Similarities Between Feminism And Marxism

This essay will compare and contrast the aspirations and opinions of the Marxist and feminist ideologies, both of which continue to have a meaningful impact upon modern politics. At its simplest Marxism is a political ideology which aims to build from the critical analysis of the philosopher Karl Marx. The Marxist view of capitalism is that through the operation of the economy, the masses (workers) are exploited by the ruling class (capitalists) via profit, which is seen as theft. A strong proponent of this stance was the philosopher Friedrich Engels who stated, “all past history was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and of exchange.” (Engles, 1877), developed

Both Marxism and Feminism strive to produce a community in which their vision of equality can be achieved. The reason that feminism, and its means, can be viewed as a more tangible approach to securing this is that it goal is to do so from within currently used political ideologies, morphing their more exploitive concepts. This strongly contrasts to Marxism’s approach which calls for a complete reworking of both political and economic structures in order to complete its objective, this radical approach to correcting inequality though well thought out conceptually would be extremely difficult to implement as all dramatic shifts from the status quo are. This difficulty in execution does not invalidate the ideology but to most relegate it to a pool of conceptual ideas to draw from. Though feminism is also difficult to class a fully formed ideology lacking in certain areas making more suited to acting as a driving force behind a pressure group, the proposals it puts forwards, as seen in both recent and past events, are able to gain traction and be incorporated into mainstream