To what extent did consumer culture help women break from the private sphere? Was it open to all women?

 Karl Marx argued that labour is an integral part of human nature; that “man lives on nature – means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die.”1 This encompasses the inalienable truth that human beings need sustenance, obtainable through the continuous exchange of what Rosemary Hennessy called “necessary labour” carried out to “reproduce the means for (his) own subsistence” which in turn guarantees one’s economic independence.2 As the nineteenth century industrial revolution (which saw many women working in places like textile factories) was replaced by twentieth century consumer culture and more women began to enter the labour force, arguably it was this mode of production rather than consumption which provided a means for women to break out of the private sphere through productive cooperation with other individuals in a societal working environment. This is supported further by Marx’s idea of the sociability of labour which suggested that labour involves “a twofold relation: on the one hand, as a natural, on the other as a social relation – social in the sense that it denotes cooperation of several individuals, no matter under what conditions, in what manner and to what end.”3 Consequently, what Clara Zetkin described as women’s dependence on the “old family economic system which provided both livelihood (financial dependence on their working husband) and life’s meaning” (to produce more life), faced interrogation.4

On the one hand, this “capitalist mode of production” did allow women to find a “meaningful life by productive activity” (Zetkin, p.1). However, it’s difficult to see the exploitation of women as “a cheap labour force and above all a submissive one”, as a better alternative to their domestication within the private sphere. (Zetkin, p.4-5) As for the so-called sociability of labour, as Zetkin points out, in former times (the pre-capitalistic period) “the rule of a man over his wife was ameliorated by their personal relationship, whereas “between an employer and his worker…[there]...exists only a cash nexus.” (Zetkin, p.5) Therefore, no empathetic considerations prohibited the capitalist from dehumanising his workers by exacting surplus labour from them in order to keep up with the “modern mode of production” whilst generating profit beyond the production of labour for himself. (Zetkin, p.2) Furthermore, this system oppressively victimised women by enabling her to gain “economic independence” but “neither as a human being nor as a woman or wife” to “to develop her individuality”, (Zetkin, p.5)

We see how ‘consumerism’ as a phenomenon came to replace ‘production’ in post-1950s late capitalism, forcing women to seek economic independence outside of the private, family structure. Rather than liberating them through fair and sociable labour conditions, entrance into the public sphere for proletariat women meant subjection to the ‘dual burden’ of having to carry out both domestic and public labour. Meanwhile, bourgeois women were exploited through a compulsion to buy in order to remain in a public sphere made attractive through its deliberately oppositional placement in relation to the demonised private sphere. The public sphere was therefore perhaps not as liberating as we might have presupposed, given that it facilitated a false consciousness which simultaneously inhibited female solidarity and bolstered class hostilities. It did this by replacing the potential for cooperative social relations with a purchasable, artificial sociability which arguably constituted yet another form of alienation from genuine human nature and social relations.

Furthermore, the construction of this public sphere necessarily predicated on the continued exploitation of a lower class of proletarian women echoes Zetkin’s observation that “wherever a woman is no longer forced to fulfil her duties, she devolves her duties as spouse, mother and housewife upon paid servants” due to the economic basis of such a familial and economic model. (Zetkin, p.3) In twentieth century consumer culture, these domestic roles took the form of manufacturing ones adopted by proletariat individuals producing labour-saving devices which freed from private domestication only those women who could afford them, furthering class divisions as a result. Thus, as the “modern mode of production slowly undermined domestic production”, it was predominantly working-class women who sought a livelihood through productive labour because their social class made it impossible for them to rely solely on the economic family plan. (Zetkin, p.2)

Consumer culture also saw the introduction of the assembly line in 1913 as an alternative to the open-plan sociability of nineteenth century textile factories. Paradoxically, this generated more rather than less surplus labour. The demand increased not just for the surplus production of necessary products, but also for these labour-saving devices. The fast-pace and repetitive monotony of such a successfully efficient capitalist model stagnated workers as individuals at one single stage in the production process. This led directly to the usurpation of the fundamental sociability of labour by dividing individual labourers so as to prohibit anti-capitalist collective action, and so that capitalists could extort more labour to satisfy the increasingly voracious appetite of twentieth century consumer culture. Ultimately, the assembly line led to the further alienation of the proletariat class both from the products they were manufacturing and from each other as they were unable to see - never mind purchase - the final product of their labour.

In conclusion, consumer culture allowed upper-class women to break from the private sphere through the materialisation of a purchasable social artificiality. However, this was necessarily predicated on the ongoing exploitation of proletariat workers, who couldn’t afford to partake in consumer culture, by capitalists aiming to earn a profit through surplus production. Thus, twentieth century consumer culture created a false liberation for upper-class women from the private sphere, whilst proletariat women were continually exploited as a result of the greater class divisions promoted by consumer culture and exacerbated by the production of luxury items. This was in large part due to the alienating effects of the assembly line which catastrophically undermined the fundamental sociability of human labour through the dehumanisation of workers for the more efficient production of items they couldn’t afford. If we accept that consumerism has only succeeded in the debatable liberation of some women who still for the most part remain engaged in a struggle against the men of her class for equal wages in the public sphere, then we must see the proletarian women fight “hand in hand with the man of her class against capitalist society”. (Zetkin p.5) As Zetkin suggested, the “final aim” of the proletariat woman “is not the free competition with the man, but the achievement of the political rule of the proletariat” in order to overcome both consumerism and the exploitation of surplus value permitted within an oppressive capitalist system. (Zetkin, p.5)

Bibliography:

. Engels, Frederick, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, iii 275 (London 1975-

. Hennessy, Rosemary, ‘Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism’ (New York: Routledge, 2004)

. Zetkin, Clara, ‘Proletarian Woman and Socialism’, Only in Conjunction With the Proletarian Woman Will Socialism Be Victorious, (Speech at the Party Congress of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Goth, October 16th, 1896, Berin