An alternative to multi-systems theories

Nancy Holmstrom opens her new book, From a Marxist-Feminist Point of View, with a brief autobiographical introduction, describing herself as “instinctively” Marxist even before reading Marx and recalling her early involvement in CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality). Although she identifies as instinctively Marxist, she offers little detail about her political formation, mentioning only briefly her time in the Young People’s Socialist League, an organisation rooted in a socialism‑from‑below tradition. The introduction feels somewhat self‑focused, though I had been warned that Holmstrom often frames her theoretical work through her own political trajectory. Fortunately, these autobiographical elements remain minimal in the rest of the book.

The introduction nevertheless sets the tone for what follows. As Holmstrom writes, “this book integrates my intellectual work with the values I have been committed to all my life: freedom, justice and equality.” With its value‑first epistemology, the book grounds socialist feminism in the lived realities of women and presents socialism as the only ideology capable of real liberation. This review focuses primarily on the first section, Mode of Production, especially the essay “Marxist/Socialist Feminist Theory and Practice in the USA Today,” with reference to “Women’s Work, the Family and Capitalism,” as the two chapters closely intersect.

Holmstrom begins with the mode of production because, following Marx, she sees it as the central analytical category for understanding social development. She treats the mode of production not as a narrow economic mechanism but as a framework model: foundational, yet not sufficient on its own to explain the full complexity of social life. Exploitation, therefore, is not a purely economic relation divided strictly along class lines.

Production

In “Marxist/Socialist Feminist Theory and Practice in the USA Today,” Holmstrom revisits the debate over whether Marx adequately accounts for women’s oppression. She notes that some feminist theorists accuse Marx of reducing “productive labour” to wage labour and thereby marginalising domestic and reproductive labour, despite the fact that such labour is essential to sustaining the very conditions of capitalist production. Holmstrom rejects this interpretation, arguing that Marx’s focus on wage labour was a methodological choice rather than a theoretical failure — a point she develops more fully in “Women’s Work, the Family and Capitalism.” (Marx’s argument was that for capital, productive labour is labour directly producing surplus value for capital, not at all that he, Marx, saw such profit-yielding labour as more worthy or beneficial than e.g. work in free-to-user public services).

This second chapter parallels Susan Himmelweit’s critique of the “domestic labour debate” of the 1970s. Holmstrom highlights the flaws in Wally Seccombe’s argument that housewives stand in a specific relation to capital obscured only by the absence of a wage, and in John Harrison’s claim that domestic labour constitutes a distinct mode of production, which would imply that housewives form a distinct class. As Holmstrom notes, capitalists are indifferent to whether labour‑power is reproduced through elaborate domestic labour or through ready‑made meals; what matters is simply that labour‑power is reproduced sufficiently to generate surplus value. Reducing reproduction to an economic transaction — as if women were “selling” their children to capital — bears little resemblance to social reality. Likewise, Harrison’s implication that domestic labour constitutes a separate mode of production is historically inaccurate and analytically incoherent. The existence of different labour relations does not automatically imply the existence of new classes. If that was the case, as Holmstrom indicates, would self employed and freelancers be a different social class, because their work relation does not reflect the typical wage labourer model?

Holmstrom’s first chapter is persuasive in arguing that proliferating multiple “systems” — race, gender, class — leads to explanatory pluralism. Her framework model, in which capitalism contains structural features that shape how other forms of domination operate, is more coherent than dual‑systems or triple‑systems approaches. Yet this does not mean that everything can be reduced to economic determinism. A fuller account must address the ideological, political, and historical forces that shape race and gender — an area Holmstrom postpones to later essays.

Similarly, while the chapter on domestic labour acknowledges that women have always been both housewives and workers — a reality reflected today in women’s overrepresentation in the working class — it offers little that is conceptually new. Much of the discussion echoes Himmelweit’s earlier analysis. More importantly, the chapter does not sufficiently address the need for the socialisation of domestic and care work. Holmstrom rightly rejects the idea that domestic labour should be waged, since this would entrench women further within gendered roles rather than transform them, yet she stops short of developing a fuller vision of collective, socialised care as a necessary condition for women’s liberation.