SOURCE: Papke, Mary E. “American Marxwomen: Duelling with Historical Materialism.¹” In Germany and German Thought in American Literature and Cultural Criticism, edited by Peter Freese, pp. 454-69. Essen: Verlag Die Blaue Eule, 1990.

In the following essay, Papke examines American, socialist, and feminist interpretations of the place of women in the context of Marxist critical theory as well as the use of Marxist theories for feminist critical debate.

In 1971, the British socialist feminist Juliet Mitchell in response to the radical feminist position that one must focus on women's oppression by men as “the problem” wrote that “We should ask the feminist questions, but try to come up with some Marxist answers” (99). In the same year, the American socialist feminist Lillian S. Robinson also warned that

Feminist criticism, as its name implies, is criticism with a Cause, engaged criticism. But the critical model presented to us so far is merely...