Life and growth of the Thirteen Marxist Feminist Theses

Abstract

The fourth international Marxist feminist conference was the most international and best attended with around 700 participants, including Silvia Federici, Nancy Fraser, Tithi Bhattacharya, Lorena Cabnal, Ochy Curiel, Ana Cecilia Dinerstein, Elsa Dorlin, Jules Falquet, and Frigga Haug. The main themes of the panels established continuity with the previous conferences, from debates on intersectionality which overlap in various fields with practical and theoretical issues such as value, the state, law, care, production, and social reproduction to those that were closely linked to the thinking of new organizations and repertoires of struggle. This Special Issue is based on the plenary titled: the Thirteen Theses of Marxist Feminism. Frigga Haug, the author of The Thirteen Theses, considers all of them in her opening interview. The most widely debated theses by the Special Issue contributors are Theses I, II, and III on relations of production and the production of the means of life followed by theses from V to VIII which deal with intersectionality and how to study race, class and gender, the role of labor movement in the process of emancipation, and the issue of primary and secondary contradictions which is closely related to the development of an effective political emancipatory subject. The Special Issue closes with an interview with the philosopher Nancy Fraser on the three faces of labor.