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In the Quagmires of Ethnicity

A Marxist Critique of Liberal ‘Exit Strategies’

University of Toronto, Canada

Liberalism and Marxism both reject ethnicity - belongings to kin, religion, culture, race, descent, or ‘blood and soil’ - as a basis for the organization of state power. The two positions are, however, radically different in their approach to the separation of politics and ethnicity. The liberal panacea is legal and juridical: citizens are ‘equal before the law’ regardless of their ethnic belonging. Marxism endorses this project of legal equality but argues that, as long as ethnic power is divided unequally outside the sphere of the law, it contributes to the reproduction of inequality. In other words, liberalism offers legal equality while leaving social inequality intact. This article offers a Marxist-feminist critique of liberal approaches to the conflict between women’s rights and religious and cultural belonging in societies that practice Islam.

Key Words: cultural relativism • Marxist-feminism • Islam and gender relations • liberal legalism

Ethnicities, Vol. 6, No. 3, 341-361 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1468796806068324


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