PARTISAN REVIEW
149
aspect of the problem is developed we will forfeit political conscious–
ness and in its place get a kind of chauvinism, "simply a self-directed
gaze" - it is worth mentioning that her prediction is very close to Betty
Friedan's current criticism of the movement in our own country.
"We should ask the feminist questions, but try to come up with
some Marxist answers," Mitchell insists. But why is she so committed
to the methods of scientific socialism given the clear discrimination
among women experienced in those countries where socialism exists,
and which Mitchell herself documents?
If
socialist ideology is bank–
rupt, or inadequate, will it not blunt the effectiveness of the emerging
feminists? Socialism seems to me no less the invention of men than
capitalism is, and neither economic system evolved from the minds of
women, as feminism has. Women are working in greater numbers than
ever before and in a highly technological society such as ours where
sheer"muscle power is largely unnecessary. Yet are they any the less
oppressed? And if that is true, on what basis are we to assume that
woman freed of her reproductive role would be less oppressed? The
question before both capitalist and socialist remains : why is she ex–
plovted at work as well as in the home ? I do not believe that the
answer to that question properly involves the sacrifice of her biological
self, which I take it to be inextricably bound to her identity as a per–
son. I insist up th prerogative of bearing children as a natoral right;
the raising of children - what Mitchell calls their socialization - is
something which must and can be shared by both sexes. It can be
shared, however, only if the structure of values within any given
society is open to change; then, working and employment will alter in
such a way as to not only permit tha,t sharing, but make it an essential
part of a man's, as well as a woman's, definition of himself. And there's
the hitch. For that is not the case in our own time.
Mitchell says that the family ("like woman herself" ) while ap–
pearing to be a natural objeot is, in fact, a cultural crea,tion. And she
sees the bearir.g of children as well as their raising as a caricature of
work in a capitalist society - the child as product. Motherhood be–
comes a substitute for work, "an activity in which the child is seen as an
object created by the mother, in the same way as a commodity is cre–
ated by a work." "... [H]er capacity for maternity
is
a definition of
woman. But it is only a physiological definition. Yet so long as it is
allowed to remain a substitute for action and creativity, and the home
an area of relaxation for men, women will remain confined to the.
species, to her universal and natural condition." She seems to me
guilty of extending the caricature by contributing to it. For unless I
