A Materialist Analysis of Contemporary Feminist Movements

Social movements on the left, such as the March 8th 2017 International Women’s Strike, see in the present moment a reorganization of capital accumulation in which gender, sexuality, race and class play significant roles. The 8th March Strike, in particular, has been characterized by the willingness to emphasize and render visible the link between masculinist violence, sexism, homophobia and transphobia and the dynamics of dispossession, privatization of common resources and environmental destruction caused by neoliberal capitalism, dynamics that are rendering ever wider strata of the population vulnerable to poverty, marginality and insecurity. This study draws on an analysis of the contributions, which approaches such as social reproduction theory and the feminist reinterpretation of Rosa Luxemburg’s thought on primitive accumulation may make to understanding the present historical moment, in order to interrogate the nature of the contemporary struggles of feminist social movements.