In the garden, man sought to become like God. Similarly, during the throes of the sexual revolution, women sought to become like men – an ambition prompted by World War II’s forced role reversal and alluring ideological apples offered by 19th-century philosophers such as Feuerbach, Hegel, and their intellectual descendants.
By the mid-20th century, the French existentialist philosopher Simone De Beauvoir tilled revolutionary ground, planting Marxist seeds as she ruthlessly critiqued gender relations. Ultimately, her exposition advanced a radical position: the abolition of gender differences and, inevitably, gender itself.
De Beauvoir’s philosophy diverges from that of Karl Marx by concentrating primarily on women’s oppression within a society designed for men. Marx, the Prussian-born philosopher and political economist, aimed to “abolish the present state of things” in what he believed to be an inevitable march towards communism – or the end of history. Marx was concerned less with the plight of women than with the plight of the proletariat, fixating primarily on the disparity between owners of the means of production and the unfortunate class on whom the owners relied for labor.
Nevertheless, Marx’s influence is apparent throughout De Beauvoir’s thought and work, most noticeably in themes of oppression and freedom, production and value, and the inevitable role of revolution in achieving female emancipation.
De Beauvoir’s most prominent book, The Second Sex, is as sacred a text for second-wave feminists as Marx’s Manifesto is for Marxists. Similar to Marx in The German Ideology, De Beauvoir traces a persistent thread of oppression woven throughout every era of human history. Drawing from this historical analysis, she describes the relationship between men and women much as Marx describes the relationship between the bourgeois and proletariat classes. De Beauvoir asserts in The Second Sex that:
“Woman has not been socially emancipated through man’s need — sexual desire and the desire for offspring — which makes the man dependent for satisfaction upon the female. Master and slave, also are united by a reciprocal need, in this case economic, which does not liberate the slave.”
De Beauvoir employs language reminiscent of Marx and his intellectual forebears, referring to a woman as the “Subject” and a man as the “Absolute,” stating that “following Hegel, we find in consciousness itself a fundamental hostility towards every other consciousness … ”
She argues that men and women are innately opposed, a dynamic evident throughout history and in modern society, echoing Marx’s belief that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. ” Additionally, relationships between the sexes, De Beauvoir asserts, are at best transactional or commercial, and at their worst, servile. She even casts a critical glance toward the revolutions unfolding during her lifetime in Russia, Haiti, and then-Indochina, which she considers successful, but only insofar as men have allowed them to be.
This, therefore, makes them mere skirmishes in the crusade for emancipation. As if lifted from the pages of Marx’s Manifesto, she contends that women have failed to organize properly, hindering true progress; thus, women remain disunited despite common experiences of oppression by the male-dominated social structure.
Ultimately, The Second Sex is both an exposé and battle cry, proclaiming, “Women of the world, unite!”
Freedom and equality
Like Marx, De Beauvoir does not view freedom as attainable independently of one’s circumstances. In fact, Marx, in a manner reminiscent of the Christian concept of a united Body of Christ, proposes that no man can be truly free unless all men are free. Similarly, De Beauvoir asserts that a woman cannot be free until all other women are free, and those other women cannot be free until men are torn from the pedestal that De Beauvoir believes they occupy.
Moreover, she does not only aver that men oppress women but agrees further with Marx and Engels’ assertion that “master of slaves and of the earth, man becomes the proprietor of woman.” While Marx proposes that “the bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production,” De Beauvoir declares that no man, not even the proletariat, is exempt from this accusation.
Ultimately, understanding the concept of women requires examining a woman’s biological limitations and her status as an oppressed group, diametrically opposed to men. Certainly, De Beauvoir paints a bleak scene for the “second sex.” How, then, does she propose women might improve their situation, and to what degree does Marx inspire her solution?
It is work, De Beauvoir proffers, that will set women free – free to become completely equal to men.
The salvific role of work
Regarding the role of work, De Beauvoir makes the following claim:
“Equality cannot be re-established until the two sexes enjoy equal rights in law; but this enfranchisement requires participation in the general industry by the whole female sex … Thus the fate of women and that of socialism are intimately bound up together.”
The fact that women are not permitted (or, perhaps, able) to do the work of men perpetuates the disparity between the sexes. This perspective, notably, flips Marx on his head since, for De Beauvoir, it is the ability to engage in the workforce that defines man as the privileged class. In contrast, Marx asserts that the proletariat class is oppressed because it must labor while the bourgeoisie does not.
De Beauvoir implies that mechanization and industrialization will catalyze women’s complete entrance into the workforce, echoing Marx’s belief that industrialization is monumental for the progression of history.
Both Marx and De Beauvoir agree that women lost what minute simulation of power they once held when the domestic cottage industry was overshadowed by factory smoke. Grasping at the ideological apples that they believed would satisfy immutable power imbalances, both figures handed rotten fruit to their followers, impacting nations and culture for generations.
