Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Optimist Reformer

Consumption, Production, and Reproduction in the Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

n a o m i b. z a u d e r e r Consumption, Production, and Reproduction in the Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman The cycle of consumption, production, and reproduction is rarely analyzed in its entirety. While both liberal economists and Marxists view production as a public activity that warrants critical scrutiny , they consider consumption and reproduction to be private activities that are largely determined by production. When de- fined in this way, consumption and reproduction fall outside the scope of conventional economic analysis. Charlotte Perkins Gilman , in contrast, gives consumption and reproduction the same careful attention ordinarily reserved for the production process alone. Her analysis reveals that Karl Marx and Frederick Engels’s economic theory is divorced from the totality of human experience in that it neglects our prolonged period of dependency in childhood. In positing that the mode of production is the driving force in our lives, Marx and Engels failed to realize that we could also subject the family structure and the socialization of children to conscious human control. Gilman’s theory, on the other hand, is premised on the belief that the organization of reproduction, like the organization of production, is a product of human artifice. Gilman’s economic theory also deserves attention because it complements Marx’s analysis in two ways. First, by focusing on the experience of women, Gilman calls our attention to the pain of being excluded from social production. This is an issue that simply fell outside of Marx’s range of vision. Second, by more fully examining the concept of ownership, Gilman’s theory reveals some of the problems with conceptual categories employed by Marx, such as alienation and labor-power. Gilman’s theory is both more and less radical than Marx’s. It is more radical in that she calls into question the very notion of individual ownership of our labor-power, our product, and our children. It is less radical in that she did not see the abolition of private ownership of the means of production as the most critical element of socialist reform; in fact, she saw female-owned business enterprises as a step toward a more egalitarian society. This essay also presents some of the limitations of Gilman’s thought. For instance, Gilman paid insufficient attention to alienation in the process of social production, and this could be the downfall of the female-owned and operated enterprises that she advocated. In addition, she failed to take into account the reasons underlying our tenacious hold on the home and family as we know it. She perceived the modern family as merely an atavistic holdover from the past. In fact, the needs it fulfills under capitalism are different from those it fulfilled in previous historical epochs. The transformation of the family requires finding other venues for meeting these needs. An adequate understanding of Gilman requires seeing her in the context of the American socialist tradition, a tradition that is not indebted to Marx. American socialism at the turn of the century, as represented by Edward Bellamy, Lester F. Ward, Thorstein Veblen, and Gilman herself, stemmed from the utopian socialist tradition, which had taken root in America in the midnineteenth century. The myriad utopian communities that were founded in the mid-nineteenth century under the inspiration of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier, among others, generally made the elimination of the family as an economic unit a central element of their project.1 This pre-Marxian socialist tradition provides a stronger basis for socialist feminism than traditional Marxism does because it recognizes that social transformation need not begin with a change in the mode of production; the family can be acted on independently and simultaneously. In contrast, Marx and Engels viewed the family as part of the ideological superstructure, which could be permanently transformed only through a change in the ownership of the means of production. While Marxism has never firmly taken root in this country, the American socialist tradition of which Gilman was a part has had a quiet, but substantial, effect on American society. In broad terms, American socialists differed from Marx in that they rejected class antagonism, considered the state to be a potentially 152 Motherhood and Reproduction benevolent force, and viewed the family as an independent influence in society. An adequate understanding of Gilman requires seeing her in the context of this American socialist tradition. The terms ‘‘consumption,’’ ‘‘production,’’ and ‘‘reproduction’’ refer to different phases of our metabolism with nature...