; Mdlicent Garrett Fawcett, introduction
to On Liberty, Representative Government, The SubJection of Women (London Oxford University Press,
1912), pp. v-xvili; Packe, pp. 494-503; Rossi. "PrestLge from the Other Sex: John Stuart Mdl," Feminist
Papers, pp. 183-96; Schneir, introductory comments to Subjection excerpt, pp. 162-63; and Anne Tatlovich,
"John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women. An Analysis," The Southern Quarterly 12 (Oct. 1973) : 87-105.
64 Rossi, m Essays on Sex Equali~, pp. 41-43, and Himmelfarb, pp 183-86, analyze it in order to decide
whether John Stuart Mill or Harriet Taylor was the true author of the anonymously published 1851 essay
"Enfranchisement of Women," which argued that a mamed woman should work for an income because it Is
"infinitely preferable" that she be a "partner" rather than a "servant" m the marriage (Rossi, pp. 104-5). Rossi
believes that this identifies the essay as Hamet's because Harriet had privately taken the same position contra
Mdl's in the 1830s. At that time Harriet had characterized a turn to the tasks of household management and
chddcare as ceasing "to exist as to anything worth calling life or any useful purpose" (Rossi, p. 85). Cf. Mill's
opposing views in Rossi, pp. 74-77, wherein he argues that the "great occupation of woman should be to
beaunfy life." I believe that Rossl has the better case on the authorship question (because of Mdl's own
statements on the subject cited in Hlmmelfarb), but Himmelfarb makes the interesting point that in the 1852
and 1857 editions of John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy (the ones published whale he was
married to Hamet), he did endorse married women's working outside the home. His statement there was to
the effect that even if the wife's earnings do not add In any way to the total family income (on the theory that
wages wall be depressed for certain reasons when wives enter the labor market), "the advantage to the woman
of not depending on a master for subsistence ~s more than an equivalent." By the 1862 edmon (with Harriet
now dead) Mill changed the "is" to a "may be," and then in the 1865 and 1871 editions he added a fiat demal
of the earlier point: "It cannot, however, be considered desirable as a permanent element . . . that the mother
of the family . . . should be under the necessity of working for s u b s i s t e n c e . . . " (Collected Works, 2 394,
 MILL, MARX, FEMINISM 329

II. The Limits of Liberalism and a Contrast with Marx One recent account
says of Mill that "his vision of life, if it is assumed to have any relevance to the
generality of the people, would require much more far-reaching structural change, espe-
cially to the property and the class system, than those which he actually advocated. ''65
One might sensibly add, "and to the family system." Why Mill stopped short of issuing
a call for an end to the sex-based family roles--the call which is prototypical of the
contemporary w o m e n ' s liberation movement66---even though so much of his argument
pointed in that direction, is a difficult question to answer.
Certainly, the proposition that his vision was limited by "his times" is not a satisfac-
tory solution. We know, for example, that since the 1830s Mill had been debating with
Harriet Taylor the question of whether married women should work 67 and that for at
least a few years, during their marriage Mill had actually endorsed Harriet's position. 68
Furthermore, the St. Simonians, whose arguments on women were followed closely by
Mill, had in the 1830s set up a communal society in rural France where the male partici-
pants caused a huge scandal by sharing in the housework. 69
This does lead to consideration of the explanation that Mill's espousal of traditional
views on the division of labor within marriage was simply a tactical stratagem, aimed at
postponing one huge area of controversy while the public adapted to the rest of his
radical views. 7~ However, this explanation, too, must be rejected. First, because Mill
himself denies it. He wrote privately in 1870 to a correspondent: "You'are mistaken in
thinking that I have purposely withheld, in my book on The Subjection o f W o m e n , any
opinions which I though relevant to the subject. The purpose of that book was to main-
tain the claim of women, whether in marriage or out of it, to perfect equality in all
rights with the male sex . . . . ,,71 Furthermore, Mill's own privately expressed views in
1867 match exactly those that he publicly expressed in 1869. In 1867, he wrote to a
correspondent:

I do not anticipate that women would be made less valuable in the house by having their minds
directed to the great concerns of mankind: but quite the contrary . . . .
Neither do 1 think that the adaptation of the work of each person to his or her special endow-
ments is a thing to be preappointed by society. I believe that perfect freedom will adjust these

Mdl's emphasis). This later statement, of course, matches the views of his 1869 essay, The Subjectton of
Women (and also matches the views he first expressed m the 1830s)
Two other sources analyze the topic: Barbara and George Tovey, "Women's Phdosophical Friends and
Enemies," Social Science Quarterly 55, no. 3 (Dec., 1974).6024; and Juha Annas (see note 57), pp.
189-90. The former notes Mill's general optimism on women's freedom under these conditions and then
points out that ff the best of women chose to pursue careers instead of marrying (which Mill seems to
endorse), society would thereby be deprived of much of the best potential offspring. The latter is a tightly
argued analysisof the clash between Mill's radical mchnationsand his reformist utilitariantheory.
65Graeme Duncan, pp. 295-96,
See, e g., Allison Jagger, "On Sexual Equahty," Ethws 84, no. 4 (July, 1974).275-96.
67 See Rossi, Essays tn Sex Equah~.
See n. 64 supra.
69Packe, pp. 94-97. Accordingto Packe, the fact that men did housework led to rumors that the commun-
ity engaged in sexual orgies!
7oMill does, for example, admit to one correspondent that m the book he purposely remained silent on
certain questionsbecause the public was not yet ready for his views (see Mill to I. B. Hooker, Sept. 13, 1869,
Collected Works, 17: 1640)
71 Mill to H. K. Rusden, Collected Works, 17: 175I.
330 HISTORY O F P H I L O S O P H Y

things far better than any general regulation can. Perhaps I do not differ so much from you as you
suppose, as to what is likely to be permanently the main occupation of a very great majority of
women. But I do not think that the majority should give laws to the individual action of the
minority . . . . 72

This private letter does give us important clues, however, as to what may have lim-
ited M i l l ' s views on the marriage question. For Mill writes on this, as on other topics
(see above, Section 1), that "perfect freedom" is the best mode for working out any
difficulties, and that it is best to keep "law" as much as possible out of human affairs.
That the use o f "law and government" to restrain some people's freedom might be
necessary in order to provide freedom for other people 73 was a notion apparently con-
trary to M i l l ' s concept of liberty---or at least to his dreams of liberty. He hoped that
somehow the self-interest of husband, of wife, and of children would all be reconciled
by an invisible hand, so that freedom and competition would promote the common
good. But since the common good required (in his mind) stay-at-home mothers, he had
to postulate that it was in the self-interest of most women to be stay-at-home mothers;
just as he postulated that free market competition would reward the best talents of every-
one else: "Whatever w o m e n ' s services are most wanted for, the free play of competition
will hold out the strongest inducements for them to undertake. And, as the words imply,
they are most wanted f o r the things f o r which they are most fit; by the apportionment of
which to them . . . [we can attain] the greatest sum of valuable result. ''74 The free
market would work that miracle of allowing everyone to do the work for which he or
she had the most talent and at the same time find people to do all the work that society
needed done. Of course, the market here would be aided (as we have already noted) by
a "rightly directed" public opinion instructing women as to their proper j o b within the
family. Unfortunately, this dream of a market that magically fulfills e v e r y b o d y ' s self-
interest without the least inconvenience to anyone is just t h a t - - a liberal's dream. 75
Despite the implications of some o f his arguments and the tone of many of his express
statements, Mill remains stuck in the mold of nineteenth-century liberalism: a perfect
advocate for the first sprouting of f e m i n i s m - - t h e women's rights movement but the
planter of no more than the barest fraction of a seed for the second growth of the
m o v e m e n t - - the contemporary women's liberation movement. It seems to me clear that
the equality of individual freedom which Mill sought (granting his own premises about
the importance of societal conditioning) must result in a call to do away with the sex-
based stereotypes about the division of labor within marriage. Mill not only stopped
short of that w o m e n ' s liberation call, but also explicitly denied its very necessity.
It is not, then, John Stuart Mill who deserves to be known as the philosophic parent
of the w o m e n ' s liberation movement. Karl Marx, I would argue, does. The contempor-
ary w o m e n ' s liberation movement really does call for moving the goal of equality right

72 Mill tO John Allen, Collected Works, 16: 1273-74.

73As in the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964. See Tatlovich on this point.
74Subjectton, p. 49, emphasis added.
75 I am tempted here to say a "male liberal's dream," but I hesitate. It is true that Harriet Taylor differed
from her husband on the question of whether a stay-at-home wife could feel fulfilled and autonomous, but
Hamet was not just a woman; she was also a self-avowed socialist. Furthermore, the women leading the
contemporaneous American women's rights movement expressed perfect contentment with J. S. Mill's views.
See n. 19 supra.
 MILL, MARX, FEMINISM 331

into the most intimate of personal relations. It does what John Stuart Mill refused to do:
it calls for an end to the sex-based division of labor within the family. 7~ And so does
Karl Marx. 77
Marx argues in the German Ideology, written during Mill's lifetime (though not pub-
lished until 1888, after the death of both Mill and Marx), that human existence, as
specifically human, begins with several simultaneous developments (which, in the
Hegelian style, he calls "moments"). These developments included the human coopera-
tion that was needed to produce the food and shelter to sustain human life, and the
human cooperation needed to reproduce human life itself. The latter, of course, con-
sisted of the relation between men, women, and their offspring, which we call the
family. Marx stated quite explicitly (and Engels reiterated the point in 1884, in The
Origin of the Family, Private Proper~ and the State) TM that the phrase "the mode of
production" referred to those forms of social cooperation needed both for the production
of the means of life through labor and also for "the production of fresh life in procrea-
tion." It is this combination of the modes of material production and of human reproduc-
tion that in the final analysis shape human consciousness and human society. 79 In other

76 See n. 44 supra and also see Judith Hole and Ellen Levme, Rebirth of Feminism (New York, Quadrangle
Book~, 1971), p. 88, for a list of the 1968 "Bill of Rights," issued by The National Organization for Women
(N.O.W.), which included the rights to childcare centers, to tax deductions for the chddcare expenses for
working parents, and to job-training opportunities and allowances for poor women levldently, mothers in-
cluded).
77 When I say Marx, unless I note otherwise, I am reterrmg to works coauthored by Marx and Engels. I
believe this usage is fair, since Engels was generally quite explicit about the leading role of Marx in their
intellectual partnership.
78 (New York: Intema~lonaI Publishers, I972), pp~ 71-72.
79 The German Ideology, written by Marx and Engels in 1845-46. pt. 1 reprinted m The Marx-Engels
Reader, ed. Robert Tucker (New York: W. W Norton, 1972), pp. 120-21. That both Marx and Engels
indicate the primary importance of the mode of reproduction in shaping human society, m my opinion, re-
lieves them of the frequent accusation of contemporary feminists that they focused narrowly on economic
variables. Engels devoted one-third of the Origin (its second chapter) to analyzing the history of human modes
of reproduction.
That they devoted most of their time and attention to analyzing the economic exploitation of the proletariat
by the capitalists is another matter A single human being has a limited amount of time on earth and cannot
accomplish everything that needs doing. My point here is simply, first, that they called for a careful analysis
of the relations between the sexes, as fundamental for understanding society, and secondly, that they called for
a much more thorough revolutionizing of those relations than Mill did. In the latter, they began the women's
liberation movement.
A second cnticlsm of Marxist theory that is made by contemporary feminists ts that It romanticizes the
proletarian family (e.g., Kate Millett, Sexual Politics [New York: Avon Books, 1969], p. 121) This criticism
is an accurate chactenzatlon of four or five sentences in Engels's Origin (see p. 135, but cf. p. 137 on the
destruction of the proletarian family). There Ls no way of knowing, however, whether Karl Marx would have
agreed with that particular paragraph in Engels's book Marx's own writings seem to state an opposite view.
Marx himself, in The Communist Manifesto, described the "wives and daughters of the proletariat" as m the
terrible position of being "at the disposal" of the bourgeoisie (with the apparent meaning that they are easily
forced by their impoverishment into prosntutton). Furthermore, Marx wrote that within the proletariat, the
economic situation is so desperate that "'all family ties . . are tom asunder" (Marx-Engels Reader, pp.
349-50). He elaborated this description in Capital, trans. S. Moore. E. Avehng, E. Untermann, 3 vols. (New
York: Modem Library, 1906), 1:513: "'The wretched half-starved parents think of nothing but gettmg as much
as possible out of their chddren. The latter, as soon as they are grown up, do not care a farthing, and naturally
so, for their parents, and leave them.'" This was the typical picture, for Marx, of the proletarian family,
although he did sensibly admit that even within the proletariat "'here and there, to be sure. family affection,
based on extremely real relations, can be found" (The German Ideology, excerpt from chap. 3, sec. D
["Hierarchy"}, in Saul Padover. ed., On Education, Women, and Children, The Karl Marx Library,, vol. 6
[New York: McGraw-Hall, 1975], p. 61).
332 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

words, when Marx calls for revolutionizing the "mode of production," he means to be
understood as calling for a revolution in human relations not only in the work place, but
also at home. s~
This becomes more fully explicit in his discussion of the division of labor. The so-
cietal division of labor, according to Marx, begins with the natural division of labor
within the sex act. Presumably Marx means to include by the phrase "the sexual act,"
the related physiological phenomena of pregnancy, giving birth, and lactation. These
strictly natural processes would in the earliest societies tie the female to the newborn
infant and require that she stay close to home at least for awhile after birth. In primitive
societies, one could speculate, she would probably be pregnant with a new child soon
after she finished nursing the previous child. Thus, "the sexual act" itself gives rise to a
primitive societal division of labor in the family. He tells us further that this division of
labor is coeval with private property, "the first form of which lies in the family, where
wife and children are the slaves of the husband. This latent slavery in the f a m i l y . . , is
the first property. ''8~
Calling wives the slaves of their husbands was a practice that Marx and Mill had in
common. What distinguishes Marx, however (and what puts him squarely into the
women's liberationist camp), is the nature of his proposal for ending that "slavery."
Marx does not call for simply extending formal legal and educational opportunity to
women. Instead he calls for a complete end to the division of labor, s2 which end, he
believes, only communist society will provide: 3

[In all past and present society, every person] has a particular, exclusive sphere o f activity, w h i c h
is forced upon h i m , and from w h i c h he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a f i s h e r m a n , a s h e p h e r d , or
a critical critic [or, m a y we add, a h o u s e w i f e ] , and m u s t r e m a i n so if he does not want to lose his

8o Corroborative evidence of this duality in the meaning of the phrase "mode of production." occurs in a
second context, also in the German Ideology (Padover, pp. 61-62), where Marx says of the persistence of the
family after the French Revolution, "The real body of the family, property relation, the excluding relation
toward other persons, forced living together--relations produced by the existence of children, the structure of
modem towns, the formation of capital-- remained, although much disturbed, because the existence of the
family is made necessary by its connection with the mode of production that is independent of the will of
bourgeois society." The "real body of the family" is at once an economic ("property relation") and an
interpersonal ("excluding . . . other persons, forced living together") system, and the "mode of production" to
which the family is tied is also simultaneously a set of economic relations ("capital formation, etc.") and a set
of interpersonal relations brought into being by "the existence of children "
8J The German Ideology, in Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 122-23. Marx perhaps has in mind the ancient
system of obtaining wives by capture. See Sarah B, Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women
in Classical Antiqui~ (New York: Schocken, 1975), p. 19. n. 7. Or, perhaps he simply means "slave" in the
general sense that the wife and children had no power to disobey the husband-father.
82 He also, in the original draft of the "'Theses on Feuerbach," insisted that the family "must . . . be
destroyed in theory and practice." Engels softened this version before publishing it after Marx's death. The
published version said "criticized in theory and revolutionized in practice" (Hal Draper, p. 89).
83 That societies who claim to follow Marx have not yet freed women from the burden of housework does
not gainsay that Marx believed they should do so. To blame Marx, or Marxism, for the failings of, say, the
U.S S.R. or of male "socialist" sexists strikes me as comparable to blaming Christ or Christianity for failings
of the organized church or of individual sinners. It is worth noting, in this context, that Lenin called for (but
never achieved) the emancipation of women from "petty housekeeping" by socialization of that set of tasks.
Only through the development of "public catering establishment, nurseries, kindergartens, [etc ]," he argues,
could "real communism" begin. See Margaret Benston, "The Political Economy of Women's Liberation,
Appendix," Monthly Review 21, no. 4 (Sept. 1969).
 MILL, M A R X , F E M I N I S M 333

means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of
activity, but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general
production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt
in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after d i n n e r . . , without
ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd, or critic [or housewife?]. 84

Marx explained, in later years, that the way in which society would put an end to the
enslavement of the division of labor would be through a shortening of the time needed
for necessary labor (i.e., the "workday"), thus leaving the majority o f a person's waking
hours free for creative, intrinsically enjoyable activity. He believed that this would be
made possible by the intelligent development of technology and by eliminating the was-
tefulness engendered by the profit motive of capitalism. 8s
In calling for an end to the division of labor, even as he recognized that the division
of labor had its roots in the natural differences between the sexes, Marx is calling for the
application of human wisdom, scientific technology, and social cooperation in order to
overcome the limits on freedom and on equality that nature imposes. Marx perceives a
trend toward this overcoming as already present in the impact of m o d e m technology on
the productive process. As much as modem industry has dehumanized the productive
process, it paradoxically (or "dialectically") has shown human society the promise of a
substantial degree o f freedom from what had earlier seemed to be the natural limitations
of human physiology:

However terrible and disgusting the dissolution, under the capitalist system, of the old family ties
may appear, nevertheless, modern industry, by assigning as it does an important part in the
process of production, outside the domestic sphere, to women, to young persons, and to children
of both sexes, creates a new economic foundation for a higher form of the family and of the
relation between the sexes. It is, of course, just as absurd to hold the Teutonic-Chnstian form of
the family to be absolute and final as it would be to apply that character to [various ancient forms
of the family which] . . . form a series in historical development. Moreover, it is obvious that the
fact of a collective working group being composed of individuals of both sexes and all ages must
necessarily, under suitable conditions, become a source of humane development; although under
its spontaneously developed, brutal, capitalistic form . . . that fact is a pestiferous source of
corruption and slavery, s6

This last statement appears in Capital, the most extensive and serious work of the
mature Marx. Its appearance there would seem to lay to rest any speculation that M a r x ' s
early references to overcoming the sex-based division of labor expressed a youthful
idealism that he abandoned in his maturity. In fact, Marx was entirely in earnest when
he called for an end to the sexual division of labor within the family. In this, he was the
first to call in a serious way for what we understand today by the term " w o m e n ' s
liberation."

84German Ideology, In Marx-Engels Reader, p. 124.

8s Excerpt from Capital, vol. 3, m Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 319-20.
a6 Capttal, 1:536, emphasis added. See also pp 532-34; and (by Marx alone) "Instructions for the Dele-
gates of the Provisional General Council (of the First International): The Different Question" (1867), in Pa-
dover, p. 91.
334 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

M o r e o v e r , M a r x ' s concern for the inequities in the relations b e t w e e n the sexes is a

m u c h more central part o f his social theory (if not of his political activities) than is
generally recognized. In addition to constituting one half o f those productive relations
that lie at the " b a s e " o f other societal and cultural p h e n o m e n a , the relations b e t w e e n the
sexes, M a r x noted on several occasions, are the hallmark o f the degree o f h u m a n i t y
present in any civilization. " F r o m this relationship one c a n . . , j u d g e m a n ' s w h o l e level
of d e v e l o p m e n t . ''87
Thus, irrespective o f whether or nor Marx was correct in his assumption that societal
ownership of the means of production was the only way in which the division o f labor
between the sexes could be ended, 88 we should, in any case, grant him recognition as
the p h i l o s o p h i c progenitor o f the w o m e n ' s liberation m o v e m e n t . 89 T o do so w o u l d not
be to deny that he gave m u c h more time and attention to the cause of the industrial
proletariat as such than he did to the cause o f w o m e n . A l t h o u g h M a r x does s e e m to
have been the first (in 1882) to draft the political d e m a n d that w o m e n receive " e q u a l pay
for equal work, ''9~ and although he rejoiced that w o m e n went to the barricades during
the French R e v o l u t i o n , 9~ there can be no reasonable doubt that the s o c i a l i s t (as distin-
guished from the f e m i n i s t ) revolution had the primary claims on his attention. 92 This
essay has not denied that priority; I have simply argued ( 1 ) t h a t M a r x understood
" s o c i a l i s m " to include the contemporary idea o f w o m e n ' s liberation, and (2) that M a r x
was the first major philosopher to advocate that goal.
Mill, to be sure, was a dedicated feminist, but one dedicated essentially to that
" w o m e n ' s rights" version o f f e m i n i s m d o m i n a n t in the nineteenth and early twentieth
century. M a r x , on the other hand, while not particularly d e v o t e d to feminist causes,
produced the first philosophical elaboration of those goals which lie at the core o f the
c o n t e m p o r a r y w o m e n ' s liberation m o v e m e n t .

University o f D e l a w a r e

87 Marx (alone), "Economic and Phdosophic Manuscripts of 1844," m Marx-Engels Reader, p. 69 See
also excerpt from "The Holy Famdy," m Padover, p. 58; and "Letter, Dec. 12, 1868" (Marx alone), m
Letters to Dr. Kugelmann (New York: International Publishers, 1934), p. 83.
88 For debate on this point contrast Margaret Benston ton the socialist s,de), with (for the potential of
cap~tahsm) Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economzcs (excerpted m Schneir, pp. 230~1-6), and Gloria
Stemem, "'What It Would Be Like if Women Win," Ltberatlon Now: Writmgsfrom the Women's Ltberatton
Movement (New York: Dell, 1971), pp, 55-60
89 Perhaps the perfect achievement of women's hberat~on is no less "a dream" than was Mill's belief that
real equality of opportunity was consistent w~th channehng the vast ma3ority of women into "household
management." My point here has not been that Marx was m general more of a "'realist," but that he was much
more realistic than Mill about the degree of restructunng of society that would be reqmred if true equality of
opportumty for indlvIduaI fulfillment were ever to be actuahzed.
90 Friednch Engels, "'Letter to Gertrude Guillaume Schak, July, 1885," and nn. 349-50, in Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels: Selected Correspondence (Moscow: Progress Pubhshers, 1965), pp 385-86, 528.
9, Marx, "The Civil War in France" (with preface by Engels) (1871), m Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 563,
569-70.
92 For particularly explicit announcements by Marx of this priority, see "Letter to Jenny Longuet, April 29,
1881," m Padover, p 152, and "Letter, Dec. 5, 1868, Postscript," in Letters to Dr Kugelmann, p. 82.