| Lise Vogel is a leading contemporary scholar of Marxist feminist theory.Her book Marxism and Women’s Oppression-Towards a Unified Theory is the summation of the second wave of the feminist movement,and the ideas of women’s liberation that Vogel articulates in it are still valuable to study today.Vogel’s view that women are oppressed because of their unique position in the reproduction of labour provides the theoretical thinking behind Marxist feminist approaches to the oppression of women.Beginning with a revaluation of the classic Marxist literature,Vogel seeks theoretical guidance for exploring women’s oppression;using social reproduction as the basic context for exploring women’s role in the reproduction of labour;and attempting to propose strategies for women’s emancipation by analysing the nature of domestic labour.Based on Marxist theoretical foundations,Vogel summarises the achievements of feminist theory,and on this basis proposes a theory of labour reproduction,which provides a new perspective to reveal the root causes of female oppression.This study will proceed on the basis of sorting out the logical progression of Vogel’s feminist emancipation thought,exploring Vogel’s critical succession and development of Marxist and feminist theories,analysing the theoretical connotations of Vogel’s thought in depth,and attempting to comment on the contributions and shortcomings of Vogel’s feminist emancipation thought,and ultimately determining Vogel’s status in the Marxist feminist academy.The first chapter of the thesis focuses on the basic concepts of feminist theory,such as "female emancipation","the feminine question" and "the wave of feminist movements".The second chapter focuses on Vogel’s critical inheritance of important theories and concepts from classical Marxist literature,and,as a committed Marxist,Vogel’s detailed analysis of some of the texts of Marx and Engels that deal with women’s issues,as well as his analysis of the work of socialists such as Bebel,Lenin and Caius.This is an important step in defining the overall context of Vogel’s theory.Chapter 3 elaborates on Vogel’s idea of women’s emancipation,centred on the theory of labour reproduction,and summarises Vogel’s thinking on the root causes of women’s oppression.Vogel begins with a feminist reading of Marx’s key concepts of’consumption’ and ’labour’,on the basis of which he suggests that the root cause of female oppression is the irreplaceable position of women in the intergenerational process of labour reproduction,in addition to which Vogel also explores the distinctive place of the concept of the ’family’ in her theory and proposes a guide to the female emancipation movement that goes beyond domestic labour to socialisation.Vogel’s feminist emancipation ideas also brought a certain degree of theoretical strength to the feminist movement,which was at its lowest ebb,and had a profound impact on the promotion of women’s emancipation and the creation of a social environment of equality between men and women in the new era. |
