PATRIARCHAL CAPITALISM AND FAMILY 29
loosest is the control of the economy and polity and family system by men who, through a system of interdependence and solidarity, control and exploit the labour of women for the men's individual and collective benefit.8 In a class society based on patriarchy, class relations are relations among classes of men.
An important aspect of women's labour is the bearing and rearing of children. Under patriarchy the women's children pass into the control of men for the men's utilization and exploitation. It is contrary to the nature of most patriarchies to permit the formation of female-headed families. We will show, however, that patriarchal capitalism encourages this development without diminishing the economic and social benefits to men of the patriarchal structure.
Patriarchy takes many forms. The best known is the exploitation of an individual woman by her father, husband, or father-in-law. But, especially in reference to modern capitalism, it is necessary to recognize that patriarchy also includes the collective exploitation of the female sex, by the male sex, and the exploitation of the female sex by ruling-class men for the ruling class's economic and social benefit.6
Family-centred Role
Patriarchal capitalism is the only form the dialectic of sex takes under capitalism, and patriarchy is necessary for capitalism^ continuation. Patriarchal capitalism developed out of patriarchal feudalism of Europe. The exploitation of women's labour by men was seen as natural. Marx «aid, "The maintenance and reproduction of the working class is and must ever be a necessary condition of the reproduction of capital. But the capitalist may safely leave its fulfilment to the labourer's instincts of self-preservation and propagation."7 In other words given the pre-existence of patriarchy, women could ^'naturally" be utilized as unpaid "reproducers" of labour—their husband's daily labour and the children's future labour. Reproduction includes such things as laundry, cooking, cleaning, nursing and other personal services to keep family members safe and happy, and the buying and transforming of exchange goods produced by the capitalists into use-value goods for the family. The benefit went both to the individual husband, who obtained a cheap servant and children to support him in his old age, as well as to the capitalist class which was free to exploit the surplus value of the male worker without having to pay for his reproduction. Capitalist males also directly benefitted from the utilization and exploitation of their own wives as reproducers and maintainers of their own and their children's labour and the family wealth, and from the exploitation of other women as low-paid factory workers, servants, and prostitutes.8
The basic structure of patriarchal capitalism was settled early. The split of men as producers and women as reproducers reached i^s height in the Victorian era, the latter third of the nineteenth century, when Marxist economic theory developed.® Among urban societies still today