[In the following review, Meyer argues that, despite its flaws, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State is a provocative, insightful, and worthwhile addition to feminist studies.]

This [Toward a Feminist Theory of the State] is not an easy book to gauge. It is by turns insightful and obscure. It is quite interesting (even genuinely disturbing in a most thoughtful way), yet it is also, at times, rhetorical to the point that it seems to undermine what may be its very purposes. MacKinnon does have a real flair for style, and the book is also, with only a few exceptions, exhaustingly documented.

The book is divided into three main sections—(1) feminism and Marxism, (2) method, (3) the state—and closes with a summation of sorts entitled “Toward a Feminist Jurisprudence.” “Feminism and Marxism” is a thorough and probing account of “The Problem of Marxism and Feminism” (p. 3), including a feminist critique of Marxism, a Marxist critique of feminism, and concluding with an analysis of the failures at an attempted synthesis. The feminist critique of Marxism offered here is essentially a critique of Marx and Engels mainly focusing on Engels. MacKinnon then moves to delineate the boundaries between liberal feminism (particularly in the guise of what she suggests is its high point, Mill's The Subjection of Women [p. 41]) and radical feminism. Liberal feminists and a variety of others (e.g., Simone de Beauvoir, Nancy Chodorow, Dorothy Dinnerstein, Shulamith Firestone, Carol Gilligan, Kate Millett) receive slim though sometimes engaging treatment. MacKinnon's account of the failure of the synthesis between Marxists and feminists focuses on an interesting, but somewhat belabored, account of a “wages for housework” theory (p. 63). The principal weakness of this otherwise valuable section is the tendency to curtail, or relegate to the endnotes, the discussion of various contemporary opponents.

The book's central section on method begins with an account of consciousness-raising as the key to feminist methodology. This important section is intriguing but offers an inadequate account of some quite serious problems. For instance, since the method of consciousness-raising “makes everyone a theorist” (p. 102), MacKinnon suggests that feminism ought to refuse to “simply regard some women's views [e.g., right-wing women and lesbian sadomasochists] as false consciousness” (p. 115). She notes that “treating some women's views as merely wrong, because they are unconscious conditioned reflections of oppression and thus complicitous in it, posits objective ground” (p. 115). And, since MacKinnon refuses to stake out objective (or for that matter subjective) epistemological territory, the search is on for some coherent methodological middle ground. However, “this new process of theorizing” (p. 116) remains obscure throughout this section. Neither is any hint given as to how, in light of the rejection of objectivity, the promised new method will arbitrate genuine substantive differences, let alone the clash to be expected between right-wing women's experience and the experience of radical feminists.

Now, perhaps the most thoughtful, and disturbing, chapter of this methodological section is the chapter on sexuality. This discussion is too rich and complex to summarize fairly here, but this understanding of sexuality—viewed in terms of forced, and deeply entrenched, patterns of dominance and submission—informs the rest of the argument. This provocative discussion itself provides reason to read the entire book.

The final section—“The State”—begins with a critique of “liberals” (and seemingly, by implication, liberal feminists) which at times indulges in generalizations that clearly fail to address the diversity and complexity of liberal perspectives. For example, MacKinnon asserts: “In Anglo-American jurisprudence, morals (value judgments) are deemed separable and separated from politics (power contests), and both from adjudication (interpretation)” (p. 162). Having said so, she fails to engage Ronald Dworkin's extensive, and well-known, discussion of this very point. A throwaway reference to Dworkin at the end of the chapter (p. 170) hardly fills this void.

In general, in this section the critical examination of liberals is largely based on a critique of the positive law of the United States. Yet, it is a critique that some liberals (and many liberal feminists) might well embrace. MacKinnon's discussion of rape law is especially well done, though it stops short of offering a full feminist account of genuine consent, which would be most useful in this regard. The discussion of abortion, and the privacy doctrine, is almost uniformly insightful. The account of pornography is a powerful analysis and is most interesting.

In this section's final chapter, “Sex Equality,” MacKinnon draws some of her previous observations on sexuality, rape, abortion, and pornography together in an overall analysis of sex discrimination. She also cuts through a tendency to overgeneralization found elsewhere in the book and notes: “Granted, some widowers are like most widows: poor because their spouse has died. Some husbands are like most wives: dependent on their spouse. A few fathers, like most mothers, are primary caretakers … [but] that some men at times find themselves in similar situations does not mean that they occupy that status as men, as members of their gender. They do so as exceptions” (p. 228; emphasis added). All of this, of course, leaves open the normative question—one that MacKinnon clearly wants to eschew “This book is not a moral tract. It is not about right and wrong” (p. xii). Is the good father as caretaker the good man? Or, must his goodness as a caretaker inhere in some quality other than his manhood? MacKinnon (who has only limited success in avoiding the normative dimensions of her inquiry) at least is well placed to note that, the good man as caretaker is typically seen to be a good man, only by virtue of what is widely regarded as supererogatory action and not duty.

Toward a Feminist Theory of the State is a provocative book of broad-ranging sweep. It is a good book that deserves the attention not just of feminists and political and legal theorists, but also of all those concerned about the relationship among sex, gender, and inequality in the modern world.