ABSTRACT
Contemporary analysis recognizes the possibility of coexisting modes of production—for example, feudalist forces and relations of production side by side with slave-holding forms of each—in the same social formation. Nancy Folbre uses that insight to recast dramatically the ongoing debate over the concept of patriarchy in feminist literature. Folbre argues that patriarchy can be understood as a mode of production with a logic of its own, and that it too can coexist with the more traditionally conceived modes of production of Marxist analysis. She offers this new conceptual foundation as a means of overcoming tendencies in more traditional Marxist analysis to treat gender issues as subordinate to those of class, and as a means of bridging the gulf between treatments of patriarchy and capitalism in much of feminist analysis. Folbre's article appears for the first time here.
