Male supremacy is built into the architecture of bourgeois productive relations. It justifies the domination of men over women, and is a weapon the capitalists use to pay women less and reap billions of dollars in profit from their super-exploitation. The origin of male supremacy coincided with the initial creation of private property, the division of society into classes and the rise of the state. Male supremacy is based on class exploitation and appropriation of the unpaid and low-paid labor of women. Male supremacist ideology is used by the capitalist class to maintain its domination and ability to extract extra profit out of female labor and maintain the split in all layers of the proletariat. The ending of women’s oppression requires not only the ending of capitalism but the abolition of all classes.
The term “male supremacy” is used rather than “male chauvinism” because chauvinism is a concept linked to nations.
(See, Woman question.)
Excerpt From: Darryl Mitchell. “Marxist Glossary Mini Edition 3.0.” iBooks.
Marxist Glossary Mini Edition 3.0 can be purchased at Lulu. com
