Engels' Fertile Paragraph

Friedrich Engels' remarkable essay, "The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State" (1884) discussed in the article by Ariana Diaz in Left Voice which I'm re-posting below, is to me the pivot upon which feminism and Marxism find a balance. Engels' paragraph setting forth the two basic motivations of human beings, upon which human culture in its entirety is built, was such a discovery for me. It explains why Marxism is both a powerful method of analysis of women's situation, and at the same time why Marxism itself has not sufficiently addressed women's situation (because Marx, culturally-bound to the misogyny of his century, applied his theory almost entirely to the "production" side, paying little attention to social reproduction).

When the theories of historical materialism and sexual selection are glimpsed together, as combined in one compressed, remarkable paragraph in the essay, the ultimate origin of male domination in human history is completely explainable. The needs for "Food and Sex" (my shorthand) are biological; the first is needed for the survival of the individual, and the second is needed for the survival of the species.

Here's the paragraph from Engels' essay as abridged in the OP:

“According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of the immediate essentials of life. […] On the one side, the production of the means of existence, of articles of food and clothing, dwellings, and of the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species.”

Engels' paragraph has been at best ignored, at worst attacked. Lise Vogel, the Marxist feminist theorist, did her best to erase it as anomalous within Marxist theory in her book Marxism and the Oppression of Women (1983, rev. 2013). Post-modernist-influenced Marxist feminists criticize it because it presents a clearly "essentialist" viewpoint; that is, it ascribes natural, not socially-constructed, divisions and processes as the bases of human culture. 

It's wonderful to see the obvious gap in Engels' essay brought out, too. As the article says, Engels had the insight that two motivations, food and sex, translated by culture into production and reproduction. He also asserted, rather than explained, women's subjugation as being caused by men's establishment of the private property system sometime during the Neolithic period, in order to pass on their new accumulations to their genetic [male] heirs.

But what motivation did men have as a class to pass it on, as opposed to women? Why were women excluded from this system? Why were men driven to be the primary accumulators of the new wealth brought in with agriculture? Engels left his assertion sitting there in the essay without further explanation. Most modern commentators ignore this gap in his theory of women's oppression because it implies that social constructionism occurs on a base of natural sex differences; that is, it assumes men and women have some inherent division underlying the societal constructions.

Engels was writing in a hurry, as the article says. He had put aside pressing work on Das Kapital to get Marx's notes and his own insights published. He left the insight with its explanatory gap there. It could have been that he didn't have time to think it through any further, or it could be that, since Marxism is a social constructionist theory, that he himself didn't want to explore the implications.

Or it could be, as I believe, that he had gone as far as he could based on the anthropological information he had. He published in 1884. He and Marx had both read Darwin's Origin of the Species from 1859 and been heartily impressed by it, but Marx was adamant about drawing a line between "animal" evolution and human evolution, which he believed was uniquely, again, socially constructed. Marx even boasted that Darwin had supplemented Marx's theory by explaining the evolution of life right up to humans, while Marx's theory explained human "evolution" itself.

If Engels had been able to fully assimilate Darwin's theory of sexual selection published in 1871 as well as Darwin's earlier natural selection theory, I think he would have come to the conclusion, as I have, that there is no such line between animals and humans, and this belief in human exceptionalism is an old holdover that is not supported by science.

Sexual selection explains the reproduction side of Engels' equation. According to it, men seek reproductive success by nature, and so do women, but the male reproductive evolutionary strategy, to maximize sexual access to women, is resisted by women's evolutionary strategy to be selective in their mate-choices and for some, not to mate. Male pressure and female resistance co-exist in a dynamic relationship common to almost all mammals, that has become unbalanced for the past few thousand years due to specific historical environmental factors. Male strategy now manifests as the maladaptive, unbalanced global cultural system of male domination.

I take all that from Engels' fertile paragraph, and much more. The two-fold structure of society is revealed in that paragraph, its division into public and private spheres is clarified, the conflictual dynamic between the sexes is revealed, the sexual division of labor comes into view, the reason for the Marxist emphasis on production and ignoring of reproduction, male aggression toward women -- all these are implications.

When the theories of historical materialism and sexual selection are glimpsed together, as combined in Engels' paragraph, however hurriedly, the ultimate origin of male domination is completely explainable. 

Food and sex are the dual determining factors of human history. They describe comprehensively the "essential" nature of humanity as with just about the entire rest of the animal kingdom. Why then are other female animals not restricted and preyed upon by the males of their species? How can women globally regain their mate-choice in the face of cultural institutions like the male exchange of women, child and forced marriage, toleration of prostitution and rape, exclusion of women from economic independence, sequestration of women, glorification of a male "right" to sexual access, and all the multifaceted ways societies cripple women to negate their resistance? Isn't essentialism bad per se? These questions certainly arise, and may be resolved, with this kind of analysis, on a firm grounding.

Here is the link to the article "Engels and Women's Oppression" from April 23, 2018:

https://www.leftvoice.org/engels-and-women-s-oppression