Destinies of feminism

20/08/2024

Culture • Economy • Feminism • Books

By NANCY PHRASES

Excerpt from the recently published book

Between commodification and social protection – resolving feminist ambivalence

The current crisis of neoliberal capitalism is altering the landscape of feminist theory. Over the past two decades, most theorists have kept their distance from the kind of large-scale social theorizing associated with Marxism. Apparently accepting the need for academic specialization, they opted for one or another branch of disciplinary investigation, conceived as an independent enterprise.

Whether the focus was jurisprudence or moral philosophy, democratic theory, or cultural criticism, the work proceeded relatively detached from the fundamental questions of social theory. The critique of capitalist society – fundamental for previous generations – practically disappeared from the agenda of feminist theory. The critique centered on the capitalist crisis was declared reductive, deterministic and outdated.

Today, however, such realities are in tatters. With the wobble of the global financial system, the freefall in world production and employment, and the looming prospect of a prolonged recession, the capitalist crisis provides the inevitable backdrop for all serious attempts at critical theory. From now on, feminist theorists cannot avoid the question of capitalist society. Large-scale social theory, aimed at clarifying the nature and roots of the crisis, as well as the prospects for an emancipatory resolution to it, promises to regain its place in feminist thought.

However, how exactly should feminist theorists approach these questions? How can we overcome the deficits of discredited economistic approaches, which focus exclusively on the “systemic logic” of the capitalist economy? How can we develop an expanded, non-economist understanding of capitalist society that incorporates the ideas of feminism, ecology, multiculturalism and postcolonialism? How can we conceptualize the crisis as a social process in which the economy is mediated by history, culture, geography, politics, ecology and law? How to understand the full range of social struggles in the current situation and how to evaluate the potential for emancipatory social transformation?

Karl Polanyi's thought offers a promising starting point for such theorizing. His 1944 classic, the great transformation, elaborates an account of the capitalist crisis as a multifaceted historical process that began with the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain and continued, over more than a century, to involve the entire world, bringing with it imperial subjection, periodic depressions and wars cataclysmic. For Karl Polanyi, moreover, the capitalist crisis had less to do with economic collapse in the strict sense than with disintegrated communities, broken solidarities and dispossessed nature.

The roots of this crisis lie less in intraeconomic contradictions, such as the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, and more in an important change in the place of the economy in relation to society. Reversing the hitherto universal relationship in which markets were embedded in social institutions and subject to moral and ethical norms, proponents of the “self-regulating market” sought to construct a world in which society, morals and ethics were subordinated to markets and, in fact, shaped by them.

Conceiving work, land and money as “factors of production”, they treated these fundamental bases of social life as common commodities and subjected them to market exchange. The effects of this “fictitious commodification”, as Karl Polanyi called it, were so destructive for habitats, livelihoods and communities that ended up triggering an ongoing counter-movement for the “protection of society”.

The result was a distinct pattern of social conflict, which he called a “double movement”: a spiraling conflict between free market advocates on the one hand and social protectionists on the other, which led to political impasse and, in turn, ultimately, to fascism and the Second World War.

Here, then, is an account of the capitalist crisis that transcends the restricted limits of economistic thought. Masterful, broad and comprehensive action on multiple scales, the great transformation intertwines local protests, national politics, international affairs, and global financial regimes into a powerful historical synthesis. Furthermore, of special interest to feminists is the centrality of social reproduction in Karl Polanyi's account. It is true that he himself does not use this expression. But the disintegration of social bonds is no less crucial to his view of the crisis than the destruction of economic values – in fact, these two manifestations are inextricably intertwined.

The capitalist crisis is largely a social crisis, as rampant commodification endangers the pool of human capabilities available for creating and maintaining social ties. By foregrounding this social reproductive aspect of the capitalist crisis, Karl Polanyi's thought resonates with recent feminist work on “social exhaustion” and the “crisis of care.” His framework is capable of encompassing, at least in principle, many feminist concerns.

These points alone would qualify Polanyi as a promising resource for feminists seeking to understand the difficulties of 21st century capitalist society. But there are other, more specific reasons to turn to him today. The story told in the great transformation has strong echoes in current developments. Certainly, there is an argument prima facie to the view that the current crisis has its roots in recent efforts to free markets from the regulatory regimes (both national and international) established in the aftermath of the Second World War.

What we today call “neoliberalism” is nothing more than the second coming of the same 19th century faith in the “self-regulating market” that triggered the capitalist crisis narrated by Karl Polanyi. Today, as then, attempts to implement this credo are spurring efforts to commodify nature, labor and money: just look at the burgeoning carbon emissions and biotechnology markets; childcare, schooling and elderly care; and financial derivatives.

Today, as then, the effect is to devastate nature, disrupt communities and destroy livelihoods. Furthermore, today, as in Karl Polanyi's time, countermovements are mobilizing to protect society and nature from the ravages of the market. Today, as at the time, struggles over nature, social reproduction and global finance constitute the central nodes and critical points of the crisis. At first glance, then, it is plausible to see today's crisis as a second great transformation, a “great transformation.” redux.

For many reasons, Karl Polanyi's perspective holds considerable promise for theorizing today. However, feminists should not rush to adopt it uncritically. Even when it overcomes economism, the great transformation On closer analysis, it reveals itself to be a deeply flawed work. Focusing exclusively on the evils that emanate from uprooted markets, the book ignores the evils originating elsewhere, in the surrounding “society”.

By concealing non-market-based forms of injustice, it also tends to conceal forms of social protection that are at the same time vehicles of domination. Focused overwhelmingly on struggles against market-based depredations, the book neglects struggles against injustices embedded in “society” and encoded in social protections.

Therefore, feminist theorists should not embrace Karl Polanyi's framework as it appears in the great transformation. What is needed, in fact, is a review of this framework. The objective should be a new, almost Polanyian conception of the capitalist crisis that not only avoids reductionist economism, but also avoids romanticizing “society”.

This is my objective in this chapter. Seeking to develop a critique that understands both “society” and “economy”, I propose to broaden Karl Polanyi's problematic to encompass a third historical project of social struggle that traverses its central conflict between commodification and social protection. This third project, which I will call “emancipation”, aims to overcome forms of subjection rooted in “society”.

Central to both iterations of the great transformation, the one analyzed by Karl Polanyi and the one we are experiencing now, struggles for emancipation constitute the missing third that mediates all conflicts between commodification and social protection. The effect of introducing this missing third will be to transform the double movement into a triple movement, encompassing commodification, social protection and emancipation.

The triple movement will form the nucleus of a new, almost Polanyian perspective that can clarify what is at stake for feminists in the current capitalist crisis. After elaborating on this new perspective in sections 1 to 4 of this chapter, I will use it in sections 5 to 7 to analyze the ambivalence of feminist politics.

1. Polanyi's key concepts: uprooted markets, social protection and the double movement

I begin by recalling Polanyi's distinction between rooted and uprooted markets. Fundamental to the great transformation, such a distinction carries strong evaluative connotations, which need to be subject to feminist scrutiny.

Famously, Karl Polanyi distinguished two different relationships in which markets can confront society. On the one hand, markets can be “entrenched”, enmeshed in non-economic institutions and subject to non-economic norms such as “fair price” and “fair wages”. On the other hand, markets can be “uprooted”, freed from extra-economic controls and governed immanently, by supply and demand.

The first possibility, argues Karl Polanyi, represents the historical norm; Throughout most of history, in otherwise disparate civilizations and in widely separated locations, markets have been subject to noneconomic controls that limited what could be bought and sold, by whom, and on what terms. The second possibility is historically anomalous; A 19th-century British invention, the “self-regulating market” was an entirely new idea, the implementation of which, Karl Polanyi argues, threatens the very fabric of human society.

For Karl Polanyi, markets can never, in fact, be completely uprooted from society at large. The attempt to make them so must inexorably fail. First, because markets can only function properly in a non-economic context of cultural understandings and supportive relationships; Attempts to uproot them destroy this background. Secondly, because the attempt to establish “self-regulating markets” proves to be destructive of the fabric of society, provoking widespread demands for social regulation. Far from reinforcing social cooperation, therefore, the project of uprooting markets inevitably triggers social crises.

It is in these terms that the great transformation narrates a capitalist crisis that extended from the Industrial Revolution to the Second World War. Furthermore, for Karl Polanyi, the crisis encompassed not only the efforts of commercial interests to uproot markets, but also the combined counter-efforts of landowners, urban workers, and others to defend “society” against “the economy.” Finally, for Karl Polanyi, it was the increasingly intense struggle between these two camps, that of market defenders and that of protectionists, that gave the crisis the particular form of a “double movement”.

If the first side of this movement took us from a mercantilist phase, in which markets were socially and politically rooted, to a phase of laissez-faire, in which they became (relatively) uprooted, the second side should take us, Karl Polanyi hoped, into a new phase, in which markets would be re-rooted in democratic welfare states. The effect would be to return the economy to its rightful place in society.

In general, then, the distinction between rooted and uprooted markets is essential to all of Polanyi's central concepts, including society, protection, crisis, and double movement. Equally important, the distinction is strongly evaluative. Rooted markets are associated with social protection, seen as shelter against aggressive elements. Uprooted markets are associated with exposure, with being left to swim naked in the “icy waters of selfish calculation.” These inflections – rooted markets are good, uprooted markets are bad – are transposed into the double movement. The first movement, of exposure, means danger; the second, a protective movement, connotes safe haven.

What should feminists do with these ideas? At first glance, the distinction between rooted and uprooted markets has much to offer feminist theorizing. On the one hand, it points beyond economism, towards a comprehensive understanding of the capitalist crisis as a multifaceted historical process, both social, political and ecological as well as economic.

On the other hand, it points beyond functionalism, understanding the crisis not as an objective “system collapse”, but as an intersubjective process that includes the responses of social actors to the changes perceived in their situations and among themselves. Furthermore, Karl Polanyi's distinction makes possible a critique of the crisis that does not reject markets per se, but only the rootless, dangerous variety. Consequently, the concept of a rooted market offers the prospect of a progressive alternative to both the rampant rootlessness promoted by neoliberals and the outright suppression of markets traditionally favored by communists.

However, the evaluative subtext of Karl Polanyi's categories is problematic. On the one hand, his description of entrenched markets and social protections is almost a rosy world. By romanticizing “society,” he hides the fact that the communities in which markets have historically been rooted have also been the loci of domination. By contrast, Karl Polanyi's account of uprooting is very bleak. By having idealized society, he conceals the fact that, whatever their other effects, the processes that uprooted oppressive protective markets contain an emancipatory moment.

Therefore, current feminist theorists must review this framework. Avoiding both widespread condemnation of uprooting and widespread approval of (re)rootedness, we must expose both sides of the double movement to critical scrutiny. By exposing the normative deficits of “society” as well as those of the “economy,” we must validate struggles against domination wherever it maintains its roots.

To this end, I propose to draw on a resource not used by Karl Polanyi, namely, the ideas of feminist movements. By unmasking power asymmetries that he kept hidden, these movements exposed the predatory face of the entrenched markets that he tended to idealize. Protesting against protections that were also oppressions, they gave rise to demands for emancipation. By exploring their ideas and taking advantage of the benefits of hindsight, I propose to rethink the double movement in relation to feminist struggles for emancipation.

2. Emancipation – the missing “third”

To speak of emancipation is to introduce a category that does not appear in the great transformation. But the idea, and even the word, played an important role throughout the period narrated by Karl Polanyi. Suffice it to mention the struggles of the time to abolish slavery, free women and free non-European peoples from colonial subjection – all fought in the name of “emancipation”. It is certainly strange that such struggles are absent from a work that aims to trace the rise and fall of what it calls “19th century civilization”.

But my intention is not simply to point out an omission. Rather, it is worth noting that the struggles for emancipation directly challenged oppressive forms of social protection, although they neither completely condemned nor simply celebrated commodification. Had they been included, these moves would have destabilized the dualist narrative scheme of The great transformation. The effect of this would have been the explosion of the double movement.

To understand why, let us consider that emancipation differs significantly from Polanyi's main positive category, social protection. If protection is opposed to exposure, emancipation is opposed to domination. While protection aims to protect “society” from the disintegrating effects of unregulated markets, emancipation aims to expose relations of domination wherever they take root, both in society and in the economy.

While the objective of protection is to subject market exchanges to non-economic norms, that of emancipation consists of subjecting both market exchanges and non-market norms to critical scrutiny. Finally, if the highest values of protection are social security, stability and solidarity, the priority of emancipation is non-domination.

It would be wrong, however, to conclude that emancipation is always combined with commodification. If emancipation is opposed to domination, commodification is opposed to the extra-economic regulation of production and exchange, whether this regulation is intended to protect or to liberate. While commodification defends the supposed autonomy of the economy, formally understood as a demarcated sphere of instrumental action, emancipation crosses the borders that demarcate the spheres, seeking to eradicate domination from all “spheres”.

While the objective of commodification is to free buying and selling from moral and ethical norms, that of emancipation is to examine all types of norms from the point of view of justice. Finally, if commodification claims efficiency, individual choice and the negative freedom of non-interference as its highest values, the priority of emancipation, as I said, is non-domination.

It follows that the struggles for emancipation do not fit perfectly into either side of Karl Polanyi's double movement. It is true that such struggles sometimes seem to converge with commodification – for example, when they condemn as oppressive the very social protections that free market advocates seek to eradicate. On other occasions, however, they converge with protectionist projects – for example, when they denounce the oppressive effects of commodification.

On still other occasions, struggles for emancipation diverge on both sides of the double movement – for example, when they aim neither to dismantle nor defend existing protections, but rather to transform the mode of protection. Thus, convergences, when they exist, are conjunctural and contingent. Without consistently aligning with either protection or commodification, struggles for emancipation represent a third force that disrupts Karl Polanyi's dualist scheme. Giving such struggles their due value requires us to review their theoretical framework – transforming their double movement into a triple movement.

3. Emancipation from hierarchical protections

To see why, let us consider feminist demands for emancipation. These claims explode the double movement by revealing a specific way in which social protections can be oppressive: namely, by virtue of hierarchies of status entrenched. Such protections deny those who are included in principle as members of society the social preconditions for full participation in social interaction.

The classic example is the gender hierarchy, which assigns women a status inferior, often similar to that of a male child, and thus prevents them from fully participating, on an equal footing with men, in social interaction. But it would also be possible to cite caste hierarchies, including those based on racialist ideologies. In all of these cases, social protections work to the benefit of those at the top of the health hierarchy. status, providing smaller benefits (if any) to those at the base.

What they protect, therefore, is less society itself than the social hierarchy. It is no wonder, then, that feminist, anti-racist and anti-caste movements have mobilized against such hierarchies, rejecting the protections they purport to offer. By insisting on full membership in society, they sought to dismantle agreements that deny them the social prerequisites of parity of participation.

The feminist critique of hierarchical protection runs through every stage of Polanyi's story, although it is never mentioned by him. During the mercantilist era, feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft criticized the traditional social arrangements that rooted markets. Condemning gender hierarchies rooted in family, religion, law and social customs, they demanded fundamental prerequisites of parity of participation, such as an independent legal personality, religious freedom, education, the right to refuse sex, the rights of child custody and the rights to public speaking and voting.

During the period of laissez-faire, feminists demanded equal access to the market. By exposing his instrumentalization of sexist norms, they opposed protections that denied them the right to own property, sign contracts, control salaries, exercise professions, work the same hours and receive the same salary as men, all of these prerequisites. -requirements for full participation in social life. During the post-World War II era, “second wave” feminists took aim at the “public patriarchy” instituted by welfare states.

Condemning social protections based on the “family wage”, they demanded equal remuneration for work of comparable value, parity between caregiving and remuneration for work in terms of social rights, and an end to the division of labor by gender, both paid and unpaid. unpaid.

In each of these eras, feminists vocalized demands for emancipation, aimed at overcoming domination. At times, they targeted traditional community structures that rooted markets; in others, they aimed their fire at the forces that of they took root in markets; in still others, their main enemies were those who were oppressively re-entrenching markets.

Thus, feminist demands have not consistently aligned with either pole of Karl Polanyi's double movement. On the contrary, their struggles for emancipation constituted a third side of the social movement, which crossed the other two. What Polanyi called a double movement was actually a triple movement.

4. Conceptualizing the triple movement

But what exactly does it mean to talk about a “triple movement”? This figure conceives the capitalist crisis as a tripartite conflict between forces of commodification, social protection and emancipation. She understands each of these three terms as conceptually irreducible, normatively ambivalent, and inextricably entangled with the other two. We have already seen that, contrary to what Polanyi says, social protection is often ambivalent, providing relief from the disintegrating effects of marketization while consolidating domination.

But, as we will see, the same applies to the other two terms. Uprooting markets does have the negative effects that Karl Polanyi highlighted, but it can also generate positive effects when the protections it dismantles are oppressive. Nor is emancipation immune to ambivalence, as it produces not only liberation, but also tensions in the fabric of existing solidarities; At the same time as it dismantles domination, emancipation can also dissolve the solidary ethical basis of social protection, paving the way for commodification.

Viewed this way, each term has a telos itself and a potential for ambivalence that develops in its interaction with the other two terms. None of the three can be adequately understood in isolation from the others. Nor can the social field be adequately understood by focusing on just two terms. Only when all three are considered together do we begin to get an adequate picture of the grammar of social struggle in capitalist crisis.

Here, then, is the central premise of the triple movement: the relationship between any two sides of the tripartite conflict must be mediated by the third. Thus, as I have just argued, the conflict between commodification and social protection must be mediated by emancipation. Equally, however, as I will argue below, conflicts between protection and emancipation must be mediated by commodification. In both cases, the dyad must be mediated by the third party. To neglect the third is to distort the logic of the capitalist crisis and the social movement.

*Nancy Fraser is a professor of political and social sciences at New School University. Author, among other books, of The old is dying and the new cannot be born (Literary Autonomy). [https://amzn.to/3yBCDax]

Reference

Nancy Fraser. Destinies of feminism: from state-administered capitalism to the neoliberal crisis. Translation: Diogo Fagundes. São Paulo, Boitempo, 2024, 288 pages. [https://amzn.to/3XbmUs2]