On Marx’s Ethnological Notebooks: A Socialist Feminist Reconsideration

The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx have long been marginal within socialist feminist scholarship, aside from a limited number of notable interventions. Despite their unfinished character, these notebooks contain a central dimension of Marx’s late intellectual project. A socialist feminist rereading of the notebooks is required --- one that foregrounds their significance for understanding patriarchy, social reproduction, and the historical variability of gender relations, while situating them in continuity with Marx’s earlier reflections on women, family, and gender. In this light, Marx’s ethnological studies not only deepen our understanding of his late thought but also offer indispensable theoretical resources for contemporary socialist feminist analyses of women’s oppression and the conditions of their emancipation.