Revolutionary Feminism

Communist Interventions, Volume III

Communist Research Cluster

2016

Revolutionary Feminism

Communist Interventions, Volume III

Women must completely discover their own possibilities—which are neither mending socks nor becoming captains of ocean-going ships. Better still, we may wish to do these things, but these now cannot be located anywhere but in the history of capital.

–Mariarosa Dalla Costa

Preface

The history of the communist movement, in the twentieth century, is also a history of women. Many women stood on the movement’s front lines. They struck in the factories, demonstrated in the streets, and died on the barricades. Revolutionary women fought under both the red flag and the black one. They partook of the movement’s few victories and suffered under its massive and in the end overwhelming defeats.

Yet women’s participation in the communist movement also raised certain questions. Or else, perhaps more accurately, their participation provided many different answers to a question that remained frustratingly undefined. This question was called, rather vaguely, the “woman question,” and it concerned the “role” of women in social life and in struggle. Revolutionary women—who were among the communist movement’s most prominent theorists, generating texts on every line of revolutionary inquiry—posed and answered this question in different ways. This reader examines revolutionary debates around the “woman question” (and we include both men and women in this history, since the former also played a role in these debates).

Towards that end, this volume is organized, loosely, into two parts. The first goes through the history of revolutionary feminism. It begins with a selection from Friedrich Engels’ text on the origins of the family. This text is included at the start, since it is both referenced and criticized by so many of the texts that follow. We then continue through the first half of the twentieth-century—looking at socialist, anarchist and communist perspectives—before moving on to the radical feminist critiques of the New Left. The second part of the reader then stops moving forward in time, to linger on some of the key debates of the 1960s and ’70s.

To return to these texts, today, is clearly of great importance. Many of the gains of 1960s and 70s mainstream feminism have stagnated. Visible feminism today is largely bifurcated between esoteric academic cultural critique and neoliberal corporate sloganeering. A certain form of feminism has become de rigueur among liberals, yet the lives of many women and queer people have seen little material improvement. This lack of improvement comes, moreover, during a time of massive transformations in social life.

Women in low-income countries make up a large portion of the world’s manufacturing workforce (and the world’s total workforce). Meanwhile, in the high-income countries, women have moved into the workforce in unprecedented numbers, driven in part by declining real wages and welfare austerity. The work of social reproduction is increasingly commodified in healthcare, education and domestic work, and food service industries. At the same time, birth rates among women, the world over, are falling to historic lows. In stark ways, women’s lives are being transformed by the changing class dynamics of capitalism.

Women are also playing dramatic and visible roles on both sides of an escalating class war. Ruling-class women are widely known as major political leaders, corporate CEOs, or heads of media empires. Meanwhile, working-class women and queer people—in the US, poor black and brown women in particular—are at the forefront of many struggles. Black women were the leading organizers in the 2014–2015 wave of anti-police brutality protest in the US, as well as many other community-based struggles. Insurrection by women is crucial to the future of all social movements, and increasingly our survival as a species.

These issues call out for a critical engagement with basic questions of the nature of women’s oppression in capitalist society. This reader returns to historical debates, looking towards substantive theoretical arguments made in the heat of earlier waves of struggle. These authors both speak to their particular historical conditions, often during periods of rising revolutionary consciousness and insurgency, and to the relentless questions of gender oppression in the capitalist world. What accounts for the persistence of women’s oppression? What drives the major changes in the conditions of women’s lives and in family reproduction? What is the role of unpaid domestic labor in class struggle and for class power? What are the causes of pervasive violence against women? How should feminist movements engage the race and class stratification among women? What role does independent and autonomous women’s organizing play in revolutionary movements? And how will revolution transform women’s lives?

Some equally important questions remain largely or wholly unasked in this reader: what is the relationship between feminism and other movements seeking emancipation from the confines of gender? How is a revolutionary approach to “the woman question” transformed by struggles over who counts as a woman? Poor queer and trans people, many of them people of color, are presently waging fierce struggles, often for their very survival. These struggles have been some of the most radical in the streets. They are also some of the most productive, in terms of generating new revolutionary perspectives, in the present moment.

By reading and debating these older texts, we hope to reflect on our own answers to these questions. For that reason, we include work by authors with whom we disagree, to better aid ourselves in discussion and debate. We include both well-known historical figures and forgotten movement scholars. Some of the later authors are academics, though we tried to hue to the leading thinking from within revolutionary movements themselves. We decided to stop the reader in 1984, at the end of one era and the cusp of another.

May this reader aid our work, and the work of those to come, in the liberation of all women, the abolition of gender oppression—and perhaps gender as well—and our collective realization as full human beings.

Communist Research Cluster

New York, NY

2015

communist.research.cluster@gmail.com

http://communistresearchcluster.wordpress.com

The Origins of an Orthodoxy

Engels elaborates on the implicit materialist development theory in the work of anthropologist Lewis Morgan. Focused largely on the transition from food-gathering (“savagery”) to food-producing (“barbarism”), Morgan identifies underlying patterns of changing gender relations across many societies. We include here the Preface, perhaps the most referenced Marxist text in post-WWI feminism, with its formulation of the two-fold production of society: goods and human beings. Ch. II has also been of particular importance to feminists, identifying the modern family as a result of capitalist property relations. Ch. IX gives an overall summary of Engels’ book, to put this argument in context.

The secondary reading is Wendy Goldman’s Women, the State & Revolution, a summary of left thought on women, addressing weeks 1–4 in this reader.

Secondary reading: Wendy Goldman, Ch. 1, Women, the State & Revolution. Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Frederich Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/

Published: October 1884, in Hottingen-Zurich.

Source: Marx/Engels Selected Works, Volume 3. Lawrence & Wishart, 1975.

Preface to the First Edition

The following chapters are, in a sense, the execution of a bequest. No less a man than Karl Marx had made it one of his future tasks to present the results of Morgan’s researches in the light of the conclusions of his own—within certain limits, I may say our—materialistic examination of history, and thus to make clear their full significance. For Morgan in his own way had discovered afresh in America the materialistic conception of history discovered by Marx forty years ago, and in his comparison of barbarism and civilization it had led him, in the main points, to the same conclusions as Marx. And just as the professional economists in Germany were for years as busy in plagiarizing Capital as they were persistent in attempting to kill it by silence, so Morgan’s Ancient Society[1] received precisely the same treatment from the spokesmen of “prehistoric” science in England. My work can only provide a slight substitute for what my departed friend no longer had the time to do. But I have the critical notes which he made to his extensive extracts from Morgan, and as far as possible I reproduce them here.

According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of the immediate essentials of life. This, again, is of a twofold character. On the one side, the production of the means of existence, of articles of food and clothing, dwellings, and of the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The social organization under which the people of a particular historical epoch and a particular country live is determined by both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labor on the one hand and of the family on the other.

The lower the development of labor and the more limited the amount of its products, and consequently, the more limited also the wealth of the society, the more the social order is found to be dominated by kinship groups. However, within this structure of society based on kinship groups the productivity of labor increasingly develops, and with it private property and exchange, differences of wealth, the possibility of utilizing the labor power of others, and hence the basis of class antagonisms: new social elements, which in the course of generations strive to adapt the old social order to the new conditions, until at last their incompatibility brings about a complete upheaval. In the collision of the newly-developed social classes, the old society founded on kinship groups is broken up; in its place appears a new society, with its control centered in the state, the subordinate units of which are no longer kinship associations, but local associations; a society in which the system of the family is completely dominated by the system of property, and in which there now freely develop those class antagonisms and class struggles that have hitherto formed the content of all written history.

It is Morgan’s great merit that he has discovered and reconstructed in its main lines this prehistoric basis of our written history, and that in the kinship groups of the North American Indians he has found the key to the most important and hitherto insoluble riddles of earliest Greek, Roman and German history. His book is not the work of a day. For nearly forty years he wrestled with his material, until he was completely master of it. But that also makes his book one of the few epoch-making works of our time.

In the following presentation, the reader will in general easily distinguish what comes from Morgan and what I have added. In the historical sections on Greece and Rome I have not confined myself to Morgan’s evidence, but have added what was available to me. The sections on the Celts and the Germans are in the main my work; Morgan had to rely here almost entirely on secondary sources, and for German conditions—apart from Tacitus—on the worthless and liberalistic falsifications of Mr. Freeman. The treatment of the economic aspects, which in Morgan’s book was sufficient for his purpose but quite inadequate for mine, has been done afresh by myself. And, finally, I am, of course, responsible for all the conclusions drawn, in so far as Morgan is not expressly cited.

II. The Family

3. Pairing Family

A certain amount of pairing, for a longer or shorter period, already occurred in group marriage or even earlier; the man had a chief wife among his many wives (one can hardly yet speak of a favorite wife), and for her he was the most important among her husbands. This fact has contributed considerably to the confusion of the missionaries, who have regarded group marriage sometimes as promiscuous community of wives, sometimes as unbridled adultery. But these customary pairings were bound to grow more stable as the gens developed and the classes of “brothers” and “sisters” between whom marriage was impossible became more numerous. The impulse given by the gens to the prevention of marriage between blood relatives extended still further. Thus among the Iroquois and most of the other Indians at the lower stage of barbarism we find that marriage is prohibited between all relatives enumerated in their system—which includes several hundred degrees of kinship. The increasing complication of these prohibitions made group marriages more and more impossible; they were displaced by the pairing family. In this stage, one man lives with one woman, but the relationship is such that polygamy and occasional infidelity remain the right of the men, even though for economic reasons polygamy is rare, while from the woman the strictest fidelity is generally demanded throughout the time she lives with the man, and adultery on her part is cruelly punished. The marriage tie can, however, be easily dissolved by either partner; after separation, the children still belong, as before, to the mother alone.

In this ever extending exclusion of blood relatives from the bond of marriage, natural selection continues its work. In Morgan’s words:

The influence of the new practice, which brought unrelated persons into the marriage relation, tended to create a more vigorous stock physically and mentally...When two advancing tribes, with strong mental and physical characters, are brought together and blended into one people by the accidents of barbarous life, the new skull and brain would widen and lengthen to the sum of the capabilities of both. [Morgan, op. cit., p. 468. –Ed.]

Tribes with gentile constitution were thus bound to gain supremacy over more backward tribes, or else to carry them along by their example.

Thus the history of the family in primitive times consists in the progressive narrowing of the circle, originally embracing the whole tribe, within which the two sexes have a common conjugal relation. The continuous exclusion, first of nearer, then of more and more remote relatives, and at last even of relatives by marriage, ends by making any kind of group marriage practically impossible. Finally, there remains only the single, still loosely linked pair, the molecule with whose dissolution marriage itself ceases. This in itself shows what a small part individual sex-love, in the modern sense of the word, played in the rise of monogamy. Yet stronger proof is afforded by the practice of all peoples at this stage of development. Whereas in the earlier forms of the family men never lacked women, but, on the contrary, had too many rather than too few, women had now become scarce and highly sought after. Hence it is with the pairing marriage that there begins the capture and purchase of women—widespread symptoms, but no more than symptoms, of the much deeper change that had occurred. These symptoms, mere methods of procuring wives, the pedantic Scot, McLennan, has transmogrified into special classes of families under the names of “marriage by capture” and “marriage by purchase.” In general, whether among the American Indians or other peoples (at the same stage), the conclusion of a marriage is the affair, not of the two parties concerned, who are often not consulted at all, but of their mothers. Two persons entirely unknown to each other are often thus affianced; they only learn that the bargain has been struck when the time for marrying approaches. Before the wedding the bridegroom gives presents to the bride’s gentile relatives (to those on the mother’s side, therefore, not to the father and his relations), which are regarded as gift payments in return for the girl. The marriage is still terminable at the desire of either partner, but among many tribes, the Iroquois, for example, public opinion has gradually developed against such separations; when differences arise between husband and wife, the gens relatives of both partners act as mediators, and only if these efforts prove fruitless does a separation take place, the wife then keeping the children and each partner being free to marry again.

The pairing family, itself too weak and unstable to make an independent household necessary or even desirable, in no way destroys the communistic household inherited from earlier times. Communistic housekeeping, however, means the supremacy of women in the house; just as the exclusive recognition of the female parent, owing to the impossibility of recognizing the male parent with certainty, means that the women—the mothers—are held in high respect. One of the most absurd notions taken over from eighteenth-century enlightenment is that in the beginning of society woman was the slave of man. Among all savages and all barbarians of the lower and middle stages, and to a certain extent of the upper stage also, the position of women is not only free, but honorable. As to what it still is in the pairing marriage, let us hear the evidence of Ashur Wright, for many years missionary among the Iroquois Senecas:

As to their family system, when occupying the old long-houses [communistic households comprising several families], it is probable that some one clan [gens] predominated, the women taking in husbands, however, from the other clans [gentes]...Usually, the female portion ruled the house...The stores were in common; but woe to the luckless husband or lover who was too shiftless to do his share of the providing. No matter how many children, or whatever goods he might have in the house, he might at any time be ordered to pick up his blanket and budge; and after such orders it would not be healthful for him to attempt to disobey. The house would be too hot for him; and...he must retreat to his own clan [gens]; or, as was often done, go and start a new matrimonial alliance in some other. The women were the great power among the clans [gentes], as everywhere else. They did not hesitate, when occasion required, “to knock off the horns,” as it was technically called, from the head of a chief, and send him back to the ranks of the warriors. [Quoted by Morgan, op. cit., p. 464. –Ed.]

The communistic household, in which most or all of the women belong to one and the same gens, while the men come from various gentes, is the material foundation of that supremacy of the women which was general in primitive times, and which it is Bachofen’s third great merit to have discovered. The reports of travelers and missionaries, I may add, to the effect that women among savages and barbarians are overburdened with work in no way contradict what has been said. The division of labor between the two sexes is determined by quite other causes than by the position of woman in society. Among peoples where the women have to work far harder than we think suitable, there is often much more real respect for women than among our Europeans. The lady of civilization, surrounded by false homage and estranged from all real work, has an infinitely lower social position than the hard-working woman of barbarism, who was regarded among her people as a real lady (lady, frowa, Frau—mistress) and who was also a lady in character.

[...]

The first beginnings of the pairing family appear on the dividing line between savagery and barbarism; they are generally to be found already at the upper stage of savagery, but occasionally not until the lower stage of barbarism. The pairing family is the form characteristic of barbarism, as group marriage is characteristic of savagery and monogamy of civilization. To develop it further, to strict monogamy, other causes were required than those we have found active hitherto. In the single pair the group was already reduced to its final unit, its two-atom molecule: one man and one woman. Natural selection, with its progressive exclusions from the marriage community, had accomplished its task; there was nothing more for it to do in this direction. Unless new, social forces came into play, there was no reason why a new form of family should arise from the single pair. But these new forces did come into play.

We now leave America, the classic soil of the pairing family. No sign allows us to conclude that a higher form of family developed here, or that there was ever permanent monogamy anywhere in America prior to its discovery and conquest. But not so in the Old World.

Here the domestication of animals and the breeding of herds had developed a hitherto unsuspected source of wealth and created entirely new social relations. Up to the lower stage of barbarism, permanent wealth had consisted almost solely of house, clothing, crude ornaments and the tools for obtaining and preparing food—boat, weapons, and domestic utensils of the simplest kind. Food had to be won afresh day by day. Now, with their herds of horses, camels, asses, cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs, the advancing pastoral peoples—the Semites on the Euphrates and the Tigris, and the Aryans in the Indian country of the Five Streams (Punjab), in the Ganges region, and in the steppes then much more abundantly watered of the Oxus and the Jaxartes—had acquired property which only needed supervision and the rudest care to reproduce itself in steadily increasing quantities and to supply the most abundant food in the form of milk and meat. All former means of procuring food now receded into the background; hunting, formerly a necessity, now became a luxury.

But to whom did this new wealth belong? Originally to the gens, without a doubt. Private property in herds must have already started at an early period, however. It is difficult to say whether the author of the so-called first book of Moses regarded the patriarch Abraham as the owner of his herds in his own right as head of a family community or by right of his position as actual hereditary head of a gens. What is certain is that we must not think of him as a property owner in the modern sense of the word. And it is also certain that at the threshold of authentic history we already find the herds everywhere separately owned by heads of families, as are the artistic products of barbarism—metal implements, luxury articles and, finally, the human cattle—the slaves.

For now slavery had also been invented. To the barbarian of the lower stage, a slave was valueless. Hence the treatment of defeated enemies by the American Indians was quite different from that at a higher stage. The men were killed or adopted as brothers into the tribe of the victors; the women were taken as wives or otherwise adopted with their surviving children. At this stage human labor-power still does not produce any considerable surplus over and above its maintenance costs. That was no longer the case after the introduction of cattle-breeding, metalworking, weaving and, lastly, agriculture. Just as the wives whom it had formerly been so easy to obtain had now acquired an exchange value and were bought, so also with the forces of labor, particularly since the herds had definitely become family possessions. The family did not multiply so rapidly as the cattle. More people were needed to look after them; for this purpose use could be made of the enemies captured in war, who could also be bred just as easily as the cattle themselves.

Once it had passed into the private possession of families and there rapidly begun to augment, this wealth dealt a severe blow to the society founded on pairing marriage and the matriarchal gens. Pairing marriage had brought a new element into the family. By the side of the natural mother of the child it placed its natural and attested father, with a better warrant of paternity, probably, than that of many a “father” today. According to the division of labor within the family at that time, it was the man’s part to obtain food and the instruments of labor necessary for the purpose. He therefore also owned the instruments of labor, and in the event of husband and wife separating, he took them with him, just as she retained her household goods. Therefore, according to the social custom of the time, the man was also the owner of the new source of subsistence, the cattle, and later of the new instruments of labor, the slaves. But according to the custom of the same society, his children could not inherit from him. For as regards inheritance, the position was as follows:

At first, according to mother-right—so long, therefore, as descent was reckoned only in the female line—and according to the original custom of inheritance within the gens, the gentile relatives inherited from a deceased fellow member of their gens. His property had to remain within the gens. His effects being insignificant, they probably always passed in practice to his nearest gentile relations—that is, to his blood relations on the mother’s side. The children of the dead man, however, did not belong to his gens, but to that of their mother; it was from her that they inherited, at first conjointly with her other blood relations, later perhaps with rights of property; they could not inherit from their father, because they did not belong to his gens, within which his property had to remain. When the owner of the herds died, therefore, his herds would go first to his brothers and sisters and to his sister’s children, or to the issue of his mother’s sisters. But his own children were disinherited.

Thus, on the one hand, in proportion as wealth increased, it made the man’s position in the family more important than the woman’s, and on the other hand created an impulse to exploit this strengthened position in order to overthrow, in favor of his children, the traditional order of inheritance. This, however, was impossible so long as descent was reckoned according to mother-right. Mother-right, therefore, had to be overthrown, and overthrown it was. This was by no means so difficult as it looks to us today. For this revolution—one of the most decisive ever experienced by humanity—could take place without disturbing a single one of the living members of a gens. All could remain as they were. A simple decree sufficed that in the future the offspring of the male members should remain within the gens, but that of the female should be excluded by being transferred to the gens of their father. The reckoning of descent in the female line and the matriarchal law of inheritance were thereby overthrown, and the male line of descent and the paternal law of inheritance were substituted for them. As to how and when this revolution took place among civilized peoples, we have no knowledge. It falls entirely within prehistoric times. But that it did take place is more than sufficiently proved by the abundant traces of mother-right which have been collected, particularly by Bachofen. How easily it is accomplished can be seen in a whole series of American Indian tribes, where it has only recently taken place and is still taking place under the influence, partly of increasing wealth and a changed mode of life (transference from forest to prairie), and partly of the moral pressure of civilization and missionaries. Of eight Missouri tribes, six observe the male line of descent and inheritance, two still observe the female. Among the Shawnees, Miamis and Delawares the custom has grown up of giving the children a gentile name of their father’s gens in order to transfer them into it, thus enabling them to inherit from him.

Man’s innate casuistry! To change things by changing their names! And to find loopholes for violating tradition while maintaining tradition, when direct interest supplied sufficient impulse. (Marx.)

The result was hopeless confusion, which could only be remedied and to a certain extent was remedied by the transition to father-right. “In general, this seems to be the most natural transition.” (Marx.) For the theories proffered by comparative jurisprudence regarding the manner in which this change was effected among the civilized peoples of the Old World—though they are almost pure hypotheses see M. Kovalevsky, Tableau des origines et de l’evolution de la famille et de la propriete, Stockholm, 1890.

The overthrow of mother-right was the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude, she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children. This degraded position of the woman, especially conspicuous among the Greeks of the heroic and still more of the classical age, has gradually been palliated and glossed over, and sometimes clothed in a milder form; in no sense has it been abolished.

The establishment of the exclusive supremacy of the man shows its effects first in the patriarchal family, which now emerges as an intermediate form. Its essential characteristic is not polygyny, of which more later, but the organization of a number of persons, bond and free, into a family, under paternal power, for the purpose of holding lands, and for the care of flocks and herds...(In the Semitic form) the chiefs, at least, lived in polygamy...Those held to servitude, and those employed as servants, lived in the marriage relation. [Morgan, op. cit., p. 474]

Its essential features are the incorporation of unfree persons, and paternal power; hence the perfect type of this form of family is the Roman. The original meaning of the word “family” (familia) is not that compound of sentimentality and domestic strife which forms the ideal of the present-day philistine; among the Romans it did not at first even refer to the married pair and their children, but only to the slaves. Famulus means domestic slave, and familia is the total number of slaves belonging to one man. As late as the time of Gaius, the familia, id est patrimonium (family, that is, the patrimony, the inheritance) was bequeathed by will. The term was invented by the Romans to denote a new social organism, whose head ruled over wife and children and a number of slaves, and was invested under Roman paternal power with rights of life and death over them all.

This term, therefore, is no older than the iron-clad family system of the Latin tribes, which came in after field agriculture and after legalized servitude, as well as after the separation of Greeks and Latins. [Morgan, op. cit., p. 478]

Marx adds:

The modern family contains in germ not only slavery (servitus), but also serfdom, since from the beginning it is related to agricultural services. It contains in miniature all the contradictions which later extend throughout society and its state.

[...]

With regard to the family life within these communities, it must be observed that at any rate in Russia the master of the house has a reputation for violently abusing his position towards the younger women of the community, especially his daughters-in-law, whom he often converts into his harem; the Russian folk-songs have more than a little to say about this.

Before we go on to monogamy, which developed rapidly with the overthrow of mother-right, a few words about polygyny and polyandry. Both forms can only be exceptions, historical luxury products, as it were, unless they occur side by side in the same country, which is, of course, not the case. As the men excluded from polygyny cannot console themselves with the women left over from polyandry, and as hitherto, regardless of social institutions, the number of men and women has been fairly equal, it is obviously impossible for either of these forms of marriage to be elevated to the general form. Polygyny on the part of one individual man was, in fact, obviously a product of slavery and confined to a few people in exceptional positions. In the Semitic patriarchal family it was only the patriarch himself, and a few of his sons at most, who lived in polygyny; the rest had to content themselves with one wife. This still holds throughout the whole of the Orient; polygyny is the privilege of the wealthy and of the nobility, the women being recruited chiefly through purchase as slaves; the mass of the people live in monogamy.

A similar exception is the polyandry of India and Tibet, the origin of which in group marriage requires closer examination and would certainly prove interesting. It seems to be much more easy-going in practice than the jealous harems of the Mohammedans. At any rate, among the Nairs in India, where three or four men have a wife in common, each of them can have a second wife in common with another three or more men, and similarly a third and a fourth and so on. It is a wonder that McLennan did not discover in these marriage clubs, to several of which one could belong and which he himself describes, a new class of club marriage! This marriage-club system, however, is not real polyandry at all; on the contrary, as Giraud-Teulon has already pointed out, it is a specialized form of group marriage; the men live in polygyny, the women in polyandry.

4. The Monogamous Family

It develops out of the pairing family, as previously shown, in the transitional period between the upper and middle stages of barbarism; its decisive victory is one of the signs that civilization is beginning. It is based on the supremacy of the man, the express purpose being to produce children of undisputed paternity; such paternity is demanded because these children are later to come into their father’s property as his natural heirs. It is distinguished from pairing marriage by the much greater strength of the marriage tie, which can no longer be dissolved at either partner’s wish. As a rule, it is now only the man who can dissolve it, and put away his wife. The right of conjugal infidelity also remains secured to him, at any rate by custom (the Code Napoléon explicitly accords it to the husband as long as he does not bring his concubine into the house), and as social life develops he exercises his right more and more; should the wife recall the old form of sexual life and attempt to revive it, she is punished more severely than ever.

We meet this new form of the family in all its severity among the Greeks. While the position of the goddesses in their mythology, as Marx points out, brings before us an earlier period when the position of women was freer and more respected, in the heroic age we find the woman already being humiliated by the domination of the man and by competition from girl slaves. Note how Telemachus in the Odyssey silences his mother. [The reference is to a passage where Telemachus, son of Odysseus and Penelope, tells his mother to get on with her weaving and leave the men to mind their own business. –Ed.] In Homer young women are booty and are handed over to the pleasure of the conquerors, the handsomest being picked by the commanders in order of rank; the entire Iliad, it will be remembered, turns on the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon over one of these slaves. If a hero is of any importance, Homer also mentions the captive girl with whom he shares his tent and his bed. These girls were also taken back to Greece and brought under the same roof as the wife, as Cassandra was brought by Agamemnon in Aeschylus; the sons begotten of them received a small share of the paternal inheritance and had the full status of freemen. Teucer, for instance, is a natural son of Telamon by one of these slaves and has the right to use his father’s name. The legitimate wife was expected to put up with all this, but herself to remain strictly chaste and faithful. In the heroic age a Greek woman is, indeed, more respected than in the period of civilization, but to her husband she is after all nothing but the mother of his legitimate children and heirs, his chief housekeeper and the supervisor of his female slaves, whom he can and does take as concubines if he so fancies. It is the existence of slavery side by side with monogamy, the presence of young, beautiful slaves belonging unreservedly to the man, that stamps monogamy from the very beginning with its specific character of monogamy for the woman only, but not for the man. And that is the character it still has today.

Coming to the later Greeks, we must distinguish between Dorians and Ionians. Among the former—Sparta is the classic example—marriage relations are in some ways still more archaic than even in Homer. The recognized form of marriage in Sparta was a pairing marriage, modified according to the Spartan conceptions of the state, in which there still survived vestiges of group marriage. Childless marriages were dissolved; King Anaxandridas (about 650 B.C.), whose first wife was childless, took a second and kept two households; about the same time, King Ariston, who had two unfruitful wives, took a third, but dismissed one of the other two. On the other hand, several brothers could have a wife in common; a friend who preferred his friend’s wife could share her with him; and it was considered quite proper to place one’s wife at the disposal of a sturdy “stallion,” as Bismarck would say, even if he was not a citizen. A passage in Plutarch, where a Spartan woman refers an importunate wooer to her husband, seems to indicate, according to Schamann, even greater freedom. Real adultery, secret infidelity by the woman without the husband’s knowledge, was therefore unheard of. On the other hand, domestic slavery was unknown in Sparta, at least during its best period; the unfree helots were segregated on the estates and the Spartans were therefore less tempted to take the helots’ wives. Inevitably in these conditions women held a much more honored position in Sparta than anywhere else in Greece. The Spartan women and the elite of the Athenian hetairai are the only Greek women of whom the ancients speak with respect and whose words they thought it worth while to record.

The position is quite different among the Ionians; here Athens is typical. Girls only learned spinning, weaving, and sewing, and at most a little reading and writing. They lived more or less behind locked doors and had no company except other women. The women’s apartments formed a separate part of the house, on the upper floor or at the back, where men, especially strangers, could not easily enter, and to which the women retired when men visited the house. They never went out without being accompanied by a female slave; indoors they were kept under regular guard. Aristophanes speaks of Molossian dogs kept to frighten away adulterers, and, at any rate in the Asiatic towns, eunuchs were employed to keep watch over the women; making and exporting eunuchs was an industry in Chios as early as Herodotus’ time, and, according to Wachsmuth, it was not only the barbarians who bought the supply. In Euripides a woman is called an oikourema, a thing (the word is neuter) for looking after the house, and, apart from her business of bearing children, that was all she was for the Athenian—his chief female domestic servant. The man had his athletics and his public business, from which women were barred; in addition, he often had female slaves at his disposal and during the most flourishing days of Athens an extensive system of prostitution which the state at least favored. It was precisely through this system of prostitution that the only Greek women of personality were able to develop, and to acquire that intellectual and artistic culture by which they stand out as high above the general level of classical womanhood as the Spartan women by their qualities of character. But that a woman had to be a hetaira before she could be a woman is the worst condemnation of the Athenian family.

This Athenian family became in time the accepted model for domestic relations, not only among the Ionians, but to an increasing extent among all the Greeks of the mainland and colonies also. But, in spite of locks and guards, Greek women found plenty of opportunity for deceiving their husbands. The men, who would have been ashamed to show any love for their wives, amused themselves by all sorts of love affairs with hetairai; but this degradation of the women was avenged on the men and degraded them also, till they fell into the abominable practice of sodomy [Knabenliebe] and degraded alike their gods and themselves with the myth of Ganymede.

This is the origin of monogamy as far as we can trace it back among the most civilized and highly developed people of antiquity. It was not in any way the fruit of individual sex-love, with which it had nothing whatever to do; marriages remained as before marriages of convenience. It was the first form of the family to be based, not on natural, but on economic conditions—on the victory of private property over primitive, natural communal property. The Greeks themselves put the matter quite frankly: the sole exclusive aims of monogamous marriage were to make the man supreme in the family, and to propagate, as the future heirs to his wealth, children indisputably his own. Otherwise, marriage was a burden, a duty which had to be performed, whether one liked it or not, to gods, state, and one’s ancestors. In Athens the law exacted from the man not only marriage but also the performance of a minimum of so-called conjugal duties. Thus when monogamous marriage first makes its appearance in history, it is not as the reconciliation of man and woman, still less as the highest form of such a reconciliation. Quite the contrary. Monogamous marriage comes on the scene as the subjugation of the one sex by the other; it announces a struggle between the sexes unknown throughout the whole previous prehistoric period. In an old unpublished manuscript, written by Marx and myself in 1846, [The reference here is to the German Ideology, published after Engels’ death. –Ed.] I find the words: “The first division of labor is that between man and woman for the propagation of children.” And today I can add: The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male. Monogamous marriage was a great historical step forward; nevertheless, together with slavery and private wealth, it opens the period that has lasted until today in which every step forward is also relatively a step backward, in which prosperity and development for some is won through the misery and frustration of others. It is the cellular form of civilized society, in which the nature of the oppositions and contradictions fully active in that society can be already studied.

The old comparative freedom of sexual intercourse by no means disappeared with the victory of pairing marriage or even of monogamous marriage:

The old conjugal system, now reduced to narrower limits by the gradual disappearance of the punaluan groups, still environed the advancing family, which it was to follow to the verge of civilization...It finally disappeared in the new form of hetaerism, which still follows mankind in civilization as a dark shadow upon the family. [Morgan, op. cit., p. 511. –Ed.]

By “hetaerism” Morgan understands the practice, co-existent with monogamous marriage, of sexual intercourse between men and unmarried women outside marriage, which, as we know, flourishes in the most varied forms throughout the whole period of civilization and develops more and more into open prostitution. This hetaerism derives quite directly from group marriage, from the ceremonial surrender by which women purchased the right of chastity. Surrender for money was at first a religious act; it took place in the temple of the goddess of love, and the money originally went into the temple treasury. The temple slaves of Anaitis in Armenia and of Aphrodite in Corinth, like the sacred dancing-girls attached to the temples of India, the so-called bayaderes (the word is a corruption of the Portuguese word bailadeira, meaning female dancer), were the first prostitutes. Originally the duty of every woman, this surrender was later performed by these priestesses alone as representatives of all other women. Among other peoples, hetaerism derives from the sexual freedom allowed to girls before marriage—again, therefore, a relic of group marriage, but handed down in a different way. With the rise of the inequality of property—already at the upper stage of barbarism, therefore—wage-labor appears sporadically side by side with slave labor, and at the same time, as its necessary correlate, the professional prostitution of free women side by side with the forced surrender of the slave. Thus the heritage which group marriage has bequeathed to civilization is double-edged, just as everything civilization brings forth is double-edged, double-tongued, divided against itself, contradictory: here monogamy, there hetaerism, with its most extreme form, prostitution. For hetaerism is as much a social institution as any other; it continues the old sexual freedom—to the advantage of the men. Actually not merely tolerated, but gaily practiced, by the ruling classes particularly, it is condemned in words. But in reality this condemnation never falls on the men concerned, but only on the women; they are despised and outcast, in order that the unconditional supremacy of men over the female sex may be once more proclaimed as a fundamental law of society.

But a second contradiction thus develops within monogamous marriage itself. At the side of the husband who embellishes his existence with hetaerism stands the neglected wife. And one cannot have one side of this contradiction without the other, any more than a man has a whole apple in his hand after eating half. But that seems to have been the husbands’ notion, until their wives taught them better. With monogamous marriage, two constant social types, unknown hitherto, make their appearance on the scene—the wife’s attendant lover and the cuckold husband. The husbands had won the victory over the wives, but the vanquished magnanimously provided the crown. Together with monogamous marriage and hetaerism, adultery became an unavoidable social institution—denounced, severely penalized, but impossible to suppress. At best, the certain paternity of the children rested on moral conviction as before, and to solve the insoluble contradiction the Code Napoléon, Article–312, decreed: “L’enfant confu pendant le marriage a pour pere le mari,” the father of a child conceived during marriage is—the husband. Such is the final result of three thousand years of monogamous marriage.

Thus, wherever the monogamous family remains true to its historical origin and clearly reveals the antagonism between the man and the woman expressed in the man’s exclusive supremacy, it exhibits in miniature the same oppositions and contradictions as those in which society has been moving, without power to resolve or overcome them, ever since it split into classes at the beginning of civilization. I am speaking here, of course, only of those cases of monogamous marriage where matrimonial life actually proceeds according to the original character of the whole institution, but where the wife rebels against the husband’s supremacy. Not all marriages turn out thus, as nobody knows better than the German philistine, who can no more assert his rule in the home than he can in the state, and whose wife, with every right, wears the trousers he is unworthy of. But, to make up for it, he considers himself far above his French companion in misfortune, to whom, oftener than to him, something much worse happens.

However, monogamous marriage did not by any means appear always and everywhere in the classically harsh form it took among the Greeks. Among the Romans, who, as future world-conquerors, had a larger, if a less fine, vision than the Greeks, women were freer and more respected. A Roman considered that his power of life and death over his wife sufficiently guaranteed her conjugal fidelity. Here, moreover, the wife equally with the husband could dissolve the marriage at will. But the greatest progress in the development of individual marriage certainly came with the entry of the Germans into history, and for the reason that the German—on account of their poverty, very probably–were still at a stage where monogamy seems not yet to have become perfectly distinct from pairing marriage. We infer this from three facts mentioned by Tacitus. First, though marriage was held in great reverence—“they content themselves with one wife, the women live hedged round with chastity”—polygamy was the rule for the distinguished members and the leaders of the tribe, a condition of things similar to that among the Americans, where pairing marriage was the rule. Secondly, the transition from mother-right to father-right could only have been made a short time previously, for the brother on the mother’s side—the nearest gentile male relation according to mother-right—was still considered almost closer of kin than the father, corresponding again to the standpoint of the American Indians, among whom Marx, as he often said, found the key to the understanding of our own primitive age. And, thirdly, women were greatly respected among the Germans, and also influential in public affairs, which is in direct contradiction to the supremacy of men in monogamy. In almost all these points the Germans agree with the Spartans, among whom also, as we saw, pairing marriage had not yet been completely overcome. Thus, here again an entirely new influence came to power in the world with the Germans. The new monogamy, which now developed from the mingling of peoples amid the ruins of the Roman world, clothed the supremacy of the men in milder forms and gave women a position which, outwardly at any rate, was much more free and respected than it had ever been in classical antiquity. Only now were the conditions realized in which through monogamy—within it, parallel to it, or in opposition to it, as the case might be—the greatest moral advance we owe to it could be achieved: modern individual sex-love, which had hitherto been unknown to the entire world.

This advance, however, undoubtedly sprang from the fact that the Germans still lived in pairing families and grafted the corresponding position of women onto the monogamous system, so far as that was possible. It most decidedly did not spring from the legendary virtue and wonderful moral purity of the German character, which was nothing more than the freedom of the pairing family from the crying moral contradictions of monogamy. On the contrary, in the course of their migrations the Germans had morally much deteriorated, particularly during their southeasterly wanderings among the nomads of the Black Sea steppes, from whom they acquired, not only equestrian skill, but also gross, unnatural vices, as Ammianus expressly states of the Taifalians and Procopius of the Herulians.

But if monogamy was the only one of all the known forms of the family through which modern sex-love could develop, that does not mean that within monogamy modern sexual love developed exclusively or even chiefly as the love of husband and wife for each other. That was precluded by the very nature of strictly monogamous marriage under the rule of the man. Among all historically active classes—that is, among all ruling classes—matrimony remained what it had been since the pairing marriage, a matter of convenience which was arranged by the parents. The first historical form of sexual love as passion, a passion recognized as natural to all human beings (at least if they belonged to the ruling classes), and as the highest form of the sexual impulse—and that is what constitutes its specific character—this first form of individual sexual love, the chivalrous love of the middle ages, was by no means conjugal. Quite the contrary. In its classic form among the Provençals, it heads straight for adultery, and the poets of love celebrated adultery. The flower of Provençal love poetry are the Albas (aubades, songs of dawn). They describe in glowing colors how the knight lies in bed beside his love—the wife of another man—while outside stands the watchman who calls to him as soon as the first gray of dawn (alba) appears, so that he can get away unobserved; the parting scene then forms the climax of the poem. The northern French and also the worthy Germans adopted this kind of poetry together with the corresponding fashion of chivalrous love; old Wolfram of Eschenbach has left us three wonderfully beautiful songs of dawn on this same improper subject, which I like better than his three long heroic poems.

Nowadays there are two ways of concluding a bourgeois marriage. In Catholic countries the parents, as before, procure a suitable wife for their young bourgeois son, and the consequence is, of course, the fullest development of the contradiction inherent in monogamy: the husband abandons himself to hetaerism and the wife to adultery. Probably the only reason why the Catholic Church abolished divorce was because it had convinced itself that there is no more a cure for adultery than there is for death. In Protestant countries, on the other hand, the rule is that the son of a bourgeois family is allowed to choose a wife from his own class with more or less freedom; hence there may be a certain element of love in the marriage, as, indeed, in accordance with Protestant hypocrisy, is always assumed, for decency’s sake. Here the husband’s hetaerism is a more sleepy kind of business, and adultery by the wife is less the rule. But since, in every kind of marriage, people remain what they were before, and since the bourgeois of Protestant countries are mostly philistines, all that this Protestant monogamy achieves, taking the average of the best cases, is a conjugal partnership of leaden boredom, known as “domestic bliss.” The best mirror of these two methods of marrying is the novel—the French novel for the Catholic manner, the German for the Protestant. In both, the hero “gets” them: in the German, the young man gets the girl; in the French, the husband gets the horns. Which of them is worse off is sometimes questionable. This is why the French bourgeois is as much horrified by the dullness of the German novel as the German philistine is by the “immorality” of the French. However, now that “Berlin is a world capital,” the German novel is beginning with a little less timidity to use as part of its regular stock-in-trade the hetaerism and adultery long familiar to that town.

In both cases, however, the marriage is conditioned by the class position of the parties and is to that extent always a marriage of convenience. In both cases this marriage of convenience turns often enough into crassest prostitution—sometimes of both partners, but far more commonly of the woman, who only differs from the ordinary courtesan in that she does not let out her body on piece-work as a wage-worker, but sells it once and for all into slavery. And of all marriages of convenience Fourier’s words hold true: “As in grammar two negatives make an affirmative, so in matrimonial morality two prostitutions pass for a virtue.” [Charles Fourier, Theorie de l’Uniti Universelle. Paris, 1841–45, Vol. III, p. 120. –Ed.] Sex-love in the relationship with a woman becomes, and can only become, the real rule among the oppressed classes, which means today among the proletariat—whether this relation is officially sanctioned or not. But here all the foundations of typical monogamy are cleared away. Here there is no property, for the preservation and inheritance of which monogamy and male supremacy were established; hence there is no incentive to make this male supremacy effective. What is more, there are no means of making it so. Bourgeois law, which protects this supremacy, exists only for the possessing class and their dealings with the proletarians. The law costs money and, on account of the worker’s poverty, it has no validity for his relation to his wife. Here quite other personal and social conditions decide. And now that large-scale industry has taken the wife out of the home onto the labor market and into the factory, and made her often the bread-winner of the family, no basis for any kind of male supremacy is left in the proletarian household—except, perhaps, for something of the brutality towards women that has spread since the introduction of monogamy. The proletarian family is therefore no longer monogamous in the strict sense, even where there is passionate love and firmest loyalty on both sides, and maybe all the blessings of religious and civil authority. Here, therefore, the eternal attendants of monogamy, hetaerism and adultery, play only an almost vanishing part. The wife has in fact regained the right to dissolve the marriage, and if two people cannot get on with one another, they prefer to separate. In short, proletarian marriage is monogamous in the etymological sense of the word, but not at all in its historical sense.

Our jurists, of course, find that progress in legislation is leaving women with no further ground of complaint. Modern civilized systems of law increasingly acknowledge, first, that for a marriage to be legal, it must be a contract freely entered into by both partners, and, secondly, that also in the married state both partners must stand on a common footing of equal rights and duties. If both these demands are consistently carried out, say the jurists, women have all they can ask.

This typically legalist method of argument is exactly the same as that which the radical republican bourgeois uses to put the proletarian in his place. The labor contract is to be freely entered into by both partners. But it is considered to have been freely entered into as soon as the law makes both parties equal on paper. The power conferred on the one party by the difference of class position, the pressure thereby brought to bear on the other party—the real economic position of both—that is not the law’s business. Again, for the duration of the labor contract both parties are to have equal rights, in so far as one or the other does not expressly surrender them. That economic relations compel the worker to surrender even the last semblance of equal rights—here again, that is no concern of the law.

In regard to marriage, the law, even the most advanced, is fully satisfied as soon as the partners have formally recorded that they are entering into the marriage of their own free consent. What goes on in real life behind the juridical scenes, how this free consent comes about—that is not the business of the law and the jurist. And yet the most elementary comparative jurisprudence should show the jurist what this free consent really amounts to. In the countries where an obligatory share of the paternal inheritance is secured to the children by law and they cannot therefore be disinherited—in Germany, in the countries with French law and elsewhere—the children are obliged to obtain their parents’ consent to their marriage. In the countries with English law, where parental consent to a marriage is not legally required, the parents on their side have full freedom in the testamentary disposal of their property and can disinherit their children at their pleasure. It is obvious that, in spite and precisely because of this fact, freedom of marriage among the classes with something to inherit is in reality not a whit greater in England and America than it is in France and Germany.

As regards the legal equality of husband and wife in marriage, the position is no better. The legal inequality of the two partners, bequeathed to us from earlier social conditions, is not the cause but the effect of the economic oppression of the woman. In the old communistic household, which comprised many couples and their children, the task entrusted to the women of managing the household was as much a public and socially necessary industry as the procuring of food by the men. With the patriarchal family, and still more with the single monogamous family, a change came. Household management lost its public character. It no longer concerned society. It became a private service; the wife became the head servant, excluded from all participation in social production. Not until the coming of modern large-scale industry was the road to social production opened to her again—and then only to the proletarian wife. But it was opened in such a manner that, if she carries out her duties in the private service of her family, she remains excluded from public production and unable to earn; and if she wants to take part in public production and earn independently, she cannot carry out family duties. And the wife’s position in the factory is the position of women in all branches of business, right up to medicine and the law. The modern individual family is founded on the open or concealed domestic slavery of the wife, and modern society is a mass composed of these individual families as its molecules.

In the great majority of cases today, at least in the possessing classes, the husband is obliged to earn a living and support his family, and that in itself gives him a position of supremacy, without any need for special legal titles and privileges. Within the family he is the bourgeois and the wife represents the proletariat. In the industrial world, the specific character of the economic oppression burdening the proletariat is visible in all its sharpness only when all special legal privileges of the capitalist class have been abolished and complete legal equality of both classes established. The democratic republic does not do away with the opposition of the two classes; on the contrary, it provides the clear field on which the fight can be fought out. And in the same way, the peculiar character of the supremacy of the husband over the wife in the modern family, the necessity of creating real social equality between them, and the way to do it, will only be seen in the clear light of day when both possess legally complete equality of rights. Then it will be plain that the first condition for the liberation of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry, and that this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society.

We thus have three principal forms of marriage which correspond broadly to the three principal stages of human development. For the period of savagery, group marriage; for barbarism, pairing marriage; for civilization, monogamy, supplemented by adultery and prostitution. Between pairing marriage and monogamy intervenes a period in the upper stage of barbarism when men have female slaves at their command and polygamy is practiced.

As our whole presentation has shown, the progress which manifests itself in these successive forms is connected with the peculiarity that women, but not men, are increasingly deprived of the sexual freedom of group marriage. In fact, for men group marriage actually still exists even to this day. What for the woman is a crime, entailing grave legal and social consequences, is considered honorable in a man or, at the worse, a slight moral blemish which he cheerfully bears. But the more the hetaerism of the past is changed in our time by capitalist commodity production and brought into conformity with it, the more, that is to say, it is transformed into undisguised prostitution, the more demoralizing are its effects. And it demoralizes men far more than women. Among women, prostitution degrades only the unfortunate ones who become its victims, and even these by no means to the extent commonly believed. But it degrades the character of the whole male world. A long engagement, particularly, is in nine cases out of ten a regular preparatory school for conjugal infidelity.

We are now approaching a social revolution in which the economic foundations of monogamy as they have existed hitherto will disappear just as surely as those of its complement—prostitution. Monogamy arose from the concentration of considerable wealth in the hands of a single individual man—and from the need to bequeath this wealth to the children of that man and of no other. For this purpose, the monogamy of the woman was required, not that of the man, so this monogamy of the woman did not in any way interfere with open or concealed polygamy on the part of the man. But by transforming by far the greater portion, at any rate, of permanent, heritable wealth—the means of production—into social property, the coming social revolution will reduce to a minimum all this anxiety about bequeathing and inheriting. Having arisen from economic causes, will monogamy then disappear when these causes disappear?

One might answer, not without reason: far from disappearing, it will, on the contrary, be realized completely. For with the transformation of the means of production into social property there will disappear also wage-labor, the proletariat, and therefore the necessity for a certain—statistically calculable—number of women to surrender themselves for money. Prostitution disappears; monogamy, instead of collapsing, at last becomes a reality—also for men.

In any case, therefore, the position of men will be very much altered. But the position of women, of all women, also undergoes significant change. With the transfer of the means of production into common ownership, the single family ceases to be the economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is transformed into a social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public affair; society looks after all children alike, whether they are legitimate or not. This removes all the anxiety about the “consequences,” which today is the most essential social—moral as well as economic—factor that prevents a girl from giving herself completely to the man she loves. Will not that suffice to bring about the gradual growth of unconstrained sexual intercourse and with it a more tolerant public opinion in regard to a maiden’s honor and a woman’s shame? And, finally, have we not seen that in the modern world monogamy and prostitution are indeed contradictions, but inseparable contradictions, poles of the same state of society? Can prostitution disappear without dragging monogamy with it into the abyss?

Here a new element comes into play, an element which, at the time when monogamy was developing, existed at most in germ: individual sex-love.

Before the Middle Ages we cannot speak of individual sex-love. That personal beauty, close intimacy, similarity of tastes and so forth awakened in people of opposite sex the desire for sexual intercourse, that men and women were not totally indifferent regarding the partner with whom they entered into this most intimate relationship—that goes without saying. But it is still a very long way to our sexual love. Throughout the whole of antiquity, marriages were arranged by the parents, and the partners calmly accepted their choice. What little love there was between husband and wife in antiquity is not so much subjective inclination as objective duty, not the cause of the marriage, but its corollary. Love relationships in the modern sense only occur in antiquity outside official society. The shepherds of whose joys and sorrows in love Theocratus and Moschus sing, the Daphnis and Chloe of Longus are all slaves who have no part in the state, the free citizen’s sphere of life. Except among slaves, we find love affairs only as products of the disintegration of the old world and carried on with women who also stand outside official society, with hetairai—that is, with foreigners or freed slaves: in Athens from the eve of its decline, in Rome under the Caesars. If there were any real love affairs between free men and free women, these occurred only in the course of adultery. And to the classical love poet of antiquity, old Anacreon, sexual love in our sense mattered so little that it did not even matter to him which sex his beloved was.

Our sexual love differs essentially from the simple sexual desire, the Eros, of the ancients. In the first place, it assumes that the person loved returns the love; to this extent the woman is on an equal footing with the man, whereas in the Eros of antiquity she was often not even asked. Secondly, our sexual love has a degree of intensity and duration which makes both lovers feel that non-possession and separation are a great, if not the greatest, calamity; to possess one another, they risk high stakes, even life itself. In the ancient world this happened only, if at all, in adultery. And, finally, there arises a new moral standard in the judgment of a sexual relationship. We do not only ask, was it within or outside marriage? But also, did it spring from love and reciprocated love or not? Of course, this new standard has fared no better in feudal or bourgeois practice than all the other standards of morality—it is ignored. But neither does it fare any worse. It is recognized just as much as they are—in theory, on paper. And for the present it cannot ask anything more.

At the point where antiquity broke off its advance to sexual love, the Middle Ages took it up again: in adultery. We have already described the knightly love which gave rise to the songs of dawn. From the love which strives to break up marriage to the love which is to be its foundation there is still a long road, which chivalry never fully traversed. Even when we pass from the frivolous Latins to the virtuous Germans, we find in the Nibelungenlied that, although in her heart Kriemhild is as much in love with Siegfried as he is with her, yet when Gunther announces that he has promised her to a knight he does not name, she simply replies: “You have no need to ask me; as you bid me, so will I ever be; whom you, lord, give me as husband, him will I gladly take in troth.” It never enters her head that her love can be even considered. Gunther asks for Brunhild in marriage, and Etzel for Kriemhild, though they have never seen them. Similarly, in Gutrun, Sigebant of Ireland asks for the Norwegian Ute, whom he has never seen, Hetel of Hegelingen for Hilde of Ireland, and, finally, Siegfried of Moorland, Hartmut of Ormany and Herwig of Seeland for Gutrun, and here Gutrun’s acceptance of Herwig is for the first time voluntary. As a rule, the young prince’s bride is selected by his parents, if they are still living, or, if not, by the prince himself, with the advice of the great feudal lords, who have a weighty word to say in all these cases. Nor can it be otherwise. For the knight or baron, as for the prince of the land himself, marriage is a political act, an opportunity to increase power by new alliances; the interest of the house must be decisive, not the wishes of an individual. What chance then is there for love to have the final word in the making of a marriage?

The same thing holds for the guild member in the medieval towns. The very privileges protecting him, the guild charters with all their clauses and rubrics, the intricate distinctions legally separating him from other guilds, from the members of his own guild or from his journeymen and apprentices, already made the circle narrow enough within which he could look for a suitable wife. And who in the circle was the most suitable was decided under this complicated system most certainly not by his individual preference but by the family interests.

In the vast majority of cases, therefore, marriage remained, up to the close of the middle ages, what it had been from the start—a matter which was not decided by the partners. In the beginning, people were already born married—married to an entire group of the opposite sex. In the later forms of group marriage similar relations probably existed, but with the group continually contracting. In the pairing marriage it was customary for the mothers to settle the marriages of their children; here, too, the decisive considerations are the new ties of kinship, which are to give the young pair a stronger position in the gens and tribe. And when, with the preponderance of private over communal property and the interest in its bequeathal, father-right and monogamy gained supremacy, the dependence of marriages on economic considerations became complete. The form of marriage by purchase disappears, the actual practice is steadily extended until not only the woman but also the man acquires a price—not according to his personal qualities, but according to his property. That the mutual affection of the people concerned should be the one paramount reason for marriage, outweighing everything else, was and always had been absolutely unheard of in the practice of the ruling classes; that sort of thing only happened in romance—or among the oppressed classes, who did not count.

Such was the state of things encountered by capitalist production when it began to prepare itself, after the epoch of geographical discoveries, to win world power by world trade and manufacture. One would suppose that this manner of marriage exactly suited it, and so it did. And yet—there are no limits to the irony of history—capitalist production itself was to make the decisive breach in it. By changing all things into commodities, it dissolved all inherited and traditional relationships, and, in place of time-honored custom and historic right, it set up purchase and sale, “free” contract. And the English jurist, H. S. Maine, thought he had made a tremendous discovery when he said that our whole progress in comparison with former epochs consisted in the fact that we had passed “from status to contract,” from inherited to freely contracted conditions—which, in so far as it is correct, was already in The Communist Manifesto.

But a contract requires people who can dispose freely of their persons, actions, and possessions, and meet each other on the footing of equal rights. To create these “free” and “equal” people was one of the main tasks of capitalist production. Even though at the start it was carried out only half-consciously, and under a religious disguise at that, from the time of the Lutheran and Calvinist Reformation the principle was established that man is only fully responsible for his actions when he acts with complete freedom of will, and that it is a moral duty to resist all coercion to an immoral act. But how did this fit in with the hitherto existing practice in the arrangement of marriages? Marriage, according to the bourgeois conception, was a contract, a legal transaction, and the most important one of all, because it disposed of two human beings, body and mind, for life. Formally, it is true, the contract at that time was entered into voluntarily: without the assent of the persons concerned, nothing could be done. But everyone knew only too well how this assent was obtained and who were the real contracting parties in the marriage. But if real freedom of decision was required for all other contracts, then why not for this? Had not the two young people to be coupled also the right to dispose freely of themselves, of their bodies and organs? Had not chivalry brought sex-love into fashion, and was not its proper bourgeois form, in contrast to chivalry’s adulterous love, the love of husband and wife? And if it was the duty of married people to love each other, was it not equally the duty of lovers to marry each other and nobody else? Did not this right of the lovers stand higher than the right of parents, relations, and other traditional marriage-brokers and matchmakers? If the right of free, personal discrimination broke boldly into the Church and religion, how should it halt before the intolerable claim of the older generation to dispose of the body, soul, property, happiness, and unhappiness of the younger generation?

These questions inevitably arose at a time which was loosening all the old ties of society and undermining all traditional conceptions. The world had suddenly grown almost ten times bigger; instead of one quadrant of a hemisphere, the whole globe lay before the gaze of the West Europeans, who hastened to take the other seven quadrants into their possession. And with the old narrow barriers of their homeland fell also the thousand-year-old barriers of the prescribed medieval way of thought. To the outward and the inward eye of man opened an infinitely wider horizon. What did a young man care about the approval of respectability, or honorable guild privileges handed down for generations, when the wealth of India beckoned to him, the gold and the silver mines of Mexico and Potosi? For the bourgeoisie, it was the time of knight-errantry; they, too, had their romance and their raptures of love, but on a bourgeois footing and, in the last analysis, with bourgeois aims.

So it came about that the rising bourgeoisie, especially in Protestant countries, where existing conditions had been most severely shaken, increasingly recognized freedom of contract also in marriage, and carried it into effect in the manner described. Marriage remained class marriage, but within the class the partners were conceded a certain degree of freedom of choice. And on paper, in ethical theory and in poetic description, nothing was more immutably established than that every marriage is immoral which does not rest on mutual sexual love and really free agreement of husband and wife. In short, the love marriage was proclaimed as a human right, and indeed not only as a droit de l’homme, one of the rights of man, but also, for once in a way, as droit de la fem, one of the rights of woman.

This human right, however, differed in one respect from all other so-called human rights. While the latter, in practice, remain restricted to the ruling class (the bourgeoisie), and are directly or indirectly curtailed for the oppressed class (the proletariat), in the case of the former the irony of history plays another of its tricks. The ruling class remains dominated by the familiar economic influences and therefore only in exceptional cases does it provide instances of really freely contracted marriages, while among the oppressed class, as we have seen, these marriages are the rule.

Full freedom of marriage can therefore only be generally established when the abolition of capitalist production and of the property relations created by it has removed all the accompanying economic considerations which still exert such a powerful influence on the choice of a marriage partner. For then there is no other motive left except mutual inclination.

And as sexual love is by its nature exclusive—although at present this exclusiveness is fully realized only in the woman—the marriage based on sexual love is by its nature individual marriage. We have seen how right Bachofen was in regarding the advance from group marriage to individual marriage as primarily due to the women. Only the step from pairing marriage to monogamy can be put down to the credit of the men, and historically the essence of this was to make the position of the women worse and the infidelities of the men easier. If now the economic considerations also disappear which made women put up with the habitual infidelity of their husbands—concern for their own means of existence and still more for their children’s future—then, according to all previous experience, the equality of woman thereby achieved will tend infinitely more to make men really monogamous than to make women polyandrous.

But what will quite certainly disappear from monogamy are all the features stamped upon it through its origin in property relations; these are, in the first place, supremacy of the man, and, secondly, indissolubility. The supremacy of the man in marriage is the simple consequence of his economic supremacy, and with the abolition of the latter will disappear of itself. The indissolubility of marriage is partly a consequence of the economic situation in which monogamy arose, partly tradition from the period when the connection between this economic situation and monogamy was not yet fully understood and was carried to extremes under a religious form. Today it is already broken through at a thousand points. If only the marriage based on love is moral, then also only the marriage in which love continues. But the intense emotion of individual sex-love varies very much in duration from one individual to another, especially among men, and if affection definitely comes to an end or is supplanted by a new passionate love, separation is a benefit for both partners as well as for society—only people will then be spared having to wade through the useless mire of a divorce case.

What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love, or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences. When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual—and that will be the end of it.

Let us, however, return to Morgan, from whom we have moved a considerable distance. The historical investigation of the social institutions developed during the period of civilization goes beyond the limits of his book. How monogamy fares during this epoch, therefore, only occupies him very briefly. He, too, sees in the further development of the monogamous family a step forward, an approach to complete equality of the sexes, though he does not regard this goal as attained. But, he says:

When the fact is accepted that the family has passed through four successive forms, and is now in a fifth, the question at once arises whether this form can be permanent in the future. The only answer that can be given is that it must advance as society advances, and change as society changes, even as it has done in the past. It is the creature of the social system, and will reflect its culture. As the monogamian family has improved greatly since the commencement of civilization, and very sensibly in modern times, it is at least supposable that it is capable of still further improvement until the equality of the sexes is attained. Should the monogamian family in the distant future fail to answer the requirements of society...it is impossible to predict the nature of its successor.

IX. Barbarism and Civilization

We have now traced the dissolution of the gentile constitution in the three great instances of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Germans. In conclusion, let us examine the general economic conditions which already undermined the gentile organization of society at the upper stage of barbarism and with the coming of civilization overthrew it completely. Here we shall need Marx’s Capital as much as Morgan’s book.

Arising in the middle stage of savagery, further developed during its upper stage, the gens reaches its most flourishing period, so far as our sources enable us to judge, during the lower stage of barbarism. We begin therefore with this stage.

Here—the American Indians must serve as our example—we find the gentile constitution fully formed. The tribe is now grouped in several gentes, generally two. With the increase in population, each of these original gentes splits up into several daughter gentes, their mother gens now appearing as the phratry. The tribe itself breaks up into several tribes, in each of which we find again, for the most part, the old gentes. The related tribes, at least in some cases, are united in a confederacy. This simple organization suffices completely for the social conditions out of which it sprang. It is nothing more than the grouping natural to those conditions, and it is capable of settling all conflicts that can arise within a society so organized. War settles external conflicts; it may end with the annihilation of the tribe, but never with its subjugation. It is the greatness, but also the limitation, of the gentile constitution that it has no place for ruler and ruled. Within the tribe there is as yet no difference between rights and duties; the question whether participation in public affairs, in blood revenge or atonement, is a right or a duty, does not exist for the Indian; it would seem to him just as absurd as the question whether it was a right or a duty to sleep, eat, or hunt. A division of the tribe or of the gens into different classes was equally impossible. And that brings us to the examination of the economic basis of these conditions.

The population is extremely sparse; it is dense only at the tribe’s place of settlement, around which lie in a wide circle first the hunting grounds and then the protective belt of neutral forest, which separates the tribe from others. The division of labor is purely primitive, between the sexes only. The man fights in the wars, goes hunting and fishing, procures the raw materials of food and the tools necessary for doing so. The woman looks after the house and the preparation of food and clothing, cooks, weaves, sews. They are each master in their own sphere: the man in the forest, the woman in the house. Each is owner of the instruments which he or she makes and uses: the man of the weapons, the hunting and fishing implements, the woman of the household gear. The housekeeping is communal among several and often many families.[2] What is made and used in common is common property—the house, the garden, the long-boat. Here therefore, and here alone, there still exists in actual fact that “property created by the owner’s labor” which in civilized society is an ideal fiction of the jurists and economists, the last lying legal pretense by which modern capitalist property still bolsters itself up.

But humanity did not everywhere remain at this stage. In Asia they found animals which could be tamed and, when once tamed, bred. The wild buffalo-cow had to be hunted; the tame buffalo-cow gave a calf yearly and milk as well. A number of the most advanced tribes—the Aryans, Semites, perhaps already also the Turanians—now made their chief work first the taming of cattle, later their breeding and tending only. Pastoral tribes separated themselves from the mass of the rest of the barbarians: the first great social division of labor. The pastoral tribes produced not only more necessities of life than the other barbarians, but different ones. They possessed the advantage over them of having not only milk, milk products and greater supplies of meat, but also skins, wool, goat-hair, and spun and woven fabrics, which became more common as the amount of raw material increased. Thus for the first time regular exchange became possible. At the earlier stages only occasional exchanges can take place; particular skill in the making of weapons and tools may lead to a temporary division of labor. Thus in many places undoubted remains of workshops for the making of stone tools have been found, dating from the later Stone Age. The artists who here perfected their skill probably worked for the whole community, as each special handicraftsman still does in the gentile communities in India. In no case could exchange arise at this stage except within the tribe itself, and then only as an exceptional event. But now, with the differentiation of pastoral tribes, we find all the conditions ripe for exchange between branches of different tribes and its development into a regular established institution. Originally tribes exchanged with tribe through the respective chiefs of the gentes; but as the herds began to pass into private ownership, exchange between individuals became more common, and, finally, the only form. Now the chief article which the pastoral tribes exchanged with their neighbors was cattle; cattle became the commodity by which all other commodities were valued and which was everywhere willingly taken in exchange for them—in short, cattle acquired a money function and already at this stage did the work of money. With such necessity and speed, even at the very beginning of commodity exchange, did the need for a money commodity develop.

Horticulture, probably unknown to Asiatic barbarians of the lower stage, was being practiced by them in the middle stage at the latest, as the forerunner of agriculture. In the climate of the Turanian plateau, pastoral life is impossible without supplies of fodder for the long and severe winter. Here, therefore, it was essential that land should be put under grass and corn cultivated. The same is true of the steppes north of the Black Sea. But when once corn had been grown for the cattle, it also soon became food for men. The cultivated land still remained tribal property; at first it was allotted to the gens, later by the gens to the household communities and finally to individuals for use. The users may have had certain rights of possession, but nothing more.

Of the industrial achievements of this stage, two are particularly important. The first is the loom, the second the smelting of metal ores and the working of metals. Copper and tin and their alloy, bronze, were by far the most important. Bronze provided serviceable tools and weapons, though it could not displace stone tools; only iron could do that, and the method of obtaining iron was not yet understood. Gold and silver were beginning to be used for ornament and decoration, and must already have acquired a high value as compared with copper and bronze.

The increase of production in all branches—cattle-raising, agriculture, domestic handicrafts—gave human labor-power the capacity to produce a larger product than was necessary for its maintenance. At the same time it increased the daily amount of work to be done by each member of the gens, household community or single family. It was now desirable to bring in new labor forces. War provided them; prisoners of war were turned into slaves. With its increase of the productivity of labor, and therefore of wealth, and its extension of the field of production, the first great social division of labor was bound, in the general historical conditions prevailing, to bring slavery in its train. From the first great social division of labor arose the first great cleavage of society into two classes: masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited.

As to how and when the herds passed out of the common possession of the tribe or the gens into the ownership of individual heads of families, we know nothing at present. But in the main it must have occurred during this stage. With the herds and the other new riches, a revolution came over the family. To procure the necessities of life had always been the business of the man; he produced and owned the means of doing so. The herds were the new means of producing these necessities; the taming of the animals in the first instance and their later tending were the man’s work. To him, therefore, belonged the cattle, and to him the commodities and the slaves received in exchange for cattle. All the surplus which the acquisition of the necessities of life now yielded fell to the man; the woman shared in its enjoyment, but had no part in its ownership. The “savage” warrior and hunter had been content to take second place in the house, after the woman; the “gentler” shepherd, in the arrogance of his wealth, pushed himself forward into the first place and the woman down into the second. And she could not complain. The division of labor within the family had regulated the division of property between the man and the woman. That division of labor had remained the same; and yet it now turned the previous domestic relation upside down, simply because the division of labor outside the family had changed. The same cause which had ensured to the woman her previous supremacy in the house—that her activity was confined to domestic labor—this same cause now ensured the man’s supremacy in the house: the domestic labor of the woman no longer counted beside the acquisition of the necessities of life by the man; the latter was everything, the former an unimportant extra. We can already see from this that to emancipate woman and make her the equal of the man is and remains an impossibility so long as the woman is shut out from social productive labor and restricted to private domestic labor. The emancipation of woman will only be possible when woman can take part in production on a large, social scale, and domestic work no longer claims anything but an insignificant amount of her time. And only now has that become possible through modern large-scale industry, which does not merely permit of the employment of female labor over a wide range, but positively demands it, while it also tends towards ending private domestic labor by changing it more and more into a public industry.

The man now being actually supreme in the house, the last barrier to his absolute supremacy had fallen. This autocracy was confirmed and perpetuated by the overthrow of mother-right, the introduction of father-right, and the gradual transition of the pairing marriage into monogamy. But this tore a breach in the old gentile order; the single family became a power, and its rise was a menace to the gens.

The next step leads us to the upper stage of barbarism, the period when all civilized peoples have their Heroic Age: the age of the iron sword, but also of the iron plowshare and ax. Iron was now at the service of man, the last and most important of all the raw materials which played a historically revolutionary role—until the potato. Iron brought the tillage of large areas, the clearing of wide tracts of virgin forest; iron gave to the handicraftsman tools so hard and sharp that no stone, no other known metal could resist them. All this came gradually; the first iron was often even softer than bronze. Hence stone weapons only disappeared slowly; not merely in the Hildebrandslied, but even as late as Hastings in 1066, stone axes were still used for fighting. But progress could not now be stopped; it went forward with fewer checks and greater speed. The town, with its houses of stone or brick, encircled by stone walls, towers and ramparts, became the central seat of the tribe or the confederacy of tribes—an enormous architectural advance, but also a sign of growing danger and need for protection. Wealth increased rapidly, but as the wealth of individuals. The products of weaving, metal-work and the other handicrafts, which were becoming more and more differentiated, displayed growing variety and skill. In addition to corn, leguminous plants and fruit, agriculture now provided wine and oil, the preparation of which had been learned. Such manifold activities were no longer within the scope of one and the same individual; the second great division of labor took place: handicraft separated from agriculture. The continuous increase of production and simultaneously of the productivity of labor heightened the value of human labor-power. Slavery, which during the preceding period was still in its beginnings and sporadic, now becomes an essential constituent part of the social system; slaves no longer merely help with production—they are driven by dozens to work in the fields and the workshops. With the splitting up of production into the two great main branches, agriculture and handicrafts, arises production directly for exchange, commodity production; with it came commerce, not only in the interior and on the tribal boundaries, but also already overseas. All this, however, was still very undeveloped; the precious metals were beginning to be the predominant and general money commodity, but still uncoined, exchanging simply by their naked weight.

The distinction of rich and poor appears beside that of freemen and slaves—with the new division of labor, a new cleavage of society into classes. The inequalities of property among the individual heads of families break up the old communal household communities wherever they had still managed to survive, and with them the common cultivation of the soil by and for these communities. The cultivated land is allotted for use to single families, at first temporarily, later permanently. The transition to full private property is gradually accomplished, parallel with the transition of the pairing marriage into monogamy. The single family is becoming the economic unit of society.

The denser population necessitates closer consolidation both for internal and external action. The confederacy of related tribes becomes everywhere a necessity, and soon also their fusion, involving the fusion of the separate tribal territories into one territory of the nation. The military leader of the people—res, basileus, thiudans—becomes an indispensable, permanent official. The assembly of the people takes form, wherever it did not already exist. Military leader, council, assembly of the people are the organs of gentile society developed into military democracy—military, since war and organization for war have now become regular functions of national life. Their neighbors’ wealth excites the greed of peoples who already see in the acquisition of wealth one of the main aims of life. They are barbarians: they think it more easy and in fact more honorable to get riches by pillage than by work. War, formerly waged only in revenge for injuries or to extend territory that had grown too small, is now waged simply for plunder and becomes a regular industry. Not without reason the bristling battlements stand menacingly about the new fortified towns; in the moat at their foot yawns the grave of the gentile constitution, and already they rear their towers into civilization. Similarly in the interior. The wars of plunder increase the power of the supreme military leader and the subordinate commanders; the customary election of their successors from the same families is gradually transformed, especially after the introduction of father-right, into a right of hereditary succession, first tolerated, then claimed, finally usurped; the foundation of the hereditary monarchy and the hereditary nobility is laid. Thus the organs of the gentile constitution gradually tear themselves loose from their roots in the people, in gens, phratry, tribe, and the whole gentile constitution changes into its opposite: from an organization of tribes for the free ordering of their own affairs it becomes an organization for the plundering and oppression of their neighbors; and correspondingly its organs change from instruments of the will of the people into independent organs for the domination and oppression of the people. That, however, would never have been possible if the greed for riches had not split the members of the gens into rich and poor, if “the property differences within one and the same gens had not transformed its unity of interest into antagonism between its members” (Marx), if the extension of slavery had not already begun to make working for a living seem fit only for slaves and more dishonorable than pillage.

We have now reached the threshold of civilization. Civilization opens with a new advance in the division of labor. At the lowest stage of barbarism men produced only directly for their own needs; any acts of exchange were isolated occurrences, the object of exchange merely some fortuitous surplus. In the middle stage of barbarism we already find among the pastoral peoples a possession in the form of cattle which, once the herd has attained a certain size, regularly produces a surplus over and above the tribe’s own requirements, leading to a division of labor between pastoral peoples and backward tribes without herds, and hence to the existence of two different levels of production side by side with one another and the conditions necessary for regular exchange. The upper stage of barbarism brings us the further division of labor between agriculture and handicrafts, hence the production of a continually increasing portion of the products of labor directly for exchange, so that exchange between individual producers assumes the importance of a vital social function. Civilization consolidates and intensifies all these existing divisions of labor, particularly by sharpening the opposition between town and country (the town may economically dominate the country, as in antiquity, or the country the town, as in the middle ages), and it adds a third division of labor, peculiar to itself and of decisive importance: it creates a class which no longer concerns itself with production, but only with the exchange of the products—the merchants. Hitherto whenever classes had begun to form, it had always been exclusively in the field of production; the persons engaged in production were separated into those who directed and those who executed, or else into large-scale and small-scale producers. Now for the first time a class appears which, without in any way participating in production, captures the direction of production as a whole and economically subjugates the producers; which makes itself into an indispensable middleman between any two producers and exploits them both. Under the pretext that they save the producers the trouble and risk of exchange, extend the sale of their products to distant markets and are therefore the most useful class of the population, a class of parasites comes into being, “genuine social ichneumons,” who, as a reward for their actually very insignificant services, skim all the cream off production at home and abroad, rapidly amass enormous wealth and correspondingly social influence, and for that reason receive under civilization ever higher honors and ever greater control of production, until at last they also bring forth a product of their own—the periodical trade crises.

At our stage of development, however, the young merchants had not even begun to dream of the great destiny awaiting them. But they were growing and making themselves indispensable, which was quite sufficient. And with the formation of the merchant class came also the development of metallic money, the minted coin, a new instrument for the domination of the non-producer over the producer and his production. The commodity of commodities had been discovered, that which holds all other commodities hidden in itself, the magic power which can change at will into everything desirable and desired. The man who had it ruled the world of production—and who had more of it than anybody else? The merchant. The worship of money was safe in his hands. He took good care to make it clear that, in face of money, all commodities, and hence all producers of commodities, must prostrate themselves in adoration in the dust. He proved practically that all other forms of wealth fade into mere semblance beside this incarnation of wealth as such. Never again has the power of money shown itself in such primitive brutality and violence as during these days of its youth. After commodities had begun to sell for money, loans and advances in money came also, and with them interest and usury. No legislation of later times so utterly and ruthlessly delivers over the debtor to the usurious creditor as the legislation of ancient Athens and ancient Rome—and in both cities it arose spontaneously, as customary law, without any compulsion other than the economic.

Alongside wealth in commodities and slaves, alongside wealth in money, there now appeared wealth in land also. The individuals’ rights of possession in the pieces of land originally allotted to them by gens or tribe had now become so established that the land was their hereditary property. Recently they had striven above all to secure their freedom against the rights of the gentile community over these lands, since these rights had become for them a fetter. They got rid of the fetter—but soon afterwards of their new landed property also. Full, free ownership of the land meant not only power, uncurtailed and unlimited, to possess the land; it meant also the power to alienate it. As long as the land belonged to the gens, no such power could exist. But when the new landed proprietor shook off once and for all the fetters laid upon him by the prior right of gens and tribe, he also cut the ties which had hitherto inseparably attached him to the land. Money, invented at the same time as private property in land, showed him what that meant. Land could now become a commodity; it could be sold and pledged. Scarcely had private property in land been introduced than the mortgage was already invented (see Athens). As hetaerism and prostitution dog the heels of monogamy, so from now onwards mortgage dogs the heels of private land ownership. You asked for full, free alienable ownership of the land and now you have got it—“tu l’as voulu, Georges Dandin.”[3]

With trade expansion, money and usury, private property in land and mortgages, the concentration and centralization of wealth in the hands of a small class rapidly advanced, accompanied by an increasing impoverishment of the masses and an increasing mass of impoverishment. The new aristocracy of wealth, in so far as it had not been identical from the outset with the old hereditary aristocracy, pushed it permanently into the background (in Athens, in Rome, among the Germans). And simultaneous with this division of the citizens into classes according to wealth there was an enormous increase, particularly in Greece, in the number of slaves,[4] whose forced labor was the foundation on which the superstructure of the entire society was reared.

Let us now see what had become of the gentile constitution in this social upheaval. Confronted by the new forces in whose growth it had had no share, the gentile constitution was helpless. The necessary condition for its existence was that the members of a gens or at least of a tribe were settled together in the same territory and were its sole inhabitants. That had long ceased to be the case. Every territory now had a heterogeneous population belonging to the most varied gentes and tribes; everywhere slaves, protected persons and aliens lived side by side with citizens. The settled conditions of life which had only been achieved towards the end of the middle stage of barbarism were broken up by the repeated shifting and changing of residence under the pressure of trade, alteration of occupation and changes in the ownership of the land. The members of the gentile bodies could no longer meet to look after their common concerns; only unimportant matters, like the religious festivals, were still perfunctorily attended to. In addition to the needs and interests with which the gentile bodies were intended and fitted to deal, the upheaval in productive relations and the resulting change in the social structure had given rise to new needs and interests, which were not only alien to the old gentile order, but ran directly counter to it at every point. The interests of the groups of handicraftsmen which had arisen with the division of labor, the special needs of the town as opposed to the country, called for new organs. But each of these groups was composed of people of the most diverse gentes, phratries, and tribes, and even included aliens. Such organs had therefore to be formed outside the gentile constitution, alongside of it, and hence in opposition to it. And this conflict of interests was at work within every gentile body, appearing in its most extreme form in the association of rich and poor, usurers and debtors, in the same gens and the same tribe. Further, there was the new mass of population outside the gentile bodies, which, as in Rome, was able to become a power in the land and at the same time was too numerous to be gradually absorbed into the kinship groups and tribes. In relation to this mass, the gentile bodies stood opposed as closed, privileged corporations; the primitive natural democracy had changed into a malign aristocracy. Lastly, the gentile constitution had grown out of a society which knew no internal contradictions, and it was only adapted to such a society. It possessed no means of coercion except public opinion. But here was a society which by all its economic conditions of life had been forced to split itself into freemen and slaves, into the exploiting rich and the exploited poor; a society which not only could never again reconcile these contradictions, but was compelled always to intensify them. Such a society could only exist either in the continuous open fight of these classes against one another, or else under the rule of a third power, which, apparently standing above the warring classes, suppressed their open conflict and allowed the class struggle to be fought out at most in the economic field, in so-called legal form. The gentile constitution was finished. It had been shattered by the division of labor and its result, the cleavage of society into classes. It was replaced by the state.

The three main forms in which the state arises on the ruins of the gentile constitution have been examined in detail above. Athens provides the purest, classic form; here the state springs directly and mainly out of the class oppositions which develop within gentile society itself. In Rome, gentile society becomes a closed aristocracy in the midst of the numerous plebs who stand outside it, and have duties but no rights; the victory of plebs breaks up the old constitution based on kinship, and erects on its ruins the state, into which both the gentile aristocracy and the plebs are soon completely absorbed. Lastly, in the case of the German conquerors of the Roman Empire, the state springs directly out of the conquest of large foreign territories, which the gentile constitution provides no means of governing. But because this conquest involves neither a serious struggle with the original population nor a more advanced division of labor; because conquerors and conquered are almost on the same level of economic development, and the economic basis of society remains therefore as before—for these reasons the gentile constitution is able to survive for many centuries in the altered, territorial form of the mark constitution and even for a time to rejuvenate itself in a feebler shape in the later noble and patrician families, and indeed in peasant families, as in Ditmarschen.[5]

The state is therefore by no means a power imposed on society from without; just as little is it “the reality of the moral idea,” “the image and the reality of reason,” as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a particular stage of development; it is the admission that this society has involved itself in insoluble self-contradiction and is cleft into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to exorcise. But in order that these antagonisms, classes with conflicting economic interests, shall not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, a power, apparently standing above society, has become necessary to moderate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of “order”; and this power, arisen out of society, but placing itself above it and increasingly alienating itself from it, is the state.

In contrast to the old gentile organization, the state is distinguished firstly by the grouping of its members on a territorial basis. The old gentile bodies, formed and held together by ties of blood, had, as we have seen, become inadequate largely because they presupposed that the gentile members were bound to one particular locality, whereas this had long ago ceased to be the case. The territory was still there, but the people had become mobile. The territorial division was therefore taken as the starting point and the system introduced by which citizens exercised their public rights and duties where they took up residence, without regard to gens or tribe. This organization of the citizens of the state according to domicile is common to all states. To us, therefore, this organization seems natural; but, as we have seen, hard and protracted struggles were necessary before it was able in Athens and Rome to displace the old organization founded on kinship.

The second distinguishing characteristic is the institution of a public force which is no longer immediately identical with the people’s own organization of themselves as an armed power. This special public force is needed because a self-acting armed organization of the people has become impossible since their cleavage into classes. The slaves also belong to the population: as against the 365,000 slaves, the 90,000 Athenian citizens constitute only a privileged class. The people’s army of the Athenian democracy confronted the slaves as an aristocratic public force, and kept them in check; but to keep the citizens in check as well, a police-force was needed, as described above. This public force exists in every state; it consists not merely of armed men, but also of material appendages, prisons and coercive institutions of all kinds, of which gentile society knew nothing. It may be very insignificant, practically negligible, in societies with still undeveloped class antagonisms and living in remote areas, as at times and in places in the United States of America. But it becomes stronger in proportion as the class antagonisms within the state become sharper and as adjoining states grow larger and more populous. It is enough to look at Europe today, where class struggle and rivalry in conquest have brought the public power to a pitch that it threatens to devour the whole of society and even the state itself.

In order to maintain this public power, contributions from the state citizens are necessary—taxes. These were completely unknown to gentile society. We know more than enough about them today. With advancing civilization, even taxes are not sufficient; the state draws drafts on the future, contracts loans, state debts. Our old Europe can tell a tale about these, too.

In possession of the public power and the right of taxation, the officials now present themselves as organs of society standing above society. The free, willing respect accorded to the organs of the gentile constitution is not enough for them, even if they could have it. Representatives of a power which estranges them from society, they have to be given prestige by means of special decrees, which invest them with a peculiar sanctity and inviolability. The lowest police officer of the civilized state has more “authority” than all the organs of gentile society put together; but the mightiest prince and the greatest statesman or general of civilization might envy the humblest of the gentile chiefs the unforced and unquestioned respect accorded to him. For the one stands in the midst of society; the other is forced to pose as something outside and above it.

As the state arose from the need to keep class antagonisms in check, but also arose in the thick of the fight between the classes, it is normally the state of the most powerful, economically ruling class, which by its means becomes also the politically ruling class, and so acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class. The ancient state was, above all, the state of the slave-owners for holding down the slaves, just as the feudal state was the organ of the nobility for holding down the peasant serfs and bondsmen, and the modern representative state is the instrument for exploiting wage-labor by capital. Exceptional periods, however, occur when the warring classes are so nearly equal in forces that the state power, as apparent mediator, acquires for the moment a certain independence in relation to both. This applies to the absolute monarchy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which balances the nobility and the bourgeoisie against one another; and to the Bonapartism of the First and particularly of the Second French Empire, which played off the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. The latest achievement in this line, in which ruler and ruled look equally comic, is the new German Empire of the Bismarckian nation; here the capitalists and the workers are balanced against one another and both of them fleeced for the benefit of the decayed Prussian cabbage Junkers. [German: Krautjunker, translated as ‘country squire’, but with pejorative overtones.]

Further, in most historical states the rights conceded to citizens are graded on a property basis, whereby it is directly admitted that the state is an organization for the protection of the possessing class against the non-possessing class. This is already the case in the Athenian and Roman property classes. Similarly in the medieval feudal state, in which the extent of political power was determined by the extent of landownership. Similarly, also, in the electoral qualifications in modern parliamentary states. This political recognition of property differences is, however, by no means essential. On the contrary, it marks a low stage in the development of the state. The highest form of the state, the democratic republic, which in our modern social conditions becomes more and more an unavoidable necessity and is the form of state in which alone the last decisive battle between proletariat and bourgeoisie can be fought out—the democratic republic no longer officially recognizes differences of property. Wealth here employs its power indirectly, but all the more surely. It does this in two ways: by plain corruption of officials, of which America is the classic example, and by an alliance between the government and the stock exchange, which is effected all the more easily the higher the state debt mounts and the more the joint-stock companies concentrate in their hands not only transport but also production itself, and themselves have their own center in the stock exchange. In addition to America, the latest French republic illustrates this strikingly, and honest little Switzerland has also given a creditable performance in this field. But that a democratic republic is not essential to this brotherly bond between government and stock exchange is proved not only by England, but also by the new German Empire, where it is difficult to say who scored most by the introduction of universal suffrage, Bismarck or the Bleichroder bank. And lastly the possessing class rules directly by means of universal suffrage. As long as the oppressed class—in our case, therefore, the proletariat—is not yet ripe for its self-liberation, so long will it, in its majority, recognize the existing order of society as the only possible one and remain politically the tail of the capitalist class, its extreme left wing. But in the measure in which it matures towards its self-emancipation, in the same measure it constitutes itself as its own party and votes for its own representatives, not those of the capitalists. Universal suffrage is thus the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the modern state; but that is enough. On the day when the thermometer of universal suffrage shows boiling-point among the workers, they as well as the capitalists will know where they stand.

The state, therefore, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies which have managed without it, which had no notion of the state or state power. At a definite stage of economic development, which necessarily involved the cleavage of society into classes, the state became a necessity because of this cleavage. We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes has not only ceased to be a necessity, but becomes a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as inevitably as they once arose. The state inevitably falls with them. The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong—into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax.

Civilization is, therefore, according to the above analysis, the stage of development in society at which the division of labor, the exchange between individuals arising from it, and the commodity production which combines them both, come to their full growth and revolutionizes the whole of previous society.

At all earlier stages of society production was essentially collective, just as consumption proceeded by direct distribution of the products within larger or smaller communistic communities. This collective production was very limited; but inherent in it was the producers’ control over their process of production and their product. They knew what became of their product: they consumed it; it did not leave their hands. And so long as production remains on this basis, it cannot grow above the heads of the producers nor raise up incorporeal alien powers against them, as in civilization is always and inevitably the case.

But the division of labor slowly insinuates itself into this process of production. It undermines the collectivity of production and appropriation, elevates appropriation by individuals into the general rule, and thus creates exchange between individuals—how it does so, we have examined above. Gradually commodity production becomes the dominating form.

With commodity production, production no longer for use by the producers but for exchange, the products necessarily change hands. In exchanging his product, the producer surrenders it; he no longer knows what becomes of it. When money, and with money the merchant, steps in as intermediary between the producers, the process of exchange becomes still more complicated, the final fate of the products still more uncertain. The merchants are numerous, and none of them knows what the other is doing. The commodities already pass not only from hand to hand; they also pass from market to market; the producers have lost control over the total production within their own spheres, and the merchants have not gained it. Products and production become subjects of chance.

But chance is only the one pole of a relation whose other pole is named “necessity.” In the world of nature, where chance also seems to rule, we have long since demonstrated in each separate field the inner necessity and law asserting itself in this chance. But what is true of the natural world is true also of society. The more a social activity, a series of social processes, becomes too powerful for men’s conscious control and grows above their heads, and the more it appears a matter of pure chance, then all the more surely within this chance the laws peculiar to it and inherent in it assert themselves as if by natural necessity. Such laws also govern the chances of commodity production and exchange. To the individuals producing or exchanging, they appear as alien, at first often unrecognized, powers, whose nature must first be laboriously investigated and established. These economic laws of commodity production are modified with the various stages of this form of production; but in general the whole period of civilization is dominated by them. And still to this day the product rules the producer; still to this day the total production of society is regulated, not by a jointly devised plan, but by blind laws, which manifest themselves with elemental violence, in the final instance in the storms of the periodical trade crises.

We saw above how at a fairly early stage in the development of production, human labor-power obtains the capacity of producing a considerably greater product than is required for the maintenance of the producers, and how this stage of development was in the main the same as that in which division of labor and exchange between individuals arise. It was not long then before the great “truth” was discovered that man also can be a commodity; that human energy can be exchanged and put to use by making a man into a slave. Hardly had men begun to exchange than already they themselves were being exchanged. The active became the passive, whether the men liked it or not.

With slavery, which attained its fullest development under civilization, came the first great cleavage of society into an exploiting and an exploited class. This cleavage persisted during the whole civilized period. Slavery is the first form of exploitation, the form peculiar to the ancient world; it is succeeded by serfdom in the middle ages, and wage-labor in the more recent period. These are the three great forms of servitude, characteristic of the three great epochs of civilization; open, and in recent times disguised, slavery always accompanies them.

The stage of commodity production with which civilization begins is distinguished economically by the introduction of (1) metal money, and with it money capital, interest and usury; (2) merchants, as the class of intermediaries between the producers; (3) private ownership of land, and the mortgage system; (4) slave labor as the dominant form of production. The form of family corresponding to civilization and coming to definite supremacy with it is monogamy, the domination of the man over the woman, and the single family as the economic unit of society. The central link in civilized society is the state, which in all typical periods is without exception the state of the ruling class, and in all cases continues to be essentially a machine for holding down the oppressed, exploited class. Also characteristic of civilization is the establishment of a permanent opposition between town and country as basis of the whole social division of labor; and, further, the introduction of wills, whereby the owner of property is still able to dispose over it even when he is dead. This institution, which is a direct affront to the old gentile constitution, was unknown in Athens until the time of Solon; in Rome it was introduced early, though we do not know the date;[6] among the Germans it was the clerics who introduced it, in order that there might be nothing to stop the pious German from leaving his legacy to the Church.

With this as its basic constitution, civilization achieved things of which gentile society was not even remotely capable. But it achieved them by setting in motion the lowest instincts and passions in man and developing them at the expense of all his other abilities. From its first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization; wealth and again wealth and once more wealth, wealth, not of society, but of the single scurvy individual—here was its one and final aim. If at the same time the progressive development of science and a repeated flowering of supreme art dropped into its lap, it was only because without them modern wealth could not have completely realized its achievements.

Since civilization is founded on the exploitation of one class by another class, its whole development proceeds in a constant contradiction. Every step forward in production is at the same time a step backwards in the position of the oppressed class, that is, of the great majority. Whatever benefits some necessarily injures the others; every fresh emancipation of one class is necessarily a new oppression for another class. The most striking proof of this is provided by the introduction of machinery, the effects of which are now known to the whole world. And if among the barbarians, as we saw, the distinction between rights and duties could hardly be drawn, civilization makes the difference and antagonism between them clear even to the dullest intelligence by giving one class practically all the rights and the other class practically all the duties.

But that should not be: what is good for the ruling class must also be good for the whole of society, with which the ruling-class identifies itself. Therefore the more civilization advances, the more it is compelled to cover the evils it necessarily creates with the cloak of love and charity, to palliate them or to deny them—in short, to introduce a conventional hypocrisy which was unknown to earlier forms of society and even to the first stages of civilization, and which culminates in the pronouncement: the exploitation of the oppressed class is carried on by the exploiting class simply and solely in the interests of the exploited class itself; and if the exploited class cannot see it and even grows rebellious, that is the basest ingratitude to its benefactors, the exploiters.[7]

And now, in conclusion, Morgan’s judgment of civilization:

Since the advent of civilization, the outgrowth of property has been so immense, its forms so diversified, its uses so expanding and its management so intelligent in the interests of its owners, that it has become, on the part of the people, an unmanageable power. The human mind stands bewildered in the presence of its own creation. The time will come, nevertheless, when human intelligence will rise to the mastery over property, and define the relations of the state to the property it protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights of its owners. The interests of society are paramount to individual interests, and the two must be brought into just and harmonious relations. A mere property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to be the law of the future as it has been of the past. The time which has passed away since civilization began is but a fragment of the past duration of man’s existence; and but a fragment of the ages yet to come. The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim; because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes. [Morgan, op. cit., p. 562. –Ed.]

1. Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism to Civilization, by Lewis H. Morgan, London, Macmillan and Co., 1877. The book was printed in America and is peculiarly difficult to obtain in London. The author died some years ago. [For the purposes of this edition, all references to Ancient Society are from the Charles H. Kerr edition, Chicago. –Ed.]↩

2. Especially on the northwest coast of America—see Bancroft. Among the Haidahs on Queen Charlotte Islands there are households with as many as 700 persons under one roof. Among the Nootkas whole tribes used to live under one roof.↩

3. “You wanted it.” This expression is taken from Moliere’s comedy George Dandin, ou le mari confondu, I. 9.–Ed.↩

4. For the number of slaves in Athens, see above, page 107. In Corinth, at the height of its power, the number of slaves was 460,000; in Ægina, 470,000. In both cases, ten times the population of free citizens.↩

5. The first historian who had at any rate an approximate conception of the nature of the gens was Niebuhr, and for this he had to thank his acquaintance with the Ditmarechen families, though he was overhasty in transferring their characteristics to the gens.↩

6. The second part of Lassalle’s System der erworbenen Rechte (System of Acquired Rights) turns chiefly on the proposition that the Roman testament is as old as Rome itself, that there was never in Roman history “a time when there were no testaments”; that, on the contrary, the testament originated in pre-Roman times out of the cult of the dead. Lassalle, as a faithful Hegelian of the old school, derives the provisions of Roman law not from the social relations of the Romans, but from the “speculative concept” of the human will, and so arrives at this totally unhistorical conclusion. This is not to be wondered at in a book which comes to the conclusion, on the ground of the same speculative concept, that the transfer of property was a purely secondary matter in Roman inheritance. Lassalle not only believes in the illusions of the Roman jurists, particularly of the earlier periods; he outdoes them.↩

7. I originally intended to place the brilliant criticism of civilization which is found scattered through the work of Charles Fourier beside that of Morgan and my own. Unfortunately, I have not the time. I will only observe that Fourier already regards monogamy and private property in land as the chief characteristics of civilization, and that he calls civilization a war of the rich against the poor. We also find already in his work the profound recognition that in all societies which are imperfect and split into antagonisms single families (les families incohirentes) are the economic units.↩

Second International

In the massive worker associations of pre-WWI European socialism, no text was more widely sold and read than August Bebel’s Woman and Socialism. Working-class female readers were particularly inspired by its speculative depiction of egalitarian gender relations under socialism. Bebel shared with many in the Second International and German SPD an understanding that the struggle for gender equality and women’s emancipation (“the Woman question”) depended on transforming the material, class relations of capitalist society (“the social question”). Eleanor Marx, Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg are all responding, in part, to Bebel and to the rising feminist movement. They differ significantly, however, in assessing if women should be able to form independent associations, if the socialist movement should generate feminist-focused propaganda, or if middle-class feminist organizing advanced working women’s interests. Eleanor Marx was responding to Bebel from England; Zetkin and Luxemburg were major leaders in the German SPD.

This week, we have two secondary readings. One is a short passage from Geoff Eley’s history of European social democracy. For those unfamiliar with the Second International, we highly recommend reading from Chapters 4 to Chapters 7 of Eley’s book, as well as the shorter excerpt we reference below on the relationship of social democracy to women’s struggles.

Second, we recommend beginning to read a main secondary text: Alice Echols’ Daring to be Bad. Though not relevant to this week’s reading, we are recommending starting now so you have sense of the historical context when we come to week 6 on Women’s Liberation.

Secondary readings: Geoff Eley, “Feminists, Socialists, and the Emancipation of Women,” (pp. 99–108) Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000. Oxford University Press, 2002.

Alice Echols, Forward, Introduction and Ch. 1 (pp. vii–50), Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967–1975. University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

August Bebel, Woman and Socialism (1879/1910)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/bebel/1879/woman-socialism/index.htm?utm_source=lasindias.info

Published: Multiple German editions between 1879 and 1910.

Source: Trans. by Meta L. Stern, Socialist Literature Co.

Ch. 8, Woman in the Future

This is going to be a very short chapter. It contains only the conclusions that follow from what has been said, conclusions the reader may easily draw for himself.

The woman of the future society is socially and economically independent, she is no longer subjected to even a vestige of domination or exploitation, she is free and on a par with man and mistress of her destiny. Her education is the same as that enjoyed by men, with the exception of some modifications demanded by differences of sex and sexual functions. Living in natural conditions, she is able to develop and exercise her physical and mental powers and faculties according to her requirements. She chooses her occupation in such a field as corresponds with her wishes, inclinations and talents, and enjoys working conditions identical to those of men. Even if she is engaged in some trade for some hours she may spend another part of the day working as an educator, teacher or nurse, and devote a third part of the day to some art, or the study of some branch of science, and set aside yet another part of the day to some administrative function. She joins in studies and work, enjoys diversions and entertainment with other women or with men as she pleases and as occasion allows.

In choosing the object of her love, woman, like man, is free and unhampered. She woos or is wooed, and enters into a union from no considerations other than her own inclinations. This bond is a private agreement, arrived at without the intermediacy of a functionary—just as marriage was a private agreement till far into the Middle Ages. Socialism is creating nothing new here, it only restores at a higher stage of civilisation and under new social forms what had prevailed universally before private property began to dominate society.

Under the proviso that the satisfaction of his instincts inflicts no injury and disadvantage on others, the individual shall see to his own needs. The gratification of the sexual instinct is as much a private concern as the satisfaction of any other natural instinct. No one is accountable for it to others and no unsolicited judge has the right to interfere. What I shall eat, how I shall drink, sleep and dress, is my own affair, as is also my intercourse with a person of the opposite sex. Intelligence and culture, full independence of an individual—all qualities that will evolve naturally as a result of the education and the conditions pertaining in the future society—will guard everyone against committing acts that would be to his disadvantage. The men and women of the future society will possess a far higher degree of self-discipline and self-knowledge than those now living. The simple fact that all the stupid prudery and ridiculous affection of secrecy regarding the discussion of sexual matters will have vanished guarantees that intercourse between the sexes will be much more natural than it is today. If two persons who have entered into a union turn out to be incompatible, or are disappointed in or repulsed by each other, morality demands that this unnatural and therefore immoral bond be dissolved. Since the conditions that have up to now condemned a large number of women to either celibacy or the barter of their bodies will have vanished, men will no longer be able to maintain any superiority. On the other hand, the transformed social conditions will remove many of the inhibitions and inconveniences which affect married life today, often prevent it from unfolding, or even render it wholly impossible.

There is a growing awareness among wide circles of the inhibitions, contradictions and unnatural aspects of the position of the woman today, and this awareness finds graphic expression in social literature as well as in fiction, but often in a distorted form. That the present form of marriage is less and less compatible with its purpose no thinking person can deny. And hence it is no wonder that there are even people who consider freedom in the choice of love and in the dissolution of the bonds already sealed only natural, while they show no inclination to draw the necessary conclusions to the effect that the present social system should be changed. They believe that freedom of sexual intercourse is a thing to which only the privileged classes should be entitled. Mathilde Reichhardt-Stromberg, for example, in answer to writer Fanny Lewald’s[1] campaigning for the emancipation of women, wrote:

If you (F.L.) demand complete equality for women in social and political life, so George Sand must also of necessity be justified in her campaigning for emancipation which aims no higher than that of which man has long since enjoyed undisputed possession. Indeed, no reasonable grounds can be found to show why only woman’s head and not her heart as well should be admitted to this equality and be free to give and take as freely as man. On the contrary, if woman has by nature the right and consequently the duty—for we should not bury the talent bestowed on us—of exerting her brain tissue to the utmost in the contest with the intellectual titans of the opposite sex, she must also have the right, just as they do, to preserve her equilibrium by accelerating the circulation of the heart’s blood in whatever way may seem appropriate to her. Do we not all read without the slightest moral indignation how Goethe—to choose the greatest of all as an example—again and again wasted his heart’s warmth and the ardour of his great soul on yet another woman. An enlightened person finds this only natural, precisely by virtue of the greatness of his insatiable soul, while only the narrow-minded moralist finds fault with this mode of living. Why, then, deride the “great souls” among women!...Let us but assume that the whole female sex consists exclusively of great souls like those portrayed by George Sand, that every woman is a Lucrezia Floriani whose children are all children of love and who brought up all these children with true motherly love and devotion, as well as with discernment and sound common sense. What would then become of the world? There can be no doubt that it could continue to exist and to progress, as it does today, and it might even fare exceptionally well in the process.

But why should this be a prerogative of “great souls” and not also of those who are not “great souls”? If a Goethe and a George Sand, to single out these two from the many who acted and are acting like them, could live according to their hearts’ dictates—and about Goethe’s love affairs whole libraries are published that are devoured by his male and female admirers in rapturous ecstasy—why condemn in others what becomes the subject of ecstatic admiration, when practised by a Goethe or a George Sand?

Admittedly, freedom in choosing the object of love is impossible in bourgeois society—this all our preceding arguments have demonstrated—but place the whole community in social conditions similar to those enjoyed by the social and intellectual elite, and the whole community gains access to similar freedoms. In Jacques, George Sand depicts a husband who judges the adulterous relations of his wife with another in these words: “No human being can command love, no one is guilty if he feels it or ceases to feel it. What debases woman is the lie, adultery is not the hour she gives to her lover but the night after that which she spends with her husband.” In accordance with his views, Jacques feels obliged to yield his place to his rival, and in so doing philosophises as follows:

Borel in my place would have quietly beaten his wife and then without blushing have taken her into his arms, debased by his blows and his kisses. There are men who after the oriental fashion kill their unfaithful wife, because they consider her their lawful property. Others fight their rival, kill him or drive him away and then ask the woman they claim to love for kisses and caresses, and the woman then either shrinks back in horror or yields in despair. This is the accepted practice in conjugal love, and it seems to me that the love of pigs is less base and less coarse than that of such people.[2]

Commenting on these passages, Brandes writes:

These truths which are considered elementary for the civilised world of today, were regarded as atrocious fifty years ago. But the “world of property and culture” does not dare even today openly to recognise the principles of George Sand, although it actually lives by them. As in morality and religion, it affects righteousness also in marriage.

What Goethe and George Sand used to do, thousands of others, who bear no comparison with Goethe or Sand, are doing today, without losing the respect of society in the least. All that is needed is a respectable position, the rest comes of itself. This notwithstanding, the liberties enjoyed by a Goethe and a George Sand are immoral judged from a bourgeois viewpoint, because they contradict the moral laws invoked by society and are incompatible with the nature of our social conditions. Arranged marriages are the normal practice in bourgeois society, the only “moral” union of the sexes. Bourgeois marriage is, we have proved this beyond contradiction, the consequence of bourgeois property relations. Closely bound up with private property and the right of succession, it is entered into for the purpose of begetting “legitimate” children as heirs. And under the pressure of the social conditions it is also forced upon those who have nothing to bequeath[3]; it becomes a social law, whose violation the state punishes by sentencing men and women who live in adultery and who have separated to terms of imprisonment.

In socialist society there is nothing to be bequeathed, unless one regards domestic utensils and personal belongings as an inheritance; hence, the modern form of marriage becomes obsolete. The question of inheritance is thereby solved and socialism does not have to bother to abolish it. Once there is no private property, there can be no right of inheritance. Thus, woman is free and her children do not restrict her freedom, they can only multiply the joy she gleans from life. Nurses, teachers, women-friends, the rising female generation are at hand to assist the mother when she needs help.

It is possible that there will be men in the future who will say with Alexander von Humboldt: “I was not made to be the father of a family. Moreover, I consider marrying a sin and the begetting of children a crime.” What of it? With others the power of natural instincts will see to it that equilibrium is maintained. We are worried neither by the hostility to marriage of a Humboldt nor by the pessimistic philosophy of a Schopenhauer, Mainländer or von Hartmann, who hold out for mankind the prospect of self-destruction in the “ideal state.” In this respect we agree with F. Ratzel who has every justification for writing:

Man must no longer look upon himself as an exception to the laws of Nature, but should at last begin to look for the regularities that underlie his own actions and thoughts, and strive to lead his life in accordance with natural laws. He will arrive at the point when co-existence with his fellows, that is, the family and the state, will be organised not according to the precepts stemming from long-forgotten centuries but in accordance with rational principles of the knowledge he has of Nature. Politics, morality, legal principles, which are still gleaned front all possible sources, will be determined according to the laws of Nature alone. An existence worthy of the human, being that man has dreamed of for millennia will at last become reality.[4]

That day is approaching with rapid strides. Human society has, in the course of millennia, traversed all previous phases of development in order finally to arrive at the point where it started from, to communistic property and to full equality and fraternity, but no longer among congeners alone, but among the whole human race. Such is the great progress it makes. What bourgeois society strived for in vain and where it runs aground, and is bound to do so, is in establishing freedom, equality and fraternity for all people, a goal which socialism will achieve. Bourgeois society was able to evolve only the theory, but here, as in many other respects too, its practice was at odds with its theories. Socialism will combine theory and practice.

Yet, while man returns to the starting-point in his development, this is effected on an infinitely higher cultural level than the one from which he started. Primitive society had common property in the gens, in the clan, but only in the crudest form and at an extremely low level of development. The development that has since taken place has, on the one hand, done away with common property, apart from small and insignificant vestiges, has broken up the gens and finally atomised the whole of society, while at the same time during its various stages it has enormously increased the productive forces of society and the diversity of requirements, created nations and great states from among the gens and tribes, but simultaneously produced once more a state of affairs that stands in blatant contradiction to society’s requirements. The task of the future is to resolve this contradiction by transforming property and the means of production back into collective property on the broadest possible basis.

Society takes back what was once its own and what it has created, but, in accordance with the newly created living conditions, it makes possible for all its members a standard of living on the highest cultural level, that is, it grants to all what under more primitive conditions was the privilege of individuals or of individual classes. To woman, too, is restored the active role she played in primitive society, not a dominating role, but the role of man’s equal.

“The end of the development of the state resembles the beginning of human existence. The original equality finally returns. The maternal element opens and closes the cycle of everything human”—Bachofen wrote in his Matriarchy and Morgan said:

Since the advent of civilisation, the outgrowth of property has been so immense, its forms so diversified, its uses so expanding and its management so intelligent in the interests of its owners, that it has become, on the part of the people, an unmanageable power. The human mind stands bewildered in the presence of its own creation. The time will come, nevertheless, when human intelligence will rise to the mastery over property, and define the relations of the state to the property it protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights of its owners. The interests of society are paramount to individual interests, and the two must be brought into just and harmonious relations. A mere property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to be the law of the future, as it has been of the past. The time which has passed away since civilisation began is but a fragment of the past duration of man’s existence; and but a fragment of the ages yet to come. The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career, of which property is the end an aim; because such a career contains elements of self-destruction.

Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending.

It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes.[5]

Thus, men representing diverse points of view arrive, on the basis of their scientific investigations, at identical conclusions. The complete emancipation of woman, and her equality with man, is the final goal of our cultural development, the achievement of which no power on earth can prevent. But it is possible only on the basis of a transformation, that abolishes all domination of man by man and hence also that of the worker by the capitalist. Only now will human development reach its peak. The “Golden Age” men have been dreaming of for millennia and for which they have yearned, will come at last. An end will be put to class domination once and for all, and with it to Man’s domination of woman.

Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling, The Woman Question (1886)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/eleanor-marx/works/womanq.htm

Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling, “The Woman Question: From a Socialist Point of View.” Westminster Review, vol. 125, January–April 1886.

The publication of August Bebel’s Woman—Past, Present and Future and the issue of a translation of the work in English, make any attempt to explain the position of Socialists in respect to the woman question timely. The reception that the work has met with in Germany and in England renders such an attempt imperative, unless our antagonists are willing to misunderstand us, and we are willing to remain passive under the misunderstanding. The writers of this article have thought that the English public, with that fairness which is said to be its special prerogative, would give hearing to the views, the arguments, the conclusions of those who call themselves Socialists. Thus, whatever opinions may be held by that English public as to the conclusions, its opinions will at least have a basis of knowledge. And the writers have further considered that the treatment of such a question as this is as its best when it is that of a man and a woman thinking and working together. In all that follows they desire it to be understood that they are giving utterance to their own opinions as two individual Socialists. Whilst they believe that these opinions are shared by the majority of their fellow-thinkers and fellow-workers in England, on the Continent, and in America, they are in no sense to be understood as pledging their Party to all, or necessarily to any particular one, of the propositions put forward.

A word or two, first, on the work that serves as the text of this discourse. Bebel is a working-man, a Socialist, and a member of the Reichstag. His book Die Frau has been prohibited in Germany. This has increased at once the difficulty of obtaining the book, and the number of those that obtain it. The German press has almost to a journal condemned it, and has ascribed to its author every possible and impossible vice. The influence of the work, and the significance of these attacks, will both be understood by those that bear in mind the position and the personal character of Bebel. One of the founders of the Socialist Party in Germany, one of the foremost among the exponents of the economics of Karl Marx, perhaps the finest orator of his country, Bebel is beloved and trusted by the Proletariat, hated and feared by the capitalists and aristocrats. He is not only the most popular man in Germany. He is by those that know him, foes as well as friends, respected. Calumny has, of course, been busy with him, but, without any hesitation, we may say that the accusations made against him are as false as they are venomous.

The English translation of his latest work has met in certain quarters with a vituperative reception. The wrath of these irritated critics would have been well placed had it been poured out on the quite unequalled carelessness of the publishers of this English version. This carelessness is the more noticeable and unpardonable as the German edition, printed at Zurich, is singularly free from errors. We ought to except in part from our condemnation the translator, Dr. Harriet B. Adams Walther. On the whole, her work has been fairly well done, though an apparent want of acquaintance with economic words and phrases has here and there produced ambiguity, and there is a most unaccountable objection to the use of the plural. But the book teems with printer’s errors, in type, in spelling, and in punctuation. To have in a book of only 164 pages an aggregate of at least 170 blunders is really too bad.

With the first or historical part of the work we do not propose dealing. Deeply interesting as it is, this must be passed over, as so much is to be said on the present relations between men and women, and on the changes that we believe are impending. Moreover, the historic portion is not quite the best in the book. It has its errors here and there. The most reliable book to consult on this particular branch of the woman question is Friedrich Engels’ Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Let us turn, therefore, to the society and the women of today.

Society is, from the point of view of Bebel, and we may fairly say here of Socialists generally, in a condition of unrest, of fermentation. The unrest is that of a mass of rottenness; the fermentation that of putrefaction. Dissolution is at hand, in both senses of the word. The death of the capitalistic method of production, and therefore of the society based on it, is, as we think, within a distance measurable in terms of years rather than of centuries. And that death means the re-solution of society into simpler forms, even into elements, that recombining will produce a new and better order of things. Society is morally bankrupt, and in nothing does this gruesome moral bankruptcy come out with a more hideous distinctness than in the relation between men and women. Efforts to postpone the crash by drawing bills upon the imagination are useless. The facts have to be faced.

One of these facts of the most fundamental importance is not, and never has been, fairly confronted by the average man or woman in considering these relations. It has not been understood even by those men and women above the average who have made the struggle for the greater freedom of women the very business of their lives. This fundamental fact is, that the question is one of economics. The position of women rests, as everything in our complex modern society rests, on an economic basis. Had Bebel done nothing but insist upon this, his work would have been valuable. The woman question is one of the organisation of society as a whole. For those who have not grasped this conception, we may quote Bacon in the first book of the Advancement of Learning. “Another error...is that, after the distribution of particular Arts and Sciences, men have abandoned universality...which cannot but cease and stop all progression...Neither is it possible to discover the more remote and deeper parts of any science if you stand but upon the level of the same science and ascend not to a higher.” This error, indeed, when “men (and women) have abandoned universality,” is something more than a “peccant humour.” It is a disease. Or, to use an illustration possibly suggested by the passage and the phrase just quoted, those who attack the present treatment of women without seeking for the cause of this in the economics of our latter-day society are like doctors who treat a local affection without inquiring into the general bodily health.

This criticism applies not alone to the commonplace person who makes a jest of any discussion into which the element of sex enters. It applies to those higher natures, in many cases earnest and thoughtful, who see that women are in a parlous state, and are anxious that something should be done to better their condition. These are the excellent and hard-working folk who agitate for that perfectly just aim, woman suffrage; for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act, a monstrosity begotten of male cowardice and brutality; for the higher education of women; for the opening to them of universities, the learned professions, and all callings, from that of teacher to that of bagman. In all this work—good as far as it goes—three things are especially notable. First, those concerned in it are of the well-to-do classes, as a rule. With the single and only partial exception of the Contagious Diseases agitation, scarcely any of the women taking a prominent part in these various movements belong to the working class. We are prepared for the comment that something very like this may be said, as far as concerns England, of the larger movement that claims our special efforts. Certainly, Socialism is at present in this country little more than a literary movement. It has but a fringe of working men on its border. But we can answer to this criticism that in Germany this is not the case, and that even here Socialism is now beginning to extend among the workers.

The second point is that all these ideas of our advanced women are based either on property, or on sentimental or professional questions. Not one of them gets down through these to the bedrock of the economic basis, not only of each of these three, but of society itself. This fact is not astonishing to those who note the ignorance of economics characteristic of most of those that labour for the enfranchisement of women. Judging from the writings and speeches of the majority of women’s advocates, no attention has been given by them to the study of the evolution of society. Even the orthodox political economy, which is, as we think, misleading in its statements and inaccurate in its conclusions, does not appear to have been mastered generally.

The third point grows out of the second. The school of whom we speak make no suggestion that is outside the limits of the society of today. Hence their work is, always from our point of view, of little value. We will support all women, not only those having property, enabled to vote; the Contagious Diseases Act repealed; every calling thrown open to both sexes. The actual position of women in respect to men would not be very vitally touched. (We are not concerned at present with the results of the increased competition and more embittered struggle for existence.) For not one of these things, save indirectly the Contagious Diseases Act, touches them in their sex relations. Nor should we deny that, with the gain of each or all of these points, the tremendous change that is to come would be more easy of attainment. But it is essential to keep in mind that ultimate change, only to come about when the yet more tremendous social change whose corollary it will be has taken place. Without that larger social change women will never be free.

The truth, not fully recognised even by those anxious to do good to woman, is that she, like the labour-classes, is in an oppressed condition; that her position, like theirs, is one of merciless degradation. Women are the creatures of an organised tyranny of men, as the workers are the creatures of an organised tyranny of idlers. Even where this much is grasped, we must never be weary of insisting on the non-understanding that for women, as for the labouring classes, no solution of the difficulties and problems that present themselves is really possible in the present condition of society. All that is done, heralded with no matter what flourish of trumpets, is palliative, not remedial. Both the oppressed classes, women and the immediate producers, must understand that their emancipation will come from themselves. Women will find allies in the better sort of men, as the labourers are finding allies among the philosophers, artists, and poets. But the one has nothing to hope from man as a whole, and the other has nothing to hope from the middle class as a whole.

The truth of this comes out in the fact that, before we pass to the consideration of the condition of women, we have to speak this word of warning. To many, that which we have to say of the Now will seem exaggerated; much that we have to say of the Hereafter, visionary, and perhaps all that is said, dangerous. To cultured people, public opinion is still that of man alone, and the customary is the moral. The majority still lays stress upon the occasional sex-helplessness of woman as a bar to her even consideration with man. It still descants upon the natural calling of the female. As to the former, people forget that sex-helplessness at certain times is largely exaggerated by the unhealthy conditions of our modern life, if, indeed, it is not wholly due to these. Given rational conditions, it would largely, if not completely, disappear. They forget also that all this about which the talk is so glib when women’s freedom is under discussion is conveniently ignored when the question is one of women’s enslavement. They forget that by capitalist employers this very sex-helplessness of woman is only taken into account with the view of lowering the general rate of wages. Again, there is no more a natural calling of woman than there is a natural law of capitalistic production, or a natural limit to the amount of the labourer’s product that goes to him for means of subsistence. That in the first case, woman’s calling is supposed to be only the tending of children, the maintenance of household conditions, and a general obedience to her lord; that, in the second, the production of surplus value is a necessary preliminary to the production of capital; that, in the third, the amount the labourer receives for his means of subsistence is so much as will keep him only just above starvation point: these are not natural laws in the same sense as are the laws of motion. They are only certain temporary conventions of society, like the convention that French is the language of diplomacy.

To treat the position of women at the present time in detail is to repeat a thousand-times-told tale. Yet, for our purpose, we must re-emphasise some familiar points, and perhaps mention one or two less familiar. And first, a general idea that has to do with all women. The life of woman does not coincide with that of man. Their lives do not intersect; in many cases do not even touch. Hence the life of the race is stunted. According to Kant, “a man and woman constitute, when united, the whole and entire being; one sex completes the other.” But when each sex is incomplete, and the one incomplete to the most lamentable extent, and when, as a rule, neither of them comes into real, thorough, habitual, free contact, mind to mind, with the other, the being is neither whole nor entire.

Second, a special idea that has to do with only a certain number, but that a large one, of women. Every one knows the effect that certain callings, or habits of life, have on the physique and on the face of those that follow them. The horsy man, the drunkard are known by gait, physiognomy. How many of us have ever paused, or dared to pause, upon the serious fact that in the streets and public buildings, in the friend-circle, we can, in a moment, tell the unmarried women, if they are beyond a certain age which lively writers call, with a delicate irony peculiarly their own, uncertain? But we cannot tell a man that is unmarried from one that is wedded. Before the question that arises out of this fact is asked, let us call to mind the terrible proportion of women that are unmarried. For example, in England, in the year 1870, 41 per cent of the women were in this condition. The question to which all this leads is a plain one, a legitimate one, and is only an unpleasant one because of the answer that must be given. How is it that our sisters bear upon their brews this stamp of lost instincts, stifled affections, a nature in part murdered? How is it that their more fortunate brothers bear no such mark? Here, assuredly, no natural law obtains. This licence for the man, this prevention of legions of noble and holy unions that does not affect him, but falls heavily on her, are the inevitable outcome of our economic system. Our marriages, like our morals, are based upon commercialism. Not to be able to meet one’s business engagements is a greater sin than the slander of a friend, and our weddings are business transactions.

Whether we consider women as a whole, or only that sad sisterhood wearing upon its melancholy brews the stamp of eternal virginity, we find alike a want of ideas and of ideals. The reason of this is again the economic position of dependency upon man. Women, once more like the labourers, have been expropriated as to their rights as human beings, just as the labourers were expropriated as to their rights as producers. The method in each case is the only one that makes expropriation at any time and under any circumstances possible—and that method is force.

In Germany at the present day the woman is a minor with regard to man. A husband of low estate may chastise a wife. All decisions as to the children rest with him, even to the fixing of the date of weanings. Whatever fortune the wife may have he manages. She may not enter into agreements without his consent; she may not take part in political associations. It is unnecessary for us to point out how much better, within the last few years, these things have been managed in England, or to remind our readers that the recent changes were due to the action of women themselves. But it is necessary to remind them that with all these added civil rights English women, married and unmarried alike, are morally dependent on man, and are badly treated by him. The position is little better in other civilised lands, with the strange exception of Russia, where women are socially more free than in any other part of Europe. In France, the women of the upper middle class are more unhappily situated than in England. Those of the lower middle and working-classes are better off than either in England or Germany. But two consecutive paragraphs in the Code Civil, 340 and 341, show that injustice to women is not only Teutonic. La recherche de la paternité est interdité and La recherche de la maternité est admise.

Every one who refuses to blink facts knows that Demosthenes words of the Athenians are true of our English middle and upper classes today, “We marry in order to obtain legitimate children and a faithful warder of the house; we keep concubines as servants for our daily attendance, but we seek the Hetairai for love’s delight.” The wife is still the child-bearer, the housewarder. The husband lives and loves according to his own bad pleasure. Even those who admit this will possibly join issue with us when we suggest as another wrong to women the rigorous social rule that from man only must come the first proffer of affection, the proposal for marriage. This may be on the principle of compensation. After marriage the proffers come generally from the woman, and the reserve is the man’s. That this is no natural law our Shakespeare has shown. Miranda, untrammelled by society, tenders herself to Ferdinand. “I am your wife if you will marry me: if not I’ll die your maid;” and Helena, in All’s Well that Ends Well, with her love for Bertram, that carries her from Rousillon to Paris and Florence, is, as Coleridge has it, Shakespeare’s loveliest character.

We have said that marriage is based upon commercialism. It is a barter transaction in many cases, and in all, under the condition of things today, the question of ways and means plays of necessity a large part. Among the upper classes the business is carried on quite unblushingly. The Sir Gorgius Midas pictures in Punch testify to this. The nature of the periodical in which they appear reminds us that all the horrors they reveal are only regarded as foibles, not as sins. In the lower middle class many a man denies himself the joy of home life until he grows out of the longing for it; many a woman closes the book of her life at its fairest page for ever, because of the dread rerum angustarum domi [of the narrow confines of domestic life].

Another proof of the commercial nature of our marriage system is afforded by the varying times at which wedlock is customary in the varying grades of society. The time is in no sense regulated, as it ought to be, by the time of life. Some favoured individuals, kings, princes, aristocrats, marry, or are married, at the age to which Nature points as fitting. Many of the working class marry young—that is, at the natural period. The virtuous capitalist who at that age makes a habitual use of prostitution dilates unctuously upon the improvidence of the artisan. The student of physiology and economics notes the fact as interesting evidence that not even the frightful capitalistic system has crushed out a normal and righteous instinct. But, with the stratum of society wedged in between these two, unions, as we have just seen, cannot take place as a rule until years after the heyday of youth is passed and passion is on the wane.

All this tells far more on the women than on the men. Society provides, recognises, legalises for the latter the means of gratifying the sex instinct. In the eyes of that same society an unmarried woman who acts after the fashion habitual to her unmarried brothers and the men that dance with her at balls, or work with her in the shop, is a pariah. And even with the working classes who marry at the normal time, the life of the woman under the present system is the more arduous and irksome of the two. The old promise of the legend, in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, is not only realised, but extended. She has to bring them up through long years, unrelieved by rest, unbrightened by hope, in the same atmosphere of perennial labour and sorrow. The man, worn out as he may be by labour, has the evening in which to do nothing. The woman is occupied until bedtime comes. Often with young children her toil goes far into, or all through, the night.

When marriage has taken place all is in favour of the one and is adverse to the other. Some wonder that John Stuart Mill wrote, “Marriage is at the present day the only actual form of serfdom recognised by law.” The wonder to us is that he never saw this serfdom as a question, not of sentiment, but of economics, the result of our capitalistic system. After marriage, as before, the woman is under restraint, and the man is not. Adultery in her is a crime, in him a venial offence. He can obtain a divorce, she cannot, on the ground of adultery. She must prove that cruelty (i.e. of a physical kind) has been shown. Marriages thus arranged, thus carried out, with such an attendant train of circumstances and of consequences, seem to us—let us say it with all deliberation—worse than prostitution. To call them sacred or moral is a desecration.

In connexion with the subject of divorce we may note an instance of the self-deception, not only of society and its constituent classes but of individuals. The clergy are ready and willing to marry anybody and everybody, age to youth, vice to virtue, and no questions asked, as a certain class of advertisements put it. Yet the clergy set their faces most sternly against divorce. To protest against such discordant unions as they again and again ratify would be an interference with the liberty of the subject. But to oppose anything that facilitates divorce is a most serious interference with the liberty of the subject. The whole question of divorce, complex in any case, is made more complicated by the fact that it has to be considered, first in relation to the present conditions, second in relation to the socialistic conditions of the future. Many advanced thinkers plead for greater facility of divorce now. They contend that divorce ought to be made at least as easy as marriage; that an engagement entered into by people who have had little or no opportunity of knowing one another ought not to be irrevocably, or even stringently binding; that incompatibility of temper, non-realisation of deep-rooted hopes, actual dislike, should be sufficient grounds for separation; finally, and most important of all, that the conditions of divorce should be the same for the two sexes. All this is excellent, and would be not only feasible but just, if—but mark the if—the economic positions of the two sexes were the same. They are not the same. Hence, whilst agreeing with every one of these ideas theoretically, we believe that they would, practically applied under our present system, result, in the majority of cases, in yet further injustice to women. The man would be able to take advantage of them; the woman would not, except in the rare instances where she had private property or some means of livelihood. The annulling of the union would be to him freedom; to her, starvation for herself and her children.

We may be asked, will these same principles of divorce hold under the socialistic regime? Our answer is this—the union between men and women, to be explained in the sequel, will be seen to be of such a nature as wholly to obviate the necessity of divorce.

Upon our treatment of the last two points, where we consider the future, we expect more hostile judgement than on anything that has gone before. To both of these points passing reference has already been made. The first is the sex instinct. To us, the whole of the method adopted by society in dealing with this is fatally wrong. It is wrong from the very beginning. Our children are constantly silenced when they ask about the begetting and the birth of offspring. The question is as natural as one about the beats of the heart or the movements of respiration. The one ought to be answered as readily and as clearly as the others. Perhaps there may be a time in the very young life when an explanation of any physiological fact in answer to a question would not be understood, though we are not prepared to define that time. There can never be a time when falsehood should be taught about any function of the body. As our boys and girls grow up, the whole subject of sex relations is made a mystery and a shame. This is the reason why an undue and unhealthy curiosity is begotten to them. The mind becomes excessively concentrated upon them, remains long unsatisfied, or incompletely satisfied—passes into a morbid condition. To us, it seems that the reproductive organs ought to be discussed as frankly, as freely, between parents and children as the digestive. The objection to this is but a form of the vulgar prejudice against the teaching of physiology, a prejudice that found its truest expression in a recent letter from a parent to a School Board mistress. “Please, don’t teach my girl anything about her inside. It does her no good, and which it is rude.” How many of us have suffered from the suggestio falsi or the suppressio veri in this matter, due to parents, or teachers, or even servants? Let us each honestly ask ourselves from whose lips, under what circumstances, did we first learn the truth about parentage. And yet it is a truth which, having to do with the birth of little children, we cannot err in calling sacred. In how many cases was it from the mother who had the holiest right to teach—a right acquired by suffering?

Nor can we admit that to speak honestly to children on these matters is to injure them. Let us quote Bebel, who in his turn quotes Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker. “In order to satisfy the constant questionings of her little boy of eight, with regard to his origin, and to avoid telling him fables, which she regarded as unmoral, she told him the whole truth. The child listened with the greatest attention, and from the day on which he had heard what pain and anxiety he had caused his mother, clung to her with an entirely new tenderness and reverence. The same reverence he had shown also towards other women.” To us at least one woman is known who has told all her children the whole truth. The children have for her a love and reverence altogether deeper than, and different from, that which they had before.

With the false shame and false secrecy, against which we protest, goes the unhealthy separation of the sexes that begins as children quit the nursery, and only ends when the dead men and women are laid in the common earth. In the Story of an African Farm, the girl Lyndall cries out, “We were equals once, when we lay new-born babies on our nurses’ knees. We shall be equals again when they tie up our jaws for the last sleep.” In the schools this separation is carried out, and even in some churches the system, with all its suggestiveness, is in vogue. Its worst form is, of course, in the non-human institutions called monasteries and nunneries. But all the less virulent forms of the same evil are, only in less degree, non-human.

In ordinary society even, the restrictions laid upon the intercourse of the sexes are, like repressive measures with school-boys, the source of much mischief. These restrictions are especially dangerous in regard to conversational subjects. Every man sees the consequence of this, though he may not know it as a consequence, in the kind of talk that goes on in the smoking-rooms of middle and upper class society. Only when men and women pure-minded, or, at least, striving after purity, discuss the sexual question in all its bearings, as free human beings, looking frankly into each other’s faces, will there be any hope of its solution. With this, as we are constantly iterating, must go the understanding that the basis of the whole matter is economic. Mary Wollstonecraft, in the Rights of Woman, taught, in part, this commingling of the sexes, instead of the separation of them throughout life. She demanded that women should have equal educational advantages, should be educated in the same schools and colleges with men; that from infancy to adult age the two should be trained side by side. This demand is a sore thorn in the flesh of Mr. J. C. Jeaffreson in his latest compilation.

Two extreme forms of the distinction of the sexes that spring from this their separation are, as Bebel points out, the effeminate man and masculine woman. These are two types from which even the average person recoils with a perfectly natural horror of the unnatural. For reasons that have been indicated more than once, the former is less bequent than the latter. But these two types do not exhaust the list of diseased forms due to our unnatural dealing with the sex relations. That morbid virginity, of which mention has already been made, is another. Lunacy is a fourth. Suicide is a fifth. As to these last two, a few figures in the one case and a reminder in the other. The reminder first. Most women suicides are between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. Many of these, of course, are due to the pregnancy which our social system drags down to the level of a crime. But others are due to ungratified sex instincts, often concealed under the euphemism disappointed love. Here are a few lunacy numbers, taken from p. 47 of the English translation of Bebel:—Hanover, 1881, 1 lunatic to 457 unmarried, 1 lunatic to 1,316 married inhabitants; Saxony, 260 unmarried lunatics to a million unmarried sane women, 125 married lunatics to a million married sane; Prussia, in 1882, to every 10,000 inhabitants 32.2 unmarried male lunatics, 9.5 married male lunatics, 29.3 female unmarried lunatics, 9.5 married female lunatics.

It is time for men and women to recognise that the slaying of sex is always followed by disaster. Extreme passion is ill. But the opposite extreme of the sacrifice of healthy natural instinct is as ill. They that are in extremity of either are abominable fellows, is as true in this connection as of melancholy and over-mirth when Rosalind railed at them in the Forest of Arden. And yet thousands of women pass, through what hell-fires they only know, to the Moloch of our social system; thousands of women are defrauded, month after month, year after year, of their unreturning May-time. Hence we—and with us, in this, at all events, most Socialists—contend that chastity is unhealthy and unholy. Always understanding by chastity the entire suppression of all instincts connected with the begetting of children, we regard chastity as a crime. As with all crimes, the criminal is not the individual sufferer, but the society that forces her to sin and to suffer. Here we are at one with Shelley. In his Notes to Queen Mab we have the following passage:—“Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; for it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half of the human race to misery, that some few may monopolise according to law.” Finally, in this most important connexion, we call to mind the accumulated medical testimony to the fact that women suffer more than men under these restraints.

Our other point, before we pass to the concluding portion of this article, is that necessary result of our today system—prostitution. This evil is, as we have said, recognised, and it is legalised, in some European countries. All that we need add here is the truism that its chief supporters are of the middle class. The aristocracy are not, of course, excepted; but the mainstay of the hideous system is the respectable, well-to-do, most seeming-virtuous capitalist. This is not due only to the great accumulation of wealth and the consequent habits of luxury. The significant fact is that in a society based upon capital, whose centre is therefore the capitalistic middle class, prostitution, one of the worst outcomes of that society, is supported chiefly by that very class. This points clearly the moral that once again, under a new form, we urge. That which might be said on the special cases which the Pall Mall Gazette has made familiar to us applies to prostitution generally. To get rid of prostitution, we must get rid of the social conditions that are its parent. Midnight meetings, refuges for the distressed, all the well-meant attempts to grapple with this awful problem are, as their initiators despairingly admit, futile. And futile they will remain as long as the system of production lasts which, creating a surplus labour-population, creates with this, criminal men, and women that are very literally and sadly abandoned. Get rid of this, the capitalistic system of production, say the Socialists, and prostitution will pass away.

This leads us to our last point. What is it that we as Socialists desire? What is it that we expect? What is that of whose coming we feel as assured as of the rising of tomorrow’s sun? What are the evolution changes in society that we believe are already close at hand? And what are the changes in the condition of woman that we anticipate as consequence of these? Let us disclaim all intention of the prophetic. He that, reasoning on a series of observed phenomena, sees the inevitable event to which they lead is no prophet. A man cannot prophesy any more than he has a right to wager, about a certainty. To us it seems clear that as in England the Germanic society, whose basis was the free landholder, gave way to the feudal system, and this to the capitalistic, so this last, no more eternal than its predecessors, will give way to the Socialistic system; that as slavery passed into serfdom, and serfdom into the wage-slavery. Of today, so this last will pass into the condition where all the means of production will belong neither to slave-owner, nor to serf’s lord, nor to the wage-slave’s master, the capitalist, but to the community as a whole. At the risk of raising the habitual smile and sneer, we confess that into every detail of that Socialistic working of society we are no more prepared to enter than were the first capitalists to enter into the details of the system that they founded. Nothing is more common, nothing is more unjust, nothing is more indicative of meagre understanding, than the vulgar clamour for exact details of things under the social condition towards which we believe the world is moving. No expounder of any new great truth, no one of his followers, can hope to work out all the truth into its ultimate ramifications. That would have been thought of those who rejected the gravitation discovery of Newton because he had not, by application of it, found out Neptune? Or of those who rejected the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection because instinct presented certain difficulties? Yet this is precisely what the average opponents of Socialism do; always with a vacuous calmness, ignoring the fact that for every difficulty or misery they suppose will arise from the socialisation of the means of production a score worse are actually existent in the putrescent society of today.

What is it that we feel certain is coming? We have wandered so far from Bebel along our own lines of thought, at the entrance of whose ways his suggestive work has generally placed us, that for the answer to this question we return gladly and gratefully to him,

A society in which all the means of production are the property of the community, a society which recognises the full equality of all without distinction of sex, which provides for the application of every kind of technical and scientific improvement or discovery, which enrolls as workers all those who are at present unproductive, or whose activity assumes an injurious shape, the idlers and the drones, and which, while it minimises the period of labour necessary for its support, raises the mental and physical condition of all its members to the highest attainable pitch.

We disguise neither from ourselves nor from our antagonists that the first step to this is the expropriation of all private property in land and in all other means of production. With this would happen the abolition of the State as it now is. No confusion as to our aims is more common than that which leads woolly thinking people to imagine that the changes we desire can be brought about, and the conditions subsequent upon them can exist, under a State regime such as that of today. The State is now a force—organisation for the maintenance of the present conditions of property and of social rule. Its representatives are a few middle and upper class men contending for places yielding abnormal salaries. The State under Socialism, if indeed a word of such ugly historical associations is retained will be the organised capacity of a community of workers. Its officials will be no better and no worse off than their fellows. The divorce between art and labour, the antagonism between head and hand work, that grieves the souls of artists, without their knowing in most cases the economic cause of their grief, will vanish.

And now comes the question as to how the future position of woman, and therefore of the race, will be affected by all this. Of one or two things we may be very sure. Others the evolution of society alone will decide positively, though every one of us may have his own idea upon each particular point. Clearly there will be equality for all, without distinction of sex. Thus, woman will be independent: her education and all other opportunities as those of man. Like him, she, if sound in mind and body (and how the number of women thus will grow!) will have to give her one, two, or three hours of social labour to supply the wants of the community, and therefore of herself. Thereafter she will be free for art or science, or teaching or writing, or amusement in any form. Prostitution will have vanished with the economic conditions that made it, and make it at this hour, a necessity.

Whether monogamy or polygamy will obtain in the Socialistic state is a detail on which one can only speak as an individual. The question is too large to be solved within the mists and miasmata of the capitalistic system. Personally, we believe that monogamy will gain the day. There are approximately equal numbers of men and women, and the highest ideal seems to be the complete, harmonious, lasting blending of two human lives. Such an ideal, almost never attainable today, needs at least four things. These are love, respect, intellectual likeness, and command of the necessities of life. Each of these four is far more possible under the system towards which we move than under that in which we now have our being. The last is absolutely ensured to all. As Ibsen makes Helmer say to Nora, “Home life ceases to be free and beautiful directly its foundations are borrowing and debts.” But borrowing and debts, when one is a member of community, and not an isolated man fighting for his own hand, can never come. Intellectual likeness. The same education for men and women; the bringing up of these twain side by side, until they join hands at last, will ensure a greater degree of this. That objectionable product of capitalism, Tennyson’s In Memoriam young woman, with her “I cannot understand, I love,” will be a myth. Every one will have learnt that there can be no love without understanding. And the love and respect that are wanting, or are lost today, because of sins and shortcomings, the product of the commercial system of society, will be more easily forthcoming, and vanish almost never. The contract between man and woman will be of a purely private nature, without the intervention of any public functionary. The woman will no longer be the man’s slave, but his equal. For divorce there will be no need.

And whether we are right or not in regarding monogamy as the best form of society, we may be sure that the best form will be chosen, and that by wisdoms riper and richer than ours. We may be equally sure that the choice will not be the barter-marriages, with its one-sided polygamy, of our own sad time. Above all, we may be sure, that two great curses that help, with others, to ruin the relations between man and woman will have passed. Those curses are the treatment of men and women as different beings, and the want of truth. There will no longer be one law for the woman and one for the man. If the coming society, like European society today, regards it as right for man to have mistresses as well as wife, we may be certain that the like freedom will be extended to women. Nor will there be the hideous disguise, the constant lying that makes the domestic life of almost all our English homes an organised hypocrisy. Whatever the matured and deliberate opinion of the community finds best will be carried out fairly, openly. Husband and wife will be able to do that which but few can do now—look clear through one another’s eyes into one another’s hearts. For ourselves, we believe that the cleaving of one man to one woman will be best for all, and that these will find each in the heart of the other, that which is in the eyes, their own image.

Clara Zetkin, Only in Conjunction With the Proletarian Women Will Socialism Be Victorious (1896)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1896/10/women.htm

Source: Clara Zetkin, Selected Writings, ed. by Philip Foner, trans. by Kai Schoenhals. International Publishers, 1984.

Speech at the Party Congress of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Gotha, October 16th, 1896. Berlin.

The investigations of Bachofen, Morgan and others seem to prove that the social suppression of women coincided with the creation of private property. The contrast within the family between the husband as proprietor and the wife as non-proprietor became the basis for the economic dependence and the social illegality of the female sex. This social illegality represents, according to Engels, one of the first and oldest forms of class rule. He states: “Within the family, the husband constitutes the bourgeoisie and the wife the proletariat.” Nonetheless, a women’s question in the modern sense of the word did not exist. It was only the capitalist mode of production which created the societal transformation that brought forth the modern women’s question by destroying the old family economic system which provided both livelihood and life’s meaning for the great mass of women during the pre-capitalistic period. We must, however, not transfer to the ancient economic activities of women those concepts (the concepts of futility and pettiness), that we connect with the activities of women in our times. As long as the old type of family still existed, a woman found a meaningful life by productive activity. Thus she was not conscious of her social illegality even though the development of her potentials as an individual was strictly limited.

The period of the Renaissance is the storm and stress period of the awakening of modern individuality that was able to develop fully and completely in the most diverse directions. We encounter individuals who are giants in both good and evil, who spurn the commandments of both religion and morals and despise equally both heaven and hell. We discover women at the center of the social, artistic and political life. And yet there is not a trace of a women’s movement. This is all the more characteristic because at that time the old family economic system began to crumble under the impact of the division of labor. Thousands upon thousands of women no longer found their livelihood and their lives’ meaning within the family. But this women’s question, as far as one can designate it as such, was solved at that time by convents, charitable institutions and religious orders.

The machines, the modern mode of production, slowly undermined domestic production and not just for thousands but for millions of women the question arose: Where do we now find our livelihood? Where do we find a meaningful life as well as a job that gives us mental satisfaction? Millions were now forced to find their livelihood and their meaningful lives outside of their families and within society as a whole. At that moment they became aware of the fact that their social illegality stood in opposition to their most basic interests. It was from this moment on that there existed the modern women’s question. Here are a few statistics to demonstrate how the modern mode of production works to make the women’s question even more acute. During 1882, 5out of 23 million women and girls in Germany were fully employed; i.e., a quarter of the female population could no longer find its livelihood within the family. According to the Census of 1895, the number of employed women in agriculture, in the broadest meaning of this term, has increased since 1882 by more than 8%, in the narrow sense by 6%, while at the same time the number of men employed in agriculture has decreased by 3%, i.e., to 11%. In the area of industry and mining, the number of employed women workers has increased by 35%, that of men by only 28%. In the retail trade, the number of women employed has increased by more than 94%, that of men by only 38%. These dry numbers stress much more the urgency of solving the women’s question than any highfalutin declamations.

The women’s question, however, is only present within those classes of society who are themselves the products of the capitalist mode of production. Thus it is that we find no women’s question in peasant circles that possess a natural (although severely curtailed and punctured) economy. But we certainly find a women’s question within those classes of society who are the very children of the modern mode of production. There is a women’s question for the women of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia and the Upper Ten Thousand. It assumes a different form according to the class situation of each one of these strata.

How does the women’s question shape up as far as the Upper Ten Thousand are concerned? The woman of the Upper Ten Thousand, thanks to her property, may freely develop her individuality and live as she pleases. In her role as wife, however, she is still dependent upon her husband. The guardianship of the weaker sex has survived in the family law which still states: And he shall be your master. And how is the family of the Upper Ten Thousand constituted in which the wife is legally subjugated by the husband? At its very founding, such a family lacks the moral prerequisites. Not individuality but money decides the matrimony. Its motto is: What capital joins, sentimental morality must not part. (Bravo!) Thus in this marriage, two prostitutions are taken for one virtue. The eventual family life develops accordingly. Wherever a woman is no longer forced to fulfill her duties, she devolves her duties as spouse, mother and housewife upon paid servants. If the women of these circles have the desire to give their lives a serious purpose, they must, first of all, raise the demand to dispose of their property in an independent and free manner. This demand, therefore, represents the core of the demands raised by the women’s movement of the Upper Ten Thousand. These women, in their fight for the realization of their demand vis-a-vis the masculine world of their class, fight exactly the same battle that the bourgeoisie fought against all of the privileged estates; i.e., a battle to remove all social differences based upon the possession of property. The fact that this demand does not deal with the rights of the individual is proven by Herr von Stumm’s advocacy of it in the Reichstag. Just when would Herr von Stumm ever advocate the rights of a person? This man in Germany signifies more than a personality, he is capital itself turned into flesh and blood (How accurate!) and if this man has put in an appearance in a cheap masquerade for women’s rights, then it only happened because he was forced to dance before capitalism’s Ark of the Covenant. This is the Herr von Stumm who is always ready to put his workers on short rations if they do not dance to his tune and he would certainly welcome it with a satisfied smile if the state as employer would also put those professors and scholars who meddle in social politics on short rations. Herr von Stumm endeavors nothing more than instituting the entail for movable female property in case of female inheritance because there are fathers who have acquired property but were not careful in the choice of their children, leaving only daughters as heirs. Capitalism honors even lowly womanhood and permits it to dispose of its fortunes. That is the final phase of the emancipation of private property.

How does the women’s question appear in the circles of the petit-bourgeoisie, the middle class and the bourgeois intelligentsia? Here it is not property which dissolves the family, but mainly the concomitant symptoms of capitalist production. To the degree this production completes its triumphal march, the middle class and the petit-bourgeoisie are hurtling further and further towards their destruction. Within the bourgeois intelligentsia, another circumstance leads to the worsening of the living conditions: capitalism needs the intelligent and scientifically trained work force. It therefore favored an overproduction of mental-work proletarians and contributed to the phenomenon that the formerly respected and profitable societal positions of members of the professional class are more and more eroding. To the same degree, however, the number of marriages is decreasing; although on the one hand the material basis is worsening, on the other hand the individual’s expectations of life are increasing, so that a man of that background will think twice or even thrice before he enters into a marriage. The age limit for the founding of a family is raised higher and higher and a man is under no pressure to marry since there exist in our time enough societal institutions which offer to an old bachelor a comfortable life without a legitimate wife. The capitalist exploitation of the proletarian work force through its starvation wages, sees to it that there is a large supply of prostitutes which corresponds to the demand by the men. Thus within the bourgeois circles, the number of unmarried women increases all the time. The wives and daughters of these circles are pushed out into society so that they may establish for themselves their own livelihood which is not only supposed to provide them with bread but also with mental satisfaction. In these circles women are not equal to men in the form of possessors of private property as they are in the upper circles. The women of these circles have yet to achieve their economic equality with men and they can only do so by making two demands: The demand for equal professional training and the demand for equal job opportunities for both sexes. In economic terms, this means nothing less than the realization of free access to all jobs and the untrammeled competition between men and women. The realization of this demand unleashes a conflict of interest between the men and women of the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia. The competition of the women in the professional world is the driving force for the resistance of men against the demands of bourgeois women’s rights advocates. It is, pure and simple, the fear of competition. All other reasons which are listed against the mental work of women, such as the smaller brain of women or their allegedly natural avocation to be a mother are only pretexts. This battle of competition pushes the women of these social strata towards demanding their political rights so that they may, by fighting politically, tear down all barriers which have been created against their economic activity.

So far I have addressed myself only to the basic and purely economic substructure. We would, however, perform an injustice to the bourgeois women’s rights movement if we would regard it as solely motivated by economics. No, this movement also contains a more profound spiritual and moral aspect. The bourgeois woman not only demands her own bread but she also requests spiritual nourishment and wants to develop her individuality. It is exactly among these strata that we find these tragic, yet psychologically interesting Nora figures, women who are tired of living like dolls in doll houses and who want to share in the development of modern culture. The economic as well as the intellectual and moral endeavors of bourgeois women’s rights advocates are completely justified.

As far as the proletarian woman is concerned, it is capitalism’s need to exploit and to search incessantly for a cheap labor force that has created the women’s question. It is for this reason, too, that the proletarian woman has become enmeshed in the mechanism of the economic life of our period and has been driven into the workshop and to the machines. She went out into the economic life in order to aid her husband in making a living, but the capitalist mode of production transformed her into on unfair competitor. She wanted to bring prosperity to her family, but instead misery descended upon it. The proletarian woman obtained her own employment because she wanted to create a more sunny and pleasant life for her children, but instead she became almost entirely separated from them. She became an equal of the man as a worker; the machine rendered muscular force superfluous and everywhere women’s work showed the same results in production as men’s work. And since women constitute a cheap labor force and above all a submissive one that only in the rarest of cases dares to kick against the thorns of capitalist exploitation, the capitalists multiply the possibilities of women’s work in industry. As a result of all this, the proletarian woman has achieved her independence. But verily, the price was very high and for the moment they have gained very little. If during the Age of the Family, a man had the right (just think of the law of Electoral Bavaria!) to tame his wife occasionally with a whip, capitalism is now taming her with scorpions. In former times, the rule of a man over his wife was ameliorated by their personal relationship. Between an employer and his worker, however, exists only a cash nexus. The proletarian woman has gained her economic independence, but neither as a human being nor as a woman or wife has she had the possibility to develop her individuality. For her task as a wife and a mother, there remain only the breadcrumbs which the capitalist production drops from the table.

Therefore the liberation struggle of the proletarian woman cannot be similar to the struggle that the bourgeois woman wages against the male of her class. On the contrary, it must be a joint struggle with the male of her class against the entire class of capitalists. She does not need to fight against the men of her class in order to tear down the barriers which have been raised against her participation in the free competition of the market place. Capitalism’s need to exploit and the development of the modern mode of production totally relieves her of having to fight such a struggle. On the contrary, new barriers need to be erected against the exploitation of the proletarian woman. Her rights as wife and mother need to be restored and permanently secured. Her final aim is not the free competition with the man, but the achievement of the political rule of the proletariat. The proletarian woman fights hand in hand with the man of her class against capitalist society. To be sure, she also agrees with the demands of the bourgeois women’s movement, but she regards the fulfillment of these demands simply as a means to enable that movement to enter the battle, equipped with the same weapons, alongside the proletariat.

Bourgeois society is not fundamentally opposed to the bourgeois women’s movement, which is proven by the fact that in various states reforms of private and public laws concerning women have been initiated. There are two reasons why the accomplishment of these reforms seems to take an exceptionally long time in Germany: First of all, men fear the battle of competition in the liberal professions and secondly, one has to take into account the very slow and weak development of bourgeois democracy in Germany which does not live up to its historical task because of its class fear of the proletariat. It fears that the realization of such reforms will only bring advantages to Social-Democracy. The less a bourgeois democracy allows itself to be hypnotized by such a fear, the more it is prepared to undertake reforms. England is a good example. England is the only country that still possesses a truly powerful bourgeoisie, whereas the German bourgeoisie, shaking in fear of the proletariat, shies away from carrying out political and social reforms. As far as Germany is concerned, there is the additional factor of widespread Philistine views. The Philistine braid of prejudice reaches far down the back of the German bourgeoisie. To be sure, this fear of the bourgeois democracy is very shortsighted. The granting of political equality to women does not change the actual balance of power. The proletarian woman ends up in the proletarian, the bourgeois woman in the bourgeois camp. We must not let ourselves be fooled by Socialist trends in the bourgeois women’s movement which last only as long as bourgeois women feel oppressed.

The less bourgeois democracy comprehends its task, the more important it is for Social-Democracy to advocate the political equality of women. We do not want to make us out to be better than we are. We are not making this demand for the sake of a principle, but in the interests of the proletarian class. The more women’s work exercises its detrimental influence upon the standard of living of men, the more urgent becomes the necessity to include them in the economic battle. The more the political struggle affects the existence of each individual, the more urgent becomes the necessity of women’s participation in this political struggle. It was the Anti-Socialist Law which for the first time made clear to women what is meant by the terms class justice, class state and class rule. It was this law which taught women the need to learn about the force which so brutally intervened in their family lives. The Anti-Socialist Law has done successful work which could never have been done by hundreds of women agitators and, indeed, we are deeply grateful to the father of the Anti-Socialist Law as well as to all organs of the state (from the minister to the local cop) who have participated in its enforcement and rendered such marvelous involuntary propaganda services. How then can one accuse us Social-Democrats of ingratitude? (Amusement.)

Yet another event must be taken into consideration. I am referring to the publication of August Bebel’s book Woman and Socialism. This book must not be judged according to its positive aspects or its shortcomings. Rather, it must be judged within the context of the times in which it was written. It was more than a book, it was an event—a great deed. (Very accurate!) The book pointed out for the first time the connection between the women’s question and historical development. For the first time, there sounded from this book the appeal: We will only conquer the future if we persuade the women to become our co-fighters. In recognizing this, I am not speaking as a woman but as a party comrade.

What practical conclusions may we now draw for our propaganda work among women? The task of this Party Congress must not be to issue detailed practical suggestions, but to draw up general directions for the proletarian women’s movement.

Our guiding thought must be: We must not conduct special women’s propaganda, but Socialist agitation among women. The petty, momentary interests of the female world must not be allowed to take up the stage. Our task must be to incorporate the modern proletarian woman in our class battle! (Very true!) We have no special tasks for the agitation among women. Those reforms for women which must be accomplished within the framework of today’s society are already demanded within the minimal program of our party.

Women’s propaganda must touch upon all those questions which are of great importance to the general proletarian movement. The main task is, indeed, to awaken the women’s class consciousness and to incorporate them into the class struggle. The unionization of female workers is made extremely difficult. During the years 1892 until 1895, the number of female laborers organized in central trade unions grew to around 7,000. If we add to this number the female workers organized in local unions and realize that there are at least 700,000 female workers actively involved in large industrial enterprises, then we begin to realize the magnitude of the organizing work that still lies ahead of us. Our work is made more burdensome by the fact that many women are active in the cottage industry and can, therefore, be organized only with great difficulty. Then we also have to deal with the widely held belief among young girls that their industrial labor is only transitory and will be terminated by their marriage. For many women there is the double obligation to be active in both the factory and the home. All the more necessary is it for female workers to obtain a legally fixed workday. Whereas in England everybody agrees that the elimination of the cottage industry, the establishment of a legal workday and the achievement of higher wages are important prerequisites for the unionization of female workers—in Germany, in addition to these obstacles there is also the enforcement of our unionization and assemblage laws. The complete freedom to form coalitions, which has been legally guaranteed to the female workers by the Empire’s legislation, has been rendered illusory by the laws of individual federal states. I do not even want to discuss the manner in which the right to form unions is handled in Saxony (as far as one can even speak of a right there). But in the two largest federal states, in Bavaria and Prussia, the union laws are handled in such a way that women’s participation in trade union organizations is becoming more and more of an impossibility. Most recently in Prussia, the district of the “liberal,” eternal candidate for minister, Herr von Bennigsen has achieved everything humanly possible in the interpretation of the Law of Unionization and Assemblage. In Bavaria all women are excluded from public meetings. In the Chamber there, Herr von Freilitzsch declared very openly that in the handling of the law of unionization not only the text but also the intention of the legislators should be taken into account. Herr von Freilitzsch is in the most fortunate position to know exactly what were the intentions of the legislators, all of whom have since died, before Bavaria became more lucky than anybody could have imagined in their wildest dreams, by appointing Herr von Freilitzsch as her minister of police. That does not surprise me at all, because whoever receives an office from God also receives concomitantly intelligence, and in our Age of Spiritualism, Herr von Freilitzsch has thus obtained his official intelligence and by way of the fourth dimension has discovered the intentions of the long deceased legislators. (Amusement.)

This situation, however, does not make it possible for the proletarian women to organize themselves together with men. Until now they had to wage a fight against police power and juridical stratagems and on the surface they seemed to have been defeated. In reality, however, they emerged as victors because all those measures which were employed to smash the organization of the proletarian woman only served to arouse her class consciousness. If we want to obtain a powerful women’s organization in both the economic and political realms, then we must, first of all, take care of the possibility of women’s freedom of movement by fighting against the cottage industry, for shorter working hours and, above all, against what the ruling classes like to call the right to organize.

We cannot determine at this party congress what form our propaganda among women should take. We must, first of all, learn how we ought to do our work among women. In the resolution which has been submitted to you, it is proposed to elect shop stewards among the women whose task it will be to stimulate the union and economic organization of women and to consolidate it in a uniform and planned manner. This proposal is not new; it was adopted in principle at the Party Congress of Frankfurt, and in a few regions it has been enacted most successfully. Time will tell whether this proposal, when introduced on a larger scale, is suited to draw proletarian women to a greater extent into the proletarian movement.

Our propaganda must not be carried out solely in an oral fashion. A large number of passive people do not even come to our meetings and countless wives and mothers cannot come to our meetings. Indeed, it must certainly not be the task of Socialist propaganda among Socialist women to alienate the proletarian woman from her duties as mother and wife. On the contrary, she must be encouraged to carry out these tasks better than ever in the interests of the liberation of the proletariat. The better the conditions within her family, the better her effectiveness at home, the more she will be capable of fighting. The more she can serve as the educator and molder of her children, the better she will be able to enlighten them so that they may continue to fight on like we did, with the same enthusiasm and willingness to sacrifice for the liberation of the proletariat. When a proletarian then exclaims: “My wife!” he will add mentally, “Comrade of my ideals, companion of my battles, mother of my children for future battles.” Many a mother and many a wife who fills her husband and children with class consciousness accomplishes just as much as the female comrades that we see at our meetings. (Vivid agreement).

Thus if the mountain does not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain: We must take Socialism to the women by a planned written propaganda campaign. For such a campaign, I suggest the distribution of pamphlets and I do not mean the traditional pamphlet on which the entire Socialist program and the entire scientific knowledge of our century are condensed on one quarto page. No, we must use small pamphlets which discuss a single practical question from one angle of vision, especially from the point of view of the class struggle, which is the main task. And we must not assume a nonchalant attitude toward the technical production of pamphlets. We must not use, as is our tradition, the worst paper and the worst type of printing. Such a miserable pamphlet will be crumpled up and thrown away by the proletarian woman who does not have the same respect for the printed word that the male proletarian possesses. We must imitate the American and English teetotalers who put out pretty little booklets of four to six pages. Because even a female proletarian is enough of a woman to say to herself: “This little thing is just charming. I will have to pick it up and keep it!” (Much amusement and many cheers.) The sentences which really count must be printed in great big letters. Then the proletarian woman will not be frightened away from reading and her mental attention will be stimulated.

Because of my personal experiences, I cannot advocate the plan of founding a special newspaper for women. My personal experiences are not based upon my position as the editor of Gleichheit (which is not designed for the mass of women, but rather their progressive avant-guard), but as a distributor of literature among female workers. Stimulated by the actions of Frau Gnauck-Kuhne, I distributed newspapers for weeks at a certain factory. I became convinced that the women there did not acquire from these papers what is enlightening, but solely what is entertaining and amusing. Therefore, the big sacrifices which are necessary in order to publish a cheap newspaper would not be worth it.

But we also have to create a series of brochures which bring Socialism closer to the woman in her capacity as female proletarian, wife and mother. Except for the powerful brochure of Frau Popp, we do not have a single one that comes up to the requirements we need. Our daily press, too, must do more than it has done heretofore. Some daily newspapers have made the attempt to enlighten women by the addition of special supplements for women. The Magdeburger Volksstimme set an example in this endeavor and Comrade Goldstein at Zwickau has skillfully and successfully emulated it. But until now the daily press has regarded the proletarian woman as a subscriber, flattering her ignorance, her bad and unformed taste, rather than trying to enlighten her.

I repeat that I am only throwing out suggestions for your consideration. Propaganda among women is difficult and burdensome and requires great devotion and great sacrifice, but these sacrifices will be rewarded and must be brought forth. The proletariat will be able to attain its liberation only if it fights together without the difference of nationality and profession. In the same way it can attain its liberation only if it stands together without the distinction of sex. The incorporation of the great masses of proletarian women in the liberation struggle of the proletariat is one of the prerequisites for the victory of the Socialist idea and for the construction of a Socialist society.

Only a Socialist society will solve the conflict that is nowadays produced by the professional activity of women. Once the family as an economic unit will vanish and its place will be taken by the family as a moral unit, the woman will become an equally entitled, equally creative, equally goal-oriented, forward-stepping companion of her husband; her individuality will flourish while at the same time, she will fulfill her task as wife and mother to the highest degree possible.

Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Suffrage and the Class Struggle (1912)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1912/05/12.htm

Source: Rosa Luxemburg, Selected Political Writings of Rosa Luxemburg, ed. by Dick Howard. Monthly Review Press, 1971.

Speech given at the Second Social Democratic Women’s Rally, Stuttgart, Germany, May 12, 1912.

“Why are there no organizations for working women in Germany? Why do we hear so little about the working women’s movement?” With these questions, Emma Ihrer, one of the founders of the proletarian women’s movement of Germany, introduced her 1898 essay, Working Women in the Class Struggle. Hardly fourteen years have passed since, but they have seen a great expansion of the proletarian women’s movement. More than a hundred fifty thousand women are organized in unions and are among the most active troops in the economic struggle of the proletariat. Many thousands of politically organized women have rallied to the banner of Social Democracy: the Social Democratic women’s paper (Die Gleichheit, edited by Clara Zetkin) has more than one hundred thousand subscribers; women’s suffrage is one of the vital issues on the platform of Social Democracy.

Exactly these facts might lead you to underrate the importance of the fight for women’s suffrage. You might think: even without equal political rights for women we have made enormous progress in educating and organizing women. Hence, women’s suffrage is not urgently necessary. If you think so, you are deceived. The political and syndical awakening of the masses of the female proletariat during the last fifteen years has been magnificent. But it has been possible only because working women took a lively interest in the political and parliamentary struggles of their class in spite of being deprived of their rights. So far, proletarian women are sustained by male suffrage, which they indeed take part in, though only indirectly. Large masses of both men and women of the working class already consider the election campaigns a cause they share in common. In all Social Democratic electoral meetings, women make up a large segment, sometimes the majority. They are always interested and passionately involved. In all districts where there is a firm Social Democratic organization, women help with the campaign. And it is women who have done invaluable work distributing leaflets and getting subscribers to the Social Democratic press, this most important weapon in the campaign.

The capitalist state has not been able to keep women from taking on all these duties and efforts of political life. Step by step, the state has indeed been forced to grant and guarantee them this possibility by allowing them union and assembly rights. Only the last political right is denied women: the right to vote, to decide directly on the people’s representatives in legislature and administration, to be an elected member of these bodies. But here, as in all other areas of society, the motto is: “Don’t let things get started!” But things have been started. The present state gave in to the women of the proletariat when it admitted them to public assemblies, to political associations. And the state did not grant this voluntarily, but out of necessity, under the irresistible pressure of the rising working class. It was not least the passionate pushing ahead of the proletarian women themselves which forced the Prusso-German police state to give up the famous “women’s section”[6]in gatherings of political associations and to open wide the doors of political organizations to women. This really set the ball rolling. The irresistible progress of the proletarian class struggle has swept working women right into the whirlpool of political life. Using their right of union and assembly, proletarian women have taken a most active part in parliamentary life and in election campaigns. It is only the inevitable consequence, only the logical result of the movement that today millions of proletarian women call defiantly and with self-confidence: Let us have suffrage!

Once upon a time, in the beautiful era of pre-1848 absolutism, the whole working class was said not to be “mature enough” to exercise political rights. This cannot be said about proletarian women today, because they have demonstrated their political maturity. Everybody knows that without them, without the enthusiastic help of proletarian women, the Social Democratic Party would not have won the glorious victory of January 12, (1912), would not have obtained four and a quarter million votes. At any rate, the working class has always had to prove its maturity for political freedom by a successful revolutionary uprising of the masses. Only when Divine Right on the throne and the best and noblest men of the nation actually felt the calloused fist of the proletariat on their eyes and its knee on their chests, only then did they feel confidence in the political “maturity” of the people, and felt it with the speed of lightning. Today, it is the proletarian woman’s turn to make the capitalist state conscious of her maturity. This is done through a constant, powerful mass movement which has to use all the means of proletarian struggle and pressure.

Women’s suffrage is the goal. But the mass movement to bring it about is not a job for women alone, but is a common class concern for women and men of the proletariat. Germany’s present lack of rights for women is only one link in the chain of the reaction that shackles the people’s lives. And it is closely connected with the other pillar of the reaction: the monarchy. In advanced capitalist, highly industrialized, twentieth-century Germany, in the age of electricity and airplanes, the absence of women’s political rights is as much a reactionary remnant of the dead past as the reign by Divine Right on the throne. Both phenomena—the instrument of heaven as the leading political power, and woman, demure by the fireside, unconcerned with the storms of public life, with politics and class struggle—both phenomena have their roots in the rotten circumstances of the past, in the times of serfdom in the country and guilds in the towns. In those times, they were justifiable and necessary. But both monarchy and women’s lack of rights have been uprooted by the development of modern capitalism, have become ridiculous caricatures. They continue to exist in our modern society, not just because people forgot to abolish them, not just because of the persistence and inertia of circumstances. No, they still exist because both—monarchy as well as women without rights—have become powerful tools of interests inimical to the people. The worst and most brutal advocates of the exploitation and enslavement of the proletariat are entrenched behind throne and altar as well as behind the political enslavement of women. Monarchy and women’s lack of rights have become the most important tools of the ruling capitalist class.

In truth, our state is interested in keeping the vote from working women and from them alone. It rightly fears they will threaten the traditional institutions of class rule, for instance militarism (of which no thinking proletarian woman can help being a deadly enemy), monarchy, the systematic robbery of duties and taxes on groceries, etc. Women’s suffrage is a horror and abomination for the present capitalist state because behind it stand millions of women who would strengthen the enemy within, i.e., revolutionary Social Democracy. If it were a matter of bourgeois ladies voting, the capitalist state could expect nothing but effective support for the reaction. Most of those bourgeois women who act like lionesses in the struggle against “male prerogatives” would trot like docile lambs in the camp of conservative and clerical reaction if they had suffrage. Indeed, they would certainly be a good deal more reactionary than the male part of their class. Aside from the few who have jobs or professions, the women of the bourgeoisie do not take part in social production. They are nothing but co-consumers of the surplus value their men extort from the proletariat. They are parasites of the parasites of the social body. And consumers are usually even more rabid and cruel in defending their “right” to a parasite’s life than the direct agents of class rule and exploitation. The history of all great revolutionary struggles confirms this in a horrible way. Take the great French Revolution. After the fall of the Jacobins, when Robespierre was driven in chains to the place of execution, the naked whores of the victory—drunk bourgeoisie danced in the streets, danced a shameless dance of joy around the fallen hero of the Revolution. And in 1871, in Paris, when the heroic workers’ Commune was defeated by machine guns, the raving bourgeois females surpassed even their bestial men in their bloody revenge against the suppressed proletariat. The women of the property-owning classes will always fanatically defend the exploitation and enslavement of the working people by which they indirectly receive the means for their socially useless existence.

Economically and socially, the women of the exploiting classes are not an independent segment of the population. Their only social function is to be tools of the natural propagation of the ruling classes. By contrast, the women of the proletariat are economically independent. They are productive for society like the men. By this I do not mean their bringing up children or their housework which helps men support their families on scanty wages. This kind of work is not productive in the sense of the present capitalist economy no matter how enormous an achievement the sacrifices and energy spent, the thousand little efforts add up to. This is but the private affair of the worker, his happiness and blessing, and for this reason nonexistent for our present society. As long as capitalism and the wage system rule, only that kind of work is considered productive which produces surplus value, which creates capitalist profit. From this point of view, the music-hall dancer whose legs sweep profit into her employer’s pocket is a productive worker, whereas all the toil of the proletarian women and mothers in the four walls of their homes is considered unproductive. This sounds brutal and insane, but corresponds exactly to the brutality and insanity of our present capitalist economy. And seeing this brutal reality clearly and sharply is the proletarian woman’s first task.

For, exactly from this point of view, the proletarian women’s claim to equal political rights is anchored in firm economic ground. Today, millions of proletarian women create capitalist profit like men—in factories, workshops, on farms, in home industry, offices, stores. They are therefore productive in the strictest scientific sense of our present society. Every day enlarges the hosts of women exploited by capitalism. Every new progress in industry or technology creates new places for women in the machinery of capitalist profiteering. And thus, every day and every step of industrial progress adds a new stone to the firm foundation of women’s equal political rights. Female education and intelligence have become necessary for the economic mechanism itself. The narrow, secluded woman of the patriarchal “family circle” answers the needs of industry and commerce as little as those of politics. It is true, the capitalist state has neglected its duty even in this respect. So far, it is the unions and the Social Democratic organizations that have done most to awaken the minds and moral sense of women. Even decades ago, the Social Democrats were known as the most capable and intelligent German workers. Likewise, unions and Social Democracy have today lifted the women of the proletariat out of their stuffy, narrow existence, out of the miserable and petty mindlessness of household managing. The proletarian class struggle has widened their horizons, made their minds flexible, developed their thinking, shown them great goals for their efforts. Socialism has brought about the mental rebirth of the mass of proletarian women—and thereby has no doubt also made them capable productive workers for capital.

Considering all this, the proletarian woman’s lack of political rights is a vile injustice, and the more so for being by now at least half a lie. After all, masses of women take an active part in political life. However, Social Democracy does not use the argument of “injustice.” This is the basic difference between us and the earlier sentimental, utopian socialism. We do not depend on the justice of the ruling classes, but solely on the revolutionary power of the working masses and on the course of social development which prepares the ground for this power. Thus, injustice by itself is certainly not an argument with which to overthrow reactionary institutions. If, however, there is a feeling of injustice in large segments of society—says Friedrich Engels, the co-founder of scientific socialism—it is always a sure sign that the economic bases of the society have shifted considerably, that the present conditions contradict the march of development. The present forceful movement of millions of proletarian women who consider their lack of political rights a crying wrong is such an infallible sign, a sign that the social bases of the reigning system are rotten and that its days are numbered.

A hundred years ago, the Frenchman Charles Fourier, one of the first great prophets of socialist ideals, wrote these memorable words: In any society, the degree of female emancipation is the natural measure of the general emancipation.[7] This is completely true for our present society. The current mass struggle for women’s political rights is only an expression and a part of the proletariat’s general struggle for liberation. In this lies its strength and its future. Because of the female proletariat, general, equal, direct suffrage for women would immensely advance and intensify the proletarian class struggle. This is why bourgeois society abhors and fears women’s suffrage. And this is why we want and will achieve it. Fighting for women’s suffrage, we will also hasten the coming of the hour when the present society falls in ruins under the hammer strokes of the revolutionary proletariat.

Rosa Luxemburg, The Proletarian Woman (1914)

Published: Sozialdemokratische Korrespondenz 5, no 27: 4–5, 1914.

Source: The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, ed. by Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson. Monthly Review Press, 2004.

Translator unknown.

The day of the proletarian woman opens the Week of Social Democracy. The party of the disinherited places its female column in the vanguard, while it sets off to the strenuous week’s work, in order to sow the seeds of socialism on pastures new. And the call for equal political rights for women is the demand raised while setting out to recruit new layers of supporters for the demands of the whole working class.

The modern wage-earning proletarian woman thus today enters the public stage as the champion of the working class and at the same time of the whole female sex, the first time for thousands of years.

From time immemorial the women of the people have worked hard. In the primitive horde she carried loads, gathered provisions; in the primitive village she planted grain and milled it, and made pottery; in ancient times she served the ruling class as a slave and suckled their offspring at her breast; in the Middle Ages she laboured at the spindle for the feudal lord. But for so long as private property has existed, the woman of the people generally works separated from the large workplace of social production, and therefore from culture, cooped up in the domestic confines of an impoverished household existence. Only capitalism has torn her out of the family and clamped her under the yoke of social production, driven onto alien fields, into workshops, onto construction sites, into offices, into factories and warehouses. As a bourgeois woman, the female is a parasite on society, her function consists only in consuming the fruits of exploitation; as a petit bourgeois woman she is a beast of burden of the family. Only as a modern proletarian do woman become human beings, for only struggle makes the individual contribute to cultural work, and to the history of humanity.

For the propertied bourgeois woman her house is the world. For the proletarian woman the whole world is her house, the world with its sorrow and its joy, with its cold cruelty and its brutal size. The proletarian woman travels with the tunnel workers from Italy to Switzerland, camps in their shacks and sings while drying her baby’s laundry, beside dynamited rocks hurled into the air. As a seasonal land worker she sits in the din of railway stations on her modest bundle, with a scarf covering her simply-parted hair, and waits patiently to be relocated from east to west. Between decks on the transatlantic steamer she migrates with every wave that washes the misery of the crisis from Europe to America, in the motley multilingual crowd of starving proletarians, so, when the backwash of an American crisis froths up, she returns to the misery of the European homeland, to new hopes and disappointments, to a new hunt for work and bread.

The bourgeois woman has no real interest in political rights, because she exercises no economic function in society, because she enjoys the finished fruits of class rule. The demand for equal women’s rights is, where it arises with bourgeois women, the pure ideology of weak groups of individuals, without material roots, a phantom of the contrast between woman and man, a quirk. Thence the farcical character of the suffragette movement.

The Proletarian woman needs political rights, because she exercises the same economic function in society, slaves away in the same way for capital, maintains the state in just the same way, is sucked dry and held down in just the same way as the male proletarian. She has the same interests and needs the same weapons in her defence. Her political demands are rooted deep in the social abyss which separates the class of the exploited from the class of the exploiters, not in the contrast between man and woman, but in the contrast between capital and labour.

Formally the political rights of the woman are accomodated quite harmoniously in the bourgeois state. The example of Finland, the American states and individual communities shows that women’s equality neither overthrows the state nor encroaches upon the rule of capital. But as today the political rights of woman are actually a purely proletarian class demand, so for the capitalist Germany of today they are a trumpet call of doomsday. Like the republic, like the militia, like the eight-hour day, a woman’s right to vote can only either be won or defeated together with the whole class struggle of the proletariat, can only be championed with proletarian fighting methods and means of power.

Bourgeois women’s rights activists want to acquire political rights, in order to participate in political life. The proletarian woman can only follow the path of workers’ struggle, which in the opposite way achieves every inch of actual power, and only in this way acquires statutory rights. At the beginning of every social advance was the deed. In political life, proletarian women have to gain a firm footing through their activity in all areas, for only in this way will they lay the foundations for their rights. The dominant society denies them entry to the temples of its legislation, but another great power of the time opens the gates wide for them—the Social Democratic Party. Here, in the rank and file of the organisation, a huge incalculable field of political work and political power is spread out before the proletarian woman. Only here is woman an equal factor. Through Social Democracy she is introduced to the workshop of history, and here, where Cyclopean forces hammer, she wins for herself actual equality, even if she is denied the paper rights of a bourgeois constitution. Here by man’s side, the working woman shakes the pillars of the existing order of society, and before it concedes to her the appearance of her rights, she will help to bury this kind of society in its own wreckage.

The workplace of the future needs many hands and passionate enthusiasm. A world of female misery awaits deliverance. Here the wife of the small farmer groans, almost breaking under the burden of life. There in German Africa in the Kalahari desert the bones of defenceless Herero women bleach, driven to a cruel death from hunger and thirst by German soldiers. In the high mountains of Putumayo on the other side of the ocean, unheard by the world, death screams die away of the martyred Indian women in the rubber plantations of the international capitalists.

Proletarian women, poorest of the poor, those with the least rights, hurry to the fight for the liberation of the female sex and the human race from the terrors of the rule of capital. Social democracy has offered you the post of honour. Hurry to the front and trench.

1. Frauenrecht und Frauenpflicht. Eine Antwort auf Fanny Lewalds Briefe Für and wider die frauen 2. Auflage, Bonn, 1871.↩

2. Georg Brandes, Die literatur des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, 5, Band Leipzig, 1883, Veit and Co.↩

3. Dr. Schäffle writes in his Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers: “A loosening of the bonds of matrimony by facilitating divorce is certainly undesirable, it would contradict the moral tasks of human mating and would be prejudicial to the maintenance of population level, as well as to the education of children.” From the above it follows that we not only consider this view wrong but are inclined to consider it “immoral.” Dr. Schäffle himself would admit that it would be impossible to introduce or preserve in a society much more civilised than the present one institutions which conflict with its conceptions of morality.↩

4. Quoted in Häckel’s Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, 4. Auflage↩

5. Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient History, New York, 178, p, 552.↩

6. The “women’s section” had been instituted in 1902 by the Prussian Minister von Hammerstein. According to this disposition, a special section of the room was reserved for women at political meetings.↩

7. Though Rosa Luxemburg could not have known it, Karl Marx cites these same words in the third of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscnpis of 1844 when he discusses the nature of communist society.↩

Anarchism

Early 20th century anarchist women were on the forefront of labor struggles, experimenting with new relationship forms, and sharing with socialists an attention to the role of capitalism in women’s oppression. Here we include a variety of anarchist feminist voices, including Emma Goldman’s critique of the existing feminist campaigns for the right to vote and access to professional employment.

The secondary reading continues with the next Echols chapter.

Secondary reading: Alice Echols, Ch. 2 (pp. 51–101), Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967–1975, University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

Lucy Parsons, Woman: Her Evolutionary Development (1905)

Published: The Liberator, September 10, 1905.

Source: Lucy Parsons, Freedom, Equality & Solidarity: Writings & Speeches, 1878–1937, ed. by Gale Ahrens. Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co., 2003.

In the earlier times of the world’s history when man was but little higher in the intellectual scale than the beast which he slew for food, and whose skins he used for raiment, muscular strength and physical endurance were the standards of excellence and the stamp of superiority which prevailed. As nature had not endowed woman with these requisites to the same extent she had man, he looked upon her as a being inferior to himself. Possibly this was the beginning of man’s domination and woman’s subjugation. But as man ascended in the social scale of development, he began to acquire property, which he wished to transmit along with his name to his offspring—then woman became his household drudge.

She was regarded as a sort of necessary evil; as something to be used and abused; to be bought and sold—as a thing fit only to cater to his pleasures and his passions—this was woman’s lowly position. For countless centuries, the drudge went her lonesome, weary way, bore the children—and man’s abuse—but the long sweep of the centuries was to bring relief at last! When the steam engine was harnessed and placed in the field of production, muscles were practically eliminated as a factor in producing the world’s wealth. This enabled woman to leave the narrow confines of the kitchen where she had been kept for so long.

She entered the arena of life’s activities, to make her way in this hustling, pushing, busy world as an independent human being for the first time in the world’s history. Oh, the direful predictions that were made if woman dared leave home to work! Why, she would become coarse, mannish, unsexed, etc.—but all to no purpose; woman went, she saw and conquered! Woman rapped long, loud and waited patiently at the college door before it was grudgingly opened to her.

“What,” exclaimed conventionality, “Our daughters go in the dissecting room with men? Never!”

But stern progress brushed aside all these objections. Experience has taught that woman can study “the human form divine” by the side of her brothers and lose not one whit of her womanly charms or modesty. Now parents are just as proud to witness their daughters receiving diplomas as they are their sons. I know of no activity from which woman is debarred because of her sex. Who will claim the change has not benefitted all humanity? But woman is allowing herself to be used to reduce the standard of life by working for lower wages than those demanded by men; this she will have to rectify, else her labor will become a detriment instead of a blessing or a help either to herself or her fellow workers.

Voltairine de Cleyre, The Woman Question (1897)

Published: Herald of Revolt, September 1913. Given as a speech in Scotland in 1897.

Source: Voltaire de Cleyre, Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre—Anarchist, Feminist, Genius. ed. by Sharon Presley and Crispin Sartwell. SUNY Press, 2005.

A section of Anarchists say there is no Women Question, apart from our present industrial situation. But the assertion is mostly made by men, and men are not the fittest to feel the slaveries of women. Scientists argue that the nutritive functions of society are best performed by the male, the reproductive by the female, the food finding is done away from, the rearing of children, at home; and if woman enters the industrial arena she will suffer in her distinctive powers. Amongst the working-classes this is not so, as the women work hard at home duties, and sometimes take in sewing, or go out washing for other people. Woman’s domestic work is the most ill-paid labour in the world. Marriage is not in the interest of women. It is a pledge from the marrying man to the male half of society (women are not counted in the State), that he will not shirk his responsibilities upon them! Marriage is discredited, by its results as well as by its origin.

Men may not mean to be tyrants when they marry, but they frequently grow to be such. It is insufficient to dispense with the priest or registrar. The spirit of marriage makes for slavery. Women are becoming more and more engaged in industry. This means that other doors are open to her than the door of menial service. It also means that just as men have developed individuality, because of their being thrown into all sorts of employment and conditions, so likewise will women. And with the development of diversity will come the irrepressible desire for its expression, and by consequence the necessity of such material conditions as will permit that expression.

The unattainability of quietude in the ordinary home militates against such conditions, whilst the ‘abominably uneconomical’ way in which the work is done—being on an infinitesimally small scale a laundry, bakery, lodging-house, restaurant and nursery rolled into one—also doom the home. With, however, the introduction of ideas bound to follow the introduction of female labour into industrialism, the home in its present form must go...Meanwhile, I would strongly advise every woman contemplating sexual union of any kind, never to live together with the man you love, in the sense of renting a house or rooms, and becoming his housekeeper.

As to the children, seeing the number of infants who die, the alarm is rather hypocritical; but, ignoring this consideration, first of all it should be the business of women to study sex, and control parentage—never to have a child unless you want it, and never to want it (selfishly, for the pleasure of having a pretty plaything), unless you, yourself alone, are able to provide for it.

Emma Goldman, The Tragedy of Woman’s Emancipation (1906)

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1906/tragedy-women.htm

Published: Mother Earth, 1906.

Source: Anarchism and Other Essays. Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1911.

I begin with an admission: Regardless of all political and economic theories, treating of the fundamental differences between various groups within the human race, regardless of class and race distinctions, regardless of all artificial boundary lines between woman’s rights and man’s rights, I hold that there is a point where these differentiations may meet and grow into one perfect whole.

With this I do not mean to propose a peace treaty. The general social antagonism which has taken hold of our entire public life today, brought about through the force of opposing and contradictory interests, will crumble to pieces when the reorganization of our social life, based upon the principles of economic justice, shall have become a reality.

Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be one’s self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one’s own characteristic qualities. This seems to me to be the basis upon which the mass and the individual, the true democrat and the true individuality, man and woman, can meet without antagonism and opposition. The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather, Understand one another. The oft-quoted sentence of Madame de Staël: “To understand everything means to forgive everything,” has never particularly appealed to me; it has the odor of the confessional; to forgive one’s fellow-being conveys the idea of pharisaical superiority. To understand one’s fellow-being suffices. The admission partly represents the fundamental aspect of my views on the emancipation of woman and its effect upon the entire sex.

Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in the truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and activity should reach its fullest expression; all artificial barriers should be broken, and the road towards greater freedom cleared of every trace of centuries of submission and slavery.

This was the original aim of the movement for woman’s emancipation. But the results so far achieved have isolated woman and have robbed her of the fountain springs of that happiness which is so essential to her. Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being, who reminds one of the products of French arboriculture with its arabesque trees and shrubs, pyramids, wheels, and wreaths; anything, except the forms which would be reached by the expression of her own inner qualities. Such artificially grown plants of the female sex are to be found in large numbers, especially in the so-called intellectual sphere of our life.

Liberty and equality for woman! What hopes and aspirations these words awakened when they were first uttered by some of the noblest and bravest souls of those days. The sun in all his light and glory was to rise upon a new world; in this world woman was to be free to direct her own destiny—an aim certainly worthy of the great enthusiasm, courage, perseverance, and ceaseless effort of the tremendous host of pioneer men and women, who staked everything against a world of prejudice and ignorance.

My hopes also move towards that goal, but I hold that the emancipation of woman, as interpreted and practically applied today, has failed to reach that great end. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free. This may sound paradoxical, but is, nevertheless, only too true.

What has she achieved through her emancipation? Equal suffrage in a few States. Has that purified our political life, as many well-meaning advocates predicted? Certainly not. Incidentally, it is really time that persons with plain, sound judgment should cease to talk about corruption in politics in a boarding school tone. Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals, or the laxity of morals, of various political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one. Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world, the mottos of which are: “To take is more blessed than to give”; “buy cheap and sell dear”; “one soiled hand washes the other.” There is no hope even that woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics.

Emancipation has brought woman economic equality with man; that is, she can choose her own profession and trade; but as her past and present physical training has not equipped her with the necessary strength to compete with man, she is often compelled to exhaust all her energy, use up her vitality, and strain every nerve in order to reach the market value. Very few ever succeed, for it is a fact that women teachers, doctors, lawyers, architects, and engineers are neither met with the same confidence as their male colleagues, nor receive equal remuneration. And those that do reach that enticing equality, generally do so at the expense of their physical and psychical well-being. As to the great mass of working girls and women, how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack of freedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack of freedom of the factory, sweat-shop, department store, or office? In addition is the burden which is laid on many women of looking after a “home, sweet home”—cold, dreary, disorderly, uninviting—after a day’s hard work. Glorious independence! No wonder that hundreds of girls are so willing to accept the first offer of marriage, sick and tired of their “independence” behind the counter, at the sewing or typewriting machine. They are just as ready to marry as girls of the middle class, who long to throw off the yoke of parental supremacy. A so-called independence which leads only to earning the merest subsistence is not so enticing, not so ideal, that one could expect woman to sacrifice everything for it. Our highly praised independence is, after all, but a slow process of dulling and stifling woman’s nature, her love instinct, and her mother instinct.

Nevertheless, the position of the working girl is far more natural and human than that of her seemingly more fortunate sister in the more cultured professional walks of life—teachers, physicians, lawyers, engineers, etc., who have to make a dignified, proper appearance, while the inner life is growing empty and dead.

The narrowness of the existing conception of woman’s independence and emancipation; the dread of love for a man who is not her social equal; the fear that love will rob her of her freedom and independence; the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will only hinder her in the full exercise of her profession—all these together make of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory vestal, before whom life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep, entrancing joys, rolls on without touching or gripping her soul.

Emancipation, as understood by the majority of its adherents and exponents, is of too narrow a scope to permit the boundless love and ecstasy contained in the deep emotion of the true woman, sweetheart, mother, in freedom.

The tragedy of the self-supporting or economically free woman does not lie in too many, but in too few experiences. True, she surpasses her sister of past generations in knowledge of the world and human nature; it is just because of this that she feels deeply the lack of life’s essence, which alone can enrich the human soul, and without which the majority of women have become mere professional automatons.

That such a state of affairs was bound to come was foreseen by those who realized that, in the domain of ethics, there still remained many decaying ruins of the time of the undisputed superiority of man; ruins that are still considered useful. And, what is more important, a goodly number of the emancipated are unable to get along without them. Every movement that aims at the destruction of existing institutions and the replacement thereof with something more advanced, more perfect, has followers who in theory stand for the most radical ideas, but who, nevertheless, in their every-day practice, are like the average Philistine, feigning respectability and clamoring for the good opinion of their opponents. There are, for example, Socialists, and even Anarchists, who stand for the idea that property is robbery, yet who will grow indignant if anyone owe them the value of a half-dozen pins.

The same Philistine can be found in the movement for woman’s emancipation. Yellow journalists and milk-and-water litterateurs have painted pictures of the emancipated woman that make the hair of the good citizen and his dull companion stand up on end. Every member of the woman’s rights movement was pictured as a George Sand in her absolute disregard of morality. Nothing was sacred to her. She had no respect for the ideal relation between man and woman. In short, emancipation stood only for a reckless life of lust and sin; regardless of society, religion, and morality. The exponents of woman’s rights were highly indignant at such misrepresentation, and, lacking humor, they exerted all their energy to prove that they were not at all as bad as they were painted, but the very reverse. Of course, as long as woman was the slave of man, she could not be good and pure, but now that she was free and independent she would prove how good she could be and that her influence would have a purifying effect on all institutions in society. True, the movement for woman’s rights has broken many old fetters, but it has also forged new ones. The great movement of true emancipation has not met with a great race of women who could look liberty in the face. Their narrow, Puritanical vision banished man, as a disturber and doubtful character, out of their emotional life. Man was not to be tolerated at any price, except perhaps as the father of a child, since a child could not very well come to life without a father. Fortunately, the most rigid Puritans never will be strong enough to kill the innate craving for motherhood. But woman’s freedom is closely allied with man’s freedom, and many of my so-called emancipated sisters seem to overlook the fact that a child born in freedom needs the love and devotion of each human being about him, man as well as woman. Unfortunately, it is this narrow conception of human relations that has brought about a great tragedy in the lives of the modern man and woman.

About fifteen years ago appeared a work from the pen of the brilliant Norwegian Laura Marholm, called Woman, a Character Study. She was one of the first to call attention to the emptiness and narrowness of the existing conception of woman’s emancipation, and its tragic effect upon the inner life of woman. In her work Laura Marholm speaks of the fate of several gifted women of international fame: the genius Eleonora Duse; the great mathematician and writer Sonya Kovalevskaia; the artist and poet—nature Marie Bashkirtzeff, who died so young. Through each description of the lives of these women of such extraordinary mentality runs a marked trail of unsatisfied craving for a full, rounded, complete, and beautiful life, and the unrest and loneliness resulting from the lack of it. Through these masterly psychological sketches one cannot help but see that the higher the mental development of woman, the less possible it is for her to meet a congenial mate who will see in her, not only sex, but also the human being, the friend, the comrade and strong individuality, who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her character.

The average man with his self-sufficiency, his ridiculously superior airs of patronage towards the female sex, is an impossibility for woman as depicted in the Character Study by Laura Marholm. Equally impossible for her is the man who can see in her nothing more than her mentality and her genius, and who fails to awaken her woman nature.

A rich intellect and a fine soul are usually considered necessary attributes of a deep and beautiful personality. In the case of the modern woman, these attributes serve as a hindrance to the complete assertion of her being. For over a hundred years the old form of marriage, based on the Bible, “till death doth part,” has been denounced as an institution that stands for the sovereignty of the man over the woman, of her complete submission to his whims and commands, and absolute dependence on his name and support. Time and again it has been conclusively proved that the old matrimonial relation restricted woman to the function of man’s servant and the bearer of his children. And yet we find many emancipated women who prefer marriage, with all its deficiencies, to the narrowness of an unmarried life: narrow and unendurable because of the chains of moral and social prejudice that cramp and bind her nature.

The explanation of such inconsistency on the part of many advanced women is to be found in the fact that they never truly understood the meaning of emancipation. They thought that all that was needed was independence from external tyrannies; the internal tyrants, far more harmful to life and growth—ethical and social conventions—were left to take care of themselves; and they have taken care of themselves. They seem to get along as beautifully in the heads and hearts of the most active exponents of woman’s emancipation, as in the heads and hearts of our grandmothers.

These internal tyrants, whether they be in the form of public opinion or what will mother say, or brother, father, aunt, or relative of any sort; what will Mrs. Grundy, Mr. Comstock, the employer, the Board of Education say? All these busybodies, moral detectives, jailers of the human spirit, what will they say? Until woman has learned to defy them all, to stand firmly on her own ground and to insist upon her own unrestricted freedom, to listen to the voice of her nature, whether it call for life’s greatest treasure, love for a man, or her most glorious privilege, the right to give birth to a child, she cannot call herself emancipated. How many emancipated women are brave enough to acknowledge that the voice of love is calling, wildly beating against their breasts, demanding to be heard, to be satisfied.

The French writer Jean Reibrach, in one of his novels, New Beauty, attempts to picture the ideal, beautiful, emancipated woman. This ideal is embodied in a young girl, a physician. She talks very cleverly and wisely of how to feed infants; she is kind, and administers medicines free to poor mothers. She converses with a young man of her acquaintance about the sanitary conditions of the future, and how various bacilli and germs shall be exterminated by the use of stone walls and floors, and by the doing away with rugs and hangings. She is, of course, very plainly and practically dressed, mostly in black. The young man, who, at their first meeting, was overawed by the wisdom of his emancipated friend, gradually learns to understand her, and recognizes one fine day that he loves her. They are young, and she is kind and beautiful, and though always in rigid attire, her appearance is softened by a spotlessly clean white collar and cuffs. One would expect that he would tell her of his love, but he is not one to commit romantic absurdities. Poetry and the enthusiasm of love cover their blushing faces before the pure beauty of the lady. He silences the voice of his nature, and remains correct. She, too, is always exact, always rational, always well behaved. I fear if they had formed a union, the young man would have risked freezing to death. I must confess that I can see nothing beautiful in this new beauty, who is as cold as the stone walls and floors she dreams of. Rather would I have the love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by the father’s curse, mother’s moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks. If love does not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.

The greatest shortcoming of the emancipation of the present day lies in its artificial stiffness and its narrow respectabilities, which produce an emptiness in woman’s soul that will not let her drink from the fountain of life. I once remarked that there seemed to be a deeper relationship between the old-fashioned mother and hostess, ever on the alert for the happiness of her little ones and the comfort of those she loved, and the truly new woman, than between the latter and her average emancipated sister. The disciples of emancipation pure and simple declared me a heathen, fit only for the stake. Their blind zeal did not let them see that my comparison between the old and the new was merely to prove that a goodly number of our grandmothers had more blood in their veins, far more humor and wit, and certainly a greater amount of naturalness, kind-heartedness, and simplicity, than the majority of our emancipated professional women who fill the colleges, halls of learning, and various offices. This does not mean a wish to return to the past, nor does it condemn woman to her old sphere, the kitchen and the nursery.

Salvation lies in an energetic march onward towards a brighter and clearer future. We are in need of unhampered growth out of old traditions and habits. The movement for woman’s emancipation has so far made but the first step in that direction. It is to be hoped that it will gather strength to make another. The right to vote, or equal civil rights, may be good demands, but true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in courts. It begins in woman’s soul. History tells us that every oppressed class gained true liberation from its masters through its own efforts. It is necessary that woman learn that lesson, that she realize that her freedom will reach as far as her power to achieve her freedom reaches. It is, therefore, far more important for her to begin with her inner regeneration, to cut loose from the weight of prejudices, traditions, and customs. The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved. Indeed, if partial emancipation is to become a complete and true emancipation of woman, it will have to do away with the ridiculous notion that to be loved, to be sweetheart and mother, is synonymous with being slave or subordinate. It will have to do away with the absurd notion of the dualism of the sexes, or that man and woman represent two antagonistic worlds.

Pettiness separates; breadth unites. Let us be broad and big. Let us not overlook vital things because of the bulk of trifles confronting us. A true conception of the relation of the sexes will not admit of conqueror and conquered; it knows of but one great thing: to give of one’s self boundlessly, in order to find one’s self richer, deeper, better. That alone can fill the emptiness, and transform the tragedy of woman’s emancipation into joy, limitless joy.

Emma Goldman, Woman Suffrage (1910)

http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-anarchism-and-other-essays#toc11

Emma Goldman, “Woman Suffrage.” Anarchism and Other Essays, Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1911.

We boast of the age of advancement, of science, and progress. Is it not strange, then, that we still believe in fetich worship? True, our fetiches have different form and substance, yet in their power over the human mind they are still as disastrous as were those of old.

Our modern fetich is universal suffrage. Those who have not yet achieved that goal fight bloody revolutions to obtain it, and those who have enjoyed its reign bring heavy sacrifice to the altar of this omnipotent diety. Woe to the heretic who dare question that divinity!

Woman, even more than man, is a fetich worshipper, and though her idols may change, she is ever on her knees, ever holding up her hands, ever blind to the fact that her god has feet of clay. Thus woman has been the greatest supporter of all deities from time immemorial. Thus, too, she has had to pay the price that only gods can exact—her freedom, her heart’s blood, her very life.

Nietzsche’s memorable maxim, “When you go to woman, take the whip along,” is considered very brutal, yet Nietzsche expressed in one sentence the attitude of woman towards her gods.

Religion, especially the Christian religion, has condemned woman to the life of an inferior, a slave. It has thwarted her nature and fettered her soul, yet the Christian religion has no greater supporter, none more devout, than woman. Indeed, it is safe to say that religion would have long ceased to be a factor in the lives of the people, if it were not for the support it receives from woman. The most ardent churchworkers, the most tireless missionaries the world over, are women, always sacrificing on the altar of the gods that have chained her spirit and enslaved her body.

The insatiable monster, war, robs woman of all that is dear and precious to her. It exacts her brothers, lovers, sons, and in return gives her a life of loneliness and despair. Yet the greatest supporter and worshiper of war is woman. She it is who instills the love of conquest and power into her children; she it is who whispers the glories of war into the ears of her little ones, and who rocks her baby to sleep with the tunes of trumpets and the noise of guns. It is woman, too, who crowns the victor on his return from the battlefield. Yes, it is woman who pays the highest price to that insatiable monster, war.

Then there is the home. What a terrible fetich it is! How it saps the very life-energy of woman,—this modern prison with golden bars. Its shining aspect blinds woman to the price she would have to pay as wife, mother, and housekeeper. Yet woman clings tenaciously to the home, to the power that holds her in bondage.

It may be said that because woman recognizes the awful toll she is made to pay to the Church, State, and the home, she wants suffrage to set herself free. That may be true of the few; the majority of suffragists repudiate utterly such blasphemy. On the contrary, they insist always that it is woman suffrage which will make her a better Christian and home keeper, a staunch citizen of the State. Thus suffrage is only a means of strengthening the omnipotence of the very Gods that woman has served from time immemorial.

What wonder, then, that she should be just as devout, just as zealous, just as prostrate before the new idol, woman suffrage. As of old, she endures persecution, imprisonment, torture, and all forms of condemnation, with a smile on her face. As of old, the most enlightened, even, hope for a miracle from the twentieth-century deity,—suffrage. Life, happiness, joy, freedom, independence,—all that, and more, is to spring from suffrage. In her blind devotion woman does not see what people of intellect perceived fifty years ago: that suffrage is an evil, that it has only helped to enslave people, that it has but closed their eyes that they may not see how craftily they were made to submit.

Woman’s demand for equal suffrage is based largely on the contention that woman must have the equal right in all affairs of society. No one could, possibly, refute that, if suffrage were a right. Alas, for the ignorance of the human mind, which can see a right in an imposition. Or is it not the most brutal imposition for one set of people to make laws that another set is coerced by force to obey? Yet woman clamors for that “golden opportunity” that has wrought so much misery in the world, and robbed man of his integrity and self-reliance; an imposition which has thoroughly corrupted the people, and made them absolute prey in the hands of unscrupulous politicians.

The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal suffrage, and, by that right, he has forged chains about his limbs. The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the right of boycott, of picketing, in fact, of everything, except the right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor. Yet all these disastrous results of the twentieth-century fetich have taught woman nothing. But, then, woman will purify politics, we are assured.

Needless to say, I am not opposed to woman suffrage on the conventional ground that she is not equal to it. I see neither physical, psychological, nor mental reasons why woman should not have the equal right to vote with man. But that can not possibly blind me to the absurd notion that woman will accomplish that wherein man has failed. If she would not make things worse, she certainly could not make them better. To assume, therefore, that she would succeed in purifying something which is not susceptible of purification, is to credit her with supernatural powers. Since woman’s greatest misfortune has been that she was looked upon as either angel or devil, her true salvation lies in being placed on earth; namely, in being considered human, and therefore subject to all human follies and mistakes. Are we, then, to believe that two errors will make a right? Are we to assume that the poison already inherent in politics will be decreased, if women were to enter the political arena? The most ardent suffragists would hardly maintain such a folly.

As a matter of fact, the most advanced students of universal suffrage have come to realize that all existing systems of political power are absurd, and are completely inadequate to meet the pressing issues of life. This view is also borne out by a statement of one who is herself an ardent believer in woman suffrage, Dr. Helen L. Sumner. In her able work on Equal Suffrage, she says: “In Colorado, we find that equal suffrage serves to show in the most striking way the essential rottenness and degrading character of the existing system.” Of course, Dr. Sumner has in mind a particular system of voting, but the same applies with equal force to the entire machinery of the representative system. With such a basis, it is difficult to understand how woman, as a political factor, would benefit either herself or the rest of mankind.

But, say our suffrage devotees, look at the countries and States where female suffrage exists. See what woman has accomplished—in Australia, New Zealand, Finland, the Scandinavian countries, and in our own four States, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. Distance lends enchantment—or, to quote a Polish formula—“it is well where we are not.” Thus one would assume that those countries and States are unlike other countries or States, that they have greater freedom, greater social and economic equality, a finer appreciation of human life, deeper understanding of the great social struggle, with all the vital questions it involves for the human race.

The women of Australia and New Zealand can vote, and help make the laws. Are the labor conditions better there than they are in England, where the suffragettes are making such a heroic struggle? Does there exist a greater motherhood, happier and freer children than in England? Is woman there no longer considered a mere sex commodity? Has she emancipated herself from the Puritanical double standard of morality for men and women? Certainly none but the ordinary female stump politician will dare answer these questions in the affirmative. If that be so, it seems ridiculous to point to Australia and New Zealand as the Mecca of equal suffrage accomplishments.

On the other hand, it is a fact to those who know the real political conditions in Australia, that politics have gagged labor by enacting the most stringent labor laws, making strikes without the sanction of an arbitration committee a crime equal to treason.

Not for a moment do I mean to imply that woman suffrage is responsible for this state of affairs. I do mean, however, that there is no reason to point to Australia as a wonder-worker of woman’s accomplishment, since her influence has been unable to free labor from the thraldom of political bossism.

Finland has given woman equal suffrage; nay, even the right to sit in Parliament. Has that helped to develop a greater heroism, an intenser zeal than that of the women of Russia? Finland, like Russia, smarts under the terrible whip of the bloody Tsar. Where are the Finnish Perovskaias, Spiridonovas, Figners, Breshkovskaias? Where are the countless numbers of Finnish young girls who cheerfully go to Siberia for their cause? Finland is sadly in need of heroic liberators. Why has the ballot not created them? The only Finnish avenger of his people was a man, not a woman, and he used a more effective weapon than the ballot.

As to our own States where women vote, and which are constantly being pointed out as examples of marvels, what has been accomplished there through the ballot that women do not to a large extent enjoy in other States; or that they could not achieve through energetic efforts without the ballot?

True, in the suffrage States women are guaranteed equal rights to property; but of what avail is that right to the mass of women without property, the thousands of wage workers, who live from hand to mouth? That equal suffrage did not, and cannot, affect their condition is admitted even by Dr. Sumner, who certainly is in a position to know. As an ardent suffragist, and having been sent to Colorado by the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League of New York State to collect material in favor of suffrage, she would be the last to say anything derogatory; yet we are informed that “equal suffrage has but slightly affected the economic conditions of women. That women do not receive equal pay for equal work, and that, though woman in Colorado has enjoyed school suffrage since 1876, women teachers are paid less than in California.” On the other hand, Miss Sumner fails to account for the fact that although women have had school suffrage for thirty-four years, and equal suffrage since 1894, the census in Denver alone a few months ago disclosed the fact of fifteen thousand defective school children. And that, too, with mostly women in the educational department, and also notwithstanding that women in Colorado have passed the “most stringent laws for child and animal protection.” The women of Colorado “have taken great interest in the State institutions for the care of dependent, defective, and delinquent children.” What a horrible indictment against woman’s care and interest, if one city has fifteen thousand defective children. What about the glory of woman suffrage, since it has failed utterly in the most important social issue, the child? And where is the superior sense of justice that woman was to bring into the political field? Where was it in 1903, when the mine owners waged a guerrilla war against the Western Miners’ Union; when General Bell established a reign of terror, pulling men out of bed at night, kidnapping them across the border line, throwing them into bull pens, declaring “to hell with the Constitution, the club is the Constitution”? Where were the women politicians then, and why did they not exercise the power of their vote? But they did. They helped to defeat the most fair-minded and liberal man, Governor Waite. The latter had to make way for the tool of the mine kings, Governor Peabody, the enemy of labor, the Tsar of Colorado. “Certainly male suffrage could have done nothing worse.” Granted. Wherein, then, are the advantages to woman and society from woman suffrage? The oft-repeated assertion that woman will purify politics is also but a myth. It is not borne out by the people who know the political conditions of Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah.

Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally bigoted and relentless in her effort to make others as good as she thinks they ought to be. Thus, in Idaho, she has disfranchised her sister of the street, and declared all women of “lewd character” unfit to vote. “Lewd” not being interpreted, of course, as prostitution in marriage. It goes without saying that illegal prostitution and gambling have been prohibited. In this regard the law must needs be of feminine gender: it always prohibits. Therein all laws are wonderful. They go no further, but their very tendencies open all the floodgates of hell. Prostitution and gambling have never done a more flourishing business than since the law has been set against them.

In Colorado, the Puritanism of woman has expressed itself in a more drastic form. “Men of notoriously unclean lives, and men connected with saloons, have been dropped from politics since women have the vote.”[1] Could Brother Comstock do more? Could all the Puritan fathers have done more? I wonder how many women realize the gravity of this would-be feat. I wonder if they understand that it is the very thing which, instead of elevating woman, has made her a political spy, a contemptible pry into the private affairs of people, not so much for the good of the cause, but because, as a Colorado woman said, “they like to get into houses they have never been in, and find out all they can, politically and otherwise.”[2] Yes, and into the human soul and its minutest nooks and corners. For nothing satisfies the craving of most women so much as scandal. And when did she ever enjoy such opportunities as are hers, the politician’s?

“Notoriously unclean lives, and men connected with the saloons.” Certainly, the lady vote gatherers can not be accused of much sense of proportion. Granting even that these busybodies can decide whose lives are clean enough for that eminently clean atmosphere, politics, must it follow that saloon-keepers belong to the same category? Unless it be American hypocrisy and bigotry, so manifest in the principle of Prohibition, which sanctions the spread of drunkenness among men and women of the rich class, yet keeps vigilant watch on the only place left to the poor man. If no other reason, woman’s narrow and purist attitude toward life makes her a greater danger to liberty wherever she has political power. Man has long overcome the superstitions that still engulf woman. In the economic competitive field, man has been compelled to exercise efficiency, judgment, ability, competency. He therefore had neither time nor inclination to measure everyone’s morality with a Puritanic yardstick. In his political activities, too, he has not gone about blindfolded. He knows that quantity and not quality is the material for the political grinding mill, and, unless he is a sentimental reformer or an old fossil, he knows that politics can never be anything but a swamp.

Women who are at all conversant with the process of politics, know the nature of the beast, but in their self-sufficiency and egotism they make themselves believe that they have but to pet the beast, and he will become as gentle as a lamb, sweet and pure. As if women have not sold their votes, as if women politicians cannot be bought! If her body can be bought in return for material consideration, why not her vote? That it is being done in Colorado and in other States, is not denied even by those in favor of woman suffrage.

As I have said before, woman’s narrow view of human affairs is not the only argument against her as a politician superior to man. There are others. Her life-long economic parasitism has utterly blurred her conception of the meaning of equality. She clamors for equal rights with man, yet we learn that “few women care to canvas in undesirable districts.”[3] How little equality means to them compared with the Russian women, who face hell itself for their ideal!

Woman demands the same rights as man, yet she is indignant that her presence does not strike him dead: he smokes, keeps his hat on, and does not jump from his seat like a flunkey. These may be trivial things, but they are nevertheless the key to the nature of American suffragists. To be sure, their English sisters have outgrown these silly notions. They have shown themselves equal to the greatest demands on their character and power of endurance. All honor to the heroism and sturdiness of the English suffragettes. Thanks to their energetic, aggressive methods, they have proved an inspiration to some of our own lifeless and spineless ladies. But after all, the suffragettes, too, are still lacking in appreciation of real equality. Else how is one to account for the tremendous, truly gigantic effort set in motion by those valiant fighters for a wretched little bill which will benefit a handful of propertied ladies, with absolutely no provision for the vast mass of working women? True, as politicians they must be opportunists, must take half-measures if they can not get all. But as intelligent and liberal women they ought to realize that if the ballot is a weapon, the disinherited need it more than the economically superior class, and that the latter already enjoy too much power by virtue of their economic superiority.

The brilliant leader of the English suffragettes, Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, herself admitted, when on her American lecture tour, that there can be no equality between political superiors and inferiors. If so, how will the workingwomen of England, already inferior economically to the ladies who are benefited by the Shackleton bill,[4] be able to work with their political superiors, should the bill pass? Is it not probable that the class of Annie Keeney, so full of zeal, devotion, and martyrdom, will be compelled to carry on their backs their female political bosses, even as they are carrying their economic masters. They would still have to do it, were universal suffrage for men and women established in England. No matter what the workers do, they are made to pay, always. Still, those who believe in the power of the vote show little sense of justice when they concern themselves not at all with those whom, as they claim, it might serve most.

The American suffrage movement has been, until very recently, altogether a parlor affair, absolutely detached from the economic needs of the people. Thus Susan B. Anthony, no doubt an exceptional type of woman, was not only indifferent but antagonistic to labor; nor did she hesitate to manifest her antagonism when, in 1869, she advised women to take the places of striking printers in New York.[5] I do not know whether her attitude had changed before her death.

There are, of course, some suffragists who are affiliated with workingwomen—the Women’s Trade Union League, for instance; but they are a small minority, and their activities are essentially economic. The rest look upon toil as a just provision of Providence. What would become of the rich, if not for the poor? What would become of these idle, parasitic ladies, who squander more in a week than their victims earn in a year, if not for the eighty million wage-workers? Equality, who ever heard of such a thing?

Few countries have produced such arrogance and snobbishness as America. Particularly is this true of the American woman of the middle class. She not only considers herself the equal of man, but his superior, especially in her purity, goodness, and morality. Small wonder that the American suffragist claims for her vote the most miraculous powers. In her exalted conceit she does not see how truly enslaved she is, not so much by man, as by her own silly notions and traditions. Suffrage can not ameliorate that sad fact; it can only accentuate it, as indeed it does.

One of the great American women leaders claims that woman is entitled not only to equal pay, but that she ought to be legally entitled even to the pay of her husband. Failing to support her, he should be put in convict stripes, and his earnings in prison be collected by his equal wife. Does not another brilliant exponent of the cause claim for woman that her vote will abolish the social evil, which has been fought in vain by the collective efforts of the most illustrious minds the world over? It is indeed to be regretted that the alleged creator of the universe has already presented us with his wonderful scheme of things, else woman suffrage would surely enable woman to outdo him completely.

Nothing is so dangerous as the dissection of a fetich. If we have outlived the time when such heresy was punishable by the stake, we have not outlived the narrow spirit of condemnation of those who dare differ with accepted notions. Therefore I shall probably be put down as an opponent of woman. But that can not deter me from looking the question squarely in the face. I repeat what I have said in the beginning: I do not believe that woman will make politics worse; nor can I believe that she could make it better. If, then, she cannot improve on man’s mistakes, why perpetrate the latter?

History may be a compilation of lies; nevertheless, it contains a few truths, and they are the only guide we have for the future. The history of the political activities of men proves that they have given him absolutely nothing that he could not have achieved in a more direct, less costly, and more lasting manner. As a matter of fact, every inch of ground he has gained has been through a constant fight, a ceaseless struggle for self-assertion, and not through suffrage. There is no reason whatever to assume that woman, in her climb to emancipation, has been, or will be, helped by the ballot.

In the darkest of all countries, Russia, with her absolute despotism, woman has become man’s equal, not through the ballot, but by her will to be and to do. Not only has she conquered for herself every avenue of learning and vocation, but she has won man’s esteem, his respect, his comradeship; aye, even more than that: she has gained the admiration, the respect of the whole world. That, too, not through suffrage, but by her wonderful heroism, her fortitude, her ability, willpower, and her endurance in her struggle for liberty. Where are the women in any suffrage country or State that can lay claim to such a victory? When we consider the accomplishments of woman in America, we find also that something deeper and more powerful than suffrage has helped her in the march to emancipation.

It is just sixty-two years ago since a handful of women at the Seneca Falls Convention set forth a few demands for their right to equal education with men, and access to the various professions, trades, etc. What wonderful accomplishments, what wonderful triumphs! Who but the most ignorant dare speak of woman as a mere domestic drudge? Who dare suggest that this or that profession should not be open to her? For over sixty years she has molded a new atmosphere and a new life for herself. She has become a world-power in every domain of human thought and activity. And all that without suffrage, without the right to make laws, without the “privilege” of becoming a judge, a jailer, or an executioner.

Yes, I may be considered an enemy of woman; but if I can help her see the light, I shall not complain.

The misfortune of woman is not that she is unable to do the work of a man, but that she is wasting her life-force to outdo him, with a tradition of centuries which has left her physically incapable of keeping pace with him. Oh, I know some have succeeded, but at what cost, at what terrific cost! The import is not the kind of work woman does, but rather the quality of the work she furnishes. She can give suffrage or the ballot no new quality, nor can she receive anything from it that will enhance her own quality. Her development, her freedom, her independence, must come from and through herself. First, by asserting herself as a personality, and not as a sex commodity. Second, by refusing the right to anyone over her body; by refusing to bear children, unless she wants them; by refusing to be a servant to God, the State, society, the husband, the family, etc., by making her life simpler, but deeper and richer. That is, by trying to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its complexities, by freeing herself from the fear of public opinion and public condemnation. Only that, and not the ballot, will set woman free, will make her a force hitherto unknown in the world, a force for real love, for peace, for harmony; a force of divine fire, of life-giving; a creator of free men and women.

Milly Witkop-Rocker, The Need for Women’s Unions (1925)

https://forgottenanarchism.wordpress.com/category/milly-witkop-rocker/

Published: Der Frauen-Bund, 1925.

Source: Forgotten Anarchism. Trans. by Corinne Chambers.

That the support of several male comrades for the dissolution of the women’s unions had to cause a storm of protests among our female comrades is natural. The women have come to realise that such organisations are necessary, and there she deals seriously with her issues, so we must not be surprised that she defends her point with energy. It would be very unfortunate if it weren’t the case, it would only prove that women had less interest for their issues. Despite everything, it would be an injustice if those comrades, who are committed to the union of both men and women in the same united organisation, wanted to presume an evil intent. Without a doubt their motives stem from thinking and are perfectly honest in order to help the movement. However, not everything that is done meaning well is also good in practice and desirable, especially not in this case.

Before we called the women’s unions into existence, we had well considered the question, and if we have decided in favour of the unions, it happened mainly because we wanted to reach out first and foremost to housewives and female relatives who are not considered directly as producers. It would be in my opinion a complete waste of time if we brought in these women in the general organisation, where they would have little opportunity to develop their own initiatives and they would end up most of the time playing the role of silent observers. In this way they would not be able to bring anything useful neither to the general movement, nor to themselves.

Some might object that so far women’s unions have only achieved little result and have not brought many advantages to women. On its own, this reproach is not conclusive. Despite the decisions of the Düsseldorf and Erfurt congresses which completely recognised the need for these unions and for supporting them, precious little has been done on this issue in the past five years. It would therefore be foolish to want to expect greater results. I do not wish to make a reproach against anyone when I say this, my words are conceived much more as a reminder that in this respect a lot more must be done.

But even so the little that was done did not remain without success. If today we have quite a number of women in the country who are able to represent effectively their own issues as well as the interests of the movement, this is a direct result from the women’s unions that we would hardly have achieved without the existence of the unions. And that women have understood their duty, this comes out of the fact that in quite a few of the groups mutual aid has been practised in a way which could serve as a very good example also for male comrades. This however does not mean that we are content and that we reject any critique. On the contrary, it must be emphasised over and over again that far too little has been done so far and that we must direct all of our power to create new groups and always better to build up and develop the existing ones. It would be however completely wrong if people wanted to reproach the women for not having done their duty, after the comrades have done theirs in their congress and taken resolutions in favour of women’s unions. Could anyone not make the same reproach to the men? Most of them believed that after they put down the need for unions in a particular resolution, the thing would just happen by itself. The means, they took this issue a bit too lightly. Without a doubt it would be desirable the women had shown up in higher numbers, but the same can also be said of the male comrades. From those who are organised as syndicalists we could have expected with full justification that they would have stood by the women who were completely inexperienced in those areas.

Unfortunately, things are not going the way we wished and that’s why we must be patient and not throw in the towel. The fact that something does not make as much progress as we we wish does not say anything at all about its necessity. If that were the case, we should also assess all the work of the pioneers of the syndicalist movement in Germany as very modest, since they also did not get the success which they maybe had expected. And no-one will contest that men, who go every day to their workplaces, are much easier to reach than women who, withdrawn in their families, are much too difficult to influence with new ideas.

If someone talks about the little success of the women’s unions, there is one circumstance they must not fail to mention: it is unfortunately an indisputable fact that a whole number of our comrades are anyway against their wives taking part in the movement. For a long time, especially in Germany, a deeply-ingrained prejudice played the lead role. The fear of having to warm up their evening bread themselves for once, if their wives attended a meeting, or just the dread that she could run away from them if she heard people speak about freedom or—God forbid—free love, often lead to really strange results. How laughable and petty as these objections should be, they nonetheless exist and are making the fight of women for their issues naturally all the harder. If we take all of this into consideration, we must not be surprised if the women’s unions have not managed to reach any major results so far.

That women are realising they need to do something is unquestionable. It is the duty of our comrades to support this inclination and to develop it, instead of nipping it in the bud.

Let’s treat women’s unions not as something trivial, but as a part of the general movement. It would be ridiculous to think that a movement with such goals as the syndicalist movement’s could ever reach those without the practical help of the women. Even the most conservative of men no longer dare to suggest this today. In the area of parliamentary politics, women have today become an important factor, and assuredly a scary reactionary factor, which doesn’t surprise us in the least, as we could predict it. An element which for centuries has been kept in blindness and ignorance, and which is then given full representation to take decisions, even if only in appearance, in public affairs, must logically help to reinforce the ranks of the reaction.

We, on the other hand, who know that the duties of women just as those of men lie in an entirely different area, must use all means of propaganda to lead women onto a new path. We must get the message across to them that their field of action does not lie in the parliamentary area, but that her effectiveness lies first and foremost in cultural affairs and in the economic field, where she comes into consideration especially as a consumer and can serve the good of all through her influence.

Luckily people have also already undertaken other steps in this task elsewhere. Thus the English comrades are now strongly concerned with the issue of organising consumers into women’s guilds, where they are trained and taught in all the issues of economic life.

The best experts are selected for this explanatory work which has shown remarkable results. We always come to the same conclusion that the economy is the most important factor of social life and that, especially in this matter, the involvement of women as consumers is of vital importance. We are therefore following the right path.

It would now be desirable if people also stood by us and not just in theory, but always determined themselves to go over to the work of cultural and economic education, in order to develop a larger work field for the women’s unions, which could make them financially independent.

How would it be if we created, everywhere where there are women’s unions, small consumers’ leagues, which would then acquire bulk buy for their members, and use the profit which would thus be taken from the middleman for the spreading of our propaganda? In this way, the women’s unions need not be a financial burden on the general movement and can at the same time do their propaganda and launch their initiative in these modest beginnings. Such experiments can lead to many consequences, about which I will not go into more details. The main point is that it is a start. To implement this suggestion, our women comrades must above all assemble where the women’s groups are, to be clear on the details of the beginning, and to discover means and ways.

Above all else, we must have the will to do something. Everything else will then fall into place.

1. Equal Suffrage, Dr. Helen Sumner.↩

2. Equal Suffrage.↩

3. Dr. Helen A. Sumner.↩

4. Mr. Shackleton was a labor leader. It is therefore self evident that he should introduce a bill excluding his own constituents. The English Parliament is full of such Judases.↩

5. Equal Suffrage, Dr. Helen A. Sumner↩

Russian Revolution

The post-revolutionary Bolshevik government in Russia implemented extensive women’s rights legislation, including the right to divorce, abortion on demand, and formal legal equality. These reforms offered women greater legal rights than those won in any other country at the time, a fact Lenin drew repeated attention to to gain international support for the Russian Revolution.

Alexandra Kollontai was a leading Bolshevik scholar and revolutionary, the only woman on the Party’s Central Committee. In various roles in the Soviet government, she worked to create new, large-scale institutions that would collectivize women’s reproductive labor, thereby transforming gender relations and ending the need for the family unit. We recommend reading this piece alongside her essays in Communist Interventions, vol. 1.

In the 1930s, the Soviet government rolled back its attempts to collectivize domestic labor, reviving the family as a productive unit. The last reading, by exiled Red Army founder Leon Trotsky, traces the abandonment of women’s emancipation by the Soviet Union.

For secondary readings, we continue with Echols, as well as a podcast on sexuality in the Russian Revolution.

Secondary sources: Jason Yanowitz, “Sex and Sexuality in Soviet Russia,” podcast. http://wearemany.org/a/2013/06/sex-and-sexuality-in-soviet-russia

Alice Echols, Ch. 3 (pp. 103–137), Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967–1975, University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

V.I. Lenin, Speech at the First All-Russia Congress of Working Women (1918)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/nov/19.htm

Published: Pravda No. 253, 22 November, 1918.

Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, vol. 28. Progress Publishers, 1974.

(Comrade Lenin is greeted by the delegates with stormy applause.) Comrades, in a certain sense this Congress of the women’s section of the workers’ army has a special significance, because one of the hardest things in every country has been to stir the women into action. There can be no socialist revolution unless very many working women take a big part in it.

In all civilised countries, even the most advanced, women are actually no more than domestic slaves. Women do not enjoy full equality in any capitalist state, not even in the freest of republics.

One of the primary tasks of the Soviet Republic is to abolish all restrictions on women’s rights. The Soviet government has completely abolished divorce proceedings, that source of bourgeois degradation, repression and humiliation.

It will soon be a year now since complete freedom of divorce was legislated. We have passed a decree annulling all distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children and removing political restrictions. Nowhere else in the world have equality and freedom for working women been so fully established.

We know that it is the working-class woman who has to bear the full brunt of antiquated codes.

For the first time in history, our law has removed everything that denied women rights. But the important thing is not the law. In the cities and industrial areas this law on complete freedom of marriage is doing all right, but in the countryside it all too frequently remains a dead letter. There the religious marriage still predominates. This is due to the influence of the priests, an evil that is harder to combat than the old legislation.

We must be extremely careful in fighting religious prejudices; some people cause a lot of harm in this struggle by offending religious feelings. We must use propaganda and education. By lending too sharp an edge to the struggle we may only arouse popular resentment; such methods of struggle tend to perpetuate the division of the people along religious lines, whereas our strength lies in unity. The deepest source of religious prejudice is poverty and ignorance; and that is the evil we have to combat.

The status of women up to now has been compared to that of a slave; women have been tied to the home, and only socialism can save them from this. They will only be completely emancipated when we change from small-scale individual farming to collective farming and collective working of the land. That is a difficult task. But now that Poor Peasants’ Committees are being formed, the time has come when the socialist revolution is being consolidated.

The poorest part of the rural population is only now beginning to organise, and socialism is acquiring a firm foundation in these organisations of poor peasants.

Before, often the town became revolutionary and then the countryside.

But the present revolution relies on the countryside, and therein lie its significance and strength. The experience of all liberation movements has shown that the success of a revolution depends on how much the women take part in it. The Soviet government is doing everything in its power to enable women to carry on independent proletarian socialist work.

The Soviet government is in a difficult position because the imperialists of all countries hate Soviet Russia and are preparing to go to war with her for kindling the fire of revolution in a number of countries and for taking determined steps towards socialism.

Now that they are out to destroy revolutionary Russia, the ground is beginning to burn under their own feet. You know how the revolutionary movement is spreading in Germany. In Denmark the workers are fighting their government. In Switzerland and Holland the revolutionary movement is getting stronger. The revolutionary movement in these small countries has no importance in itself, but it is particularly significant because there was no war in these countries and they had the most “constitutional” democratic system. If countries like these are stirring into action, it makes us sure the revolutionary movement is gaining ground all over the world. No other republic has so far been able to emancipate woman. The Soviet Government is helping her. Our cause is invincible because the invincible working class is rising in all countries. This movement signifies the spread of the invincible socialist revolution. (Prolonged applause. All sing the “Internationale”.)

V.I. Lenin, Soviet Power and the Status of Women (1919)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/nov/06.htm

Published: Pravda. No. 249, November 6, 1919.

Source: Women and Communism: Selections from the Writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. Lawrence and Wishart, 1950.

The second anniversary of the Soviet power is a fitting occasion for us to review what has, in general, been accomplished during this period, and to probe into the significance and aims of the revolution which we accomplished.

The bourgeoisie and its supporters accuse us of violating democracy. We maintain that the Soviet revolution has given an unprecedented stimulus to the development of democracy both in depth and breadth, of democracy, moreover, distinctly for the toiling masses, who had been oppressed under capitalism; consequently, of democracy for the vast majority of the people, of socialist democracy (for the toilers) as distinguished from bourgeois democracy (for the exploiters, the capitalists, the rich).

Who is right?

To probe deeply into this question and to understand it well will mean studying the experience of these two years and being better prepared to further follow up this experience.

The position of women furnishes a particularly graphic elucidation of the difference between bourgeois and socialist democracy, it furnishes a particularly graphic answer to the question posed.

In no bourgeois republic (i.e., where there is private ownership of the land, factories, works, shares, etc.), be it even the most democratic republic, nowhere in the world, not even in the most advanced country, have women gained a position of complete equality. And this, notwithstanding the fact that more than one and a quarter centuries have elapsed since the Great French (bourgeois-democratic) Revolution.

In words, bourgeois democracy promises equality and liberty. In fact, not a single bourgeois republic, not even the most advanced one, has given the feminine half of the human race either full legal equality with men or freedom from the guardianship and oppression of men.

Bourgeois democracy is democracy of pompous phrases, solemn words, exuberant promises and the high-sounding slogans of freedom and equality. But, in fact, it screens the non-freedom and inferiority of women, the non-freedom and inferiority of the toilers and exploited.

Soviet, or socialist, democracy sweeps aside the pompous, bullying, words, declares ruthless war on the hypocrisy of the “democrats,” the landlords, capitalists or well-fed peasants who are making money by selling their surplus bread to hungry workers at profiteering prices.

Down with this contemptible fraud! There cannot be, nor is there nor will there ever be “equality” between the oppressed and the oppressors, between the exploited and the exploiters. There cannot be, nor is there nor will there ever be real “freedom” as long as there is no freedom for women from the privileges which the law grants to men, as long as there is no freedom for the workers from the yoke of capital, and no freedom for the toiling peasants from the yoke of the capitalists, landlords and merchants.

Let the liars and hypocrites, the dull-witted and blind, the bourgeois and their supporters hoodwink the people with talk about freedom in general, about equality in general, about democracy in general.

We say to the workers and peasants: Tear the masks from the faces of these liars, open the eyes of these blind ones. Ask them:

“Equality between what sex and what other sex?”

“Between what nation and what other nation?”

“Between what class and what other class?”

“Freedom from what yoke, or from the yoke of what class? Freedom for what class?”

Whoever speaks of politics, of democracy, of liberty, of equality, of socialism, and does not at the same time ask these questions, does not put them in the foreground, does not fight against concealing, hushing up and glossing over these questions, is one of the worst enemies of the toilers, is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, is a bitter opponent of the workers and peasants, is a servant of the landlords, tsars, capitalists.

In the course of two years Soviet power in one of the most backward countries of Europe did more to emancipate women and to make their status equal to that of the “strong” sex than all the advanced, enlightened, “democratic” republics of the world did in the course of 130 years.

Enlightenment, culture, civilisation, liberty—in all capitalist, bourgeois republics of the world all these fine words are combined with extremely infamous, disgustingly filthy and brutally coarse laws in which woman is treated as an inferior being, laws dealing with marriage rights and divorce, with the inferior status of a child born out of wedlock as compared with that of a “legitimate” child, laws granting privileges to men, laws that are humiliating and insulting to women.

The yoke of capital, the tyranny of “sacred private property,” the despotism of philistine stupidity, the greed of petty proprietors—these are the things that prevented the most democratic bourgeois republics from infringing upon those filthy and infamous laws.

The Soviet Republic, the republic of workers and peasants, promptly wiped out these laws and left not a stone in the structure of bourgeois fraud and bourgeois hypocrisy.

Down with this fraud! Down with the liars who are talking of freedom and equality for all, while there is an oppressed sex, while there are oppressor classes, while there is private ownership of capital, of shares, while there are the well-fed with their surplus of bread who keep the hungry in bondage. Not freedom for all, not equality for all, but a fight against the oppressors and exploiters, the abolition of every possibility of oppression and exploitation—that is our slogan!

Freedom and equality for the oppressed sex!

Freedom and equality for the workers, for the toiling peasants!

A fight against the oppressors, a fight against the capitalists, a fight against the profiteering kulaks!

That is our fighting slogan, that is our proletarian truth, the truth of the struggle against capital, the truth which we flung in the face of the world of capital with its honeyed, hypocritical, pompous phrases about freedom and equality in general, about freedom and equality for all.

And for the very reason that we have torn down the mask of this hypocrisy, that we are introducing with revolutionary energy freedom and equality for the oppressed and for the toilers, against the oppressors, against the capitalists, against the kulaks—for this very reason the Soviet government has become so dear to the hearts of workers of the whole world.

It is for this very reason that, on the second anniversary of the Soviet power, the: sympathies of the masses of the workers, the sympathies of the oppressed and exploited in every country of the world, are with us.

It is for this very reason that, on this second anniversary of the Soviet power, despite hunger and cold, despite all our tribulations, which have been caused by the imperialists’ invasion of the Russian Soviet Republic, we are full of firm faith in the justice of our cause, of firm faith in the inevitable victory of Soviet power all over the world.

Clara Zetkin, Lenin on the Woman Question (1920)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1920/lenin/zetkin1.htm

Clara Zetkin, “Lenin on the Woman Question,” The Emancipation of Women: From the Writings of V.I. Lenin. International Publishers, 1966.

Comrade Lenin frequently spoke to me about the women’s question. Social equality for women was, of course, a principle needing no discussion for communists. It was in Lenin’s large study in the Kremlin in the autumn of 1920 that we had our first long conversation on the subject.

“We must create a powerful international women’s movement, on a clear theoretical basis,” Lenin began.

There is no good practice without Marxist theory, that is clear. The greatest clarity of principle is necessary for us communists in this question. There must be a sharp distinction between ourselves and all other Parties. Unfortunately, our Second World Congress did not deal with this question. It was brought forward, but no decision arrived at. The matter is still in commission, which should draw up a resolution, theses, directions. Up to the present, however, they haven’t got very far. You will have to help.

I was already acquainted with what Lenin said and expressed my astonishment at the state of affairs. I was filled with enthusiasm about the work done by Russian women in the revolution and still being done by them in its defence and further development. And as for the position and activities of women comrades in the Bolshevik Party, that seemed to me a model Party. It alone formed an international communist women’s movement of useful, trained and experienced forces and a historical example.

Movement of Working Women

“That is right, that is all very true and fine,” said Lenin, with a quiet smile.

In Petrograd, here in Moscow, in other towns and industrial centres the women workers acted splendidly during the revolution. Without them we should not have been victorious. Or scarcely so. That is my opinion. How brave they were, how brave they still are! Think of all the suffering and deprivations they bore. And they are carrying on because they want freedom, want communism. Yes, our proletarian women are excellent class fighters. They deserve admiration and love. Besides, you must remember that even the ladies of the ‘constitutional democracy’ in Petrograd proved more courageous against us than did the junkers. That is true. We have in the Party reliable, capable and untiringly active women comrades. We can assign them to many important posts in the Soviet and Executive Committees, in the People’s Commissariats and public services of every kind. Many of them work day and night in the Party or among the masses of the proletariat, the peasants, the Red Army. That is of very great value to us. It is also important for women all over the world. It shows the capacity of women, the great value their work has in society. The first proletarian dictatorship is a real pioneer in establishing social equality for women. It is clearing away more prejudices than could volumes of feminist literature. But even with all that we still have no international communist women’s movement, and that we must have. We must start at once to create it. Without that the work of our International and of its Parties is not complete work, can never be complete. But our work for the revolution must be complete. Tell me how communist work is going on abroad.

Lenin listened attentively, his body inclined forward slightly, following, without a trace of boredom, impatience or weariness, even incidental matters.

“Not bad, not at all bad,” said Lenin.

The energy, willingness and enthusiasm of women comrades, their courage and wisdom in times of illegality or semi-legality indicate good prospects for the development of our work. They are valuable factors in extending the Party and increasing its strength, in winning the masses and carrying on our activities. But what about the training and clarity of principle of these men and women comrades? It is of fundamental importance for work among the masses. It is of great influence on what closely concerns the masses, how they can be won, how made enthusiastic. I forget for the moment who said: ‘One must be enthusiastic to accomplish great things.’ We and the toilers of the whole world have really great things to accomplish. So what makes your comrades, the proletarian women of Germany, enthusiastic? What about their proletarian class-consciousness; are their interests, their activities concentrated on immediate political demands? What is the mainspring of their ideas?

I have heard some peculiar things on this matter from Russian and German comrades. I must tell you. I was told that a talented woman communist in Hamburg is publishing a paper for prostitutes and that she wants to organise them for the revolutionary fight. Rosa acted and felt as a communist when in an article she championed the cause of the prostitutes who were imprisoned for any transgression of police regulations in carrying on their dreary trade. They are, unfortunately, doubly sacrificed by bourgeois society. First, by its accursed property system, and, secondly, by its accursed moral hypocrisy. That is obvious. Only he who is brutal or short-sighted can forget it. But still, that is not at all the same thing as considering prostitutes—how shall I put it?—to be a special revolutionary militant section, as organising them and publishing a factory paper for them. Aren’t there really any other working women in Germany to organise, for whom a paper can be issued, who must be drawn into your struggles? The other is only a diseased excrescence. It reminds me of the literary fashion of painting every prostitute as a sweet Madonna. The origin of that was healthy, too: social sympathy, rebellion against the virtuous hypocrisy of the respectable bourgeois. But the healthy part became corrupted and degenerate.

Besides, the question of prostitutes will give rise to many serious problems here. Take them back to productive work, bring them into the social economy. That is what we must do. But it is difficult and a complicated task to carry out in the present conditions of our economic life and in all the prevailing circumstances. There you have one aspect of the women’s problem which, after the seizure of power by the proletariat, looms large before us and demands a practical solution. It will give us a great deal of work here in Soviet Russia. But to go back to your position in Germany. The Party must not in any circumstances calmly stand by and watch such mischievous conduct on the part of its members. It creates confusion and divides the forces. And you yourself, what have you done against it?

Sex and Marriage

Before I could answer, Lenin continued:

Your list of sins, Clara, is still longer. I was told that questions of sex and marriage are the main subjects dealt with in the reading and discussion evenings of women comrades. They are the chief subject of interest, of political instruction and education. I could scarcely believe my ears when I heard it. The first country of proletarian dictatorship surrounded by the counter-revolutionaries of the whole world, the situation in Germany itself requires the greatest possible concentration of all proletarian, revolutionary forces to defeat the ever-growing and ever-increasing counter-revolution. But working women comrades discuss sexual problems and the question of forms of marriage in the past, present and future. They think it their most important duty to enlighten proletarian women on these subjects. The most widely read brochure is, I believe, the pamphlet of a young Viennese woman comrade on the sexual problem. What a waste! What truth there is in it the workers have already read in Bebel, long ago. Only not so boringly, not so heavily written as in the pamphlet, but written strongly, bitterly, aggressively, against bourgeois society.

The extension of Freudian hypotheses seems ‘educated’, even scientific, but it is ignorant, bungling. Freudian theory is the modern fashion. I mistrust the sexual theories of the articles, dissertations, pamphlets, etc., in short, of that particular kind of literature which flourishes luxuriantly in the dirty soil of bourgeois society. I mistrust those who are always contemplating the several questions, like the Indian saint his navel. It seems to me that these flourishing sexual theories which are mainly hypothetical, and often quite arbitrary hypotheses, arise from the personal need to justify personal abnormality or hypertrophy in sexual life before bourgeois morality, and to entreat its patience. This masked respect for bourgeois morality seems to me just as repulsive as poking about in sexual matters. However wild and revolutionary the behaviour may be, it is still really quite bourgeois. It is, mainly, a hobby of the intellectuals and of the sections nearest them. There is no place for it in the Party, in the class-conscious, fighting proletariat.

I interrupted here, saying that the questions of sex and marriage, in a bourgeois society of private property, involve many problems, conflicts and much suffering for women of all social classes and ranks. The war and its consequences had greatly accentuated the conflicts and sufferings of women in sexual matters, had brought to light problems which were formerly hidden from them. To that were added the effects of the revolution. The old world of feeling and thought had begun to totter. Old social ties are entangling and breaking, there are the tendencies towards new ideological relationships between man and woman. The interest shown in these questions is an expression of the need for enlightenment and reorientation. It also indicates a reaction against the falseness and hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Forms of marriage and of the family, in their historical development and dependence upon economic life, are calculated to destroy the superstition existing in the minds of working women concerning the eternal character of bourgeois society. A critical, historical attitude to those problems must lead to a ruthless examination of bourgeois society, to a disclosure of its real nature and effects, including condemnation of its sexual morality and falseness. All roads lead to Rome. And every real Marxist analysis of any important section of the ideological superstructure of society, of a predominating social phenomenon, must lead to an analysis of bourgeois society and of its property basis, must end in the realisation, “this must be destroyed.”

Lenin nodded laughingly.

There we have it! You are defending counsel for your women comrades and your Party. Of course, what you say is right. But it only excuses the mistakes made in Germany; it does not justify them. They are, and remain, mistakes. Can you really seriously assure me that the questions of sex and marriage were discussed from the standpoint of a mature, living, historical materialism? Deep and many-sided knowledge is necessary for that, the dearest Marxist mastery of a great amount of material. Where can you get the forces for that now? If they existed, then pamphlets like the one I mentioned would not be used as material for study in the reading and discussion circles. They are distributed and recommended, instead of being criticised. And what is the result of this futile, un-Marxist dealing with the question? That questions of sex and marriage are understood not as part of the large social question? No, worse! The great social question appears as an adjunct, a part, of sexual problems. The main thing becomes a subsidiary matter. That not only endangers clarity on that question itself, it muddles the thoughts, the class-consciousness of proletarian women generally.

Last and not least. Even the wise Solomon said that everything has its time. I ask you: Is now the time to amuse proletarian women with discussions on how one loves and is loved, how one marries and is married? Of course, in the past, present and future, and among different nations—what is proudly called historical materialism! Now all the thoughts of women comrades, of the women of the working people, must be directed towards the proletarian revolution. It creates the basis for a real renovation in marriage and sexual relations. At the moment other problems are more urgent than the marriage forms of Maoris or incest in olden times. The question of Soviets is still on the agenda for the German proletariat. The Versailles Treaty and its effect on the life of the working woman—unemployment, falling wages, taxes, and a great deal more. In short, I maintain that this kind of political, social education for proletarian women is false, quite, quite false. How could you be silent about it? You must use your authority against it.

Sexual Morality

I have not failed to criticise and remonstrate with leading women comrades in the separate districts, I told him. By my criticism I had laid myself open to the charge of “strong survivals of social democratic ideology and old-fashioned philistinism.”

“I know, I know,” he said.

I have also been accused by many people of philistinism in this matter, although that is repulsive to me. There is so much hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness in it. Well, I’m bearing it calmly! The little yellow-beaked birds who have just broken from the egg of bourgeois ideas are always frightfully clever. We shall have to let that go. The youth movement, too, is attacked with the disease of modernity in its attitude towards sexual questions and in being exaggeratedly concerned with them.

Lenin gave an ironic emphasis to the word modernity and grimaced as he did so.

I have been told that sexual questions are the favourite study of your youth organisations, too. There is supposed to be a lack of sufficient speakers on the subject. Such misconceptions are particularly harmful, particularly dangerous in the youth movement. They can very easily contribute towards over-excitement and exaggeration in the sexual life of some of them, to a waste of youthful health and strength. You must fight against that, too. There are not a few points of contact between the women’s and youth movements. Our women comrades must work together systematically with the youth. That is a continuation, an extension and exaltation of motherliness from the individual to the social sphere. And all the awakening social life and activity of women must be encouraged, so that they can discard the limitations of their philistine individualist home and family psychology. But we’ll come to that later.

With us, too, a large part of the youth is keen on ‘revising bourgeois conceptions and morality’ concerning sexual questions. And, I must add, a large part of our best, our most promising young people. What you said before is true. In the conditions created by the war and the revolution the old ideological values disappeared or lost their binding force. The new values are crystallising slowly, in struggle. In relations between man and man, between man and woman, feelings and thoughts are becoming revolutionised. New boundaries are being set up between the rights of the individual and the rights of the whole, in the duties of individuals. The matter is still in a complete chaotic ferment. The direction, the forces of development in the various contradictory tendencies are not yet clearly defined. It is a slow and often a very painful process of decay and growth. And particularly in the sphere of sexual relationships, of marriage and the family. The decay, the corruption, the filth of bourgeois marriage, with its difficult divorce, its freedom for the man, its enslavement for the woman, the repulsive hypocrisy of sexual morality and relations fill the most active minded and best people with deep disgust.

The constraint of bourgeois marriage and the family laws of bourgeois states accentuate these evils and conflicts. It is the force of ‘holy property’. It sanctifies venality, degradation, filth. And the conventional hypocrisy of honest bourgeois society does the rest. People are beginning to protest against the prevailing rottenness and falseness, and the feelings of an individual change rapidly. The desire and urge to enjoyment easily attain unbridled force at a time when powerful empires are tottering, old forms of rule breaking down, when a whole social world is beginning to disappear. Sex and marriage forms, in their bourgeois sense, are unsatisfactory. A revolution in sex and marriage is approaching, corresponding to the proletarian revolution. It is easily comprehensible that the very involved complex of problems brought into existence should occupy the mind of the youth, as well as of women. They suffer particularly under present-day sexual grievances. They are rebelling with all the impetuosity of their years. We can understand that. Nothing could be more false than to preach monkish asceticism and the sanctity of dirty bourgeois morality to the youth. It is particularly serious if sex becomes the main mental concern during those years when it is physically most obvious. What fatal effects that has!

The changed attitude of the young people to questions of sexual life is of course based on a ‘principle’ and a theory. Many of them call their attitude ‘revolutionary’ and ‘communist’. And they honestly believe that it is so. That does not impress us old people. Although I am nothing but a gloomy ascetic, the so-called ‘new sexual life’ of the youth—and sometimes of the old—often seems to me to be purely bourgeois, an extension of bourgeois brothels. That has nothing whatever in common with freedom of love as we communists understand it. You must be aware of the famous theory that in communist society the satisfaction of sexual desires, of love, will be as simple and unimportant as drinking a glass of water. This glass of water theory has made our young people mad, quite mad. It has proved fatal to many young boys and girls. Its adherents maintain that it is Marxist. But thanks for such Marxism which directly and immediately attributes all phenomena and changes in the ideological superstructure of society to its economic basis! Matters aren’t quite as simple as that. A certain Frederich Engels pointed that out a long time ago with regard to historical materialism.

I think this glass of water theory is completely un-Marxist, and, moreover, anti-social. In sexual life there is not only simple nature to be considered, but also cultural characteristics, whether they are of a high or low order. In his Origin of the Family Engels showed how significant is the development and refinement of the general sex urge into individual sex love. The relations of the sexes to each other are not simply an expression of the play of forces between the economics of society and a physical need, isolated in thought, by study, from the physiological aspect. It is rationalism, and not Marxism, to want to trace changes in these relations directly, and dissociated from their connections with ideology as a whole, to the economic foundations of society. Of course, thirst must be satisfied. But will the normal person in normal circumstances lie down in the gutter and drink out of a puddle, or out of a glass with a rim greasy from many lips? But the social aspect is most important of all. Drinking water is, of course, an individual affair. But in love two lives are concerned, and a third, a new life, arises, it is that which gives it its social interest, which gives rise to a duty towards the community.

As a communist I have not the least sympathy for the glass of water theory, although it bears the fine title ‘satisfaction of love’. In any case, this liberation of love is neither new, nor communist. You will remember that about the middle of the last century it was preached as the ‘emancipation of the heart’ in romantic literature. In bourgeois practice it became the emancipation of the flesh. At that time the preaching was more talented than it is today, and as for the practice, I cannot judge. I don’t mean to preach asceticism by my criticism. Not in the least. Communism will not bring asceticism, but joy of life, power of life, and a satisfied love life will help to do that. But in my opinion the present widespread hypertrophy in sexual matters does not give joy and force to life, but takes it away. In the age of revolution that is bad, very bad.

Young people, particularly, need the joy and force of life. Healthy sport, swimming, racing, walking, bodily exercises of every kind, and many-sided intellectual interests. Learning, studying, inquiry, as far as possible in common. That will give young people more than eternal theories and discussions about sexual problems and the so-called ‘living to the full’. Healthy bodies, healthy minds! Neither monk nor Don Juan, nor the intermediate attitude of the German philistines. You know, young comrade—? A splendid boy, and highly talented. And yet I fear that nothing good will come out of him. He reels and staggers from one love affair to the next. That won’t do for the political struggle, for the revolution. And I wouldn’t bet on the reliability, the endurance in struggle of those women who confuse their personal romances with politics. Nor on the men who run petticoat and get entrapped by every young woman. That does not square with the revolution.

The revolution demands concentration, increase of forces. From the masses, from individuals. It cannot tolerate orgiastic conditions, such as are normal for the decadent heroes and heroines of D’Annunzio. Dissoluteness in sexual life is bourgeois, is a phenomenon of decay. The proletariat is a rising class. It doesn’t need intoxication as a narcotic or a stimulus. Intoxication as little by sexual exaggeration as by alcohol. It must not and shall not forget, forget the shame, the filth, the savagery of capitalism. It receives the strongest urge to fight from a class situation, from the communist ideal. It needs clarity, clarity and again clarity. And so I repeat, no weakening, no waste, no destruction of forces. Self-control, self-discipline is not slavery, not even in love. But forgive me, Clara, I have wandered far from the starting point of our conversation. Why didn’t you call me to order. My tongue has run away with me. I am deeply concerned about the future of our youth. It is a part of the revolution. And if harmful tendencies are appearing, creeping over from bourgeois society into the world of revolution—as the roots of many weeds spread—it is better to combat them early. Such questions are part of the women question.

Principles of Organisation

Lenin glanced at the clock. “Half of the time I had set aside for you has already gone,” he said. “I have been chattering. You will draw up proposals for communist work among women. I know your principles and practical experience in the matter. So there need not be much for us to discuss. Fire away. What sort of proposals have you in mind?”

I gave a concise account of them. Lenin nodded repeatedly in agreement without interrupting me. When I had finished, I looked at him questioningly.

“Agreed,” said he.

I only want to dwell on a few main points, in which I fully share your attitude. They seem to me to be important for our current agitation and propaganda work, if that work is to lead to action and successful struggles.

The thesis must clearly point out that real freedom for women is possible only through communism. The inseparable connection between the social and human position of the woman, and private property in the means of production, must be strongly brought out. That will draw a clear and ineradicable line of distinction between our policy and feminism. And it will also supply the basis for regarding the woman question as a part of the social question, of the workers’ problem, and so bind it firmly to the proletarian class struggle and the revolution. The communist women’s movement must itself be a mass movement, a part of the general mass movement. Not only of the proletariat, but of all the exploited and oppressed, all the victims of capitalism or any other mastery. In that lies its significance for the class struggles of the proletariat and for its historical creation communist society. We can rightly be proud of the fact that in the Party, in the Communist International, we have the flower of revolutionary woman kind. But that is not enough. We must win over to our side the millions of working women in the towns and villages. Win them for our struggles and in particular for the communist transformation of society. There can be no real mass movement without women.

Our ideological conceptions give rise to principles of organisation. No special organisations for women. A woman communist is a member of the Party just as a man communist, with equal rights and duties. There can be no difference of opinion on that score. Nevertheless, we must not close our eyes to the fact that the Party must have bodies, working groups, commissions, committees, bureaus or whatever you like, whose particular duty it is to arouse the masses of women workers, to bring them into contact with the Party, and to keep them under its influence. That, of course, involves systematic work among them. We must train those whom we arouse and win, and equip them for the proletarian class struggle under the leadership of the Communist Party. I am thinking not only of proletarian women, whether they work in the factory or at home. The poor peasant women, the petty bourgeois—they, too, are the prey of capitalism, and more so than ever since the war. The unpolitical, unsocial, backward psychology of these women, their isolated sphere of activity, the entire manner of their life—these are facts. It would be absurd to overlook them, absolutely absurd. We need appropriate bodies to carry on work amongst them, special methods of agitation and forms of organisation. That is not feminism, that is practical, revolutionary expediency.

I told Lenin that his words encouraged me greatly. Many comrades, and good comrades at that, strongly combated the idea that the Party should have special bodies for systematic work among women.

“That is neither new nor proof,” said Lenin.

You must not be misled by that. Why have we never had as many women as men in the Party—not at any time in Soviet Russia? Why is the number of women workers organised in trade unions so small? Facts give food for thought. The rejection of the necessity for separate bodies for our work among the women masses is a conception allied to those of our highly principled and most radical friends of the Communist Labour Party. According to them there must be only one form of organisation, workers’ unions. I know them. Many revolutionary but confused minds appeal to principle ‘whenever ideas are lacking.’ That is, when the mind is closed to the sober facts, which must be considered. How do such guardians of ‘pure principle’ square their ideas with the necessities of the revolutionary policy historically forced upon us? All that sort of talk breaks down before inexorable necessity. Unless millions of women are with us we cannot exercise the proletarian dictatorship, cannot construct on communist lines. We must find our way to them, we must study and try to find that way.

Immediate Demands

That is why it is right for us to put forward demands favourable to women. That is not a minimum, a reform programme in the sense of the Social Democrats, of the Second International. It is not a recognition that we believe in the eternal character, or even in the long duration of the rule of the bourgeoisie and their state. It is not an attempt to appease women by reforms and to divert them from the path of revolutionary struggle. It is not that nor any other reformist swindle. Our demands are practical conclusions which we have drawn from the burning needs, the shameful humiliation of women, in bourgeois society, defenceless and without rights. We demonstrate thereby that we recognise these needs, and are sensible of the humiliation of the woman, the privileges of the man. That we hate, yes, hate everything, and will abolish everything which tortures and oppresses the woman worker, the housewife, the peasant woman, the wife of the petty trader, yes, and in many cases the women of the possessing classes. The rights and social regulations which we demand for women from bourgeois society show that we understand the position and interests of women, and will have consideration for them under the proletarian dictatorship. Not of course, as the reformists do, lulling them to inaction and keeping them in leading strings. No, of course not; but as revolutionaries who call upon the women to work as equals in transforming the old economy and ideology.

I assured Lenin that I shared his views, but that they would certainly meet with resistance. Nor could it be denied that our immediate demands for women could be wrongly drawn up and expressed.

“Nonsense!” said Lenin, almost bad temperedly.

That danger is present in everything that we do and say. If we were to be deterred by fear of that from doing what is correct and necessary, we might as well become Indian Stylites. Don’t move, don’t move, we can contemplate our principles from a high pillar! Of course, we are concerned not only with the contents of our demands, but with the manner in which we present them. I thought I had made that clear enough. Of course we shan’t put forward our demands for women as though we were mechanically counting our beads. No, according to the prevailing circumstances, we must fight now for this, now for that. And, of course, always in connection with the general interests of the proletariat.

Every such struggle brings us in opposition to respectable bourgeois relationships, and to their not less respectable reformist admirers whom it compels, either to fight together with us under our leadership—which they don’t want to do—or to be shown up in their true colours. That is, the struggle clearly brings out the differences between us and other Parties, brings out our communism. It wins us the confidence of the masses of women who feel themselves exploited, enslaved, suppressed, by the domination of the man, by the power of the employer, by the whole of bourgeois society. Betrayed and deserted by all, the working women will recognise that they must fight together with us.

Must I again swear to you, or let you swear, that the struggles for our demands for women must be bound up with the object of seizing power, of establishing the proletarian dictatorship? That is our Alpha and Omega at the present time. That is clear, quite clear. But the women of the working people will not feel irresistibly driven into sharing our struggles for the state power if we only and always put forward that one demand, though it were with the trumpets of Jericho. No, no! The women must be made conscious of the political connection between our demands and their own suffering, needs, and wishes. They must realise what the proletarian dictatorship means for them: complete equality with man in law and practice, in the family, in the state, in society; an end to the power of the bourgeoisie.

“Soviet Russia shows that,” I interrupted.

“That will be the great example in our teaching,” Lenin continued.

Soviet Russia puts our demands for women in a new light. Under the proletarian dictatorship those demands are not objects of struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. They are part of the structure of communist society. That indicates to women in other countries the decisive importance of the winning of power by the proletariat. The difference must be sharply emphasised, so as to get the women into the revolutionary class struggle of the proletariat. It is essential for the Communist Parties, and for their triumph, to rally them on a clear understanding of principle and a firm organisational basis. But don’t let us deceive ourselves. Our national sections still lack a correct understanding of this matter. They are standing idly by while there is this task of creating a mass movement of working women under communist leadership. They don’t understand that the development and management of such a mass movement is an important part of entire Party activity, indeed, a half of general Party work. Their occasional recognition of the necessity and value of a powerful, clear-headed communist women’s movement is a platonic verbal recognition, not the constant care and obligation of the Party.

What About the Men?

Agitation and propaganda work among women, their awakening and revolutionisation, is regarded as an incidental matter, as an affair which only concerns women comrades. They alone are reproached because work in that direction does not proceed more quickly and more vigorously. That is wrong, quite wrong! Real separatism and as the French say, feminism à la rebours, feminism upside down! What is at the basis of the incorrect attitude of our national sections? In the final analysis it is nothing but an under-estimation of woman and her work. Yes, indeed! Unfortunately it is still true to say of many of our comrades, ‘scratch a communist and find a Philistine.’ Of course, you must scratch the sensitive spot, their mentality as regards women. Could there be a more damning proof of this than the calm acquiescence of men who see how women grow worn out in the petty, monotonous household work, their strength and time dissipated and wasted, their minds growing narrow and stale, their hearts beating slowly, their will weakened! Of course, I am not speaking of the ladies of the bourgeoisie who shove on to servants the responsibility for all household work, including the care of children. What I am saying applies to the overwhelming majority of women, to the wives of workers and to those who stand all day in a factory.

So few men—even among the proletariat—realise how much effort and trouble they could save women, even quite do away with, if they were to lend a hand in ‘women’s work.’ But no, that is contrary to the ‘rights and dignity of a man.’ They want their peace and comfort. The home life of the woman is a daily sacrifice to a thousand unimportant trivialities. The old master right of the man still lives in secret. His slave takes her revenge, also secretly. The backwardness of women, their lack of understanding for the revolutionary ideals of the man decrease his joy and determination in fighting. They are like little worms which, unseen, slowly but surely, rot and corrode. I know the life of the worker, and not only from books. Our communist work among the women, our political work, embraces a great deal of educational work among men. We must root out the old ‘master’ idea to its last and smallest root, in the Party and among the masses. That is one of our political tasks, just as is the urgently necessary task of forming a staff of men and women comrades, well trained in theory and practice, to carry on Party activity among working women.

Millions Building New Life

To my question about the conditions in Soviet Russia on this point, Lenin replied:

The Government of the proletarian dictatorship, together with the Communist Party and trade unions, is of course leaving no stone unturned in the effort to overcome the backward ideas of men and women, to destroy the old un-communist psychology. In law there is naturally complete equality of rights for men and women. And everywhere there is evidence of a sincere wish to put this equality into practice. We are bringing the women into the social economy, into legislation and government. All educational institutions are open to them, so that they can increase their professional and social capacities. We are establishing communal kitchens and public eating-houses, laundries and repairing shops, nurseries, kindergartens, children’s homes, educational institutes of all kinds. In short, we are seriously carrying out the demand in our programme for the transference of the economic and educational functions of the separate household to society. That will mean freedom for the woman from the old household drudgery and dependence on man. That enables her to exercise to the full her talents and her inclinations. The children are brought up under more favourable conditions than at home. We have the most advanced protective laws for women workers in the world, and the officials of the organised workers carry them out. We are establishing maternity hospitals, homes for mothers and children, mothercraft clinics, organising lecture courses on child care, exhibitions teaching mothers how to look after themselves and their children, and similar things. We are making the most serious efforts to maintain women who are unemployed and unprovided for.

We realise clearly that that is not very much, in comparison with the needs of the working women, that it is far from being all that is required for their real freedom. But still it is tremendous progress, as against conditions in tsarist-capitalist Russia. It is even a great deal compared with conditions in countries where capitalism still has a free hand. It is a good beginning in the right direction, and we shall develop it further. With all our energy, you may believe that. For every day of the existence of the Soviet State proves more clearly that we cannot go forward without the women.

Alexandra Kollontai, Communism and the Family (1920)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm

Published: Komunistka, No. 2, 1920, and in English in The Worker, 1920.

Source: Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai, trans. by Alix Holt. Allison and Busby, 1977.

Women’s role in production: its effect upon the family

Will the family continue to exist under communism? Will the family remain in the same form? These questions are troubling many women of the working class and worrying their menfolk as well. Life is changing before our very eyes; old habits and customs are dying out, and the whole life of the proletarian family is developing in a way that is new and unfamiliar and, in the eyes of some, “bizarre.” No wonder that working women are beginning to think these questions over. Another fact that invites attention is that divorce has been made easier in Soviet Russia. The decree of the Council of People’s Commissars issued on 18 December 1917 means that divorce is no longer a luxury that only the rich can afford; henceforth, a working woman will not have to petition for months or even for years to secure the right to live separately from a husband who beats her and makes her life a misery with his drunkenness and uncouth behaviour. Divorce by mutual agreement now takes no more than a week or two to obtain. Women who are unhappy in their married life welcome this easy divorce. But others, particularly those who are used to looking upon their husband as “breadwinners,” are frightened. They have not yet understood that a woman must accustom herself to seek and find support in the collective and in society, and not from the individual man.

There is no point in not facing up to the truth: the old family in which the man was everything and the woman nothing, the typical family where the woman had no will of her own, no time of her own and no money of her own, is changing before our very eyes. But there is no need for alarm. It is only our ignorance that leads us to think that the things we are used to can never change. Nothing could be less true than the saying “as it was, so it shall be.” We have only to read how people lived in the past to see that everything is subject to change and that no customs, political organisations or moral principles are fixed and inviolable. In the course of history, the structure of the family has changed many times; it was once quite different from the family of today. There was a time when the kinship family was considered the norm: the mother headed a family consisting of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who lived and worked together. At another period the patriarchal family was the rule. In this case it was the father whose will was law for all the other members of the family: even today such families may be found among the peasantry in the Russian villages. Here the morals and customs of family life are not those of the urban proletariat. In the countryside, they observe norms which the worker has long forgotten. The structure of the family and the customs of family life also vary from nation to nation. Among some peoples such as the Turks, Arabs and Persians, a man is allowed to have several wives. There have been and there still are tribes where the woman may have several husbands. We are used to the fact that a young girl is expected to remain a virgin until marriage; however, there are tribes where it is a matter of pride to have had many lovers and where the women decorate their arms and legs with the corresponding number of bracelets. Many practices which might astonish us and which might even seem immoral are considered by other peoples to be quite normal and they, in their turn, consider our laws and customs “sinful.” There is, therefore, no reason to be frightened of the fact that the family is in the process of change, and that outdated and unnecessary things are being discarded and new relations between men and women developing. Our job is to decide which aspects of our family system are outdated, and to determine what relations between the men and women of the working and peasant classes and which rights and duties would best harmonise with the conditions of life in the new workers’ Russia. That which is in line with the new life should be maintained, while all that is old and outdated and derives from the cursed epoch of servitude and domination, of landed proprietors and capitalists, should be swept aside together with the exploiting class itself and the other enemies of the proletariat and the poor.

The type of family to which the urban and rural proletariat has grown accustomed is one of these, legacies of the past. There was a time when the isolated, firmly-knit family, based on a church wedding, was equally necessary to all its members. If there had been no family, who would have fed, clothed and brought up the children? Who would have given them advice? In days gone by, to be an orphan was one of the worst fates imaginable. In the family of old, the husband earns and supports his wife and children. The wife for her part is occupied with housekeeping and with bringing up the children as best she can. But over the last hundred years this customary family structure has been falling apart in all the countries where capitalism is dominant and where the number of factories and other enterprises which employ hired labour is increasing. The customs and moral principles of family life are changing as the general conditions of life change. It is the universal spread of female labour that has contributed most of all to the radical change in family life. Formerly only the man was considered a breadwinner. But Russian women have for the past fifty or sixty years (and in other capitalist countries for a somewhat longer period of time) been forced to seek paid work outside the family and outside the home. The wages of the “breadwinner” being insufficient for the needs of the family, the woman found herself obliged to look for a wage and to knock at the factory door. With every year the number of working-class women starting work outside the home as day labourers, saleswomen, clerks, washerwomen and servants increased. Statistics show that in 1914, before the outbreak of the First World War, there were about sixty million women earning their own living in the countries of Europe and America, and during the war this number increased considerably. Almost half of these women are married. What kind of family life they must have can easily be imagined. What kind of “family life” can there be if the wife and mother is out at work for at least eight hours and, counting the travelling, is away from home for ten hours a day? Her home is neglected; the children grow up without any maternal care, spending most of the time out on the streets, exposed to all the dangers of this environment. The woman who is wife, mother and worker has to expend every ounce of energy to fulfil these roles. She has to work the same hours as her husband in some factory, printing-house or commercial establishment and then on top of that she has to find the time to attend to her household and look after her children. Capitalism has placed a crushing burden on woman’s shoulders: it has made her a wage-worker without having reduced her cares as housekeeper or mother. Woman staggers beneath the weight of this triple load. She suffers, her face is always wet with tears. Life has never been easy for woman, but never has her lot been harder and more desperate than that of the millions of working women under the capitalist yoke in this heyday of factory production.

The family breaks down as more and more women go out to work. How can one talk about family life when the man and woman work different shifts, and where the wife does not even have the time to prepare a decent meal for her offspring? How can one talk of parents when the mother and father are out working all day and cannot find the time to spend even a few minutes with their children? It was quite different in the old days. The mother remained at home and occupied herself with her household duties; her children were at her side, under her watchful eye. Nowadays the working woman hastens out of the house early in the morning when the factory whistle blows. When evening comes and the whistle sounds again, she hurries home to scramble through the most pressing of her domestic tasks. Then it’s off to work again the next morning, and she is tired from lack of sleep. For the married working woman, life is as bad as the workhouse. It is not surprising therefore that family ties should loosen and the family begin to fall apart. The circumstances that held the family together no longer exist. The family is ceasing to be necessary either to its members or to the nation as a whole. The old family structure is now merely a hindrance. What used to make the old family so strong? First, because the husband and father was the family’s breadwinner; secondly, because the family economy was necessary to all its members: and thirdly, because children were brought up by their parents. What is left of this former type of family? The husband, as we have just seen, has ceased to be the sole breadwinner. The wife who goes to work earns wages. She has learned to earn her own living, to support her children and not infrequently her husband. The family now only serves as the primary economic unit of society and the supporter and educator of young children. Let us examine the matter in more detail, to see whether or not the family is about to be relieved of these tasks as well.

Housework ceases to be necessary

There was a time when the women of the poorer classes in city and country spent their entire lives within the four walls of the home. A woman knew nothing beyond the threshold of her own home, and in most cases had no wish to know anything. After all, in her own home, there was so much to do, and this work was most necessary and useful not only for the family itself but also for the state as a whole. The woman did everything that the modern working and peasant woman has to do, but besides this cooking, washing, cleaning and mending, she spun wool and linen, wove cloth and garments, knitted stockings, made lace, prepared—as far as her resources permitted—all sorts of pickles, jams and other preserves for winter, and manufactured, her own candles. It is difficult to make a complete list of all her duties. That is how our mothers and grandmothers lived. Even today you may still come across remote villages deep in the country, far from the railroads and the big rivers, where this mode of life has been preserved and where the mistress of the house is overburdened with all kinds of chores over which the working woman of the big cities and of the populous industrial regions has long ceased to worry.

In our grandmother’s day, all this domestic work was necessary and beneficial; it ensured the well-being of the family. The more the mistress of the house applied herself, the better the peasant or craftsman’s family lived. Even the national economy benefited from the housewife’s activity, for the woman did not limit herself to making soup and cooking potatoes (i.e. satisfying the immediate needs of the family), she also produced such things as cloth, thread, butter, etc. which had a value as commodities that could be sold on the market. And every man, whether peasant or worker, tried to find a wife who had “hands of gold,” for he knew that a family could not get along without this “domestic labour.” The interests of the whole nation were involved, for the more work the woman and the other members of the family put into making cloth, leather and wool (the surplus of which was sold in the neighbouring market), the greater the economic prosperity of the country as a whole.

But capitalism has changed all this. All that was formerly produced in the bosom of the family is now being manufactured on a mass scale in workshops and factories. The machine has superseded the wife. What housekeeper would now bother to make candles, spin wool or weave, cloth? All these products can be bought in the shop next door. Formerly every girl would learn to knit stockings. Nowadays, what working woman would think of making her own? In the first place she doesn’t have the time. Time is money, and no one wants to waste time in an unproductive and useless manner. Few working women would start to pickle cucumbers or make other preserves when all these things can be bought in the shop. Even if the products sold in the store are of an inferior quality and not prepared with the care of the home-made equivalent the working woman has neither the time nor the energy needed to perform these domestic operations. First and foremost she is a hired worker. Thus the family economy is gradually being deprived of all the domestic work without which our grandmothers could hardly have imagined a family. What was formerly produced in the family is now produced by the collective labour of working men and women in the factories.

The family no longer produces; it only consumes. The housework that remains consists of cleaning (cleaning the floors, dusting, heating water, care of the lamps etc.), cooking (preparation of dinners and suppers), washing and the care of the linen and clothing of the family (darning and mending). These are difficult and exhausting tasks and they absorb all the spare time and energy of the working woman who must, in addition, put in her hours at a factory. But this work is different in one important way from the work our grandmothers did: the four tasks enumerated above, which still serve to keep the family together, are of no value to the state and the national economy, for they do not create any new values or make any contribution to the prosperity of the country. The housewife may spend all day, from morning to evening, cleaning her home, she may wash and iron the linen daily, make every effort to keep her clothing in good order and prepare whatever dishes she pleases and her modest resources allow, and she will still end the day without having created any values. Despite her industry she would not have made anything that could be considered a commodity. Even if a working woman were to live a thousand years, she would still have to begin every day from the beginning. There would always be a new layer of dust to be removed from the mantelpiece, her husband would always come in hungry and her children bring in mud on their shoes.

Women’s work is becoming less useful to the community as a whole. It is becoming unproductive. The individual household is dying. It is giving way in our society to collective housekeeping. Instead of the working woman cleaning her flat, the communist society can arrange for men and women whose job it is to go round in the morning cleaning rooms. The wives of the rich have long since been freed from these irritating and tiring domestic duties. Why should working woman continue to be burdened with them? In Soviet Russia the working woman should be surrounded by the same ease and light, hygiene and beauty that previously only the very rich could afford. Instead of the working woman having to struggle with the cooking and spend her last free hours in the kitchen preparing dinner and supper, communist society will organise public restaurants and communal kitchens.

Even under capitalism such establishments have begun to appear. In fact over the last half a century the number of restaurants and cafes in all the great cities of Europe has been growing daily; they are springing up like mushrooms after the autumn rain. But under capitalism only people with well-lined purses can afford to take their meals in restaurants, while under communism everyone will be able to eat in the communal kitchens and dining-rooms. The working woman will not have to slave over the washtub any longer, or ruin her eyes in darning her stockings and mending her linen; she will simply take these things to the central laundries each week and collect the washed and ironed garments later. That will be another job less to do. Special clothes-mending centres will free the working woman from the hours spent on mending and give her the opportunity to devote her evenings to reading, attending meetings and concerts. Thus the four categories of housework are doomed to extinction with the victory of communism. And the working woman will surely have no cause to regret this. Communism liberates woman from her domestic slavery and makes her life richer and happier.

The state is responsible for the upbringing of children

But even if housework disappears, you may argue, there are still the children to look after. But here too, the workers’ state will come to replace the family, society will gradually take upon itself all the tasks that before the revolution fell to the individual parents. Even before the revolution, the instruction of the child had ceased to be the duty of the parents. Once the children had attained school age the parents could breathe more freely, for they were no longer responsible for the intellectual development of their offspring. But there were still plenty of obligations to fulfil. There was still the matter of feeding the children, buying them shoes and clothes and seeing that they developed into skilled and honest workers able, when the time came, to earn their own living and feed and support their parents in old age. Few workers’ families however, were able to fulfil these obligations. Their low wages did not enable them to give the children enough to eat, while lack of free time prevented them from devoting the necessary attention to the education of the rising generation. The family is supposed to bring up the children, but in reality proletarian children grow up on the streets. Our forefathers knew some family life, but the children of the proletariat know none. Furthermore, the parents’ small income and the precarious position in which the family is placed financially often force the child to become an independent worker at scarcely ten years of age. And when children begin, to earn their own money they consider themselves their own masters, and the words and counsels of the parents are no longer law; the authority of the parents weakens, and obedience is at an end.

Just as housework withers away, so the obligations of parents to their children wither away gradually until finally society assumes the full responsibility. Under capitalism children were frequently, too frequently, a heavy and unbearable burden on the proletarian family. Communist society will come to the aid of the parents. In Soviet Russia the Commissariats of Public Education and of Social Welfare are already doing much to assist the family. We already have homes for very small babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals and health resorts for sick children, restaurants, free lunches at school and free distribution of text books, warm clothing and shoes to schoolchildren. All this goes to show that the responsibility for the child is passing from the family to the collective.

The parental care of children in the family could be divided into three parts: (a) the care of the very young baby, (b) the bringing up of the child, and (c) the instruction of the child. Even in capitalist society the education of the child in primary schools and later in secondary and higher educational establishments became the responsibility of the state. Even in capitalist society the needs of the workers were to some extent met by the provision of playgrounds, kindergartens, play groups, etc. The more the workers became conscious of their rights and the better they were organised, the more society had to relieve the family of the care of the children. But bourgeois society was afraid of going too far towards meeting the interests of the working class, lest this contribute to the break-up of the family. For the capitalists are well aware that the old type of family, where the woman is a slave and where the husband is responsible for the well-being of his wife and children, constitutes the best weapon in the struggle to stifle the desire of the working class for freedom and to weaken the revolutionary spirit of the working man and working woman. The worker is weighed down by his family cares and is obliged to compromise with capital. The father and mother are ready to agree to any terms when their children are hungry. Capitalist society has not been able to transform education into a truly social and state matter because the property owners, the bourgeoisie, have been against this.

Communist society considers the social education of the rising generation to be one of the fundamental aspects of the new life. The old family, narrow and petty, where the parents quarrel and are only interested in their own offspring, is not capable of educating the “new person.” The playgrounds, gardens, homes and other amenities where the child will spend the greater part of the day under the supervision of qualified educators will, on the other hand, offer an environment in which the child can grow up a conscious communist who recognises the need for solidarity, comradeship, mutual help and loyalty to the collective. What responsibilities are left to the parents, when they no longer have to take charge of upbringing and education? The very small baby, you might answer, while it is still learning to walk and clinging to its mother’s skirt, still needs her attention. Here again the communist state hastens to the aid of the working mother. No longer will there be any women who are alone. The workers’ state aims to support every mother, married or unmarried, while she is suckling her child, and to establish maternity homes, day nurseries and other such facilities in every city and village, in order to give women the opportunity to combine work in society with maternity.

Working mothers have no need to be alarmed; communist not intending to take children away from their parents or to tear the baby from the breast of its mother, and neither is it planning to take violent measures to destroy the family. No such thing! The aims of communist society are quite different. Communist society sees that the old type of family is breaking up, and that all the old pillars which supported the family as a social unit are being removed: the domestic economy is dying, and working-class parents are unable to take care of their children or provide them with sustenance and education. Parents and children suffer equally from this situation. Communist society has this to say to the working woman and working man: “You are young, you love each other. Everyone has the right to happiness. Therefore live your life. Do not flee happiness. Do not fear marriage, even though under capitalism marriage was truly a chain of sorrow. Do not be afraid of having children. Society needs more workers and rejoices at the birth of every child. You do not have to worry about the future of your child; your child will know neither hunger nor cold.” Communist society takes care of every child and guarantees both him and his mother material and moral support. Society will feed, bring up and educate the child. At the same time, those parents who desire to participate in the education of their children will by no means be prevented from doing so. Communist society will take upon itself all the duties involved in the education of the child, but the joys of parenthood will not be taken away from those who are capable of appreciating them. Such are the plans of communist society and they can hardly be interpreted as the forcible destruction of the family and the forcible separation of child from mother.

There is no escaping the fact: the old type of family has had its day. The family is withering away not because it is being forcibly destroyed by the state, but because the family is ceasing to be a necessity. The state does not need the family, because the domestic economy is no longer profitable: the family distracts the worker from more useful and productive labour. The members of the family do not need the family either, because the task of bringing up the children which was formerly theirs is passing more and more into the hands of the collective. In place of the old relationship between men and women, a new one is developing: a union of affection and comradeship, a union of two equal members of communist society, both of them free, both of them independent and both of them workers. No more domestic bondage for women. No more inequality within the family. No need for women to fear being left without support and with children to bring up. The woman in communist society no longer depends upon her husband but on her work. It is not in her husband but in her capacity for work that she will find support. She need have no anxiety about her children. The workers’ state will assume responsibility for them. Marriage will lose all the elements of material calculation which cripple family life. Marriage will be a union of two persons who love and trust each other. Such a union promises to the working men and women who understand themselves and the world around them the most complete happiness and the maximum satisfaction. Instead of the conjugal slavery of the past, communist society offers women and men a free union which is strong in the comradeship which inspired it. Once the conditions of labour have been transformed and the material security of the working women has increased, and once marriage such as the church used to perform it—this so-called indissoluble marriage which was at bottom merely a fraud—has given place to the free and honest union of men and women who are lovers and comrades, prostitution will disappear. This evil, which is a stain on humanity and the scourge of hungry working women, has its roots in commodity production and the institution of private property. Once these economic forms are superseded, the trade in women will automatically disappear. The women of the working class, therefore, need not worry over the fact that the family is doomed to disappear. They should, on the contrary, welcome the dawn of a new society which will liberate women from domestic servitude, lighten the burden of motherhood and finally put an end to the terrible curse of prostitution.

The woman who takes up the struggle for the liberation of the working class must learn to understand that there is no more room for the old proprietary attitude which says: “These are my children, I owe them all my maternal solicitude and affection; those are your children, they are no concern of mine and I don’t care if they go hungry and cold—I have no time for other children.” The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers.

The workers’ state needs new relations between the sexes, just as the narrow and exclusive affection of the mother for her own children must expand until it extends to all the children of the great, proletarian family, the indissoluble marriage based on the servitude of women is replaced by a free union of two equal members of the workers’ state who are united by love and mutual respect. In place of the individual and egoistic family, a great universal family of workers will develop, in which all the workers, men and women, will above all be comrades. This is what relations between men and women, in the communist society will be like. These new relations will ensure for humanity all the joys of a love unknown in the commercial society of a love that is free and based on the true social equality of the partners.

Communist society wants bright healthy children and strong, happy young people, free in their feelings and affections. In the name of equality, liberty and the comradely love of the new marriage we call upon the working and peasant men and women to apply themselves courageously and with faith to the work of rebuilding human society, in order to render it more perfect, more just and more capable of ensuring the individual the happiness which he or she deserves. The red flag of the social revolution which flies above Russia and is now being hoisted aloft in other countries of the world proclaim the approach of the heaven on earth to which humanity has been aspiring for centuries.

Leon Trotsky, Thermidor in the Family (1937)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch07.htm#ch07-1

Published: Leon Trotsky,“Ch. 7, Family, Youth and Culture” The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going? trans. Max Eastman. Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc., 1937.

Source: Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, trans Max Eastman. Dover Publications, 2004.

The October revolution honestly fulfilled its obligations in relation to woman. The young government not only gave her all political and legal rights in equality with man, but, what is more important, did all that it could, and in any case incomparably more than any other government ever did, actually to secure her access to all forms of economic and cultural work. However, the boldest revolution, like the “all-powerful” British parliament, cannot convert a woman into a man—or rather, cannot divide equally between them the burden of pregnancy, birth, nursing and the rearing of children. The revolution made a heroic effort to destroy the so-called “family hearth”—that archaic, stuffy and stagnant institution in which the woman of the toiling classes performs galley labor from childhood to death. The place of the family as a shut-in petty enterprise was to be occupied, according to the plans, by a finished system of social care and accommodation: maternity houses, creches, kindergartens, schools, social dining rooms, social laundries, first-aid stations, hospitals, sanatoria, athletic organizations, moving-picture theaters, etc. The complete absorption of the housekeeping functions of the family by institutions of the socialist society, uniting all generations in solidarity and mutual aid, was to bring to woman, and thereby to the loving couple, a real liberation from the thousand-year-old fetters. Up to now this problem of problems has not been solved. The forty million Soviet families remain in their overwhelming majority nests of medievalism, female slavery and hysteria, daily humiliation of children, feminine and childish superstition. We must permit ourselves no illusions on this account. For that very reason, the consecutive changes in the approach to the problem of the family in the Soviet Union best of all characterize the actual nature of Soviet society and the evolution of its ruling stratum.

It proved impossible to take the old family by storm—not because the will was lacking, and not because the family was so firmly rooted in men’s hearts. On the contrary, after a short period of distrust of the government and its creches, kindergartens and like institutions, the working women, and after them the more advanced peasants, appreciated the immeasurable advantages of the collective care of children as well as the socialization of the whole family economy. Unfortunately society proved too poor and little cultured. The real resources of the state did not correspond to the plans and intentions of the Communist Party. You cannot “abolish” the family; you have to replace it. The actual liberation of women is unrealizable on a basis of “generalized want.” Experience soon proved this austere truth which Marx had formulated eighty years before.

During the lean years, the workers wherever possible, and in part their families, ate in the factory and other social dining rooms, and this fact was officially regarded as a transition to a socialist form of life. There is no need of pausing again upon the peculiarities of the different periods: military communism, the NEP and the first five-year plan. The fact is that from the moment of the abolition of the food-card system in 1935, all the better placed workers began to return to the home dining table. It would be incorrect to regard this retreat as a condemnation of the socialist system, which in general was never tried out. But so much the more withering was the judgment of the workers and their wives upon the “social feeding” organized by the bureaucracy. The same conclusion must be extended to the social laundries, where they tear and steal linen more than they wash it. Back to the family hearth! But home cooking and the home washtub, which are now half shamefacedly celebrated by orators and journalists, mean the return of the workers’ wives to their pots and pans that is, to the old slavery. It is doubtful if the resolution of the Communist International on the “complete and irrevocable triumph of socialism in the Soviet Union” sounds very convincing to the women of the factory districts!

The rural family, bound up not only with home industry but with agriculture, is infinitely more stable and conservative than that of the town. Only a few, and as a general rule, anaemic agricultural communes introduced social dining rooms and creches in the first period. Collectivization, according to the first announcements, was to initiate a decisive change in the sphere of the family. Not for nothing did they expropriate the peasant’s chickens as well as his cows. There was no lack, at any rate, of announcements about the triumphal march of social dining rooms throughout the country. But when the retreat began, reality suddenly emerged from the shadow of this bragging. The peasant gets from the collective farm, as a general rule, only bread for himself and fodder for his stock. Meat, dairy products and vegetables, he gets almost entirely from the adjoining private lots. And once the most important necessities of life are acquired by the isolated efforts of the family, there can no longer be any talk of social dining rooms. Thus the midget farms, creating a new basis for the domestic hearthstone, lay a double burden upon woman.

The total number of steady accommodations in the creches amounted, in 1932, to 600,000, and of seasonal accommodations solely during work in the fields to only about 4,000,000. In 1935 the cots numbered 5,600,000, but the steady ones were still only an insignificant part of the total. Moreover, the existing creches, even in Moscow, Leningrad and other centers, are not satisfactory as a general rule to the least fastidious demands. “A creche in which the child feels worse than he does at home is not a creche but a bad orphan asylum,” complains a leading Soviet newspaper. It is no wonder if the better-placed workers’ families avoid creches. But for the fundamental mass of the toilers, the number even of these “bad orphan asylums” is insignificant. Just recently the Central Executive Committee introduced a resolution that foundlings and orphans should be placed in private hands for bringing up. Through its highest organ, the bureaucratic government thus acknowledged its bankruptcy in relation to the most important socialist function. The number of children in kindergartens rose during the five years 1930-1935 from 370,000 to 1,181,000. The lowness of the figure for 1930 is striking, but the figure for 1935 also seems only a drop in the ocean of Soviet families. A further investigation would undoubtedly show that the principal, and in any case the better part of these kindergartens, appertain to the families of the administration, the technical personnel, the Stakhanovists, etc.

The same Central Executive Committee was not long ago compelled to testify openly that the “resolution on the liquidation of homeless and uncared-for children is being weakly carried out.” What is concealed behind this dispassionate confession? Only by accident, from newspaper remarks printed in small type, do we know that in Moscow more than a thousand children are living in “extraordinarily difficult family conditions”; that in the so-called children’s homes of the capital there are about 1,500 children who have nowhere to go and are turned out into the streets; that during the two autumn months of 1935 in Moscow and Leningrad “7,500 parents were brought to court for leaving their children without supervision.” What good did it do to bring them to court? How many thousand parents have avoided going to court? How many children in “extraordinarily difficult conditions” remained unrecorded? In what do extraordinarily difficult conditions differ from simply difficult ones? Those are the questions which remain unanswered. A vast amount of the homelessness of children, obvious and open as well as disguised, is a direct result of the great social crisis in the course of which the old family continues to dissolve far faster than the new institutions are capable of replacing it.

From these same accidental newspaper remarks and from episodes in the criminal records, the reader may find out about the existence in the Soviet Union of prostitution—that is, the extreme degradation of woman in the interests of men who can pay for it. In the autumn of the past year Izvestia suddenly informed its readers, for example, of the arrest in Moscow of “as many as a thousand women who were secretly selling themselves on the streets of the proletarian capital.” Among those arrested were 177 working women, 92 clerks, 5 university students, etc. What drove them to the sidewalks? Inadequate wages, want, the necessity to “get a little something for a dress, for shoes.” We should vainly seek the approximate dimensions of this social evil. The modest bureaucracy orders the statistician to remain silent. But that enforced silence itself testifies unmistakably to the numerousness of the “class” of Soviet prostitutes. Here there can be essentially no question of “relics of the past”; prostitutes are recruited from the younger generation. No reasonable person, of course, would think of placing special blame for this sore, as old as civilization, upon the Soviet regime. But it is unforgivable in the presence of prostitution to talk about the triumph of socialism. The newspapers assert, to be sure insofar as they are permitted to touch upon this ticklish theme—that “prostitution is decreasing.” It is possible that this is really true by comparison with the years of hunger and decline (1931-1933). But the restoration of money relations which has taken place since then, abolishing all direct rationing, will inevitably lead to a new growth of prostitution as well as of homeless children. Wherever there are privileged there are pariahs!

The mass homelessness of children is undoubtedly the most unmistakable and most tragic symptom of the difficult situation of the mother. On this subject even the optimistic Pravda is sometimes compelled to make a bitter confession: “The birth of a child is for many women a serious menace to their position.” It is just for this reason that the revolutionary power gave women the right to abortion, which in conditions of want and family distress, whatever may be said upon this subject by the eunuchs and old maids of both sexes, is one of her most important civil, political and cultural rights. However, this right of women too, gloomy enough in itself, is under the existing social inequality being converted into a privilege. Bits of information trickling into the press about the practice of abortion are literally shocking. Thus through only one village hospital in one district of the Urals, there passed in 1935 “195 women mutilated by midwives”—among them 33 working women, 28 clerical workers, 65 collective farm women, 58 housewives, etc. This Ural district differs from the majority of other districts only in that information about it happened to get into the press. How many women are mutilated every day throughout the extent of the Soviet Union?

Having revealed its inability to serve women who are compelled to resort to abortion with the necessary medical aid and sanitation, the state makes a sharp change of course, and takes the road of prohibition. And just as in other situations, the bureaucracy makes a virtue of necessity. One of the members of the highest Soviet court, Soltz, a specialist on matrimonial questions, bases the forthcoming prohibition of abortion on the fact that in a socialist society where there are no unemployed, etc., etc., a woman has no right to decline “the joys of motherhood.” The philosophy of a priest endowed also with the powers of a gendarme. We just heard from the central organ of the ruling party that the birth of a child is for many women, and it would be truer to say for the overwhelming majority, “a menace to their position.” We just heard from the highest Soviet institution that “the liquidation of homeless and uncared-for children is being weakly carried out,” which undoubtedly means a new increase of homelessness. But here the highest Soviet judge informs us that in a country where “life is happy” abortion should be punished with imprisonment—just exactly as in capitalist countries where life is grievous. It is clear in advance that in the Soviet Union as in the West those who will fall into the claws of the jailer will be chiefly working women, servants, peasant wives, who find it hard to conceal their troubles. As far as concerns “our women”, who furnish the demand for fine perfumes and other pleasant things, they will, as formerly, do what they find necessary under the very nose of an indulgent justiciary. “We have need of people,” concludes Soltz, closing his eyes to the homeless. “Then have the kindness to bear them yourselves,” might be the answer to the high judge of millions of toiling women, if the bureaucracy had not sealed their lips with the seal of silence. These gentlemen have, it seems, completely forgotten that socialism was to remove the cause which impels woman to abortion, and not force her into the “joys of motherhood” with the help of a foul police interference in what is to every woman the most intimate sphere of life.

The draft of the law forbidding abortion was submitted to so-called universal popular discussion, and even through the fine sieve of the Soviet press many bitter complaints and stifled protests broke out. The discussion was cut off as suddenly as it had been announced, and on June 27th the Central Executive Committee converted the shameful draft into a thrice shameful law. Even some of the official apologists of the bureaucracy were embarrassed. Louis Fischer declared this piece of legislation something in the nature of a deplorable misunderstanding. In reality the new law against women—with an exception in favor of ladies—is the natural and logical fruit of a Thermidorian reaction.

The triumphal rehabilitation of the family, taking place simultaneously—what a providential coincidence!—with the rehabilitation of the ruble, is caused by the material and cultural bankruptcy of the state. Instead of openly saying, “We have proven still too poor and ignorant for the creation of socialist relations among men, our children and grandchildren will realize this aim”, the leaders are forcing people to glue together again the shell of the broken family, and not only that, but to consider it, under threat of extreme penalties, the sacred nucleus of triumphant socialism. It is hard to measure with the eye the scope of this retreat.

Everybody and everything is dragged into the new course: lawgiver and litterateur, court and militia, newspaper and schoolroom. When a naive and honest communist youth makes bold to write in his paper: “You would do better to occupy yourself with solving the problem how woman can get out of the clutches of the family,” he receives in answer a couple of good smacks and—is silent. The ABCs of communism are declared a “leftist excess.” The stupid and stale prejudices of uncultured philistines are resurrected in the name of a new morale. And what is happening in daily life in all the nooks and corners of this measureless country? The press reflects only in a faint degree the depth of the Thermidorian reaction in the sphere of the family.

Since the noble passion of evangelism grows with the growth of sin, the seventh commandment is acquiring great popularity in the ruling stratum. The Soviet moralists have only to change the phraseology slightly. A campaign is opened against too frequent and easy divorces. The creative thought of the lawgivers had already invented such a “socialistic” measure as the taking of money payment upon registration of divorces, and increasing it when divorces were repeated. Not for nothing we remarked above that the resurrection of the family goes hand in hand with the increase of the educative role of the ruble. A tax indubitably makes registration difficult for those for whom it is difficult to pay. For the upper circles, the payment, we may hope, will not offer any difficulty. Moreover, people possessing nice apartments, automobiles and other good things arrange their personal affairs without unnecessary publicity and consequently without registration. It is only on the bottom of society that prostitution has a heavy and humiliating character. On the heights of the Soviet society, where power is combined with comfort, prostitution takes the elegant form of small mutual services, and even assumes the aspect of the “socialist family.” We have already heard from Sosnovsky about the importance of the “automobile-harem factor” in the degeneration of the ruling stratum.

The lyric, academical and other “friends of the Soviet Union” have eyes in order to see nothing. The marriage and family laws established by the October revolution, once the object of its legitimate pride, are being made over and mutilated by vast borrowings from the law treasuries of the bourgeois countries. And as though on purpose to stamp treachery with ridicule, the same arguments which were earlier advanced in favor of unconditional freedom of divorce and abortion—“the liberation of women,” “defense of the rights of personality,” “protection of motherhood”—are repeated now in favor of their limitation and complete prohibition.

The retreat not only assumes forms of disgusting hypocrisy, but also is going infinitely farther than the iron economic necessity demands. To the objective causes producing this return to such bourgeois forms as the payment of alimony, there is added the social interest of the ruling stratum in the deepening of bourgeois law. The most compelling motive of the present cult of the family is undoubtedly the need of the bureaucracy for a stable hierarchy of relations, and for the disciplining of youth by means of 40,000,000 points of support for authority and power.

While the hope still lived of concentrating the education of the new generations in the hands of the state, the government was not only unconcerned about supporting the authority of the “elders”, and, in particular of the mother and father, but on the contrary tried its best to separate the children from the family, in order thus to protect them from the traditions of a stagnant mode of life. Only a little while ago, in the course of the first five-year plan, the schools and the Communist Youth were using children for the exposure, shaming and in general “re-educating” of their drunken fathers or religious mothers—with what success is another question. At any rate, this method meant a shaking of parental authority to its very foundations. In this not unimportant sphere too, a sharp turn has now been made. Along with the seventh, the fifth commandment is also fully restored to its rights as yet, to be sure, without any references to God. But the French schools also get along without this supplement, and that does not prevent them from successfully inculcating conservatism and routine.

Concern for the authority of the older generation, by the way, has already led to a change of policy in the matter of religion. The denial of God, his assistance and his miracles, was the sharpest wedge of all those which the revolutionary power drove between children and parents. Outstripping the development of culture, serious propaganda and scientific education, the struggle with the churches, under the leadership of people of the type of Yaroslavsky, often degenerated into buffoonery and mischief. The storming of heaven, like the storming of the family, is now brought to a stop. The bureaucracy, concerned about their reputation for respectability, have ordered the young “godless” to surrender their fighting armor and sit down to their books. In relation to religion, there is gradually being established a regime of ironical neutrality. But that is only the first stage. It would not be difficult to predict the second and third, if the course of events depended only upon those in authority.

The hypocrisy of prevailing opinion develops everywhere and always as the square, or cube, of the social contradictions. Such approximately is the historic law of ideology translated into the language of mathematics. Socialism, if it is worthy of the name, means human relations without greed, friendship without envy and intrigue, love without base calculation. The official doctrine declares these ideal norms already realized—and with more insistence the louder the reality protests against such declarations. “On a basis of real equality between men and women,” says, for example, the new program of the Communist Youth, adopted in April 1936, “a new family is coming into being, the flourishing of which will be a concern of the Soviet state.” An official commentary supplements the program: “Our youth in the choice of a life-friend—wife or husband—know only one motive, one impulse: love. The bourgeois marriage of pecuniary convenience does not exist for our growing generation.” (Pravda, April 4, 1936.) So far as concerns the rank-and-file workingman and woman, this is more or less true. But “marriage for money” is comparatively little known also to the workers of capitalist countries. Things are quite different in the middle and upper strata. New social groupings automatically place their stamp upon personal relations. The vices which power and money create in sex relations are flourishing as luxuriously in the ranks of the Soviet bureaucracy as though it had set itself the goal of outdoing in this respect the Western bourgeoisie.

In complete contradiction to the just quoted assertion of Pravda, “marriage for convenience,” as the Soviet press itself in moments of accidental or unavoidable frankness confesses, is now fully resurrected. Qualifications, wages, employment, number of chevrons on the military uniform, are acquiring more and more significance, for with them are bound up questions of shoes, and fur coats, and apartments, and bathrooms, and—the ultimate dream—automobiles. The mere struggle for a room unites and divorces no small number of couples every year in Moscow. The question of relatives has acquired exceptional significance. It is useful to have as a father-in-law a military commander or an influential communist, as a mother-in-law the sister of a high dignitary. Can we wonder at this? Could it be otherwise?

One of the very dramatic chapters in the great book of the Soviets will be the tale of the disintegration and breaking up of those Soviet families where the husband as a party member, trade unionist, military commander or administrator, grew and developed and acquired new tastes in life, and the wife, crushed by the family, remained on the old level. The road of the two generations of the Soviet bureaucracy is sown thick with the tragedies of wives rejected and left behind. The same phenomenon is now to be observed in the new generation. The greatest of all crudities and cruelties are to be met perhaps in the very heights of the bureaucracy, where a very large percentage are parvenus of little culture, who consider that everything is permitted to them. Archives and memoirs will some day expose downright crimes in relation to wives, and to women in general, on the part of those evangelists of family morals and the compulsory “joys of motherhood,” who are, owing to their position, immune from prosecution.

No, the Soviet woman is not yet free. Complete equality before the law has so far given infinitely more to the women of the upper strata, representatives of bureaucratic, technical, pedagogical and, in general, intellectual work, than to the working women and yet more the peasant women. So long as society is incapable of taking upon itself the material concern for the family, the mother can successfully fulfill a social function only on condition that she has in her service a white slave: nurse, servant, cook, etc. Out of the 40,000,000 families which constitute the population of the Soviet Union, 5 per cent, or maybe 10, build their “hearthstone” directly or indirectly upon the labor of domestic slaves. An accurate census of Soviet servants would have as much significance for the socialistic appraisal of the position of women in the Soviet Union as the whole Soviet law code, no matter how progressive it might be. But for this very reason the Soviet statistics hide servants under the name of “working woman” or “and others”! The situation of the mother of the family who is an esteemed communist, has a cook, a telephone for giving orders to the stores, an automobile for errands, etc., has little in common with the situation of the working woman who is compelled to run to the shops, prepare dinner herself, and carry her children on foot from the kindergarten—if, indeed, a kindergarten is available. No socialist labels can conceal this social contrast, which is no less striking than the contrast between the bourgeois lady and the proletarian woman in any country of the West.

The genuinely socialist family, from which society will remove the daily vexation of unbearable and humiliating cares, will have no need of any regimentation, and the very idea of laws about abortion and divorce will sound no better within its walls than the recollection of houses of prostitution or human sacrifices. The October legislation took a bold step in the direction of such a family. Economic and cultural backwardness has produced a cruel reaction. The Thermidorian legislation is beating a retreat to the bourgeois models, covering its retreat with false speeches about the sacredness of the “new” family. On this question, too, socialist bankruptcy covers itself with hypocritical respectability.

There are sincere observers who are, especially upon the question of children, shaken by the contrast here between high principles and ugly reality. The mere fact of the furious criminal measures that have been adopted against homeless children is enough to suggest that the socialist legislation in defense of women and children is nothing but crass hypocrisy. There are observers of an opposite kind who are deceived by the broadness and magnanimity of those ideas that have been dressed up in the form of laws and administrative institutions. When they see destitute mothers, prostitutes and homeless children, these optimists tell themselves that a further growth of material wealth will gradually fill the socialist laws with flesh and blood. It is not easy to decide which of these two modes of approach is more mistaken and more harmful. Only people stricken with historical blindness can fail to see the broadness and boldness of the social plan, the significance of the first stages of its development, and the immense possibilities opened by it. But on the other hand, it is impossible not to be indignant at the passive and essentially indifferent optimism of those who shut their eyes to the growth of social contradictions, and comfort themselves with gazing into a future, the key to which they respectfully propose to leave in the hands of the bureaucracy. As though the equality of rights of women and men were not already converted into an equality of deprivation of rights by that same bureaucracy! And as though in some book of wisdom it were firmly promised that the Soviet bureaucracy will not introduce a new oppression in place of liberty.

How man enslaved woman, how the exploiter subjected them both, how the toilers have attempted at the price of blood to free themselves from slavery and have only exchanged one chain for another—history tells us much about all this. In essence, it tells us nothing else. But how in reality to free the child, the woman and the human being? For that we have as yet no reliable models. All past historical experience, wholly negative, demands of the toilers at least and first of all an implacable distrust of all privileged and uncontrolled guardians.

American Communist Party

From the 1930s into the 1950s, women within the American Communist Party were instrumental in developing many of the foundational theories later influential for second wave feminist debates, as argued in the secondary source by Kate Weigand. They propagandized for the Soviet Union, even as the claim it represented “full equality for women” was increasingly inaccurate.

The three authors reflect the developing thought of the leading women intellectuals in the Party. Margaret Cowl offers the orthodox framework, closely reflecting the previous line on the Woman Question. Mary Inman boldly argued the labor of housewives was productive of value and essential for socialist organizing. Her disputes with the Party on this question lead to her resigning and spending the long remainder of her life denouncing the Party’s thinking on women’s oppression. Claudia Jones, born in Trinidad and later organizing in New York and London, became the leading thinker and strategist on the Party’s work with women, here offering a sophisticated and early account of the multiple structures of oppression and violence operating in the lives of Black women workers.

Secondary reading: Kate Weigand, Introduction, Ch. 2, 4 and 5, Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Liberation, John Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Margaret Cowl, Women and Equality (1935)

http://digital.library.pitt.edu/u/ulsmanuscripts/pdf/31735061538421.pdf

Margaret Cowl, Women and Equality. Workers Library Publishers, 1935.

It is an undisputed fact that all women are in an unequal position with men in all countries with the exception of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

We have often been led to believe that this unequal position of women has always existed and therefore is a natural one. Frederich Engels, a noted philosopher and scientist, in his Origin of the Family, attacks this idea. He says:

It is one of the most absurd notions derived from eighteenth century enlightenment, that in the beginning of society woman was the slave of man. Among all savages and barbarians of the lower and middle stages, sometimes even of the higher stage, women not only have freedom, but are held in high esteem.

Engels is supported by Arthur Wright, for many years a missionary among the Seneca Iroquois, who writes about the latter as follows:

The female part generally ruled the house; the provisions were held in common; but woe to the luckless husband or lover who was too indolent or too clumsy to contribute his share to the common stock. No matter how many children or how much private property he had in the house, he was liable at any moment to receive a hint to gather up his belongings and get out... The women were the dominating power in the clans (gentes) and everywhere else. Occasionally they did not hesitate to dethrone a chief and degrade him to a common warrior.

The freedom of women, as described by Arthur Wright, coincided with the non-existence of private property. Wealth consisted chiefly of tools for obtaining and preparing food; houses, clothing and ornaments.

“Human labor power,” says Engels, “at this stage does not yet produce a considerable amount over and above its cost of subsistence.” Human beings produced chiefly for the purposes of existence, not as today, when production is chiefly for making profits.

The introduction of cattle-raising, of the metal industry, of weaving, and finally of agriculture wrought a change. Captured enemies were no longer put to death or absorbed into the clan as members. They were put to work and the proceeds of their labor, over and above that needed for their own subsistence, belonged not to themselves but to certain families whose riches increased.

According to the division of labor at that time, the task of obtaining food and the tools necessary for this purpose belonged to the man; he owned the latter and kept them in case of separation, as the woman did the household goods. According to this social custom, the man became also the owner of the new source of existence, the cattle, and later on of the new labor power, the slaves. He accumulated the riches produced by the labor of others. He became the owner of private property, the exploiter of human labor power.

But his children could not inherit his property. According to maternal law, which existed at that time, his children belonged not to his clan, but to the clan from whence the mother came. Upon his death, his closest relatives inherited his property. His children were disinherited.

In the measure of the increasing wealth man’s position in the family became superior to that of woman, and the desire arose to use this fortified position for the purpose of overthrowing the traditional law of inheritance in favor of his children. (Engels, Origin of the Family.)

Maternal law was abolished.

The downfall of maternal law was the historic defeat of the female sex. The men seized the reins also in the house, the women were stripped of their dignity, enslaved, tools of men’s lust and mere machines for the generation of children. (Engels, Origin of the Family.)

Inequality Based on Exploitation

The present inequality of women as compared to men, the unequal position of the Negro toiling population in the U.S.A. as compared to that of the white workers, the unequal position of the laboring masses as a whole as compared to that of those who do not work but who own the wealth of the country, have a common basic reason, namely: The existence of the exploitation of one human being by another under the system of the private ownership of the things most essential to produce the necessities of life. (The ownership of the railroads, the factories, factory machinery, sources of raw materials, the banks, etc.).

The exploiting class, or, as it is commonly called, the capitalist class, does not work, but accumulates riches from the labor of others. They are the masters. The working class, who build the subways, the sky-scrapers, dig the coal, till the soil, grow the food, make the machinery for the factories, run the railroads, ship and distribute the things that are essential to maintain life, do the bookkeeping, the typing, the teaching, etc., etc., who produce all the riches of the land, receive only a small part of the proceeds of their labor in the form of money wages. The rest is pocketed by the employing class. They, the workers, are the hired slaves of the masters, the capitalist class.

The capitalist class is only a small minority of the population. The working class, together with the working farmers, the small business people and the professional groups, make up the great majority of the population. The latter three groups are also squeezed more and more by the capitalist class.

Thus there exists the exploitation of one human being by another under the capitalist system of society, sanctioned by the government which is controlled by the capitalist class, a system based on the division of the population into classes—those who work, the great majority of whom have nothing and a small number who have a little, but are daily losing it, and those who do not work but who have everything.

Not only men but women too are to be found in the capitalist class. There are women employing large numbers of workers, women who have many servants, etc. Therefore the division in society is not women against men, but workers against exploiters, against capitalists.

However, the women in the capitalist class have not the same rights with men of that class. This is a remnant of the historic change as described earlier. The profits these women accumulate through the exploitation of workers (of both men and women workers), according to law in the U.S.A., are not always their own property to do with as they please.

These old unjust laws appear in the form of inequality in marriage, no free choice in the selection of nationality by the mother for her children (generally the nationality of the father is the one recognized), inequality in the choice of a career, etc.

Because of their position, it is therefore natural that these women of the capitalist class who are not on a par with the men of their class and who themselves either exploit labor or live on the proceeds of such exploitation, see a division in society along sex lines and not along class lines as described above.

It is no wonder, then, that they are the prominent leaders of the feminist movement in the U.S.A., and the most active foes of labor legislation for working-class women.

By the time large scale industry developed, with factories replacing household and small-shop production and machinery taking the place of the hand tool, many traditions stamping women’s position in society as inferior to man’s had already taken root.

Discrimination—Weapon Against All Workers

The employer of labor utilized these reactionary ideas about women to make more profits for himself. Especially when machinery was simplified women were employed in larger numbers at wages lower than the wages received by men for the same kind of work. (Negro women were and are paid even lower wages than white women.) New machines did not require as much muscular strength. Supple limbs fitted in with the increased speed-up in the factories. Wages of men workers were reduced and became insufficient to feed and clothe the entire family. Rather than see their loved ones starve, women entered the factories in greater numbers to earn their daily bread. (For statistics see Women Who Work by Grace Hutchins, International Publishers, 1934). The entrance of women into industry is in itself a progressive factor. But the oppressive conditions forced upon them are degrading.

It is a fact that in the U.S.A. many women in skilled trades, where it took years of learning to achieve that skill, receive less wages than unskilled men workers.

In her book, Women Who Work, Grace Hutchins writes that married women or women who had been married make up 46.1 per cent of all working women in the U.S.A. “In certain centers,” she writes, “especially in the South where many Negro women are employed and in towns where there are many foreign-born women in industry, the proportion of married, widowed, and divorced women wage-earners is sometimes as high as 70 per cent.” In face of the growing propaganda to oust married women from industry (in the U.S.A. with a law calling for dismissal of married women in government employ as a precedent to discharge married women from industry, and with the Westinghouse Company in New York already taking the hint), illusions are created among married women in industry that if they increase their speed they will not be dismissed. Thus they become a prey for increased speed-up without increase in wages. They become difficult to organize into trade unions for fear of losing their jobs. This intensified work on the part of married women arouses a competition between men and women workers and creates a sex antagonism which acts in favor of the employer because it helps to keep the men and women workers divided so that they cannot unitedly struggle for improved conditions.

Lower Wages for Women Means Lower Wages for All

A reserve army of cheap labor power is created. The presence in the factories of such cheap labor; mothers, wives of unemployed workers clinging to the factory gates in search of work, with thoughts of the empty milk bottle at home, offers a fine basis for an offensive against the wages of all workers.

The splendid qualities of women, their tender feelings for their loved ones, were and are used by the employers in the attempt to reduce to a minimum the resistance offered by men workers against increasing exploitation, against the lowering of the standard of living of the working class. That part of Lord Ashley’s speech, quoted by Karl Marx in a footnote in Capital, Volume I, delivered in London in 1844, on the Ten-Hour Bill, wherein he said “thus are the virtues, the peculiar virtues of the female character to be perverted to her injury—thus all that is most dutiful and tender in her nature is made a means of her bondage and suffering,” applies to the present position of women who work.

The precedent of lower wages for women is now being used to reduce wages for all workers, particularly in fascist Germany. Women workers are dismissed and men employed at wages even lower than the wages paid to women, on the ground that the employment of male labor would increase wage costs. Men are replacing women at “women’s wages” but on condition that they increase their speed. Adult women who know how to struggle for improved conditions, are being dismissed and young girls are taking their place at lower wages and with greater speed-up. While Hitler was broadcasting the demand for the return of women to the kitchen, children and church, the number of women in German industry increased in the first nine months of 1933 by 9.1 per cent, especially in the industries manufacturing articles for war purposes.

In the U.S.A. this principle of lower wages for women workers has been sanctioned by the Roosevelt N.R.A. codes. Lower minimum wages for women were written into over 120 codes. In the South the white men workers in the textile industry receive less wages than do the men textile workers in the North. But the women textile workers in the South receive lower wages than the Southern men workers in that industry. The Negro women workers in the textile industry in the South receive even lower wages than do their Southern white sisters. This is in accord with the provisions of the Code administration.

With another war on our heels, with competition among the capitalists increasing, employers fight more doggedly to hold on to this source of cheap labor power. Lower pay for women is a way of keeping wages low for all workers. To keep working women in this double servitude, the false ideas about women’s inferiority must be maintained. The inequality of women is legalized. This weaker economic position of women is used to deprive them of equal rights and often to humiliate them.

Motherhood of working-class women remains unprotected under a capitalist society. Frequently the working mother must hide her pregnancy (ofttimes to the point of deforming herself). In the U.S.A. there is no maternity insurance as provided for in the Workers’ Unemployment and Social Insurance Bill, H.R. 2827. Therefore the working mother is forced to work until the last day, knowing that child-birth most likely means loss of her job, her earnings. In the U.S.A., under the vicious anti-birth-control laws, working women are not permitted the liberty to determine the size of their families. Particularly the unemployed women, who cannot pay the bootleg-racketeer prices for birth-control information, are forced to bear many children who upon their very birth are doomed to inequality.

Millions of women are harnessed to the drudgery of the narrow life in the household. In many cases they are not released from this monotonous toil at home even when they are driven into the factories, mills, offices.

Thus we see that there is a close connection between the social and human position of women and the system of private property, whose very existence pre-supposes squeezing profits out of those who work; a condition where women are kept in a humiliating position, without full rights, without equality.

To win complete equality with men in practice, in the family, in the State, in society, women must become active together with the entire working class in the struggle to change the present social system, the capitalist system of society, based on exploitation of one human being by another, to a socialist system of society, where all exploitation and oppression is eliminated and production is carried on for the benefit of the producers. This change can be secured only under a workers’ and farmers’ government, a Soviet form of government.

The “aim of Socialism,” wrote Lenin, “in the whole world, is to fight exploitation of one human being by another.”

In reply to the accusations that there is no democracy in the Soviet Union, Lenin replied:

We see equality declared in all the democratic republics, but in the civil laws and the laws dealing with women and her position in the family, in the question of divorce, in every step we observe inequality and degradation for women. And we declare that this is violation of democracy, particularly with regard to the oppressed. The Soviet Power more than any other of the most advanced countries, has realized democracy by the very fact that not a single trace of inequality for women was left in its laws.

For the complete emancipation of women and for their real equality with men, it is necessary to establish social economy and the participation of women in general productive labor. Only then will the women occupy the same place as the man.

It is understood that when we talk of equality for women in productive labor, in extent of labor, its duration, conditions, etc., we mean that the woman should not be oppressed in her economic position in comparison with the man. You all know that even in conditions of complete equality, there still remains the real oppression of woman, because she carries the whole burden of the household.

...such work, petty in itself, cannot help the development of women.

Complete Equality in the Soviet Union

In the 14 years since Lenin made these true statements, the position of women in the Soviet Union has advanced by leaps and bounds. (The pamphlet Women in the Soviet Union by F. Nurina tells the story of women’s freedom in the Soviet Union.)

Communist Parties in all countries, including the Communist Party in the U.S.A., are working to mobilize the masses of women for the program of the Communist International which includes:

Complete equality between men and women before the law and in social life; a radical reform of marital and family laws; recognition of maternity as a social function; protection of mothers and infants. Initiation of social care and upbringing of infants and children. Creches, kindergartens, children’s homes, etc.).

The establishment of institutions that will gradually relieve the burden of house drudgery (public kitchens and laundries); and systematic cultural struggle against the ideology and traditions of female bondage.

This program of the Communist International is based on Lenin’s teachings, especially when he said:

We hate, yes, hate, everything, and will abolish everything which tortures and oppresses the woman worker, the housewife, the peasant woman, the wife of the petty trader, yes, and in many cases the women of the possessing classes.

What Can We Do

The Communist Party warns the masses of women in the U.S.A. that the road to women’s freedom suggested by the Socialist Party is a false one. The slanderous propaganda conducted against the Soviet Union, the fairy tales about the militarization of children in the Soviet Union, are an attempt to turn the hate of the masses of the women for imperialist war and fascism into a hate against the Soviet Union; it means an attempt to turn the masses of women away from the path of struggle for complete equality, for freedom. The Socialist Party, over a period of years, preached the “peaceful” way to achieve freedom to the workers in Germany—and see how the shackles of degradation have been tightened around the millions of women in fascist Germany.

Even suffrage rights for women in the U.S.A. were won only by the most determined struggle and only when working women had fought through a number of great strikes for better economic conditions.

The development of special forms and methods to fit in with the special position of women, which will facilitate the struggle for immediate improvement of the conditions of the masses of women, is needed in the fight for complete equality and freedom.

Women’s committees in the trade unions and special women’s meetings called by the trade unions are essential to give proper attention to special women’s problems; the special women’s meetings will develop the initiative and activity of women inside the trade union; they will become better organizers and pioneers for the organizing of the masses of working women into the trade unions. Women’s trade union auxiliaries comprising the women relatives and friends of the men workers are a powerful aid to the workers in their struggles for better conditions and a means of mobilizing women in the fight against the high cost of living, sales taxes, and against war and fascism.

These special forms and methods should be only as an auxiliary means to the general forms already adopted by the entire working class to improve its daily life. The demand of equal pay for equal work for women as part of workers’ demands in their strike struggles is necessary, not only to improve the conditions of women workers, but to ward off attacks upon the wages of all workers. This should be a demand primarily in strike struggles, but activities should be organized, especially of women, to enforce legislation for equal pay.

Abolition of the anti-birth-control laws; establishment of free day nurseries for working mothers; establishment of free birth-control clinics; enactment of legislation for maternity insurance (the support of H.R. 2827 which is the only Bill providing maternity insurance); other such legislative enactment that would make up a Mothers’ Bill of Rights, can only be obtained by women if they band together and organize various activities for the realization of same.

The Workers’ Unemployment and Social Insurance Bill (H. R. 2827), the only Bill which provides for immediate payment of unemployment insurance, can become law only if workers, including women, increase mass pressure for its enactment.

The abolition of laws discriminating against women, the extension of existing rights for women, can be obtained only by following the example set by those really very courageous women who so valiantly fought for the right of suffrage for women in the U.S.A. Various bills for laws that would improve the status of women generally “die in committee.” Organized action in the form of demonstrations, strikes, visits of delegations to the various government bodies, etc., by the masses of women directly affected by these discriminatory laws, is the only way to force favorable results.

Victories become fruitless, unless women benefit by them. That is why it is necessary for white women to fight for the same equal rights for Negro women as white women, to support the activities of Negro women for liberation.

Various forms of action against war and fascism by women are essential to fight against threatening slaughter of mankind.

To make known to broad masses of women the position of the women in the Soviet Union, their complete equality with men, the almost complete eradication of the old ideas about the inferiority of women, that this is all taking place under the Soviet form of government, is also part of the fight for freedom on the part of the women in the U.S.A.

All the activities as mentioned above, by masses of women, are links in the chain of struggle that will eventually break the shackles that bind woman and lead her forth into that world of freedom and happiness that only a Socialist society can give.

Mary Inman, In Woman’s Defense (1940)

Mary Inman, In Woman’s Defense. The Committee to Organize the Advancement of Women, 1940.

Preface

Progressive men and women have long recognized in woman’s relative social and political backwardness a menace to the people’s economic security and civil liberties.

They have also recognized that women’s inactivity injures women themselves, thwarts their social inclinations, atrophies their natural abilities and supports the claim that they are basically inferior.

Furthermore, they have recorded that wherever women became active participants in progressive political, economic or cultural movements that they were loyal, energetic and resourceful, and that as a result of such activities their lives became enriched.

How then to release woman’s energies to herself and to the people, under the intensified drive of the war mongers and reactionaries, has become the Gordian knot of the present day.

Unfortunately, although the need is greater than ever, there seems to be no short cuts to this complicated historic task. Nor can the task be longer delayed on the claim that there is more important work to be done. There is no more urgent work than calling up the women reserves to help in the task that inevitably lies ahead.

Too often in the past women themselves have been blamed for their backwardness. This is an error, both in fact and in tactics. In fact; because the backwardness of women is only one of three strands of the Gordian knot. These strands intertwine and are drawn tightly together and strengthen and support one another, and to analyze the problem as consisting only in woman’s backwardness is not enough, and immensely over-simplifies the whole problem. Furthermore, action based on such false analysis will necessarily be inadequate and lead to defeat.

In addition to it being bad tactics to blame women and attack them for their backwardness, such a course is not consistent with the established policy of the people toward oppressed groups, which is one not of condemning, but of “explaining patiently” and of striving to have them understand their problems.

Unaided, women cannot effectively organize to overcome their condition, not any more than other subject groups such as workers and Negroes can effectively organize, unaided by the vanguard of the working class, the most advanced political organizations, trade unions, cultural groups and individual progressive men and women.

All three strands of the Gordian knot that binds woman must be cut: Women’s ideological backwardness must be overcome by tying in their particular problems with the problems of the people. The backward method of their work must be improved to some degree, at least they must have partial relief from unnecessary household drudgery and 24-hour care of small children in isolated household units. And last, but not least, the backward attitude of a great many people’s organizations, and their reluctance to effectively take up the task of organizing women, must be changed.

Finally, it all boils down to this: women must be activized in the interests of the people, and the people must be activized in the interests of women.

Society today is highly organized and theory applied to woman is social theory, and represents the opinions not of individuals, nor of biological groups, such as men or women, but of economic classes.

The first task is to sort out the theories and values of the two conflicting economic classes in society, that woman and her allies may clearly see what are the programs of these two classes applied to woman, and thus achieve closer political and social unity.

It is this that we shall attempt to do in the following pages.

Los Angeles, California

December 20, 1939

Ch. VII, The Class Basis of Woman’s Subjection

Observing that the oppression of women extends beyond the jurisdiction that men have over women of their own households, and observing that here is a social process that could not have been established by unrelated male strangers, bound neither by cohesive plan nor organization, advocates of the man versus woman theory cast about for new arguments to support their theory. They found a very confusing one in the claim that man oppresses woman through the State.

This is confusing, because it is through the State that the subjugation of woman is legalized, and hundreds of laws are enacted which bind her to an inequal status. These laws establish her status as that of a subject, and define man’s duties toward her and his duties to the State in performing his dominant role.

If we inquire how this came about we are likely to be told that it happened during the time when men alone voted; when disfranchised woman had no voice in affairs of State.

And while here at least would be a means of effecting a cohesion between males, the premise that men, without class distinction, legalized the subordinate status of woman happens to still be untrue.

The subjugation of women was legalized during feudalism, when the vast majority of men had no vote and no more to say about their lives than women had. Then when capitalism overthrew feudalism and came to dominant power the subjugation of woman was legalized by the new capitalist State during the time when the majority of males and all women were disfranchised.

Thus it is evident that the legalization of woman’s subordinate status was not the act of men; that middle class men didn’t legalize the relatively lower status of middle class women, nor did working class men legalize the relatively lower status of working class women, nor did all men collectively legalize the subordinate status of all women collectively.

Instead, the binding of woman to inequality by law, was the act of the men of a numerically small class that was so powerful economically and politically that it could pass and enforce laws harmful to the majority of the population.

We hear a great deal about how tradition binds woman to inequality. We hear about woman’s “traditional” method of work, and her traditional this and traditional that, until one might conclude that the only pressure on her to conform, are past practices of having conformed.

The subjugation of woman has a long evolutionary background and a great many aspects of the problem are clear only when this background is taken into account. However, her subjugation does not exist because of this background, but because it has a very practical use right now, today.

The repeated legalization of the subjugation of women by a minority owning class, coming to power by acts of violence, as during the English and French Revolutions, was not the result of cultural lags, nor of customs carried over from one regime to the next. The new owners outlawed the institutions of the old and then set up and legalized the kind of laws needed for their interests and to fit the new method of production.

Thus with the revolutionary overthrow of feudalism by capitalism in various countries, profound changes were made in the legal enactments affecting woman, binding her anew to subjugation.

Yet a striking similarity exists between all these different methods and the old feudal codes, because the purpose remained always the same, the drive for wealth, for profits.

Later in this work we will trace certain of these changes, and their causes, in more detail and show their relation to present day subjugation, after we have cut away some of the cultural undergrowth that prevents a clear view of the matter.

For the present let us examine a little more critically the relationship between men and women both in the family and as competitors for jobs in industry, to see if there exists anywhere a sound economic basis for conflict that outweighs the benefits which they could achieve by social unity.

The first important male that appears in a woman’s life is her father. How can the granting of equality to her, hurt him? He has been cast in the role of her protector. What better protection and saner life could she have than the assurance that society has established a definite place for her that does not depend upon his ability to provide?

Life is so arranged today that no one can guarantee another perpetual economic security, no matter how well loved, nor how great the wish to protect and provide for them.

And if he takes up the function of doing her thinking what happens to her when the thinking part of her life dies? On an average she has a life expectancy of many years after his death. Yet the head dies while the body lives on.

The situation between husband and wife parallels in many ways that between father and daughter. The husband has to think not only of providing for his wife and children under conditions which will permit him employment necessary to their support, but he has to think of what they would be faced with in case of his unemployment, or death.

Under the best conditions now possible, where the husband has employment and is able to support his family, the cultural inequalities under which women live adds no pleasure to his life, and under less favorable conditions they become a positive handicap to him.

What about brother and sister? What does a man gain for himself by insisting that the inequalities to which women are subjected be applied to his sister?

He has his own life to live, and the situation would be very unusual even if he wanted to be burdened by supplying her with a living, to say nothing about his ability to do so. In his plans for her he is almost certain to consider only part of the important factors which go to make up her life.

Or, consider son and mother. A woman old enough to have a grown son needs equality as much, if not more than younger women. She talks less about the discrimination she experiences, but she feels it more keenly, and, wise from the experience of living life, she knows that dependence upon a son is not the best for either herself or her son. Often it will mean the difference between whether or not he can marry.

Mothers of whatever age need economic and social equality not only for themselves but for their children. The greater woman’s insecurity the greater is the insecurity of her dependents.

It is untrue, as sometimes claimed, that the security of a mother is something that can be traded in for the security of her children, or that her security would mean their insecurity.

Nor can we find any reason for supposing that a woman’s distant male relatives, or the other males she meets as friends, mere acquaintances, business associates, or strangers to whom she never even speaks, and that large group of men whom she will never meet, will be harmed in any way by society extending to her full equality, or by the abolition of the discrimination against women. Yet, the theory that the men of these various groups will be harmed, if this is done, is persistently propagated and does women much harm.

Furthermore, the scarcity of jobs is used by unscrupulous employers to create hostility between men and women and then to lower wages and working conditions just as it is used to set native against foreigner and white against black. But there is no solution to job inadequacy by following this line.

The fascists in Germany launched a drive against women, to give their jobs to men. They put men to work at the wage paid women, and in some cases even lower. But they in turn reduced the pay of women still further, for they used this campaign against women to work them cheaper than formerly and in addition, 3% more women were employed after three years under the fascists than before they started their drive to not give jobs to women.

A further illustration of the process of playing one sex or racial group against another is contained in the economic and cultural status of poor white men and women workers and farmers of the South. They are called “white trash,” which shows how low their living standards have become as a result of disunity arising from race conflict.

Race subjugation is used to lower the wages and increase the rents of the Negroes and then their competition is used to lower the wages and increase the rents of the poor whites.

So we see through a similar process how the hour and wage drive against women is just one way that it benefits an exploiting class for women to have a subordinate status to men without it benefiting men, and how a low status for women does not mean a high status for men.

It is, then, the low status of women that is of primary importance to take into account. After that, to take into account that, because of woman’s economic dependence, primarily men and secondarily women are enlisted and trained to hold women to this subordinate status.

The misnamed “war between the sexes” has many of the characteristics of race conflict between black and white.

But the “war between the sexes” has invaded the home and for this reason there exists not only conflict between unrelated men and women, but the added complexities arising from intimate group relationships.

The preparation of men and women for the respective roles they are to play in adult life, in this sham “war between the sexes,” begins in early childhood.

Thus there is laid a foundation in human behavior that is made the basis for a claim of “natural” antagonism between the sexes and of their complete and total unlikeness.

Ch. VIII, Manufacturing Feminity

There is no evidence that woman’s biological function as a childbearer reacts on her mental processes in such a manner as to fit her better to become a chambermaid than an engineer. What evidently does react to produce more women who are chambermaids than engineers is not woman’s nature, but her environment.

Women are influenced by their physical surroundings, both as members of society and as members of a particular group in society which, in general, has had a particular kind of work allotted to it. It is natural that they should so react, and there is nothing here about which to object, except the kind of work women do.

But, women, like members of other subject groups, such as workers and Negroes, have had part of their behavior cut to a particular group pattern and forced upon them, often from birth.

These groups react to this purposely made environment in much the same manner as certain varieties of grapes when exposed to dry heat, turn into raisins.

Deliberately manufacturing characteristics by this artificial process is neither more natural nor mysterious than the deliberate manufacture of sauerkraut. All that is necessary to do is take certain elements and do certain things with them.

In making kraut, the cabbage is shredded, or chopped, then packed into a wooden container with alternating layers of salt and cabbage. The cabbage is pounded down and a weight is added to keep it submerged.

To manufacture femininity, about one minute after a baby is born you determine whether it is male or female. After that has been established you are ready to begin, for there are already set up and operating two well defined sets of rules to guide you. One governing the conduct of males, the other that of females, and the attitude of persons toward each. So, if the new baby is a girl the making of femininity begins at once. If a boy the making of masculinity starts.

Little boys are trained to be confident and independent; little girls to be cautious and dependent. Boys are taught that they can achieve their ambitions; girls that they must have some one achieve their ambitions for them.

He has toys and games designed to cultivate his intellect. She has playthings to develop her emotions. He is taught to build a tower. She to pin on a diaper.

He must be daring and brave; she restrained in deportment, meek and submissive. Little girls must grow up to obey and follow men. Little boys to command and lead women.

If it were just a matter of training a child to live life, one set of rules would suffice for all children, because all children have to be taught to live life.

But, instead, we find that boy and girl rules are made to serve an altogether different purpose than teaching a child to wash its hands, blow its nose, wipe its feet, keep away from fire and out from under automobiles, or anything else making for survival.

Neither are they ethical rules covering such necessary social training as sharing one’s apple, or toys, or coming to the rescue of another in danger, or playing fairly, because these things apply to children of both sex.

The two opposite set of rules, into one of which every baby is inducted before it can walk, talk, see, hear or think, have only one purpose. To regulate the relations between subject group and overseers.

To this end, rules which govern him are calculated to bring out and emphasize those traits useful to a petty strawboss and submerge and atrophy those traits which would interfere with the successful pursuit of such a role. To this end also, rules taught her are calculated to aid him in a successful consummation of his strawboss rule over her.

In view of this training it is rather absurd to say that women have less brains than men. If men are smarter than women, then the dullest man is the mental superior of the most intellectual woman. The dullest male has maleness and if maleness is made the measure by which we estimate intelligence then the rest necessarily follows.

Say women are smarter than men and you merely reverse the rule. Femaleness is made the measure by which we estimate intelligence and if we should insist on this measure it would label the most stupid female the intellectual superior of the most brilliant man.

How illogical to insist on attaching particular sex characteristics to the human brain. Negroes come in for the same sort of discrimination. A mulatto writes a brilliant book. Some newspaper reviews attribute his skill to his white blood.

This is often carried to the extreme of insisting, when there is no evidence or proof that a Negro who excels has any white blood, that he must have a little, for it is said to be hard to always know, or be sure. So they insist that brains not only possess sex but color and race as well.

The surprising thing is not that woman has achieved so little, but that she has accomplished so much, handicapped as she has been by her training. One reason she has escaped to the degree that she has, is because those who make the molding rules do not have complete control over the manufacturing environment.

Those nearest and dearest to her were assigned the task of crushing her spirit and arresting any tendency toward independent thinking. The task has been a repulsive one and they have not always done it well.

Then, too, children’s resistance has helped to save them from the full effects of this training. It has been said that a child is a natural rebel. Certainly they know many times when something that their trainers insist upon is harmful to them, and they not only disobey the socially conflicting sex rules on occasion but often contest them verbally and give logical arguments why they should not be applied.

One other factor operates in woman’s favor. In addition to complicated housework, embodying some twelve or so kinds of skilled and semi-skilled work, she has other tasks to perform, such as teaching, keeping books, answering the telephone and holding her own with tradesmen, who on occasion would cheat her. For these necessary tasks she must have an independently functioning brain, and it is impossible to keep her from using this brain to solve her problems embodying survival and escape.

Yet, it is not merely woman’s restricted work and the peculiar manufactured “feminine” characteristics that causes all the trouble. Women, like members of other subject groups, have been slandered and charged with weaknesses and faults which they do not possess, but which it is convenient for the subjectors to have believed about them.

Human nature, manufactured characteristics and falsified characteristics have all been lumped together and labeled feminine nature.

A woman who several years ago gained much publicity from lecturing on the subject of sex expression and repression, makes the charge in the published story of her life that women are to blame for their subject status.

Her indictment is based on the theory that women, as trainers of children, could wipe out in one generation the discrimination against women, merely by teaching their children to have theories of equality and freedom toward women.

Woman’s children can unquestionably be a vital factor in her emancipation. But, to expect them, as this woman does, to do the job alone is to pit them against an entire economic and social process, armed only with an idea about a single issue. They would be unaided by their fathers, and have only the coaching of women to guide them.

Furthermore, her estimate glosses over the fact that in the training of children, it is not just women who train just children, but subject women who train subject children, and back of these women are successive generations of subject parents.

This does not mean that these subject parents did not pass on training and traditions from their struggles to their children that are helpful to them, for they did, but they also passed on theories of the subjectors, who had laid their cuckoo eggs in the parental nest.

Boys and girls, today, are not trained by their parents into such strikingly different patterns as they were, say thirty years ago. This modification of the training of children came as a result of the people attaining a fuller, more rational life. With their increased economic and political power they were able to resist the most oppressive measures applying to their children and themselves.

However, if we should have fascism, or black reaction, in the United States, the training of children will return to its old repressive forms.

Ch. XXVII, The Housewife’s Role in Social Production

Workers of no other group have had their importance so ignored and denied as present day housewives.

Because productive tasks once performed in the home are now performed elsewhere, the housewife’s work now is under-rated to such an extent that she is considered in certain quarters to even be living in ease and parasitism.

Adding to this erroneous notion, and appearing to support it, is the fact that the 22 million housewives who work only at home and do all their work have no earnings or income of their own and must depend upon their food, clothing and housing being bought with money earned by their husbands.

Now this support a husband gives his wife comes out of production, and if she is not useful, in fact indispensable to the owners of industry, why do they permit 22 million women to subsist on the proceeds of industry? They could not possibly be unaware that these 22 million women, not directly productive, are out there.

And this owning class is noted for its ability to exploit the balance of the population in some manner. So insistent are they that persons work for them that they even hound those they refuse to employ, because they are unemployed, as the bulk of the vagrancy cases bear witness.

Why then do not the paid propagandists of this owning class attack this arrangement of 22 million housewives being maintained out of the proceeds of industry, instead of lauding the arrangement and surrounding it with moralistic robes?

There can be only one answer. Under certain conditions it profits them. Under certain conditions it is irreplaceable.

One very striking peculiarity of certain trends of theory about woman and what is called woman’s work, is that this work has been described and then elsewhere, generally apart from it, broad generalizations have been made referring to woman’s subjugation being a part of the system of the exploitation of human labor, but these two things have not been adequately connected.

It is somewhat as if the woods were described and in a separate section the trees were also described but the whole matter was left in such a disconnected shape that neither seemed to have any relation to the other; the trees did not appear to be in the woods and the woods were not a collectivity of trees.

Let us illustrate the point further: The work of a cook in a logging camp is a necessary part of the production of lumber. The services of all the cooks in all the camps, restaurants and eating places wherever productive workers are fed, are a necessary part of production. And for the same reason, the work of the cooks in the homes of productive workers is also, at present, a necessary part of production.

The labor of a woman, who cooks for her husband, who is making tires in the Firestone plant in Southgate, California, is essentially as much a part of the production of automobile tires as the cooks and waitresses in the cafes where Firestone workers eat.

And all the wives of all the Firestone workers, by the necessary social labor they perform in the home, have a part in the production of Firestone Tires, and their labor is as inseparably knit into those tires as is the labor of their husbands.

Anyone can multiply this illustration by the products produced by Republic Steel, Standard Oil, Henry Ford, etc., and always get the same answer, that the wives’ labor is a necessary service in the creation of products in these plants.

The labor of workers in the laundries who wash clothing for productive workers is necessary to the system of production. Maids and porters who sweep the floors, make the beds and tidy the rooms in boarding houses or camps where productive workers sleep and rest, so that they may prepare themselves to return to work the next day, are a necessary link in the productive process.

And in the same way, the labor of housewives in the homes of productive workers who perform the services of keeping clothing washed and beds and floors clean, is also an indispensable part of production.

Persons who work in houses where children are boarded and trained, or schooled, are performing a useful service, and their labor is indispensable to the present method of production and distribution. And for a similar reason, millions of women in homes, who do the greater part of such work, are rendering an indispensable service to the present method of producing and distributing commodities.

If profits are to be made, commodities must not only be produced but distributed. Both production and distribution are complex and are inseparably linked to communication and transportation, and have tentacles that extend into schools and almost every legitimate phase of human activity.

The housewife does not cook eight or nine hours like the camp cook, nor wash and iron a stated number of hours like the laundry worker, nor make beds for certain hours like the maid in the hotel or rooming house, nor teach and nurse and feed children, future productive workers, a stated number of hours like teachers and workers in nurseries and schools, but she does perform all these tasks, and more, for unlimited and unstated hours every day, every week, and every month for years.

If the man cook in the lumber camp could be held to a subordinate economic position, directly under another worker and required to work, not nine hours, but an indefinite number, from ten to twelve, or more, and be paid nothing directly but have to get his keep from the little extra given the worker over him, and then be scornfully referred to as being “kept,” it is easy to see that his employer would be further enriched by the decreased status and lengthened hours of the cook.

And it is in some such manner that the collective owners of industry, the Hearsts, Rockefellers, Mellons, du Ponts, Fords and Morgans benefit by the cheap labor of the collective house-wives and their resultant economic and social degradation. Besides, the wife’s dependence is a means of binding the man too, and of reaching through the parents their subject children.

And what shall we say of the housework middle class women performed under developing capitalism, cleaning, cooking, ironing, scrubbing and washing clothes and dishes? We must consider the work of most of these women as being necessary to the system of production and distribution also.

It is true that some of them had hired girls but in many cases where they did, the housewife herself performed a great deal of useful work. It is our belief that the majority of the women of what is commonly called the middle class, did not subsist parasitically upon society, but did socially useful, necessary work.

Why was it useful, and why was it necessary? Because at one stage of the development of capitalism the middle class was an indispensable part of the system of manufacturing and distributing commodities. These persons with small capital investments were useful to the big capitalists, who had not yet gotten around to department and chain stores, and mass production and distribution.

When feudalism was overthrown by capitalism, the new system in the process of revolutionizing production, and spreading over the world, utilized millions of small producers and distributors.

And until the big capitalists had time and opportunity to expand over the entire earth with imperialistic, monopolistic combines and interlocking companies, banks, loans and business interests, hundreds of thousands of little stores and one-man management factories, with the manager often making a hand himself, were required in the United States, and millions more were required throughout the world.

This middle class helped build and develop and present machine system. During the building, the larger capitalists benefited by collecting tribute in the form of rent, interest, taxes and in various other ways from this middle class.

Yet, although this tribute increased in kind and amount with the years, that did not satisfy the big capitalists who wanted ownership in more and more cases and not only wanted ownership but took it.

And in time, monopoly-finance capitalists, with their inside track on politics and increasing power of wealth control, through financing and producing goods and selling them cheaper, practically destroyed the once numerically great middle class.

The small individually owned and operated factories and stores became outmoded and could not compete with ever-growing enterprises not handicapped by small capital investments. Such a method of production and distribution truly belonged to the horse and buggy days, but like the horse and buggy, useful in its historic setting.

The middle class housewife then, who did useful housework for a husband engaged in such work of production and distribution, or for sons so engaged, or for sons who were already, or preparing to become, technicians, engineers or teachers for the capitalists, or for daughters who would become the working wives of men so employed, such middle class housewives filled a socially useful role in their day to day work, and they contributed to the cumulative building of the great factory process that is modern America.

Housewives of both the middle and working classes helped create this wealth that is America today, and part of it belongs to them by right of toil.

Ch. XXIX, Outmoded Housework

A great deal of sentimental nonsense has been written about the work housewives do, tending to prove they can never escape it. Yet, if we trace down each of these sentimental idealizations, we find that it is definitely tied to poverty and disappears where persons have the means to lead a life in keeping with what the entire family desires and considers to be a high standard of living.

Families with sufficient income have never hesitated to hire a cook, and no great demoralizing sacrifice was considered to have been visited upon husband and children because the wife and mother no longer cooked the food.

Those with money employ kindly and competent nurse-maids for their children, and instead of this hurting their children, the practice is praised by authorities on child raising as a progressive and intelligent trend.

A great deal of the work formerly done in the home is now done socially even under capitalism, but the results are mainly appropriated by individual owners. Weaving and the making of clothing, the making of bedding and canning of foodstuffs have become profitable sources of income for factory owners.

The schooling of children, hospitalization and care of the sick, a large percentage of recreation and amusements and the necessary services for the dead, child births, and even weddings, have departed to a greater or less degree from individual homes.

The new method is more efficient and more scientific. Persons specially trained to do these tasks, work with others so trained, and they work regular hours and then are free.

The great lags in this progressive trend have been in the production of cooked foods, in the nursing and care of children, and in household cleaning and tidying. Laundering has lagged amazingly. This despite the fact that it is one service that could be done effectively with machinery at central points.

The work women do in isolated household units may be classified as consisting of two parts: household work, and the care of children.

Household work in turn may be classified into four main divisions: shopping, cooking, washing and cleaning.

In so far as it affects a woman’s life, and her work, the care of children has two distinct phases. One phase has to do with the actual work connected with their care, and the other with the restrictive effects upon her life.

This latter phase narrows her interests and greatly lengthens her hours of duty. For example, if a woman has small children and they retire at, say, seven o’clock and she at eleven, there is a difference of four hours during which she must stay within calling distance of their voices for they require her presence for long hours even when asleep, or need no actual attention, but must have somebody on hand to protect them from accidental harm and to minister to unforseen wants.

Such a woman may not participate often in political and social life. She may not even go to a movie in the evening, and during the summer she is denied the customary two weeks vacation that many women wage workers receive. She may not do any number of things, because she is shackled for unnecessary hours to the routine life of small children or to the care and supervision of children in their teens.

In a city of 500,000 people, containing, say, 100,000 working and lower middle class homes, 100,000 women are planning how to get the windows washed, the curtains cleaned, the clothing washed and ironed and the shopping done.

Not only is time wasted when 100,000 women go to market but marketing is becoming increasingly unpleasant. A woman must exercise unceasing vigilance otherwise when she returns home she will find that she has spent her husband’s hard earned money for food not fit to serve him; soft bananas and tomatoes, pea pods mysteriously devoid of peas, green oranges artificially colored a beautiful yellow, loose heads of cabbage and stringy, bony, untrimmed cuts of meat. What a waste of time! What a nuisance altogether!

But individual shopping is only part of the present method of housekeeping and of cooked food production. There are also the individual cookings.

On 100,000 fires, skillets are smoking and pots boiling as 100,000 cooks cook 100,000 meals in our typical city of 500,000 persons. If there is an equal number of coffee and tea drinkers, 50,000 coffee pots will boil and 50,000 tea pots will steep.

When all is ready 100,000 women will serve 100,000 suppers and then wash 100,000 sets of dishes by a hand method so old it goes back beyond the ox cart stage. Few of the mechanical dishwashing machines will be found in the homes where they are needed the most, where the housewife does all the work herself.

Household hours average at least 50 hours a week, and on farms where there are babies they average 75, according to U. S. Labor Bulletin No. 155.

Now there are in the United States not 100,000 but 26 million households, where a minimum of 26 million persons, either in the capacity of servants or housewives, expend some 200 million hours of labor every day.

If we take into account that this work could probably be done in one-tenth the time, or less, by, 3 million of these women, the enormity of this social waste becomes apparent.

If women in 26 million households are ever to escape the present out of date method of performing household work, their work must be reorganized so that it can be done more efficiently.

The number of “servants” is limited; and even if working and middle class families all had the means to hire them, this would be no “solution,” for the number available falls far short of the number of individual households, and “servants”’ need releasing not only from outmoded methods of work, but from the whole ideology of caste which surrounds their present method of doing socially useful work.

In the introductory chapter to her book, “Home,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote:

We may all have homes to love and grow in without the requirement that half of us shall never have anything else. We shall have homes of rest and peace for all, with no need for half of us to find them places of ceaseless work and care...

To the child who longs to grow up and be free; to the restless, rebelling boy; to the girl who marries all too hastily as a means of escape; to the man who puts his neck in the collar and pulls while life lasts to meet the unceasing demands of his little sanctuary; and to the woman—the thousands upon thousands of women, who work while life lasts to serve that sanctuary by night and day—to all these it may not be unwelcome to suggest that the home need be neither a prison, a workhouse, nor a consuming fire.

This ideal, pictured by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is more realizable than ever, and more of a necessity than it ever was, for if all the feudalistic lags, none, not even that in agriculture, compares to the lag in household work, which is a drag even on capitalism.

The feudalistic system that binds the Negro people in the United States has a territorial foundation in the plantation Black Belt in the South. The feudalistic system of woman’s work is not founded on land boundaries, but extends over all the nation and exists in industrial centers, where isolated home units, in which women toil at hand labor, stand side by side with factories where production is mechanized and specialized.

Yet, in step with fascistic trends backward, an effort is being made to set household work back still further. Mrs. Ralph Borsodi, in “The New Woman Goes Home,” Scribner’s magazine, February, 1937, paints a glowing picture of benefits to women if they will only perform work in the home that is now being done outside by food canneries, garment factories, bakeries and laundries, schools and hospitals. She even mentions weaving and a “loom room” in the home.

Capitalism’s spokesmen have not been slow about praising the progressive features where work was done more efficiently outside the home, but significantly they have been equally fulsome in praise of the lags, and have told us how indispensable these lags were to our happiness.

It is also fallacious to assume, as some socialists do, that nothing can be done under capitalism to improve housewives’ outmoded method of work, and that we must first have socialism before women put their minds to this problem and tackle its solution.

This attitude is as illogical as saying that workers must wait for socialism to obtain higher wages, and have the conditions of their work improved, or that old persons must wait for pensions, or the unemployed sick for social medical care.

Ch. XXXIII, The Road Ahead

The majority of women have, together with the majority of men, general problems as members of society, relating to such issues as building strong trade unions; resistance to reactionary political measures; resistance to reduced living standards through wage cuts and increased living costs; and the necessity of having adequate new housing constructed.

Women have general problems as women, such as “the necessity to struggle against the ideology of female bondage,” and against the subservient doctrines preached to them through most of the women’s magazines and the general press.

They have general problems arising from the demands levied upon them to train their children in the old patterns that attempt to set men and women against one another in hostile camps.

Women have general problems relating to segregation and isolation. Jim Crowism along either race or sex lines is a bar to political and economic unity.

Finally, women have special problems as women, because of economic groupings, or levels of political awareness.

Most important of all, the housewife must be given credit for performing, in the home, work that is indispensable to the present method of machine production. This will remove her from that sentimental little classification, that, theoretically, restricted her importance to her family. Especially should trade unions and people’s organizations be made aware of this fact.

Recognition of the housewife’s importance will raise her estimation in her own eyes and in the eyes of society. It will permit her to actively join the ranks of socially useful workers, where she rightfully belongs, swelling their numbers and releasing her political energies to the people.

Recognition of the social importance of the housewife’s work will permit of an analysis and study of her organizing problems, and bring to her aid expert advice and help from experienced organizers and leaders of the people, such as wage workers now enjoy, and which she has never had.

There is a growing demand for the establishment of day nurseries for children, thus freeing women from caring for small children exclusively at home, and of being dragged down physically and mentally by long hours ministering to their wants.

Children’s nurseries are in the same class as public schools for children, and should be so considered. It is woman’s right to have them, and children’s and fathers’ right, too.

Women wage workers may join their trade unions, together with the men with whom they work, but housewives who work only at home must have housewives’ leagues, or other organizations, framed to cope with their specific economic needs.

Two important, progressive organizations for women are the League of Women Shoppers, which exerts economic pressure through their buying power, and the Women’s Auxiliaries of the Trade Unions, formed to assist unions, by feeding strikers, assisting in picket duty, and interviewing employers who discriminate against unionists.

One thing that will aid woman’s struggles, is the growing unity between working and middle class women.

The feminist movement attracted large numbers of women from the small propertied classes and some upper class women. Since the aims of the movement, except for deviations, did not go beyond demands for equality of women with men, the aims fitted well the ideology of these propertied class women, who did not want class relations disturbed but wanted only to take their place alongside of upper and middle class men, receive the same kind of schooling and own property as men of their class did.

But for working women, equality between the sexes was not enough. At best it would be equality of exploitation, low wages, bad working conditions and unemployment equally with the working man. Equality with man was certainly worth struggling for, then as now, because it meant cessation of discrimination based on femaleness, but given sex equality only, there would still be left class inequality.

Economic conditions have now changed for the small property owners and, as a result of this change, equality between the sexes is not now enough for these once propertied women as it would leave them the equals of men faced with economic ruin, in a world where the situation is highly unfavorable for the propertyless to acquire property. Therefore, these women are now the logical allies of working class women, in contra-distinction to being allied with upper class women to the extent that they once were.

Through changing economic conditions working class women now have as their allies working class men to a greater extent than ever before, and there now exists a situation highly favorable to unity between men and women with reference to women’s present problems.

Fewer families live on farms and those who do are very definitely and very obviously producing surplus wealth not for themselves but for the bankers. And city families no longer produce commodities which the man, as head of the house, can look upon as a source of income.

Instead, in the majority of households, wife and children are dependent upon the earnings of the husband and father. He no longer exploits his family and there is neither the degree, nor kind, of economic conflict that existed between husband and wife and between father and children, when he did exploit them.

What now is the chief role of the man? To sell his labor power in a competitive labor market to acquire money to feed, house and clothe his family.

We can find no decisive factor in the present economic arrangement, of the family’s dependence upon the man, that should cause the average man to desire a subservient economic and cultural status for women.

It certainly is against his interests, and against his wife’s interests, too. For the principal fact remains, that she is held to economic dependence, and an out-of-date method of performing socially useful work, which is reached only by personal invitation.

With this changing economic situation the capitalists have attempted to corrupt woman with new ideology, to fit the new conditions.

Columnists for capitalist newspapers, and other writers, tell her to not let the man off easy. That he can support her and the children in plenty if he will only apply himself as he should, and that she will weaken his character if she takes work outside the home and contributes to the family income, or does not act as though he could support his family on a constantly increasing scale of comfort.

The theory that a woman should not work at all, but be supported in idleness by her husband, comes from the camp of the exploiters. All this makes life for the man harder.

Wives of workers who attempt to live such decayed, perverted theories and consequently fail to hold up their end of the family responsibility, and neglect necessary tasks of cleaning and cooking, are taking their ease at the expense of other members of the family.

A companion theory, applied to society instead of the family, is that the woman should take no part in political and social activities, but let some one do the work for her and save her the trouble, and also the risk of picking the losing side, thus she will always be safe. But she will not be safe, and neither will her children and her husband, by her following such a course.

The reason neither man, woman, nor child of the working and middle classes will be safe, unless they struggle unitedly against their exploiters, is that the exploiters control the population’s means of making a living.

Proof of the tight grip in which the dominant owning class in the United States hold the majority of the population, is contained in the Brookings Institution figures on wealth division. The total wealth at the time of the crisis in 1929 was 425 billions, or $3,500 per man, woman and child. But 1% of the population owned 83% of the liquid wealth, while 99% owned only 17%.

And no longer can people “escape” to the land. Mortgage indebtedness increased from 3 billion dollars in 1910 to 8 billion dollars in 1933. These mortgages were acquired principally by the banks and the powerful Wall Street dominated insurance companies, the insurance companies being the largest mortgage owners.

Farm Research reported that more than 1,700,000 farms (about one-fourth of all those in the United States) were sold under the hammer during the eight year period, 1930–1937.

Here is a process of economic strangulation, through increasing monopoly control, that brings in its wake war, repression, poverty, unemployment and disease, and causes cultural and social disintegration. And only the resistance of a united people, with women as active participants, can meet this menace.

Claudia Jones, We Seek Full Equality for Women (1949)

https://viewpointmag.com/2015/02/21/we-seek-full-equality-for-women/

Published: The Daily Worker, September 4, 1949.

Source: Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment, ed. Carole Boyce Davies. Ayebia Clarke Publishing Ltd., 2011.

Taking up the struggle of the Suffragists, the Communists have set new tasks, new objectives in the fight for a new status for women. The special value of Foster’s contribution:

The leading role of the Communist Party in the struggle to emancipate women from male oppression is one of the proud contributions which our Party of Marxism-Leninism, the Communist Party, U.S.A., celebrates on its thirtieth anniversary.

Marxism-Leninism exposes the core of the woman question and shows that the position of women in society is not always and everywhere the same, but derives from woman’s relation to the mode of production.

Under capitalism, the inequality of women stems from exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class. But the exploitation of women cuts across class lines and affects all women. Marxism-Leninism views the woman question as a special question which derives from the economic dependence of women upon men. This economic dependence as Engels wrote over 100 years ago, carries with it the sexual exploitation of women, the placing of woman in the modern bourgeois family, as the “proletariat” of the man, who assumes the role of “bourgeoisie.”

Hence, Marxist-Leninists fight to free woman of household drudgery, they fight to win equality for women in all spheres; they recognize that one cannot adequately deal with the woman question or win women for progressive participation unless one takes up the special problems, needs and aspirations of women—as women.

It is this basic principle that has governed the theory and practice of the Communist Party for the last three decades.

As a result, our Party has chalked up a proud record of struggle for the rights of women. American literature has been enhanced by the works of Marxists who investigated the status of women in the U.S. in the ‘30s. Its record is symbolized in the lives of such outstanding women Communists as Ella Reeve Bloor and Anita Whitney and others who are associated with the fight for women’s suffrage, for the rights of the Negro people, for working class emancipation. Our Party and its leadership helped stimulate the organization of women in the trade unions and helped activize the wives of workers in the great labor organizing drives; built housewives’ councils to fight against the high cost of living; taught women through the boycott and other militant actions how to fight for the needs of the family; helped to train and mold women Communist leaders on all levels, working class women inspired by the convictions and ideals of their class—the working class.

A pioneer in the fight for the organization of working class women, our Party was the first to demonstrate to white women and to the working class that the triply-oppressed status of Negro women is a barometer of the status of all women, and that the fight for the full, economic, political and social equality of the Negro woman is in the vital self-interest of white workers, in the vital interest of the fight to realize equality for all women.

But it remained for the contribution of William Z. Foster, National Chairman of our Party, to sharpen the thinking of the American Communist Party on the woman question. Comrade Foster projected in a deeper way the basic necessity for the working class and its vanguard Party to fight the obstacles to women’s equality, evidenced in many anti-woman prejudices, in the prevalent ideology of male superiority fostered by the monopolists imbibed by the working class men.

The essence of Foster’s contribution is that it is necessary to win the masses of American women for the over-all struggle against imperialist war and fascism by paying special attention to their problems and by developing special struggles for their economic, political, and social needs. Basing himself upon the Marxist-Leninist tenet that the inequality of women is inherently connected with the exploitation of the working class, Foster called on the Party and the working class to master the Marxist-Leninist theory of the woman question, to improve our practical work on this question, and to correct former errors, errors of commission and omission with regard to this fundamental question.

Foster’s special contribution lies in his unique exposé of the mask placed on the status of women in every sphere in the U.S. by American imperialism. Comrade Foster exposed the bourgeois lie that women in the U.S. have achieved full equality and that no further rights remain to be won. He shows that the ideological prop used by reactionary propagandists to perpetuate false ideas of women’s ‘inferiority’ is to base their anti-social arguments as regards women on all kinds of pseudo-scientific assumptions, particularly the field of biology.

Any underestimation of the need for a persistent ideological struggle against all manifestations of masculine superiority must therefore be rooted out. If biology is falsely utilized by the bourgeois ideologists to perpetuate their false notions about women, Communists and progressives must fare boldly into the biological sciences and enhance our ideological struggle against bourgeois ideas and practices of male superiority.

In order to meet the tasks projected for a deeper understanding and mastery of the Marxist-Leninist approach to the woman question a special Party Commission on Theoretical Aspects of Work among Women was established. Reflecting the great hunger for theory on the woman question on the part of Communists and progressives was the one day Conference on Marxism and the Women Question held under the auspices of the Jefferson School of Social Science held in June of this year. Nearly 600 women and men attended. Indicative, too, of how the Party is meeting its tasks in this sphere are the numerous cadre schools which have been held to facilitate the training of women for mass work among women and the training of Communist men on the woman question.

Some 10 Party women’s commissions now exist, which, under the leadership and guidance of the Party district organizations, give attention to work among women in the Party and in the mass organizations. It is necessary to utilize the 30th anniversary of our Party to strengthen our mass and Party work and to turn the face of the entire Party toward this question.

This is necessary, first, because without mobilization of the masses of women, particularly working class and Negro women, the fight for peace against a third world war will not be successful. American women and their organizations have given indications in varied ways, that they oppose the Atlantic Pact, and are fearful of the implications of the arms pact.

This understanding is necessary, secondly, because of the growing reactionary offensive against the civil rights of the American people, the outstanding examples of which is the indictment and trial of the 12 leaders of our Party before a jury having a majority of women.

Finally, this understanding is necessary because without rooting ourselves among the masses of women, without building the progressive organizations of women, such as the Congress of American Women, Women’s Division of the Progressive Party, the Negro women’s organizations, etc., and without organizing special struggles for the demands of women, we cannot win the women against the reactionary influences of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and the bourgeois ideologists.

By successfully mastering our theory of the woman question, organizing masses of American women, and focusing attention primarily on the problems and needs of working class women, our Party can help usher in a new status for American women.

To achieve that end, we must win the women to an over-active fight against imperialist war and fascism. For, in the words of the great Dimitroff, in his famous report, “The United Front Against Fascism”:

While fascism exacts most from youth it enslaves women with particular ruthlessness and cynicism, playing on the most painful feelings of the mother, the housewife, the single working woman, uncertain of the morrow. Fascism, posing as a benefactor, throws the starving family a few beggarly scraps, trying in this way to stifle the bitterness aroused particularly among the toiling women, by the unprecedented slavery which fascism brings them.

We must spare no pains to see that the women workers and toilers fight shoulder to shoulder with their class brothers in the ranks of the united working class front and the anti-fascist people’s front.

In the spirit of the anti-fascist hero of Leipzig, let us rededicate ourselves to the fight for the complete equality of women.

Claudia Jones, An End to the Neglect of the Problems of Negro Women (1949)

Available online through the Publication of Archival Library and Museum Materials of the State University Libraries of Florida.

Claudia Jones, “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of Negro Women.” Political Affairs v. 28, n. 5, June 1949.

An outstanding feature of the present stage of the Negro liberation movement is the growth in the militant participation of Negro women in all aspects of the struggle for peace, civil rights, and economic security. Symptomatic of this new militancy is the fact that Negro women have become symbols of many present-day struggles of the Negro people. This growth of militancy among Negro women has profound meaning, both for the Negro liberation movement and for the emerging anti-fascist, anti-imperialist coalition.

To understand this militancy correctly, to deepen and extend the role of Negro women in the struggle for peace and for all interests of the working class and the Negro people, means primarily to overcome the gross neglect of the special problems of Negro women. This neglect has too long permeated the ranks of the labor movement generally, of Left-progressives, and also of the Communist Party. The most serious assessment of these shortcomings by progressives, especially by Marxist-Leninists, is vitally necessary if we are to help accelerate this development and integrate Negro women in the progressive and labor movement and in our own Party.

The bourgeoisie is fearful of the militancy of the Negro woman, and for good reason. The capitalists know, far better than many progressives seem to know, that once Negro women undertake action, the militancy of the whole Negro people, and thus of the anti-imperialist coalition, is greatly enhanced.

Historically, the Negro woman has been the guardian, the protector, of the Negro family. From the days of the slave traders down to the present, the Negro woman has had the responsibility of caring for the needs of the family, of militantly shielding it from the blows of Jim-Crow insults, of rearing children in an atmosphere of lynch terror, segregation, and police brutality, and of fighting for an education for the children. The intensified oppression of the Negro people, which has been the hallmark of the postwar reactionary offensive, cannot therefore but lead to an acceleration of the militancy of the Negro woman. As mother, as Negro, and as worker, the Negro woman fights against the wiping out of the Negro family, against the Jim-Crow ghetto existence which destroys the health, morale, and very life of millions of her sisters, brothers, and children.

Viewed in this light, it is not accidental that the American bourgeoisie has intensified its oppression, not only of the Negro people in general, but of Negro women in particular. Nothing so exposes the drive to fascization in the nation as the callous attitude which the bourgeoisie displays and cultivates toward Negro women. The vaunted boast of the ideologists of Big Business—that American women possess “the greatest equality” in the world is exposed in all its hypocrisy when one sees that in many parts of the world, particularly in the Soviet Union, the New Democracies and the formerly oppressed land of China, women are attaining new heights of equality. But above all else, Wall Street’s boast stops at the water’s edge where Negro and working-class women are concerned. Not equality, but degradation and super-exploitation: this is the actual lot of Negro women!

Consider the hypocrisy of the Truman Administration, which boasts about “exporting democracy throughout the world” while the state of Georgia keeps a widowed Negro mother of twelve children under lock and key. Her crime? She defended her life and dignity—aided by her two sons—from the attacks of a “white supremacist.” Or ponder the mute silence with which the Department of Justice has greeted Mrs. Amy Mallard, widowed Negro school-teacher, since her husband was lynched in Georgia because he had bought a new Cadillac and become, in the opinion of the “white supremacists,” “too uppity.” Contrast this with the crocodile tears shed by the U.S. delegation to the United Nations for Cardinal Mindszenty, who collaborated with the enemies of the Hungarian People’s Republic and sought to hinder the forward march to fuller democracy by the formerly oppressed workers and peasants of Hungary. Only recently, President Truman spoke solicitously in a Mother’s Day Proclamation about the manifestation of “our love and reverence” for all mothers of the land. The so-called “love and reverence” for the mothers of the land by no means includes Negro mothers who, like Rosa Lee Ingram, Amy Mallard, the wives and mothers of the Trenton Six, or the other countless victims, dare to fight back against lynch law and “white supremacy” violence.

Economic Hardships

Very much to the contrary, Negro women—as workers, as Negroes, and as women—are the most oppressed stratum of the whole population.

In 1940, two out of every five Negro women, in contrast to two out of every eight white women, worked for a living. By virtue of their majority status among the Negro people, Negro women not only constitute the largest percentage of women heads of families, but are the main breadwinners of the Negro family. The large proportion of Negro women in the labor market is primarily a result of the low-scale earnings of Negro men. This disproportion also has its roots in the treatment and position of Negro women over the centuries.

Following emancipation, and persisting to the present day, a large percentage of Negro women—married as well as single—were forced to work for a living. But despite the shift in employment of Negro women from rural to urban areas, Negro women are still generally confined to the lowest-paying jobs. The Women’s Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, Handbook of Facts for Women Workers (1948, Bulletin 225), shows white women workers as having median earnings more than twice as high as those of non-white women, and non-white women workers (mainly Negro women) as earning less than $500 a year! In the rural South, the earnings of women are even less. In three large Northern industrial communities, the median income of white families ($1,720) is almost 60 percent higher than that of Negro families ($1,095). The super-exploitation of the Negro woman worker is thus revealed not only in that she receives, as woman, less than equal pay for equal work with men, but in that the majority of Negro women get less than half the pay of white women. Little wonder, then, that in Negro communities the conditions of ghetto-living—low salaries, high rents, high prices, etc.—virtually become an iron curtain hemming in the lives of Negro children and undermining their health and spirit! Little wonder that the maternity death rate for Negro women is triple that of white women! Little wonder that one out of every ten Negro children born in the United States does not grow to manhood or womanhood!

The low scale of earnings of the Negro woman is directly related to her almost complete exclusion from virtually all fields of work except the most menial and underpaid, namely, domestic service. Revealing are the following data given in the report of 1945, Negro Women War Workers (Women’s Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, Bulletin 205): Of a total 7 million Negro women, over a million are in domestic and personal service. The overwhelming bulk—about 918,000—of these women workers are employed in private families, and some 98,000 are employed as cooks, waitresses, and in like services in other than private homes. The remaining 60,000 workers in service trades are in miscellaneous personal service occupations (beauticians, boarding house and lodging-house keepers, charwomen, janitors, practical nurses, housekeepers, hostesses, and elevator operators).

The next largest number of Negro women workers are engaged in agricultural work. In 1940, about 245,000 were agricultural workers. Of them, some 128,000 were unpaid family workers.

Industrial and other workers numbered more than 96,000 of the Negro women reported. Thirty-six thousand of these women were in manufacturing, the chief groups being 11,300 in apparel and other fabricated textile products, 11,000 in tobacco manufactures, and 5,600 in food and related products.

Clerical and kindred workers in general numbered only 13,000. There were only 8,300 Negro women workers in civil service.

The rest of the Negro women who work for a living were distributed along the following lines: teachers, 50,000; nurses and student nurses, 6,700; social and welfare workers, 1,700; dentists, pharmacists, and veterinarians, 120; physicians and surgeons, 129; actresses, 200; authors, editors, and reporters, 100; lawyers and judges, 39; librarians, 400; and other categories likewise illustrating the large-scale exclusion of Negro women from the professions.

During the anti-Axis war, Negro women for the first time in history had an opportunity to utilize their skills and talents in occupations other than domestic and personal service. They became trail blazers in many fields. Since the end of the war, however, this has given way to growing unemployment, to the wholesale firing of Negro women, particularly in basic industry.

This process has been intensified with the development of the economic crisis. Today, Negro women are being forced back into domestic work in great numbers. In New York State, for example, this trend was officially confirmed recently when Edward Corsi, Commissioner of the State Labor Department, revealed that for the first time since the war, domestic help is readily obtainable. Corsi in effect admitted that Negro women are not voluntarily giving up jobs, but rather are being systematically pushed out of industry. Unemployment, which has always hit the Negro woman first and hardest, plus the high cost of living, is what compels Negro women to re-enter domestic service today. Accompanying this trend is an ideological campaign to make domestic work palatable. Daily newspaper advertisements which base their arguments on the claim that most domestic workers who apply for jobs through U.S.E.S. “prefer this type of work to work in industry,” are propagandizing the “virtues” of domestic work, especially of “sleep-in positions.”

Inherently connected with the question of job opportunities where the Negro woman is concerned, is the special oppression she faces as Negro, as woman, and as worker. She is the victim of the white chauvinist stereotype as to where her place should be. In the film, radio, and press, the Negro woman is not pictured in her real role as breadwinner, mother, and protector of the family, but as a traditional “mammy” who puts the care of children and families of others above her own. This traditional stereotype of the Negro slave mother, which to this day appears in commercial advertisements, must be combatted and rejected as a device of the imperialists to perpetuate the white chauvinist ideology that Negro women are “backward,” “inferior,” and the “natural slaves” of others.

Historical Aspects

Actually, the history of the Negro woman shows that the Negro mother under slavery held a key position and played a dominant role in her own family grouping. This was due primarily to two factors: the conditions of slavery, under which marriage, as such, was non-existent, and the Negro’s social status was derived from the mother and not the father; and the fact that most of the Negro people brought to these shores by the slave traders came from West Africa where the position of women, based on active participation in property control, was relatively higher in the family than that of European women.

Early historians of the slave trade recall the testimony of travelers indicating that the love of the African mother for her child was unsurpassed in any part of the world. There are numerous stories attesting to the self-sacrificial way in which East African mothers offered themselves to the slave traders in order to save their sons and Hottentot women refused food during famines until after their children were fed.

It is impossible within the confines of this article to relate the terrible sufferings and degradation undergone by Negro mothers and Negro women generally under slavery. Subject to legalized rape by the slaveowners, confined to slave pens, forced to march for eight to fourteen hours with loads on their backs and to perform back-breaking work even during pregnancy, Negro women bore a burning hatred for slavery, and undertook a large share of the responsibility for defending and nurturing the Negro family.

The Negro mother was mistress in the slave cabin, and despite the interference of master or overseer, her wishes in regard to mating and in family matters were paramount. During and after slavery, Negro women had to support themselves and the children. Necessarily playing an important role in the economic and social life of her people, the Negro woman became schooled in self-reliance, in courageous and selfless action.

There is documentary material of great interest which shows that Negro family life and the social and political consciousness of Negro men and women underwent important changes after emancipation. One freedman observed, during the Civil War, that many men were exceedingly jealous of their newly acquired authority in family relations and insisted upon a recognition of their superiority over women. After the Civil War, the slave rows were broken up and the tenant houses scattered all over the plantation in order that each family might carry on an independent existence. The new economic arrangement, the change in the mode of production, placed the Negro man in a position of authority in relation to his family. Purchase of homesteads also helped strengthen the authority of the male.

Thus, a former slave, who began life as a freedman on a “one-horse” farm, with his wife working as a laundress, but who later rented land and hired two men, recalls the pride which he felt because of his new status: ``In my humble palace on a hill in the woods beneath the shade of towering pines and sturdy oaks, I felt as a king whose supreme commands were `law and gospel to my subjects.

One must see the double motive was operative here. In regard to his wife and children, the Negro man was now enabled to assume economic and other authority over the family; but he also could fight against violation of women of his group where formerly he was powerless to interfere.

The founding of the Negro church, which from the outset was under the domination of men, also tended to confirm the man’s authority in the family. Sanction for male ascendancy was found in the Bible, which for many was the highest authority in such matters.

Through these and other methods, the subordination of Negro women developed. In a few cases, instead of legally emancipating his wife and children, the husband permitted them to continue in their status of slaves. In many cases, state laws forbade a slave emancipated after a certain date to remain in the state. Therefore, the only way for many Negro wives and children to remain in the state was to become “enslaved” to their relatives. Many Negro owners of slaves were really relatives of their slaves.

In some cases, Negro women refused to become subject to the authority of the men. In defiance of the decisions of their husbands to live on the places of their former masters, many Negro women took their children and moved elsewhere.

Negro Women In Mass Organizations

This brief picture of some of the aspects of the history of the Negro woman, seen in the additional light of the fact that a high proportion of Negro women are obliged today to earn all or part of the bread of the family, helps us understand why Negro women play a most active part in the economic, social, and political life of the Negro community today. Approximately 2,500,000 Negro women are organized in social, political, and fraternal clubs and organizations. The most prominent of their organizations are the National Association of Negro women, the National Council of Negro Women the National Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Women’s Division of the Elks’ Civil Liberties Committee, the National Association of Colored Beauticians, National Negro Business Women’s League, and the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses. Of these, the National Association of Negro Women, with 75,000 members, is the largest membership organization. There are numerous sororities, church women’s committees of all denominations, as well as organizations among women of West Indian descent. In some areas, N.A.A.C.P. chapters have Women’s Divisions, and recently the National Urban League established a Women’s Division for the first time in its history.

Negro women are the real active forces—the organizers and workers—in all the institutions and organizations of the Negro people. These organizations play a many-sided role, concerning themselves with all questions pertaining to the economic, political, and social life of the Negro people, and particularly of the Negro family. Many of these organizations are intimately concerned with the problems of Negro youth, in the form of providing and administering educational scholarships, giving assistance to schools and other institutions, and offering community service. The fight for higher education in order to break down Jim Crow in higher institutions was symbolized last year, by the brilliant Negro woman student, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher of Oklahoma. The disdainful attitudes which are sometimes expressed—that Negro women’s organizations concern themselves only with “charity” work—must be exposed as of chauvinist derivation, however subtle, because while the same could be said of many organizations of white women, such attitudes fail to recognize the special character of the role of Negro women’s organizations. This approach, fails to recognize the special function which Negro women play in these organizations, which, over and above their particular function, seek to provide social services denied to Negro youth as a result of the Jim-Crow lynch system in the U.S.

The Negro Woman Worker

The negligible participation of Negro women in progressive and trade-union circles is thus all the more startling. In union after union, even in those unions where a large concentration of workers are Negro women, few Negro women are to be found as leaders or active workers. The outstanding exceptions to this are the Food and Tobacco Workers’ Union and the United Office and Professional Workers’ Union.

But why should these be exceptions? Negro women are among the most militant trade unionists. The sharecroppers’ strikes of the ‘30s were sparkplugged by Negro women. Subject to the terror of the landlord and white supremacist, they waged magnificent battles together with Negro men and white progressives in that struggle of great tradition led by the Communist Party. Negro women played a magnificent part in the pre-C.I.O. days in strikes and other struggles, both as workers and as wives of workers, to win recognition of the principle of industrial unionism, in such industries as auto, packing, steel, etc. More recently, the militancy of Negro women unionists is shown in the strike of the packinghouse workers, and even more so, in the tobacco workers’ strike—in which such leaders as Moranda Smith and Velma Hopkins emerged as outstanding trade unionists. The struggle of the tobacco workers led by Negro women later merged with the political action of Negro and white which led to the election of the first Negro in the South (in Winston Salem, N. C.) since Reconstruction days.

It is incumbent on progressive unionists to realize that in the fight for equal rights for Negro workers, it is necessary to have a special approach to Negro women workers, who, far out of proportion to other women workers, are the main breadwinners in their families. The fight to retain the Negro woman in industry and to upgrade her on the job, is a major way of struggling for the basic and special interests of the Negro woman worker. Not to recognize this feature is to miss the special aspects of the effects of the growing economic crisis, which is penalizing Negro workers, particularly Negro women workers, with special severity.

The Domestic Worker

One of the crassest manifestations of trade-union neglect of the problems of the Negro woman worker has been the failure, not only to fight against relegation of the Negro woman to domestic and similar menial work, but to organize the domestic worker. It is merely lip service for progressive unionists to speak of organizing the unorganized without turning their eyes to the serious plight of the domestic worker, who, unprotected by union standards, is also the victim of exclusion from all social and labor legislation. Only about one in ten of all Negro women workers is covered by present minimum-wage legislation, although about one-fourth of all such workers are to be found in states having minimum-wage laws. All of the arguments heretofore projected with regard to the real difficulties of organizing the domestic workers-such as the “casual” nature of their employment, the difficulties of organizing day workers, the problem of organizing people who work in individual households, etc.—must be overcome forthwith. There is a danger that Social-Democratic forces may enter this field to do their work of spreading disunity and demagogy, unless progressives act quickly.

The lot of the domestic worker is one of unbearable misery. Usually, she has no definition of tasks in the household where she works. Domestic workers may have “thrown in,” in addition to cleaning and scrubbing, such tasks as washing windows, caring for the children, laundering, cooking, etc., and all at the lowest pay. The Negro domestic worker must suffer the additional indignity, in some areas, of having to seek work in virtual “slave markets” on the streets where bids are made, as from a slave block, for the hardiest workers. Many a domestic worker, on returning to her own household, must begin housework anew to keep her own family together.

Who was not enraged when it was revealed in California, in the heinous case of Dora Jones, that a Negro woman domestic was enslaved for more than 40 years in “civilized” America? Her “employer” was given a minimum sentence of a few years and complained that the sentence was for “such a long period of time.” But could Dora Jones, Negro domestic worker, be repaid for more than 40 years of her life under such conditions of exploitation and degradation? And how many cases, partaking in varying degrees of the condition of Dora Jones, are still tolerated by progressives themselves!

Only recently, in the New York State Legislature, legislative proposals were made to “fingerprint” domestic workers. The Martinez Bill did not see the light of day, because the reactionaries were concentrating on other repressive legislative measures; but here we see clearly the imprint of the African “pass” system of British imperialism (and of the German Reich in relation to the Jewish people!) being attempted in relation to women domestic workers.

It is incumbent on the trade unions to assist the Domestic Workers’ Union in every possible way to accomplish the task of organizing the exploited domestic workers, the majority of whom are Negro women. Simultaneously, a legislative fight for the inclusion of domestic workers under the benefits of the Social Security Law is vitally urgent and necessary. Here, too, recurrent questions regarding “administrative problems” of applying the law to domestic workers should be challenged and solutions found.

The continued relegation of Negro women to domestic work has helped to perpetuate and intensify chauvinism directed against all Negro women. Despite the fact that Negro women may be grandmothers or mothers, the use of the chauvinist term “girl” for adult Negro women is a common expression. The very economic relationship of Negro women to white women, which perpetuates “madam-maid” relationships, feeds chauvinist attitudes and makes it incumbent on white women progressives, and particularly Communists, to fight consciously against all manifestations of white chauvinism, open and subtle.

Chauvinism on the part of progressive white women is often expressed in their failure to have close ties of friendship with Negro women and to realize that this fight for equality of Negro women is in their own self-interest, inasmuch as the super-exploitation and oppression of Negro women tends to depress the standards of all women. Too many progressives, and even some Communists, are still guilty of exploiting Negro domestic workers, of refusing to hire them through the Domestic Workers’ Union (or of refusing to help in its expansion into those areas where it does not yet exist), and generally of participating in the vilification of “maids” when speaking to their bourgeois neighbors and their own families. Then, there is the expressed “concern” that the exploited Negro domestic worker does not “talk” to, or is not “friendly” with, her employer, or the habit of assuming that the duty of the white progressive employer is to “inform” the Negro woman of her exploitation and her oppression which she undoubtedly knows quite intimately. Persistent challenge to every chauvinist remark as concerns the Negro woman is vitally necessary, if we are to break down the understandable distrust on the part of Negro women who are repelled by the white chauvinism they often find expressed in progressive circles.

Manifestations Of White Chauvinism

Some of the crassest expressions of chauvinism are to be found at social affairs, where, all too often, white men and women and Negro men participate in dancing, but Negro women are neglected. The acceptance of white ruling-class standards of “desirability” for women (such as light skin), the failure to extend courtesy to Negro women and to integrate Negro women into organizational leadership, are other forms of chauvinism.

Another rabid aspect of the Jim Crow oppression of the Negro woman is expressed in the numerous laws which are directed against her as regards property rights, inter-marriage (originally designed to prevent white men in the South from marrying Negro women)—and laws which hinder and deny the right of choice, not only to Negro women, but Negro and white men and women.

For white progressive women and men, and especially for Communists, the question of social relations with Negro men and women is above all a question of strictly adhering to social equality. This means ridding ourselves of the position which sometimes finds certain progressives and Communists fighting on the economic and political issues facing the Negro people, but “drawing the line” when it come to social intercourse or inter-marriage. To place the question as a “personal” and not a political matter, when such questions arise, is to be guilty of the worst kind of Social-Democratic, bourgeois-liberal thinking as regard the Negro question in American life; it is to be guilty of imbibing the poisonous white-chauvinist “theories” of a Bilbo or a Rankin. Similarly, too, with regard to guaranteeing the “security” of children. This security will be enhanced only through the struggle for the liberation and equality of all nations and peoples, and not by shielding children from the knowledge of this struggle. This means ridding ourselves of the bourgeois-liberal attitudes which “permit” Negro and white children of progressives to play together at camps when young, but draw the line when the children reach teenage and establish boy-girl relationships.

The bourgeois ideologists have not failed, of course, to develop a special ideological offensive aimed at degrading Negro women, as part and parcel of the general reactionary ideological offensive against women of “kitchen, church, and children.” They cannot, however, with equanimity or credibility, speak of the Negro woman’s “place” as in the home; for Negro women are in other peoples’ kitchens. Hence, their task has been to intensify their theories of male “superiority” as regards the Negro woman by developing introspective attitudes which coincide with the “new school” of “psychological inferiority” of women. The whole intent of a host of articles, books, etc., has been to obscure the main responsibility for the oppression of Negro women by spreading the rotten bourgeois notion about a “battle of the sexes” and “ignoring” the fight of both Negro men and women—the whole Negro people—against their common oppressors, the white ruling class.

Chauvinist expressions also include paternalistic surprise when it is learned that Negroes are professional people. Negro professional women workers are often confronted with such remarks as “Isn’t your family proud of you?” Then, there is the reverse practice of inquiring of Negro women professionals whether “someone in the family” would like to take a job as a domestic worker.

The responsibility for overcoming these special forms of white chauvinism rests, not with the “subjectivity” of Negro women, as it is often put, but squarely on the shoulders of white men and white women. Negro men have a special responsibility particularly in relation to rooting out attitudes of male superiority as regards women in general. There is need to root out all “humanitarian” and patronizing attitudes toward Negro women. In one community, a leading Negro trade unionist, the treasurer of her Party section, would be told by a white progressive woman after every social function: “Let me have the money; something may happen to you.” In another instance, a Negro domestic worker who wanted to join the Party was told by her employer, a Communist, that she was “too backward” and “wasn’t ready” to join the Party. In yet another community, which since the war has been populated in the proportion of sixty per cent Negro to forty per cent white, white progressive mothers maneuvered to get their children out of the school in this community. To the credit of the initiative of the Party section organizer, a Negro woman, a struggle was begun which forced a change in arrangements which the school principal, yielding to the mothers’ and to his own prejudices, had established. These arrangements involved a special class in which a few white children were isolated with “selected Negro kids” in what was termed an “experimental class in race relations.”

These chauvinist attitudes, particularly as expressed toward the Negro woman, are undoubtedly an important reason for the grossly insufficient participation of Negro women in progressive organizations and in our Party as members and leaders.

The American bourgeoisie, we must remember, is aware of the present and even greater potential role of the masses of Negro women, and is therefore not loathe to throw plums to Negroes who betray their people and do the bidding of imperialism.

Faced with the exposure of their callous attitude to Negro women, faced with the growing protests against unpunished lynchings and the legal lynchings “Northern style,” Wall Street is giving a few token positions to Negro women. Thus, Anna Arnold Hedgeman, who played a key role in the Democratic National Negro Committee to Elect Truman, was rewarded with the appointment as Assistant to Federal Security Administrator Ewing. Thus, too, Governor Dewey appointed Irene Diggs to a high post in the New York State Administration.

Another straw in the wind showing attempts to whittle down the militancy of Negro women was the State Department’s invitation to a representative of the National Council of Negro Women—the only Negro organization so designated—to witness the signing of the Atlantic Pact.

Key Issues Of Struggle

There are many key issues facing Negro women around which struggles can and must be waged.

But none so dramatizes the oppressed status of Negro womanhood as does the case of Rosa Lee Ingram, widowed Negro mother of fourteen children—two of them dead—who faces life imprisonment in a Georgia jail for the “crime” of defending herself from the indecent advances of a “white supremacist.” The Ingram case illustrates the landless, Jim Crow, oppressed status of the Negro family in America. It illumines particularly the degradation of Negro women today under American bourgeois democracy moving to fascism and war. It reflects the daily insults to which Negro women are subjected in public places, no matter what their class, status, or position. It exposes the hypocritical alibi of the lynchers of Negro manhood who have historically hidden behind the skirts of white women when they try to cover up their foul crimes with the “chivalry” of “protecting white womanhood.” But white women, today, no less than their sisters in the abolitionist and suffrage movements, must rise to challenge this lie and the whole system of Negro oppression.

American history is rich in examples of the cost—to the democratic rights of both women and men—of failure to wage this fight. The suffragists, during their first jailings, were purposely placed on cots next to Negro prostitutes to “humiliate” them. They had the wisdom to understand that the intent was to make it so painful, that no women would dare to fight for her rights if she had to face such consequences. But it was the historic shortcoming of the women’s suffrage leaders, predominantly drawn as they were from the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeoisie, that they failed to link their own struggles to the struggles for the full democratic rights of the Negro people following emancipation.

A developing consciousness on the woman question today, therefore, must not fail to recognize that the Negro question in the United States is prior to, and not equal to, the woman question; that only to the extent that we fight all chauvinist expressions and actions as regards the Negro people and fight for the full equality of the Negro people, can women as a whole advance their struggle for equal rights. For the progressive women’s movement, the Negro woman, who combines in her status the worker, the Negro, and the woman, is the vital link to this heightened political consciousness. To the extent, further, that the cause of the Negro woman worker is promoted, she will be enabled to take her rightful place in the Negro proletarian leadership of the national liberation movement, and by her active participation contribute to the entire American working class, whose historic mission is the achievement of a Socialist America—the final and full guarantee of woman’s emancipation.

The fight for Rosa Lee Ingram’s freedom is a challenge to all white women and to all progressive forces, who must begin to ask themselves: How long shall we allow this dastardly crime against all womenhood, against the Negro people, to go unchallenged! Rosa Lee Ingram’s plight and that of her sisters also carries with it a challenge to progressive cultural workers to write and sing of the Negro woman in her full courage and dignity.

The recent establishment of the National Committee to Free the Ingram Family fulfills a need long felt since the early movement which forced commutation to life imprisonment of Mrs. Ingram’s original sentence of execution. This National Committee, headed by Mary Church Terrell, a founder of the National Association of Colored Women, includes among its leaders such prominent women, Negro and white, as Therese Robinson, National Grand Directoress of the Civil Liberties Committee of the Elks, Ada B. Jackson, and Dr. Gene Weltfish.

One of the first steps of the Committee was the visit of a delegation of Negro and white citizens to this courageous, militant Negro mother imprisoned in a Georgia cell. The measure of support was so great that the Georgia authorities allowed the delegation to see her unimpeded. Since that time, however, in retaliation against the developing mass movement, the Georgia officials have moved Mrs. Ingram, who is suffering from a severe heart condition, to a worse penitentiary, at Reedsville.

Support to the work of this committee becomes a prime necessity for all progressives, particularly women. President Truman must be stripped of his pretense of “know-nothing” about the Ingram case. To free the Ingrams, support must be rallied for the success of the million-signatures campaign, and for U.N. action on the Ingram brief soon to be filed.

The struggle for jobs for Negro women is a prime issue. The growing economic crisis, with its mounting unemployment and wage-cuts and increasing evictions, is making its impact felt most heavily on the Negro masses. In one Negro community after another, Negro women, the last to be hired and the first to be fired, are the greatest sufferers from unemployment. Struggles must be developed to win jobs for Negro women in basic industry, in the white-collar occupations, in the communities, and in private utilities.

The successful campaign of the Communist Party in New York’s East Side to win jobs for Negro women in the five-and-dime stores has led to the hiring of Negro women throughout the city, even in predominantly white communities. This campaign has extended to New England and must be waged elsewhere.

Close to 15 government agencies do not hire Negroes at all. This policy gives official sanction to, and at the same time further encourages, the pervasive Jim-Crow policies of the capitalist exploiters. A campaign to win jobs for Negro women here would thus greatly advance the whole struggle for jobs for Negro men and women. In addition, it would have a telling effect in exposing the hypocrisy of the Truman Administration’s “Civil Rights” program.

A strong fight will also have to be made against the growing practice of the United States Employment Service to shunt Negro women, despite their qualifications for other jobs, only into domestic and personal service work.

Where consciousness of the special role of Negro women exists, successful struggle can be initiated which will win the support of white workers. A recent example was the initiative taken by white Communist garment workers in a show employing 25 Negro women where three machines were idle. The issue of upgrading Negro women workers became a vital one. A boycott movement has been initiated and the machines stand unused as of this writing, the white workers refusing to adhere to strict seniority at the expense of Negro workers. Meanwhile, negotiations are continuing on this issue. Similarly, in a Packard U.A.W. local in Detroit, a fight for the maintenance of women in industry and for the upgrading of 750 women, the large majority of whom were Negro, was recently won.

The Struggle For Peace

Winning the Negro women for the struggle for peace is decisive for all other struggles. Even during the anti-Axis war, Negro women had to weep for their soldier-sons, lynched while serving in a Jim-Crow army. Are they, therefore, not interested in the struggle for peace?

The efforts of the bipartisan war-makers to gain the support of the women’s organizations in general, have influenced many Negro women’s organizations, which, at their last annual conventions, adopted foreign-policy stands favoring the Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine. Many of these organizations have worked with groups having outspoken anti-imperialist positions.

That there is profound peace sentiment among Negro women which can be mobilized for effective action is shown, not only in the magnificent response to the meetings of Eslande Goode Robeson, but also in the position announced last year by the oldest Negro women’s organization, under the leadership of Mrs. Christine C. Smith, in urging a national mobilization of American Negro women in support of the United Nations. In this connection, it will be very fruitful to bring to our country a consciousness of the magnificent struggles of women in North Africa, who, though lacking in the most elementary material needs, have organized a strong movement for peace and thus stand united against a Third World War, with 81 million women in 57 nations, in the Women’s International Democratic Federation.

Our Party, based on its Marxist-Leninist principles, stands foursquare on a program of full economic, political, and social equality for the Negro people and of equal rights for women. Who, more than the Negro woman, the most exploited and oppressed, belongs in our Party? Negro women can and must make an enormous contribution to the daily life and work of the Party. Concretely, this means prime responsibility lies with white men and women comrades. Negro men comrades, however, must participate in this task. Negro Communist women must everywhere now take their rightful place in Party leadership on all levels.

The strong capacities, militancy and organizational talents of Negro women, can, if well utilized by our Party, be a powerful lever for bringing forward Negro workers—men and women—as the leading forces of the Negro people’s liberation movement for cementing Negro and Wall Street imperialism, and for rooting the Party among the most exploited and oppressed sections of the working class and its allies.

In our Party clubs, we must conduct an intensive discussion of the role of the Negro women, so as to equip our Party membership with clear understanding for undertaking the necessary struggles in the shops and communities. We must end the practice, in which many Negro women who join our Party, and who, in their churches, communities and fraternal groups are leaders of masses, with an invaluable mass experience to give to our Party, suddenly find themselves viewed in our clubs, not as leaders, but as people who have “to get their feet wet” organizationally. We must end this failure to create an atmosphere in our clubs in which new recruits—in this case Negro women—are confronted with the “silent treatment” or with attempts to “blueprint” them into a pattern. In addition to the white chauvinist implications in such approaches, these practices confuse the basic need for Marxist-Leninist understanding which our Party gives to all workers, and which enhances their political understanding, with chauvinist disdain for the organizational talents of new Negro members, or for the necessity to promote them into leadership.

To win the Negro women for full participation in the anti-fascist, anti-imperialist coalition, to bring her militancy and participation to even greater heights in the current and future struggles against Wall Street imperialism, progressives must acquire political consciousness as regards her special oppressed status.

It is this consciousness, accelerated by struggles, that will convince increasing thousands that only the Communist Party, as the vanguard of the working class, with its ultimate perspective of Socialism, can achieve for the Negro women—for the entire Negro people—the full equality and dignity of their stature in a Socialist society in which contributions to society are measured, not by national origin, or by color, but a society in which men and women contribute according to ability, and ultimately under Communism receive according to their needs.

Women’s Liberation

In the mid-1960s, women in the New Left called out the misogyny of their comrades, and launched a broad set of new women’s organizing efforts, soon constituting the core of the “second wave” of American feminism. Alice Echols, as the recommended secondary source we have been reading, now becomes contemporaneous with our readings, offering a rich history of radical feminism in the first few years of its flourishing. Our texts draw from both sides of the “politico-feminist” split.

Casey Hayden and Mary King, both white women, wrote “Sex and Caste” while members of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a major civil rights organization. The next three essays, the Redstockings Manifesto, “The Politics of Ego” and “Female Liberation as the Basis for Social Revolution” are all key documents from major early radical feminist organizations: Redstockings, New York Radical Feminists, and Cell 16 respectively. Jo Freeman, aka Joreen, wrote as an engaged scholar, participant and critic on feminist organizing of the time, and here reflects on the dysfunctionality of women’s groups without formal structure. We close with the women of the Weather Underground, as they revisit their previously hard opposition to feminist organizing.

Secondary reading: Alice Echols, Ch. 4 (pp. 139–202). Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967–1975, University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

Casey Hayden and Mary King, Sex and Caste (1965)

https://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/CWLUArchive/memo.html

Self-published: Casey Harden and Mary King, “Sex and Caste: A Kind of Memo from Casey Hayden and Mary King to a number of other women in the peace and freedom movements.” 1965.

Source: Casey Harden and Mary King, “Sex and Caste,” Dear Sisters: Dispatches From the Women’s Liberation Movement, ed. by Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gorden. Basic Books, 2001.

We’ve talked a lot, to each other and to some of you, about our own and other women’s problems in trying to live in our personal lives and in our work as independent and creative people. In these conversations we’ve found what seem to be recurrent ideas or themes. Maybe we can look at these things many of us perceive, often as a result of insights learned from the movement:

Sex and caste: There seem to be many parallels that can be drawn between treatment of Negroes and treatment of women in our society as a whole. But in particular, women we’ve talked to who work in the movement seem to be caught up in a common-law caste system that operates, sometimes subtly, forcing them to work around or outside hierarchical structures of power which may exclude them. Women seem to be placed in the same position of assumed subordination in personal situations too. It is a caste system which, at its worst, uses and exploits women.

This is complicated by several facts, among them:

1. The caste system is not institutionalized by law (women have the right to vote, to sue for divorce, etc.);

2. Women can’t withdraw from the situation (á la nationalism) or overthrow it;

3. There are biological differences (even though those biological differences are usually discussed or accepted without taking present and future technology into account so we probably can’t be sure what these differences mean). Many people who are very hip to the implications of the racial caste system, even people in the movement, don’t seem to be able to see the sexual caste system and if the question is raised they respond with: “That’s the way it’s supposed to be. There are biological differences.” Or with other statements which recall a white segregationist confronted with integration.

Women and problems of work: The caste system perspective dictates the roles assigned to women in the movement, and certainly even more to women outside the movement. Within the movement, questions arise in situations ranging from relationships of women organizers to men in the community, to who cleans the freedom house, to who holds leadership positions, to who does secretarial work, and who acts as spokesman for groups. Other problems arise between women with varying degrees of awareness of themselves as being as capable as men but held back from full participation, or between women who see themselves as needing more control of their work than other women demand. And there are problems with relationships between white women and black women.

Women and personal relations with men: Having learned from the movement to think radically about the personal worth and abilities of people whose role in society had gone unchallenged before, a lot of women in the movement have begun trying to apply those lessons to their own relations with men. Each of us probably has her own story of the various results, and of the internal struggle occasioned by trying to break out of very deeply learned fears, needs, and self-perceptions, and of what happens when we try to replace them with concepts of people and freedom learned from the movement and organizing.

Institutions: Nearly everyone has real questions about those institutions which shape perspectives on men and women: marriage, child rearing patterns, women’s (and men’s) magazines, etc. People are beginning to think about and even to experiment with new forms in these areas.

Men’s reactions to the questions raised here: A very few men seem to feel, when they hear conversations involving these problems, that they have a right to be present and participate in them, since they are so deeply involved. At the same time, very few men can respond non-defensively, since the whole idea is either beyond their comprehension or threatens and exposes them. The usual response is laughter. That inability to see the whole issue as serious, as the strait-jacketing of both sexes and as societally determined often shapes our own response so that we learn to think in their terms about ourselves and to feel silly rather than trust our inner feelings. The problems we’re listing here, and what others have said about them, are therefore largely drawn from conversations among women only and that difficulty in establishing dialogue with men is a recurring theme among people we’ve talked to.

Lack of community for discussion: Nobody is writing, or organizing or talking publicly about women, in any way that reflects the problems that various women in the movement come across and which we’ve tried to touch above. Consider this quote from an article in the centennial issue of The Nation:

However equally we consider men and women, the work plans for husbands and wives cannot be given equal weight. A woman should not aim for “a second-level career” because she is a woman; from girlhood on she should recognize that, if she is also going to be a wife and mother, she will not be able to give as much to her work as she would if single. That is, she should not feel that she cannot aspire to directing the laboratory simply because she is a woman, but rather because she is also a wife and mother; as such, her work as a lab technician (or the equivalent in another field) should bring both satisfaction and the knowledge that, through it, she is fulfilling an additional role, making an additional contribution.

And that’s about as deep as the analysis goes publicly, which is not nearly so deep as we’ve heard many of you go in chance conversations.

The reason we want to try to open up dialogue is mostly subjective. Working in the movement often intensifies personal problems, especially if we start trying to apply things we’re learning there to our personal lives. Perhaps we can start to talk with each other more openly than in the past and create a community of support for each other so we can deal with ourselves and others with integrity and can therefore keep working.

Objectively the chances seem nil that we could start a movement based on anything as distant to general American thought as a sex-caste system. Therefore, most of us will probably want to work full time on problems such as war, poverty, race. The very fact that the country can’t face, much less deal with, the questions we’re raising means that the movement is one place to look for some relief. Real efforts at dialogue within the movement and with whatever liberal groups, community women, or students might listen are justified. That is, all the problems between men and women and all the problems of women functioning in society as equal human beings are among the most basic that people face. We’ve talked in the movement about trying to build a society which would see basic human problems (which are now seen as private troubles) as public problems and would try to shape institutions to meet human needs rather than shaping people to meet the needs of those with power. To raise questions like those above illustrates very directly that society hasn’t dealt with some of its deepest problems and opens discussion of why that is so. (In one sense, it is a radicalizing question that can take people beyond legalistic solutions into areas of personal and institutional change.) The second objective reason we’d like to see discussion begin is that we’ve learned a great deal in the movement and perhaps this is one area where a determined attempt to apply ideas we’ve learned there can produce some new alternatives.

Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt, Redstockings Manifesto (1968)

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/wlmpc_wlmms01039/

Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt, “Redstockings Manifesto,” Notes from the Second Year, ed. by Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt. 1970.

I

After centuries of individual and preliminary political struggle, women are uniting to achieve their final liberation from male supremacy. Redstockings is dedicated to building this unity and winning our freedom.

II

Women are an oppressed class. Our oppression is total, affecting every facet of our lives. We are exploited as sex objects, breeders, domestic servants, and cheap labor. We are considered inferior beings, whose only purpose is to enhance men’s lives. Our humanity is denied. Our prescribed behavior is enforced by the threat of physical violence.

Because we have lived so intimately with our oppressors, in isolation from each other, we have been kept from seeing our personal suffering as a political condition. This creates the illusion that a woman’s relationship with her man is a matter of interplay between two unique personalities, and can be worked out individually. In reality, every such relationship is a class relationship, and the conflicts between individual men and women are political conflicts that can only be solved collectively.

III

We identify the agents of our oppression as men. Male supremacy is the oldest, most basic form of domination. All other forms of exploitation and oppression (racism, capitalism, imperialism, etc.) are extensions of male supremacy: men dominate women, a few men dominate the rest. All power structures throughout history have been male-dominated and male-oriented. Men have controlled all political, economic and cultural institutions and backed up this control with physical force. They have used their power to keep women in an inferior position. All men receive economic, sexual, and psychological benefits from male supremacy. All men have oppressed women.

IV

Attempts have been made to shift the burden of responsibility from men to institutions or to women themselves. We condemn these arguments as evasions. Institutions alone do not oppress; they are merely tools of the oppressor. To blame institutions implies that men and women are equally victimized, obscures the fact that men benefit from the subordination of women, and gives men the excuse that they are forced to be oppressors. On the contrary, any man is free to renounce his superior position, provided that he is willing to be treated like a woman by other men.

We also reject the idea that women consent to or are to blame for their own oppression. Women’s submission is not the result of brain-washing, stupidity or mental illness but of continual, daily pressure from men. We do not need to change ourselves, but to change men.

The most slanderous evasion of all is that women can oppress men. The basis for this illusion is the isolation of individual relationships from their political context and the tendency of men to see any legitimate challenge to their privileges as persecution.

V

We regard our personal experience, and our feelings about that experience, as the basis for an analysis of our common situation. We cannot rely on existing ideologies as they are all products of male supremacist culture. We question every generalization and accept none that are not confirmed by our experience.

Our chief task at present is to develop female class consciousness through sharing experience and publicly exposing the sexist foundation of all our institutions. Consciousness-raising is not “therapy,” which implies the existence of individual solutions and falsely assumes that the male-female relationship is purely personal, but the only method by which we can ensure that our program for liberation is based on the concrete realities of our lives.

The first requirement for raising class consciousness is honesty, in private and in public, with ourselves and other women.

VI

We identify with all women. We define our best interest as that of the poorest, most brutally exploited woman.

We repudiate all economic, racial, educational or status privileges that divide us from other women. We are determined to recognize and eliminate any prejudices we may hold against other women.

We are committed to achieving internal democracy. We will do whatever is necessary to ensure that every woman in our movement has an equal chance to participate, assume responsibility, and develop her political potential.

VII

We call on all our sisters to unite with us in struggle.

We call on all men to give up their male privilege and support women’s liberation in the interest of our humanity and their own.

In fighting for our liberation we will always take the side of women against their oppressors. We will not ask what is “revolutionary” or “reformist,” only what is good for women.

The time for individual skirmishes has passed. This time we are going all the way.

July 7, 1969

Redstockings

P.O. Box 748

Stuyvesant Station

New York, N.Y. 10009

Anne Koedt, The Politics of the Ego: A Manifesto for N.Y. Radical Feminists (1969)

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/wlmpc_wlmms01039/

Anne Koedt, “The Politics of Ego: A Manifesto for N.Y. Radical Feminists,” Notes from the Second Year, ed. by Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt. 1970.

Radical feminism recognizes the oppression of women as a fundamental political oppression wherein women are categorized as an inferior class based upon their sex. It is the aim of radical feminism to organize politically to destroy this sex class system.

As radical feminists we recognize that we are engaged in a power struggle with men, and that the agent of our oppression is man insofar as he identifies with and carries out the supremacy privileges of the male role. For while we realize that the liberation of women will ultimately mean the liberation of men from their destructive role as oppressor, we have no illusion that men will welcome this liberation without a struggle.

Radical feminism is political because it recognizes that a group of individuals (men) have organized together for power over women, and that they have set up institutions throughout society to maintain this power.

A political power institution is set up for a purpose. We believe that the purpose of male chauvinism is primarily to obtain psychological ego satisfaction, and that only secondarily does this manifest itself in economic relationships. For this reason we do not believe that capitalism, or any other economic system, is the cause of female oppression, nor do we believe that female oppression will disappear as a result of a purely economic revolution. The political oppression of women has its own class dynamic, and that dynamic must be understood in terms previously called “non-political”—namely, the politics of the ego.[1]

Thus the purpose of the male power group is to fulfill a need. That need is psychological and derives from the supremacist the male identity—namely, that the male ego identity be sustained through its ability to have power over the female ego. Man establishes his “manhood” in direct proportion to his ability to have his ego override women’s, and he derives his strength and self-esteem through this process. This male need, though destructive, is in that sense impersonal. It is not out of a desire to hurt the woman that he dominates and destroys her; it is out of a need for a sense of power that he necessarily must destroy her ego and make it subservient to his. Hostility to women is a secondary effect: to the degree that he is not fulfilling his own assumptions of male power, he hates women for not complying. Similarly, a man’s failure to establish himself supreme among other males (as for example, a poor white male) may make him channel his hostility into his relationship with women since they are one of the few political groups available to him for reassertion.

As women we are living in a male power structure, and our roles become necessarily a function of men. The services we supply are services to the male ego. We are rewarded according to how well we perform these services. Our skill—our profession—is our ability to be feminine—and that is, dainty, sweet, passive, helpless, ever-giving, and sexy. In other words, everything to help reassure man that he is primary. If we perform successfully, our skills are rewarded. We “marry well”; we are treated with benevolent paternalism; we are deemed successful women, and may even make the “women’s pages.”

If we do not choose to perform these ego services, but instead assert ourselves as primary to ourselves, we are denied the necessary access to alternatives wherein we can manifest our self-assertion. Decision-making positions in the various job fields are closed to us; politics (left, right, or liberal) are barred in any roles other than auxiliary; our creative efforts are a priori judged not serious because we are females; our day-to-day lives are judged failures because we have not become “real women.”

The rejection is economic in that women’s work is underpaid. It is emotional in that we are cut off from human relationships because we choose to reject the submissive female role. We are trapped in an alien system, just as the worker under capitalism is forced to sell his economic services in a system which is set up against his self-interest.

Sexual Institutions

The oppression of women is manifested in particular institutions, constructed and maintained to keep women in their place. Among these are the institutions of marriage, motherhood, love, and sexual intercourse (the family is incorporated by the above). Through these institutions the woman is taught to confuse her biological sexual differences with her total human potential. Biology is destiny, she is told. Because she has childbearing capacity, she is told motherhood and chid rearing is her function, not her option. Because she has childbearing capacity, she is told that it is her function to marry and have the man economically maintain her and make the decisions. Because she has had the physical capacity for sexual intercourse, she is told that sexual intercourse too is her function, rather than just a voluntary act which she may engage in as an expression of her general humanity.

In each case her sexual difference is rationalized to trap her within it, while the male sexual difference is rationalized to imply an access to all areas of human activity.

Love, in the context of an oppressive male-female relationship, becomes an emotional cement to justify the dominant-submissive relationship. The man “loves” that woman who fu1fills her submissive ego-boosting role. The woman “loves” the man she is submitting to—that is, after all, why she “lives for him.” Love, magical and systematically unanalyzed, becomes the emotional rationale for the submission of one ego to the other. And it is deemed every woman’s natural function to love.

Radical feminism believes that the popularized version of love has thus been used politically to cloud and justify an oppressive relationship between men and women, and that in reality there can be no genuine love until the need to control the growth of another is substituted by the love for the growth of another.

[...]

Internalization

It is not only through denying women human alternatives that men are able to maintain their positions of power. It is politically necessary for any oppressive group to convince the oppressed that they are in fact inferior, and therefore deserve their situation. For it is precisely through the destruction of women’s egos that they are robbed of their ability to resist.

For the sake of our own liberation, we must learn to overcome this damage done to ourselves by internalization. We must begin to reverse the systematic crushing of women’s egos by constructing alternate selves that are healthy, independent, and self-assertive. We must, in short, help each other to transfer the ultimate power of judgement about the value of our lives from men to ourselves.

It remains for us as women to fully develop a new dialectic of sex class—an analysis of the way in which sexual identity and institutions reinforce one another.

A.K. 12/69

Roxanne Dunbar, Female Liberation as the Basis for Social Revolution (1969)

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/wlmpc_wlmms01029/

Roxanne Dunbar, “Female Liberation as the Basis for Social Revolution.” Cell 16, No More Fun and Games, vol. 1, issue 2, 1969.

[...]

II

Now we can begin to think the unthinkable, ask questions never posed. For instance: Why should the organ for revolution be a masculine organ within which women’s liberation is a faction (caucus)? The existence of power is always the rationale for continued power. When we fanatic female liberationists insist on the primary importance of female liberation, we do not mean that men are excluded (really wishful thinking on the part of radical men). We do not say our oppression is greater than others; we simply say it is basic to all other struggles. The origin of caste was the oppression of the female sex. The struggle against the basis of oppression is at a higher stage of revolution than the archaic strategy of the present radical analysis. In a time when nearly every American male is economically capable of possessing a household slave, we consider women to be the proletariat.

Black people identify as a colony with colonized people all over the world. Spanish Americans and Indians identify similarly. Unless the men of those groups insist on sharing the privilege of the White man—possession of a woman and children—they might be able to establish organs for national liberation as a united front (men and women) with a conscious basis of female liberation.

The case is very different for the privileged man. White male radicals are the inheritors of power, the golden boys of the society, the cream of the crop. They must prove their ability to lead to the fathers. They seem to think they are free of all that. Yes indeed Black people, Chicanos, women, workers need to be liberated in the revolutionary struggle, which White men will lead. The White man’s role is the White Man’s Burden—updated. Protect little brown people and women. But by what perogative? What makes these men think they are equipped to deal with anyone’s liberation when they have not even begun to analyze their own consciousness?

I do not find men that oppressed by this society, though I hear men and women all the time argue that men are just as oppressed. I can not see it; they do not seem to find it unbearable; the compensations for men seem to leave them freer for creative activity than the compensations (humiliating at best) offered women in place of real power. Radical men want power, but they have a social conscience, so they must establish a new order of sorts. Yet they do not appear to be operating as leaders in a revolutionary effort (like Lenin, Mao, Fidel) or as cultural workers teaching the people with some humility (like Fanon, Sartre, Marcuse), but rather as politicians. They so accept their right to power that they do not even think it is a problem. No one of the master class has escaped the damage done to him in a caste society. Every white man in this country has been raised with a false sense of power.

Men run the Movement. There is not much possibility that the situation will change automatically. Masters do not relinquish power; it is wrested from them. Radical men show no inclination to change their attitudes toward women, the family, the use of the economy (what else is there except rhetoric—a politician’s only tool?) These men transmit ideology for the radical movement. It is essential to know how they structure reality, if they are to retain positions of authority as teachers and leaders. If they consider themselves cultural workers in the service of the revolution (the people), would they not seek self-criticism, correct thinking? Would they not seek knowledge from the oppressed, rather than authoritatively directing their “liberation?”

Women are now formulating ideology for a female liberation movement, and we have our own ideas and tactics for building a revolutionary base which we think will be more effective than the present ideology of the movement. The SDS resolution assumes that the ideal model of humanity is the man (the radical man, of course), and that women must be allowed to participate on an equal basis, but on masculine terms. We do not agree. In Female Liberation meetings, much of the meet- ing is spent in reminding ourselves to stop “acting like men.” All of us seem to be infected with the phallic structure to some extent, but the point is that we do not like it—in ourselves or in men. We consider such behavior alien to what we are trying to do, and become. Nor do we like the identity men have given us—femininity. We see that we must begin creating the new person—in ourselves, and not by breeding heirs. We want men and women to reject their programmed roles, and question every single aspect of this society, their role in it, and their behavior.

The first question from a male radical to a female liberationist is: “What about sex?” This seems strange. Apparently, women can “do their thing” as long as they don’t cut off the sex supply, which is the major use radical men have for women (like politicians). I answer by saying that it is not an important question; that women should of course have control of their own bodies, and never submit to sexual relations simply because they fear they might appear frigid or lose a friendship with a man. The response from the male radical is almost always that my attitude is repressive. It seems clear that the “sex problem” is the man’s problem, and he will have to take care of it. Women have been accepting the responsibility for it for far too long. Females should be talking about political strategy, not sex. Men should be experiencing a little psycho-therapy, group therapy and T-groups to straighten out their minds.

III.

The female liberation movement will undoubtedly continue to develop at many levels to meet the varying situations and needs of women. Groups have formed spontaneously throughout the society. The direction so far in these groups has been educational, analytical. We all seem to feel a need for new analysis, ideology, because little of traditional analysis relates to the timeless situation of woman. Our most accurate ideologists have been Socialists and Communists but Marx and Engels are consistently used against us by male radicals. Though no man has ever completely overcome his mystification of women, and his need for an alter-ego, Marx, Engels, Bakunin, Lenin, and Mao have analyzed woman’s condition and place in history accurately.

Though female liberation is the most advanced revolutionary thought available to us at this point in history, we should not fight on an exclusive, narrow front. Ultimately, we want to destroy the three pillars of class (caste) society—the family, private property, and the state, and their attendent evils—corporate capitalism, imperialism, war, racism, misogyny, annihilation of the balance of nature. By exposing attendent evils, as SDS does so well with imperialism and war and now misogyny; the nature of the system is revealed, but we do not begin to annihilate it. We must attack the pillars of the class system directly, as well as the attendent evils. They are so interrelated (private property, the family and the state) that an attack upon one should be an attack upon another, but the family is often left free of attack because it is such a convenient unit for the very people who are attacking the system. And it is basic to the continuance of the system. We should question whether we have truly attacked private property and the state, or are we still capitalists, trying to reform the system?

It seems that the state is being attacked from many sides. The struggle against American Imperialism in process throughout the world is a battle against the State. Within each of these national liberation wars, a female liberation movement will emerge and radically reorient and radicalize the movement toward communism. It is vitally important that a Southern separatist movement take form. The South, as a colony, can be mobilized against the State with a united front of women and poor Black and White men. The South is one of several colonies now considered a part of the nation of the United States. The disintegration of that structure is the key to the revolutionary movement in North America, a fact that Northern radicals find hard to swallow since they identify with the nation and not with any colony. If they look they will find that they too are part of a colony, and must work from there (i.e. New England, the Midwest, Jewish, Irish, Greek, etc.).

If men are to become truly revolutionary, they too must fight the institution of the family and not “leave it to the women” as the family is now left. Everyone must fight for female liberation, not just women.

At some point warfare (guerrilla style) will be necessary. There is no hope of ever arriving at that stage of revolution unless the people are educated to fight for their own liberation. The key area of influence will be through the educational system, and through the organizations that are being set up by women. First the teachers must be taught. It would seem that the American school teacher is a committed enough teacher to be convinced of the need for revolution. There is little tendency to Fascism among them. Perhaps this is due in part to the fact that so many teachers are women. Perhaps we should first organize these women as organizers.

There is only one way to overcome the enormous propaganda influence of the media and political structure which program the people: we must go directly to the people and teach them to think for themselves within a revolutionary framework. To do that we must enter their communities, not use the political platform or the media. They do not believe anything they hear through those organs; the programming is subtle and we can not hope to overcome it through the existing media or to replace the media. We can form women’s projects in culturally defined areas. The organizers should be of the people with whom they will be working.

We must avoid one major error of middle-class organizers. In an effort to win people over to the movement (win a vote?), organizers often immitate the style of life of those they are organizing. This is patronizing and unliberating and cruel. People who are oppressed want new alternatives, and want to learn. They do not want to be further entrenched in their oppressive style of life. We must be generous with our knowledge, and not underestimate the desire for freedom on the part of the oppressed, and not mistake ignorance for desire. California is proof that people can radically alter their mores and style of life in a short time, and indeed want to do so. If we do not open doors to people, they will find them through the oppressive structure—through the Californias.

IV.

Many radicals (male and female) seem to think that female liberation would be divisive, because women would be fighting the agent of their oppression—men. Such a thought reveals the prejudice against women. That is, men make revolutions; women help. And if men have pressures on them from women, their power as fighters is diminished. I fail to see how women fighting the authoritarian power-hunger in men can but greatly aid the revolution.

There is a strong fascist trend developing among poor white American men (some would call many of them middle-class), and I can imagine that somewhere there is a young man developing into a Hitler. Such a force could spell doom to a revolutionary effort by re-creating a situation of genocide similar to Nazi Germany. Most of us would quickly be put away. Fascism is a man’s game, not very appealing to women (Hitler had to brainwash the women to be earth mothers and breed—a budding woman power movement perverted to womb power). I do not think men can be trusted as long as they hold the kind of personal and social power they do, and they will hold it until it is taken from them, when women refuse to continue the game.

Finally, I want to explain the term “female Liberation” so that its full revolutionary meaning is grasped. I use the term “female” rather than “woman” to denote a principle. When I say female liberation, I mean the liberation of the female principle in all human beings—the worldview which is maternal, materialist, and peaceful (non-competitive). I do not suggest that all women exhibit these traits, though many do; certainly some men do (Che Guevara and Big Bill Haywood for instance), but not many. Women are programmed for a role—motherhood—which does allow the female principle to take ascendence over the male principle. The position of the woman in relation to the man in America is analogous to the position of the Black in relation to the rich man or bossman. One must not romanticize that position, but it is clear that the excluded are less corrupt, therefore the potential leadership of the revolution.

Jo Freeman, The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1971)

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/wlmpc_wlmms01018/

Published: Joreen (aka Jo Freeman), “The Tyranny of Structurelessness.” The Second Wave, vol. 2, no. 1. KNOW, Inc., 1971.

During the years in which the women’s liberation movement has been taking shape, a great emphasis has been placed on what are called leaderless, structureless groups as the main if not sole organizational form of the movement. The source of this idea was a natural reaction against the over-structured society in which most of us found ourselves, the inevitable control this gave others over our lives, and the continual elitism of the Left and similar groups among those who were supposedly fighting this over-structuredness.

The idea of “structurelessness,” however, has moved from a healthy counter to those tendencies to becoming a goddess in its own right. The idea is as little examined as the term is much used, but it has become an intrinsic and unquestioned part of women’s liberation ideology. For the early development of the movement this did not much matter. It early defined its main goal, and its main method, as consciousness-raising, and the “structureless rap group” was an excellent means to this end. Its looseness and informality encouraged participation in discussion, and its often supportive atmosphere elicited personal insight. If nothing more concrete than personal insight ever resulted from these groups, that did not much matter, because their purpose did not really extend beyond this.

The basic problems didn’t appear until individual rap groups exhausted the virtues of consciousness-raising and decided they wanted to do something more specific. At this point they usually floundered because most groups were unwilling to change their structure when they changed their tasks. Women had thoroughly accepted the idea of “structurelessness” without realizing the limitations of its uses. People would try to use the “structureless” group and the informal conference for purposes for which they were unsuitable out of a blind belief that no other means could possibly be anything but oppressive.

If the movement is to grow beyond these elementary stages of development, it will have to disabuse itself of some of its prejudices about organization and structure. There is nothing inherently bad about either of these. They can be and often are misused, but to reject them out of hand because they are misused is to deny ourselves the necessary tools to further development. We need to understand why “structurelessness” does not work.

Formal and Informal Structures

Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a “structureless” group. Any group of people of whatever nature, coming together for any length of time, for any purpose, will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible, it may vary over time, it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities or intentions of the people involved. The very fact that we are individuals, with different talents, predispositions and backgrounds makes this inevitable. Only if we refused to relate or interact on any basis whatsoever could we approximate “structurelessness,” and that is not the nature of a human group.

This means that to strive for a “structureless” group is as useful and as deceptive, as to aim at an “objective” news story, “value-free” social science, or a “free” economy. A “laissez-faire” group is about as realistic as a “laissez-faire” society; the idea becomes a smoke screen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can be so easily established because the idea of “structurelessness” does not prevent the formation of informal structures, but only formal ones. Similarly “laissez-faire” philosophy did not prevent the economically powerful from establishing control over wages, prices, and distribution of goods; it only prevented the government from doing so. Thus, “structurelessness” becomes a way of masking power, and within the women’s movement is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). The rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is curtailed to those who know the rules as long as the structure of the group is informal. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware.

For everyone to have the opportunity to be involved in a given group and to participate in its activities the structure must be explicit, not implicit. The rules of decision-making must be open and available to everyone, and this can happen only if they are formalized. This is not to say that formalization of a structure of a group will destroy the informal structure. It usually doesn’t. But it does hinder the informal structure from having predominant control and make available some means of attacking it. “Structurelessness” is organizationally impossible. We cannot decide whether to have a structured or structureless group; only whether or not to have a formally structured one. Therefore, the word will not be used any longer except to refer to the idea it represents. Unstructured will refer to those groups which have not been deliberately structured in a particular manner. Structured will refer to those which have. A structured group always has formal structure, and may also have an informal, or covert, structure. It is this informal structure, particularly in unstructured groups, which forms the basis for elites.

The Nature of Elitism

“Elitist” is probably the most abused word in the women’s liberation movement. It is used as frequently, and for the same reasons, as “pinko” was used in the fifties. It is never used correctly. Within the movement it commonly refers to individuals, though the personal characteristics and activities of those to whom it is directed may differ widely. An individual, as an individual, can never be an elite, because the only proper application of the term “elite” is to groups. Any individual, regardless of how well-known that person may be, can never be an elite.

Correctly, an elite refers to a small group of people who have power over a larger group of which they are part, usually without direct responsibility to that larger group, and often without their knowledge or consent. A person becomes an elitist by being part of, or advocating the rule by such a small group, whether or not that individual is well-known or not known at all. Notoriety is not a definition of an elitist. The most insidious elites are usually run by people not known to the larger public at all. Intelligent elitists are usually smart enough not to allow themselves to become well known. When they become known, they are watched, and the mask over their power is no longer firmly lodged.

Because elites are informal does not mean they are invisible. At any small group meeting anyone with a sharp eye and an acute ear can tell who is influencing whom. The members of a friendship group will relate more to each other than to other people. They listen more attentively, and interrupt less. They repeat each other’s points and give in amiably. They tend to ignore or grapple with the “outs” whose approval is not necessary for making a decision. But it is necessary for the “outs” to stay on good terms with the “ins.” Of course the lines are not as sharp as I have drawn them. They are nuances of interaction, not pre-written scripts. But they are discernible, and they do have their effect. Once one knows with whom it is important to check before a decision is made, and whose approval is the stamp of acceptance, one knows who is running things.

Elites are not conspiracies. Very seldom does a small group of people get together and deliberately try to take over a larger group for its own ends. Elites are nothing more, and nothing less, than groups of friends who also happen to participate in the same political activities. They would probably maintain their friendship whether or not they were involved in political activities; they would probably be involved in political activities whether or not they maintained their friendships. It is the coincidence of these two phenomena which creates elites in any group and makes them so difficult to break.

These friendship groups function as networks of communication outside any regular channels for such communication that may have been set up by a group. If no channels are set up, they function as the only networks of communication. Because people are friends, usually share the same values and orientations, because they talk to each other socially and consult with each other when common decisions have to be made, the people involved in these networks have more power in the group than those who don’t. And it is a rare group that does not establish some informal networks of communication through the friends that are made in it.

Some groups, depending on their size, may have more than one such informal communications network. Networks may even overlap. When only one such network exists, it is the elite of an otherwise unstructured group, whether the participants in it want to be elitists or not. If it is the only such network in a structured group it may or may not be an elite depending on its composition and the nature of the formal structure. If there are two or more such networks of friends, they may compete for power within the group, thus forming factions, or one may deliberately opt out of the competition, leaving the other as the elite. In a structured group, two or more such friendship networks usually compete with each other for formal power. This is often the healthiest situation. The other members are in a position to arbitrate between the two competitors for power and thus to make demands on the group to whom they give their temporary allegiance.

The inevitably elitist and exclusive nature of informal communication networks of friends is neither a new phenomenon characteristic of the women’s movement nor a phenomenon new to women. Such informal relationships have excluded women for centuries from participating in integrated groups of which they were a part. In any profession or organization these networks have created the “locker room” mentality and the “old school” ties which have effectively prevented women as a group (as well as some men individually) from having equal access to sources of power or social reward. Much of the energy of past women’s movements has been directed to having the structures of decision-making and the selection processes formalized so that the exclusion of women could be confronted directly. As we well know, these efforts have not prevented the informal male-only networks from discriminating against women, but they have made it more difficult.

Since movement groups have made no concrete decisions about who shall exercise power within them, many different criteria are used around the country. Most criteria are along the lines of traditional female characteristics. For instance, in the early days of the movement, marriage was usually a prerequisite for participation in the informal elite. As women have been traditionally taught, married women relate primarily to each other, and look upon single women as too threatening to have as close friends. In many cities, this criterion was further refined to include only those women married to New Left men. This standard had more than tradition behind it, however, because New Left men often had access to resources needed by the movement—such as mailing lists, printing presses, contacts, and information—and women were used to getting what they needed through men rather than independently. As the movement has charged through time, marriage has become a less universal criterion for effective participation, but all informal elites establish standards by which only women who possess certain material or personal characteristics may join. The standards frequently include: middle-class background (despite all the rhetoric about relating to the working class), being married, not being married but living with someone, being or pretending to be a lesbian, being between the ages of twenty and thirty, being college-educated or at least having some college background, being “hip,” not being too “hip,” holding a certain political line or identification as a “radical,” having children or at least liking them, not having children, having certain “feminine” personality characteristics such as being “nice,” dressing right (whether in the traditional style or the antitraditional style), etc. There are also some characteristics which will almost always tag one as a “deviant” who should not be related to. They include: being too old, working full time (particularly if one is actively committed to a “career”), not being “nice,” and being avowedly single (i.e., neither actively heterosexual nor homosexual).

Other criteria could be included, but they all have common themes. The characteristics prerequisite for participating in the informal elites of the movement, and thus for exercising power, concern one’s background, personality, or allocation of time. They do not include one’s competence, dedication to feminism, talents, or potential contribution to the movement. The former are the criteria one usually uses in determining one’s friends. The latter are what any movement or organization has to use if it is going to be politically effective.

The criteria of participation may differ from group to group, but the means of becoming a member of the informal elite if one meets those criteria are pretty much the same. The only main difference depends on whether one is in a group from the beginning or joins it after it has begun. If involved from the beginning, it is important to have as many of one’s personal friends as possible also join. If no one knows anyone else very well, then one must deliberately form friendships with a select number and establish the informal interaction patterns crucial to the creation of an informal structure. Once the informal patterns are formed they act to maintain themselves. One of the most successful tactics of maintenance is to continuously recruit new people who “fit in.” One joins such an elite much the same way one pledges a sorority. If perceived as a potential addition, one is “rushed” by the members of the informal structure and eventually either dropped or initiated. If the sorority is not politically aware enough to actively engage in this process itself, it can be started by the outsider much the same way one joins any private club. Find a sponsor, i.e., pick some member of the elite who appears to be well-respected within it and actively cultivate that person’s friendship. Eventually, she will most likely bring you into the inner circle.

All of these procedures take time. So if one works full time or has a similar major commitment, it is usually impossible to join simply because there are not enough hours left to go to all the meetings and cultivate the personal relationships necessary to have a voice in the decision-making. That is why formal structures of decision-making are a boon to the overworked person. Having an established process for decision-making ensures that everyone can participate in it to some extent.

Although this dissection of the process of elite formation within small groups has been critical in its perspective, it is not made in the belief that these informal structures are inevitably bad—merely inevitable. All groups create informal structures as a result of interaction patterns among the members. Such informal structures can do very useful things. But only unstructured groups are totally governed by them. When informal elites are combined with a myth of “structurelessness,” there can be no attempt to put limits on the use of power. It becomes capricious.

This has two potentially negative consequences of which we should be aware. The first is that the informal structure of decision-making will be much like a sorority: one in which people listen to others because they like them, not because they say significant things. As long as the movement does not do significant things this does not much matter. But if its development is not to be arrested at this preliminary stage, it will have to alter this trend. The second is that informal structures have no obligation to be responsible to the group at large. Their power was not given to them; it cannot be taken away. Their influence is not based on what they do for the group; therefore, they cannot be directly influenced by the group. This does not necessarily make informal structures irresponsible. Those who are concerned with maintaining their influence will usually try to be responsible. The group simply cannot compel such responsibility; it is dependent on the interests of the elite.

The “Star” System

The idea of “structurelessness” has created the “star” system. We live in a society which expects political groups to make decisions and to select people to articulate those decisions to the public at large. The press and the public do not know how to listen seriously to individual women as women; they want to know how the group feels. Only three techniques have ever been developed for establishing mass group opinion: the vote or referendum, the public opinion survey questionnaire, and the selection of group spokespeople at an appropriate meeting. The women’s liberation movement has used none of these to communicate with the public. Neither the movement as a whole nor most of the multitudinous groups within it have established a means of explaining their position on various issues. But the public is conditioned to look for spokespeople.

While it has consciously not chosen spokespeople, the movement has thrown up many women who have caught the public eye for varying reasons. These women represent no particular group or established opinion; they know this and usually say so. But because there are no official spokespeople nor any decision-making body that the press can interview when it wants to know the movement’s position on a subject, these women are perceived as the spokespeople. Thus, whether they want to or not, whether the movement likes it or not, women of public note are put in the role of spokespeople by default.

This is one main source of the ire that is often felt toward the women who are labeled “stars.” Because they were not selected by the women in the movement to represent the movement’s views, they are resented when the press presumes that they speak for the movement. But as long as the movement does not select its own spokeswomen, such women will be placed in that role by the press and the public, regardless of their own desires.

This has several negative consequences for both the movement and the women labeled “stars.” (1) Because the movement didn’t put them in the role of spokesperson, the movement cannot remove them. The press put them there and only the press can choose not to listen. The press will continue to look to “stars” as spokeswomen as long as it has no official alternatives to go to for authoritative statements from the movement. The movement has no control in the selection of its representatives to the public as long as it believes that it should have no representatives at all. (2) Women put in this position often find themselves viciously attacked by their sisters. This achieves nothing for the movement and is painfully destructive to the individuals involved. Such attacks only result in either the woman leaving the movement entirely—often bitterly alienated—or in her ceasing to feel responsible to her “sisters.” She may maintain some vaguely defined loyalty to the movement but she is no longer susceptible to pressures from other women in it. One cannot feel responsible to people who have been the source of such pain without being a masochist, and these women are usually too strong to bow to that kind of personal pressure. Thus the backlash to the “star” system, in effect, encourages the very kind of individualistic non-responsibility that the movement condemns. By purging a sister as a “star,” the movement loses whatever control it may have had over the person, who then becomes free to commit all of the individualistic sins of which she has been accused.

Political Impotence

Unstructured groups may be very effective in getting women to talk about their lives; they aren’t very good for getting things done. Unless their mode of operation changes, groups flounder at the point where people tire of “just talking” and want to do something more. Because the larger movement in most cities is as unstructured as individual rap groups, it is not too much more effective than the separate groups at specific tasks. The informal structure is rarely together enough or in touch enough with the people to be able to operate effectively. So the movement generates much motion and few results. Unfortunately, the consequences of all this motion are not as innocuous as the results, and their victim is the movement itself.

Some groups have formed themselves into local action projects, if they do not involve many people, and work in a small scale. But this form restricts movement activity to the local level; it cannot be done on the regional or national level. Also, to function well the groups must usually pare themselves down to that informal group of friends who were running things in the first place. This excludes many women from participating. As long as the only way women can participate in the movement is through membership in a small group, the non-gregarious are at a distinct disadvantage. As long as friendship groups are the main means of organizational activity, elitism becomes institutionalized.

For those groups which cannot find a local project to devote themselves to, the mere act of staying together becomes the reason for their staying together. When a group has no specific task (and consciousness-raising is a task), the people in it turn their energies to controlling others in the group. This is not done so much out of a malicious desire to manipulate others (though sometimes it is) as out of a lack of anything better to do with their talents. Able people with time on their hands and a need to justify their coming together put their efforts into personal control, and spend their time criticizing the personalities of the other members in the group. Infighting and personal power games rule the day. When a group is involved in a task, people learn to get along with others as they are and to subsume personal dislikes for the sake of the larger goal. There are limits placed on the compulsion to remold every person in our image of what they should be.

The end of consciousness-raising leaves people with no place to go and the lack of structure leaves them with no way of getting there. The women in the movement either turn in on themselves and their sisters or seek other alternatives of action. There are few alternatives available. Some women just “do their own thing.” This can lead to a great deal of individual creativity, much of which is useful for the movement, but it is not a viable alternative for most women and certainly does not foster a spirit of cooperative group effort. Other women drift out of the movement entirely because they don’t want to develop an individual project and they have found no way of discovering, joining, or starting group projects that interest them.

Many turn to other political organizations to give them the kind of structured, effective activity that they have not been able to find in the women’s movement. Thus, those political organizations which see women’s liberation as only one issue among many, find the women’s movement a vast recruiting ground for new members. There is no need for such organizations to “infiltrate” (though this is not precluded). The desire for meaningful political activity generated in women by their becoming part of the women’s liberation movement is sufficient to make them eager to join other organizations. The movement itself provides no outlets for their new ideas and energies.

Those women who join other political organizations while remaining within the women’s liberation movement, or who join women’s liberation while remaining in other political organizations, in turn become the framework for new informal structures. These friendship networks are based upon their common non-feminist politics rather than the characteristics discussed earlier, however, the network operates in much the same way. Because these women share common values, ideas, and political orientations, they too become informal, unplanned, unselected, unresponsible elites—whether they intend to be so or not.

These new informal elites are often perceived as threats by the old informal elites previously developed within different movement groups. This is a correct perception. Such politically oriented networks are rarely willing to be merely “sororities” as many of the old ones were, and want to proselytize their political as well as their feminist ideas. This is only natural, but its implications for women’s liberation have never been adequately discussed. The old elites are rarely willing to bring such differences of opinion out into the open because it would involve exposing the nature of the informal structure of the group. Many of these informal elites have been hiding under the banner of “anti-elitism” and “structurelessness.” To effectively counter the competition from another informal structure, they would have to become “public” and this possibility is fraught with many dangerous implications. Thus, to maintain its own power, it is easier to rationalize the exclusion of the members of the other informal structure by such means as “red-baiting,” “reformist-baiting,” “lesbian-baiting,” or “straight-baiting.” The only other alternative is to formally structure the group in such a way that the original power structure is institutionalized. This is not always possible. If the informal elites have been well structured and have exercised a fair amount of power in the past, such a task is feasible. These groups have a history of being somewhat politically effective in the past, as the tightness of the informal structure has proven an adequate substitute for a formal structure. Becoming structured does not alter their operation much, though the institutionalization of the power structure does open it to formal challenge. It is those groups which are in greatest need of structure that are often least capable of creating it. Their informal structures have not been too well formed and adherence to the ideology of “structurelessness” makes them reluctant to change tactics. The more unstructured a group is, the more lacking it is in informal structures, and the more it adheres to an ideology of “structurelessness,” the more vulnerable it is to being taken over by a group of political comrades.

Since the movement at large is just as Unstructured as most of its constituent groups, it is similarly susceptible to indirect influence. But the phenomenon manifests itself differently. On a local level most groups can operate autonomously; but the only groups that can organize a national activity are nationally organized groups. Thus, it is often the Structured feminist organizations that provide national direction for feminist activities, and this direction is determined by the priorities of those organizations. Such groups as NOW, WEAL, and some Left women’s caucuses are simply the only organizations capable of mounting a national campaign. The multitude of unstructured women’s liberation groups can choose to support or not support the national campaigns, but are incapable of mounting their own. Thus their members become the troops under the leadership of the structured organizations. The avowedly unstructured groups have no way of drawing upon the movement’s vast resources to support their priorities. They don’t even have a way of deciding what the priorities are.

The more unstructured a movement is, the less control it has over the directions in which it develops and the political actions in which it engages. This does not mean that its ideas do not spread. Given a certain amount of interest by the media and the appropriateness of social conditions, the ideas will still be diffused widely. But diffusion of ideas does not mean they are implemented; it only means they are talked about. Insofar as they can be applied individually they may be acted on; insofar as they require coordinated political power to be implemented, they will not be.

As long as the women’s liberation movement stays dedicated to a form of organization which stresses small, inactive discussion groups among friends, the worst problems of unstructuredness will not be felt. But this style of organization has its limits; it is politically inefficacious, exclusive, and discriminatory against those women who are not or cannot be tied into the friendship networks. Those who do not fit into what already exists because of class, race, occupation, education, parental or marital status, personality, etc., will inevitably be discouraged from trying to participate. Those who do fit in will develop vested interests in maintaining things as they are.

The informal groups’ vested interests will be sustained by the informal structures which exist, and the movement will have no way of determining who shall exercise power within it. If the movement continues deliberately to not select who shall exercise power, it does not thereby abolish power. All it does is abdicate the right to demand that those who do exercise power and influence be responsible for it. If the movement continues to keep power as diffuse as possible because it knows it cannot demand responsibility from those who have it, it does prevent any group or person from totally dominating. But it simultaneously insures that the movement is as ineffective as possible. Some middle ground between domination and ineffectiveness can and must be found.

These problems are coming to a head at this time because the nature of the movement is necessarily changing. Consciousness-raising as the main function of the women’s liberation movement is becoming obsolete. Due to the intense press publicity of the last two years and the numerous overground books and articles now being circulated, women’s liberation has become a household word. Its issues are discussed and informal rap groups are formed by people who have no explicit connection with any movement group. Purely educational work is no longer such an overwhelming need. The movement must go on to other tasks. It now needs to establish its priorities, articulate its goals, and pursue its objectives in a coordinated fashion. To do this it must get organized locally, regionally, and nationally.

Principles of Democratic Structuring

Once the movement no longer clings tenaciously to the ideology of “structurelessness,” it is free to develop those forms of organization best suited to its healthy functioning. This does not mean that we should go to the other extreme and blindly imitate the traditional forms of organization. But neither should we blindly reject them all. Some of the traditional techniques will prove useful, albeit not perfect; some will give us insights into what we should and should not do to obtain certain ends with minimal costs to the individuals in the movement. Mostly, we will have to experiment with different kinds of structuring and develop a variety of techniques to use for different situations. The “lot system” is one such idea which has emerged from the movement. It is not applicable to all situations, but is useful in some. Other ideas for structuring are needed. But before we can proceed to experiment intelligently, we must accept the idea that there is nothing inherently bad about structure itself—only its excess use.

While engaging in this trial-and-error process, there are some principles we can keep in mind that are essential to democratic structuring and are also politically effective also:

1. Delegation of specific authority to specific individuals for specific tasks by democratic procedures. Letting people assume jobs or tasks only by default means they are not dependably done. If people are selected to do a task, preferably after expressing an interest or willingness to do it, they have made a commitment which cannot so easily be ignored.

2. Requiring all those to whom authority has been delegated to be responsible to those who selected them. This is how the group has control over people in positions of authority. Individuals may exercise power, but it is the group that has ultimate say over how the power is exercised.

3. Distribution of authority among as many people as is reasonably possible. This prevents monopoly of power and requires those in positions of authority to consult with many others in the process of exercising it. It also gives many people the opportunity to have responsibility for specific tasks and thereby to learn different skills.

4. Rotation of tasks among individuals. Responsibilities which are held too long by one person, formally or informally, come to be seen as that person’s “property” and are not easily relinquished or controlled by the group. Conversely, if tasks are rotated too frequently the individual does not have time to learn her job well and acquire the sense of satisfaction of doing a good job.

5. Allocation of tasks along rational criteria. Selecting someone for a position because they are liked by the group, or giving them hard work because they are disliked, serves neither the group, nor the person in the long run. Ability, interest, and responsibility have got to be the major concerns in such selection. People should be given an opportunity to learn skills they do not have, but this is best done through some sort of “apprenticeship” program rather than the “sink or swim” method. Having a responsibility one can’t handle well is demoralizing. Conversely, being blacklisted from doing what one can do well does not encourage one to develop one’s skills. Women have been punished for being competent throughout most of human history; the movement does not need to repeat this process.

6. Diffusion of information to everyone as frequently as possible. Information is power. Access to information enhances one’s power. When an informal network spreads new ideas and information among themselves outside the group, they are already engaged in the process of forming an opinion—without the group participating. The more one knows about how things work, the more politically effective one can be.

7. Equal access to resources needed by the group. This is not always perfectly possible, but should be striven for. A member who maintains a monopoly over a needed resource (like a printing press , or a darkroom owned by a husband) can unduly influence the use of that resource. Skills and information are also resources. Members’ skills can be equitably available only when members are willing to teach what they know to others.

When these principles are applied, they insure that whatever structures are developed by different movement groups will be controlled by and responsible to the group. The group of people in positions of authority will be diffuse, flexible, open, and temporary. They will not be in such an easy position to institutionalize their power because ultimate decisions will be made by the group at large. The group will have the power to determine who shall exercise authority within it.

Women of the Weather Underground, A Collective Letter to the Women’s Movement (1973)

Published: Women of the Weather Underground, “A Collective Letter to the Women’s Movement,” The Weather Eye: Communiqués from the Weather Underground. Union Square Press, 1974.

Source: Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements and Communiqués of the Weather Underground, 1970–1974, ed. by Bernardine Dorn, Bill Ayers, and Jeff Jones. Seven Stories Press, 2006.

July 24, 1973

Dear sisters—

We women of the weather underground, having lived in the United States as fugitives for more than three years, are writing to open up our thinking and practice to the rest of the Women’s Movement. Over the past several months we have been working on a collective letter to you, to begin to bridge the space between us. Underground communication is a drawn-out process. The writing of this letter has been a collective effort by women in many parts of the country, an attempt to synthesize our views and to reflect the different experiences that shape them. Among us there are great variations of personal herstory—class, regional, movement and non-movement pasts, and a range of opinion.

The purpose of this letter is to mark a change—to commit ourselves as women to the cause of women. We believe that the struggle against sexism demands the destruction of the American state, and that the immediate personal nature of sexism requires struggle against men who enforce that oppression as well as its institutions. Since going underground we have never publicly committed ourselves to the right and duty of women to rebel, to the revolutionary content of women’s demands, and to the profound feminist critique of Western culture. As communists, we know we can criticize our practice without repudiating or denying our own past. We intend also in this letter to share some of our purpose and our experience as women underground.

Since going underground there have been few times that we have communicated about our internal process. The risk of revealing too much about ourselves to the state is ever present, but we also felt an urgent need to overcome these difficulties and to share our lives with our sisters. The nature of the unity among us is the secret thread of clandestine organization. This is what the state is searching out. We expect to be living underground for many years and know we must build with care, understanding that we are responsible for each other’s lives...we recognize the need for a critical look at our herstory and our present practice—and to acknowledge our debt to the women’s movement. We’ve tried to set forth what we have been trying to accomplish, without overusing the benefits of hindsight.

We keep reexamining and reinterpreting the period 1969–1970 both because it was so decisive in each of our lives and because it is our image at that time which is stamped on people’s memories. We have reread all our old leaflets and articles about women recently, some of it stands, some doesn’t.

Three years ago, we denied the legitimacy of white women’s demands. Although we had been assaulted, underpaid, brainwashed, aborted, raped like women everywhere, we—and the left as a whole—did not recognize that women’s demands for power over their own lives is fundamental to any revolution we would care to make.

At that time we were primarily involved in supporting Third World liberation struggles. The Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam had been declared in spring 1969, and full military and political victory for the Vietnamese people began to take shape. In the face of the Provisional Revolutionary Government’s gains, the US began the 1968–69 escalation of B-52 bombing and chemical warfare throughout Indochina.

In the United States, Black resistance against racism challenged the foundations of US society—Black parents and children battled for community control over their schools in New York City, freedom for Third World political prisoners was raised as a demand. The fear of armed Black revolution unleashed a systematic campaign by the government to destroy the most visible militant Third World organizations and to imprison, immobilize or murder their leaders.

White women who had been active in the struggles against the war and in support of Blacks turned their attention to the herstory of their own oppression, separated from men to create space for this exploration. It was out of this that the feminist movement grew. Without an independent feminist force the significant accomplishments of consciousness raising, analysis of sexism and the roots of male power, abortion reform, control of our bodies, affirmative action around equal rights—the shattering of women’s chains and shackles—would not have occurred. At the same time, Third World women were opening up similar questions in their own terms—attempting to resolve their struggle for leadership and a culture of equality within a whole national movement for the survival and unity of their peoples.

During this period we were time and again in gatherings of the left or planning for actions, demonstrations, where women were polarized. It seemed we were either primarily anti-sexist, believing that sexism was the crucial issue to tackle before any revolutionary development could go on, or primarily anti-racist, and argued that we could not divide and weaken the movement at a time when the fight for life in the Black community was so urgent, and when Black resistance was not consistently supported in action by white people.

Long-time sisters fell on different sides of the split and it continues to divide us now. The women who pushed the primacy of sexism came out of the anti-war movement, or called themselves anti-imperialists; many of us SDS women identified deeply with women’s struggles, having been in SDS women’s rap groups and caucuses, and felt part of the women’s movement.

This was not the first time in history that women divided around priorities. After the Civil War a movement grew to guarantee Blacks the right to vote. Many women wanted to include in the 14th or 15th amendment a guarantee to vote regardless of sex, as well as race, while others argued that raising the issue of sex would defeat the amendment, when Blacks faced the imminent danger of being brought back under some system of de facto slavery.

Contradictions always arise among people who are oppressed in the process of building a revolution. These can serve the enemy and must be recognized and resolved when they arise in our movement. American society rests on racism and the enslavement of women, and on dividing people through fear, hatred, and a glorification of narrow self-interest. If women come to deny the Attica brothers their full place as warriors, their beautiful humaneness in the liberation of the prison yard, then we are turned against our comrades while our enemies laugh.

We take responsibility for increasing the polarization and the contradictions. We both denied the revolutionary importance of developing feminist politics and made our own political choice into an oppressive standard by which we judged other women. There will always be arguments about priorities, and those will continue to move us forward—but for us the basis for struggling has changed. We cannot make a value judgment about peoples’ oppression—which is more important, or far-reaching, or pervasive or painful. It is the wrong question.

We cannot liberate ourselves in some vacuum of our own self-conception. The great majority of women in the world are bowed down by the questions of survival for themselves and their children, self-determination in their daily lives. The liberation of women cannot be realized while the United States empire remains the main consumer of the world’s food, resources and energy. That is why our movement will have to take on the question of state power.

And that is why our future is tied to the liberation of the Third World—for it is their struggles, which in our lifetime, have shaken the grip of the empire. The fight by Black people for their freedom led all of us to an understanding of the enemy and how to fight them, and to become conscious of other cultures, learn from the way they see the world, support in action their fight for the survival of their people against repression and cultural penetration and genocide. Our commonality as women can offer a base to build trust.

In the past, I don’t care how poor this white woman was, in the South, she still felt like she was more than us. In the North, I don’t care how poor or how rich this white woman has been, she still felt like she was more than us. But coming to the realization of the thing, her freedom is shackled in chains to mine, and she realized for the first time that she is not free until I am free. –Fannie Lou Hamer

Looking back from here on the split between the feminist movement and the New Left, it has been a long road to try to integrate the feminism we have come to with the anti-imperialist politics on which our underground was founded. Our understanding of the world and our own lives is in a continuous process of change—we have to invite and nurture one another’s changing. As one woman wrote to another:

Since I have been underground, I have been learning about our herstory, about Prudence Crandall, the Grimke sisters, Sojourner Truth, along with so many other women. Sometimes it strikes me how so many women know more about our sisters who made herstory in generations before ours than about those many women who fought in the struggles of the 1960s, the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement. I guess it’s not so strange...the ’60s is so close: the discovery of the influence of men in our lives made many women question whether anything they believed was really their own belief. And coming to see how pervasive sexism is in the world made many see everything in terms of sexism. So the struggles that happened in the `60s were questioned, what did they mean for women, for the women who had been in them?

I feel so tied to that history, though, which took me underground and got me to where I am, like a tree with roots. Sometimes I have heard people talk as if all that came before was bad. Yet for me, those years are a touchstone for what I have become—the truths in them are a basis for my understanding much of what happens in the world, the wrongs are the platform from where my feminism has grown.

I feel like it’s so important to understand that just because we were influenced in many ways by men, it would be wrong to say that we didn’t understand anything for ourselves, we have to trust ourselves more than that. Our struggle for freedom stretches way ahead of us, and oppression continually has to be fought: oppression and liberation will coexist in our lives.

And also, that what we and so many other women did to try and end the suffering of the Vietnamese people is very much part of the herstory of the women’s movement: sometimes it’s painful to hear that not included as part of herstory, because, after all, it was made by women. And more...it seems to me that the women’s movement has to be about many things that women do: there is no issue that is not a woman’s issue, for we are about ordering a new society. There is no injustice that should not be taken on by women for we are about humanity...

The women in Weather collectives were deeply affected by the arguments of the separatists—women continued to work and fight within sight and sound of each other. We were working to develop a conception out of our own needs, of a revolutionary woman. In 1968–69 each of us was changed in her conception of herself as a woman—as wife, intellectual, coward, or empty vessel.

I remember Diana especially on the SDS trip to Cuba to meet with the Vietnamese in the summer of 1969. Since her death in the townhouse explosion in March 1970 I have grown to hate the superficial condescending psychoanalyses of her life—those by radicals as much as the Daily News variety. How do you write the making of a revolutionary woman? Not as a mere victim of a man, product of father, or lover. Maybe begin with fragments. She wept plenty, same as all of us. Also she demanded honest love. Our women’s group met every day on the boat back from Cuba and I learned it from her.

She translated for us, up early every morning after a late-night party to prepare for the day’s Spanish lessons. Special care to make friends with the Cuban women, meet their children, reminiscing about the children she had taught in a Guatemalan school. Beautiful, strong arms—an indefatigable worker in the hold of the ship, and never without a certain amount of ironic humor.

Ideas that seem quite natural now were each a battle to be fought: that women could meet together, conceive and carry out a demonstration, that we could be free of the “couple” form, be our own person, that we could make love with our sisters, that we could form a women’s militia out of our women’s energy, anger and joy. If we had not been so focused on our internal process we could have allied with other women who were transforming their lives. We had radical ideas about monogamy, which we saw as an isolating and weakening form for women. But this became a lack of realism about what such a line meant for most women as a demand, and became a way of judging other women’s lives and choices. At the time, the urgency to become new people right away gave our criticisms a hammering relentlessness.

We developed a vision of women as fighters, pushed by the existence of a separate women’s movement to define a revolutionary woman, not just a “revolutionary,” and we looked for women to emulate out of our past, and from other countries. The women of Vietnam were our model. We had met with them, Pham Thi Quyen, Tu, Thanh Tra, heard their battle stories, and saw them gaining freedom in the process of their people’s war for independence. What was most important to us was that they were able to take part in prolonged military battle, and endure great hardships. We had a single-minded conception of a woman guerrilla as fighter only.

Through the last three years of building a community of opposition to the U.S. government, we have come to appreciate the many sides of women revolutionaries. The details of our survival have taken much of our time, all of our women’s weapons. The holding together and nurturance of our community has meant calling on every woman’s potential. From our diversity comes collective strength.

Determination and skill come out of a depth of political and cultural experiences. Women resist and are brave in the most ordinary-seeming situations, on a welfare line, after being told that medical benefits are going to be cut; on a street late at night helping another sister who is being harassed; as a mother demanding that the hospital stop experimenting with sterilization on her daughters; one sister to another trying to convince her to stop shooting up because it is giving the Man a victory, swallowing up her life. Sisters who didn’t know who we were, giving fugitives cover and support when we needed it most—struggles for survival, ours was one of them.

I think it has to be difficult for people to be violent, to go to war...how can we say we aren’t afraid? What do our lives mean to us, and the lives of others? We love life! But you’ve got to be violent and go to war if it’s necessary. But what you can’t lose in that kind of situation is your sensitivity. –Haydee Santamaria, Cuban revolutionary woman

Although our purely military conception of women revolutionaries was too narrow, we believe that armed struggle is an essential dimension in a movement which is facing a cruel and murderous government. When the New Morning statement appeared in December 1970 it was misunderstood as a repudiation—especially on the part of the women in the Weather underground—of armed struggle. We meant it to be an analysis of the error of militarism, which includes the idealization of violence, an exaggerated emphasis on the use of arms to the exclusion of mass struggle, coming out of a sense of powerlessness. We believe that armed struggle can be—must be—humane. After the townhouse explosion we stepped back to look at our approach to armed action. Now we feel a tremendous responsibility even in the smallest action to take great care in the methods we use. A belief in our own instincts has become one guideline—getting closer to the ground. One sister writes of an early experience:

The first time I was involved in an armed action I literally felt no fear at all. There I was, risking jail or death. Yet no bad dreams, no doubts, no slightest tremor of the hand. When I was arrested all I felt was a little sad. It’s strange, if you put your hand in the fire and don’t feel any pain at all, you can get really hurt. You want to relieve pain if you’ve got it, but it also warns you that something is the matter, so you value it. I think fear is the same way. It’s like a body’s early warning system. If I had felt fear and valued it, that experience might have been different. (I certainly would have been more careful). That’s why when much later I participated in a small but successful action, the fear that went through my body and mind filled me with the most amazing sense of liberation...

The basis of trust over time is laid by our practice. The choice of what to do is never made lightly, each detail is examined many times over. Our actions have been against the widening of the Indochina war into Cambodia and Laos and the bombing of Hanoi, in support of Black and Latin people in prison, on trial, in struggle. At this stage they have had mainly symbolic value, in retaliation for the crimes committed by the state—a way of cutting through the myth of impenetrability of government. We believe that the continued existence of an underground shows that America is deeply divided within itself.

Since we’ve been underground each of us has come to feel the need for women living and working together—the lesson of the women’s movement. This was not always true. In the first year, precarious and unsure of our survival, internal contradictions between the women and the men were less important than the battle with the state. At this time many other women were taking the space to work with one another apart from men. We saw one movement group after another fly apart because of sexism, and partly out of this process the women’s movement grew, in anger. Yet we wanted to cohere our organization—both to stay free in the face of government pursuit and out of our political unity, women and men, around the building of the underground.

We realize that many women distrust us because we work with men. To some this puts into question not only our loyalties to other woman but our very womanness. But the last few years we have both learned and suffered from the brothers in our family, struggled with and been passive to them, loved and been alienated and fought with them. We claim the integrity of our choice to work with them, and do not intend to either defend or reject them.

So it is within the context of a mixed organization that we have fought for space for ourselves. It started slowly: working together on a woman’s action, sustaining friendships between women who saw each other rarely, supporting each other in our daily lives, dealing with sexist practices as a group of sisters, developing women’s houses. Taking time to study herstory. Over time we have built women’s collectives—pushed by our growing commitment to women to define our feminist politics apart from the brothers:

When we work together, a few of us women, there seems to be so many forms that we can use to express ourselves, enabling the essence of what we are saying and feeling to come across. Culturally just the things we create together are important. There are many gives and takes between us that are subtle and important. We often understand what each other is saying, even when it’s only partly in words. We are aware of each other’s presence and whether it is troubled or full. We won’t let too many hours go by before a locked door gets opened to examine what’s inside—a growing collectivity, I guess is what it is, with importance placed on each of the individuals within it...

Recently we met to discuss proposals circulated among our women’s groups to compare our development throughout the country. The very process of writing this paper has pulled us closer together. We are formalizing the beginning of an ongoing women’s community in the underground. We live in many ways, mothers, lesbians, with men, with older women or alone, and are as varied as women anywhere. We look at each other in amazement, realizing how much it is possible for each one of us to grow, and that together we are part of giving birth to a new women’s culture. We feel it in the poetry, art and music we are creating.

Women have done illegal work as long as our herstory, for it is part of our survival. We look back to the women who have done clandestine work in past years—to the witches, Harriet Tubman, Emma Goldman, to Tanya and many more. It is their tradition we want to carry on as we build the underground.

We hope this letter can open up with sisters a discussion about the role of women underground. How to talk to one another is something we will have to figure out together. We read women’s newspapers in many parts of the country and will look for letters from you.

We hope to reach across this space—for centuries women have spoken to one another in strange tongues to protect themselves from their enemies.

In sisterhood

Women of the Weather Underground

1. We are using the classical definition rather than the Freudian: that is, the sense of individual self as distinct from others.↩

Gay Liberation Front

Following the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City, a new generation of gay militants formed the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), explicitly locating gay freedom within the international context of revolutionary socialist and national liberation movements. Through its decentralized and open structure, members of the GLF formed many autonomous affinity groups around particular politics or identities, including the Radicalesbians, the Communist Red Butterfly (distributors of Carl Wittman’s essay here, and authors of the afterword), Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), and the Radicalqueens. Essays written by these groups demonstrate the range of the new thinking on gender, patriarchy and sexuality in the milieu of the GLF. We include here two statements from early trans liberation militants. The last essay is by Charlotte Bunch, a member of the Furies, a radical lesbian collective formed in 1971 in Washington, DC.

A note is in order about the pieces by STAR. STAR included multiple political tendencies, and here we find them defending the legitimacy of police. Elsewhere, leading figures in STAR, such as Sylvia Rivera, adamantly rejected police as a social institution, and the complicity of mainstream gays with expanded policing. It is often the less radical voices who author a group’s manifestos.

For the secondary reading, we have two recommendations: a recent scholarly essay on the Gay Liberation Front, and to continue with Echols.

Secondary reading: Terrance Kissack, “Freaking Fag Revolutionaries: New York’s Gay Liberation Front, 1969–1971,” Radical History Review, Spring 1995.

Alice Echols, Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967–1975, Ch. 5 (pp. 203–241). University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

Radicalesbians, The Woman Identified Woman Manifesto (1970)

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/wlmpc_wlmms01011/

Radicalesbians, “The Woman Identified Woman.” KNOW, Inc., 1970.

This paper was first issued by the Radicalesbians in 1970 during the “Lavender Menace” protest at the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York City. The principal authors were Artemis March, Lois Hart, Rita Mae Brown, Ellen Shumsky, Cynthia Funk and Barbara XX.

What is a lesbian? A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion. She is the woman who, often beginning at an extremely early age, acts in accordance with her inner compulsion to be a more complete and freer human being than her society—perhaps then, but certainly later—cares to allow her. These needs and actions, over a period of years, bring her into painful conflict with people, situations, the accepted ways of thinking, feeling and behaving, until she is in a state of continual war with everything around her, and usually with her self. She may not be fully conscious of the political implications of what for her began as personal necessity, but on some level she has not been able to accept the limitations and oppression laid on her by the most basic role of her society—the female role. The turmoil she experiences tends to induce guilt proportional to the degree to which she feels she is not meeting social expectations, and/or eventually drives her to question and analyze what the rest of her society more or less accepts. She is forced to evolve her own life pattern, often living much of her life alone, learning usually much earlier than her “straight” (heterosexual) sisters about the essential aloneness of life (which the myth of marriage obscures) and about the reality of illusions. To the extent that she cannot expel the heavy socialization that goes with being female, she can never truly find peace with herself. For she is caught somewhere between accepting society’s view of her—in which case she cannot accept herself—and coming to understand what this sexist society has done to her and why it is functional and necessary for it to do so. Those of us who work that through find ourselves on the other side of a tortuous journey through a night that may have been decades long. The perspective gained from that journey, the liberation of self, the inner peace, the real love of self and of all women, is something to be shared with all women—because we are all women.

It should first be understood that lesbianism, like male homosexuality, is a category of behavior possible only in a sexist society characterized by rigid sex roles and dominated by male supremacy. Those sex roles dehumanize women by defining us as a supportive/serving caste in relation to the master caste of men, and emotionally cripple men by demanding that they be alienated from their own bodies and emotions in order to perform their economic/political/military functions effectively. Homosexuality is a by-product of a particular way of setting up roles (or approved patterns of behavior) on the basis of sex; as such it is an inauthentic (not consonant with “reality”) category. In a society in which men do not oppress women, and sexual expression is allowed to follow feelings, the categories of homosexuality and heterosexuality would disappear.

But lesbianism is also different from male homosexuality, and serves a different function in the society. “Dyke” is a different kind of put-down from “faggot,” although both imply you are not playing your socially assigned sex role...are not therefore a “real woman” or a “real man.” The grudging admiration felt for the tomboy, and the queasiness felt around a sissy boy point to the same thing: the contempt in which women—or those who play a female role—are held. And the investment in keeping women in that contemptuous role is very great. Lesbian is a word, the label, the condition that holds women in line. When a woman hears this word tossed her way, she knows she is stepping out of line. She knows that she has crossed the terrible boundary of her sex role. She recoils, she protests, she reshapes her actions to gain approval. Lesbian is a label invented by the Man to throw at any woman who dares to be his equal, who dares to challenge his prerogatives (including that of all women as part of the exchange medium among men), who dares to assert the primacy of her own needs. To have the label applied to people active in women’s liberation is just the most recent instance of a long history; older women will recall that not so long ago, any woman who was successful, independent, not orienting her whole life about a man, would hear this word. For in this sexist society, for a woman to be independent means she can’t be a woman—she must be a dyke. That in itself should tell us where women are at. It says as clearly as can be said: women and person are contradictory terms. For a lesbian is not considered a “real woman.” And yet, in popular thinking, there is really only one essential difference between a lesbian and other women: that of sexual orientation—which is to say, when you strip off all the packaging, you must finally realize that the essence of being a “woman” is to get fucked by men.

“Lesbian” is one of the sexual categories by which men have divided up humanity. While all women are dehumanized as sex objects, as the objects of men they are given certain compensations: identification with his power, his ego, his status, his protection (from other males), feeling like a “real woman,” finding social acceptance by adhering to her role, etc. Should a woman confront herself by confronting another woman, there are fewer rationalizations, fewer buffers by which to avoid the stark horror of her dehumanized condition. Herein we find the overriding fear of many women toward being used as a sexual object by a woman, which not only will bring her no male-connected compensations, but also will reveal the void which is woman’s real situation. This dehumanization is expressed when a straight woman learns that a sister is a lesbian; she begins to relate to her lesbian sister as her potential sex object, laying a surrogate male role on the lesbian. This reveals her heterosexual conditioning to make herself into an object when sex is potentially involved in a relationship, and it denies the lesbian her full humanity. For women, especially those in the movement, to perceive their lesbian sisters through this male grid of role definitions is to accept this male cultural conditioning and to oppress their sisters much as they themselves have been oppressed by men. Are we going to continue the male classification system of defining all females in sexual relation to some other category of people? Affixing the label lesbian not only to a woman who aspires to be a person, but also to any situation of real love, real solidarity, real primacy among women, is a primary form of divisiveness among women: it is the condition which keeps women within the confines of the feminine role, and it is the debunking/scare term that keeps women from forming any primary attachments, groups, or associations among ourselves.

Women in the movement have in most cases gone to great lengths to avoid discussion and confrontation with the issue of lesbianism. It puts people up-tight. They are hostile, evasive, or try to incorporate it into some “broader issue.” They would rather not talk about it. If they have to, they try to dismiss it as a “lavender herring.” But it is no side issue. It is absolutely essential to the success and fulfillment of the women’s liberation movement that this issue be dealt with. As long as the label “dyke” can be used to frighten women into a less militant stand, keep her separate from her sisters, keep her from giving primacy to anything other than men and family—then to that extent she is controlled by the male culture. Until women see in each other the possibility of a primal commitment which includes sexual love, they will be denying themselves the love and value they readily accord to men, thus affirming their second-class status. As long as male acceptability is primary—both to individual women and to the movement as a whole—the term lesbian will be used effectively against women. Insofar as women want only more privileges within the system, they do not want to antagonize male power. They instead seek acceptability for women’s liberation, and the most crucial aspect of the acceptability is to deny lesbianism—i.e., to deny any fundamental challenge to the basis of the female. It should also be said that some younger, more radical women have honestly begun to discuss lesbianism, but so far it has been primarily as a sexual “alternative” to men. This, however, is still giving primacy to men, both because the idea of relating more completely to women occurs as a negative reaction to men, and because the lesbian relationship is being characterized simply by sex, which is divisive and sexist. On one level, which is both personal and political, women may withdraw emotional and sexual energies from men, and work out various alternatives for those energies in their own lives. On a different political/psychological level, it must be understood that what is crucial is that women begin disengaging from male-defined response patterns. In the privacy of our own psyches, we must cut those cords to the core. For irrespective of where our love and sexual energies flow, if we are male-identified in our heads, we cannot realize our autonomy as human beings.

But why is it that women have related to and through men? By virtue of having been brought up in a male society, we have internalized the male culture’s definition of ourselves. That definition consigns us to sexual and family functions, and excludes us from defining and shaping the terms of our lives. In exchange for our psychic servicing and for performing society’s non-profit-making functions, the man confers on us just one thing: the slave status which makes us legitimate in the eyes of the society in which we live. This is called “femininity” or “being a real woman” in our cultural lingo. We are authentic, legitimate, real to the extent that we are the property of some man whose name we bear. To be a woman who belongs to no man is to be invisible, pathetic, inauthentic, unreal. He confirms his image of us—of what we have to be in order to be acceptable by him—but not our real selves; he confirms our womanhood—as he defines it, in relation to him, but cannot confirm our personhood, our own selves as absolutes. As long as we are dependent on the male culture for this definition, for this approval, we cannot be free.

The consequence of internalizing this role is an enormous reservoir of self-hate. This is not to say the self-hate is recognized or accepted as such; indeed most women would deny it. It may be experienced as discomfort with her role, as feeling empty, as numbness, as restlessness, as a paralyzing anxiety at the center. Alternatively, it may be expressed in shrill defensiveness of the glory and destiny of her role. But it does exist, often beneath the edge of her consciousness, poisoning her existence, keeping her alienated from herself, her own needs, and rendering her a stranger to other women. They try to escape by identifying with the oppressor, living through him, gaining status and identity from his ego, his power, his accomplishments. And by not identifying with other “empty vessels” like themselves. Women resist relating on all levels to other women who will reflect their own oppression, their own secondary status, their own self-hate. For to confront another woman is finally to confront one’s self—the self we have gone to such lengths to avoid. And in that mirror we know we cannot really respect and love that which we have been made to be.

As the source of self-hate and the lack of real self are rooted in our male-given identity, we must create a new sense of self. As long as we cling to the idea of “being a woman,” we will sense some conflict with that incipient self, that sense of I, that sense of a whole person. It is very difficult to realize and accept that being “feminine” and being a whole person are irreconcilable. Only women can give to each other a new sense of self. That identity we have to develop with reference to ourselves, and not in relation to men. This consciousness is the revolutionary force from which all else will follow, for ours is an organic revolution. For this we must be available and supportive to one another, give our commitment and our love, give the emotional support necessary to sustain this movement. Our energies must flow toward our sisters, not backward toward our oppressors. As long as woman’s liberation tries to free women without facing the basic heterosexual structure that binds us in one-to-one relationship with our oppressors, tremendous energies will continue to flow into trying to straighten up each particular relationship with a man, into finding how to get better sex, how to turn his head around—into trying to make the “new man” out of him, in the delusion that this will allow us to be the “new woman.” This obviously splits our energies and commitments, leaving us unable to be committed to the construction of the new patterns which will liberate us.

It is the primacy of women relating to women, of women creating a new consciousness of and with each other, which is at the heart of women’s liberation, and the basis for the cultural revolution. Together we must find, reinforce, and validate our authentic selves. As we do this, we confirm in each other that struggling, incipient sense of pride and strength, the divisive barriers begin to melt, we feel this growing solidarity with our sisters. We see ourselves as prime, find our centers inside of ourselves. We find receding the sense of alienation, of being cut off, of being behind a locked window, of being unable to get out what we know is inside. We feel a real-ness, feel at last we are coinciding with ourselves. With that real self, with that consciousness, we begin a revolution to end the imposition of all coercive identifications, and to achieve maximum autonomy in human expression.

Carl Wittman, A Gay Manifesto (1970)

http://paganpressbooks.com/jpl/TRB-WITT.PDF

Carl Wittman, “A Gay Manifesto.” Red Butterfly, 1970.

San Francisco is a refugee camp for homosexuals. We have fled here from every part of the nation, and like refugees elsewhere, we came not because it is so great here, but because it was so bad there. By the tens of thousands, we fled small towns where to be ourselves would endanger our jobs and any hope of a decent life; we have fled from blackmailing cops, from families who disowned or “tolerated” us; we have been drummed out of the armed services, thrown out of schools, fired from jobs, beaten by punks and policemen.

And we have formed a ghetto, out of self-protection. It is a ghetto rather than a free territory because it is sill theirs. Straight cops patrol us, straight legislators govern us, straight employers keep us in line, straight money exploits us. We have pretended everything is OK, because we haven’t been able to see how to change it—we’ve been afraid.

In the past year there has been an awakening of gay liberation ideas and energy. How it began we don’t know; maybe we were inspired by black people and their freedom movement; we learned how to stop pretending from the hip revolution. Amerika in all its ugliness has surfaced with the war and our national leaders. And we are revulsed by the quality of our ghetto life.

Where once there was frustration, alienation, and cynicism, there are new characteristics among us. We are full of love for each other and are showing it; we are full of anger at what has been done to us. And as we recall all the self-censorship and repression for so many years, a reservoir of tears pours out of our eyes. And we are euphoric, high, with the initial flourish of a movement.

We want to make ourselves clear: our first job is to free ourselves; that means clearing our heads of the garbage that’s been poured into them. This article is an attempt at raising a number of issues, and presenting some ideas to replace the old ones. It is primarily for ourselves, a starting point of discussion. If straight people of good will find it useful in understanding what liberation is about, so much the better.

It should also be clear that these are the views of one person, and are determined not only by my homosexuality, but my being white, male, middle class. It is my individual consciousness. Our group consciousness will evolve as we get ourselves together—we are only at the beginning.

I. On Orientation

1. What homosexuality is: Nature leaves undefined the object of sexual desire. The gender of that object is imposed socially. Humans originally made homosexuality taboo because they needed every bit of energy to produce and raise children: survival of species was a priority. With overpopulation and technological change, that taboo continued only to exploit us and enslave us.

As kids we refused to capitulate to demands that we ignore our feelings toward each other. Somewhere we found the strength to resist being indoctrinated, and we should count that among our assets. We have to realize that our loving each other is a good thing, not an unfortunate thing, and that we have a lot to teach straights about sex, love, strength, and resistance.

Homosexuality is not a lot of things. It is not a makeshift in the absence of the opposite sex; it is not a hatred or rejection of the opposite sex; it is not genetic; it is not the result of broken homes except inasmuch as we could see the sham of American marriage. Homosexuality is the capacity to love someone of the same sex.

2. Bisexuality: Bisexuality is good; it is the capacity to love people of either sex. The reason so few of us are bisexual is because society made such a big stink about homosexuality that we got forced into seeing ourselves as either straight or non-straight. Also, many gays got turned off to the ways men are supposed to act with women and vice-versa, which is pretty fucked-up. Gays will begin to turn on to women when 1) it’s something that we do because we want to, and not because we should, and 2) when women’s liberation changes the nature of heterosexual relationships.

We continue to call ourselves homosexual, not bisexual, even if we do make it with the opposite sex also, because saying “Oh, I’m Bi” is a cop out for a gay. We get told it’s OK to sleep with guys as long as we sleep with women, too, and that’s still putting homosexuality down. We’ll be gay until everyone has forgotten that it’s an issue. Then we’ll begin to be complete.

3. Heterosexuality: Exclusive heterosexuality is fucked up. It reflects a fear of people of the same sex, it’s anti-homosexual, and it is fraught with frustration. Heterosexual sex is fucked up, too; ask women’s liberation about what straight guys are like in bed. Sex is aggression for the male chauvinist; sex is obligation for the traditional woman. And among the young, the modern, the hip, it’s only a subtle version of the same. For us to become heterosexual in the sense that our straight brothers and sisters are is not a cure, it is a disease.

II. On Women

1. Lesbianism: It’s been a male-dominated society for too long, and that has warped both men and women. So gay women are going to see things differently from gay men; they are going to feel put down as women, too. Their liberation is tied up with both gay liberation and women’s liberation.

This paper speaks from the gay male viewpoint. And although some of the ideas in it may be equally relevant to gay women, it would be arrogant to presume this to be a manifesto for lesbians.

We look forward to the emergence of a lesbian liberation voice. The existence of a lesbian caucus within the New York Gay Liberation Front has been very helpful in challenging male chauvinism among gay guys, and anti-gay feelings among women’s lib.

2. Male Chauvinism: All men are infected with male chauvinism—we were brought up that way. It means we assume that women play subordinate roles and are less human than ourselves. (At an early gay liberation meeting one guy said, “Why don’t we invite women’s liberation—they can bring sandwiches and coffee.”) It is no wonder that so few gay women have become active in our groups.

Male chauvinism, however, is not central to us. We can junk it much more easily than straight men can. For we understand oppression. We have largely opted out of a system which oppresses women daily—our egos are not built on putting women down and having them build us up. Also, living in a mostly male world we have become used to playing different roles, doing our own shit-work. And finally, we have a common enemy: the big male chauvinists are also the big anti-gays.

But we need to purge male chauvinism, both in behavior and in thought among us. Chick equals nigger equals queer. Think it over.

3. Women’s liberation: They are assuming their equality and dignity and in doing so are challenging the same things we are: the roles, the exploitation of minorities by capitalism, the arrogant smugness of straight white male middle-class Amerika. They are our sisters in struggle.

Problems and differences will become clearer when we begin to work together. One major problem is our own male chauvinism. Another is uptightness and hostility to homosexuality that many women have—that is the straight in them. A third problem is differing views on sex: sex for them has meant oppression, while for us it has been a symbol of our freedom. We must come to know and understand each other’s style, jargon and humor.

III. On Roles

1. Mimicry of straight society: We are children of straight society. We still think straight: that is part of our oppression. One of the worst of straight concepts is inequality. Straight (also white, English, male, capitalist) thinking views things in terms of order and comparison. A is before B, B is after A; one is below two is below three; there is no room for equality. This idea gets extended to male/female, on top/on bottom, spouse/not spouse, heterosexual/homosexual; boss/worker, white/black and rich/poor. Our social institutions cause and reflect this verbal hierarchy. This is Amerika.

We’ve lived in these institutions all our lives. Naturally we mimic the roles. For too long we mimicked these roles to protect ourselves—a survival mechanism. Now we are becoming free enough to shed the roles which we’ve picked up from the institutions which have imprisoned us.

“Stop mimicking straights, stop censoring ourselves.”

2. Marriage: Marriage is a prime example of a straight institution fraught with role playing. Traditional marriage is a rotten, oppressive institution. Those of us who have been in heterosexual marriages too often have blamed our gayness on the breakup of the marriage. No. They broke up because marriage is a contract which smothers both people, denies needs, and places impossible demands on both people. And we had the strength, again, to refuse to capitulate to the roles which were demanded of us.

Gay people must stop gauging their self-respect by how well they mimic straight marriages. Gay marriages will have the same problems as straight ones except in burlesque. For the usual legitimacy and pressures which keep straight marriages together are absent, e.g., kids, what parents think, what neighbors say.

To accept that happiness comes through finding a groovy spouse and settling down, showing the world that “we’re just the same as you” is avoiding the real issues, and is an expression of self-hatred.

3. Alternatives to Marriage: People want to get married for lots of good reasons, although marriage won’t often meet those needs or desires. We’re all looking for security, a flow of love, and a feeling of belonging and being needed.

These needs can be met through a number of social relationships and living situations. Things we want to get away from are: 1. exclusiveness, propertied attitudes toward each other, a mutual pact against the rest of the world; 2. promises about the future, which we have no right to make and which prevent us from, or make us feel guilty about, growing; 3. inflexible roles, roles which do not reflect us at the moment but are inherited through mimicry and inability to define equalitarian relationships.

We have to define for ourselves a new pluralistic, role-free social structure for ourselves. It must contain both the freedom and physical space for people to live alone, live together for a while, live together for a long time, either as couples or in larger numbers; and the ability to flow easily from one of these states to another as our needs change.

Liberation for gay people is defining for ourselves how and with whom we live, instead of measuring our relationship in comparison to straight ones, with straight values.

4. Gay “stereotypes”: The straights’ image of the gay world is defined largely by those of us who have violated straight roles. There is a tendency among “homophile” groups to deplore gays who play visible roles—the queens and the nellies. As liberated gays, we must take a clear stand. 1) Gays who stand out have become our first martyrs. They came out and withstood disapproval before the rest of us did. 2) If they have suffered from being open, it is straight society whom we must indict, not the queen.

5. Closet queens: This phrase is becoming analogous to “Uncle Tom.” To pretend to be straight sexually, or to pretend to be straight socially, is probably the most harmful pattern of behavior in the ghetto. The married guy who makes it on the side secretly; the guy who will go to bed once but won’t develop any gay relationships; the pretender at work or school who changes the gender of the friend he’s talking about; the guy who’ll suck cock in the bushes but who won’t go to bed.

If we are liberated we are open with our sexuality. Closet queenery must end. Come out.

But: in saying come out, we have to have our heads clear about a few things: 1) closet queens are our brothers, and must be defended against attacks by straight people; 2) the fear of coming out is not paranoia; the stakes are high: loss of family ties, loss of job, loss of straight friends—these are all reminders that the oppression is not just in our heads. It’s real. Each of us must make the steps toward openness at our own speed and on our own impulses. Being open is the foundation of freedom: it has to be built solidly. 3) “Closet queen” is a broad term covering a multitude of forms of defense, self-hatred, lack of strength, and habit. We are all closet queens in some ways, and all of us had to come out—very few of us were “flagrant” at the age of seven! We must afford our brothers and sisters the same patience we afforded ourselves. And while their closet queenery is part of our oppression, it’s more a part of theirs. They alone can decide when and how.

IV. On Oppression

It is important to catalog and understand the different facets of our oppression. There is no future in arguing about degrees of oppression. A lot of “movement” types come on with a line of shit about homosexuals not being oppressed as much as blacks or Vietnamese or workers or women. We don’t happen to fit into their ideas of class or caste. Bull! When people feel oppressed, they act on that feeling. We feel oppressed. Talk about the priority of black liberation or ending imperialism over and above gay liberation is just anti-gay propaganda.

1. Physical attacks: We are attacked, beaten, castrated and left dead time and time again. There are half a dozen known unsolved slayings in San Francisco parks in the last few years. “Punks,” often of minority groups who look around for someone under them socially, feel encouraged to beat up on “queens” and cops look the other way. That used to be called lynching.

Cops in most cities have harassed our meeting places: bars and baths and parks. They set up entrapment squads. A Berkeley brother was slain by a cop in April when he tried to split after finding out that the trick who was making advances to him was a cop. Cities set up “pervert” registration, which if nothing else scares our brothers deeper into the closet.

One of the most vicious slurs on us is the blame for prison “gang rapes.” These rapes are invariably done by people who consider themselves straight. The victims of these rapes are us and straights who can’t defend themselves. The press campaign to link prison rapes with homosexuality is an attempt to make straights fear and despise us, so they can oppress us more. It’s typical of the fucked-up straight mind to think that homosexual sex involves tying a guy down and fucking him. That’s aggression, not sex. If that’s what sex is for a lot of straight people, that’s a problem they have to solve, not us.

2. Psychological warfare: Right from the beginning we have been subjected to a barrage of straight propaganda. Since our parents don’t know any homosexuals, we grow up thinking that we are alone and different and perverted. Our school friends identify “queer” with any non-conformist or bad behavior. Our elementary school teachers tell us not to talk to strangers or accept rides. Television, billboards and magazines put forth a false idealization of male/female relationships, and make us wish we were different, wish we were “in.” In family living class we’re taught how we’re supposed to turn out. And all along, the best we hear if anything about homosexuality is that it’s an unfortunate problem.

3. Self-oppression: As gay liberation grows, we will find our uptight brothers and sisters, particularly those who are making a buck off our ghetto, coming on strong to defend the status quo. This is self oppression: “don’t rock the boat”; “things in SF are OK”; “gay people just aren’t together”; “I’m not oppressed.” These lines are right out of the mouths of the straight establishment. A large part of our oppression would end if we would stop putting ourselves and our pride down.

4. Institutional: Discrimination against gays is blatant, if we open our eyes. Homosexual relationships are illegal, and even if these laws are not regularly enforced, they encourage and enforce closet queenery. The bulk of the social work/psychiatric field looks upon homosexuality as a problem, and treats us as sick. Employers let it be known that our skills are acceptable as long as our sexuality is hidden. Big business and government are particularly notorious offenders.

The discrimination in the draft and armed services is a pillar of the general attitude towards gays. If we are willing to label ourselves publicly not only as homosexual but as sick, then we qualify for deferment; and if we’re not “discreet” (dishonest) we get drummed out of the service. Hell, no, we won’t go, of course not, but we can’t let the army fuck over us this way, either.

V. On Sex

1. What sex is: It is both creative expression and communication: good when it is either, and better when it is both. Sex can also be aggression, and usually is when those involved do not see each other as equals; and it can also be perfunctory, when we are distracted or preoccupied. These uses spoil what is good about it.

I like of think of good sex in terms of playing the violin: with both people on one level seeing the other body as an object capable of creating beauty when they play it well; and on a second level the players communicating through their mutual production and appreciation of beauty. As in good music, you get totally into it—and coming back out of that state of consciousness is like finishing a work of art or coming back from an episode of an acid or mescaline trip. And to press the analogy further: the variety of music is infinite and varied, depending on the capabilities of the players, both as subjects and as objects. Solos, duets, quartets (symphonies, even, if you happen to dig Romantic music!) are possible. The variations in gender, response, and bodies are like different instruments. And perhaps what we have called sexual “orientation” probably just means that we have not yet learned to turn on to the total range of musical expression.

2. Objectification: In this scheme, people are sexual objects, but they are also subjects, and are human beings who appreciate themselves as object and subject. This use of human bodies as objects is legitimate (not harmful) only when it is reciprocal. If one person is always object and the other subject, it stifles the human being in both of them. Objectification must also be open and frank. By silence we often assume or let the other person assume that sex means commitments: if it does, ok; but if not, say it. (Of course, it’s not all that simple: our capabilities for manipulation are unfathomed—all we can do is try.)

Gay liberation people must understand that women have been treated exclusively and dishonestly as sexual objects. A major part of their liberation is to play down sexual objectification and to develop other aspects of themselves which have been smothered so long. We respect this. We also understand that a few liberated women will be appalled or disgusted at the open and prominent place that we put sex in our lives; and while this is a natural response from their experience, they must learn what it means for us.

For us, sexual objectification is a focus of our quest for freedom. It is precisely that which we are not supposed to share with each other. Learning how to be open and good with each other sexually is part of our liberation. And one obvious distinction: objectification of sex for us is something we choose to do among ourselves, while for women it is imposed by their oppressors.

3. On positions and roles: Much of our sexuality has been perverted through mimicry of straights, and warped from self-hatred. These sexual perversions are basically anti-gay:

“I like to make it with straight guys”

“I’m not gay, but I like to be ‘done’ ”

“I like to fuck, but don’t want to be fucked”

“I don’t like to be touched above the neck”

This is role playing at its worst; we must transcend these roles. We strive for democratic, mutual, reciprocal sex. This does not mean that we are all mirror images of each other in bed, but that we break away from the roles which enslave us. We already do better in bed than straights do, and we can be better to each other than we have been.

4. Chickens and Studs: Face it, nice bodies and young bodies are attributes, they’re groovy. They are inspiration for art, for spiritual elevation, for good sex. The problem arises only in the inability to relate to people of the same age, or people who don’t fit the plastic stereotypes of a good body. At that point, objectification eclipses people, and expresses self-hatred: “I hate gay people, and I don’t like myself, but if a stud (or chicken) wants to make it with me, I can pretend I’m someone other than me.”

A note on exploitation of children: kids can take care of themselves, and are sexual beings way earlier than we’d like to admit. Those of us who began cruising in early adolescence know this, and we were doing the cruising, not being debauched by dirty old men. Scandals such as the one in Boise, Idaho—blaming a “ring” of homosexuals for perverting their youth—are the fabrications of press and police and politicians. And as for child molesting, the overwhelming amount is done by straight guys to little girls: it is not particularly a gay problem, and is caused by the frustrations resulting from anti-sex puritanism.

5. Perversion: We’ve been called perverts enough to be suspect of any usage of the word. Still many of us shrink from the idea of certain kinds of sex: with animals, sado/masochism, dirty sex (involving piss or shit). Right off, even before we take the time to learn any more, there are some things to get straight:

1. We shouldn’t be apologetic to straights about gays whose sex lives we don’t understand or share;

2. It’s not particularly a gay issue, except that gay people are probably less hung up about sexual experimentation;

3. Let’s get perspective: even if we were to get into the game of deciding what’s good for someone else, the harm done in these “perversions” is undoubtedly less dangerous or unhealthy than is tobacco or alcohol.

4. While they can be reflections of neurotic or self-hating patterns, they may also be enactments of spiritual or important phenomena: e.g. sex with animals may be the beginning of interspecies communication: some dolphin-human breakthroughs have been made on the sexual level; e.g. one guy who says he digs shit during sex occasionally says it’s not the taste or texture, but a symbol that he’s so far into sex that those things no longer bug him; e.g. sado/masochism, when consensual, can be described as a highly artistic endeavor, a ballet the constraints of which are thresholds of pain and pleasure.

VI. On Our Ghetto

We are refugees from Amerika. So we came to the ghetto—and as other ghettos, it has its negative and positive aspects. Refugee camps are better than what preceded them, or people never would have come. But they are still enslaving, if only that we are limited to being ourselves there and only there.

Ghettos breed self-hatred. We stagnate here, accepting the status quo. The status quo is rotten. We are all warped by our oppression, and in the isolation of the ghetto we blame ourselves rather than our oppressors.

Ghettos breed exploitation: Landlords find they can charge exorbitant rents and get away with it, because of the limited area which is safe to live in openly. Mafia control of bars and baths in NYC is only one example of outside money controlling our institutions for their profit. In San Francisco the Tavern Guild favors maintaining the ghetto, for it is through ghetto culture that they make a buck. We crowd their bars not because of their merit but because of the absence of any other social institution. The Guild has refused to let us collect defense funds or pass out gay liberation literature in their bars—need we ask why?

Police or con men who shake down the straight gay in return for not revealing him; the bookstores and movie makers who keep raising prices because they are the only outlet for pornography; heads of “modeling” agencies and other pimps who exploit both the hustlers and the johns—these are the parasites who flourish in the ghetto.

San Francisco—Ghetto or Free Territory: Our ghetto certainly is more beautiful and larger and more diverse than most ghettos, and is certainly freer than the rest of Amerika. That’s why we’re here. But it isn’t ours. Capitalists make money off of us, cops patrol us, government tolerates us as long as we shut up, and daily we work for and pay taxes to those who oppress us.

To be a free territory, we must govern ourselves, set up our own institutions, defend ourselves, and use our won energies to improve our lives. The emergence of gay liberation communes, and our own paper is a good start. The talk about a gay liberation coffee shop/dance hall should be acted upon. Rural retreats, political action offices, food cooperatives, a free school, unalienating bars and after hours places—they must be developed if we are to have even the shadow of a free territory.

VII. On Coalition

Right now the bulk of our work has to be among ourselves—self educating, fending off attacks, and building free territory. Thus basically we have to have a gay/straight vision of the world until the oppression of gays is ended.

But not every straight is our enemy. Many of us have mixed identities, and have ties with other liberation movements: women, blacks, other minority groups; we may also have taken on an identity which is vital to us: ecology, dope, ideology. And face it: we can’t change Amerika alone.

Who do we look to for coalition?

1. Women’s Liberation: summarizing earlier statements, 1) they are our closest ally; we must try hard to get together with them. 2) a lesbian caucus is probably the best way to attack gay guys’ male chauvinism, and challenge the straightness of women’s liberation; 3) as males we must be sensitive to their developing identities as women, and respect that; if we know what our freedom is about, they certainly know what’s best for them.

2. Black liberation: This is tenuous right now because of the uptightness and supermasculinity of many black men (which is understandable). Despite that, we must support their movement, particularly when they are under attack from the establishment; we must show them that we mean business; and we must figure out which our common enemies are: police, city hall, capitalism.

3. Chicanos: Basically the same problem as with blacks: trying to overcome mutual animosity and fear, and finding ways to support them. The extra problem of super uptightness and machismo among Latin cultures, and the traditional pattern of Mexicans beating up “queers,” can be overcome: we’re both oppressed, and by the same people at the top.

4. White radicals and ideologues: We’re not, as a group, Marxist or communist. We haven’t figured out what kind of political/economic system is good for us as gays. Neither capitalist or socialist countries have treated us as anything other than non grata so far.

But we know we are radical, in that we know the system that we’re under now is a direct source of oppression, and it’s not a question of getting our share of the pie. The pie is rotten.

We can look forward to coalition and mutual support with radical groups if they are able to transcend their anti-gay and male chauvinist patterns. We support radical and militant demands when they arise, e.g. Moratorium, People’s Park; but only as a group; we can’t compromise or soft-peddle our gay identity.

Problems: because radicals are doing somebody else’s thing, they tend to avoid issues which affect them directly, and see us as jeopardizing their “work” with other groups (workers, blacks). Some years ago a dignitary of SDS on a community organization project announced at an initial staff meeting that there would be no homosexuality (or dope) on the project. And recently in New York, a movement group which had a coffee-house get-together after a political rally told the gays to leave when they started dancing together. (It’s interesting to note that in this case, the only two groups which supported us were the Women’s Liberation and the Crazies.)

Perhaps most fruitful would be to broach with radicals their stifled homosexuality and the issues which arise from challenging sexual roles.

5. Hip and street-people: A major dynamic of rising gay lib sentiment is the hip revolution within the gay community. Emphasis on love, dropping out, being honest, expressing yourself through hair and clothes, and smoking dope are all attributes of this. The gays who are the least vulnerable to attack by the establishment have been the freest to express themselves on gay liberation.

We can make a direct appeal to young people, who are not so uptight about homosexuality. One kid, after having his first sex with a male said, “I don’t know what all the fuss is about, making it with a girl just isn’t that different.”

The hip/street culture has led people into a lot of freeing activities: encounter/sensitivity, the quest for reality, freeing territory for the people, ecological consciousness, communes. These are real points of agreement and probably will make it easier for them to get their heads straight about homosexuality, too.

6. Homophile groups: 1) reformist or pokey as they sometimes are, they are our brothers. They’ll grow as we have grown and grow. Do not attack them in straight or mixed company. 2) ignore their attack on us. 3) cooperate where cooperation is possible without essential compromise of our identity.

Conclusion: An Outline Of Imperatives For Gay Libertation

1. Free ourselves: come out everywhere; initiate self defense and political activity; initiate counter community institutions.

2. Turn other gay people on: talk all the time; understand, forgive, accept.

3. Free the homosexual in everyone: we’ll be getting a good bit of shit from threatened latents: be gentle, and keep talking and acting free.

4. We’ve been playing an act for a long time, so we’re consummate actors. Now we can begin to be, and it’ll be a good show!

Comments On Carl Wittman’s “A Gay Manifesto”

Carl Wittman’s “A Gay Manifesto” represents an important step forward for our movement. Gay Liberation is struggling for a self-understanding which would probe deeply enough into the causes of our oppression to give us a clear vision of the forms and directions our struggle must take. Wittman has provided an analysis of homosexual oppression in America which links the individual-psychological experiences of oppression to the social and economic facts which are at once the causes and effects of this situation. He has spelled out the various aspects of gay oppression from his own vantage point, with self-acknowledged limitations.

Most importantly, Wittman’s “Manifesto” provides a clear statement of Gay Liberation’s goal: to free ourselves as gays and to free straight society in as much as it represses its own homosexual aspects. What is noteworthy in Wittman’s approach is his insistence that we must change our own consciousness to be free to change the institutions which shape our lives. Liberation of the head can never be more than a half-step, a transitional move, until fundamental changes are made in the institutions and cultural forms which create gay oppression. By making this connection so explicit, Carl Wittman is able to go on to link our struggle to those of the other oppressed groups in this society, thus widening the viewpoint of the movement as a whole.

Our criticisms are intended as friendly amendments to Wittman’ s “Manifesto.” As Wittman says, “we are only at the beginning.” Hopefully these comments of ours will foster discussion and new thinking throughout the movement.

We feel that two aspects of the “Manifesto” invite further clarification and development. They are difficult issues central to the entire movement. The first is the notion of “coming out” and the importance it ought to have within our movement. The second is the question Wittman raises in section VII of the “Manifesto”: the kind of social and economic viewpoint most conducive to our liberation as gays.

On the matter of “coming out,” we agree that the phrase is a description of our movement’s overall process, that it both describes what we are about and what we are working for. However, concealed within this idea is an important tension which ought to be unpacked and examined. It is the same tension which Wittman develops throughout the pamphlet: the polarity between personal head-freeing and the need for collective, social action to change institutions. This is no simple issue and it cannot be solved by simple slogans or catchwords. As in any process which has to unite two distinct and in some ways opposed actions, problems result from overemphasis on either of the poles.

Emphasis on personal liberation, the experience of feeling free, which is the meaning often given to “coming out,” can and often does lead to a kind of escapism or regression, to detachment from the actual conditions confronting us. It can also lead to real personal problems for people who act unthinkingly; they end up “free” in their heads but cut off in fact from access to means for changing social conditions. This problem is especially acute for our movement since so much of our oppression consists precisely in being forced to choose between a personal life in a gay ghetto or a de-personalized life in straight society—usually to the detriment of individual growth, no matter which option is taken.

Emphasis on effective action, pushed to excess, leads to similar immobility, but in the opposite direction. The homosexual who hides his identity for the sake of the political movement, the good of his family or whatever, is likely to run into the dilemma of all “boring from within”; the inability to effect change because he is not recognized for what he is or has actually forgotten who he is himself. This is not to say that sisters and brothers may not be entirely correct to go incognito at least for a time and in certain parts of their lives. However, the danger here of copping out is real, and if this strategy were applied by everyone there would obviously be no Gay Liberation movement.

The second issue, the social and economic perspective most conducive for Gay Liberation, is also very basic. On this question Red Butterfly takes a socialist perspective. We assert that human liberation in all its forms, including Gay Liberation, requires effective self-determination, i.e., democracy, in all spheres of social life affecting the lives of people as a whole. This means particularly economic and political democracy: common ownership and decision-making with regard to economic and social matters by society as a whole. We believe that economic and social democracy are the necessary conditions for liberation. In Marxist language, we assert that a democratic socialism is the necessary basis for building a classless society, i.e., communism.

To facilitate discussion of this issue we propose the following scheme for judging a social and economic system which can make a free society possible: Given the material and technological resources of American society, how well can the system in question provide:

1. ecological well-being for the nation and the planet as a whole.

2. the basic economic and social necessities: adequate income, housing, medical care; meaningful employment and democratic civil rights for all participants in the society.

3. protection for minority groups, such as homosexuals; equal opportunities for education, leisure, and personal development for all participants.

4. cooperation with world-wide social and economic development and the self-determination of peoples.

5. effective political power for all, the ability of all social groups to resist exploitation and to determine their own destinies.

This question is basic to our movement, since the answers we give to it will determine the concrete political alignments we make and, ultimately, the success or failure of our struggle for liberation—which in the long run is a political struggle.

Today the fight for eros, the fight for life, is the political fight. –H. Marcuse

–The Red Butterfly (1970) Box 3445 Grand Central Station New York, N.Y. 10017

Radicalqueens, Radicalqueens Manifestos (1973)

Published: Radicalqueens, “Manifesto #1” The Radical Queen: The Magazine of the Non-Man, no. 1, 1973.

Radicalqueens, “Manifesto #2” The Radical Queen: The Magazine of the Non-Man, no. 2, 1973.

Source: The Early Years of Gay Liberation, ed. by Tommi Avicolli Mecca. City Lights Books, 2009.

Radicalqueens Manifesto #1

Whereas we are tired of being the brunt of most straight oppression, including fairy jokes, physical assaults, and snickering stares;

whereas we are tired of the oppression of straight-identified machismo gays, including remarks about the “tacky queens,” denial of queens as representative of the gay community, and being looked down upon;

whereas gay liberation movements have often denied our right to be ourselves in public and denied our very existence while in the same breath patting us on the ass and telling us we are equal (as long as we remain Uncle Toms);

whereas we have decided that macho straight identification is psychologically oppressive and destructive, we have banded together in a union of Radical Queens: to shatter myths, ZAP! our oppressor (both straight and gay), and thereby stand up and get our right to be ourselves both in the straight and in the gay communities, including wearing makeup, doing drag, and other femme-identified activity that any queen decides expresses him or herself!!!!

Radicalqueens Manifesto #2

Having been born men, having been socialized to be independent, aggressive, competitive, assertive, task-oriented, outward-oriented, innovative, self-disciplined, stoic, active, objective, analytic-minded, courageous, unsentimental, rational, confident, emotionally controlled, having been socialized to be leaders, having been made to consider makeup, dresses, crying, touching other men, kissing other men and other related traits “sissyish” or “faggoty,” having been made to play war games as a child and to believe that life is a battle to be fought in Vietnam, and against the communists and against those men who are not “manly,” having been made to believe that women are the weaker sex, and frail, passive, unexciting, intuitive, emotional, things which real men are not supposed to be, things which only “faggots” are, having been told as men that real men are not hairdressers, that real men are not artists, actors or female impersonators, having been slapped when we tried on our mother’s dresses or jewelry, or when we played with our sister’s dolls, having been part of movements that, though liberal, still held onto the definition of man as aggressive, competitive, etc., and still reduced the women in the movement to secretaries and typists, having been part of gangs in school, gangs that taunted effeminate boys, kicking and spitting on them, calling them names, pushing them, stealing their books, sometimes beating them up or forcing them to suck us off, having as men defined ourselves as the creators, the conquerers, the scientists, having as men resisted seeing how ugly these images of men are, how destructive they are!

Radicalqueens are not men, we are non-men. We are not women. We do not accept the attributes of femininity, that is, passivity, non-aggressiveness, fragility, etc., things which our sisters in the Women’s Movement see as oppressive and undesirable traits socialized into women. We do not accept the traditional role of women as any alternative to the oppressor role of the male. Both roles are inventions of the oppressor, both are oppressive to those who accept them.

We of radicalqueens feel it is only by becoming non-men, that is, by throwing off the needs of the machismo man, the need to conquer, to suppress, the need to be like john wayne or any other symbol of strength and “manliness.” We feel being sensitive, being compassionate, being able to cry, to touch, to feel, yet without being totally passive, totally non-aggressive, is revolutionary, is Gay. Being homosexual is not the answer to being oppressors. Men have been raised to be the oppressor. All men.

We of radicalqueens will not be the oppressors, we have been working against our own oppressive tendencies. We recommend that all Gay men begin questioning their own feelings. It is only by questioning everything that we can find anything, can find a bit of the truth, by slicing through all of the lies!

Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries, Street Transvestites for Gay Power Statement (1970)

http://thespiritwas.tumblr.com/post/43780113854/nyu-occupation-street-transvestites-for-gay-power

Released during the NYU Gay Liberation Front occupation.

Gay Power When Do We Want It! Or Do We?

This is the question that is running through our minds. Do you really want Gay Power or are you looking for a few laughs or maybe a little excitement. We are not quite sure what you people really want. If you want Gay Liberation then you’re going to have to fight for it. We don’t mean tomorrow or the next day, we are talking about today. We can never possibly win by saying “wait for a better day” or “we’re not ready yet.” If you’re ready to tell people that you want to be free, then you’re ready to fight. And if you’re not ready then shut up and crawl back into your closets. But let us ask you this, Can you really live in a closet? We can’t.

So now the question is, do we want Gay Power or Pig Power. We are willing to admit that we need pigs. But we only need them for crime control. We do not need them to beat and harass our gay brothers and sisters. The pigs are not helping the people who are being robbed on the streets and being murdered. How can they when they’re too busy trying too bust a homosexual over the head. Or they’re too busy trying to catch someone hustling so they can arrest them. But they do give us an alternative. All we have to do is commit sodomy with them and they’ll forget they saw us. Until next time, that is. So again we ask you, do you want pig power or gay power? This is up to each and every one of you.

If you want gay power then you’re going to have to fight for it. And you’re going to have to fight until you win. Once you start, you’re not going to be able to stop, because if you do you’ll lose everything. You won’t just lose this fight, but all the other fights all, over the country. All our brothers and sisters all over the world will return to their closets in shame. So if you want to fight for your rights, then fight till the end.

We would also like to say that all we fought for at Weinstein Hall was lost when we left upon request of the pigs. Chalk one up for the pigs, for they truly are carrying their victory flag. And realize the next demonstration is going to be harder, because they now know that we scare easily.

You people run if you want to, but we’re tired of running. We intend to fight for our rights until we get them.

Street Transvestites for Gay Power October 1970

Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, Transvestite-Transsexual Action Organization and Fems Against Sexism, Transvestite and Transsexual Liberation (1970)

Published: “Transvestite and Transsexual Liberation.” The Gay Dealer, October 1970.

Provided by the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives of the William Way LGBT Center.

The oppression against transvestites and transsexuals of either sex arises from sexist values and this oppression is manifested by homosexuals and heterosexuals of both sexes in the form of exploitation, ridicule, harassment, beatings, rapes, murders, use of us as shock troops, sacrificial victims, and others.

We reject all labels of “stereotype,” “sick,” or “maladjusted” from non-transvestic and non-transsexual sources and defy any attempt to repress our manifestation as transvestites and transsexuals.

Trans Lib began in the summer of 1969 when “Queens” formed in New York and began militating for equal rights, The Transvestite-Transsexual Action Organization (TAO) formed in Los Angeles, the Cockettes in San Francisco, Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in New York, Fems Against Sexism, Transvestites and Transsexuals (TAT) also formed in New York; Radical Queens formed in Milwaukee—all in 1970. “Queens” became “Queens Liberation Front.”

Transvestism—transsexualism—homosexuality are separate entities. Sexist values incorrectly classify any male who wears feminine attire as a homosexual, and to a lesser degree, any female who wears masculine attire is classified as a homosexual.

Demands

1. Abolishment of all crossdressing laws and restrictions of adornment.

2. An end to exploitation and discrimination within the gay world,

3. An end to exploitative practices of doctors and psychiatrists who work in the fields of transvestism and transsexualism. Hormone treatment and transsexual surgery should be provided free upon demand by the state.

4. Transsexual assistance centers should be created in all cities of over one million inhabitants, under the direction of postoperative transsexuals.

5. Transvestites and transsexuals should be granted full and equal rights on all levels of society and a full voice in the struggle for the liberation of all oppressed people.

6. Transvestites who exist as members of the opposite anatomical gender should be able to obtain full identification as members of the opposite gender. Transsexuals should be able to obtain such identification commensurate to their new gender with no difficulty, and not be reqired to carry special identification as transsexuals. There should be no special licensing requirements of transvestites or transsexuals who work in the entertainment field.

7. Immediate release of all persons in mental hospitals or prison for transvestism or transsexualism.

We share in the oppression of gays and we share in the oppression of women.

Trans Lib includes transvestites, transsexuals and hermaphrodites of any sexual manifestation and of all sexes—heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and asexual. It is becoming a separate movement as the great majority of transvestites are heterosexual, and many transsexuals (postoperative) are also heterosexual, and because the oppression directed towards us is due to our transvestism and transsexualism and for no other reason. We unite around our oppression as all oppressed groups unite around their particular oppression. All power to trans liberation.

QLF Box 538 NYC NY 10009

TAO Box 261 Coconut Grove, Fla.

STAR BOX 410 NYC NY 10011

COCKETTES Box 408, Berkeley, Calif.

FAS Box 410 NYC NY 10011

Radical Queens Box 5457 Milwaukee, Wisc. 53211

This statement was prepared by members of STAR, TAO and FAS and does not signify approval by the Radical Queens, QLF or the Cockettes. A national conference of all trans lib groups is being planned later this spring.

OUT OF THE CLOSETS AND INTO THE STREETS

COME VERY TOGETHER

Charlotte Bunch, Lesbians in Revolt (1972)

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/wlmpc_wlmms01033/

Charlotte Bunch, “Lesbians in Revolt: Male Supremacy Quakes and Quivers.” The Furies, vol. 1, 1972.

The development of Lesbian-feminist politics as the basis for the liberation of women is our top priority; this article outlines our present ideas. In our society which defines all people and institutions for the benefit of the rich, white male, the Lesbian is in revolt. In revolt because she defines herself in terms of women and rejects the male definitions of how she should feel, act, look, and live. To be a Lesbian is to love oneself, woman, in a culture that denegrates and despises women. The Lesbian rejects male sexual/political domination; she defies his world, his social organization, his ideology, and his definition of her as inferior. Lesbianism puts women first while the society declares the male supreme. Lesbianism threatens male supremacy at its core. When politically conscious and organized, it is central to destroying our sexist, racist, capitalist, imperialist system.

Lesbianism is a Political Choice

Male society defines Lesbianism as a sexual act, which reflects men’s limited view of women; they think of us only in terms of sex. They also say Lesbians are not real women, so a real woman is one who gets fucked by men. We say that a Lesbian is a woman whose sense of self and energies, including sexual energies, center around women—she is woman-identified. The woman-identified-woman commits herself to other women for political, emotional, physical and economic support. Women are important to her. She is important to herself. Our society demands that commitment from women be reserved for men.

The Lesbian, woman-identified-woman, commits herself to women not only as an alternative to oppressive male/female relationships but primarily because she loves women. Whether consciously or not, by her actions, the Lesbian has recognized that giving support and love to men over women perpetuates the system that oppresses her. If women do not make a commitment to each other, which includes sexual love, we deny ourselves the love and value traditionally given to men. We accept our second class status. When women do give primary energies to other women, then it is possible to concentrate fully on building a movement for our liberation.

Woman-identified Lesbianism is, then, more than a sexual preference, it is a political choice. It is political because relationships between men and women are essentially political, they involve power and dominance. Since the Lesbian actively rejects that relationship and chooses women, she defies the established political system.

Lesbianism, by itself, is not enough

Of course, not all Lesbians are consciously woman-identified, nor are all committed to finding common solutions to the oppression they suffer as women and Lesbians. Being a Lesbian is part of challenging male supremacy, but not the end. For the Lesbian or heterosexual woman, there is no individual solution to oppression.

The Lesbian may think that she is free since she escapes the personal oppression of the individual male/female relationship. But to the society she is still a woman, or worse, a visible Lesbian. On the street, at the job, in the schools, she is treated as an inferior and is at the mercy of men’s power and whims. (I’ve never heard of a rapist who stopped because his victim was a Lesbian.) This society hates women who love women, and so, the Lesbian, who escapes male dominance in her private home, receives it doubly at the hands of male society; she is harassed, outcast, and shuttled to the bottom. Lesbians must become feminists and fight against women’s oppression, just as feminists must become Lesbians if they hope to end male supremacy.

U.S. society encourages individual solutions, apolitical attitudes, and reformism to keep us from political revolt and out of power. Men who rule, and male leftists who seek to rule, try to depoliticize sex and the relations between men and women in order to prevent us from acting to end our oppression and challenging their power. As the question of homosexuality has become public, reformists define it as a private question of who you sleep with in order to sidetrack our understanding of the politics of sex. For the Lesbian-feminist, it is not private; it is a political matter of oppression, domination and power. Reformists offer solutions which make no basic changes in the system that oppresses us, solutions which keep power in the hands of the oppressor. The only way oppressed people end their oppression is by seizing power: people whose rule depends on the subordination of others do not voluntarily stop oppressing others. Our subordination is the basis of male power.

Sexism is the Root of All Oppression

The first division of labor, in pre-history, was based on sex: men hunted, women built the villages, took care of children, and farmed. Women collectively controlled the land, language, culture, and the communities. Men were able to conquer women with the weapons that they developed for hunting when it became clear that women were leading a more stable, peaceful, and desirable existence. We do not know exactly how this conquest took place, but it is clear that the original imperialism was male over female: the male claiming the female body and her service as his territory (or property).

Having secured the domination of women, men continued this pattern of suppressing people, now on the basis of tribe, race and class. Although there have been numerous battles over class, race, and nation during the past three thousand years, none has brought the liberation of women. While these other forms of oppression must be ended, there is no reason to believe that our liberation will come with the smashing of capitalism, racism or imperialism today. Women will be free only when we concentrate on fighting male supremacy.

Our war against male supremacy does, however, involve attacking the latter-day dominations based on class, race, and nation. As Lesbians who are outcasts from every group, it would be suicidal to perpetuate these man-made divisions among ourselves. We have no heterosexual privileges, and when we publicly assert our Lesbianism, those of us who had them lose many of our class and race privileges. Most of our privileges as women are granted to us by our relationships to men (fathers, husbands, boyfriends) whom we now reject. This does not mean that there is no racism or class chauvinism within us, but we must destroy these divisive remnants of privileged behavior among ourselves as the first step toward their destruction in the society. Race, class, and national oppressions come from men, serve ruling class white men’s interests, and have no place in a woman-identified revolution.

Lesbianism is the Basic Threat to Male Supremacy

Lesbianism is a threat to the ideological, political, personal, and economic basis of male supremacy. The Lesbian threatens the ideology of male supremacy by destroying the lie about female inferiority, weakness, passivity, and by denying women’s “innate” need for men. Lesbians literally do not need men (even for procreation if the science of cloning is developed).

The Lesbian’s independence and refusal to support one man undermines the personal power that men exercise over women. Our rejection of heterosexual sex challenges male domination in its most individual and common form. We offer all women something better than submission to personal oppression. We offer the beginning of the end of collective and individual male supremacy. Since men of all races and classes depend on female support and submission for practical tasks and feeling superior, our refusal to submit will force some to examine their sexist behavior, to break down their own destructive privileges over other humans, and to fight against those privileges in other men. They will have to build new selves that do not depend on oppressing women and learn to live in social structures that do not give them power over anyone.

Heterosexuality separates women from each other; it makes women define themselves through men; it forces women to compete against each other for men and the privilege which comes through men and their social standing. Heterosexual society offers women a few privileges as compensation if they give up their freedom: for example, mothers are respected and “honored,” wives or lovers are socially accepted and given some economic and emotional security, a woman gets physical protection on the street when she stays with her man, etc. The privileges give heterosexual women a personal and political stake in maintaining the status quo.

The Lesbian receives none of these heterosexual privileges or compensations since she does not accept the male demands on her. She has little vested interest in maintaining the present political system since all of its institutions—church, state, media, health, schools—work to keep her down. If she understands her oppression, she has nothing to gain by supporting white rich male America and much to gain from fighting to change it. She is less prone to accept reformist solutions to women’s oppression.

Economics is a crucial part of women’s oppression, but our analysis of the relationship between capitalism and sexism is not complete. We know that Marxist economic theory does not sufficiently consider the role of women or Lesbians, and we are presently working on this area.

However, as a beginning, some of the ways that Lesbians threaten the economic system are clear: In this country, women work for men in order to survive, on the job and in the home. The Lesbian rejects this division of labor at its roots; she refuses to be a man’s property, to submit to the unpaid labor system of housework and childcare. She rejects the nuclear family as the basic unit of production and consumption in capitalist society.

The Lesbian is also a threat on the job because she is not the passive/part-time woman worker that capitalism counts on to do boring work and be part of a surplus labor pool. Her identity and economic support do not come through men, so her job is crucial and she cares about job conditions, wages, promotion, and status. Capitalism cannot absorb large numbers of women demanding stable employment, decent salaries, and refusing to accept their traditional job exploitation. We do not understand yet the total effect that this increased job dissatisfaction will have. It is, however, clear that as women become more intent upon taking control of their lives, they will seek more control over their jobs, thus increasing the strains on capitalism and enhancing the power of women to change the economic system.

Lesbians Must Form Our Own Movement to Fight Male Supremacy

Feminist-lesbianism, as the most basic threat to male supremacy, picks up part of the Women’s Liberation analysis of sexism and gives it force and direction. Women’s Liberation lacks direction now because it has failed to understand the importance of heterosexuality in maintaining male supremacy and because it has failed to face class and race as real differences in women’s behavior and political needs. As long as straight women see Lesbianism as a bedroom issue, they hold back the development of politics and strategies which would put an end to male supremacy and they give men an excuse for not dealing with their sexism.

Being a Lesbian means ending identification with, allegiance to, dependence on, and support of heterosexuality. It means ending your personal stake in the male world so that you join women, individually and collectively, in the struggle to end your oppression. Lesbianism is the key to liberation and only women who cut their ties to male privilege can be trusted to remain serious in the struggle against male dominance. Those who remain tied to men, individually or in political theory, cannot always put women first. It is not that heterosexual women are evil or do not care about their sisters. It is because the very essence, definition, and nature of heterosexuality is men first. Every woman has experienced that desolation when her sister puts her man first in the final crunch: heterosexuality demands that she do so. As long as women still benefit from heterosexuality, receive its privileges and security, they will at some point have to betray their sisters, especially Lesbian sisters who do not receive those benefits.

Women in women’s liberation have understood the importance of having meetings and other events for women only. It has been clear that dealing with men divides us and saps our energies and that it is not the job of the oppressed to explain our oppression to the oppressor. Women also have seen that collectively, men will not deal with their sexism until they are forced to do so. Yet, many of these same women continue to have primary relationships with men individually and do not understand why Lesbians find this oppressive. Lesbians cannot grow politically or personally in a situation which denies the basis of our politics: that Lesbianism is political, that heterosexuality is crucial to maintaining male supremacy.

Lesbians must form our own political movement in order to grow. Changes which will have more than token effects on our lives will be led by women-identified Lesbians who understand the nature of our oppression and are therefore in a position to end it.

Charlotte Bunch

For the Furies collective

Socialist Feminism

Barbara Ehrenreich opens this chapter outlining socialist feminism as a dynamic tendency critiquing limitations of both mechanical Marxism and radical feminist movements. She points to the oppression of women as key to atomizing the working class and undermining socialist class consciousness. CLWU goes on to outline a detailed political program based on building women’s organizational power, waging successful reform efforts, and having a material impact on the lives of women. Marlene Dixon offers a Marxist-Leninist critique of the theoretical confusion and political limits of autonomous women’s organizing.

The secondary reading is a short essay by Johanna Brenner on Socialist Feminism.

Secondary readings: Johanna Brenner, “The Promise of Socialist Feminism,” Jacobin, September, 18, 2014. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/the-promise-of-socialist-feminism/

Barbara Ehrenreich, What is Socialist Feminism? (1976)

https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/ehrenreich-barbara/socialist-feminism.htm

Barbara Ehrenreich, “What Is Socialist Feminism?” WIN Magazine, 1976.

At some level, perhaps not too well articulated, socialist feminism has been around for a long time. You are a woman in a capitalist society. You get pissed off: about the job, about the bills, about your husband (or ex), about the kids’ school, the housework, being pretty, not being pretty, being looked at, not being looked at (and either way, not listened to), etc. If you think about all these things and how they fit together and what has to be changed, and then you look around for some words to hold all these thoughts together in abbreviated form, you’d almost have to come up with “socialist feminism.”

A lot of us came to socialist feminism in just that kind of way. We were searching for a word/term/phrase which would begin to express all of our concerns, all of our principles, in a way that neither “socialist” nor “feminist” seemed to. I have to admit that most socialist feminists I know are not too happy with the term “socialist feminist” either. On the one hand it is too long (I have no hopes for a hyphenated mass movement); on the other hand it is much too short for what is, after all, really socialist internationalist antiracist, anti-heterosexist feminism.

The trouble with taking a new label of any kind is that it creates an instant aura of sectarianism. “Socialist feminism” becomes a challenge, a mystery, an issue in and of itself. We have speakers, conferences, articles on “socialist feminism”—though we know perfectly well that both “socialism” and “feminism” are too huge and too inclusive to be subjects for any sensible speech, conference, article, etc. People, including avowed socialist feminists, ask themselves anxiously, “What is socialist feminism?” There is a kind of expectation that it is (or is about to be at any moment, maybe in the next speech, conference, or article) a brilliant synthesis of world historical proportions—an evolutionary leap beyond Marx, Freud, and Wollstonecraft. Or that it will turn out to be a nothing, a fad seized on by a few disgruntled feminists and female socialists, a temporary distraction.

I want to try to cut through some of the mystery which has grown up around socialist feminism. A logical way to start is to look at socialism and feminism separately. How does a socialist, more precisely, a Marxist, look at the world? How does a feminist? To begin with, Marxism and feminism have an important thing in common: they are critical ways of looking at the world. Both rip away popular mythology and “common sense” wisdom and force us to look at experience in a new way. Both seek to understand the world—not in terms of static balances, symmetries, etc. (as in conventional social science)—but in terms of antagonisms. They lead to conclusions which are jarring and disturbing at the same time that they are liberating. There is no way to have a Marxist or feminist outlook and remain a spectator. To understand the reality laid bare by these analyses is to move into action to change it.

Marxism addresses itself to the class dynamics of capitalist society. Every social scientist knows that capitalist societies are characterized by more or less severe, systemic inequality. Marxism understands this inequality to arise from processes which are intrinsic to capitalism as an economic system. A minority of people (the capitalist class) own all the factories/energy sources/resources, etc. which everyone else depends on in order to live. The great majority (the working class) must work out of sheer necessity, under conditions set by the capitalists, for the wages the capitalists pay. Since the capitalists make their profits by paying less in wages than the value of what the workers actually produce, the relationship between the two classes is necessarily one of irreconcilable antagonism. The capitalist class owes its very existence to the continued exploitation of the working class. What maintains this system of class rule is, in the last analysis, force. The capitalist class controls (directly or indirectly) the means of organized violence represented by the state—police, jails, etc. Only by waging a revolutionary struggle aimed at the seizure of state power can the working class free itself, and, ultimately, all people.

Feminism addresses itself to another familiar inequality. All human societies are marked by some degree of inequality between the sexes. If we survey human societies at a glance, sweeping through history and across continents, we see that they have commonly been characterized by: the subjugation of women to male authority, both with the family and in the community in general; the objectification of women as a form of property; a sexual division of labor in which women are confined to such activities as child raising, performing personal services for adult males, and specified (usually low prestige) forms of productive labor.

Feminists, struck by the near-universality of these things, have looked for explanations in the biological “givens” which underlie all human social existence. Men are physically stronger than women on the average, especially compared to pregnant women or women who are nursing babies. Furthermore, men have the power to make women pregnant. Thus, the forms that sexual inequality take—however various they may be from culture to culture—rest, in the last analysis, on what is clearly a physical advantage males hold over females. That is to say, they result ultimately on violence, or the threat of violence.

The ancient, biological root of male supremacy—the fact of male violence—is commonly obscured by the laws and conventions which regulate the relations between the sexes in any particular culture. But it is there, according to a feminist analysis. The possibility of male assault stands as a constant warning to “bad” (rebellious, aggressive) women, and drives “good” women into complicity with male supremacy. The reward for being “good” (“pretty,” submissive) is protection from random male violence and, in some cases, economic security.

Marxism rips away the myths about “democracy” and its “pluralism” to reveal a system of class rule that rests on forcible exploitation. Feminism cuts through myths about “instinct” and romantic love to expose male rule as a rule of force. Both analyses compel us to look at a fundamental injustice. The choice is to reach for the comfort of the myths or, as Marx put it, to work for a social order that does not require myths to sustain it.

It is possible to add up Marxism and feminism and call the sum “socialist feminism.” In fact, this is probably how most socialist feminists see it most of the time—as a kind of hybrid, pushing our feminism in socialist circles, our socialism in feminist circles. One trouble with leaving things like that, though, is that it keeps people wondering “Well, what is she really?” or demanding of us “What is the principal contradiction.” These kinds of questions, which sound so compelling and authoritative, often stop us in our tracks: “Make a choice!” “Be one or another!” But we know that there is a political consistency to socialist feminism. We are not hybrids or fencesitters.

To get to that political consistency we have to differentiate ourselves, as feminists, from other kinds of feminists, and, as Marxists, from other kinds of Marxists. We have to stake out a (pardon the terminology here) socialist feminist kind of feminism and a socialist feminist kind of socialism. Only then is there a possibility that things will “add up” to something more than an uneasy juxtaposition.

I think that most radical feminists and socialist feminists would agree with my capsule characterization of feminism as far as it goes. The trouble with radical feminism, from a socialist feminist point of view, is that it doesn’t go any farther. It remains transfixed with the universality of male supremacy—things have never really changed; all social systems are patriarchies; imperialism, militarism, and capitalism are all simply expressions of innate male aggressiveness. And so on.

The problem with this, from a socialist feminist point of view, is not only that it leaves out men (and the possibility of reconciliation with them on a truly human and egalitarian basis) but that it leaves out an awful lot about women. For example, to discount a socialist country such as China as a “patriarchy”—as I have heard radical feminists do—is to ignore the real struggles and achievements of millions of women. Socialist feminists, while agreeing that there is something timeless and universal about women’s oppression, have insisted that it takes different forms in different settings, and that the differences are of vital importance. There is a difference between a society in which sexism is expressed in the form of female infanticide and a society in which sexism takes the form of unequal representation on the Central Committee. And the difference is worth dying for.

One of the historical variations on the theme of sexism which ought to concern all feminists is the set of changes that came with the transition from an agrarian society to industrial capitalism. This is no academic issue. The social system which industrial capitalism replaced was in fact a patriarchal one, and I am using that term now in its original sense, to mean a system in which production is centered in the household and is presided over by the oldest male. The fact is that industrial capitalism came along and tore the rug out from under patriarchy. Production went into the factories and individuals broke off from the family to become “free” wage earners. To say that capitalism disrupted the patriarchal organization of production and family life is not, of course, to say that capitalism abolished male supremacy! But it is to say that the particular forms of sex oppression we experience today are, to a significant degree, recent developments. A huge historical discontinuity lies between us and true patriarchy. If we are to understand our experience as women today, we must move to a consideration of capitalism as a system.

There are obviously other ways I could have gotten to the same point. I could have simply said that, as feminists, we are most interested in the most oppressed women—poor and working-class women, third world women, etc.—and for that reason we are led to a need to comprehend and confront capitalism. I could have said that we need to address ourselves to the class system simply because women are members of classes. But I am trying to bring out something else about our perspective as feminists: there is no way to understand sexism as it acts on our lives without putting it in the historical context of capitalism.

I think most socialist feminists would also agree with the capsule summary of Marxist theory as far as it goes. And the trouble again is that there are a lot of people (I’ll call them “mechanical Marxists”) who do not go any further. To these people, the only “real” and important things that go on in capitalist society are those things that relate to the productive process or the conventional political sphere. From such a point of view, every other part of experience and social existence—things having to do with education, sexuality, recreation, the family, art, music, housework (you name it)—is peripheral to the central dynamics of social change; it is part of the “superstructure” or “culture.”

Socialist feminists are in a very different camp from what I am calling “mechanical Marxists.” We (along with many, many Marxists who are not feminists) see capitalism as a social and cultural totality. We understand that, in its search for markets, capitalism is driven to penetrate every nook and cranny of social existence. Especially in the phase of monopoly capitalism, the realm of consumption is every bit as important, just from an economic point of view, as the realm of production. So we cannot understand class struggle as something confined to issues of wages and hours, or confined only to workplace issues. Class struggle occurs in every arena where the interests of classes conflict, and that includes education, health, art, music, etc. We aim to transform not only the ownership of the means of production, but the totality of social existence.

As Marxists, we come to feminism from a completely different place than the mechanical Marxists. Because we see monopoly capitalism as a political/economic/cultural totality, we have room within our Marxist framework for feminist issues which have nothing ostensibly to do with production or “politics,” issues that have to do with the family, health care, and “private” life.

Furthermore, in our brand of Marxism, there is no “woman question,” because we never compartmentalized women off to the “superstructure” or somewhere else in the first place. Marxists of a mechanical bent continually ponder the issue of the unwaged woman (the housewife): Is she really a member of the working class? That is, does she really produce surplus value? We say, of course housewives are members of the working class—not because we have some elaborate proof that they really do produce surplus value—but because we understand a class as being composed of people, and as having a social existence quite apart from the capitalist-dominated realm of production. When we think of class in this way, then we see that in fact the women who seemed most peripheral, the housewives, are at the very heart of their class—raising children, holding together families, maintaining the cultural and social networks of the community.

We are coming out of a kind of feminism and a kind of Marxism whose interests quite naturally flow together. I think we are in a position now to see why it is that socialist feminism has been so mystified: The idea of socialist feminism is a great mystery or paradox, so long as what you mean by socialism is really what I have called “mechanical Marxism” and what you mean by feminism is an ahistorical kind of radical feminism. These things just don’t add up; they have nothing in common.

But if you put together another kind of socialism and another kind of feminism, as I have tried to define them, you do get some common ground and that is one of the most important things about socialist feminism today. It is a space—free from the constrictions of a truncated kind of feminism and a truncated version of Marxism—in which we can develop the kind of politics that addresses the political/economic/cultural totality of monopoly capitalist society. We could only go so far with the available kinds of feminism, the conventional kind of Marxism, and then we had to break out to something that is not so restrictive and incomplete in its view of the world. We had to take a new name, “socialist feminism,” in order to assert our determination to comprehend the whole of our experience and to forge a politics that reflects the totality of that comprehension.

However, I don’t want to leave socialist feminist theory as a “space” or a common ground. Things are beginning to grow in that “ground.” We are closer to a synthesis in our understanding of sex and class, capitalism and male domination, than we were a few years ago. Here I will indicate only very sketchily one such line of thinking:

1. The Marxist/feminist understanding that class and sex domination rest ultimately on force is correct, and this remains the most devastating critique of sexist/capitalist society. But there is a lot to that “ultimately.” In a day to day sense, most people acquiesce to sex and class domination without being held in line by the threat of violence, and often without even the threat of material deprivation.

2. It is very important, then, to figure out what it is, if not the direct application of force, that keeps things going. In the case of class, a great deal has been written already about why the U.S. working-class lacks militant class consciousness. Certainly ethnic divisions, especially the black/white division, are a key part of the answer. But I would argue, in addition to being divided, the working class has been socially atomized. Working-class neighborhoods have been destroyed and are allowed to decay; life has become increasingly privatized and inward-looking; skills once possessed by the working class have been expropriated by the capitalist class; and capitalist controlled “mass culture” has edged out almost all indigenous working-class culture and institutions. Instead of collectivity and self-reliance as a class, there is mutual isolation and collective dependency on the capitalist class.

3. The subjugation of women, in the ways which are characteristic of late capitalist society, has been key to this process of class atomization. To put it another way, the forces which have atomized working class life and promoted cultural/material dependence on the capitalist class are the same forces which have served to perpetuate the subjugation of women. It is women who are most isolated in what has become an increasingly privatized family existence (even when they work outside the home too). It is, in many key instances, women’s skills (productive skills, healing, midwifery, etc.) which have been discredited or banned to make way for commodities. It is, above all, women who are encouraged to be utterly passive/uncritical/dependent (i.e. “feminine”) in the face of the pervasive capitalist penetration of private life. Historically, late capitalist penetration of working class life has singled out women as prime targets of pacification/“feminization”—because women are the culture-bearers of their class.

4. It follows that there is a fundamental interconnection between women’s struggle and what is traditionally conceived as class struggle. Not all women’s struggles have an inherently anti-capitalist thrust (particularly not those which seek only to advance the power and wealth of special groups of women), but all those which build collectivity and collective confidence among women are vitally important to the building of class consciousness. Conversely, not all class struggles have an inherently antisexist thrust (especially not those that cling to preindustrial patriarchal values), but all those which seek to build the social and cultural autonomy of the working class are necessarily linked to the struggle for women’s liberation.

This, in very rough outline, is one direction which socialist feminist analysis is taking. No one is expecting a synthesis to emerge which will collapse socialist and feminist struggle into the same thing. The capsule summaries I gave earlier retain their “ultimate” truth: there are crucial aspects of capitalist domination (such as racial oppression) which a purely feminist perspective simply cannot account for or deal with—without bizarre distortions, that is. There are crucial aspects of sex oppression (such as male violence within the family) which socialist thought has little insight into—again, not without a lot of stretching and distortion. Hence the need to continue to be socialists and feminists. But there is enough of a synthesis, both in what we think and what we do for us to begin to have a self-confident identity as socialist feminists.

Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, Socialist Feminism (1972)

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/wlmpc_wlmms01035/

Hyde Park Chapter, Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, “Socialist Feminism: A Strategy for the Women’s Movement,” 1972.

Authored by Heather Booth, Day Creamer, Susan Davis, Deb Dobbin, Robin Kaufman, Tobey Klass

Introduction

We have written this paper to express and share with other women ideas for a new strategy for the women’s movement. Currently there are two ideological poles, representing the prevailing tendencies within the movement. One is the direction toward new lifestyles within a women’s culture, emphasizing personal liberation and growth, and the relationship of women to women. Given our real need to break loose from the old patterns—socially, psychologically, and economically—and given the necessity for new patterns in the post-revolutionary society, we understand, support and enjoy this tendency. However, when it is the sole emphasis, we see it leading more toward a kind of isolation rather than to a condition in which we can fight for and win power over our own lives.

The other direction is one which emphasizes a structural analysis of our society and its economic base. It focuses on the ways in which productive relations oppress us. This analysis is also correct, but its strategy, taken alone, can easily become, or appear to be, insensitive to the total lives of women.

As socialist feminists, we share both the personal and the structural analysis. We see a combination of the two as essential if we are to become a lasting mass movement. We think that it is important to define ourselves as socialist feminists, and to start conscious organizing around this strategy. This must be done now because of the current state of our movement. We have reached a crucial point in our history.

On the one hand, the strengths of our movement are obvious: it has become an important force of our time, and it has also succeeded in providing services and support for some women’s immediate needs. Thousands of women see themselves as part of the movement; a vaguely defined “women’s consciousness” has been widely diffused through rap groups, demonstrations, action projects, counter-institutional activity, and through the mass media. Women in the movement have a growing understanding of common oppression and the imperative of collective solutions. With the realization that what we saw as personal problems were in fact social ones, we have come to understand that the solutions must also be social ones. With the realization that all women lack control over their lives, we have come to understand that that control can only be gained if we act together. We have come to understand the specific needs of various groups of women and that different groups of women have different ways in which they will fight for control over their own lives.

On the other hand, the women’s movement is currently divided. In most places it is broken into small groups which are hard to find, hard to join, and hard to understand politically. At the same time, conservative but organizationally clever entrepreneurs are attaching themselves to the movement, and are beginning to determine the politics of large numbers of people. If our movement is to survive, let alone flourish, it is time to begin to organize for power. We need to turn consciousness into action, choose priorities for our struggles, and win. To do this we need a strategy.

Our movement’s strategy must grow from an understanding of the dynamics of power, with the realization that those who have power have a vested interest in preserving it and the institutional forms which maintain it. Wresting control of the institutions which now oppress us must be our central effort if women’s liberation is to achieve its goals. To reach out to most women we must address their real needs and self-interests.

At this moment we think that it is important to argue for a strategy which will achieve the following three things: 1) it must win reforms that will objectively improve women’s lives; 2) it must give women a sense of their own power, both potentially and in reality; and 3) it must alter existing relations of power. We argue here for socialist feminist organizations. We are not arguing for any one specific organization but for the successful development of organizations so that we may be able to learn from experience and bring our movement to its potential strength.

To make this argument we have written this paper. It has been designed as follows:

1. Socialist Feminism—the concept and what it draws from each parent tradition.

2. Power—the basis for power in this society, and our potential as women to gain power. An applied example of our strategy.

3. Consciousness—the importance of consciousness for the development of the women’s movement, its limitations, and its place in a socialist feminist ideology.

4. Current issues and questions facing our movement—A socialist feminist approach to respond to and develop a context for our programs and concerns.

5. Organization—the importance of building organizations for the women’s liberation movement and some thoughts on organizational forms.

The ideas that we are presenting are probably shared by many women in the movement, but so far they have not been articulated or identified nationally. We are not organized partly because our tolerance for different approaches, which our ideology encourages, makes it hard to present a new or contrary position. Furthermore, certain factors in our movement work against any kind of organization. Fears of elitism, the emphasis on personal alternatives and strengths, fear of failure, disbelief in the possibility of winning, and even fear of winning, have all played a role in our hesitancy.

We are addressing the paper now to women who share our ideas of socialist feminism, whether they are women working in the movement, women who have never been active, women who have dropped out of the movement, or women working in mixed organizations. We hope that it may provide a common language in which we can begin to talk, a context in which we can meet to plan how to move.

(1) Socialist Feminism

We choose to identify ourselves with the heritage and future of feminism and socialism in our struggle for revolution. From feminism we have learned the fullness of our own potential as women, the strength of women. We have seen our common self-interest with other women and our common oppression. Having found these real bonds as women, we realize we can rely on each other as we fight for liberation. Feminism has moved us to see more concretely what becomes of people shaped by social conditions they do not control. We find our love and hate focused through our feminism—love for other women bound by the same conditions, hate for the oppression that binds us. A great strength we find in feminism is the reaffirmation of human values, ideals of sisterhood: taking care of people, being sensitive to people’s needs and developing potential.

From feminism we have come to understand an institutionalized system of oppression based on the domination of men over women: sexism. Its contradictions are based on the hostile social relations set into force by this domination. This antagonism can be mediated by the culture and the flexibility of the social institutions so that in certain times and places it seems to be a stable relationship. But the antagonisms cannot be eliminated and will break out to the surface until there is no longer a system of domination.

But we share a particular conception of feminism that is socialist. It is one that focuses on how power has been denied women because of their class position. We see capitalism as an institutionalized form of oppression based on profit for private owners of publicly-worked-for wealth. It sets into motion hostile social relations in classes. Those classes too have their relations mediated through the culture and institutions. Thus alliances and divisions appear within and between classes at times clouding the intensity or clarity of their contradiction. But the basic hostile nature of class relations will be present until there is no longer a minority owning the productive resources and getting wealthy from the paid and unpaid labor of the rest

We share the socialist vision of a humanist world made possible through a redistribution of wealth and an end to the distinction between the ruling class and those who are ruled.

We have come to understand that only through an organized collective response can we fight such a system. Sisterhood thus also means to us a struggle for real power over our own lives and the lives of our sisters. Our personal relations and our political fight merge together and create our sense of feminism. Through the concept of sisterhood, women have tried to be responsive to the needs of all women rather than a selected few, and to support, criticize and encourage other women rather than competing with them.

Our Vision—Socialist Feminism is Desirable and Not Possible Under the Existing System

The following would be among the things we envision in the new order, part of everyday life for all people:

- free, humane, competent medical care with an emphasis on preventive medicine, under the service of community organizations

- peoples’ control over their own bodies—i.e., access to safe, free birth control, abortion, sterilization, free from coercion or social stigma

- attractive, comfortable housing designed to allow for private and collective living

- varied, nutritious, abundant diet

- social respect for the work people do, understanding that all jobs can be made socially necessary and important

- democratic councils through which all people control the decisions which most directly affect their lives on the job, in the home, and community

- scientific resources geared toward the improvement of life for all, rather than conquest and destruction through military and police aggression

- varied, quality consumer products to meet our needs

- an end of housework as private, unpaid labor

- redefinition of jobs, with adequate training to prepare people for jobs of their choice; rotation of jobs to meet the life cycle needs of those working at them, as well as those receiving the services.

- political and civil liberties which would encourage the participation of all people in the political life of the country

- disarming of and community control of police

- social responsibility for the raising of children and free client-controlled childcare available on a 24-hour basis to accommodate the needs of those who use it and work in it

- free, public quality education integrated with work and community activities for people of all ages

- freedom to define social and sexual relationships

- a popular culture which enhances rather than degrades one’s self respect and respect for others

- support for internal development and self-determination for countries around the world

We outline this vision to be more concrete about what a socialist feminist society might mean or try to be. This vision of society is in direct opposition to the present one which is based on the domination of the few over the many through sex, race and class. While there are concessions that it can make, the present form would not or could not adjust to the kind of people-oriented society outlined above.

Contradictions—An Alternative Is Necessary

Socialist feminism is not only desirable but it is also necessary because the current system of capitalism is not stable and cannot last in its present form. However, this does not mean that the society will inevitably become socialist. A fascist or barbaric form is also an alternative. The system that will replace capitalism will be determined by the orientation and power of groups fighting for alternatives. Hence, we must struggle to bring our vision of socialist feminism to fruition.

Contradictions are phenomena necessary to maintain the system but by their own internal logic produce forces destructive to it. A knowledge of them helps explain the chaos around us, giving a stable context to understand the historically changing process we are in. Such an understanding also helps us pick out weak spots of the process, points for defense and attack. Examples of these contradictions are all around us in varying degrees of severity. Sexism and capitalism reinforce one another, shape each other and have shaped us.

Contradictions in Our Power

Any analysis of the distribution of power and its effect on society’s institutions must recognize the historical context of our oppression. Our oppression is different from that of our sisters at the turn of the century who had no legal rights, were confined to the home, and bore children from maturity to death. Thus, what is liberating at one time may be a factor of oppression at another. For example, women were denied their own sexuality because of social attitudes, inadequate birth control, the shelter of the family, women’s private role in the economy, and the lack of knowledge about their bodies. The development of a more advanced technology (the pill and machines) and education objectively gave more freedom to our sisters. At the same time, these developments also made possible new forms for the oppression of women, increased sexual objectification and abuse.

In the realm of women and work, legislation which protected women was of great benefit in easing their burden. Currently, however, in the name of easing our burden, such legislation is used to deny women equal opportunity. Of course, women and all people have a right to safe and good working conditions; but these need to be fought for all workers.

Understanding our changing history helps us to avoid stereotyping our opposition or our own notions of what liberation means. The development of a strategy makes it clear that technological advances, legislative changes or educational developments are not good or bad in themselves. When we know the context in which any specific change occurs, we can judge the value of that change for our goals.

We have learned from history that, in fact, what is progressive for the system as a whole is also the seeds for its destruction. For example, increasing the availability of jobs for women and encouraging talented women to enter the labor force helps employers and strengthens capitalism but at the same time gives women an opportunity to come together physically and unionize as a collective force for change. Other women, seeing this, will raise their expectations and demands on the system for a larger share than it can offer all.

Knowing that these contradictions are the reality in which we live, we can fight that otherwise supposed “monolith” of control at its weak points and gain strength for ourselves. If our analysis is correct, on the basis of those contradictions, women and other powerless people will find concrete bases for unity to struggle in their self-interest. Now we see severe contradictions and possibilities for fights for structural changes on issues of childcare (for adequate care and community control), inclusion in the political system, jobs and working conditions for workers’ control, etc.

Multi-Level Contradictions

Many analyses have identified various institutions (e.g., the family or sexual relations) as the crucial contradiction of sexism. However, these contradictions reflect the social relations of a sexist society, or institutions in which sexism occurs. Eliminating these “prime factors” would neither eliminate sexism nor necessarily create supportive alternatives for women. As the factory may be the locus for capitalist exploitation, it is not the basis of that exploitation. Private ownership and profit is the basis, giving rise to the class relations. Similarly, the family is a crucial locus of sexist oppression but it is not the basis of that exploitation. Control by men over women and the relegation of women to secondary roles is the basis of sexism, giving rise to a sexist society.

We do not find helpful the constant cry that before we organize, we need to develop a complete theory of the nature of our oppression or find the prime contradiction of our oppression (as if there is just one). Some analyses, in fact, have led us only to further inaction with the rationale of not having the total picture.

Every institution oppresses women as long as the society is based on the oppression of women. Our struggle against sexism is against those institutions, social relations and ideas which divide women and keep them powerless, and subservient to men. At different periods our oppression may be greater in one area than another, and this should direct our struggle.

The social relations of society—its institutions, culture and ideology—grow out of this system. But these ideas take on a life of their own, no longer dependent on or necessary to the economic base. In fact, they can develop in contradiction to that base. So, for example, racism or sexism serve much more than narrow economic function. Thus, what is important is not just redistribution of goods but a change in authority, control and ideas. Clearly, all elements of a class society are not reflections of the economic relations; however, in the last instance (at the point where contradictions become revolutionary in dimension) economic relations are the crucial link.

Contradictions at every level of society influence each other and within each level (economic, social, ideological) they are mirrored and overdetermined. That is, the pace at which contradictions develop is complex, sometimes reinforcing, sometimes cancelling each other. Thus, long range planning and a carefully worked out strategy are needed to continually respond to the complexity of the contradictions in American society. But we reflect in our theory that there are contradictions and that an alternative system is 1) desirable and not possible now, and 2) necessary to provide a true end to hostilities (between classes, sexes, races, nations).

We find it futile to argue which is more primary—capitalism or sexism. We are oppressed by both. As they are systems united against our interests, so our struggle is against both. This understanding implies more than women’s caucuses in a “movement” organization. What we as socialist feminists need are organizations which can work for our particular vision, our self-interest in a way that will guarantee the combined fight against sexism and capitalism. At times this will mean independent organizations, at other times joint activity recognizing situations and general conditions.

The American Context of the Contradictions

The forms of oppression we face are filtered through the unique conditions of the American situation. We have a very heterogeneous working class, more diversified by ethnic background, race and job status than most other countries. This gives us many different strengths but also many internal divisions. Also, we have a heritage of slavery with an oppressed black and minority population. This now is as basic to the society as is sexism and is linked with it.

In addition, the power of the ruling class is widespread and disseminated through every aspect of the society. This makes for a difficult enemy—hard to isolate, focus on at its root, and hold accountable while its ideas filter into our minds. As the leading world imperialist power, our national struggle must consider strategic relationships linking our struggle with those around the world. Also, we live in a society with relative material comfort. This means that what we have to offer must not be just economic solutions. The question of quality of life is not only to be raised but also ideas for a new social order.

We also are cut off from our history of left struggle since the destruction of the left in the fifties. To our great lack this has sometimes denied us a sense of long-term struggle and strategy development. One of our overriding responsibilities at this particular historical period is to develop a strategy which will both call into question the validity of current economic and social relations and at the same time make socialist feminism a meaningful possibility. This will not occur except as more and more people gain the political experience necessary to develop a concrete understanding of the viability of our vision.

Role of Ideology in the Development of Strategy

The preceding section outlines our ideology—socialist feminism. It is this ideology which guides the development of our strategy and tactics, sets our priorities, and gives us an overall focus for our work. The key ideological understanding is that all issues are political, are based on power, and that our actions have political implications.

We develop this ideology both out of practice and in reading and discussion—matching theory to the real world. To an extent ideology plays the role of consciousness—it is a clear picture of reality which strengthens our ability to communicate and argue for our position. Stated explicitly, ideology helps provide links for women, in seeing how one struggle is related to others. Some individuals, aware of many social contradictions, may make an intellectual leap—understand the parts as a whole through a socialist feminist ideology.

Most people are guided by an ideology Our own particular relationship to ideology has two special functions. First, it provides ideas which guide us, defining the framework and reason for our actions. Second, it defines our view of the world concretely, thus providing a system of analysis through which women can understand socialist feminism as a world view.

The ideological underpinnings for a socialist feminist strategy are laid out here and should be evident in the paper. But this paper is designed primarily to propose a strategy. It flows from and should help us define our ideology even better in the future; but it is a different undertaking—determining what we should do NOW.

This is one reason we feel confident in describing a strategy when we do not have the full blueprint for how revolution will occur. One is not developed full blown and then the other becomes possible.

Neither is this an attempt at overall strategy. Overall strategy helps us to see the way to seizure of state power and the critical break from the past, developing new institutions and a new social order based on equality of people and redistribution of wealth and resources. We can only develop an understanding of exactly how this will occur as we gain experience in building our movement. Continually moving from political work to further theoretical development and back to political work is a necessity. Revolution has several stages and it is important to have an understanding of the historical period we are in.

Therefore, given the ideology presented here, we have developed the following priorities for this particular point in time:

1. We must reach most women. We must work toward building a majority movement. Our analysis tells us this is possible if we proceed in the right way.

2. We must present intermediate goals that are realizable as well as desirable to show the necessity and possibility of organizing

3. We must develop collective actions.

Now the crucial need is to weaken the power of the ruling class, give women a sense of their own power, and improve our lives so that we are welded together as a force prepared to struggle together. Concern with these issues is the basis for the socialist feminist strategy we outline in the next sections.

(2) Power and Sisterhood

As socialist feminists we have an analysis of who has power and who does not, the basis for that power and our potential as women to gain power. Sisterhood is powerful in our personal lives, in our relationships with other women, in providing personal energy and maintaining warmth and love. But sisterhood is revolutionary because it can provide a basis on which we can unite to seize power.

The focus on power is an institutional focus, one that examines the structure of existing institutions and determines who, specifically, has power and how that power is used to oppress women. This includes understanding the interrelation between the economic sector and the social institutions which reinforce ruling class control. The family, church, schools and government priorities which oppress us reflect and reinforce this control. These are reflected in and are served by the dominant ideology, a cultural dominance which controls our everyday private lives.

In America, our culture so reflects the ideas of those in power that it is often difficult to identify who the enemy is. The opposition seems to be all encompassing and everywhere, hard to pinpoint in origins or basics. The ruling class, so reinforced, often appears as a monolith of control. However, as feminists and as socialists we are able to analyze the basic structures of society and how these are used to oppress women. This focus on power provides a framework for analyzing how power relations can be altered.

In this section, we focus on a strategy for developing mass women’s organizations by focusing on the relationship that we see between reforms and power. There are three questions crucial to our conception of this relationship: 1) Will the reform materially improve women’s lives? 2) Will the reform give women a sense of their own power? 3) Will the reform alter existing relations of power?

The Self-Interest of Women

Women are for liberation not just for abstract reasons and a sense of what is “correct” for women, or because they will be the “wave of the future.” They are attracted because we present a picture of reality that they also know, as well as hold out a vision that they wish to share. But talking of such a reality is not sufficient. If we are going to be a movement of all women, we must be able to serve our own self-interest. Unable to fully offer alternatives for women ourselves, we must be able to hold out the realistic promise of obtaining some of these alternatives through struggles which can be won.

We emphasize self-interest because we feel that recently the movement has gotten far away from thinking about it or what moves women to act, or what moves us to act. Idealism alone now guides us abstractly. We argue it, we live it, we see it. But we cannot always count on it. We raise the subject of self-interest to insure that we really are speaking to women’s needs.

However, we do not emphasize self-interest in any narrow sense. Self-interest is not just the accumulation of all physical and concrete needs. We know women do not live by bread alone and want deeply for themselves and others the enjoyment of culture and relationships that express their hopes and accomplishments. Self-interest is the interest of our sisters and our class. It means bringing into being and recognizing our consciousness, culture and control of the society.

We must develop ways to transform women’s currently felt interests in line with our vision. Real sisterhood changes concern from individual needs into concern for one’s group, organizational and class needs. With strategy and struggle for short-term goals, women can come to perceive a long-term self-interest. Abstract social goals are defined and given concrete form in program. We should choose issues for our direct action campaigns around which women will unite, can win, and on which their views of what is advantageous to them will change.

For example, while destroying racism is a deep concern of ours, we would not organize white women around racism as an issue. Stated as such, it is not concrete enough to do something about; and it is not a concern for most white women. However, uniting white and black groups around common concerns would be a concrete way to objectively also fight racism. We also can develop means to discuss and make explicit these ideas. But direct action for concrete reforms makes our ideology have real content.

Winning

If we want to speak to most women, we have to be serious about winning. Women have been losers too long. Women will only flock to women’s liberation ideas when they know that it will help them and others become winners, gain something that they want for themselves and their daughters and others. This differentiates us from many groups such as PL, IS, and purist sects more concerned with the correctness of political principles than in converting a simple, true idea into a means for winning something for the people involved.

We want better lives for ourselves and others now. We would not want success for some at the expense of others, but we want to fight to win for success. Out of this commitment to our sisters, we have challenged our own thinking, our own sense of weakness, and our own inability to push ahead, so we may solidify the gains our movement is making and move to greater gains.

We know this treads on our fear of success (often greater than our fears of failure). “If you win, do you really lose?” Women have been losers so long, we often resist any chance at material victories. It is important to consider how we define victories to avoid co-optation. This goes back to our original criteria for strategy. We fight for reforms that will improve women’s lives but we place priority on developing struggles which will also give women a sense of their own power and limit the arbitrary power of those in control.

We do not believe that reform built on reform will eventually lead to socialism or women’s liberation. We anticipate a severe rift in social relations or many such breaks prior to full alterations in power. But we think that the increased demands for real benefits created by this strategy will heighten contradictions and prepare us for struggles leading to the rift. The nature of this revolution and the future that follows it will be defined by the struggles leading up to it.

As long as we are not effective, winning, feeling our strength, sometimes there is a danger of resentment toward our sisters with statements like, “why is it they can’t see and they won’t join us?” This will happen to an extent as long as we’re not effective. The main burden is on us to provide activity that women will want to join. If women do not join us, our first thought must be: what are we doing that is not clear enough, not related sufficiently to the specific problems women are facing that they are not joining us? Of course, there are many reasons women may not join us at certain times, for example, threats from their husbands, fear of social identification, lack of babysitters or real disagreements. Our task is finding ways to develop and build our strength as a movement. To this end we propose this strategy.

Power and Reform

The socialist feminist strategy aims at realigning power relations through the process of building a base of power for women through a mass movement united around struggling for our self-interest. Our goal is to build this movement. We oppose the utopian position which argues against any change until the perfect solution is possible. On the other hand, we also are not for working on any and every reform action that presents itself. Our strategy allows us to define priorities and timetables to lend structure to issues in terms of particular situations.

Decisions about what reforms to fight for and how must be made on the basis of the following three criteria:

1. Will the reform materially improve women’s lives? Our lives as women are oppressive in many ways; therefore we want to work to improve our lives now. Whatever our priorities, we must focus on meeting our immediate needs. When we can show that we can meet women’s needs they will want to join us. While we believe that sexist capitalism cannot implement all of the reforms we are for, it is possible to use its own rules against itself. That is, we can force change through pressure. Thus, our strategy is quite different from that of raising maximalist demands—demanding something that can’t be done under capitalism in order to prove that capitalism is bad. Many reforms are really beneficial to us, can be won and build our confidence. Nevertheless, the reform itself is not the only end. We also are oppressed by our real (and felt) lack of power to control that reform.

2. Will the struggle for the reform give women a sense of their own power? We need to struggle around issues where success is obviously our victory rather than a gift from those in power. Our struggle for reforms must build our movement. Our movement’s strength can only be sustained through organizations. Through organizations, individual women can collectively have a sense of their power. Otherwise, even when we win, we don’t know it or can’t claim it. (Who forced troop withdrawals in Indochina—the President or the movement? Who forced abortion law reform in New York—the state legislature or the women’s movement? ) Through organizations, one victory builds on another. They have a life longer than the individual participants and strength greater than their parts.

3. Will the reform alter existing relations of power? Women in American society have little control over any aspect of our lives. We want not only concrete improvements but the right to decide on those improvements and priorities. We want power restructured, wealth redistributed, and an end to exploitation. Those most closely affected by institutions have the right to decide what those institutions do. (This means councils of workers, consumers of an institution’s services, parents in childcare centers, etc.)

Most projects now, of great value to our movement, work on only one or two of the above points. The third is the most difficult and least developed in our movement. Specific battles may not win or even try to work on all three levels. But our lasting success will depend on interrelating the three points on and among projects.

[...]

Role of Counter-Institutions

A major trend in the current women’s movement is to organize counter-institutional projects to directly meet the needs of women. This work is important for the women’s movement but must occur in the context of a movement which has other foci as well.

Counter-institutions can do a number of things. They can help to raise the expectations of women who use and staff the institutions as to what is possible. They can provide services which meet the needs of women now. They can demonstrate that the problems addressed are social in nature and in solution. They convey to the broad constituencies we seek to address that we have positive programs to offer for solving the problems we draw attention to, and that we are not simply negative in orientation. In contrast to consciousness-raising, such programs dispel the specter of endless problems without apparent solutions.

For example, a feminist-sponsored health center provides a needed service that materially improves our immediate condition. It demonstrates that women acting together can change some of their circumstances. It can contribute to building an organized base of power among women ready to fight on an ongoing basis for their rights.

However, counter-institutions have some limitations. They may foster false optimism about change by indicating that problems can be solved in the spaces between existing institutions. Such programs could take up all the time of more than all of us involved in the present movement and never meet all the needs. Such activities cannot alter the power relations if they make no demands on those in power.

We argue the importance of combining counter-institutions with direct action organizing to build on the strengths of each. Such organizing focuses demands on social institutions, thus countering the conclusion that society is unchangeable. It also counters an over-optimism about the potential of self-help to change women’s lives by pressing the point that significant changes can be made for all women only through far-reaching changes in power relations. The most useful role of the counter-institutional projects is providing a vision for an alternative and at the same time demonstrating the need for demanding change from those in power.

How Do We Get Power? (Or Building and Maintaining Real Sisterhood)

Focusing specifically on political or direct action, how do we incorporate this approach into our movement? We believe that many women would join us if we had the structures and activities so they could become involved in struggles on concrete issues. We need a perspective which will allow us to undertake both short and long term struggles and campaigns which have a focus on winning. Following is a partial summary of the criteria we feel must be considered in selecting and planning a program for direct action:

The goals of the movement should be ones which can:

- broaden and relate to many aspects of women’s lives

- convert a vision into specific activity

- help women gain self-respect

- unite women and build a mass organization because it focuses on women’s needs

- identify the felt needs that would move women to fight on the issue

A project should be chosen so that it:

- moves women into direct action and groups where they can evaluate their efforts (e.g. ongoing organizations)

- can identify specifically what institutions and who within those institutions exercises control over the issue and has the power to make reforms in response to pressure

- identifies what a victory would be

The project should:

- be broken into parts and fought as reforms that can conceivably be won

- provide step-by-step activity for involvement

[...]

(4) Issues

To make more concrete what we mean by socialist feminism, in this section we address a few issues currently facing the women’s movement. For each of these issues we sketch what we see as a socialist feminist context. The issues include independent women’s organizations, separatism, class organizing, counter-culture, lesbianism and vanguards.

Independent Women’s Organizations

With the isolation and unorganized state of the women’s movement in a number of areas of the country, many women who might agree with ideas presented here are not presently working as part of the independent women’s movement. Many women have filtered back into mixed organizations or left the women’s movement, feeling that it rejected their skills.

Many women in mixed organizations who know they are for women’s liberation are caught in the bind of either feeling guilty or hostile to the independent women’s movement (because they feel that the movement condemns them for the choice they made). Our concerns, we expect, are shared by many women in mixed organizations. We hope emphasizing the need for an independent women’s movement also helps develop ways for working with women and men in mixed organizations.

We argue for developing organizations and having organizational pride. This is a point many act as if we had “overcome.” We argue for developing leaders and organizers responsible to such organizations and through them to us in the movement. A few years ago it was not “in” to be for organizers. Now leaders are “out.” We argue for a leadership that is responsible (again, not so obvious to some) and useful to all of us. There are so many more points, but these should provide some for argument and discussion.

All women’s fates are bound with that of the independent women’s movement. The movement’s advances will concretely affect the lives of all other women. So too, individual women’s advances and defeats, multiplied, will help shape the movement.

Women

Other reasons for women working with women have been said often, and still are true. As with any group with common interests, once those interests are identified, much is shared and a common perspective can be developed more readily. It is easier to follow our own agenda. (At least it lessens the likelihood of forgetting our own self-interest, which is so often submerged in other organizations and institutions.) Of course, there are situations in which organizational problems develop among women. We find women are just nicer to work with than men.

But the most basic argument for the independent women’s movement and organizations is that the relations of power are unequal between women and men. As long as this is true, men will maintain control unless we have separate organizations to identify our needs and strengths. Unequals, treated superficially as equals, will remain unequals. This will be true unless women come together on the basis of self-respect and separate organizations or caucuses.

We argue this partly in the interest of ever maintaining democratic and effective mixed organizations. Women must be united (in caucuses or separate women’s groups) to act on our own program. Otherwise, feeling our ineffectiveness, we will focus solely on attacking chauvinism in organizations in a more and more personalized form. Without a strong caucus through which women can be strong, they suffer—for example, being told they are “not political” or to submerge their desire to fight on women’s concerns. Organizations also suffer, unable to proceed, having to deal with internal problems of chauvinism at every step. Alternatively, they will not deal with chauvinism at all.

As socialist feminists, we argue for using the principles of power realities to guide democracy in the organization. Women, in mixed organizations, would fight for and win the program they wanted and know they had won it. This would begin to alter structurally the relations of power in the mixed organization through common struggles in action. At the same time, we must remember our greatest enemies are those in or serving the ruling class.

Working With Men

Objectively, men as a group have vested interests opposed to those of women as a group. We will, for example, cut into their jobs, challenge their position of comfort in the family, and take personal power away from them. In the short-run, and in some ways, men are an enemy.

Why work with men at all? At many points, our interests and the interests of men are shared. We commonly are united in our class position against such things as bad health care, insufficient jobs, long hours and a powerlessness to affect priority decisions of our society. Also, at points, sexism oppresses men. At these points, we can join in common struggle (e.g., they are trained to kill and be killed, have tenderness drilled out of them). Even then, we must be able to organize separately so that we may come together.

In addition, women have historic and emotional bonds to men. When men and women come together, it is out of the forces of social reality. Those social bonds are not destroyed by ideological argument alone, but only when that social reality changes. In many cases, women have no real choice but marriage for survival, self-respect and warmth or love. We must look at the lives of most women with fewer assumptions to discover what their real alternatives are and in what is their happiness. Our perspective for our struggle must not deny to these women the sources of support they have found in the past (possibly through men or children).

There has sometimes been a weakening of the skills men have to offer to the movement, by excessive guilt-tripping when men were told to give up their chauvinism. True, the struggle against chauvinism is a constant one. But chauvinism is all around us, constantly conditioning us, and will be most effectively overcome through attacking its institutional roots, through women united against it. We assume men (and we) will reflect chauvinism. Too often our actions contradict our knowledge that originally brought us together—you cannot overcome social problems with personal solutions. Thus a “position” on men should be tactical: it varies with the real circumstances. A position on men is not our program. Sexism, not men, is our political enemy.

Separatism

Separatism has two meanings now in the movement. One is an ideological position arguing for the separate development of men and women as fully as possible. Another is a tactical position, arguing for separate organizations or life alternatives. We too argue for separate organizations as a tactical decision. However, we argue against an ideological stance of separatism.

It is easy to see how the argument for the independent women’s movement could lead to an ideological argument for separatism (or how the two arguments are related). We do find strength in separatist models. They show us concretely, how much we can gain from each other as women. But for reasons previously said we do not believe separatism will solve our problems. Also, because ideological separatism does not have the social basis for attraction to the majority of women, it has turned the struggle to one only within the movement. It moves toward more and more purity, dividing us from our allies rather than uniting us on common ground and developing new common ground on which we can unite.

Ironically, this is much the same position that women in mixed organizations, without strong caucuses, find themselves in. (That is, they turn their struggle to one within the organization—fighting chauvinism—not to program.)

More basically, under certain circumstances, working with men is feasible, desirable and necessary to achieve our vision. Separatism as personal practice is a matter of choice, as political position is illusory.

In the Name of Socialism

In the name of socialism, arguments have been made against the independent women’s movement that did justice neither to feminism nor to socialism. Such arguments were often part of attempts to develop a class analysis of American society and saw women’s liberation as a way to bring women into “the movement.” Many in the women’s movement have responded negatively to the opportunism implied in this using of women’s liberation. Although it is now generally accepted that the fight against sexism is a main goal, there are still times when the perspective of women’s liberation is challenged for legitimacy from this quarter.

Sometimes the challenge comes in the form that our primary fight must be against racism. Since the women’s movement is primarily white, this would mean we need to change struggles. Raising the need to fight racism abstractly only reaffirms the “purity” of those who raise it. We argue that struggles against racism will be meaningful on the basis of common self-interest between black and white groups.

On many issues, whites and blacks may not be able to unite because our relations of power are unequal. However, when social forces touch us commonly in some ways, we can build programs to overcome social divisions. We must not deride the support we do have because it does not include all women right now.

At other times the argument is one of “giving up privilege.” To some extent this is another abstract purism. More importantly, this is not the image we want to project, nor will it be successful. Women will join us because we win rights for them. No one joins in order to lose something that they need. Rights will be established as they are fought for and won, not because those with privileges and power give them up.

A third challenge to women’s liberation has postulated that only productive, paid working (or, more narrowly, industrial working) women are a revolutionary force. There have been some interesting but defensive responses to this showing that housework is productive. But we feel the argument and the defense have been too narrow. There are many contradictions in society. Many different kinds of efforts, directed at many different targets, have included so many more women in our movement. Of course, only employed workers can withhold labor necessary for corporations to continue. But the general strike has never won any victories when it wasn’t combined with the general political mobilization of all exploited classes. While working for it, organizations of unpaid female labor and community organizing efforts are building the social force we will need for that revolution and revolutionizing future social relations.

[...]

(5) Organizational Needs

In order to implement the strategy outlined in this paper, women’s liberation organizations are needed. Through the strength of organizations, power can be won and the women who participate in them can gain a sense of their own power, a new self-respect, and a form for ensuring the continuation of our movement. Only organizations can be the carrier of victories and the repository of past successes.

Currently, the women’s liberation movement is broken into small groups in most places and thus is hard to find, hard to join. Women’s liberation has not received recognition for even the few victories we have won up to now, because there is no organized form to articulate our successes. With organization, women’s liberation can be in the arena along with other groups, struggling for our own victories.

We fear that the women’s liberation movement may die. How can we survive struggling for five, ten or more years without organizations larger than ourselves to carry on? More conservative efforts will be able to claim our victories and attract women and resources unless we offer our own organizational alternative. They will set the tone and the agenda for the movement and it will no longer be ours.

As a movement, we have tried to understand why early feminists died out, sold out, or lost out in history. Concerned lest we repeat their mistakes, we have spent much time saying we should expand our class and racial base. But perhaps a fate similar to the early feminists awaits us because 1) we have not concretely identified the interests of women and fought in common for real gains on that interest; and 2) we have not developed organizations that would fight around that interest. If we can do these things, we should be able to overcome the limitations of the earlier women’s movement and actively recruit women to our movement.

In this paper we are not arguing for any one specific organization, although in the future we would hope a socialist feminist organization might be possible. Rather, we are arguing for an organizational conception which would provide a form for working on the range of problems women face—abortion, child care, health, job discrimination (i.e. “women’s issues”) as well as all issues which affect our lives as women: taxes, housing, the war, welfare, etc. As those issues affect us, we need forms that belong to us, through which we can respond and reach other women, and which will insure that the solutions won reflect our interests.

The kind of organization we propose reflects our confidence in this strategy, with alliances made on the basis of mutual self-interest and equal power among groups. Sometimes we have participated in coalitions out of a sense of guilt or because we did not have our own work. Often in the women’s movement we face requests for our participation in everyone else’s program. In a socialist feminist organization, such alliances would only be made as they fit into our own strategy.

Structures Appropriate to Goals and Constituency

As women, we have had many bad experiences with organizations which impeded our personal growth and political progress. Many women, reacting to the way they have been oppressed by such structures, reject all explicit structures. We have found this unrealistic because the structures survive implicitly and continue to affect us while we try to ignore them or live in the spaces allowed us.

The form and structures for organization will vary depending on the type of group being formed. For large, mass organizations, more structure is necessary in order to be able to integrate new members, and provide varying levels of responsibility so that those with less time can also participate. Such organizations, which are designed to achieve specific goals, need structures also in order to facilitate the development of strategy and the implementation of decisions.

A reason for flexibility in organizational form is that women of different styles may feel comfortable in different situations. For example, those with a college background may see more need for philosophical discussion. Some with jobs, family and other commitments may feel greatest priority on starting and ending meetings on time. At times the decision may have to be for the medium amount of comfort for everyone rather than the perfect atmosphere for any.

Within this context, there are several specific organizational ideas that we think are important in building organizations that serve us. We need specific forms clearly stated through which women can see where leadership lies and how to develop it and make it accountable to them. Below are structural elements we think are necessary for developing a mass organization:

1. explicit structure and decision-making vehicle

2. levels of involvement to allow women to make more or less of a commitment depending on interest and/or time.

3. division of labor, reviewed systematically and designed to help less skilled women gain skills.

4. leadership responsible to the organization

5. work and involvement having some relationship to decision-making

6. information dissemination throughout the organization.

[...]

Conclusion

To summarize, we have argued for a strategy toward building socialism and feminism for this specific time in history when we have strength in our sense of responsibility to women and yet weakness in our isolated situations. This strategy assumes we want to reach most women and to do that we must understand and build on their real self-interests. We must develop winning programs and now emphasize direct action. We have argued three points in each part of this paper, which define our strategy: 1) win reforms which really improve women’s lives, 2) give women a sense of their own power through organization, 3) alter the relations of power. The issue of building and seizing power is the crucial one in our real situation now. Our consciousness of reality and our vision of what relations we would like to see between people is what guides efforts, attracts people to us and helps define what we mean by winning.

So much of this is obvious, many may ask, “so what’s new?” To this we have two kinds of answers. One answer is that precisely because we think it obvious, we wrote the paper. We do believe, as we said, that we are a majority of the movement, and that as our strategy reflects reality, we will (in the course of time) attract a majority of women to our position. Still restating the obvious clarifies where we are, where we have come from and how far we have yet to go. Without a strategic conception, the women’s movement has become less clear in its mission and fervor. We hope to reinforce and help each other identify what may have once appeared as common sense (before so many splits and diversions altered our common sense of relating to the needs of women).

But there is another answer to the common senseness of what we have done. Common sense is not always too common. We draw attention to some few points of significance. We hope our ideas will not be just accepted or rejected but discussed for how they challenge common past practice. We argue for the primacy of self-interest, so often lost in discussion of ideology. Our ideology must guide us, but also must be guided by the realities shaping our lives.

We have learned a great deal in the last few years, but because we had no structure on which to build, we have lost where we could have gained in experience and power. This paper reflects both our frustration and our commitment to the development of a women’s movement struggling toward the realization of a socialist feminist vision. We have written this paper so sisters who believe as we do may come forward and join us.

Primarily, we argue for an aggressive and audacious perspective. It is one that our movement began with when we thought we were the newest and hottest thing going. Now, we have found roots. We will need strategy, organization and so many steps along the way. But we must take the offensive again, and this time fight a long battle—worth it because we believe we can win.

Marlene Dixon, The Rise and Demise of Women’s Liberation (1977)

https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/dixon-marlene/rise-demise.htm

Marlene Dixon, “The Rise and Demise of Women’s Liberation: A Class Analysis,” Women in Class Struggle. San Francisco: Synthesis Publications, 1978.

The history of the rise and demise of Women’s Liberation is a primer for a study of the fatal weaknesses that infected all the New Left struggles of the l960s.[1] The collapse of Women’s Liberation shortly followed the general collapse of the New Left in the early 1970s. Hindsight makes clear that the fatal flaw of the New Left lay in its inability to recognize the determinative role of class conflict. It was consequently unable to distinguish between class antagonisms within mass movements, a product of the failure to comprehend that revolutionary movements arise and flourish only within revolutionary classes.

Many of the errors of the New Left are perpetuated today, whether it be in the so-called socialist feminist movement or in the so-called anti-imperialist movement. Each such tendency, in its own way, has failed to learn from the recent past. Yet, as women, we must not fall prey to the dictum “history repeats itself,” for the massive institutionalized exploitation and oppression of women continues, virtually untouched by all the fulminations of the 1960s, just as American imperialism flourishes with unhampered brutality. Nevertheless, any critique of the New Left must recognize that it was, in itself, a powerfully progressive force in all of its manifestations.

Consequently, we cannot fail to recognize that the Women’s Liberation movement resurrected the “woman question” and rebuilt on a world scale a consciousness of the exploitation and oppression of women. For nearly forty years women had been without a voice to articulate the injustice and brutality of women’s place. For nearly forty years women had been without an instrumentality to fight against their exploitation and oppression. From the mid 1960s to the early 1970s, Women’s Liberation became that new instrumentality. From the United States and Canada to Europe, to national liberation struggles in Africa and Asia, to revolutionary China itself, the reverberations of the movement set in motion a new awareness and new movements for the emancipation of women. Whatever the faults and weaknesses of Women’s Liberation in the United States and Canada, it was a historical event of worldwide importance.

Nevertheless, what happened to the Women’s Liberation movement in the early 1970s is precisely what happened to each mass movement of the last decade: internal differentiation along class and political lines. In the case of the women’s movement, the remnants of Women’s Liberation have come to be dominated by a middle class leadership, reducing a vigorous and radical social movement to a politically and ideologically co-opted reformist lobby in the halls of Congress. The problem before us is to understand the course of the class conflict that resulted in the final co-optation and decline of the autonomous women’s movement.

Consciousness Raising: The Beginning

The autonomous women’s movement was a necessity of the time, a product of the political realities of the 1960s, a transitional movement which was a direct product of the male supremacist structure of the New Left and the legitimacy it permitted for the expression of male dominance in everyday life. The New Left was an instrument for the suppression, oppression and exploitation of women. The formation of the autonomous movement was the only reply possible. Women set about organizing women in order to avoid the wrecking tactics of the men and to openly fight against the exploitation and oppression of women. Women would never have been able to do so within the male-dominated New Left. Women clearly recognized that the politics and practice around the “woman question” on the part of student and other left groupings were deformed by their own practice of male supremacy. Women were forced to conclude, on the basis of experience, that only by building a base among women would it be possible to put a correct priority on the question of the emancipation of women, to confront the entire left and force them to a recognition of the centrality of women’s emancipation in all revolutionary struggles.

The origin and importance of the small consciousness-raising group is to be found in the basic organizing tool of the autonomous movement: organize around your own oppression. There were many foundations for such a position. First, the major task faced by early organizers was to get women to admit that they in fact were oppressed. The socialization of women includes a vast superstructure of rationalizations for women’s secondary status; the superstructure of belief is reinforced through inducing guilt and fear (of not being a “true” woman, etc.) as a response to rebellion against women’s traditional role; consequently, women are raised to be very conservative, to cling to the verities of the hearth, to a limited and unquestioning acceptance of things as they are. However, organizers very quickly learned that under the crust of surface submission there had built up in countless women an enormous frustration, anger, bitterness—what Betty Friedan called “an illness without a name.” Women’s Liberation gave the illness a name, an explanation and a cure. The cure was the small group and the method was what the Chinese Communists call “speaking bitterness.” The bitterness, once spoken, was almost overwhelming in its sheer emotional impact.

For many new recruits, consciousness raising was the end-all and be-all of the early movement, a mystical method to self-realization and personal liberation. But for others, especially for left-wing radical women, the original aim of the small group was supposed to have been the path to sisterhood—that unity expressed in empathic identification with the suffering of all women—which would lead from the recognition of one’s own oppression to identification with the sisterhood of all women, from sisterhood to radical politics, from radical politics to revolution. Early organizers had correctly understood that women could be organized on a mass scale in terms of their own subjective oppression and by appealing to the common oppression of all women (irrespective of class). Aiming at radicalizing the constituency of Women’s Liberation, early radical organizers talked a great deal about the common source of oppression (hoping to foster the empathic identification that would provide the bridge to cross-class unity). They talked much less about the fact that the common oppression of women has different results in different social classes. The result of the class position, or class identification, of almost all recruits to Women’s Liberation was to retranslate “organize around your own oppression” to “organize around your own interests.” The step from self-understanding to altruistic identification and cross-class unity never occurred because the real basis for radicalization, common economic exploitation, was absent.

“Organize around your own oppression” was indeed a Pandora’s Box of troubles. Middle class women used this maxim to justify the pursuit of their own class interests: “We are oppressed too,” “We must take care of our own problems first.” Middle class women also justified ignoring the mass of working class women by asserting that “ending our oppression will end theirs,” i.e., the fight against discrimination would equalize the status of all women.

The transformation of the small group from its original political consciousness raising function into a mechanism for social control and group therapy was a result of the predominantly middle class character of Women’s Liberation. The fact that there were so few women in Women’s Liberation who were directly experiencing material deprivation, threats of genocide or enforced pauperization—that is, so few who were driven by conditions of objective exploitation and deep social oppression—made it almost inevitable that the search for cultural and life-style changes were substituted for revolutionary politics.

What radicals had not taken into account was the fact that middle class and wealthy women do not want to identify with their class inferiors; do not care, by and large, what happens to women who have problems different from their own; greatly dislike being reminded that they are richer, better educated, healthier and have more life chances than most people.

Therefore, behind the outward unity of the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1960s, centered as it was around a public ideology based upon feminism, sisterhood and the demand for equal rights, there raged an internal fight between the so-called feminists and politicos. This fight was disguised in many ways, most effectively by personalizing it or by casting it as a battle against “male-identified” or “elitist” women, in which the pejorative “politico” implied both sins summed up by the phrase “anti-woman.” All of these pseudo-psychological arguments were manipulative verbiage which mystified the fact that class politics vs. reform politics, and therefore class conflict for hegemony over the leadership of the movement, were the real stakes of the combat. Certainly, participants at the time often were not consciously aware of the true nature of their struggle, but from the vantage point of hindsight, the true meaning of these struggles is manifestly clear. While in the beginning, roughly from 1967 to 1969, the left was in a relatively powerful position, by 1973 a coalition of the center and right had gained control of the women’s movement.

The Rise of Class Conflict

The early and primitive ideology of Women’s Liberation stressed psychological oppression and social and occupational discrimination. The politics of psychological oppression swiftly transmuted into the bourgeois feminist ideology of “men as the enemy,” for psychological world-views pit individual against individual and mystify the social basis of exploitation. Nevertheless, the politics of psychological oppression and of invoking the injustice of discrimination were aimed at altering the consciousness of women newly recruited to the movement in order to transform personal discontent into political militancy. Women, being in most cases without a political vocabulary, could most easily respond to the articulation of emotion. (This, of course, explains the impassioned, personal nature of the early polemical literature. It was indeed “speaking bitterness.”) Furthermore, women of almost any political persuasion or lack of one can easily accept the straightforward demand for social equality. Explaining the necessity for the abolition of social classes, the complexities of capitalism and its necessary evolution into imperialism, etc., a much more formidable task, often elicited more hostility than sympathy. On the other hand, the stress on discrimination and psychological theorizing aimed directly at the liberal core of North American politics. In turn, sex discrimination affects all women, irrespective of race, language or class (but the fact that it does not affect all women in the same way or to the same degree was often absent from discussion).

The primacy of ideologies of oppression and discrimination (and the absence of class analysis exposing exploitation) and the ethic of sisterhood, facilitated the recruitment of large numbers of women from certain strata of the middle class, especially students, professionals, upper-middle class housewives and women from all sections of the academic world.

Given the predominantly apolitical disposition of women in general coupled with their initial fearfulness and lack of political experience, the task of revolutionary political education was an uphill battle from the beginning. The articulation of a class analysis in both Canada and the U.S., too often in a style inherited from the competitive and intellectually arrogant student left, frightened women away or left them totally confused and unable to understand what the fuss was all about. In a purely agitational sense, the feminists’ anti-male line had the beauty of simplicity and matched the everyday experience of women; the left-wing radicals had the disadvantage of a complex argument that required hard work and study, an “elitist” sin. However, the anti-male line had its difficulties too, rooted in a fundamental contradiction which faces all women. It was impossible to tell women not to resent men, when it was plain in everyday life that the agents of a woman’s oppression at home and on the job were men. On the other hand, women were unwilling and unable to actualize anger against sexism into a hatred of men.

Because of this contradiction there existed a predisposition to take a rhetorical anti-male stand (throwing men out of meetings to keep them from being obstructionist, expressing anger and contempt towards men to display defiance and thus give moral support and courage to new women, etc.), overlaying a profound ambiguity regarding what was, or ought to be, the relationship between men and women.

The result was a situation which might be termed dual leadership, made up of the early left activist organizers, the politicos, and the newer level of middle class women, the feminists, the latter seeking, by virtue of their class position, wealth and education, to bring the goals, ideology and style of the movement into line with their politics and class interests. The ethic of sisterhood publicly smoothed over these two opposing conceptions of the enemy, i.e., who and what is going to be abolished To accomplish the liberation of women. Thus, the public ideology of Women’s Liberation built unity around certain basic feminist tenets acceptable to the mixed class composition of the mass movement: 1) first priority must be placed on the organization and liberation of women (glossing over differing and contradictory positions on the definition and means to attain liberation); 2) action programs ought to put first priority upon woman-centered issues; 3) socialist revolution would not in itself guarantee the liberation of women.

The class conflict seething under the nominal agreement on the basic tenets of feminism was ideologically expressed in two contradictory lines of analysis corresponding to the dual leadership situation. The feminist line stemmed from the assertion that “men are the principal enemy” and that the primary contradiction is between men and women. The politico line stemmed from the assertion that the male supremacist ruling class is the principal enemy and that the primary contradiction exists between the exploited and exploiting classes, in which women bear the double burden of economic exploitation and social oppression. The leftist line stressed that the object of combat against male-supremacist practices was the unification of the men and women of the exploited classes against a common class enemy in order to transcend the division and conflict sexism created between them. Women’s Liberation was called upon to combat sexism by combating the dependency and subjugation of women that created and perpetuated the exploitation and oppression of women. The position on men was explicit: men in the exploited classes, bribed through their privileged position over women, acted so as to divide the class struggle. The source of divisiveness was not men per se but the practice of male supremacy.

One can immediately see that the leftist analysis, pointing to class and property relations as the source of the oppression of women, was much more difficult to propagandize than the feminist anti-male line. In everyday life what all women confront is the bullying exploitation of men. From the job to the bedroom, men are the enemy, but men are not the same kind of enemy to all women.

The Material Basis of Bourgeois Feminism

For the middle class woman, particularly if she has a career or is planning to have a career, the primary problem is to get men out of the way (i.e. to free women from male dominance maintained by institutionalized discrimination), in order to enjoy, along with the men, the full privileges of middle class status. The system of sexual inequality and institutionalized discrimination, not class exploitation, is the primary source of middle class female protest. Given this fact, it is men, and not the very organization of the social system itself, who stand in the way. Consequently, it is reform of the existing system which is required, and not the abolition of existing property relations, not proletarian revolution—which would sweep away the privileges of the middle class woman.

The fact that the fight against discrimination is essentially a liberal reform program was further mystified by the assertion that the equalization of the status of women would bring about a “revolution” because it would alter the structure of the family and transform human relationships (which were held to be perverted through the existence of male authoritarianism). The left line held that equalization of the status of women is not, nor could it be, the cause of the decomposition of the nuclear family. The organization of the family is a result of the existing economic structure; just as the origin of the contemporary nuclear family is to be found in the rise of capitalism, so it is perpetuated in the interests of monopoly capitalism. Furthermore, equalization of the status of women would be no more likely to introduce an era of beautiful human relationships than did the introduction of Christianity bring obedience to the Golden Rule or the Ten Commandments. The claim that status equalization would bring about a “revolution” is of the same order as the claim made by the Suffragists that giving women the vote would usher in an era of world peace. Abolishing discrimination would not lead to a “revolution” in the status of women because it would leave the class structure absolutely untouched. Gloria Steinem might build a corporation, a woman might become a general or a corporation vice-president, but the factory girl would remain the factory girl.

The tactical and ideological error of the left in this struggle was to try to win the entire mass movement to their position. The failure to recognize class struggles led to the defeat of the leftist position not only because of the predominant middle class background of the movement, but also because the left had not only to fight the petty bourgeois reformers, but also the anticommunist, cold war ideologies with which almost all North Americans have been so thoroughly infected. Without disciplined organization and a working class base, a left position will always lose in a mass movement, or be reduced to self-defeating opportunism.

Sisterhood: Root of Bourgeois Feminism

The politics of oppression and the politics of discrimination were amalgamated and popularized in the ethic of sisterhood. Sisterhood invoked the common oppression of all women, the common discrimination suffered by all. Sisterhood was the bond, the strength of the women’s movement. It was the call to unity and the basis of solidarity against all attacks from the male-dominated left and right, based on the idea that common oppression creates common understanding and common interests upon which all women can unite (transcending class, language and race lines) to bring about a vast movement for social justice—after first abolishing the special privileges enjoyed by all men, naturally.

The ideology of sisterhood came to emphatically deny the importance, even the existence, of class conflict in the women’s movement. To raise class issues, to suggest the existence of class conflict, to engage in any form of class struggle was defined as divisive of women, as a plot by men to destroy women (after all, were not Marx and Lenin men?) as weakening the women’s struggle, and the perpetrator was proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, to be a traitor to women, male-identified, an agent of the enemy in the sisterhood. Sisterhood was a moral imperative: disagreements were to be minimized, no woman was to be excluded from the movement, all sisters were to love all other sisters, all sisters were to support all other sisters, no sister was to publicly criticize other sisters.

Sisterhood, and the outward unity it provided, also disguised and mystified the internal class contradictions of the women’s movement. Specifically, sisterhood temporarily disguised the fact that all women do not have the same interests, needs, desires: working class women and middle class women, student women and professional women, minority women and white women have more conflicting interests than could ever be overcome by their common experience based on sex discrimination. The illusions of sisterhood were possible because Women’s Liberation had become in its ideology and politics predominantly a middle class movement. The voices of poor and working class women, of racial and national minority women or even of housewives with children were only infrequently heard. Even when these women were recognized, they were dismissed with a token gesture or an empty promise. When the isolation of the left was complete, almost all internal opposition to bourgeois feminism disappeared.

The collapse of sisterhood was principally a result of the disguised class and political conflict which became acute throughout 1970–71. Under the guise of rejecting “elitism” left-wing women were attacked mercilessly for being “domineering,” “oppressive,” “elitist,” “male-identified,” etc. In fact, the early radical leadership was in this way either discredited or driven out of the movement, to be replaced by “nonoppressive,” “apolitical,” manipulative feminist or “radical feminist” leadership. This was the period of the “trashing.” At this time a clearly defined right-wing also emerged, the reactionary “radical feminists” who were, by and large, virulently anti-leftist and anticommunist.

In the end, political debate became almost completely nonexistent in the small group, which was essentially reduced to being a source of social and psychological support. Rivalries, disputes and feuds often grew up between small groups in the same city (each doubtless accusing the other of being “elitist”), frequently having the effect (along with the major programmatic and ideological divisions between feminists and politicos) of making even the minimal workings of a women’s center impossible.

Reactionary Feminism

The bourgeois feminist line, “men are the enemy,” branches into two ideologies, liberal feminism and reactionary (or “radical”) feminism. The first, liberal feminism, does not openly admit that its ideology is a variant on “men are the enemy” but disguises that assumption behind a liberal facade that men are “misguided” and through education and persuasion (legal if need be) can be brought around to accepting the equalization of the status of women. Since the questions of the origins of injustice and the roots of social power are never very strong in any liberal ideology, there is little besides legislative reforms and education to fall back on.

Reactionary feminism, on the other hand, openly asserted as its fundamental tenet that all men are the enemies of all women and, in its most extreme forms, called for the subjugation of all men to some form of matriarchy (and sometimes for the extermination of all men). It offered a utopia composed of police states and extermination camps, even though reactionary feminists very rarely followed through to the logical outcome of their position.

Reactionary feminism was not an ideology of revolution (the likelihood of victory seeming remote even to its advocates) but an ideology of vengeance. It was also a profound statement of despair that saw the cruelty and ugliness of present relationships between men and women as immutable, inescapable. Reactionary feminism may have been politically confused, and it was certainly politically destructive, but it powerfully expressed the experience and feeling of a whole segment of the female population.

The root of reactionary feminism was in the sexual exploitation of women. Its strength lay in the fact that it did express and appeal to psychological oppression, for this oppression is far worse than the conditions of economic exploitation experienced by petty bourgeois women. In the last analysis reactionary feminism was a product of male supremacy, and its corollary, sexual exploitation. Male supremacy, itself reactionary, breeds reaction.

With the virtual expulsion of the left leadership the “radical feminists” assumed leadership over the portion of the movement not yet co-opted into the reformist wing. The excesses of the right: man-hating, reactionary separatism, lesbian vanguardism, virulent anti-communism, opposition to all peoples’ revolutionary struggles (including Vietnam), served to discredit Women’s Liberation and to make public the split in the movement between the reformists and the radical feminists. Of the expulsion of the left, no mention was made, keeping up the masquerade as an “anti-elitist campaign.” The triumph of the right resulted in the disintegration of the Women’s Liberation movement. In the shambles to which the movement had reduced itself, left and right opportunists were swift to seize the opportunity to take control. The leftists watched the predictable occur with despair while the reactionary, so-called “radical” feminists, with their shriek of “elitism” still issuing from their mouths, found the movement they had sought to control snatched out of their hands.

The Failure of Program

Women’s Liberation never produced a coherent program. Programmatic development requires theoretical development, and Women’s Liberation was incapable, on the basis of its class contradictions alone, of generating a coherent political analysis. What program and agitation existed clearly reflected the class nature of the movement. The wide variety of national and local single-issue programs undertaken by isolated women’s groups reflected the overriding problems of younger, middle class women: the need for legal abortion (rather than a demand for universal health and nutritional care, including abortion and birth control services, which working class and poor women desperately need); demands for cooperative, “parent controlled” day-care centers (rather than universal day-care with compensatory educational programs which the majority of working class parents and children need); the creation of women’s centers to provide young women with a “place of their own” in which to socialize, to work for abortion on demand or to secure illegal abortions (rather than creating “organizational” centers capable of organizing with working class women for struggles on the job or in the community).

The cold truth of the matter is that the women’s centers often differed very little from the standby of the suburban housewife—community work, complete with good deeds, exciting activities, lively gossip and truly thrilling exercises in intrigue and character assassination. Within these centers working class women often wandered about in a state of frustration and confusion. They knew something was very wrong, but they did not know what.

Given the almost exclusive attention to sexual exploitation and the consequent psychological oppression, the focus was not upon male supremacy as part of class exploitation, but upon its result, the practice of male chauvinism; not upon the need for revolutionary social and economic changes, but upon individualized struggles between men and women around the oppressive attitudes and objective sexual and social privileges of men. Furthermore, emphasis upon male chauvinism had the effect of privatizing the contradiction between men and women, transmuting the conflict into problems of personal relationships, rather than politicizing the conflict as part of the overall capitalist system of economic and class exploitation.

The internal failures of the movement may be summed up in a brief series of criticisms. Mass movements contain within them class contradictions; women were far too slow to recognize class struggle for what it was within the movement. Furthermore, lack of a correct theoretical analysis led to the left’s inability to generate correct programs to guide internal class struggle. The movement was thus reduced to single-issue mass campaigns which had to coalesce around the lowest common denominator, reform. Leadership thus passed to liberal reformers or left opportunists who opposed straightforward class conflict or open recognition of the inevitability of such conflict. The movement isolated itself, for these and other reasons, from the concrete struggles of working class women, in the home and in the factory, who make up the majority of oppressed and exploited women. The final and perhaps the most important lesson to be learned is that a movement without coherent politics, organization and discipline cannot be a fighting organization.

In short, Women’s Liberation, for all its rhetoric and all its pretensions, for all its brave start, has outwardly become what it really was (indeed, what it had to be): an anti-working class, anticommunist, petty bourgeois reform movement.

Socialist Feminism

The last gasp of Women’s Liberation continues today as a loose collection of small local organizations committed in varying degrees to autonomous socialist feminist organizing. The constituency is almost exclusively from the white petty bourgeoisie as indicated by attendance at the National Conference on Socialist Feminism (held in 1975). Reports of the 1975 conference suggest that the socialist feminist constituency is very mixed in political orientation. There is without doubt a significant proportion of women who are biding their time with socialist feminism in reaction to the regressive positions of most new Marxist-Leninist formations (whose morality is Victorian and whose understanding of the so-called “woman question” is hardly equal to Bebel’s statement written in 1879). There is reason to believe, however, that its stable constituency is made up of white radical feminists who are conscious social democrats and who represent one continuation of the radical petty bourgeois politics of the early days of Women’s Liberation. Whatever the precise class composition of socialist feminism might be, its leading tendency is clearly a cross between radical feminism and social democracy. This peculiar amalgamation underlies the first three “principles of unity” drawn up by the conference organizers:

1. We recognize the need for and support the existence of the autonomous women’s movement throughout the revolutionary process.

2. We agree that all oppression, whether based on race, class, sex, or lesbianism, is interrelated and the fights for liberation from oppression must be simultaneous and cooperative.

3. We agree that Socialist Feminism is a strategy for revolution.[2]

It is not surprising that these “principles of unity” produced very little unity and a great deal of confusion and contention, also very reminiscent of the confused and contradictory organizing conferences of Women’s Liberation. Nevertheless, the “principles of unity” exhibit very clearly the petty bourgeois class character of Women’s Liberation perpetuated under the guise of socialist feminism. For example, in principle no. 2 we note that “all oppression, whether based on race, class, sex or lesbianism, is interrelated” without any indication of how they are interrelated. Throughout, oppression is used, but not exploitation. Oppression is a psychological term, while exploitation is an economic term that refers to class relations. Class is used as a category in itself, as are race, sex and lesbianism. There is no recognition that race and sex discrimination are products of class exploitation. We must assume that tacking on “lesbianism” is a result of an opportunist attempt to appeal to radical lesbians, for surely homosexuality is subsumed under sexual discrimination.

Hostility toward recognizing the determinative role of class, also inherited from Women’s Liberation, is demonstrated in a report of the conference written by a member of the Berkeley-Oakland Women’s Union:

There was much said in panels and in workshops on the question of race, class, lesbianism, etc., but there was no agreed-upon framework in which to place these discussions. Nor was there any apparent reason to attempt to resolve differences, as we were making no commitment to work or struggle together beyond the conference...Members of the Marxist-Leninist caucus often stated that class was the primary contradiction. They also often remarked that the women’s movement was a “middle class” movement. Many of the working women at the conference expressed a personal disgust at this sloppiness of terminology, as well as the way it discounted their own position in the work force.[3]

The “disgust” was displayed by those women who were sympathetic to the position put forward by Barbara Ehrenreich:

Let’s start by being very honest about class. About ninety per cent of the American people are “working class”: in the sense that they sell their labor for wages, or are dependent on others who do...Now what does that tell us?...It tells us, for political purposes, a class is not defined strictly by gross economic relationships. For political purposes, a class is defined by its consciousness of itself as a class that exists in opposition to another class or classes.[4]

The Ehrenreich position resolves the problem of “sloppy terminology” by liquidating the middle class (or new petty bourgeoisie) into a vast, undifferentiated mass (90% of the population) defined by class consciousness-for-itself. Since no such class or class consciousness presently exists in the United States, class is effectively made non-existent. It therefore follows that women can be united around their common “oppression” and become a “class defined by its consciousness of itself as a class that exists in opposition to another class or classes,” and we are right back to the unity of sisterhood propounded by Women’s Liberation. Is it any wonder that “the conference was also plagued with the homogeneity contradiction (sic), most of the women there being white and under thirty-five years old”?[5] Dismissing the determinative role of social class as a “gross economic relationship” and substituting a psychological definition without a material basis perpetuates the Women’s Liberation tactic of “organizing around your own oppression,” exemplified by the retention of the slogan, “the personal is political.” The rejection of Marxism as an “agreed-upon framework” thereby continues to justify the hegemony of white middle class (petty bourgeois) women in Women’s Liberation-by-another-name: socialist feminism.

The real unity of the socialist feminist tendency is stated in the first principle asserting the necessity of an autonomous women’s movement. In clinging to this belief, socialist feminism would condemn women to continued isolation and segregation. The formation of the autonomous movement in the mid-1960s reflected the constraints that pervasive and entrenched left-wing male sexism put upon any attempt to organize women as a significant part of the New Left. In organizing the autonomous movement, women had demonstrated their ability to organize a vigorous mass movement. Yet, the male-dominated left’s actual response was to isolate and ghettoize the women’s movement even within the petty bourgeois left. Women’s Liberation fell into the trap by characterizing political struggles as “male-dominated,” or Marxism as “penis politics,” reducing Women’s Liberation to dead-end reformist programs around “women’s issues”: abortion, day-care, women’s studies programs, women’s health clinics and so forth. The reduction of the autonomous movement to a trivialized, isolated and limited series of local reformist struggles was the legacy of retaining a separate women’s movement.

Once the “woman question” had been put on the New Left agenda, conditions were created that potentially could have enabled women to carry the fight against sexism directly into the left. By and large, this did not happen. The autonomous movement, by isolating women, did not allow a serious political campaign against sexism to be carried out between men and women as an organizational struggle. The continued political segregation of women limited opposing sexism to opposing sexism in one’s lover or husband; Consequently, the autonomous movement failed in its mission of defeating left-wing sexism, as the regressive lines of much of the new communist movement make quite clear. The prolonged existence of the autonomous movement, with its penchant for psychological theorizing, made it difficult to see that the defeat of sexism and racism in the left was an organizational, not attitudinal, problem. The solution to the prevalence of both sexism and racism must be found in the process of party formation itself. The very structure of a revolutionary party must provide an organizational basis upon which equality between comrades can be developed and enforced.

The rejection of Marxism, the rejection of the determinative role of the relations of production, also serves to mystify precisely what sexism is—a class relationship between the sexes, just as racism is a class relation between races. This was the insight provided by Engels so long ago, when he wrote that the relationship between man and wife was as the bourgeoisie to the proletariat. It is not that men and women, black people and white people, each make up a class (although at one time that was asserted in Women’s Liberation) but rather that the social relations existing between them irrespective of actual class membership have the character of class relations, being, as they are, the product of class relations. Thus, sexism and racism have a class identity: each demands relations of inequality, subordination, and the assumed inferiority of one group of humanity to another.

The refusal to recognize the determinative role of class relations in Women’s Liberation and in its offspring, socialist feminism, must result in reducing talk of “revolutionary process” and “socialist feminism is a strategy for revolution” to radical cant. These phrases can have no content, no real referent, without a unified theoretical understanding of the origins of exploitation and the material roots of psychological oppression. Socialist feminism is, in the final analysis, nothing more than a continuation of Women’s Liberation past its time.

New Directions

The entire period of the 1960s in North America was crippled by the cold war repression of the 1940s and 1950s which had left two generations almost completely bereft of any knowledge, theoretical or historical, of North American class struggle and North American socialism. Over twenty years of anti-Marxist, anti-Soviet propaganda (which began in the elementary school and continued through graduate education) guaranteed that the majority of North American youth was anticommunist, antisocialist, anti-Marxist. U.S. imperialism and its Canadian branch plant protected the masses of the people from severe material deprivation and served to validate the ideologies of “America, the apex of democratic, free enterprise” on both sides of the border. Indeed, it was one of the contradictions of imperialism, the brutal exploitation of black and native people throughout the continent and of Quebecois in Canada, which began the revival of a moribund left and signaled the sharpening of the contradictions and class struggle which marks the 1970s.

Isolation from revolutionary theory and practice left the movement, specifically the New Left, the peace movement and Women’s Liberation, without the theoretical tools (and most particularly without any understanding of dialectical analysis) so necessary to guide practice in the long run. As a result, practice was typically pragmatic and sporadic, marked by few victories and many defeats, exhausting and disillusioning people. Isolation from revolutionary classes, combined with theoretical and historical ignorance, meant that people often did not have any adequate analysis. As a result, people were tactically, not strategically oriented. Furthermore, they were populist and reformist by default, through ignorance and programmed anticommunism. Great numbers of militants responded with confusion and despair as effort after effort collapsed or was defeated outright or, even more frustrating, was co-opted into irrelevant reform. Without any knowledge or sense of the dialectics of history, without a correct understanding of capitalism and imperialism, with no way to evaluate or understand the course of class struggle, the radicalism of the 1960s found itself bankrupted in a few short years. Thus, we can clearly see that Women’s Liberation was not unique, but that the fate of the Women’s Liberation movement followed the general pattern for the New Left of the 1960s.

Many of us, after more than ten long years of experience in a series of movements, and especially the Women’s Liberation movement, have become Marxist-Leninists—not because we read books, but because we fought and lost too many battles, then read the books. In short, we must begin again. This time, however, we are far better armed, in terms of ideology and practice, not to repeat the mistakes of the past, not to compromise with counterrevolutionary racism and sexism, not to be sucked into petty bourgeois class collaborationism, not to fail in our struggle to build an organization, a fighting organization for the liberation of our sisters, our brothers, ourselves.

1. Portions of this article were published under the title “Women’s Liberation: Opening Chapter Two,” in Canadian Dimension, Vol. X, No. 9, 1975.↩

2. Barbara Dudley, “Report on the Conference,” Socialist Revolution, October–December 1975, pp. 109, 111, l14.↩

3. Ibid.., pp.111, 114.↩

4. Barbara Ehrenreich, “Speech by Barbara Ehrenreich,” Socialist Revolution, October–December 1975, p. 89.↩

5. Dudley, p. 107↩

Sexual Violence

Feminist organizing in recent decades has devoted much attention to violence against women. Here, Susan Brownmiller defines rape as “conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear,” shaping much of the radical feminist understanding of rape culture. She roots women’s vulnerability to rape in biological difference.

Alison Edwards, in a pamphlet published by the Sojourner Truth Organization—a revolutionary group influential for many left communists today—thoroughly attacks Brownmiller as encouraging of historical and current racist state violence and incarceration. She calls on the women’s movement to orient towards the struggle against white supremacy as strategically central to transforming US society. Edwards’ analysis of the potentially racist, violent uses of anti-rape rhetoric was prescient, foreshadowing the following decades of mass incarceration and aggressive policing.

Lilia Melani and Linda Fodaski offer a more progressive critique of rape culture than Brownmiller, first published in a volume by the New York Radical Feminists.

Finally, the Combahee River Collective offer us an example of Black feminist anti-violence organizing, in their pamphlet distributed during the serial murders of Black women in Boston. The Combahee River Collective was a Black lesbian feminist organization whose important statement on Black Feminism is included in Week 10, below.

There is no secondary reading this week.

Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will (1975)

Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. Fawcett Columbine, 1975.

Ch. 1, The Mass Psychology of Rape: An Introduction

Krafft-Ebing, who pioneered in the study of sexual disorders, had little to say about rape. His famous Psychopathia Sexualis gives amazingly short shrift to the act and its doers. He had it on good authority, he informed his readers, that most rapists were degenerate, imbecilic men. Having made that sweeping generalization, Krafft-Ebing washed his hands of the whole affair and turned with relish to the frotteurs and fetishists of normal intelligence who tickled his fancy.

Sigmund Freud, whose major works followed Krafft-Ebing’s by twenty to forty years, was also struck dumb by the subject of rape. We can search his writings in vain for a quotable quote, an analysis, a perception. The father of psychoanalysis, who invented the concept of the primacy of the penis, was never motivated, as far as we know, to explore the real-life deployment of the penis as weapon. What the master ignored, the disciples tended to ignore as well. Alfred Adler does not mention rape, despite his full awareness of the historic power struggle between men and women. Jung refers to rape only in the most obscure manner, a glancing reference in some of his mythological interpretations. Helene Deutsch and Karen Horney, each from a differing perspective, grasped at the female fear of rape, and at the feminine fantasy, but as women who did not dare to presume, they turned a blind eye to the male and female reality.

And the great socialist theoreticians Marx and Engels and their many confreres and disciples who developed the theory of class oppression and put words like “exploitation” into the every-day vocabulary, they, too, were strangely silent about rape, unable to fit it into their economic constructs. Among them only August Bebel tried to grasp at its historic importance, its role in the very formulation of class, private property and the means of production. In Woman Under Socialism Bebel used his imagination to speculate briefly about the prehistoric tribal fights for land, cattle and labor power within an acceptable Marxist analysis: “There arose the need of labor power to cultivate the ground. The more numerous these powers, all the greater was the wealth in products and herds. These struggles led first to the rape of women, later to the enslaving of conquered men. The women became laborers and objects of pleasure for the conqueror; their males became slaves.” He didn’t get it quite right, making the rape of women secondary to man’s search for labor, but it was a flash of revelation and one that Engels did not achieve in his Origin of the Family. But Bebel was more at ease researching the wages and conditions of working women in German factories, and that is where his energies went.

It was the half-crazed genius Wilhelm Reich, consumed with rage in equal parts toward Hitler, Marx and Freud, who briefly entertained the vision of a “masculine ideology of rape.” The phrase hangs there in the opening chapter of The Sexual Revolution, begging for further interpretation. But it was not forthcoming, The anguished mind was in too great a state of disarray. A political analysis of rape would have required more treachery toward his own immutable gender than even Wilhelm Reich could muster.

And so it remained for the latter-day feminists, free at last from the strictures that forbade us to look at male sexuality, to discover the truth and meaning in our own victimization. Critical to our study is the recognition that rape has a history, and that through the tools of historical analysis we may learn what we need to know about our current condition.

No zoologist, as far as I know, has ever observed that animals rape in their natural habitat, the wild. Sex in the animal world, including those species that are our closest relations, the primates, is more properly called “mating,” and it is cyclical activity set off by biologic signals the female puts out. Mating is initiated and “controlled,” it would seem, by the female estrous cycle. When the female of the species periodically goes into heat, giving off obvious physical signs, she is ready and eager for copulation and the male becomes interested. At other times there is simply no interest, and no mating.

Jane Goodall, studying her wild chimpanzees at the Gombe Stream reserve, noted that the chimps, male and female, were “Very promiscuous, but this does not mean that every female will accept every male that courts her.” She recorded her observations of one female in heat, who showed the telltale pink swelling of her genital area, who nevertheless displayed an aversion to one particular male who pursued her. “Though he once shook her out of the tree in which she had sought refuge, we never saw him actually ‘rape’ her,” Goodall wrote, adding, however, “Nonetheless, quite often he managed to get his way through dogged persistence.” Another student of animal behavior, Leonard Williams, has stated categorically, “The male monkey cannot in fact mate with the female without her invitation and willingness to cooperate. In monkey society there is no such thing as rape, prostitution, or even passive consent.”

Zoologists for the most part have been reticent on the subject of rape. It has not been, for them, an important scientific question. But we do know that human beings are different. Copulation in our species can occur 365 days of the year; it is not controlled by the female estrous cycle. We females of the human species do not “go pink.” The call of estrus and the telltale signs, both visual and olfactory, are absent from our mating procedures, lost perhaps in the evolutionary shuffle. In their place, as a mark of our civilization, we have evolved a complex system of psychological signs and urges, and a complex structure of pleasure. Our call to sex occurs in the head, and the act is not necessarily linked, as it is with animals, to Mother Nature’s pattern of procreation. Without a biologically determined mating season, a human male can evidence sexual interest in a human female at any time he pleases, and his psychologic urge is not dependent in the slightest on her biologic readiness or receptivity. What it all boils down to is that the human male can rape.

Man’s structural capacity to rape and woman’s corresponding structural vulnerability are as basic to the physiology of both our sexes as the primal act of sex itself. Had it not been for this accident of biology, an accommodation requiring the locking together of two separate parts, penis into vagina, there would be neither copulation nor rape as we know it. Anatomically one might want to improve on the design of nature, but such speculation appears to my mind as unrealistic. The human sex act accomplishes its historic purpose of generation of the species and it also affords some intimacy and pleasure. I have no basic quarrel with the procedure. But, nevertheless, we cannot work around the fact that in terms of human anatomy the possibility of forcible intercourse incontrovertibly exists. This single factor may have been sufficient to have caused the creation of a male ideology of rape. When men discovered that they could rape, they proceeded to do it. Later, much later, under certain circumstances they even came to consider rape a crime.

In the violent landscape inhabited by primitive woman and man, some woman somewhere had a prescient vision of her right to her own physical integrity, and in my mind’s eye I can picture her fighting like hell to preserve it. After a thunderbolt of recognition that this particular incarnation of hairy, two-legged hominid was not the Homo sapiens with whom she would like to freely join parts, it might have been she, and not some man, who picked up the first stone and hurled it. How surprised he must have been, and what an unexpected battle must have taken place. Fleet of foot and spirited, she would have kicked, bitten, pushed and run, but she could not retaliate in kind.

The dim perception that had entered prehistoric woman’s consciousness must have had an equal but opposite reaction in the mind of her male assailant. For if the first rape was an unexpected battle founded on the first woman’s refusal, the second rape was indubitably planned. Indeed, one of the earliest forms of male bonding must have been the gang rape of one woman by a band of marauding men. This accomplished, rape became not only a male prerogative, but man’s basic weapon of force against woman, the principal agent of his will and her fear. His forcible entry into her body, despite her physical protestations and struggle, became the vehicle of his victorious conquest over her being, the ultimate test of his superior strength, the triumph of his manhood.

Man’s discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire and the first crude stone axe. From prehistoric times to the present, I believe, rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.

Alison Edwards, Rape, Racism, and the White Women’s Movement (1976)

http://www.sojournertruth.net/rrwwm.pdf

Published: Sojourner Truth Association, 1976.

Source: 2nd edition. Sojourner Truth Association, 1979.

Every little girl is taught to refuse candy from strangers. By the time she reaches her teens she speeds up when a strange man walks behind her on the street. No girl reaches womanhood without an entrenched fear of rape.

In the last few years the women’s movement has been channeling those fears into action, making women and men recognize rape as a political crime against women, a crime that is often ignored in this country.

Capitalizing on all these fears and on the current anti-rape movement, Simon and Schuster published Susan Brownmiller’s book, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, in time for Christmas, 1975. The book, modestly described as a “classic” by its author, has been almost universally acclaimed by the press: frontpage review in the New York Times book review section, a selection of most major book clubs, serialized in four major periodicals, and the subject of countless promotional forums for the author.

Never before has the media been so friendly to radical feminism. But then again, never before has radical feminism been so eager to place itself at the forefront of the “fight against crime,” wholeheartedly supporting the basic premises and institutions of our society that underlie all oppression, including that of women.

Against Our Will, behind its strident feminist rhetoric, and precisely because of it, is a dangerous book. It is a law-and-order book that is picking up liberal support because in the case of rape, the victims of crime are members of an oppressed group. Like all cries for law and order these days, it is a book with strong racist overtones. It is a book which, unless repudiated, will serve to fan the fires of racism.

Susan Brownmiller would, of course, disagree. In her defense, she would point to her dazzling denunciation of Fogel and Engerman’s outrageous book, Time On the Cross. (That book states, among other things, that Black women weren’t all that exploited by slavery, which wasn’t really that bad.) And she would point to her own analysis of slavery, where she describes how “black women’s sexual integrity was deliberately crushed in order that slavery might profitably endure.” Her portrayal of racism in the special case where Black women are the direct victims is admirable.

This understanding, however, is negated by her steadfast refusal to recognize that Black women in U.S. society have at least as much in common with Black men as with white women, and that in some respects, notably relating to the legal system, racism has been considerably more oppressive to Black men than to Black women.

Ideas Not Unique to Brownmiller

Unfortunately, the ideas advanced in Against Our Will are not unique to Brownmiller. She is representative of a majority tendency in the white women’s movement, a narrow view of women’s consciousness which prevents the movement from developing programs making possible alliances with other oppressed groups. Any movement for women’s liberation which limits itself to issues affecting only women shuts itself off from dealing with all other forms of oppression and thereby rules out alliances with some of the strongest women throughout the world, on issues of the most decisive importance.

This pamphlet is divided into two parts. The first part is a critique of Against Our Will and the tendency it represents. The second part calls for a new form of women’s movement with a program and theory that will enable women to build a base powerful enough to begin to change society in such a way as will some day end the oppression of women, including the crime of rape.

Part I

According to Susan Brownmiller, rape is the source of women’s oppression. To put it another way, the ability to rape is the source of man’s domination of woman: to overcome oppression women must first divest men of the power to rape.

...we cannot work around the fact that in terms of human anatomy the possibility of forcible intercourse incontrovertibly exists. This single factor may have been sufficient to have caused the creation of the male ideology of rape. When men discovered they could rape, they proceeded to do it. (p. 14)

From this hypothesis, Brownmiller draws her theory of civilization.

...one of the earliest forms of male bonding must have been the gang rape of one woman by a band of marauding men. (p. 14)

Man’s discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire and the first crude stone axe. (p. 14)

After a thunderbolt of recognition that this particular incarnation of hairy two-legged hominid was not the Homo Sapiens with whom she would like freely to join parts, it might have been she, and not some man, who picked up the first stone and hurled it. (p. 14)

Female fear of an open season of rape...was probably the most important key to her historic dependence, her domestication by protective mating, (p. 16)

From prehistoric times to the present, I believe rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which ALL MEN keep ALL WOMEN in a state of fear. (p. 15)

Susan Brownmiller shares with other feminists the view that men as a group are the primary enemy of women as a group. Most feminists have concluded that women’s oppression goes back to the overthrow of matriarchal society. Brownmiller goes back even further to the self-consciousness of the first male “hairy hominid.” What these views have in common is a strategy for women’s liberation isolated from the fight against all other forms of oppression.

This analysis overlooks the connection between the social condition of women and their role in the process of production. The basic division in this society is between one class that owns and controls the means of production and another which does the actual work. Ruling class power rests on the competition among the workers. This competition is maintained by various kinds of inequalities imposed by the ruling class on different sectors of the population, or adapted by it from earlier social systems to serve current needs. Such is the case with the oppression of women.

Non-white people and women are kept in a state of inferiority vis a vis white people and men. When hard times come along, non-white people and women are the hardest hit: cutbacks in jobs, in services, etc. As times get better, everyone’s position tends to improve. But whites and men make gains from where they already are, namely, better off than non-whites and women.

Women’s oppression takes various forms. It is directly economic. Women get less pay than men for the same work. They are channelled away from the more financially (and intellectually) rewarding jobs. Because the better-paying industrial jobs are also the important ones to the functioning of the economy, women are thereby excluded from key areas of production. When jobs are scarce, like now, they get laid off before men. When needed by the ruling class, as in wartime, women are trotted out to fill jobs temporarily vacant. Being economically dependent on men, women are the stable element in the family—the unseen worker, without whose maintenance and upkeep many men could not work the long hours required of them by their employers. Many wives are the unpaid employees of their husband’s boss. The drudgery of housewifery in turn molds the social oppression of women—the dependent sex, the soft sex, the stupid, uninteresting sex, and the readily available sex. It is these factors that have shaped the politics of rape.

Social Relations, Not Biology

By viewing their status as a product of social relations rather than biology, women can devise a strategy for liberation based on alliances with other groups fighting oppression. From Susan Brownmiller’s analysis, that women’s shared oppression by men outweighs all potential for alliances along other lines, the decisive alliance is among women. In this framework, Happy Rockefeller has more in common with a Black woman in an auto plant than has a male Black autoworker.

The hostility with which the white women’s movement has frequently viewed movements which it fears might intrude on such an alliance is shared by Susan Brownmiller. Throughout her book she tries to divide society into the male oppressors and the female oppressed, with astonishing disregard for the shared oppression of Black and third world men and women. A revealing example of this viewpoint is her discussion of the campaign of terror waged by the Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction period.

Gerda Lerner...in her documentary history, Black Women in White America, makes the point that ‘there are no records of rape and violation of white women whose husbands or male relatives were associated with the Republican cause. Such practices were confined to black women.’ Since she calls attention to an omission for the purpose of making a case for the special political abuse of black women...I feel I must try to set the record straight, (p. 131)

Brownmiller fails to come up with any examples of rape of white women by the Klan during Reconstruction. Instead she cites one case in 1925 where the Grand Dragon of the Klan was actually arrested, tried and convicted of the rape and murder of a white woman. She also reports that, “Klansmen often whipped white women they accused of adultery.” From this paltry evidence, seemingly in opposition to Gerda Lerner’s point of view that Southern Black women were special victims of Klan terror, Brownmiller draws the following conclusion:

No one would want to deny that blacks were the special target of the Klan, and that black women suffered special abuse because they were women, but rather than try to separate out white women and claim they got off scot-free, a higher political understanding is gained by recognizing that sexual intimidation knows no racial distinctions, and that sexual oppression of white women and black women is commonly shared, (p. 131)

The function of the Ku Klux Klan was to terrorize the freed slaves who were the main force in the revolutionary Reconstruction governments. The Klan, therefore, directed its attack at Black political candidates, and Black and white people connected with the Freedmen’s Bureau and freedmen’s schools. The point is that the Klan, like any army, acted in a systematic manner with specific goals in mind. Rape of Black women, if not a calculated part of its plan of action, was at least a useful byproduct. Rape of white women would have undermined its efforts.

In other words, sexual intimidation certainly did know racial distinctions. It was precisely these distinctions that were used by the Klan and others to smash Reconstruction. All but a handful of progressive whites (both men and women) eventually succumbed to the pressure and lined up with the reactionaries against the Blacks. As Gerda Lerner writes:

...the Southern black community was, in fact, reduced to subsistence at the lowest economic level in a system of social oppression based on white racism. (Black Women in White America, p. 181)

White women were not blameworthy for not being raped, nor did they do any raping themselves. By silent acquiescence, however, and by eventually lining up on the wrong side, they were a part of the force that pushed down the Southern Black community.

It is this kind of defensiveness on behalf of white women, seen over and over in her book, that blinds Brownmiller to political reality and leads her not to a “higher political understanding,” as she claims, but to a position of isolation, and appalling racism and anti-communism. The most blatant examples of these tendencies are in the chapter devoted to...“A Question of Race.”

A Question of Race

There is a serious error in isolating rape statistics from the rising rate of crime in general. All crime is on the increase in the United States. Unemployment is the highest in thirty years. What is more important, the unemployment rate for non-whites is double that for whites, and the rate for non-white youth is six times that of the most favored group, white males over twenty. Public housing funds have been cut, medical care has deteriorated. There is an increase in the police and prison repression of third world communities. The U.S. economic system, itself built on world-wide violence, is in crisis. As people sit home, frustrated, unable to find work, often without the most elementary necessities, they lash out at each other. And there are plenty of violent models to choose from: movies, television, police shootings, and the activities of the government itself.

In times like these, with the ruling class trying to shift the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the Black and other third world people, white supremacy becomes even more lethal than usual. Today, one out of every ten Black youths will die a violent death before age thirty. To focus on the increase in rape, particularly Black on white rape, in isolation from the entire pattern and its causes, can only contribute to the repression and terror against Black people. It is in this context that racism, including the racist use of the rape charge, must be examined.

An entire chapter in Against Our Will deals with...“a question of race.” Here Brownmiller maintains, among other things, that the left, by its strenuous efforts over the years on behalf of Black men falsely accused of raping white women, has actually undermined the fight against rape. With sanctimonious fervor usually displayed by reformed alcoholics, she devotes several pages to baring her leftist path. Rhetorically setting forth how she enrolled in a course taught by Communist historian Herbert Aptheker during the 1950’s—“when most people could not say the word ‘Communist’ without trembling”—she bolsters her anti-left arguments with the personal touch and authority of one who has been there and who “knows.” One can appreciate the temptation to do this, but the fact remains that it is a cheap trick and not an argument. A serious reader will not be fooled by it.

In this chapter and elsewhere, Brownmiller lambastes the left, specifically the Communist Party, for buttressing male supremacy and for opportunism in its defense work on such cases as Scottsboro and Willie McGee. She dilutes her comments with a few drops of liberalism to make the whole thing seem “objective,” but her point is clear: where rape is the issue, the fight against racism has been a fight against women.

The left fought hard for its symbols of racial injustice, making bewildered heroes out of a handful of pathetic, semi-literate fellows caught in the jaws of Southern jurisprudence who only wanted to beat the rap...(p. 237)

For its part, the left, in its increasing paranoia (during the McCarthy period) and raging impotence, vilified and excoriated the hapless white woman whose original charge had wreaked such total destruction upon the hapless black. The standard defense strategy for puncturing holes in a rape case was (and is) an attempt to destroy the credibility of the complaining witness by smearing her as mentally unbalanced, or as sexually frustrated, or as an oversexed, promiscuous whore. In its mass protest campaigns to save the lives of convicted black rapists, the left employed all these tactics, and more, against white women with a virulence that bordered on hate. (p. 232–8)

Interracial rape remains a huge political embarassment to liberals. (p. 254)

Brownmiller points to the statistical rise in interracial (Black on white) rape and in part blames the “radicals” and the “white intellectual establishment” for making “heroes” of the convicted rapists. In an attempt to prove her thesis, Brownmiller deals in detail with three cases of Southern jurisprudence.

Scottsboro

...Scottsboro remains an ugly blot on American history and Southern jurisprudence, and damning proof to liberals everywhere that Eve Incarnate and the concept of Original Sin was a no-good promiscuous woman who rode a freight train through Alabama, (p. 230)

Briefly, “Scottsboro” is the tale of nine Black youths and a handful of whites, all male, who hopped a freight from Chattanooga into Alabama in the Depression year of 1931. During the ride, the whites tried to mess with the Blacks and a fight broke out. The whites, after losing, complained to a depot man at one of the stops. When he came on to investigate, he rounded up the youths, Black and white, along with two white women in overalls riding the rails. By the time they all got to Scottsboro, the nearest town, a raging mob had gathered, and the nine Blacks were accused of raping the two white women.

The Scottsboro case went through the courts for seventeen years. Haywood Patterson, who escaped from jail in 1948 after he had been tried and convicted four times, wrote a book about his ordeal, Scottsboro Boy. It should be required reading for everyone who has read Against Our Will.

Susan Brownmiller’s analysis of the Scottsboro case is so outrageous it shocks the conscience. It is utterly and irredeemably obscene. She agrees that the nine youths were innocent. Nonetheless, in her efforts to portray the “rape victims,” Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, as equally oppressed and innocent, she goes to extravagant lengths.

First, she states without documentation that they tried to “duck away and vanish” in the confusion “when the black and white youths were taken off the train.” Perhaps this is true. She also says that the women were merely trying to “save their own skins” from vagrancy charges. This, for sure, is true. Again in their defense, she claims that “the singular opportunity afforded Price and Bates should be appreciated by every woman.”

Right-thinking women might agree. Price and Bates had an opportunity to answer a question, “no,” and save nine innocent men from seventeen years in prison. But that’s not the opportunity Brownmiller is talking about.

From languishing in jail cells as the lowest of the low, vagrant women who stole rides on freight cars, it was a short step to the witness stand where dignity of a sort could be reclaimed by charging that they had been pathetic, innocent victims of rape. (p. 231)

This opportunity, wholly understandable to Brownmiller, she claims is nothing more than the motive from which some of the Scottsboro boys themselves were working.

Operating from precisely the same motivation—to save their own skins—some of the black defendants tried to exculpate themselves in court by swearing they had seen others do the raping, (p. 231–2)

This is a remarkable comparison. The Scottsboro boys were literally fighting for their own skins—and their necks: death by mob lynching or judicial lynching. The two young women were not fighting at all. The courtroom, while predominantly male (a fact dwelt upon by Brownmiller), was exclusively white. Here is how Haywood Patterson described the reading of the guilty verdicts:

The people in the court cheered and clapped after the judge gave out with the date of the execution. I didn’t like it, people feeling good because I was going to die. (Scottsboro Boy, p. 24)

I looked around. That courtroom was one big smiling white face. (p. 25)

The women, personally benefiting from the privilege of being white in Southern society, had seized upon an opportunity to be courtroom pets at the expense of nine lives. For them, the courtroom was anything but a hostile place. While they were poor and they were women, in that particular courtroom setting they were lionized. True, they were tragic women, but the comparison of them with their victims is disgusting.

Brownmiller draws comfort from the fact that the all-white jury that convicted the nine youths was all-male.

...no one, no political grouping, no appellate lawyer, no Scottsboro pamphlet ever raised the question of the exclusion of women from the jury rolls of Alabama, although many a pamphlet charged that Victoria Price was a prostitute (p. 232)

Women on juries is certainly an important demand. Twenty-five years later people in large numbers were talking about demands like that, to a considerable extent impelled by the example set by Blacks. But raising this to explain why nine Black youths were convicted based on false accusations of two white women misses the entire point of Scottsboro and similar cases. The Scottsboro boys didn’t need a jury to convict them. They were convicted by white opinion before they got to court. And they were convicted of being Black in a society based on white supremacy.

Haywood Patterson describes the mob that gathered outside the Scottsboro jail the first evening after they were arrested:

Round about dusk hundreds of people gathered about the jailhouse...We heard them yelling like crazy about how they were coming in after us and what ought to be done with us...(Scottsboro Boy, p. 17)

As evening came on the crowd got to be about five hundred, most of them with guns. Mothers had kids in their arms. Autos, bicycles, and wagons were parked around the place. People in and about them. (Scottsboro Boy, p. 18)

A lynching was a carnival. Women were as much a part of the public opinion bent on protecting their Southern womanhood as men were. It would not have done the Scottsboro boys any good to have been officially convicted by twelve women. Only a wholly Black jury—men or women—could have fairly judged the Scottsboro Boys.

The essence of Brownmiller’s outrage at the left seems to be that Victoria Price was portrayed in their defense campaigns as what Brownmiller calls “a woman of murky virtue.” When a woman has, in fact, been raped, and she is accused of asking for it by virtue of her reputation, this indeed is inexcusable. This has been the pattern when Black women are rape victims, and such character assassination certainly has been used to discredit the testimony of white rape victims as well. In this area, the women’s movement has made commendable advances in several states, reforming evidence codes to make a woman’s past sexual history irrelevant. The Scottsboro case, however, is an entirely different matter. Victoria Price had not been raped at all. (Her companion, Ruby Bates, in 1933 repudiated her testimony and admitted there had been no rape.) The fact remains that the Scottsboro Boys were convicted four times on Victoria Price’s perjured testimony—testimony that was corroborated by semen found in her vagina. The fact also remains that she had had intercourse in a Chattanooga hobo jungle the night before, and in Huntsville, Alabama, the night before that. These facts were not gratuitous slander, but a crucial part of the evidence that the semen was not put there by an accused Black rapist, let alone by nine of them. These facts, of course, Victoria Price elected to lie about and send nine men to death sentences, to “save her skin from a vagrancy charge.”

To prove the righteousness of her outrage at the treatment given the complaining witness, Brownmiller quotes from the judicial opinion which overturned Patterson’s second conviction. Judge Horton had ruled in a long, painstaking opinion that the jury’s guilty verdict was contrary to the weight of the evidence.

“History, sacred and profane,” he wrote, and the common experience of mankind teaches that women of the character shown in this case are prone for selfish reasons to make false accusations both of rape and of insult upon the slightest provocation, or even without provocation for ulterior purposes...The tendency on the part of the women shows they are predisposed to make false accusations upon any occasion whereby their selfish ends may be gained. (p. 234)

Susan Brownmiller spent four years meticulously researching this book. How odd that she should overlook the judge’s middle sentence (...), which reads as follows:

These women are shown, by the great weight of the evidence, on this very day before leaving Chattanooga, to have falsely accused two negroes of insulting them, and of almost precipitating a fight between one of the white boys they were in company with and these two negroes. (Scottsboro Boy, p. 294)

Why does Brownmiller work herself up into such a frenzy to protect this woman’s reputation?

Anti-Communism

According to Brownmiller, the left took on defense of Black men framed on rape charges with selfish opportunism. The men, after all, were only “pathetic, semi-literate fellows” and were therefore sitting ducks for exploitation by an American Communist movement that needed a rallying point to bring it out of the death throes of McCarthyism.

In 1951 the last Scottsboro ‘Boy,’ then a man of thirty-eight had finally won his freedom, his name superseded in the pantheon of obscure Southern black men suddenly elevated to the position of international martyr by a succession of new cases...(p. 235)

The early fifties were a bad time for the American left...To Communists and those within their orbit who believed in the political strategy of mass action built around an emotional symbol, the Southern interracial rape case came to epitomize everything that was rotten or unjust about the American way of life. (p. 235)

As a natural outgrowth of its politik, the Communist Party deliberately propagandized a series of interracial rape cases as symbolic of the perfidy of the American system, (p. 235)

Going still further, Brownmiller states, again with little documentation, that not only white women, but also those Black men aided by the left in the 1950’s were actually hurt by those efforts.

...because of the national hysteria of the McCarthyite years, any case the Communists took on and publicized became for all practical purposes a Communist cause from which others ran as if from the plague...Many a case was decided in the timid court of public opinion on the basis of whether or not a modest compromise—a commutation of the death sentence—would give aid and succor to the Communist cause, (p. 237)

This is the old outside agitator theory. “If only the reformers would shut up and go home, we could get on with the business of reform.” Here, however, the accusations are more serious. Although the South was lynching Blacks long before the Communist Party of the United States came to their defense, Brownmiller is actually accusing the commies of sending Black men to the death chair by their interference in Southern affairs.

Her prime example of Communist opportunism and symbolic work derived from a position of “impotence” and “paranoia” is the defense campaign on behalf of Willie McGee. McGee, a Black man, was sentenced to die for rape of a white woman in Laurel, Mississippi. His accuser was a woman whom people in Laurel, Black and white, all knew had been having an affair with McGee for a long time. The woman, Wilametta Hawkins, claimed she was raped by a Black man she could not identify. Whether she was actually raped by someone other than McGee, and McGee was merely arrested as a likely victim, or whether she was not raped at all, but blew the whistle when she figured out the whole town was talking, it was obvious to the people of Laurel that Willie McGee was innocent. Brownmiller herself, after casting doubt on McGee’s innocence for several pages, grudgingly acknowledges his innocence, based on the account by Carl Rowan. Rowan, at the time a northern news reporter, having interviewed many Laurel townsfolk who knew about the affair between McGee and Hawkins, chose not to come forward with the information, for fear of playing ball with the commies. Later, after McGee had been executed, Rowan apparently got his courage back. He then wrote his story, with what Brownmiller calls “great sensitivity to its lasting ambiguities.”

Brownmiller sees the McGee case as another example of vilification of a white woman and an isolated gasp of the Communist Party for recognition at her expense. The truth is something different and something everyone should know. For all the dismal errors the Communist Party of the United States has made, in its defense of Black men framed on rape charges, it has had a distinguished career.

Laurel, Mississippi, was a one-industry town dominated by the Masonite Corporation. Masonite employees had been organized into a militant CIO union, where Black and white workers had the makings of a unified workforce. During the middle 1940’s, the CIO was engaged in an organizing drive through the South. McGee was arrested November 3, 1945, during the wave of strikes that swept the country after World War II. His frame-up was instrumental in disrupting the growing unity between white and Black workers. This case was not an isolated incident. At the same time, in the same county, there was a celebrated “miscegenation” trial.

It was a losing battle for McGee. The governor of Mississippi publicly declared that if the State did not kill McGee, he’d do it himself. A coalition of women from all over the country was put in jail “in protective custody” when they went to appeal to the governor shortly before McGee’s execution.

In this context, the leftist explanation of the rape charge as one method by which the state assists private enterprise for power and profit is not the ferocious, ridiculous rhetoric Brownmiller claims. It is an accurate description of a mechanism used, with others, to further divide an already divided working class—a useful tool to pit white against Black workers to prevent successful strikes and moves for higher wages and better working conditions. In Laurel the ploy succeeded. Fifteen hundred whites on the courthouse lawn cheered McGee’s execution the night he was finally electrocuted. There were women in that crowd.

Brownmiller ignorantly counterposes what she calls the “authentic, black-originated southern civil rights movement” of the 1960’s with the situation in Laurel in 1945.

...the new movement started not with symbolic cases, but with pragmatic efforts at lunch counter desegregation and voter registration, (p. 235)

She apparently knows as little about the rape charge and the civil rights movement of the 1960’s as she knows about the rape charge of 1945. In 1961, at the height of the “authentic” lunch counter sit-in movement, Thomas Wansley, age sixteen, was arrested in Lynchburg, Virginia, and convicted of rape. The hysteria that pervaded the community not only convicted Wansley, it crippled the civil rights movement. A protest movement got his death sentence reversed and reduced to life, but in 1976 he is still in prison.

A white man found guilty of raping an eleven-year-old girl in Lynchburg at that time got five years. In late 1959, during the “authentic” voter registration drive, Mack Charles Parker, charged with rape, was turned over to a Mississippi mob by jail guards and lynched by seven men. The list goes on and on.

[...]

Law and Order

[...]

Given the realities of prison, and its utter failure as a deterrent as well as a rehabilitative measure, one can ask whether Brownmiller is really interested in ending rape. It is obvious that she is interested in selling books. Her approach ignores the reality of U.S. prisons, which are breeding grounds for crime, particularly for rape, as homosexual rape seems to be universal in men’s prisons. A prisoner who comes out of jail is angrier, more economically deprived, and less able to deal with the world than when he went in. Her approach also fails to deal with the realities of the criminal justice system. The legal system in this country is an automatic railroad for Black defendants. A solution to rape that calls for more prosecution is a solution that is designed to put more Black men in jail, whether or not they have committed any crimes.

Brownmiller’s solutions are consistent with this approach: fifty percent women on the police forces, vigorous prosecutions, reduce the penalty for rape so juries won’t be so reluctant to convict, outlaw pornography and clean up prostitution, and karate lessons for women.

I am convinced that the battle to achieve parity with men in the critical area of law enforcement will be the ultimate testing ground on which full equality for women will be won or lost. (p. 388)

A fine solution. Brownmiller calls it a “revolutionary goal of utmost importance to women’s rights.” It is The Fifty Percent Solution. Brownmiller suggests an equal demand in the army and national guard, state troopers, sheriffs, and among the ranks of prosecuting attorneys. Why stop there? How about a movement for women’s revolutionary right to drop 50% of U.S.-made napalm from 50% of all U.S. bombers, or to spy on 50% of citizens the president characterizes as his enemies (women might be especially good spying on other women), or maybe to plot 50% of the assassinations of leaders of third world countries engaged in struggles for national liberation? Susan Brownmiller probably just didn’t think of those ideas.

Back to Reality

[...]

There is no evidence that female police will be less corrupt than males. The entire law enforcement systems at least of large cities are based on corruption. The F.B.I. spreads deathly rumors about one group of Black youths to another, to prevent unity among Black people and keep them at each other’s throats. The city police bring heroin into Black and Latin communities for the same reason, giving one faction the exclusive franchise to deal. A good lawyer is one who knows who to pay off and how much: witnesses, police, prosecutors, courtroom personnel, judges—all the positions Brownmiller wants to fill up with women. Women certainly have the right to 50% of capitalism’s graft. But that is not a revolutionary demand.

A genuine movement against pornography would rely on mass action, not legalistic maneuvers. It would mobilize large numbers of women to stop, by direct action, the printing, showing, shipping, and circulation of books, films, and other items which contribute to the degradation and subjugation of women. (One example has recently been reported from Britain, where in one town, the opponents of a dirty movie house greet its patrons with cries of “shame,” snap their pictures, and publicize them. Reports are that business has fallen off considerably.)

Brownmiller’s solutions are the only ones a narrow feminist can propose. They pose absolutely no challenge to the structure of our society. In fact, they bolster its framework: make more laws, put more criminals (Black people) in jail, beef up police forces and make them half women, give guns to women to shoot men, make our streets safe for women, and build more jails, even if they don’t do a thing to stop crime. This is why the press loves Susan Brownmiller’s book. And this is why any liberation movement, including the movement for women’s liberation, should hate it. Law-and-order solutions won’t liberate women. Law-and-order solutions will just create a police state in which nobody will be free.

Part II

Most white women who join the women’s movement start with at least some of the premises set forth by Susan Brownmiller. While they may not go so far as to call rape the origin of women’s oppression, they consider male domination to be the perpetuating force of women’s inequality. From here, the white women’s movement concludes that all women share a common oppression which forms a tie that binds women more powerfully than any other.

By deliberately picking programs designed (at least theoretically) to draw in women of all races and classes, the movement seeks to unite women based upon this shared oppression. Thus, women’s centers all over the country have consciousness-raising sessions and legal clinics that concentrate on divorce. They have rape crisis centers, pregnancy testing services, abortion referral services, and legalistically oriented employment discrimination task forces that inevitably get bogged down in a few cases as they crawl upward through the courts for years.

Every one of these problems does, in fact, exist for all women. But the programs built around them fail to draw in large numbers of women from any group except the white middle class. Other women may revolve through the organizations for services or check out the groups for a time, but they do not join the movement.

Many committed members of the women’s movement, as well as many of its sympathetic critics, have long voiced concern that, “Women’s Liberation is all white.” These are women who do not want the women’s movement to retain its narrow focus and constituency, yet the trend of bourgeois whiteness continues. Why is this happening?

One answer to this question is that the problems most immediate to non-white women are not those that have been taken up by the women’s movement. While some women from all races and classes get raped, need divorces, or do the same job as some man for less money, these are not the salient problems for Black and third world women. Let us take an example of a married, pregnant, Black woman who already has two sons and two daughters.

1. She has a four times greater chance of dying in childbirth than a pregnant white woman (before World War II she had only a two times greater chance, and in 1949 a three times greater chance);

2. The chance that her baby will die at birth is twice that of a white woman’s baby;

3. Each of her sons has a 10% chance of dying a violent death before he is thirty years old. If the baby she is carrying turns out to be a boy, there is a 33$\frac{1}{3}$% chance that one of her sons will die this way before age thirty;

4. She is more likely than a white woman to come out of the hospital having been sterilized;

5. Her nine-year-old daughter has been suspended from a 98% Black public school for kicking a teacher who was pulling her hair;

6. The economic crisis has resulted in her husband losing the job he had held for eight years. Although the layoffs at his company have left an all-white workforce, the union says they can’t do anything for him. Under the union seniority agreement, the last person hired is the first person fired, and before the 1964 Civil Rights Act there were no Black people hired;

7. Her chances of getting a job are slim. Black women now have the highest unemployment rate in the U.S., above Black men, whose unemployment rate is far above white women. (White men over age twenty are the most favored group.)

What does the women’s movement have to offer this woman?

Historically, the most menial, unskilled, lowest-paying jobs in this society have been reserved for Black women. For this reason, they have often been able to find jobs when Black men could not (a trend that now seems to be changing, perhaps as domestic and unskilled production work has been further automated). Thus, Black women have always accepted the need to work to survive. More fortunate Black women whose families could come up with a little money tended to become teachers and nurses. Because of the lack of comparable jobs for Black men, families would often send their daughters rather than their sons to school. This is not to suggest that there are not many Black men with steady jobs. Nor is it to suggest that Black women have any power in the United States—any more than Black men. But as between Black men and women, as a group, there is a greater sense of equality and a greater sense of independence on the part of Black women than there is in the relationships between white men and women.

For these reasons, getting out of the kitchen and into a job is not a liberating goal for Black women as a group. Nor is there much to relate to in the various concepts of women’s consciousness raised by the women’s liberation movement: rape as the source of women’s oppression, “femininity” as a control mechanism to keep women weak and in constant competition with each other, sexist jokes as a mechanism to keep women down by humiliation and ridicule, sexual equality, shared housework, etc. To Black women over the years, the fight has been for survival of their families and survival of Black people generally. And Black women have almost unanimously agreed that their liberation as women depends on improvement of life in their communities and cannot be won apart from the liberation of Black men. A movement that does not take this into account will not win Black women. And a women’s movement without Black women will not free itself of bourgeois domination and become a revolutionary movement. In fact, a white women’s movement that does not align itself with Black women’s struggle for liberation cannot be considered a women’s movement at all.

What Does This Mean For The Women’s Liberation Movement?

It is time for white women to develop an alternative strategy to the white Women’s Liberation Movement. It is time to pose programs that will build a mighty, unified movement—a force that can deal a decisive blow to the network of capitalism, racism and sexism that devours women. Such a movement must take up as its own and as its priority the fight against white supremacy.

[...]

Programs

A proletarian revolution is an absolute necessity for the liberation of women. Conversely, an autonomous women’s movement is an absolute necessity as part of a strategy for proletarian revolution. Without an independent women’s movement, there is no guarantee that the male supremacy now rampant in bourgeois society or, for that matter, within the proletarian movement or in any party, will be challenged. Thus, without a women’s movement there is no assurance that even under socialism the ideological superstructure of male dominance and male superiority will be undercut. Furthermore, without a revolutionary struggle against male supremacy, the fight against capitalist domination will not succeed.

The task of the women’s movement is to win liberation for women by aligning itself with the proletariat. Tactically, this means developing programs which focus on issues of special concern to women and which are, at the same time, able to mobilize women for mass action. Within this category of programs, those of special concern to non-white women must be taken up as a priority, and those which in any way undermine the fight for equality by non-white people must be rejected, whether or not they have organizing potential for women. Projects which involve working alliances with the police and prosecutors almost invariably fall into the latter category.

The second part of a successful women’s movement must be to educate those women active in its mass programs about the nature of imperialism and capitalism, and their direct link to oppression of non-white people and women in the United States and elsewhere. This task is particularly significant in areas where support groups exist for various movements for national liberation in third world countries.

[...]

Lilia Melani and Linda Fodaski, The Psychology of the Rapist and His Victim (1974)

Lilia Melani and Linda Fodaski, “The Psychology of the Rapist and His Victim” in Rape: The First Sourcebook for Women, by New York Radical Feminists, edited by Noreen Connell and Cassandra Wilson. New American Library, 1974.

The attempt of the rape conference was to examine the nature of sexual assault. Although the direction of the study was only vaguely suggested by the criminological and psychiatric literature, the conviction grew among feminists that women are victimized and abused not only by street violence and deviant sexuality but, indeed, by the total sexual system of the present culture, a culture that deprives them of sexual autonomy and exploits them as inferior sexual objects. By rape we mean any assaultive or humiliating act perpetrated on a woman through her demeaned sexual status. It is understood that rape is fundamentally an aggressive rather than a sexual act, that its motivation and dynamics arise out of hostility rather than sexual need, and that this hostility is only the final expression in series of indignities and prejudices continually heaped on women in this culture.

One problem that arises in analyzing the motivation and behavior of the rapist is that of identification—just who is to be classified as a rapist? The legal classifications of rape, statutory and assaultive, are inadequate for many reasons. The charge of statutory rape, designed to protect virgins by setting an arbitrary age of consent (varying from sixteen to twenty-one in various states), is a fundamental denial of female sexual autonomy. A young woman is discouraged from experimenting sexually with companions of her own age level.[1] Boys who satisfy their sexual desire with similarly motivated girls are legally declared rapists and fall into the same category as assaultive offenders. The only real connection between statutory rape and assaultive rape is that both deny the female the right to choose the sexual experience; on the one hand, the law restricts the female minor from having sex, on the other, the rapist forces her to submit to it. Even discussions of assaultive rape, however, have limited application since they represent only the barest minimum of actual rapes. Few of the forcible rapes by strangers—let alone acquaintances, friends, or family—are reported to the police; government agencies conclude that rape is one or the most under-reported crimes—the crime that victims are most reluctant to talk about. Of the small number of men arrested for the few forcible rapes reported in 1967, only 62 percent nationwide were prosecuted for the charge of rape; 34 percent were found guilty of rape, 17 percent were convicted of lesser charges.[2] Furthermore, records often show only the charge for which a person was convicted, and this is frequently a lesser offense than that for which he was arrested. What this means is that few of the men who commit rape are ever arrested, much less convicted. Yet most studies of rapists survey men in prison, although it is clear from other sources—Attica, for example—that the prison population, with its high concentration of oppressed groups, does not reflect our society as a whole. In other words, the phenomenon of rape is a great deal more pervasive than we think and is conspicuous, for the most part, only where it is considered socially repugnant (as in the South, when a black man rapes a white woman) or excessively brutal (as in the cases of rape-murder).

Bearing in mind that current reports of rapists may apply only, or primarily, to men in prison, we can still profitably examine the psychological and sociological opinion in the literature on sexual offense. The studies persist in grouping rape with what are, legally, classified as sex crimes, i.e., homosexuality, voyeurism, indecent exposure. This classification, however, disregards the true nature of sexuality and the real rationale of the dynamics of sexual laws. Sexuality includes actions that give an individual pleasure through erotic contact and stimulation. It is valid as long as it involves responsible and mutual consent and is not injurious to the persons involved or to anyone else. Our sex laws, however, originate from a belief in the necessity for population increase and consequent sexual conformity. Every form of sexual activity that neither produces children (e.g., homosexuality) nor produces them in a socially acceptable way (rape and fornication) is made illegal. Our sexual laws, in other words, deny the individual the right to free and full sexual experience. The association of the rapist, who violates another person, with the homosexual, who exercises a natural sexual option, reflects the degree of control that society exercises over individual preference. This basis of our sexual laws is shown by its extension into and justification by psychiatry. Benjamin Karpman, a pioneer in the psychodynamics of sexual offense, comments, “It is entirely true that many modern humans’ sex acts are often engaged in without the thought of procreation; but most humans are bent on raising a family, which is the foundation of our society and assures the continuation of the race. Where the individual lacks this trend and only recognizes the need for sexual intercourse as a need per se, we are, I am sure, dealing with a neurotic situation.”[3]

It is, to a great extent, sexual nonconformity that strikes the most intensive blow at our collective morality. Homosexuality and rape can evoke equivalent distaste because they both transcend the limits of “proper behavior.” That the latter brutally violates another person becomes, in the legal and moral scheme, essentially obscured. Indeed, rape, in its great variety of forms, may be more acceptable, because the elements that produce it (viz., aggression-submission) function in all human relationships, most of which are structured, to a very great degree, around the exertion of power.

How different is predatory criminal rape from “normal” sexual behavior? We suggest that the difference is essentially one of degree, that we live in a culture that, at best, condones and, at worst, encourages women to be perennial victims, men to be continual predators, and sexual relations to be fundamentally aggressive. First, psychiatric and popular opinion maintain that woman is by nature masochistic, and that this trait achieves its fullest expression during the sex act. For example, “it should be borne in mind that a masochistic component is present in the female at the height of sexual passion.”[4] We find Freud remarking that everything active and powerful is masculine, everything passive and weak is feminine. “To the end of his life he maintained his assumption that the libido (the energy of the sexual instinct) is always masculine. Consequently, he could not account for any positive manifestations of sexual feeling or any voluntary sexual activity in the female except by making another assumption, that all such feelings and activities arise from a masculine component of their nature.”[5] In other words, men assert themselves sexually and women do not. Men are again and again encouraged to show force and/or dominance, to disregard the weak refusals of the female, and when persuasion fails, simply to overpower the passive partner with aggression and control. The pressure to be masculine, in fact, is implicitly an underlying factor in much sexual assault. Some studies have discovered an unconscious passivity in violent sex offenders which was concealed by excessive aggression. Disregarding the dignity of women, many of the assaulters (studied by Glueck) “showed no concern for their partners’ sexual response or gratification, and many...had no idea of how a woman responded, that she could have an orgasm, or that she might be an important component of sexual intercourse.”[6] Many men, in fact, achieve greater potency when confronted with female resistance; overcoming resistance is one mechanism of rape: it degrades the woman and satisfies the rapist’s need for sexual control. Through the sense of dominance belittles the sexual object and satisfies hostile impulses directed toward women.[7]

Two patterns are significant in sexual domination: (1) it fulfills the cultural image of male supremacy; and (2) it symbolizes the inferiority of the offender and expresses what is actually an overcompensation for sexual inadequacy. In the first case we find, in the early lives of many convicted rapists, an indication of great parental friction, with a violent father abusing an ineffectual mother. The culturally established images of male aggressiveness and female weakness, learned from the parents and approved by society in general, are thus duplicated symbolically and physically in the explosive act of rape. In the second case, concerning male inadequacy, we find many suggestions of insecurity and submissiveness in the offenders’ childhoods. The submissiveness, used to conceal the hostility toward parental authority, later becomes a source of fear and insecurity for the adult male. For aggressiveness and destructiveness constitute acceptable male behavior, while femininity is identified with passivity. Passivity, therefore, represents the greatest threat to the “sense” of masculinity, and it is not surprising that studies have revealed “a substratum of unconscious passivity” in perpetrators of violent crimes, the offenders having concealed this with an exaggerated or pretended masculinity.[8] It is the unconscious fear of femininity that drives this type of rapist, again and again, to attack the submissive female; he destroys what he fears most in himself. An interesting and tragic illustration of this power of the feminine can be found in a report on the Philadelphia prison system filed on September 2, 1968. Male homosexual assaults were epidemic although the vast majority of aggressors and victims had no previous homosexual history. “Virtually every slightly built young man committed by the courts was sexually approached within a day or two after his admission. Many of these men were overwhelmed and repeatedly raped by gangs of inmate aggressors. Others were compelled by the terrible threat of gang rape to seek protection by entering into a housekeeping arrangement with an individual tormentor.”[9] The report stated that none of the aggressors considered himself homosexual. Rather, he saw his behavior as an “impression of masculinity.” What do we have in this prison picture, in this microcosm of society’s power plays, but the enforcement of our own sexual codes with force operating on the weaker from the more aggressive? The kept prisoner, like the married woman, protected at home by the husband, is cautioned to avoid the “world” with its physical and sexual dangers. The female or the surrogate female becomes the property of the male, the most obvious illustration of this occurring in the marriage ceremony where the father “gives the woman away,” or transfers ownership.

The woman whose connection to, or ownership by, a man is not immediately clear, is vulnerable to attack by any man, fair game for all men. That is why a woman’s place is in the home where her husband (as in the territorial imperative) has total reign. The real motive behind imprisoning the woman in the home is to force her to perform society’s tasks (e.g., bearing and raising children), and one way to keep her there is to make the outside environment threatening to females. A woman who is raped while alone at night or in a deserted place is blamed for “asking for it.” The implication is that her behavior disregards safety precautions; the extension of this is that she is responsible for any harm done to her, and she is, in fact, frequently accused of desiring her own rape. A man in the same situation, who might be robbed or mugged, is not judged this harshly. The actuality is that both men and women are attacked in such circumstances because of their vulnerability. And the crux of rape is woman’s vulnerability. Women are conditioned to be helpless property requiring the protection of a male owner. We find John Kercher implying that the home is the right place for woman, and that she maybe raped because she leaves it, when he says:

Before the First World War women were satisfied to be housewives. After the war, they enjoyed independence, they lived and worked as men did. Men lost their jobs owing to women’s competition and found it hard to build up a family because of women’s independence. Millions of men without jobs, without money, without home, and mates, without ability to work off surplus energy, with enforced idleness and sexual urge ungratified, and with animosity towards women in general, committed an unusual number of sex crimes or rape.[10]

Kercher, apparently, sees no connection between the war itself as brutalizing force and the violent expression of hostility. An interesting illustration of this traditional idea that “a woman’s place is in the home” occurred on February 24, 1968, after two women were murdered in the street. The New York Times reported that a task force of plainclothesmen was set up to protect women who have to use the streets at night (emphasis added). Such a phrase would seem strange indeed used with reference to men. The formation of this squad and its implicit suggestion that women should remain at home are especially remarkable since they ignore completely a third rape-murder which occurred at the same time, that of a twenty-one-year-old mother who was killed in her own apartment. The fact that a considerable percentage of reported rapes occur in the victim’s home is generally ignored when we think or talk about rape.

The focus on the kind of rapist who attacks strangers on deserted streets obscures the fact that nearly everything in our sexual system implies the rape relationship and encourages the male to go out and “take” the female. A common male belief, arising, naturally enough, from sexual miseducation, is that when a male feels the sexual urge, “he’s got to have it.” This misconception leads, in fact, to a whole set of misguided notions about rape—primarily, that it arises out of excessive potency and great sexual need. But it is true that rapists have no source of sexual outlet? A surprising proportion of the rapists studied are or have been married. John Mohr found in his study that fourteen out of the thirty-eight rapists were married and three separated; only one of the rapists over twenty had not been married.[11] Bernard Oliver presents 59 percent as married or living in common-law relationships.[12] In addition, the idea of the rapist as unusually potent was rejected by most experts, as well as by the fact that many rapists are unable to maintain an erection or to ejaculate. Glueck rejects sexual desire as a motive for rape; indeed the rapist emerges, from Glueck’s studies, as a man who experienced difficulties from his earliest sexual encounters. Only 10 percent of all rapists enjoyed their first ejaculation, 43 percent experienced mild anxiety or disgust, 37 percent severe anxiety or disgust. Seventy-three percent still suffered moderate to severe anxiety after intercourse, a lack of pleasure Glueck believed to be a significant factor in rape. Sixty-three percent regarded women in a derogatory manner, dissociating sexuality from love. This distaste for women is reflected by the fact that approximately half of the rapists avoided sex with women menstruating, many feeling extreme disgust like nausea or hostility. Very few had the “concept of an equal, sharing, mutually satisfying relationship with women.”[13]

As distasteful and inferior as the female may be, she remains an object of desire, to be had, as the concubines of American slavery; and the having remains an enhancement to the sense of masculinity. In addition, the male has been told that women like strong, commanding men, that women do not know what they want, that they say “no” though they mean “yes,” that he must insist. If the woman is a “tease,” the man may feel he has the right to punish her with rape. Gebhard comments on the “curiously self-righteous” attitude of this type of rapist, whose moral hypocrisy extends to the female who has had or is believed to have had sexual encounters (i.e., the “school whore” who is actually a virgin). By having had previous sexual experience, without belonging to one man, she has forfeited the right to refuse any man. Menachim Amir found a significant association between rape and victims with “bad” reputations in victim precipitated rape: that is, rapes which ensued because the man interpreted the woman’s behavior as an invitation or a sign of availability.[14] In any case, overpowering even the not-too-willing female is implicitly condoned, encouraged, or accepted as biologically inevitable. We find one of the experts saying:

Any reasonably experienced male has learned to disregard [the] minor protestations of the female...a male is supposed to be physically forceful in his sexual behavior....Actually there is some sound biology behind this supposition. In many mammals coitus is ordinarily preceded by a physical struggle...The physiological by-products of excitement and exertion—the increased heart rate, increased breathing, muscle tension, the greater supply of blood to the body surfaces, etc.—all of these are also a part of sexual response and it is easy to see how these physiological conditions could facilitate a subsequent sexual response.[15]

Once we accept the relationship of aggression and submission; once we recognize force or struggle as an integral component of the sexual courtship (as in the battle of the sexes), it follows that the sex act itself is only a less emphatic expression of all those elements that make up criminal rape. The connection between rape and “normal” sex is concealed and made generally ambiguous in our society. On the one hand, men react to rape with the same horror that they experience in seeing their property damaged (which is no small emotion considering our great “love” of property). On the other hand, sexual abuse is minimized and covertly accepted in all but a few cases (those which concern total strangers). Although murder and aggravated assault are clearly related to forcible rape in being aggressive acts against the person, rape is, in effect, dissociated from the others. The FBI Uniform Crime Report comments that most murders and aggravated assaults are committed by relatives or friends of the victim.[16] In the case of sexual assault, however, the more closely acquainted the victim is with her attacker, the less likely are the police and courts to believe the charge of rape. The implication is that the woman who agrees to the company of a man is, automatically, making herself sexually accessible. This illogicality is carried to its ultimate conclusion in the legal fact that there can be no rape in marriage, the wife having given her permanent sexual consent to her husband.

The frequently stated belief that there are few crimes in which false charges are more easily and confidently made than in rape, leads, in the courtroom, to the victim herself being on trial; suspected of lying, she must prove her innocence. Furthermore, she must be prepared to defend her entire sexual mode; any deviation from conventional morality weakens her credibility, a fact that causes many rapists to charge, in their defense, that the woman was a prostitute seeking revenge for nonpayment. One defense based on these assumptions occurs in gang rapes: “...but I was fifth.”

Another assumption, this one from medical jurisprudence, also against a woman’s credibility in courts: that is, that no healthy adult female resisting vigorously can be raped by one unarmed man. This belief is asserted universally, though it has never actually been proved; in addition, it conveniently ignores many psychological factors in the woman. A comparable statement would be that no healthy adult can be robbed or mugged if he resists a single, unarmed assailant. Opinions and judgments unfavorable to women radiate from this premise, like tentacles from an octopus. It is at the heart of the reasoning for the stringent corroborative evidence required by many states. Morris Ploscowe objects to defining as rape any assault in which the penis merely touches the vulva or vagina; he believes the penis must penetrate fully, as this is more susceptible of proof.[17] Again, apply this criterion to assaultive crimes: how deep must a stab wound be, how deep a bullet, to penetrate?

The myth of woman’s physical un-rapability ignores the fact that the woman is, all her life, discouraged from asserting herself physically, emotionally, socially, or financially; she is encouraged generally to submit to men’s demands. Women, constantly propositioned by men and even manhandled (the phrase is no accident), are trained to feel that they must be gentle and inoffensive in their rejections. This conditioning, which makes many women afraid or incapable of opposing men (the woman’s marriage vow runs, significantly, “love, honor, and obey”), also reduces the verbal and physical forcefulness of their resistance, and it is thus easy for men to ignore or mistake their meaning, with disastrous consequences to the woman. Furthermore, women are advised by expert and layman alike to submit to rape rather than be killed. Yet a glance at statistics about murder reveals that there are, relative to the number of murders, few rape murders. Edwin H. Sutherland, after tabulating the murders reported by The New York Times in 1930, 1935, and 1940, found that of the 324 women murdered, only 17 had been raped or seem to have been raped. He concluded that:

The danger of murder by relative or other intimate associate is very much greater than the danger of murder by an unknown sex fiend. In fact, in one of the three years as many females were reported to have been murdered by policemen—two cases, both involving drunkenness of the policemen—as by the so-called sex fiends.[18]

This myth of the murderous sex fiends serves the valuable function of keeping women frightened and submissive. Gebhard reports that few of the rapists interviewed had been even bitten or scratched, so intimidated were the women; he adds that few women are willing to commit the necessary brutalities to defend themselves, as in most rapes the attacker’s eyes or genitals are vulnerable at some moment.

The victim’s encounters with police only duplicate and intensify the defenselessness she has already suffered through sexual attack; many policemen, believing that women invite rape, show a prurient interest in the crime and persist in asking questions about its details (i.e., “Did you climax?”). Even if the policeman is sympathetic, it seems unreasonable to expect a woman, just violated by a man, to turn to other men for comfort, guidance, and redress. But this illogicality makes sense if we remember the appropriate female role: that is, to turn to the male for protection and security, the male who has humiliated her, degraded her, and traditionally, rendered her powerless. The source of her weakness is not only concealed but presented as the source of her strength and salvation.

Why this distrust on the part of police, of courts, of men in general? The male is aware, apparently, at some level of consciousness, of the hostility that exists in relationships between the sexes, a hostility that arises inevitably when men have power and women do not. Knowing how he had used his power against women, sexually and nonsexually, the male also feels vulnerable to a charge of rape; he has probably forced or manipulated some woman to submit to him, a woman not in a position to deny his sexual demands, because she needs the job, because she needs his approval, or his money, because she needs his help as an analyst, a lawyer, or a teacher. So, of course, men in self-protection, and in common cause with other men, have been reluctant to believe a woman’s claim that a male friend, relative, or acquaintance has raped her.

Women’s outrage and injury are perpetually minimized by the courts, by police, and by men in general. Women are accused of enticing men into sexual uncontrollability or of seeking revenge after a quarrel (hell hath no fury like a woman scorned). This view of women as seductive or acquiescent to male desire figures significantly in the fact that convicted rapists denied their guilt more frequently than nonsexual prisoners. Gebhard found that only 52 percent admitted their aggression to authorities, 57 percent to his staff.[19] That many of these rapists charged that women encouraged them or became aroused during the course of the rape made them sound sincere; they were perhaps mistaken through distorted beliefs rather than lying. It is this ring of sincerity that contributes to the difficulty of prosecution. Glueck received the impression that “most of the men were partially or completely seduced by their so-called victims.” Gebhard’s staff held a similar belief until they checked official reports which indicated that a supposedly willing woman required five stitches in her lip. For this and other reasons Gebhard recommends that “in the absence of witnesses or evidence, the woman’s word weighs more than that of the man.”[20]

Psychologists and other experts have little sympathy with the female victim. They are acquainted with theories of female masochism and hidden sexual motivation and hence of her consequent responsibility for victimization. Bernard Oliver discusses an article written by a rape victim; she states that the rape she experienced at age thirteen has made her neither bitter nor ashamed, though one wonders why she wrote anonymously. She compares the rape to the breaking of a leg or an arm with accompanying discomfort, awkwardness, and a mild unhappiness which soon disappeared. Oliver approves of her submission and concludes: “Victims can usually escape prolonged effects of the experience of rape if they are able to develop a sound emotional attitude toward it.”[21] What this means is, a great number of women who might understand the horror of rape dissociate themselves, ultimately, from the victim, through their identification with male power and their fear of association with someone who is suspect. “Did she ask for it?” the other woman wonders, and thinks, smugly or fearfully, that she is impervious to rape. If the victim is held responsible other women can comfort themselves with the belief that “proper behavior” will protect them.

For the man who is connected with the rape victim, his masculinity is affected in two ways: (1) his possession of the woman is no longer complete (the importance of exclusivity or possession is clearly indicated by our cultural emphasis on fidelity, particularly for the woman); (2) he has failed in his obligation or role as protector and may experience her rape as his failure, with resulting resentment and hostility.

Clearly it is necessary for society that rape be seen as an aberration, that the rapist be seen as a man different, fundamentally, from other men in his sexual nature and emotional structure. In reality, his behavior and attitudes are shared in varying degrees by everyone in our culture. Indeed, the rapist has been shown to have more in common with the general population than all other types of sexual offenders. Studies that use control groups of nonsexual offenders (chosen from the general prison population) consistently indicate that rapists are more closely related to the control than to other sexual offenders. Glueck found that, “in terms of their general personality organization these men [rapists] were closest to the offender-controls in every area investigated. They showed a more aggressive, outgoing, impulsive type of personality...and were somewhat better integrated into community activities because of this.”[22]

In the final analysis it seems clear that we have all been raised on sexual images of male and female acquiescence. From the earliest ages we are exposed to male fantasies about females; thus, women, struggling with and guilty for their own active urges, came, tragically, to identify with the male sensibility, so pervasive is it. Female sexuality remains painfully undefined and unfulfilled. When a woman attempts to become a sexual being instead of an object, she is regarded with suspicion or condemned outright. For the female adolescent who engages in sex is “incorrigible,” the female adult who has premarital or extramarital sex is promiscuous, and the woman who tries to affirm her own sexuality, to be active and directive, is called castrating or nymphomaniacal.

There is little in womanhood that we can identify with power or sexual dynamism. Women are called sexy, to be sure, but more for their physical qualities than for their sexual sensitivity. And after all the cultural encouragement of male sexuality and the repression of female sexuality, we are told that men, biologically, have greater need and desire, that it is more painful for men to go sexually unsatisfied, that men have a harder time doing without; and the proof of this barrage of nonsense is the sex maniac whose uncontrollable urges compel him to attack. Interestingly, the few women who are believed to have uncontrollable urges (i.e., nymphomaniacs) attack no one, not being trained for aggression and violence.

In actuality, it is not only female sexuality that is thwarted in women but also the sense of herself as a “being.” It is indeed more comfortable to see her in her relation to men, to see her, in de Beauvoir’s terms, as the “other.” Morris Ploscowe introduces his discussion of rape with this idea: “His [the rapist’s] activities strike a sphere where man is most sensitive: the sexual honor of the female, whether the female be wife, mother, daughter, or sister.”[23]

The implication here is that, for men, rape is reprehensible because it threatens their honor or power. Women, that is, have no power or honor within themselves; they are defined in terms of their relationship to men. This sort of depreciation is part of the general depersonalization of women, a phenomenon that makes it easier to commit aggressive acts against them; indeed women’s bodies when not sold directly in prostitution or marriage, are used to sell other objects like cars or cigarettes or plane rides. The depersonalization that allows men to attack women enables them also to dismiss women’s attempts at justice for the indignities that burden them. And, as we have seen, women are indeed blamed for the many ways in which they “ask for it.” A woman alone is “asking for it.” A woman who is enticing “asks for it.” It seems, then, that woman is trapped by a contradictory and paradoxical set of demands and expectations. She performs these functions. Men continually regard women as sexual objects, their primary function being to fulfill sexual needs and fantasies. Despite recent acknowledgements of the fact that women, too, have sexual needs, they are not yet regarded as important as men’s, or as necessary of fulfillment. The reason is simple: women are selling. They have been taught to sell, to be conscious of their bodies, to be eyed, but to barter well for financial support, security, or status. One of the single most curious facts in the study of sexual assaults is that the mothers and/or wives of many convicted rapists have been characterized as “seductive and rejecting.” Is this not, however, what most women are taught to be? Are we not entreated again and again to make ourselves attractive but cautioned at turn, always, always, to remain “good girls”?

Combahee River Collective, Why Did They Die? A Document of Black Feminism (1979)

http://library.brown.edu/pdfs/1124979008226934.pdf

Combahee River Collective, “Why Did They Die? A Document of Black Feminism.” Radical America, vol. 13, no. 6, November-December 1979.

8 Black Women

Recently 6 young Black women have been murdered in Roxbury, Dorchester and the South End. The entire Black community continues to mourn their cruel and brutal deaths. In the face of police indifference and media lies and despite our grief and anger, we have begun to organize ourselves in order to figure out ways to protect ourselves and our sisters, to make the streets safe for women.

We are writing this pamphlet because as Black feminist activists we think it essential to understand the social and political causes behind these sisters’ deaths. We also want to share information about safety measures every woman can take and list groups who are working on the issue of violence against women.

In the Black community the murders have often been talked about as solely racial or racist crimes. It’s true that the police and media response has been typically racist. It’s true that the victims were all Black and that Black people have always been targets of racist violence in this society, but they were also all women. Our sisters died because they were women just as surely as they died because they were Black. If the murders were only racial, young teen-age boys and older Black men might also have been the unfortunate victims. They might now be petrified to walk the streets as women have always been.

When we look at the statistics and hard facts about daily, socially acceptable violence against women, it’s clear it’s no “bizarre series of coincidences” that all six victims were female.[24] In the U.S.A. 1 out of 3 women will be raped in their lifetimes or 1/3 of all the women in this country; at least 1 woman is beaten by her husband or boyfriend every 18 seconds; 1 out of every 4 women experiences some form of sexual abuse before she reaches the age of 18 (child molesting, rape, incest) 75% of the time by someone they know and 38% of the time by a family member; 9 out of 10 women in a recent survey had received unwanted sexual advances and harassment at their jobs.[25] Another way to think about these figures is that while you have been reading this pamphlet a woman somewhere in this city, in this state, in this country has been beaten, raped, and even murdered.

These statistics apply to all women: Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, old, young, rich, poor and in between. We’ve got to understand that violence against us as women cuts across all racial, ethnic and class lines. This doesn’t mean that violence against Third World women does not have a racial as well as sexual cause. Both our race and sex lead to violence against us.

One reason that attacks on women are so widespread is that to keep us down, to keep us oppressed we have to be made afraid. Violence makes us feel powerless and also like we’re second best.

The society also constantly encourages the violence through the media: movies, pornography, Playboy, Players, Hustler, JET, record covers, advertisements and disco songs (“Put Love’s Chains Back On Me”). Boys and men get the message every day that it’s all right, even fun, to hurt women. What has happened in Boston’s Black community is a thread in the fabric of violence against women.

Another idea that has been put out in this crisis is that women should stay in the house until the murderer(s) are found. In other words Black women should be under house arrest. (Remember Daryal Hargett, the fifth woman, was found dead in her own apartment.) If and when they catch the murderers we still won’t be safe to leave our houses, because it has never been safe to be a woman alone in the street. Staying in the house punishes the innocent and protects the guilty. It also doesn’t take into account real life, that we must go to work, get food, pick up the kids at school, do that wash, do errands and visit friends. Women should be able to walk outside whenever they please, with whoever they please and for whatever reason.

WE WILL ONLY HAVE THIS RIGHT WHEN WOMEN JOIN TOGETHER TO DEMAND OUR RIGHTS AS HUMAN BEINGS TO BE FREE OF PHYSICAL ABUSE, TO BE FREE OF FEAR.

The last idea we want to respond to is that it’s men’s job to protect women. At first glance this may seem to make sense, but look at the assumptions behind it. Needing to be protected assumes that we are weak, helpless and dependent, that we are victims who need men to protect us from other men. As women in this society we are definitely at risk as far as violence is concerned but WE HAVE TO LEARN TO PROTECT OURSELVES. There are many ways to do this: learning and following common sense safety measures, learning self-defense, setting up phone chains and neighborhood safehouses, joining and working in groups that are organizing against violence against women are all ways to do this.

The idea of men protecting us isn’t very realistic because many of us don’t have a man to depend on for this—young girls, teen-agers, single women, separated and divorced women. And even if we do have a man he cannot be our shadow 24 hours a day.

What men can do to “protect” us is to check out the ways in which they put down and intimidate women in the streets and at home, to stop being verbally and physically abusive to us and to tell men they know who mistreat women to stop it and stop it quick. Men who are committed to stopping violence against women should start seriously discussing this issue with other men and organizing in supportive ways.

We decided to write this pamphlet because of our outrage at what has happened to 6 Black women and to 1000s and 1000s of women whose names we don’t even know. As Black women who are feminists we are struggling against all racist, sexist, heterosexist and class oppression. We know that we have no hopes of ending this particular crisis and violence against women in our community until we identify all of its causes, including sexual oppression.

–This pamphlet was prepared by the Combahee River Collective, a Boston Black Feminist Organization.

1. The problem of the solicitation of children or teen-agers by older men is another issue discussed in Florence Bush’s paper on the “Sexual Abuse of Children.”↩

2. FBI Uniform Crime Report of the U.S., 1969.↩

3. Benjamin Karpman, The Sexual Offender and His Offenses, New York, 1954, pp. 502–503.↩

4. Walker Bromberg, Crime and the Mind, New York, 1965, p. 335.↩

5. Hervey Cleckley, The Caricature of Love, New York, 1957, p. 80.↩

6. Bernard Glueck, Final Report Research Project for the Study and Treatment of Crimes Involving Sexual Aberrations, Minnesota, 1952–55, p. 32.↩

7. Karpman, op.cit., p. 121.↩

8. Bromberg, op.cit., p. 98↩

9. The New York Times, September 12, 1968.↩

10. Karpman, op.cit., p. 80.↩

11. J.W. Mohr, “Rape and Attempted Rape,” in Sexual Behavior and the Criminal Law Preliminary Report, Toronto, 1965, p. 2.↩

12. Bernard J. Oliver, Sexual Deviation in American Society: A Social Psychological Study of Non-Conformity, New Haven, 1967, p. 58.↩

13. Glueck, op. cit., p. 33.↩

14. Manachim Amir, “Forcible Rape,” The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science, 1967, pp. 497–99.↩

15. Paul H. Gebbard, John H. Gagnon, Wardell B. Pomeroy and Cornelia V. Christenson, Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types, New York, 1965, pp. 177–78.↩

16. FBI Uniform Crime Report of the U.S., 1967.↩

17. Mooris, Ploscowe, Sex and the Law, New York, 1951, p. 180.↩

18. Paul Tappan, The Habitual Sex Offender, Report and Recommendations of the Commission on the Habitual Sex Offender as Formulated by Paul W. Tappan, New Jersey, 1950, pp. 21–22.↩

19. Gebbard, op.cit., p. 197.↩

20. Ibid., p. 177.↩

21. Oliver, op.cit., p. 66.↩

22. Glueck, op.cit., p. 85 23.↩

23. Ploscowe, op.cit., p. 155.↩

24. Boston Globe, April 1, 1979, p. 16.↩

25. Statistics from the paper “Grass Roots Services for Battered Women: A Model for Long Term Change” by Lisa Leghorn.↩

Black Feminism

These five essays trace an arc of radical Black feminist theorizing. Mary Ann Weathers, the Third World Women’s Alliance, and Frances Beale were all veterans of SNCC, offering contrasting perspectives to the earlier piece by Hayden and King. Weathers and Beale see combating sexism and building a Black feminist politics as crucial for including the full participation of women as combatants in the global struggle against colonialism and white supremacy. The Third World Women’s Alliance argues the importance of independent third world women’s organizations, and the right to armed self-defense.

Combahee River Collective and Audre Lorde, possibly more familiar to contemporary readers, both draw attention to the limits of white-dominated feminist politics. Less well-known are their shared commitments to revolutionary socialism.

All these articles, to various extents, implicitly continue the previous work of Claudia Jones in seeing capitalism as inseparably linked to multiple forms of simultaneous structures of oppression in the lives of Black women—a political critique taken up today in an altered, less revolutionary, form by academic accounts of “intersectionality.”

There are many great readings on Black feminism, but none we thought were adequately concise and specific to the topics of these readings.

Secondary reading: Alice Echols, Ch. 6 (pp. 203–242), Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967–1975, University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

Mary Ann Weathers, An Argument for Black Women’s Liberation as a Revolutionary (1969)

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/wlmpc_wlmms01029/

Mary Ann Weathers Weathers, “An Argument for Black Women’s Liberation as a Revolutionary Force.” No More Fun and Games: A Journal of Female Liberation. Cell 16. vol. 1, no. 2, Feb. 1969.

“Nobody can fight your battles for you; you have to do it yourself.” This will be the premise used for the time being for stating the case for Black women’s liberation, although certainly it is the least significant. Black women, at least the Black women we have come in contact with in the movement have been expounding all their energies in “liberating” Black men (if you yourself are not free, how can you “liberate” someone else?). Consequently, the movement has practically come to a standstill. Not entirely due however to wasted energies but, adhering to basic false concepts rather than revolutionary principles—and at this stage of the game we should understand that if it is not revolutionary it is false.

We have found that Women’s Liberation is an extremely emotional issue, as well as an explosive one. Black men are still parroting the master’s prattle about male superiority. This now brings us to a very pertinent question: How can we seriously discuss reclaiming our African heritage—cultural living modes which clearly refute not only patriarchy and matriarchy, but our entire family structure as we know it. African tribes live communally where households let alone heads of households are non-existent.

It is disgusting to hear Black women talk about giving Black men their manhood—or allowing them to get it. This is degrading to other Black women and thoroughly insulting to Black men (or at least it should be). How can someone “give” one something as personal as one’s adulthood? That’s precisely like asking the beast for your freedom. We also chew the fat about standing behind our men. This forces me to the question: Are we women or leaning posts and props? It sounds as if we are saying if we come out from behind him, he’ll fall down. To me, these are clearly maternal statements and should be closely examined.

Women’s Liberation should be considered as a strategy for an eventual tie-up with the entire revolutionary movement consisting of women, men, and children. We are now speaking of real revolution (armed). If you can not accept this fact purely and without problems examine your reactions closely. We are playing to win and so are they. Viet Nam is simply a matter of time and geography.

Another matter to be discussed is the liberation of children from a sick slave culture. Although we don’t like to see it, we are still operating within the confines of the slave culture. Black women use our children for our own selfish needs of worth and love. We try to live our lives which are oppressing to bear through our children and thereby destroy them in the process. Obviously the much acclaimed plaudits of the love of the Black mother has some discrepancies. If we allow ourselves to run from the truth we run the risk of spending another 400 years in self destruction. Assuming of course the beast would tolerate us that long, and we know he wouldn’t.

Women have fought with men and we have died with men in every revolution, more timely in Cuba, Algeria, China, and now in Viet Nam. If you notice, it is a woman heading the “Peace Talks” in Paris for the NLF. What is wrong with Black women? We are clearly the most oppressed and degraded minority in the world, let alone the country. Why can’t we rightfully claim our place in the world?

Realizing fully what is being said, you should be warned that the opposition for liberation will come from everyplace, particularly from other women and from Black men. Don’t allow yourselves to be intimidated any longer with this nonsense about the “Matriarchy” of Black women. Black women are not matriarchs but we have been forced to live in abandonment and been used and abused. The myth of the matriarchy must stop and we must not allow ourselves to be sledgehammered by it any longer—not if we are serious about change and ridding ourselves of the wickedness of this alien culture. Let it be clearly understood that Black women’s liberation is not anti-male; any such sentiment or interpretation as such can not be tolerated. It must be taken clearly for what it is—pro-human for all peoples.

The potential for such a movement is boundless. Where as in the past only certain type of Black people have been attracted to the movement—younger people, radicals, and militants. The very poor, the middle class, older people and women have not become aware or have not been able to translate their awareness into action. Women’s liberation offers such a channel for these energies.

Even though middle-class Black women may not have suffered the brutal supression of poor Black people, they most certainly have felt the scourge of the male superiority oriented society as women, and would be more prone to help in alleviating some of the conditions of our more oppressed sisters by teaching, raising awareness and consciousness, verbalizing the ills of women and this society, helping to establish communes.

Older women have a wealth of information and experience to offer and would be instrumental in closing the communications gap between the generations. To be Black and to tolerate this jive about discounting people over 30 is madness.

Poor women have knowledge to teach us all. Who else in this society sees more and is more realistic about ourselves and this society and about the faults that lie within our own people than our poor women? Who else could profit and benefit from a communal setting than these sisters? We must let the sisters know that we are capable and some of us already do love them. We women must begin to unabashedly learn to use the word “love” for one another. We must stop the petty jealousies, the violence that we Black women have so long perpetrated on one another about fighting over this man or the other. (Black men should have better sense to encourage this kind of destructive behavior.) We must turn to ourselves and one another for strength and solace. Just think for a moment what it would be like if we got together and internalized our own 24 hour a day communal centers knowing our children would be safe and loved constantly. Not to mention what it would do to everyone’s egos, especially the children. Women should not have to be enslaved by this society’s concept of motherhood through their children and then the kids suffer through a mother’s resentment of it by beatings, punishment, and rigid discipline. All one has to do it look at the statistics of Black women who are rapidly filling the beast’s mental institutions to know that the time for innovation and change and creative thinking is here.

We do not have to look at ourselves as someone’s personal sex objects, maids, baby sitters, domestics and the like in exchange for a man’s attention. Men hold this power, along with that of the breadwinner, over our heads for these services and that’s all it is—servitude. In return we torture him, and fill him with insecurities about his manhood, and literally force him to “cat” and “mess around” bringing in all sorts of conflicts. This is not the way really human people live. This is whitey’s thing. And we play the game with as much proficiency as he does.

If we are going to bring about a better world, where better to begin than with ourselves? We must rid ourselves of our own hang-ups, before we can begin to talk about the rest of the world and we mean the world and nothing short of just that (Let’s not kid ourselves). We will be in a position soon of having to hook up with the rest of the oppressed peoples of the world who are involved in liberation just as we are, and we had better be ready to act.

All women suffer oppression, even white women, particularly poor white women, and especially Indian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Oriental and Black American women whose oppression is tripled by any of the above mentioned. But we do have female’s oppression in common. This means that we can begin to talk to other women with this common factor and start building links with them and thereby build and transform the revolutionary force we are now beginning to amass. This is what Dr. King was doing. We can no longer allow ourselves to be duped by the guise of racism. Any time the White man admits to something you know he is trying to cover something else up. We are all being exploited, even the white middle class, by the few people in control of this entire world. And to keep the real issue clouded, he keeps us at one another’s throats with this racism jive. Although, Whites are most certainly racist, we must understand that they have been programmed to think in these patterns to divert their attention. If they are busy fighting us, then they have no time to question the policies of the war being run by this government. With the way the elections went down it is clear that whites are as powerless as the rest of us. Make no question about it, folks, this fool knows what he is doing. This man is playing the death game for money and power, not because he doesn’t like us. He could care less one way or the other. But think for a moment if we all got together and just walked on out. Who would fight his wars, who would run his police state, who would work his factories, who would buy his products?

We women must start this thing rolling.

Third World Women’s Alliance, Women in the Struggle (1971)

Published: Triple Jeopardy vol. 1, no. 1, Sept-Oct 1971.

Source: Radical Feminism: A Documentary History, ed. by Barbara A. Crow. NYU Press, 2000.

A History of the Organization

The foundation of our present organization was laid in December, 1968. Within SNCC, a black women’s caucus was formed to begin to address itself to the problems that the women of SNCC encountered within the organization. Women were generally confined to secretarial and/or supportive roles and no matter what a woman’s capabilities were, never seemed to be able to rise above this situation. The women in SNCC who had been meeting over a period of several months decided that the organization should be expanded beyond the confines of SNCC and that we should be drawing in women from other organizations, welfare mothers, community workers and campus radicals. An attempt was made to reach out to these women and the name of the organization was changed to the Black Women’s Alliance. As of now, the organization is independent of SNCC and at the same time, SNCC has decided to retain its women’s caucus.

We decided to form a black women’s organization for many reasons. One was and still is the widespread myth and concept in the black community of the matriarchy. We stated that the concept of the matriarchy was myth and that it has never existed in the United States. A matriarchy denotes a society where the economic power of a group rests in the hands of the women and we all know where the economic power of this nation rests. Our position would be to expose this myth.

There was also the widespread concept that by some miracle, the oppression of slavery for the black woman was not as degrading, not as horrifying, not as barbaric as it had been for the black man. However, we state that in any society where men are not yet free, women are less free because we are further enslaved by our sex.

Now we noticed another interesting thing. And that is, that with the rise of black nationalism and the rejection of white middle class norms and values, that this rejection of whiteness—white culture, white norms and values—took a different turn when it came to the black woman. That is, black men began defining the role of black women in the movement. They stated that our role was a supportive one, others stated that we must become breeders and provide an army; still others stated that we had kotex or pussy power. We opposed these concepts stating that a true revolutionary movement must enhance the status of women.

Further discussion and study began to point out to us the intimate connection between the oppression of women and the form of government which was in control. We began to see the economic basis of our oppression and we became convinced that capitalism and imperialism were our main enemies. It is economically profitable to exploit and oppress third world women. We represent a surplus labor supply, a cheap labor supply, a free labor supply (in our homes).

The development of an anti-imperialist ideology led us to recognize the need for Third World solidarity. Although Asian, Black, Chicana, Native American and Puerto Rican sisters have certain differences, we began to see that we were all affected by the same general oppressions. Industries employing mainly third world women are among the most exploitive in the country. Domestic workers, hospital workers, factory workers and farm laborers are prime objects of this exploitation, as are the garment workers.

Stereotypes which are forced upon our peoples and which try to mold them with the acceptable white values, large use of drugs and alcoholism in our respective communities used as escapes from the daily oppression suffered by our peoples and other problems mentioned above gave us the realization that our similarities transcended our differences. We realized that we would be much more effective and unified by becoming a third world women’s organization. So our group was expanded to include all third world sisters since our oppression is basically caused by the same factors and our enemy is the same. The name of the organization was changed to reflect this new awareness and composition of the group—Third World Women’s Alliance.

Is a Third World Women’s Group Divisive to the Liberation Struggle?

The third world woman must always be fighting against and exposing her triple exploitation in this society. A third world women’s group can potentially be one of the most revolutionary forces confronting the U.S. ruling class. The third world woman consciously aware of the depth of her oppression and willingness to fight against it will never give up until all forms of racist, sexist, and economic exploitation is eliminated.

An independent third world women’s organization, rather than divide the national liberation struggle would actually enhance that struggle. The rulers of this society would like to keep us thinking that the problem is only one of racism or that men are inherently the enemy, thus diverting our attention from the economic basis of our oppression. Thus our brothers who tell us not to get involved in women’s liberation fail to realize that this idea, if carried out, would tend to contain rather than expand the revolutionary fervor of third world women and would harm the liberation struggle as a whole.

An independent third world women’s organization gives us the opportunity to reach women who might not ordinarily be reached by male-female organizations and thus heighten the political consciousness of third world women. An independent third world women’s group creates an atmosphere whereby women who are overly shy about speaking in a mixed group about “women’s problems” would not have that same hesitation in an all women’s group. We can train third world women for leadership roles and help them gain confidence in her own abilities and help to eliminate the concept of what is “feminine” and “masculine.”

It must be understood that we are not just for civil rights for women or civil rights for third world people, but for the elimination of all forms of sexist and racist oppression—liberation for women and the third world. We understand that national liberation can come about under an atmosphere of economic equality and economic equality cannot be achieved under this system. We understand that the elimination of our oppression as women can only be achieved from a revolutionary government who understands with the help of women the need for women to be liberated.

It is the position of the Third World Women’s Alliance that the struggle against racism and imperialism must be waged simultaneously with the struggle for women’s liberation, and only a strong independent socialist women’s group can ensure that this will come about.

Goals and Objectives

Our purpose is to make a meaningful and lasting contribution to the Third World community by working for the elimination of the oppression and exploitation from which we suffer. We further intend to take an active part in creating a socialist society where we can live as decent human beings, free from the pressures of racism, economic exploitation, and sexual oppression.

1. To create a sisterhood of women devoted to the task of developing solidarity among the peoples of the Third World, based on a socialist ideology of struggling for the complete elimination of any and all forms of oppression and exploitation based upon race, economic status, or sex and to use whatever means are necessary to accomplish this task.

2. To promote unity among Third World people within the United States in matters affecting the educational, economic, social and political life of our peoples.

3. To collect, interpret, and distribute information about the Third World, both at home and abroad, and particularly information affecting its women.

4. To establish an education fund to be used to promote educational projects, to publish articles, and to employ such other media as is necessary to carry out such educational projects.

5. To recreate and build solid relationships with our men, destroying myths that have been created by our oppressor to divide us from each other, and to work together to appreciate human love and respect.

Ideological Platform

We recognize the right of all people to be free. As women, we recognize that our struggle is against an imperialist, sexist system that oppresses all minority peoples as well as exploiting the majority. The United States is ruled by a small ruling class clique who use the concepts of racism and chauvinism to divide, control and oppress the masses of people for economic gain and profit.

We want equal status in a society that does not exploit and murder other people and smaller nations. We will fight for a socialist system that guarantees full, creative, nonexploitive lives for all human beings, fully aware that we will never be free until all oppressed people are free.

Family

WHEREAS in a capitalist culture, the institution of the family has been used as an economic and psychological tool, not serving the needs of people, we declare that we will not relate to the private ownership of any person by another. We encourage and support the continued growth of communal households and the idea of the extended family. We encourage alternative forms to the patriarchal family and call for the sharing of all work (including housework and child care) by men and women.

Women must have the right to decide if and when they want to have children. There is no such thing as an illegitimate child. There should be free and SAFE family planning methods available to all women, including abortions if necessary.

There should be no forced sterilization or mandatory birth control programs which are presently used as genocide against third world woman and against other poor people.

Employment

WHEREAS third world women in a class society have been continuously exploited through their work, both in the home and on the job, we call for:

1. Guaranteed full, equal and nonexploitative employment, controlled collectively by the workers who produce the wealth of this society.

2. Guaranteed adequate income for all. This would entail the sharing of non-creative tasks and the maximum utilization of revolutionary technology to eliminate these tasks.

3. An end to the racism and sexism which forces third world women into the lowest paying service jobs and which ensures that we will be the lowest paid of all.

4. The establishment of free day care centers available to all, including facilities for pre-school and older children.

Sex Roles

WHEREAS behavior patterns based on rigid sex roles are oppressive to both men and women, role integration should be attempted. The true revolutionary should be concerned with human beings and not limit themselves to people as sex objects.

Furthermore, whether homosexuality is societal or genetic in origin, it exists in the third world community. The oppression and dehumanizing ostracism that homosexuals face must be rejected and their right to exist as dignified human beings must be defended.

Education

WHEREAS women historically have been deprived of education, or only partially educated and miseducated in those areas deemed appropriate for them by those ruling powers who benefit from this ignorance, we call for:

1. The right to determine our own goals and ambitions.

2. An end of sex roles regarding training and skills.

3. Self-Knowledge—the history of third world women and their contributions to the liberation struggle, their relation to society and the knowledge of their bodies.

Services

WHEREAS the services provided for the masses of third world people have been inadequate, unavailable, or too expensive, administered in a racist, sexist manner, we demand that all services necessary to human survival—health care, housing, food, clothing, transportation and education—should be free and controlled and administered by the people who use them.

Women in Our Own Right

WHEREAS we do not believe that any person is the property of any other and whereas all people must share equally in the decisions which affect them, we hereby demand:

1. That third world women have the right to determine their own lives, not lives determined by their fathers, brothers, or husbands.

2. That all organizations and institutions (including all so-called radical, militant and/or so-called revolutionary groups) deal with third world women in their own right as human beings and individuals, not as property of men and only valued in relationship to their association or connection with some man.

3. That third world women be full participants on all levels of the struggle for national liberation, i.e. administrative, political and military.

Self-Defense

WHEREAS the struggle for liberation must be borne equally by all members of an oppressed people, we declare that third world women have the right and responsibility to bear arms.

Women should be fully trained and educated in the martial arts as well as in the political arena. Furthermore, we recognize that it is our duty to defend all oppressed peoples.

Frances Beal, Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female (1976)

https://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/CWLUArchive/blackandfemale.html

Published first as a pamphlet in 1969 by the Third World Women’s Alliance.

Source: The Black Woman: An Anthology, ed. by Toni Cade Bambara. Washington Square Press, 2005.

In attempting to analyze the situation of the black woman in America, one crashes abruptly into a solid wall of grave misconceptions, outright distortions of fact and defensive attitudes on the part of many. The system of capitalism (and its after birth—racism) under which we all live, has attempted by many devious ways and means to destroy the humanity of all people, and particularly the humanity of black people. This has meant an outrageous assault on every black man, woman and child who reside in the United States.

In keeping with its goal of destroying the black race’s will to resist its subjugation, capitalism found it necessary to create a situation where the black man found it impossible to find meaningful or productive employment. More often than not, he couldn’t find work of any kind. And the black woman likewise was manipulated by the system, economically exploited and physically assaulted. She could often find work in the white man’s kitchen, however, and sometimes became the sole breadwinner of the family This predicament has led to many psychological problems on the part of both man and woman and has contributed to the turmoil that we find in the black family structure.

Unfortunately, neither the black man nor the black woman understood the true nature of the forces working upon them. Many black women tended to accept the capitalist evaluation of manhood and womanhood and believed, in fact, that black men were shiftless and lazy, otherwise they would get a job and support their families as they ought to. Personal relationships between black men and women were thus torn asunder and one result has been the separation of man from wife, mother from child, etc.

America has defined the roles to which each individual should subscribe. It has defined “manhood” in terms of its own interests and “femininity” likewise. Therefore, an individual who has a good job, makes a lot of money and drives a Cadillac is a real “man,” and conversely, an individual who is lacking in these “qualities” is less of a man. The advertising media in this country continuously informs the American male of his need for indispensable signs of his virility—the brand of cigarettes that cowboys prefer, the whiskey that has a masculine tang, or the label of the jock strap that athletes wear.

The ideal model that is projected for a woman is to be surrounded by hypocritical homage and estranged from all real work, spending idle hours primping and preening, obsessed with conspicuous consumption, and limiting life’s functions to simply a sex role. We unqualitatively reject these respective models. A woman who stays at home, caring for children and the house often leads an extremely sterile existence. She must lead her entire life as a satellite to her mate. He goes out into society and brings back a little piece of the world for her. His interests and his understanding of the world become her own and she can not develop herself as an individual, having been reduced to only a biological function. This kind of woman leads a parasitic existence that can aptly be described as legalized prostitution.

Furthermore it is idle dreaming to think of black women simply caring for their homes and children like the middle class white model. Most black women have to work to help house, feed and clothe their families. Black women make up a substantial percentage of the black working force, and this is true for the poorest black family as well as the so-called “middle class” family.

Black women were never afforded any such phony luxuries. Though we have been browbeaten with this white image, the reality of the degrading and dehumanizing jobs that were relegated to us quickly dissipated this mirage of womanhood. The following excerpts from a speech that Sojourner Truth made at a Women’s Rights Convention in the 19th century show us how misleading and incomplete a life this model represents for us:

...Well, chilern, whar dar is so much racket dar must be something out o’kilter. I tink dat ‘twixt de niggers of de Souf and de women at de norf all a talkin’ ‘bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all dis here talkin’ ’bout? Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be helped into carriages and lifted ober ditches, and to have de best place every whar. Nobody ever help me into carriages, or ober mud puddles, or gives me any best places...and ar’nt I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm...I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me—and ar’nt I a woman? I could work as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear de lash as well—and ar’nt I a woman? I have borne five chilern and I seen ‘em mos’ all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard—and ar’nt I a woman?

Unfortunately, there seems to be some confusion in the Movement today as to who has been oppressing whom. Since the advent of black power, the black male has exerted a more prominent leadership role in our struggle for justice in this country. He sees the system for what it really is for the most part, but where he rejects its values and mores on many issues, when it comes to women, he seems to take his guidelines from the pages of the Ladies Home Journal. Certain black men are maintaining that they have been castrated by society but that black women somehow escaped this persecution and even contributed to this emasculation.

Let me state here and now that the black woman in America can justly be described as a “slave of a slave.” By reducing the black man in America to such abject oppression, the black woman had no protector and was used, and is still being used in some cases, as the scapegoat for the evils that this horrendous system has perpetrated on black men. Her physical image has been maliciously maligned; she has been sexually molested and abused by the white colonizer; she has suffered the worst kind of economic exploitation, having been forced to serve as the white woman’s maid and wet nurse for white offspring while her own children were more often than not starving and neglected. It is the depth of degradation to be socially manipulated, physically raped, used to undermine your own household, and to be powerless to reverse this syndrome.

It is true that our husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons have been emasculated, lynched, and brutalized. They have suffered from the cruelest assault on mankind that the world has ever known. However, it is a gross distortion of fact to state that black women have oppressed black men. The capitalist system found it expedient to enslave and oppress them and proceeded to do so without signing any agreements with black women.

It must also be pointed out at this time, that black women are not resentful of the rise to power of black men. We welcome it. We see in in it the eventual liberation of all black people from this corrupt system under which we suffer. Nevertheless, this does not mean that you have to negate one for the other. This kind of thinking is a product of miseducation; that it’s either X or it’s Y. It is fallacious reasoning that in order the black man to be strong, the black woman has to be weak.

Those who are exerting their “manhood” by telling black women to step back into a domestic, submissive role are assuming a counter-revolutionary position. Black women likewise have been abused by the system and we must begin talking about the elimination of all kinds of oppression. If we are talking about building a strong nation, capable of throwing off the yoke of capitalist oppression, then we are talking about the total involvement of every man, woman, and child, each with a highly developed political consciousness. We need our whole army out there dealing with the enemy and not half an army.

There are also some black women who feel that there is no more productive role in life than having and raising children. This attitude often reflects the conditioning of the society in which we live and is adopted from a bourgeois white model. Some young sisters who have never had to maintain a household and accept the confining role which this entails tend to romanticize (along with the help of a few brothers) this role of housewife and mother. Black women who have had to endure this kind of function are less apt to have these utopian visions.

Those who project in an intellectual manner how great and rewarding this role will be and who feel that the most important thing that they can contribute to the black nation is children are doing themselves a great injustice. This line of reasoning completely negates the contributions that black women have historically made to our struggle for liberation. These black women include Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary McLeod Bethune and Fannie Lou Hamer to name but a few.

We live in a highly industrialized society and every member of the black nation must be as academically and technologically developed as possible. To wage a revolution, we need competent teachers, doctors, nurses, electronic experts, chemists, biologists, physicists, political scientists, and so on and so forth. Black women sitting at home reading bedtime stories to their children are just not going to make it.

Economic Exploitation Of Black Women

The economic system of capitalism finds it expedient to reduce women to a state of enslavement. They oftentimes serve as a scapegoat for the evils of this system. Much in the same way that the poor white cracker of the South, who is equally victimized, looks down upon blacks and contributes to the oppression of blacks, so, by giving to men a false feeling of superiority (at least in their own home or in their relationships with women), the oppression of women acts as an escape valve for capitalism. Men may be cruelly exploited and subjected to all sorts of dehumanizing tactics on the part of the ruling class, but they have someone who is below them—at least they’re not women.

Women also represent a surplus labor supply, the control of which is absolutely necessary to the profitable functioning of capitalism. Women are systematically exploited by the system. They are paid less for the same work that men do and jobs that are specifically relegated to women are low-paying and without the possibility of advancement. Statistics from the Women’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor show that in 1967 the wage scale for white women was even below that of black men; and the wage scale for non-white women was the lowest of all:

[ht]

White Males

$6,704

Non-White Males

4,277

White Females

3,99l

Non-White Females

2,861

Those industries which employ mainly black women are the most exploitative in the country. Domestic and hospital workers are good examples of this oppression; the garment workers in New York City provide us with another view of this economic slavery. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), whose overwhelming membership consists of black and Puerto Rican women, has a leadership that is nearly lily-white and male. This leadership has been working in collusion with the ruling class and has completely sold its soul to the corporate structure.

To add insult to injury, the IGLWU has invested heavily in business enterprises in racist, apartheid South Africa—with union funds. Not only does this bought-off leadership contribute to our continued exploitation in this country by not truly representing the best interests of its membership, but it audaciously uses funds that black and Puerto Rican women have provided to support the economy of a vicious government that is engaged in the economic rape and murder of our black brothers and sisters in our Motherland, Africa.

The entire labor movement in the United States has suffered as a result of the super-exploitation of black workers and women. The unions have historically been racist and chauvinistic. They have upheld racism in this country and have failed to fight the white skin privileges of white workers. They have failed to fight or even make an issue against the inequities in the hiring and pay of women workers. There has been virtually no struggle against either the racism of the white worker or the economic exploitation of the working woman, two factors which have consistently impeded the advancement of the real struggle against the ruling capitalist class.

This racist, chauvinistic, and manipulative use of black workers and women, especially black women, has been a severe cancer on the American labor scene. It therefore becomes essential for those who understand the workings of capitalism and imperialism to realize that the exploitation of black people and women works to everyone’s disadvantage and that the liberation of these two groups is a stepping stone to the liberation of all oppressed people in this country and around the world.

Combahee River Collective, A Black Feminist Statement (1977)

Published: The Combahee River Collective, The Combahee River Collective Statement: Black Feminist Organizing in the Seventies and Eighties, Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1986.

Source: This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, ed. by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa. Kitchen Table Press, 1981.

We are a collective of Black feminists who have been meeting together since 1974.[1] During that time we have been involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements. The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.

We will discuss four major topics in the paper that follows: (1) the genesis of contemporary Black feminism; (2) what we believe, i.e., the specific province of our politics; (3) the problems in organizing Black feminists, including a brief herstory of our collective; and (4) Black feminist issues and practice.

The Genesis of Contemporary Black Feminism

Before looking at the recent development of Black feminism we would like to affirm that we find our origins in the historical reality of Afro-American women’s continuous life-and-death struggle for survival and liberation. Black women’s extremely negative relationship to the American political system (a system of white male rule) has always been determined by our membership in two oppressed racial and sexual castes. As Angela Davis points out in “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves,” Black women have always embodied, if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to white male rule and have actively resisted its inroads upon them and their communities in both dramatic and subtle ways. There have always been Black women activists—some known, like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Wells Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell, and thousands upon thousands unknown—who have had a shared awareness of how their sexual identity combined with their racial identity to make their whole life situation and the focus of their political struggles unique. Contemporary Black feminism is the outgrowth of countless generations of personal sacrifice, militancy, and work by our mothers and sisters.

A Black feminist presence has evolved most obviously in connection with the second wave of the American women’s movement beginning in the late 1960s. Black, other Third World, and working women have been involved in the feminist movement from its start, but both outside reactionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself have served to obscure our participation. In 1973, Black feminists, primarily located in New York, felt the necessity of forming a separate Black feminist group. This became the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO).

Black feminist politics also have an obvious connection to movements for Black liberation, particularly those of the 1960s and I970s. Many of us were active in those movements (Civil Rights, Black nationalism, the Black Panthers), and all of our lives were greatly affected and changed by their ideologies, their goals, and the tactics used to achieve their goals. It was our experience and disillusionment within these liberation movements, as well as experience on the periphery of the white male left, that led to the need to develop a politics that was anti-racist, unlike those of white women, and anti-sexist, unlike those of Black and white men.

There is also undeniably a personal genesis for Black Feminism, that is, the political realization that comes from the seemingly personal experiences of individual Black women’s lives. Black feminists and many more Black women who do not define themselves as feminists have all experienced sexual oppression as a constant factor in our day-to-day existence. As children we realized that we were different from boys and that we were treated differently. For example, we were told in the same breath to be quiet both for the sake of being “ladylike” and to make us less objectionable in the eyes of white people. As we grew older we became aware of the threat of physical and sexual abuse by men. However, we had no way of conceptualizing what was so apparent to us, what we knew was really happening.

Black feminists often talk about their feelings of craziness before becoming conscious of the concepts of sexual politics, patriarchal rule, and most importantly, feminism, the political analysis and practice that we women use to struggle against our oppression. The fact that racial politics and indeed racism are pervasive factors in our lives did not allow us, and still does not allow most Black women, to look more deeply into our own experiences and, from that sharing and growing consciousness, to build a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression. Our development must also be tied to the contemporary economic and political position of Black people. The post World War II generation of Black youth was the first to be able to minimally partake of certain educational and employment options, previously closed completely to Black people. Although our economic position is still at the very bottom of the American capitalistic economy, a handful of us have been able to gain certain tools as a result of tokenism in education and employment which potentially enable us to more effectively fight our oppression.

A combined anti-racist and anti-sexist position drew us together initially, and as we developed politically we addressed ourselves to heterosexism and economic oppression under capitalism.

What We Believe

Above all else, our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that Black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else’s but because of our need as human persons for autonomy. This may seem so obvious as to sound simplistic, but it is apparent that no other ostensibly progressive movement has ever considered our specific oppression as a priority or worked seriously for the ending of that oppression. Merely naming the pejorative stereotypes attributed to Black women (e.g. mammy, matriarch, Sapphire, whore, bulldagger), let alone cataloguing the cruel, often murderous, treatment we receive, indicates how little value has been placed upon our lives during four centuries of bondage in the Western hemisphere. We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work.

This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression. In the case of Black women this is a particularly repugnant, dangerous, threatening, and therefore revolutionary concept because it is obvious from looking at all the political movements that have preceded us that anyone is more worthy of liberation than ourselves. We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.

We believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive in Black women’s lives as are the politics of class and race. We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know that there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor solely sexual, e.g., the history of rape of Black women by white men as a weapon of political repression.

Although we are feminists and lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive Black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white women who are separatists demand. Our situation as Black people necessitates that we have solidarity around the fact of race, which white women of course do not need to have with white men, unless it is their negative solidarity as racial oppressors. We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism.

We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy. We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create these resources. We are not convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and antiracist revolution will guarantee our liberation. We have arrived at the necessity for developing an understanding of class relationships that takes into account the specific class position of Black women who are generally marginal in the labor force, while at this particular time some of us are temporarily viewed as doubly desirable tokens at white-collar and professional levels. We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives. Although we are in essential agreement with Marx’s theory as it applied to the very specific economic relationships he analyzed, we know that his analysis must be extended further in order for us to understand our specific economic situation as Black women.

A political contribution which we feel we have already made is the expansion of the feminist principle that the personal is political. In our consciousness-raising sessions, for example, we have in many ways gone beyond white women’s revelations because we are dealing with the implications of race and class as well as sex. Even our Black women’s style of talking/testifying in Black language about what we have experienced has a resonance that is both cultural and political. We have spent a great deal of energy delving into the cultural and experiential nature of our oppression out of necessity because none of these matters has ever been looked at before. No one before has ever examined the multilayered texture of Black women’s lives. An example of this kind of revelation/conceptualization occurred at a meeting as we discussed the ways in which our early intellectual interests had been attacked by our peers, particularly Black males. We discovered that all of us, because we were “smart” had also been considered “ugly,” i.e., “smart-ugly.” “Smart-ugly” crystallized the way in which most of us had been forced to develop our intellects at great cost to our “social” lives. The sanctions in the Black and white communities against Black women thinkers is comparatively much higher than for white women, particularly ones from the educated middle and upper classes.

As we have already stated, we reject the stance of Lesbian separatism because it is not a viable political analysis or strategy for us. It leaves out far too much and far too many people, particularly Black men, women, and children. We have a great deal of criticism and loathing for what men have been socialized to be in this society: what they support, how they act, and how they oppress. But we do not have the misguided notion that it is their maleness, per se—i.e., their biological maleness—that makes them what they are. As Black women we find any type of biological determinism a particularly dangerous and reactionary basis upon which to build a politic. We must also question whether Lesbian separatism is an adequate and progressive political analysis and strategy, even for those who practice it, since it so completely denies any but the sexual sources of women’s oppression, negating the facts of class and race.

Problems in Organizing Black Feminists

During our years together as a Black feminist collective we have experienced success and defeat, joy and pain, victory and failure. We have found that it is very difficult to organize around Black feminist issues, difficult even to announce in certain contexts that we are Black feminists. We have tried to think about the reasons for our difficulties, particularly since the white women’s movement continues to be strong and to grow in many directions. In this section we will discuss some of the general reasons for the organizing problems we face and also talk specifically about the stages in organizing our own collective.

The major source of difficulty in our political work is that we are not just trying to fight oppression on one front or even two, but instead to address a whole range of oppressions. We do not have racial, sexual, heterosexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal access to resources and power that groups who possess anyone of these types of privilege have.

The psychological toll of being a Black woman and the difficulties this presents in reaching political consciousness and doing political work can never be underestimated. There is a very low value placed upon Black women’s psyches in this society, which is both racist and sexist. As an early group member once said, “We are all damaged people merely by virtue of being Black women.” We are dispossessed psychologically and on every other level, and yet we feel the necessity to struggle to change the condition of all Black women. In “A Black Feminist’s Search for Sisterhood,” Michele Wallace arrives at this conclusion:

We exist as women who are Black who are feminists, each stranded for the moment, working independently because there is not yet an environment in this society remotely congenial to our struggle—because, being on the bottom, we would have to do what no one else has done: we would have to fight the world.[2]

Wallace is pessimistic but realistic in her assessment of Black feminists’ position, particularly in her allusion to the nearly classic isolation most of us face. We might use our position at the bottom, however, to make a clear leap into revolutionary action. If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.

Feminism is, nevertheless, very threatening to the majority of Black people because it calls into question some of the most basic assumptions about our existence, i.e., that sex should be a determinant of power relationships. Here is the way male and female roles were defined in a Black nationalist pamphlet from the early 1970s:

We understand that it is and has been traditional that the man is the head of the house. He is the leader of the house/nation because his knowledge of the world is broader, his awareness is greater, his understanding is fuller and his application of this information is wiser...After all, it is only reasonable that the man be the head of the house because he is able to defend and protect the development of his home...Women cannot do the same things as men—they are made by nature to function differently. Equality of men and women is something that cannot happen even in the abstract world. Men are not equal to other men, i.e. ability, experience or even understanding. The value of men and women can be seen as in the value of gold and silver—they are not equal but both have great value. We must realize that men and women are a complement to each other because there is no house/family without a man and his wife. Both are essential to the development of any life.[3]

The material conditions of most Black women would hardly lead them to upset both economic and sexual arrangements that seem to represent some stability in their lives. Many Black women have a good understanding of both sexism and racism, but because of the everyday constrictions of their lives cannot risk struggling against them both.

The reaction of Black men to feminism has been notoriously negative. They are, of course, even more threatened than Black women by the possibility that Black feminists might organize around our own needs. They realize that they might not only lose valuable and hardworking allies in their struggles but that they might also be forced to change their habitually sexist ways of interacting with and oppressing Black women. Accusations that Black feminism divides the Black struggle are powerful deterrents to the growth of an autonomous Black women’s movement.

Still, hundreds of women have been active at different times during the three-year existence of our group. And every Black woman who came, came out of a strongly-felt need for some level of possibility that did not previously exist in her life.

When we first started meeting early in 1974 after the NBFO first eastern regional conference, we did not have a strategy for organizing, or even a focus. We just wanted to see what we had. After a period of months of not meeting, we began to meet again late in the year and started doing an intense variety of consciousness-raising. The overwhelming feeling that we had is that after years and years we had finally found each other. Although we were not doing political work as a group, individuals continued their involvement in Lesbian politics, sterilization abuse and abortion rights work, Third World Women’s International Women’s Day activities, and support activity for the trials of Dr. Kenneth Edelin, Joan Little, and Inéz García. During our first summer when membership had dropped off considerably, those of us remaining devoted serious discussion to the possibility of opening a refuge for battered women in a Black community. (There was no refuge in Boston at that time.) We also decided around that time to become an independent collective since we had serious disagreements with NBFO’s bourgeois-feminist stance and their lack of a clear political focus.

We also were contacted at that time by socialist feminists, with whom we had worked on abortion rights activities, who wanted to encourage us to attend the National Socialist Feminist Conference in Yellow Springs. One of our members did attend and despite the narrowness of the ideology that was promoted at that particular conference, we became more aware of the need for us to understand our own economic situation and to make our own economic analysis.

In the fall, when some members returned, we experienced several months of comparative inactivity and internal disagreements which were first conceptualized as a Lesbian-straight split but which were also the result of class and political differences. During the summer those of us who were still meeting had determined the need to do political work and to move beyond consciousness-raising and serving exclusively as an emotional support group. At the beginning of 1976, when some of the women who had not wanted to do political work and who also had voiced disagreements stopped attending of their own accord, we again looked for a focus. We decided at that time, with the addition of new members, to become a study group. We had always shared our reading with each other, and some of us had written papers on Black feminism for group discussion a few months before this decision was made. We began functioning as a study group and also began discussing the possibility of starting a Black feminist publication. We had a retreat in the late spring which provided a time for both political discussion and working out interpersonal issues. Currently we are planning to gather together a collection of Black feminist writing. We feel that it is absolutely essential to demonstrate the reality of our politics to other Black women and believe that we can do this through writing and distributing our work. The fact that individual Black feminists are living in isolation all over the country, that our own numbers are small, and that we have some skills in writing, printing, and publishing makes us want to carry out these kinds of projects as a means of organizing Black feminists as we continue to do political work in coalition with other groups.

Black Feminist Issues and Projects

During our time together we have identified and worked on many issues of particular relevance to Black women. The inclusiveness of our politics makes us concerned with any situation that impinges upon the lives of women, Third World and working people. We are of course particularly committed to working on those struggles in which race, sex, and class are simultaneous factors in oppression. We might, for example, become involved in workplace organizing at a factory that employs Third World women or picket a hospital that is cutting back on already inadequate heath care to a Third World community, or set up a rape crisis center in a Black neighborhood. Organizing around welfare and daycare concerns might also be a focus. The work to be done and the countless issues that this work represents merely reflect the pervasiveness of our oppression.

Issues and projects that collective members have actually worked on are sterilization abuse, abortion rights, battered women, rape and health care. We have also done many workshops and educationals on Black feminism on college campuses, at women’s conferences, and most recently for high school women.

One issue that is of major concern to us and that we have begun to publicly address is racism in the white women’s movement. As Black feminists we are made constantly and painfully aware of how little effort white women have made to understand and combat their racism, which requires among other things that they have a more than superficial comprehension of race, color, and black history and culture. Eliminating racism in the white women’s movement is by definition work for white women to do, but we will continue to speak to and demand accountability on this issue.

In the practice of our politics we do not believe that the end always justifies the means. Many reactionary and destructive acts have been done in the name of achieving “correct” political goals. As feminists we do not want to mess over people in the name of politics. We believe in collective process and a nonhierarchical distribution of power within our own group and in our vision of a revolutionary society. We are committed to a continual examination of our politics as they develop through criticism and self-criticism as an essential aspect of our practice. In her introduction to Sisterhood is Powerful Robin Morgan writes:

I haven’t the faintest notion what possible revolutionary role white heterosexual men could fulfill, since they are the very embodiment of reactionary-vested-interest-power.

As Black feminists and Lesbians we know that we have a very definite revolutionary task to perform and we are ready for the lifetime of work and struggle before us.

Audre Lorde, Age, Race, Class and Sex (1980)

Paper delivered at the Copeland Colloquium, Amherst College, April 1980.

Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.” Sister Outsider. Crossing Press, 1984.

Much of Western European history conditions us to see human differences in simplistic opposition to each other: dominant/subordinate, good/bad, up/down, superior/inferior. In a society where the good is defined in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, there must always be some group of people who, through systematized oppression, can be made to feel surplus, to occupy the place of the dehumanized inferior. Within this society, that group is made up of Black and Third World people, working-class people, older people, and women.

As a forty-nine-year-old Black lesbian feminist socialist mother of two, including one boy, and a member of an interracial couple, I usually find myself a part of some group defined as other, deviant, inferior, or just plain wrong. Traditionally, in american society, it is the members of oppressed, objectified groups who are expected to stretch out and bridge the gap between the actualities of our lives and the consciousness of our oppressor. For in order to survive, those of us for whom oppression is as american as apple pie have always had to be watchers, to become familiar with the language and manners of the oppressor, even sometimes adopting them for some illusion of protection. Whenever the need for some pretense of communication arises, those who profit from our oppression call upon us to share our knowledge with them. In other words, it is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes. I am responsible for educating teachers who dismiss my children’s culture in school. Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.

Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals. As a result, those differences have been misnamed and misused in the service of separation and confusion.

Certainly there are very real differences between us of race, age, and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation.

Racism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance. Sexism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one sex over the other and thereby the right to dominance. Ageism. Heterosexism. Elitism. Classism.

It is a lifetime pursuit for each one of us to extract these distortions from our living at the same time as we recognize, reclaim, and define those differences upon which they are imposed. For we have all been raised in a society where those distortions were endemic within our living. Too often, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and exploring difference into pretending those differences are insurmountable barriers, or that they do not exist at all. This results in a voluntary isolation, or false and treacherous connections. Either way, we do not develop tools for using human difference as a springboard for creative change within our lives. We speak not of human difference, but of human deviance.

Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, there is what I call a mythical norm, which each one of us within our hearts knows “that is not me.” In america, this norm is usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure. It is with this mythical norm that the trappings of power reside within this society. Those of us who stand outside that power often identify one way in which we are different, and we assume that to be the primary cause of all oppression, forgetting other distortions around difference, some of which we ourselves may be practising. By and large within the women’s movement today, white women focus upon their oppression as women and ignore differences of race, sexual preference, class, and age. There is a pretense to a homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist.

Unacknowledged class differences rob women of each others’ energy and creative insight. Recently a women’s magazine collective made the decision for one issue to print only prose, saying poetry was a less “rigorous” or “serious” art form. Yet even the form our creativity takes is often a class issue. Of all the art forms, poetry is the most economical. It is the one which is the most secret, which requires the least physical labor, the least material, and the one which can be done between shifts, in the hospital pantry, on the subway, and on scraps of surplus paper. Over the last few years, writing a novel on tight finances, I came to appreciate the enormous differences in the material demands between poetry and prose. As we reclaim our literature, poetry has been the major voice of poor, working class, and Colored women. A room of one’s own may be a necessity for writing prose, but so are reams of paper, a typewriter, and plenty of time. The actual requirements to produce the visual arts also help determine, along class lines, whose art is whose. In this day of inflated prices for material, who are our sculptors, our painters, our photographers? When we speak of a broadly based women’s culture, we need to be aware of the effect of class and economic differences on the supplies available for producing art.

As we move toward creating a society within which we can each flourish, ageism is another distortion of relationship which interferes without vision. By ignoring the past, we are encouraged to repeat its mistakes. The “generation gap” is an important social tool for any repressive society. If the younger members of a community view the older members as contemptible or suspect or excess, they will never be able to join hands and examine the living memories of the community, nor ask the all important question, “Why?” This gives rise to a historical amnesia that keeps us working to invent the wheel every time we have to go to the store for bread.

We find ourselves having to repeat and relearn the same old lessons over and over that our mothers did because we do not pass on what we have learned, or because we are unable to listen. For instance, how many times has this all been said before? For another, who would have believed that once again our daughters are allowing their bodies to be hampered and purgatoried by girdles and high heels and hobble skirts?

Ignoring the differences of race between women and the implications of those differences presents the most serious threat to the mobilization of women’s joint power.

As white women ignore their built-in privilege of whiteness and define woman in terms of their own experience alone, then women of Color become “other,” the outsider whose experience and tradition is too “alien” to comprehend. An example of this is the signal absence of the experience of women of Color as a resource for women’s studies courses. The literature of women of Color is seldom included in women’s literature courses and almost never in other literature courses, nor in women’s studies as a whole. All too often, the excuse given is that the literatures of women of Color can only be taught by Colored women, or that they are too difficult to understand, or that classes cannot “get into” them because they come out of experiences that are “too different.” I have heard this argument presented by white women of otherwise quite clear intelligence, women who seem to have no trouble at all teaching and reviewing work that comes out of the vastly different experiences of Shakespeare, Moliere, Dostoyefsky, and Aristophanes. Surely there must be some other explanation.

This is a very complex question, but I believe one of the reasons white women have such difficulty reading Black women’s work is because of their reluctance to see Black women as women and different from themselves. To examine Black women’s literature effectively requires that we be seen as whole people in our actual complexities—as individuals, as women, as human—rather than as one of those problematic but familiar stereotypes provided in this society in place of genunine images of Black women. And I believe this holds true for the literatures of other women of Color who are not Black.

The literatures of all women of Color recreate the textures of our lives, and many white women are heavily invested in ignoring the real differences. For as long as any difference between us means one of us must be inferior, then the recognition of any difference must be fraught with guilt. To allow women of Color to step out of stereotypes is too guilt provoking, for it threatens the complacency of those women who view oppression only in terms of sex.

Refusing to recognize difference makes it impossible to see the different problems and pitfalls facing us as women.

Thus, in a patriarchal power system where whiteskin privilege is a major prop, the entrapments used to neutralize Black women and white women are not the same. For example, it is easy for Black women to be used by the power structure against Black men, not because they are men, but because they are Black. Therefore, for Black women, it is necessary at all times to separate the needs of the oppressor from our own legitimate conflicts within our communities. This same problem does not exist for white women. Black women and men have shared racist oppression and still share it, although in different ways. Out of that shared oppression we have developed joint defenses and joint vulnerabilities to each other that are not duplicated in the white community, with the exception of the relationship between Jewish women and Jewish men.

On the other hand, white women face the pitfall of being seduced into joining the oppressor under the pretense of sharing power. This possibility does not exist in the same way for women of Color. The tokenism that is sometimes extended to us is not an invitation to join power; our racial “otherness” is a visible reality that makes that quite clear. For white women there is a wider range of pretended choices and rewards for identifying with patriarchal power and its tools.

Today, with the defeat of ERA, the tightening economy, and increased conservatism, it is easier once again for white women to believe the dangerous fantasy that if you are good enough, pretty enough, sweet enough, quiet enough, teach the children to behave, hate the right people, and marry the right men, then you will be allowed to co-exist with patriarchy in relative peace, at least until a man needs your job or the neighborhood rapist happens along. And true, unless one lives and loves in the trenches it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.

But Black women and our children know the fabric of our lives is stitched with violence and with hatred, that there is no rest. We do not deal with it only on the picket lines, or in dark midnight alleys, or in the places where we dare to verbalize our resistance. For us, increasingly, violence weaves through the daily tissues of our living—in the supermarket, in the classroom, in the elevator, in the clinic and the schoolyard, from the plumber, the baker, the saleswoman, the bus driver, the bank teller, the waitress who does not serve us.

Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying.

The threat of difference has been no less blinding to people of Color. Those of us who are Black must see that the reality of our lives and our struggle does not make us immune to the errors of ignoring and misnaming difference. Within Black communities where racism is a living reality, differences among us often seem dangerous and suspect. The need for unity is often misnamed as a need for homogeneity, and a Black feminist vision mistaken for betrayal of our common interests as a people. Because of the continuous battle against racial erasure that Black women and Black men share, some Black women still refuse to recognize that we are also oppressed as women, and that sexual hostility against Black women is practiced not only by the white racist society, but implemented within our Black communities as well. It is a disease striking the heart of Black nationhood, and silence will not make it disappear. Exacerbated by racism and the pressures of powerlessness, violence against Black women and children often becomes a standard within our communities, one by which manliness can be measured. But these woman-hating acts are rarely discussed as crimes against Black women.

As a group, women of Color are the lowest paid wage earners in america. We are the primary targets of abortion and sterilization abuse, here and abroad. In certain parts of Africa, small girls are still being sewed shut between their legs to keep them docile and for men’s pleasure. This is known as female circumcision, and it is not a cultural affair as the late Jomo Kenyatta insisted, it is a crime against Black women.

Black women’s literature is full of the pain of frequent assault, not only by a racist patriarchy, but also by Black men. Yet the necessity for and history of shared battle have made us, Black women, particularly vulnerable to the false accusation that anti-sexist is anti-Black. Meanwhile, womanhating as a recourse of the powerless is sapping strength from Black communities, and our very lives. Rape is on the increase, reported and unreported, and rape is not aggressive sexuality, it is sexualized aggression. As Kalamu ya Salaam, a Black male writer points out, “As long as male domination exists, rape will exist. Only women revolting and men made conscious of their responsibility to fight sexism can collectively stop rape.”[4]

Differences between ourselves as Black women are also being misnamed and used to separate us from one another. As a Black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting way to live. My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restrictions of externally imposed definition. Only then can I bring myself and my energies as a whole to the service of those struggles which I embrace as part of my living.

A fear of lesbians, or of being accused of being a lesbian, has led many Black women into testifying against themselves. It has led some of us into destructive alliances, and others into despair and isolation. In the white women’s communities, heterosexism is sometimes a result of identifying with the white patriarchy, a rejection of that interdependence between women-identified women which allows the self to be, rather than to be used in the service of men. Sometimes it reflects a die-hard belief in the protective coloration of heterosexual relationships, sometimes a self-hate which all women have to fight against, taught us from birth.

Although elements of these attitudes exist for all women, there are particular resonances of heterosexism and homophobia among Black women. Despite the fact that woman-bonding has a long and honorable history in the African and Africanamerican communities, and despite the knowledge and accomplishments of many strong and creative women-identified Black women in the political, social and cultural fields, heterosexual Black women often tend to ignore or discount the existence and work of Black lesbians. Part of this attitude has come from an understandable terror of Black male attack within the close confines of Black society, where the punishment for any female self-assertion is still to be accused of being a lesbian and therefore unworthy of the attention or support of the scarce Black male. But part of this need to misname and ignore Black lesbians comes from a very real fear that openly women-identified Black women who are no longer dependent upon men for their self-definition may well reorder our whole concept of social relationships.

Black women who once insisted that lesbianism was a white woman’s problem now insist that Black lesbians are a threat to Black nationhood, are consorting with the enemy, are basically un-Black. These accusations, coming from the very women to whom we look for deep and real understanding, have served to keep many Black lesbians in hiding, caught between the racism of white women and the homophobia of their sisters. Often, their work has been ignored, trivialized, or misnamed, as with the work of Angelina Grimke, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Lorraine Hansberry. Yet women-bonded women have always been some part of the power of Black communities, from our unmarried aunts to the amazons of Dahomey.

And it is certainly not Black lesbians who are assaulting women and raping children and grandmothers on the streets of our communities.

Across this country, as in Boston during the spring of 1979 following the unsolved murders of twelve Black women, Black lesbians are spearheading movements against violence against Black women.

What are the particular details within each of our lives that can be scrutinized and altered to help bring about change? How do we redefine difference for all women? It is not our differences which separate women, but our reluctance to recognize those differences and to deal effectively with the distortions which have resulted from the ignoring and misnaming of those differences.

As a tool of social control, women have been encouraged to recognize only one area of human difference as legitimate, those differences which exist between women and men. And we have learned to deal across those differences with the urgency of all oppressed subordinates. All of us have had to learn to live or work or coexist with men, from our fathers on. We have recognized and negotiated these differences, even when this recognition only continued the old dominant/subordinate mode of human relationship, where the oppressed must recognize the masters’ difference in order to survive.

But our future survival is predicated upon our ability to relate within equality. As women, we must root out internalized patterns of oppression within ourselves if we are to move beyond the most superficial aspects of social change. Now we must recognize differences among women who are our equals, neither inferior nor superior, and devise ways to use each others’ difference to enrich our visions and our joint struggles.

The future of our earth may depend upon the ability of all women to identify and develop new definitions of power and new patterns of relating across difference. The old definitions have not served us, nor the earth that supports us. The old patterns, no matter how cleverly rearranged to imitate progress, still condemn us to cosmetically altered repetitions of the same old exchanges, the same old guilt, hatred, recrimination, lamentation, and suspicion.

For we have, built into all of us, old blueprints of expectation and response, old structures of oppression, and these must be altered at the same time as we alter the living conditions which are a result of those structures. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

As Paulo Freire shows so well in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed,[5] the true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us, and which knows only the oppressors’ tactics, the oppressors’ relationships.

Change means growth, and growth can be painful. But we sharpen self-definition by exposing the self in work and struggle together with those whom we define as different from ourselves, although sharing the same goals. For Black and white, old and young, lesbian and heterosexual women alike, this can mean new paths to our survival.

We have chosen each other

and the edge of each others battles

the war is the same

if we lose

someday women’s blood will congeal

upon a dead planet

if we win

there is no telling

we seek beyond history

for a new and more possible meeting.[6]

1. This statement is dated April 1977.↩

2. Wallace, Michele. “A Black Feminist’s Search for Sisterhood,” The Village Voice, 28 July 1975, pp. 6–7.↩

3. Mumininas of Committee for Unified Newark, Mwanamke Mwananchi (The Nationalist Woman), Newark, N.J., 1971, pp. 4–5.↩

4. From “Rape: A Radical Analysis, An African-American Perspective” by Kalamu ya Salaam in Black Books Bulletin, vol. 6, no. 4 (1980).↩

5. Seabury Press, New York, 1970.↩

6. From “Outlines,” unpublished poem.↩

Wages for Housework

Wages for Housework was, at times, a welfare rights organizing campaign in Italy, the UK, and the US. Many of its proponents, however, treated it less as a programmatic campaign and more as a banner for thinking, a tendency of new theoretical work. This current generated a body of rich arguments on the role of women’s reproductive labor under capitalism, and the need for autonomous women’s organizing to build working class power.

Mariarosa Dalla Costa calls for the destruction of the role of the housewife, understanding it as form of capitalist class exploitation. Rather than replacing private unpaid domestic labor with state-managed canteens or waged work for women, we must abolish capital and the class relation itself, and with it both the social structure of both waged and unwaged work.

Selma James, a British collaborator with Dalla Costa, theorizes that struggles around gender and race advance and strengthen working class power.

As a critique, well-known Black liberation activist, former fugitive and Communist academic Angela Davis looks to the experience of Black women to argue “government paychecks for housewives would further legitimise this domestic slavery.”

Secondary reading: Kathi Weeks, “Working Demands: From Wages for Housework to Basic Income,” The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Duke University Press, 2011. https://libcom.org/files/the-problem-with-work_-feminism-marxism-kathi-weeks.pdf

Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Women and the Subversion of the Community (1972)

https://libcom.org/library/power-women-subversion-community-dalla-costa-selma-james

Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, The Power of Women and the Subversion of Community. Falling Wall Press, 1972.

These observations are an attempt to define and analyze the “Woman Question,” and to locate this question in the entire “female role” as it has been created by the capitalist division of labor.

We place foremost in these pages the housewife as the central figure in this female role. We assume that all women are housewives and even those who work outside the home continue to be housewives. That is, on a world level, it is precisely what is particular to domestic work, not only measured as number of hours and nature of work, but as quality of life and quality of relationships which it generates, that determines a woman’s place wherever she is and to whichever class she belongs. We concentrate here on the position of the working class woman, but this is not to imply that only working class women are exploited. Rather it is to confirm that the role of the working class housewife, which we believe has been indispensable to capitalist production, is the determinant for the position of all other women. Every analysis of women as a caste, then, must proceed from the analysis of the position of working class housewives.

In order to see the housewife as central, it was first of all necessary to analyze briefly how capitalism has created the modern family and the housewife’s role in it, by destroying the types of family group or community which previously existed.

This process is by no means complete. While we are speaking of the Western world and Italy in particular, we wish to make clear that to the extent that the capitalist mode of production also brings the Third World under its command, the same process of destruction must and is taking place there. Nor should we take for granted that the family as we know it today in the most technically advanced Western countries is the final form the family can assume under capitalism. But the analysis of new tendencies can only be the product of an analysis of how capitalism created this family and what woman’s role is today, each as a moment in a process.

We propose to complete these observations on the female role by analyzing as well the position of the woman who works outside the home, but this is for a later date. We wish merely to indicate here the link between two apparently separate experiences: that of housewife and that of working woman.

The day-to-day struggles that women have developed since the second world war run directly against the organization of the factory and of the home. The “unreliability” of women in the home and out of it has grown rapidly since then, and runs directly against the factory as regimentation organized in time and space, and against the social factory as organization of the reproduction of labor power. This trend to more absenteeism, to less respect for timetables, to higher job mobility, is shared by young men and women workers. But where the man for crucial periods of his youth will be the sole support of a new family, women who on the whole are not restrained in this way and who must always consider the job at home, are bound to be even more disengaged from work discipline, forcing disruption of the productive flow and therefore higher costs to capital. (This is one excuse for the discriminatory wages which many times over make up for capital’s loss.) It is this same trend of disengagement that groups of housewives express when they leave their children with their husbands at work.[1] This trend is and will increasingly be one of the decisive forms of the crisis in the systems of the factory and of the social factory.

In recent years, especially in the advanced capitalist countries, there have developed a number of women’s movements of different orientations and range, from those which believe the fundamental conflict in society is between men and women to those focusing on the position of women as a specific manifestation of class exploitation.

If at first sight the position and attitudes of the former are perplexing, especially to women who have had previous experience of militant participation in political struggles, it is, we think, worth pointing out that women for whom sexual exploitation is the basic social contradiction provide an extremely important index of the degree of our own frustration, experienced by millions of women both inside and outside the movement. There are those who define their own lesbianism in these terms (we refer to views expressed by a section of the movement in the US in particular): “Our associations with women began when, because we were together, we could acknowledge that we could no longer tolerate relationships with men, that we could not prevent these from becoming power relationships in which we were inevitably subjected. Our attentions and energies were diverted, our power was diffused and its objectives delimited.” From this rejection has developed a movement of gay women which asserts the possibilities of a relationship free of a sexual power struggle, free of the biological social unit, and asserts at the same time our need to open ourselves to a wider social and therefore sexual potential.

Now in order to understand the frustrations of women expressing themselves in ever-increasing forms, we must be clear what in the nature of the family under capitalism precipitates a crisis on this scale. The oppression of women, after all, did not begin with capitalism. What began with capitalism was the more intense exploitation of women as women and the possibility at last of their liberation.

The origins of the capitalist family

In pre-capitalist patriarchal society the home and the family were central to agricultural and artisan production. With the advent of capitalism the socialization of production was organized with the factory as its center. Those who worked in the new productive center, the factory, received a wage. Those who were excluded did not. Women, children and the aged lost the relative power that derived from the family’s dependence on their labor, which was seen to be social and necessary. Capital, destroying the family and the community and production as one whole, on the one hand has concentrated basic social production in the factory and the office, and on the other has in essence detached the man from the family and turned him into a wage laborer. It has put on the man’s shoulders the burden of financial responsibility for women, children, the old and the ill, in a word, all those who do not receive wages. From that moment began the expulsion from the home of all those who did not procreate and service those who worked for wages. The first to be excluded from the home, after men, were children; they sent children to school. The family ceased to be not only the productive, but also the educational center.[2]

To the extent that men had been the despotic heads of the patriarchal family, based on a strict division of labor, the experience of women, children and men was a contradictory experience which we inherit. But in pre-capitalist society the work of each member of the community of serfs was seen to be directed to a purpose: either to the prosperity of the feudal lord or to our survival. To this extent the whole community of serfs was compelled to be co-operative in a unity of unfreedom that involved to the same degree women, children and men, which capitalism had to break.[3] In this sense the unfree individual, the democracy of unfreedom[4] entered into a crisis. The passage from serfdom to free labor power separated the male from the female proletarian and both of them from their children. The unfree patriarch was transformed into the “free” wage earner, and upon the contradictory experience of the sexes and the generations was built a more profound estrangement and therefore a more subversive relation.

We must stress that this separation of children from adults is essential to an understanding of the full significance of the separation of women from men, to grasp fully how the organization of the struggle on the part of the women’s movement, even when it takes the form of a violent rejection of any possibility of relations with men, can only aim to overcome the separation which is based on the “freedom” of wage labor.

The class struggle in education

The analysis of the school which has emerged during recent years—particularly with the advent of the students’ movement—has clearly identified the school as a center of ideological discipline and of the shaping of the labor force and its masters. What has perhaps never emerged, or at least not in its profundity, is precisely what precedes all this; and that is the usual desperation of children on their first day of nursery school, when they see themselves dumped into a class and their parents suddenly desert them. But it is precisely at this point that the whole story of school begins.[5]

Seen in this way, the elementary school children are not those appendages who, merely by the demands “free lunches, free fares, free books,” learnt from the older ones, can in some way be united with the students of the higher schools.[6] In elementary school children, in those who are the sons and daughters of workers, there is always an awareness that school is in some way setting them against their parents and their peers, and consequently there is an instinctive resistance to studying and to being “educated.” This is the resistance for which Black children are confined to educationally subnormal schools in Britain.[7] The European working class child, like the Black working class child, sees in the teacher somebody who is teaching him or her something against her mother and father, not as a defense of the child but as an attack on the class. Capitalism is the first productive system where the children of the exploited are disciplined and educated in institutions organized and controlled by the ruling class.[8]

The final proof that this alien indoctrination which begins in nursery school is based on the splitting of the family is that those working class children who arrive (those few who do arrive) at university are so brainwashed that they are unable any longer to talk to their community.

Working class children then are the first who instinctively rebel against schools and the education provided in schools. But their parents carry them to schools and confine them to schools because they are concerned that their children should “have an education,” that is, be equipped to escape the assembly line or the kitchen to which they, the parents, are confined. If a working class child shows particular aptitudes, the whole family immediately concentrates on this child, gives him the best conditions, often sacrificing the others, hoping and gambling that he will carry them all out of the working class. This in effect becomes the way capital moves through the aspirations of the parents to enlist their help in disciplining fresh labor power.

In Italy parents less and less succeed in sending their children to school. Children’s resistance to school is always increasing even when this resistance is not yet organized.

At the same time that the resistance of children grows to being educated in schools, so does their refusal to accept the definition that capital has given of their age. Children want everything they see; they do not yet understand that in order to have things one must pay for them, and in order to pay for them one must have a wage, and therefore one must also be an adult. No wonder it is not easy to explain to children why they cannot have what television has told them they cannot live without.

But something is happening among the new generation of children and youth which is making it steadily more difficult to explain to them the arbitrary point at which they reach adulthood. Rather the younger generation is demonstrating their age to us: in the sixties six-year-olds have already come up against police dogs in the South of the United States. Today we find the same phenomenon in Southern Italy and Northern Ireland, where children have been as active in the revolt as adults. When children (and women) are recognized as integral to history, no doubt other examples will come to light of very young people’s participation (and of women’s) in revolutionary struggles. What is new is the autonomy of their participation in spite of and because of their exclusion from direct production. In the factories youth refuse the leadership of older workers, and in the revolts in the cities they are the diamond point. In the metropolis generations of the nuclear family have produced youth and student movements that have initiated the process of shaking the framework of constituted power: in the Third World the unemployed youth are often in the streets before the working class organized in trade unions.

It is worth recording what The Times of London (1 June 1971) reported concerning a headteachers’ meeting called because one of them was admonished for hitting a pupil: “Disruptive and irresponsible elements lurk around every corner with the seemingly planned intention of eroding all forces of authority.” This “is a plot to destroy the values on which our civilization is built and of which our schools are some of the finest bastions.”

The exploitation of the wageless

We wanted to make these few comments on the attitude of revolt that is steadily spreading among children and youth, especially from the working class and particularly Black people, because we believe this to be intimately connected with the explosion of the women’s movement and something which the Women’s movement itself must take into account. We are dealing with the revolt of those who have been excluded, who have been separated by the system of production, and who express in action their need to destroy the forces that stand in the way of their social existence, but who this time are coming together as individuals.

Women and children have been excluded. The revolt of the one against exploitation through exclusion is an index of the revolt of the other.

To the extent to which capital has recruited the man and turned him into a wage laborer, it has created a fracture between him and all the other proletarians without a wage who, not participating directly in social production, were thus presumed incapable of being the subjects of social revolt.

Since Marx, it has been clear that capital rules and develops through the wage, that is, that the foundation of capitalist society was the wage laborer and his or her direct exploitation. What has been neither clear nor assumed by the organizations of the working class movement is that precisely through the wage has the exploitation of the non-wage laborer been organized. This exploitation has been even more effective because the lack of a wage hid it. That is, the wage commanded a larger amount of labor than appeared in factory bargaining. Where women are concerned, their labor appears to be a personal service outside of capital. The woman seemed only to be suffering from male chauvinism, being pushed around because capitalism meant general “injustice” and “bad and unreasonable behavior”; the few (men) who noticed convinced us that this was “oppression” but not exploitation. But “oppression” hid another and more pervasive aspect of capitalist society. Capital excluded children from the home and sent them to school not only because they are in the way of others’ more “productive” labor or only to indoctrinate them. The rule of capital through the wage compels every ablebodied person to function, under the law of division of labor, and to function in ways that are if not immediately, then ultimately profitable to the expansion and extension of the rule of capital. That, fundamentally, is the meaning of school. Where children are concerned, their labor appears to be learning for their own benefit.

Proletarian children have been forced to undergo the same education in the schools: this is capitalist levelling against the infinite possibilities of learning. Woman on the other hand has been isolated in the home, forced to carry out work that is considered unskilled, the work of giving birth to, raising, disciplining, and servicing the worker for production. Her role in the cycle of social production remained invisible because only the product of her labor, the laborer, was visible there. She herself was thereby trapped within pre-capitalist working conditions and never paid a wage.

And when we say “pre-capitalist working conditions” we do not refer only to women who have to use brooms to sweep. Even the best equipped American kitchens do not reflect the present level of technological development; at most they reflect the technology of the 19th century. If you are not paid by the hour, within certain limits, nobody cares how long it takes you to do your work.

This is not only a quantitative but a qualitative difference from other work, and it stems precisely from the kind of commodity that this work is destined to produce. Within the capitalist system generally, the productivity of labor doesn’t increase unless there is a confrontation between capital and class: technological innovations and co-operation are at the same time moments of attack for the working class and moments of capitalistic response. But if this is true for the production of commodities generally, this has not been true for the production of that special kind of commodity, labor power. If technological innovation can lower the limit of necessary work, and if the working class struggle in industry can use that innovation for gaining free hours, the same cannot be said of housework; to the extent that she must in isolation procreate, raise and be responsible for children, a high mechanization of domestic chores doesn’t free any time for the woman. She is always on duty, for the machine doesn’t exist that makes and minds children.[9] A higher productivity of domestic work through mechanization, then, can be related only to specific services, for example, cooking, washing, cleaning. Her workday is unending not because she has no machines, but because she is isolated.[10]

Confirming the myth of female incapacity

With the advent of the capitalist mode of production, then, women were relegated to a condition of isolation, enclosed within the family cell, dependent in every aspect on men. The new autonomy of the free wage slave was denied her, and she remained in a pre-capitalist stage of personal dependence, but this time more brutalized because in contrast to the large-scale highly socialized production which now prevails. Woman’s apparent incapacity to do certain things, to understand certain things, originated in her history, which is a history very similar in certain respects to that of “backward” children in special ESN classes. To the extent that women were cut off from direct socialized production and isolated in the home, all possibilities of social life outside the neighborhood were denied them, and hence they were deprived of social knowledge and social education. When women are deprived of wide experience of organizing and planning collectively industrial and other mass struggles, they are denied a basic source of education, the experience of social revolt. And this experience is primarily the experience of learning your own capacities, that is, your power, and the capacities, the power, of your class. Thus the isolation from which women have suffered has confirmed to society and to themselves the myth of female incapacity.

It is this myth which has hidden, firstly, that to the degree that the working class has been able to organize mass struggles in the community, rent strikes, struggles against inflation generally, the basis has always been the unceasing informal organization of women there; secondly, that in struggles in the cycle of direct production women’s support and organization, formal and informal, has been decisive. At critical moments this unceasing network of women surfaces and develops through the talents, energies and strength of the “incapable female.” But the myth does not die. Where women could together with men claim the victory—to survive (during unemployment) or to survive and win (during strikes)—the spoils of the victor belonged to the class “in general.” Women rarely if ever got anything specifically for themselves; rarely if ever did the struggle have as an objective in any way altering the power structure of the home and its relation to the factory. Strike or unemployment, a woman’s work is never done.

The capitalist function of the uterus

Never as with the advent of capitalism has the destruction of woman as a person meant also the immediate diminution of her physical integrity. Feminine and masculine sexuality had already before capitalism undergone a series of regimes and forms of conditioning. But they had also undergone efficient methods of birth control, which have unaccountably disappeared. Capital established the family as the nuclear family and subordinated within it the woman to the man, as the person who, not directly participating in social production, does not present herself independently on the labor market. As it cuts off all her possibilities of creativity and of the development of her working activity, so it cuts off the expression of her sexual, psychological and emotional autonomy.

We repeat: never had such a stunting of the physical integrity of woman taken place, affecting everything from the brain to the uterus. Participating with others in the production of a train, a car or an airplane is not the same thing as using in isolation the same broom in the same few square feet of kitchen for centuries.

This is not a call for equality of men and women in the construction of airplanes, but it is merely to assume that the difference between the two histories not only determines the differences in the actual forms of struggle but brings also finally to light what has been invisible for so long: the different forms women’s struggles have assumed in the past. In the same way as women are robbed of the possibility of developing their creative capacity, they are robbed of their sexual life which has been transformed into a function for reproducing labor power: the same observations which we made on the technological level of domestic services apply to birth control (and, by the way, to the whole field of gynaecology), research into which until recently has been continually neglected, while women have been forced to have children and were forbidden the right to have abortions when, as was to be expected, the most primitive techniques of birth control failed.

From this complete diminution of woman, capital constructed the female role, and has made the man in the family the instrument of this reduction. The man as wage worker and head of the family was the specific instrument of this specific exploitation which is the exploitation of women.

The homosexuality of the division of labour

In this sense we can explain to what extent the degraded relationships between men and women are determined by the fracturing that society has imposed between man and woman, subordinating woman as object, the “complement” to man. And in this sense we can see the validity of the explosion of tendencies within the women’s movement in which women want to conduct their struggle against men as such[11] and no longer wish to use their strength to sustain even sexual relationships with them, since each of these relationships is always frustrating. A power relation precludes any possibility of affection and intimacy. Yet between men and women power as its right commands sexual affection and intimacy. In this sense, the gay movement is the most massive attempt to disengage sexuality and power.

But homosexuality generally is at the same time rooted in the framework of capitalist society itself: women at home and men in factories and offices, separated one from the other for the whole day; or a typical factory of 1,000 women with 10 foremen; or a typing pool (of women, of course) which works for 50 professional men. All these situations are already a homosexual framework of living.

Capital, while it elevates heterosexuality to a religion, at the same time in practice makes it impossible for men and women to be in touch with each other, physically or emotionally—it undermines heterosexuality except as a sexual, economic and social discipline.

We believe that this is a reality from which we must begin. The explosion of the gay tendencies have been and are important for the movement precisely because they pose the urgency to claim for itself the specificity of women’s struggle and above all to clarify in all their depths all facets and connections of the exploitation of women.

Surplus value and the social factory

At this point then we would like to begin to clear the ground of a certain point of view which orthodox Marxism, especially in the ideology and practice of so-called Marxist parties, has always taken for granted. And this is: when women remain outside social production, that is, outside the socially organized productive cycle, they are also outside social productivity. The role of women, in other words, has always been seen as that of a psychologically subordinated person who, except where she is marginally employed outside the home, is outside production; essentially a supplier of a series of use values in the home. This basically was the viewpoint of Marx who, observing what happened to women working in the factories, concluded that it might have been better for them to be at home, where resided a morally higher form of life. But the true nature of the role of housewife never emerges clearly in Marx. Yet observers have noted that Lancashire women, cotton workers for over a century, are more sexually free and helped by men in domestic chores. On the other hand, in the Yorkshire coal mining districts where a low percentage of women worked outside the home, women are more dominated by the figure of the husband. Even those who have been able to define the exploitation of women in socialised production could not then go on to understand the exploited position of women in the home; men are too compromised in their relationship with women. For that reason only women can define themselves and move on the woman question.

We have to make clear that, within the wage, domestic work produces not merely use values, but is essential to the production of surplus value.[12] This is true of the entire female role as a personality which is subordinated at all levels, physical, psychical and occupational, which has had and continues to have a precise and vital place in the capitalist division of labor, in pursuit of productivity at the social level. Let us examine more specifically the role of women as a source of social productivity, that is, of surplus value making. Firstly within the family.

A. The Productivity of Wage Slavery Based on Unwaged Slavery

It is often asserted that, within the definition of wage labor, women in domestic labor are not productive. In fact precisely the opposite is true if one thinks of the enormous quantity of social services which capitalist organization transforms into privatized activity, putting them on the backs of housewives. Domestic labor is not essentially “feminine work”; a woman doesn’t fulfill herself more or get less exhausted than a man from washing and cleaning. These are social services inasmuch as they serve the reproduction of labor power. And capital, precisely by instituting its family structure, has “liberated” the man from these functions so that he is completely “free” for direct exploitation; so that he is free to “earn” enough for a woman to reproduce him as labor power. It has made men wage slaves, then, to the degree that it has succeeded in allocating these services to women in the family, and by the same process controlled the flow of women onto the labor market. In Italy women are still necessary in the home and capital still needs this form of the family. At the present level of development in Europe generally, in Italy in particular, capital still prefers to import its labor power—in the form of millions of men from underdeveloped areas—while at the same time consigning women to the home.[13]

And women are of service not only because they carry out domestic labor without a wage and without going on strike, but also because they always receive back into the home all those who are periodically expelled from their jobs by economic crisis. The family, this maternal cradle always ready to help and protect in time of need, has been in fact the best guarantee that the unemployed do not immediately become a horde of disruptive outsiders.

The organized parties of the working class movement have been careful not to raise the question of domestic work. Aside from the fact that they have always treated women as a lower form of life, even in factories, to raise this question would be to challenge the whole basis of the trade unions as organizations that deal (a) only with the factory; (b) only with a measured and “paid” work day; (c) only with that side of wages which is given to us and not with the side of wages which is taken back, that is, inflation. Women have always been forced by the working class parties to put off their liberation to some hypothetical future, making it dependent on the gains that men, limited in the scope of their struggles by these parties, win for “themselves.”

In reality, every phase of working class struggle has fixed the subordination and exploitation of women at a higher level. The proposal of pensions for housewives (and this makes us wonder why not a wage) serves only to show the complete willingness of these parties further to institutionalize women as housewives and men (and women) as wage slaves.[14]

Now it is clear that not one of us believes that emancipation, liberation, can be achieved through work. Work is still work, whether inside or outside the home. The independence of the wage earner means only being a “free individual” for capital, no less for women than for men. Those who advocate that the liberation of the working class woman lies in her getting a job outside the home are part of the problem, not the solution. Slavery to an assembly line is not a liberation from slavery to a kitchen sink. To deny this is also to deny the slavery of the assembly line itself, proving again that if you don’t know how women are exploited, you can never really know how men are. But this question is so crucial that we deal with it separately. What we wish to make clear here is that by the non-payment of a wage when we are producing in a world capitalistically organized, the figure of the boss is concealed behind that of the husband. He appears to be the sole recipient of domestic services, and this gives an ambiguous and slavelike character to housework. The husband and children, through their loving involvement, their loving blackmail, become the first foremen, the immediate controllers of this labor.

The husband tends to read the paper and wait for his dinner to be cooked and served, even when his wife goes out to work as he does and comes home with him. Clearly, the specific form of exploitation represented by domestic work demands a correspondingly specific form of struggle, namely the women’s struggle, within the family.

If we fail to grasp completely that precisely this family is the very pillar of the capitalist organization of work, if we make the mistake of regarding it only as a superstructure, dependent for change only on the stages of the struggle in the factories, then we will be moving in a limping revolution that will always perpetuate and aggravate a basic contradiction in the class struggle, and a contradiction which is functional to capitalist development. We would, in other words, be perpetuating the error of considering ourselves as producers of use values only, of considering housewives external to the working class. As long as housewives are considered external to the class, the class struggle at every moment and any point is impeded, frustrated, and unable to find full scope for its action. To elaborate this further is not our task here. To expose and condemn domestic work as a masked form of productive labor, however, raises a series of questions concerning both the aims and the forms of struggle of women.

Socializing the struggle of the isolated laborer

In fact, the demand that would follow, namely “pay us wages for housework,” would run the risk of looking, in the light of the present relationship of forces in Italy, as though we wanted further to entrench the condition of institutionalized slavery which is produced with the condition of housework—therefore such a demand could scarcely operate in practice as a mobilizing goal.[15]

The question is, therefore, to develop forms of struggle which do not leave the housewife peacefully at home, at most ready to take part in occasional demonstrations through the streets, waiting for a wage that would never pay for anything; rather we must discover forms of struggle which immediately break the whole structure of domestic work, rejecting it absolutely, rejecting our role as housewives and the home as the ghetto of our existence, since the problem is not only to stop doing this work, but to smash the entire role of housewife. The starting point is not how to do housework more efficiently, but how to find a place as protagonist in the struggle; that is, not a higher productivity of domestic labor but a higher subversiveness in the struggle.

To immediately overthrow the relation between time-given-to-housework and time-not-given-to-housework: it is not necessary to spend time each day ironing sheets and curtains, cleaning the floor until it sparkles nor to dust every day. And yet many women still do that. Obviously it is not because they are stupid: once again we are reminded of the parallel we made earlier with the ESN school. In reality, it is only in this work that they can realize an identity precisely because, as we said before, capital has cut them off from the process of socially organized production.

But it does not automatically follow that to be cut off from socialized production is to be cut off from socialized struggle: struggle, however, demands time away from housework, and at the same time it offers an alternative identity to the woman who before found it only at the level of the domestic ghetto. In the sociality of struggle women discover and exercise a power that effectively gives them a new identity. The new identity is and can only be a new degree of social power.

The possibility of social struggle arises out of the socially productive character of women’s work in the home. It is not only or mainly the social services provided in the home that make women’s role socially productive, even though in fact at this moment these services are identified with women’s role. But capital can technologically improve the conditions of this work. What capital does not want to do for the time being, in Italy at least, is to destroy the position of the housewife as the pivot of the nuclear family. For this reason there is no point in our waiting for the automation of domestic work, because this will never happen: the maintenance of the nuclear family is incompatible with the automation of these services. To really automate them, capital would have to destroy the family as we know it; that is, it would be driven to socialize in order to automate fully.

But we know all too well what their socialization means: it is always at the very least the opposite of the Paris Commune!

The new leap that capitalist reorganization could make and that we can already smell in the U.S. and in the more advanced capitalist countries generally is to destroy the pre-capitalist relation of production in the home by constructing a family which more nearly reflects capitalist equality and its domination through co-operative labor; to transcend “the incompleteness of capitalist development” in the home, with the pre-capitalist, unfree woman as its pivot, and make the family more nearly reflect in its form its capitalist productive function, the reproduction of labor power.

To return then to what we said above: women, housewives, identifying themselves with the home, tend to a compulsive perfection in their work. We all know the saying too well: you can always find work to do in a house.

They don’t see beyond their own four walls. The housewife’s situation as a pre-capitalist mode of labor and consequently this “femininity” imposed upon her, makes her see the world, the others and the entire organization of work as a something which is obscure, essentially unknown and unknowable; not lived; perceived only as a shadow behind the shoulders of the husband who goes out each day and meets this something.

So when we say that women must overthrow the relation of domestic-work-time to non-domestic-time and must begin to move out of the home, we mean their point of departure must be precisely this willingness to destroy the role of housewife, in order to begin to come together with other women, not only as neighbors and friends but as workmates and anti-workmates; thus breaking the tradition of privatized female, with all its rivalry, and reconstructing a real solidarity among women: not solidarity for defense but solidarity for attack, for the organization of the struggle.

A common solidarity against a common form of labor. In the same way, women must stop meeting their husbands and children only as wife and mother, that is, at mealtime after they have come home from the outside world.

Every place of struggle outside the home, precisely because every sphere of capitalist organization presupposes the home, offers a chance for attack by women; factory meetings, neighborhood meetings, student assemblies, each of them are legitimate places for women’s struggle, where women can encounter and confront men—women versus men, if you like, but as individuals, rather than mother-father, son-daughter, with all the possibilities this offers to explode outside of the house the contradictions, the frustrations, that capital has wanted to implode within the family.

A new compass for class struggle

If women demand in workers’ assemblies that the night-shift be abolished because at night, besides sleeping, one wants to make love—and it’s not the same as making love during the day if the women work during the day—that would be advancing their own independent interests as women against the social organization of work, refusing to be unsatisfied mothers for their husbands and children.

But in this new intervention and confrontation women are also expressing that their interests as women are not, as they have been told, separate and alien from the interests of the class. For too long political parties, especially of the left, and trade unions have determined and confined the areas of working class struggle. To make love and to refuse night work to make love, is in the interest of the class. To explore why it is women and not men who raise the question is to shed new light on the whole history of the class.

To meet your sons and daughters at a student assembly is to discover them as individuals who speak among other individuals; it is to present yourself to them as an individual. Many women have had abortions and very many have given birth. We can’t see why they should not express their point of view as women first, whether or not they are students, in an assembly of medical students. (We do not give the medical faculty as an example by accident. In the lecture hall and in the clinic, we can see once more the exploitation of the working class not only when third class patients exclusively are made the guinea pigs for research. Women especially are the prime objects of experimentation and also of the sexual contempt, sadism, and professional arrogance of doctors.)

To sum up: the most important thing becomes precisely this explosion of the women’s movement as an expression of the specificity of female interests hitherto castrated from all its connections by the capitalist organization of the family. This has to be waged in every quarter of this society, each of which is founded precisely on the suppression of such interests, since the entire class exploitation has been built upon the specific mediation of women’s exploitation.

And so as a women’s movement we must pinpoint every single area in which this exploitation is located, that is, we must regain the whole specificity of the female interest in the course of waging the struggle.

Every opportunity is a good one: housewives of families threatened with eviction can object that their housework has more than covered the rent of the months they didn’t pay. On the out-skirts of Milan, many families have already taken up this form of struggle.

Electric appliances in the home are lovely things to have, but for the workers who make them, to make many is to spend time and to exhaust yourself. That every wage has to buy all of them is tough, and presumes that every wife must run all these appliances alone; and this only means that she is frozen in the home, but now on a more mechanized level. Lucky worker, lucky wife!

The question is not to have communal canteens.[16] We must remember that capital makes Fiat for the workers first, then their canteen.

For this reason to demand a communal canteen in the neighborhood without integrating this demand into a practice of struggle against the organization of labor, against labor time, risks giving the impetus for a new leap that, on the community level, would regiment none other than women in some alluring work so that we will then have the possibility at lunchtime of eating shit collectively in the canteen.

We want them to know that this is not the canteen we want, nor do we want play centers or nurseries of the same order. We want canteens too, and nurseries and washing machines and dishwashers, but we also want choices: to eat in privacy with few people when we want, to have time to be with children, to be with old people, with the sick, when and where we choose. To “have time” means to work less. To have time to be with children, the old and the sick does not mean running to pay a quick visit to the garages where you park children or old people or invalids. It means that we, the first to be excluded, are taking the initiative in this struggle so that all those other excluded people, the children, the old and the ill, can re-appropriate the social wealth; to be re-integrated with us and all of us with men, not as dependents but autonomously, as we women want for ourselves; since their exclusion, like ours, from the directly productive social process, from social existence, has been created by capitalist organization.

The refusal of work

Hence we must refuse housework as women’s work, as work imposed upon us, which we never invented, which has never been paid for, in which they have forced us to cope with absurd hours, 12 and 13 a day, in order to force us to stay at home.

We must get out of the house; we must reject the home, because we want to unite with other women, to struggle against all situations which presume that women will stay at home, to link ourselves to the struggles of all those who are in ghettos, whether the ghetto is a nursery, a school, a hospital, an old-age home, or asylum. To abandon the home is already a form of struggle, since the social services we perform there would then cease to be carried out in those conditions, and so all those who work out of the home would then demand that the burden carried by us until now be thrown squarely where it belongs—onto the shoulders of capital. This alteration in the terms of struggle will be all the more violent the more the refusal of domestic labor on the part of women will be violent, determined and on a mass scale.

The working class family is the more difficult point to break because it is the support of the worker, but as worker, and for that reason the support of capital. On this family depends the support of the class, the survival of the class—but at the woman’s expense against the class itself. The woman is the slave of a wage-slave, and her slavery ensures the slavery of her man. Like the trade union, the family protects the worker, but also ensures that he and she will never be anything but workers. And that is why the struggle of the woman of the working class against the family is crucial.

To meet other women who work inside and outside their homes allows us to possess other chances of struggle. To the extent that our struggle is a struggle against work, it is inscribed in the struggle which the working class wages against capitalist work. But to the extent that the exploitation of women through domestic work has had its own specific history, tied to the survival of the nuclear family, the specific course of this struggle which must pass through the destruction of the nuclear family as established by the capitalist social order, adds a new dimension to the class struggle.

[...]

C. The Productivity of Discipline

[...]

Here we have only attempted to consider female domestic productivity without going into detail about the psychological implications. At least we have located and essentially outlined this female domestic productivity as it passes through the complexities of the role that the woman plays (in addition, that is, to the actual domestic work the burden of which she assumes without pay). We pose, then, as foremost the need to break this role that wants women divided from each other, from men and from children, each locked in her family as the chrysalis in the cocoon that imprisons itself by its own work, to die and leave silk for capital. To reject all this, as we have already said, means for housewives to recognize themselves also as a section of the class, the most degraded because they are not paid a wage.

The housewife’s position in the overall struggle of women is crucial, since it undermines the very pillar supporting the capitalist organization of work, namely the family.

So every goal that tends to affirm the individuality of women against this figure complementary to everything and everybody, that is, the housewife, is worth posing as a goal subversive to the continuation, the productivity of this role.

In this same sense all the demands that can serve to restore to the woman the integrity of her basic physical functions, starting with the sexual one which was the first to be robbed along with productive creativity, have to be posed with the greatest urgency.

It is not by chance that research in birth control has developed so slowly, that abortion is forbidden almost the world over or conceded finally only for “therapeutic” reasons.

To move first on these demands is not facile reformism. Capitalist management of these matters poses over and over discrimination of class and discrimination of women specifically.

Why were proletarian women, Third World women, used as guinea pigs in this research? Why does the question of birth control continue to be posed as women’s problem? To begin to struggle to overthrow the capitalist management over these matters is to move on a class basis, and on a specifically female basis. To link these struggles with the struggle against motherhood conceived as the responsibility of women exclusively, against domestic work conceived as women’s work, ultimately against the models that capitalism offers us as examples of women’s emancipation which are nothing more than ugly copies of the male role, is to struggle against the division and organization of labor.

Women and the struggle not to work

Let us sum up. The role of housewife, behind whose isolation is hidden social labor, must be destroyed. But our alternatives are strictly defined. Up to now, the myth of female incapacity, rooted in this isolated woman dependent on someone else’s wage and therefore shaped by someone else’s consciousness, has been broken by only one action: the woman getting her own wage, breaking the back of personal economic dependence, making her own independent experience with the world outside the home, performing social labor in a socialized structure, whether the factory or the office, and initiating there her own forms of social rebellion along with the traditional forms of the class. The advent of the women’s movement is a rejection of this alternative.

Capital itself is seizing upon the same impetus which created a movement—the rejection by millions of women of women’s traditional place—to recompose the work force with increasing numbers of women. The movement can only develop in opposition to this. It poses by its very existence and must pose with increasing articulation in action that women refuse the myth of liberation through work.

For we have worked enough. We have chopped billions of tons of cotton, washed billions of dishes, scrubbed billions of floors, typed billions of words, wired billions of radio sets, washed billions of nappies, by hand and in machines. Every time they have “let us in” to some traditionally male enclave, it was to find for us a new level of exploitation. Here again we must make a parallel, different as they are, between underdevelopment in the Third World and underdevelopment in the metropolis—to be more precise, in the kitchens of the metropolis. Capitalist planning proposes to the Third World that it “develop”; that in addition to its present agonies, it too suffer the agony of an industrial counter revolution. Women in the metropolis have been offered the same “aid.” But those of us who have gone out of our homes to work because we had to or for extras or for economic independence have warned the rest: inflation has riveted us to this bloody typing pool or to this assembly line, and in that there is no salvation. We must refuse the development they are offering us. But the struggle of the working woman is not to return to the isolation of the home, appealing as this sometimes may be on Monday morning; any more than the housewife’s struggle is to exchange being imprisoned in a house for being clinched to desks or machines, appealing as this sometimes may be compared to the loneliness of the 12th story flat.

Women must completely discover their own possibilities—which are neither mending socks nor becoming captains of ocean-going ships. Better still, we may wish to do these things, but these now cannot be located anywhere but in the history of capital.

The challenge to the women’s movement is to find modes of struggle which, while they liberate women from the home, at the same time avoid on the one hand a double slavery and on the other prevent another degree of capitalistic control and regimentation. This ultimately is the dividing line between reformism and revolutionary politics within the women’s movement.

It seems that there have been few women of genius. There could not be since, cut off from the social process, we cannot see on what matters they could exercise their genius. Now there is a matter, the struggle itself.

Freud said also that every woman from birth suffers from penis envy. He forgot to add that this feeling of envy begins from the moment when she perceives that in some way to have a penis means to have power. Even less did he realize that the traditional power of the penis commenced upon a whole new history at the very moment when the separation of man from woman became a capitalistic division.

And this is where our struggle begins.

29 December 1971

Selma James, Sex, Race and Class (1975)

https://libcom.org/library/sex-race-class-james-selma

Published: Race Today, January 1974.

Source: Sex, Race and Class: The Perspective of Winning, A Selection of Writings 1952–2011, PM Press, 2012.

There has been enough confusion generated when sex, race and class have confronted each other as separate and even conflicting entities. That they are separate entities is self-evident. That they have proven themselves to be not separate, inseparable, is harder to discern. Yet if sex and race are pulled away from class, virtually all that remains is the truncated, provincial, sectarian politics of the white male metropolitan Left. I hope to show in barest outline, first, that the working class movement is something other than what that Left has ever conceived it to be. Second, locked within the contradiction between the discrete entity of sex or race and the totality of class is the greatest deterrent to working class power and at the same time the creative energy to achieve that power.

In our book which Avis Brown so generously referred to,[17] we tackled “...the relation of women to capital and [the] kind of struggle we [can] effectively wage to destroy it” (p.5), and draw throughout on the experience of the struggle against capital by Black people. Beginning with the female (caste) experience, we redefined class to include women. That redefinition was based on the unwaged labour of the housewife. We put it this way:

Since Marx, it has been clear that capital rules and develops through the wage, that is, that the foundation of capitalist society was the wage labourer and his or her direct exploitation. What has been neither clear nor assumed by the organizations of the working class movement is that precisely through the wage has the exploitation of the non-wage labourer been organized. This exploitation has been even more effective because the lack of a wage hid it...Where women are concerned their labour appears to be a personal service outside of capital.

But if the relation of caste to class where women are concerned presents itself in a hidden, mystified form, this mystification is not unique to women. Before we confront race, let us take an apparent diversion.

The least powerful in the society are our children, also unwaged in a wage labour society. They were once (and in tribal society for example still are) accepted as an integral part of the productive activity of the community. The work they did was part of the total social labour and was acknowledged as such. Where capital is extending or has extended its rule, children are taken away from others in the community and forced to go to schools, against which the number of rebels is growing daily. Is their powerlessness a class question? Is their struggle against school the class struggle? We believe it is. Schools are institutions organized by capital to achieve its purpose through and against the child.

Capital...sent them to school not only because they are in the way of others’ more “productive” labour or only to indoctrinate them. The rule of capital through the wage compels every ablebodied person to function, under the law of division of labour, and to function in ways that are if not immediately, then ultimately profitable to the expansion and extension of the rule of capital. That, fundamentally, is the meaning of school. Where children are concerned, their labour appears to be learning for their own benefit.

So here are two sections of the working class whose activities, one in the home, the other in the school, appear to be outside of the capitalist wage labour relation because the workers themselves are wageless. In reality, their activities are facets of capitalist production and its division of labour.

One, housewives, are involved in the production and (what is the same thing) reproduction of workers, what Marx calls labour power. They service those who are daily destroyed by working for wages and who need to be daily renewed; and they care for and discipline those who are being prepared to work when they grow up.

The other, children, are those who from birth are the objects of this care and discipline, who are trained in homes, in schools and in front of the telly to be future workers. But this has two aspects.

In the first place, for labour power to be reproduced in the form of children, these children must be coerced into accepting discipline and especially the discipline of working, of being exploited in order to be able to eat. In addition, however, they must be disciplined and trained to perform a certain kind of work. The labour that capital wants done is divided and each category parceled out internationally as the life work, the destiny, the identity of specific sets of workers. The phrase often used to describe this is the international division of labour. We will say more of this later, but for now let the West Indian mother of a seven-year-old sum up her son’s education with precision: “They’re choosing the street sweepers now.”

Those of us in the feminist movement who have torn the final veil away from this international capitalist division of labour to expose women’s and children’s class position, which was hidden by the particularity of their caste position, learnt a good deal of this from the Black movement. It is not that it is written down anywhere (though we discovered later it was, in what would seem to some a strange place). A mass movement teaches less by words than by the power it exercises which, clearing away the debris of appearances, tells it like it is.

Just as the women’s movement being “for” women and the rebellion of children being “for” children, appears at first not to be about class:

The Black movement in the United States (and elsewhere) also began by adopting what appeared to be only a caste position in opposition to the racism of white male-dominated groups. Intellectuals in Harlem and Malcolm X, that great revolutionary, were both nationalists, both appeared to place colour above class when the white Left were still chanting variations of ‘Black and white unite and fight,’ or ‘Negroes and Labour must join together.’ The Black working class were able through this nationalism to redefine class: overwhelmingly Black and Labour were synonymous (with no other group was Labour as synonymous-except perhaps with women), the demands of Blacks and the forms of struggle created by Blacks were the most comprehensive working class struggle...

It is not then that the Black movement “wandered off into the class struggle,” as Avis says. It was the class struggle and this took a while to sink into our consciousness. Why?

One reason is because some of us wore the blinkers of the white male Left, whether we knew it or not. According to them, if the struggle’s not in the factory, it’s not the class struggle. The real bind was that this Left assured us they spoke in the name of Marxism. They threatened that if we broke from them, organizationally or politically, we were breaking with Marx and scientific socialism. What gave us the boldness to break, fearless of the consequences, was the power of the Black movement. We found that redefining class went hand-in-hand with rediscovering a Marx the Left would never understand.

There were deeper reasons too why caste and class seemed contradictory. It appears often that the interests of Blacks are contradicted by the interests of whites, and it is similar with men and women. To grasp the class interest when there seems not one but two, three, four, each contradicting the other, is one of the most difficult revolutionary tasks, in theory and practice, that confront us.

Another source of confusion is that not all women, children or Black men are working class. This is only to say that within the movements which these form are layers whose struggle tends to be aimed at moving up in the capitalist hierarchy rather than at destroying it. And so within each movement there is a struggle about which class interest the movement will serve. But this is the history also of white male workers’ movements. There is no class “purity,” not even in shop floor organizations. The struggle by workers against organizations they formed there and in the society generally—trade unions, labour parties, etc.—is the class struggle.[18]

Let’s put the relation of caste to class another way. The word “culture” is often used to show that class concepts are narrow, philistine, inhuman. Exactly the opposite is the case. A national culture which has evolved over decades or centuries may appear to deny that society’s relation to international capitalism. It is a subject too wide to go into deeply here but one basic point can be quickly clarified.

The life-style unique to themselves which a people develop once they are enmeshed by capitalism, in response to and in rebellion against it, cannot be understood at all except as the totality of their capitalist lives. To delimit culture is to reduce it to a decoration of daily life.[19] Culture is plays and poetry about the exploited; ceasing to wear mini-skirts and taking to trousers instead; the clash between the soul of Black Baptism and the guilt and sin of white Protestantism. Culture is also the shrill of the alarm clock that rings at 6 AM when a Black woman in London wakes her children to get them ready for the baby minder. Culture is how cold she feels at the bus stop and then how hot in the crowded bus. Culture is how you feel on Monday morning at eight when you clock in, wishing it was Friday, wishing your life away. Culture is the speed of the line or the weight and smell of dirty hospital sheets, and you meanwhile thinking what to make for tea that night. Culture is making the tea while your man watches the news on the telly.

And culture is an “irrational woman” walking out of the kitchen into the sitting room and without a word turning off the telly “for no reason at all.”

From where does this culture spring which is so different from a man’s if you are a woman and different too from a white woman’s if you are a Black woman? Is it auxiliary to the class struggle (as the white Left has it) or is it more fundamental to the class struggle (as Black nationalists and radical feminists have it) because it is special to your sex, your race, your age, your nationality and the moment in time when you are these things?

Our identity, our social roles, the way we are seen, appears to be disconnected from our capitalist functions. To be liberated from them (or through them) appears to be independent from our liberation from capitalist wage slavery. In my view, identity—caste—is the very substance of class.

Here is the “strange place” where we found the key to the relation of class to caste written down most succinctly. Here is where the international division of labour is posed as power relationships within the working class. It is Volume I of Marx’s Capital:

Manufacture...develops a hierarchy of labour powers, to which there corresponds a scale of wages. If, on the one hand, the individual labourers are appropriated and annexed for life by a limited function; on the other hand, the various operations of the hierarchy are parceled out among the labourers according to both their natural and their acquired capabilities. (Moscow 1958, p. 349)

In two sentences is laid out the deep material connection between racism, sexism, national chauvinism and the chauvinism of the generations who are working for wages against children and old age pensioners who are wageless, who are “dependents.”

A hierarchy of labour powers and scale of wages to correspond. Racism and sexism training us to develop and acquire certain capabilities at the expense of all others. Then these acquired capabilities are taken to be our nature and fix our functions for life, and fix also the quality of our mutual relations. So planting cane or tea is not a job for white people and changing nappies is not a job for men and beating children is not violence. Race, sex, age, nation, each an indispensable element of the international division of labour. Our feminism bases itself on a hitherto invisible stratum of the hierarchy of labour powers—the housewife—to which there corresponds no wage at all.

To proceed on the basis of a hierarchical structure among waged and unwaged slavery is not, as Avis accuses the working class of doing, “concentrating...exclusively on the economic determinants of the class struggle.” The work you do and the wages you receive are not merely “economic” but social determinants, determinants of social power. It is not the working class but organizations which claim to be of and for that class which reduce the continual struggle for social power by that class into “economic determinants”—greater capitalist control for a pittance more a week. Wage rises that unions negotiate often turn out to be standstills or even cuts, either through inflation or through more intense exploitation (often in the form of productivity deals) which more than pay the capitalist back for the rise. And so people assume that this was the intention of workers in demanding, for example, more wages, more money, more “universal social power,” in the words of Marx.

The social power relations of the sexes, races, nations and generations are precisely, then, particularized forms of class relations. These power relations within the working class weaken us in the power struggle between the classes. They are the particularized forms of indirect rule, one section of the class colonizing another and through this capital imposing its own will on us all. One of the reasons why these so-called working class organizations have been able so to mediate the struggle is that we have, internationally, allowed them to isolate “the working class,” which they identify as white, male and over 21, from the rest of us. The unskilled white male worker, an exploited human being who is increasingly disconnected from capital’s perspective for him to work, to vote, to participate in its society, he also, racist and sexist though he is, recognizes himself as the victim of these organizations. But housewives, Blacks, young people, workers from the Third World, excluded from the definition of class, have been told that their confrontation with the white male power structure in the metropolis is an “exotic historical accident.” Divided by the capitalist organization of society into factory, office, school, plantation, home and street, we are divided too by the very institutions which claim to represent our struggle collectively as a class.

In the metropolis, the Black movement was the first section of the class massively to take its autonomy from these organizations, and to break away from the containment of the struggle only in the factory. When Black workers burn the centre of a city, however, white Left eyes, especially if they are trade union eyes, see race, not class.

The women’s movement was the next major movement of the class in the metropolis to find for itself a power base outside the factory as well as in it. Like the Black movement before it, to be organizationally autonomous of capital and its institutions, women and their movement had also to be autonomous of that part of the “hierarchy of labour powers” which capital used specifically against them. For Blacks it was whites. For women it was men. For Black women it is both.

Strange to think that even today, when confronted with the autonomy of the Black movement or the autonomy of the women’s movement, there are those who talk about this “dividing the working class.” Strange indeed when our experience has told us that in order for the working class to unite in spite of the divisions which are inherent in its very structure—factory versus plantation versus home versus schools—those at the lowest levels of the hierarchy must themselves find the key to their weakness, must themselves find the strategy which will attack that point and shatter it, must themselves find their own modes of struggle.

The Black movement has not in our view “integrated into capitalism’s plural society” (though many of its “leaders” have), it has not “been subsumed to white working class strategy.” (Here I think Avis is confusing white working class struggle with trade union/Labour party strategy. They are mortal enemies, yet they are often taken as identical.) The Black movement has, on the contrary, in the United States challenged and continues to challenge the most powerful capitalist State in the world. The most powerful at home and abroad. When it burnt down the centres of that metropolis and challenged all constituted authority, it made a way for the rest of the working class everywhere to move in its own specific interests. We women moved. This is neither an accident nor the first time events have moved in this sequence.

It is not an accident because when constituted power was confronted, a new possibility opened for all women. For example, the daughters of men to whom was delegated some of this power saw through the noble mask of education, medicine and the law for which their mothers had sacrificed their lives. Oh yes, marriage to a man with a good salary would be rewarded by a fine house to be imprisoned in, and even a Black servant; they would have privilege for as long as they were attached to that salary which was not their own. But power would remain in the hands of the white male power structure. They had to renounce the privilege even to strike out for power. Many did. On the tide of working class power which the Black movement had expressed in the streets, and all women expressed in the day-to-day rebellion in the home, the women’s movement came into being.

It is not the first time either that a women’s movement received its impetus from the exercise of power by Black people. The Black slave who formed the Abolitionist Movement and organized the Underground Railroad for the escape to the North also gave white women—and again the more privileged of them—a chance, an occasion to transcend the limitations in which the female personality was imprisoned. Women, trained always to do for others, left their homes not to free themselves—that would have been outrageous—but to free “the slave.” They were encouraged by Black women, ex-slaves like Sojourner Truth, who suffered because, being women, they had been the breeders of labour power on the plantation. But once those white women had taken their first decisive step out of the feminine mould, they confronted more sharply their own situation. They had to defend their right, as women, to speak in public against slavery. They were refused, for example, seating at the Abolitionist conference of 1840 in London because they were women. By 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York, they called their own conference, for women’s rights. There was a male speaker. He was a leading Abolitionist. He had been a slave. His name was Frederick Douglass.

And when young white women headed South on the Freedom Ride buses in the early 60s of this century and discovered that their male (white and Black) comrades had a special place for them in the hierarchy of struggle, as capital had in the hierarchy of labour power, history repeated itself—almost. This time it was not for the vote but for a very different goal that they formed a movement. It was a movement for liberation.

The parallels that are drawn between the Black and women’s movements can always turn into an 11-plus: who is more exploited? Our purpose here is not parallels. We are seeking to describe that complex interweaving of forces which is the working class; we are seeking to break down the power relations among us on which is based the hierarchical rule of international capital. For no man can represent us as women any more than whites can speak about and themselves end the Black experience. Nor do we seek to convince men of our feminism. Ultimately they will be “convinced” by our power. We offer them what we offer the most privileged women: power over their enemies. The price is an end to their privilege over us.

The strategy of feminist class struggle is, as we have said, based on the wageless woman in the home. Whether she also works for wages outside the home, her labour of producing and reproducing the working class weighs her down, weakens her capacity to struggle—she doesn’t even have time. Her position in the wage structure is low especially but not only if she is Black. And even if she is relatively well placed in the hierarchy of labour powers (rare enough!), she remains defined as a sexual object of men. Why? Because as long as most women are housewives part of whose function in reproducing labour power is to be the sexual object of men, no woman can escape that identity. We demand wages for the work we do in the home. And that demand for a wage from the State is, first, a demand to be autonomous of men on whom we are now dependent. Secondly, we demand money without working out of the home, and open for the first time the possibility of refusing forced labour in the factories and in the home itself.

It is here in this strategy that the lines between the revolutionary Black and the revolutionary feminist movements begin to blur. This perspective is founded on the least powerful—the wageless. Reinforcing capital’s international division of labour is a standing army of unemployed who can be shunted from industry to industry, from country to country. The Third World is the most massive repository of this industrial reserve army. (The second most massive is the kitchen in the metropolis.) Port of Spain, Calcutta, Algiers, the Mexican towns south of the US border are the labour power for shitwork in Paris, London, Frankfurt and the farms of California and Florida. What is their role in the revolution? How can the wageless struggle without the lever of the wage and the factory? We do not pose the answers—we can’t. But we pose the questions in a way which assumes that the unemployed have not to go to work in order to subvert capitalist society.

Housewives working without a pay packet in the home may also have a job outside of their homes. The subordination of the wage of the man in the home and the subordinating nature of that labour weaken the woman wherever else she is working, and regardless of race. Here is the basis for Black and white women to act together, “supported” or “unsupported,” not because the antagonism of race is overcome, but because we both need the autonomy that the wage and the struggle for the wage can bring. Black women will know in what organizations (with Black men, with white women, with neither) to make that struggle. No one else can know.

We don’t agree with Avis that “the Black American struggle failed to fulfill its potential as a revolutionary vanguard...”, if by “vanguard” is meant the basic propellant of class struggle in a particular historical situation. It has used the “specificity of its experience”—as a nation and as a class both at once—to redefine class and the class struggle itself. Perhaps the theoreticians have not, but then they must never be confused with the movement. Only as a vanguard could that struggle have begun to clarify the central problem of our age, the organizational unity of the working class internationally as we now perceive and define it.

It is widely presumed that the Vanguard Party on the Leninist model embodies that organizational unity. Since the Leninist model assumes a vanguard expressing the total class interest, it bears no relation to the reality we have been describing, where no one section of the class can express the experience and interest of, and pursue the struggle for, any other section. The formal organizational expression of a general class strategy does not yet anywhere exist.

Let me quote finally from a letter written against one of the organizations of the Italian extra-parliamentary Left who, when we had a feminist symposium in Rome last year and excluded men, called us fascists and attacked us physically.

...The traditional attack on the immigrant worker, especially but not exclusively if he or she is Black (or Southern Italian), is that her presence threatens the gains of the native working class. Exactly the same is said about women in relation to men. The anti-racist (i.e., anti-nationalist and anti-sexist) point of view—the point of view, that is, of struggle—is to discover the organizational weakness which permits the most powerful sections of the class to be divided from the less powerful, thereby allowing capital to play on this division, defeating us. The question is, in fact, one of the basic questions which the class faces today. Where Lenin divided the class between the advanced and the backward, a subjective division, we see the division along the lines of capitalist organization, the more powerful and the less powerful. It is the experience of the less powerful that when workers in a stronger position (that is, men with a wage in relation to women without one, or whites with a higher wage than Blacks) gain a ‘victory,’ it may not be a victory for the weaker and even may represent a defeat for both. For in the disparity of power within the class is precisely the strength of capital.[20]

How the working class will ultimately unite organizationally, we don’t know. We do know that up to now many of us have been told to forget our own needs in some wider interest which was never wide enough to include us. And so we have learnt by bitter experience that nothing unified and revolutionary will be formed until each section of the exploited will have made its own autonomous power felt.

Power to the sisters and therefore to the class.

Angela Davis, The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework (1981)

https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/davis-angela/housework.htm

Published: Angela Davis, “The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective,” Ch. 13 of Women, Race and Class. The Women’s Press Ltd, 1981.

The countless chores collectively known as “housework”—cooking, washing dishes, doing laundry, making beds, sweeping, shopping etc.—apparently consume some three to four thousand hours of the average housewife’s year.[21] As startling as this statistic may be, it does not even account for the constant and unquantifiable attention mothers must give to their children. Just as a woman’s maternal duties are always taken for granted, her never-ending toil as a housewife rarely occasions expressions of appreciation within her family. Housework, after all, is virtually invisible: “No one notices it until it isn’t done—we notice the unmade bed, not the scrubbed and polished floor.”[22] Invisible, repetitive, exhausting, unproductive, uncreative—these are the adjectives which most perfectly capture the nature of housework.

The new consciousness associated with the contemporary women’s movement has encouraged increasing numbers of women to demand that their men provide some relief from this drudgery. Already, more men have begun to assist their partners around the house, some of them even devoting equal time to household chores. But how many of these men have liberated themselves from the assumption that housework is women’s work? How many of them would not characterise their housecleaning activities as “helping” their women partners?

If it were at all possible simultaneously to liquidate the idea that housework is women’s work and to redistribute it equally to men and women alike, would this constitute a satisfactory solution? While most women would joyously hail the advent of the “househusband,” the desexualisation of domestic labour would not really alter the oppressive nature of the work itself. In the final analysis, neither women nor men should waste precious hours of their lives on work that is neither stimulating nor productive.

One of the most closely guarded secrets of advanced capitalist societies involves the possibility—the real possibility—of radically transforming the nature of housework. A substantial portion of the housewife’s domestic tasks can actually be incorporated into the industrial economy. In other words, housework need no longer be considered necessarily and unalterably private in character. Teams of trained and well-paid workers, moving from dwelling to dwelling, engineering technologically advanced cleaning machinery, could swiftly and efficiently accomplish what the present-day housewife does so arduously and primitively. Why the shroud of silence surrounding this potential of radically redefining the nature of domestic labour? Because the capitalist economy is structurally hostile to the industrialisation of housework. Socialised housework implies large government subsidies in order to guarantee accessibility to the working-class families whose need for such services is most obvious. Since little in the way of profits would result, industrialised housework—like all unprofitable enterprises—is anathema to the capitalist economy. Nonetheless, the rapid expansion of the female labour force means that more and more women are finding it increasingly difficult to excel as housewives according to the traditional standards. In other words, the industrialisation of housework, along with the socialisation of housework, is becoming an objective social need. Housework as individual women’s private responsibility and as a female labour performed under primitive technical conditions, may finally be approaching historical obsolescence.

Although housework as we know it today may eventually become a bygone relic of history, prevailing social attitudes continue to associate the eternal female condition with images of brooms and dustpans, mops and pails, aprons and stoves, pots and pans. And it is true that women’s work, from one historical era to another, has been associated in general with the homestead. Yet female domestic labour has not always been what it is today, for like all social phenomena, housework is a fluid product of human history. As economic systems have arisen and faded away, the scope and quality of housework have undergone radical transformations.

As Frederich Engels argued in his classic work on the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,[23] sexual inequality as we know it today did not exist before the advent of private property. During early eras of human history the sexual division of labour within the system of economic production was complementary as opposed to hierarchical. In societies where men may have been responsible for hunting wild animals and women, in turn, for gathering wild vegetables and fruits, both sexes performed economic tasks that were equally essential to their community’s survival. Because the community, during those eras, was essentially an extended family, women’s central role in domestic affairs meant that they were accordingly valued and respected members of the community.

The centrality of women’s domestic tasks in pre-capitalist cultures was dramatised by a personal experience during a jeep trip I took in 1973 across the Masai Plains. On an isolated dirt road in Tanzania, I noticed six Masai women enigmatically balancing an enormous board on their heads. As my Tanzanian friends explained, these women were probably transporting a house roof to a new village which they were in the process of constructing. Among the Masai, as I learned, women are responsible for all domestic activities, thus also for the construction of their nomadic people’s frequently relocated houses. Housework, as far as Masai women are concerned, entails not only cooking cleaning, child-rearing, sewing, etc., but house-building as well. As important as their men’s cattle-rearing activities may be, the women’s “housework” is no less productive and no less essential than the economic contributions of Masai men.

Within the pre-capitalist, nomadic economy of the Masai, women’s domestic labour is as essential to the economy as the cattle-raising jobs performed by their men. As producers, they enjoy a correspondingly important social status. In advanced capitalist societies, on the other hand, the service-oriented domestic labour of housewives, who can seldom produce tangible evidence of their work, diminishes the social status of women in general. When all is said and done, the housewife, according to bourgeois ideology, is, quite simply, her husband’s lifelong servant.

The source of the bourgeois notion of woman as man’s eternal servant is itself a revealing story. Within the relatively short history of the United States, the “housewife” as a finished historical product is just a little more than a century old. Housework, during the colonial era, was entirely different from the daily work of the housewife in the United States today.

A woman’s work began at sunup and continued by firelight as long as she could hold her eyes open. For two centuries, almost everything that the family used or ate was produced at home under her direction. She spun and dyed the yarn that she wove into cloth and cut and hand-stitched into garments. She grew much of the food her family ate, and preserved enough to last the winter months. She made butter, cheese, bread, candles and soap and knitted her family’s stockings.[24]

In the agrarian economy of pre-industrialised North America, a woman performing her household chores was thus a spinner, weaver, and seamstress as well as a baker, butter-churner, candle-maker and soap-maker. And et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. As a mater of fact,

...the pressures of home production left very little time for the tasks that we would recognise today as housework. By all accounts pre-industrial revolution women were sloppy housekeepers by today’s standards. Instead of the daily cleaning or the weekly cleaning there was the spring cleaning. Meals were simple and repetitive; clothes were changed infrequently; and the household wash was allowed to accumulate, and the washing done once a month, or in some households once in three months. And, of course, since each wash required the carting and heating of many buckets of water, higher standards of cleanliness were easily discouraged.[25]

Colonial women were not “house-cleaners” or “housekeepers” but rather full-fledged and accomplished workers within the home-based economy. Not only did they manufacture most of the products required by their families, they were also the guardians of their families’ and their communities’ health.

It was [the colonial woman’s] responsibility to gather and dry wild herbs used...as medecines; she also served as doctor, nurse, and midwife within her own family and in the community.[26]

Included in the United States Practical Recipe Book—a popular colonial recipe book—are recipes for foods as well as for household chemicals and medicines. To cure ringworm, for example, “obtain some blood-root...slice it in vinegar, and afterwards wish the place affected with the liquid.”[27]

The economic importance of women’s domestic functions in colonial America was complemented by their visible roles in economic activity outside the home. It was entirely acceptable, for example, for a woman to become a tavern keeper.

Women also ran sawmills and gristmills, caned chairs and built furniture, operated slaughterhouses, printed cotton and other cloth, made lace, and owned and ran dry-goods and clothing stores. They worked in tobacco shops, drug shops, (where they sold concoctions they made themselves), and general stores that sold everything from pins to meat scales. Women ground eye-glasses, made cards for wool carding, and even were housepainters. Often they were the town undertakers...[28]

The postrevolutionary surge of industrialisation resulted in a proliferation of factories in the northeastern section of the new country. New England’s textile mills were the factory system’s successful pioneers. Since spinning and weaving were traditional female domestic occupations, women were the first workers recruited by the mill-owners to operate the new power looms. Considering the subsequent exclusion of women from industrial production in general, it is one of the great ironies of this country’s economic history that the first industrial workers were women.

As industrialisation advanced, shifting economic production from the home to the factory, the importance of women’s domestic work suffered a systematic erosion. Women were the losers in a double sense: as their traditional jobs were usurped by the burgeoning factories, the entire economy moved away from the home, leaving many women largely bereft of significant economic roles. By the middle of the nineteenth century the factory provided textiles, candles and soap. Even butter, bread and other food products began to be mass-produced.

By the end of the century, hardly anyone made their own starch or boiled their laundry in a kettle. In the cities, women bought their bread and at least their underwear ready-made, sent their children out to school and probably some clothes out to be laundered, and were debating the merits of canned foods...The flow of industry had passed on and had left idle the loom in the attic and the soap kettle in the shed.[29]

As industrial capitalism approached consolidation, the cleavage between the new economic sphere and the old home economy became ever more rigorous. The physical relocation of economic production caused by the spread of the factory system was undoubtedly a drastic transformation. But even more radical was the generalised revaluation of production necessitated by the new economic system. While home-manufactured goods were valuable primarily because they fulfilled basic family needs, the importance of factory-produced commodities resided overwhelmingly in their exchange value—in their ability to fulfill employers’ demands for profit. This revaluation of economic production revealed—beyond the physical separation of home and factory—a fundamental structural separation between the domestic home economy and the profit-oriented economy of capitalism. Since housework does not generate profit, domestic labour was naturally defined as an inferior form of work as compared to capitalist wage labour.

An important ideological by-product of this radical economic transformation was the birth of the “housewife.” Women began to be ideologically redefined as the guardians of a devalued domestic life. As ideology, however, this redefinition of women’s place was boldly contradicted by the vast numbers of immigrant women flooding the ranks of the working class in the Northeast. These white immigrant women were wage earners first and only secondarily housewives. And there were other women—millions of women—who toiled away from home as the unwilling producers of the slave economy in the South. The reality of women’s place in nineteenth-century U.S. society involved white women, whose days were spent operating factory machines for wages that were a pittance, as surely as it involved Black women, who laboured under the coercion of slavery. The “housewife” reflected a partial reality, for she was really a symbol of the economic prosperity enjoyed by the emerging middle classes.

Although the “housewife” was rooted in the social conditions of the bourgeoisie and the middle classes, nineteenth-century ideology established the housewife and the mother as universal models of womanhood. Since popular propaganda represented the vocation of all women as a function of their roles in the home, women compelled to work for wages came to be treated as alien visitors within the masculine world of the public economy. Having stepped outside their “natural” sphere, women were not to be treated as full-fledged wage workers. The price they paid involved long hours, substandard working conditions and grossly inadequate wages. Their exploitation was even more intense than the exploitation suffered by their male counterparts. Needless to say, sexism emerged as a source of outrageous super-profits for the capitalists.

The structural separation of the public economy of capitalism and the private economy of the home has been continually reinforced by the obstinate primitiveness of household labour. Despite the proliferation of gadgets for the home, domestic work has remained qualitatively unaffected by the technological advances brought on by industrial capitalism. Housework still consumes thousands of hours of the average housewife’s year. In 1903 Charlotte Perkins Gilman proposed a definition of domestic labour which reflected the upheavals which had changed the structure and content of housework in the United States:

...The phrase “domestic work” does not apply to a special kind of work, but to a certain grade of work, a state of development through which all kinds pass. All industries were once “domestic,” that is were performed at home and in the interests of the family. All industries have since that remote period risen to higher stages, except one or two which have never left their primal stage.[30]

“The home,” Gilman maintains, “has not developed in proportion to our other institutions.” The home economy reveals

...the maintenance of primitive industries in a modern industrial community and the confinement of women to these industries and their limited area of expression.[31]

Housework, Gilman insists, vitiates women’s humanity:

She is feminine, more than enough, as man is masculine, more than enough; but she is not human as he is human. The house-life does not bring out our humanness, for all the distinctive lines of human progress lie outside.[32]

The truth of Gilman’s statement is corroborated by the historical experience of Black women in the United States. Throughout this country’s history, the majority of Black women have worked outside their homes. During slavery, women toiled alongside their men in the cotton and tobacco fields, and when industry moved into the South, they could be seen in tobacco factories, sugar refineries and even in lumber mills and on crews pounding steel for the railroads. In labour, slave women were the equals of their men. Because they suffered a grueling sexual equality at work, they enjoyed a greater sexual equality at home in the slave quarters than did their white sisters who were “housewifes.”

As a direct consequence of their outside work—as “free” women no less than as slaves—housework has never been the central focus of Black women’s lives. They have largely escaped the psychological damage industrial capitalism inflicted on white middle-class housewives, whose alleged virtues were feminine weakness and wifely submissiveness. Black women could hardly strive for weakness; they had to become strong, for their families and their communities needed their strength to survive. Evidence of the accumulated strengths Black women have forged through work, work and more work can be discovered in the contributions of the many outstanding female leaders who have emerged within the Black community. Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Ida Wells and Rosa Parks are not exceptional Black women as much as they are epitomes of Black womanhood.

Black women, however, have paid a heavy price for the strengths they have acquired and the relative independence they have enjoyed. While they have seldom been ``just housewivesthey have always done their housework. They have thus carried the double burden of wage labour and housework—a double burden which always demands that working women possess the persevering powers of Sisyphus. As W. E. B. DuBois observed in 1920:

...some few women are born free, and some amid insult and scarlet letters achieve freedom; but our women in black had freedom thrust contemptuously upon them. With that freedom they are buying an untrammeled independence and dear as is the price they pay for it, it will in the end be worth every taunt and groan.[33]

Like their men, Black women have worked until they could work no more. Like their men, they have assumed the responsibilities of family providers. The unorthodox feminine qualities of assertiveness and self-reliance—for which Black women have been frequently praised but more often rebuked—are reflections of their labour and their struggles outside the home. But like their white sisters called “housewives,” they have cooked and cleaned and have nurtured and reared untold numbers of children. But unlike the white housewives, who learned to lean on their husbands for economic security, Black wives and mothers, usually workers as well, have rarely been offered the time and energy to become experts at domesticity. Like their white working-class sisters, who also carry the double burden of working for a living and servicing husbands and children, Black women have needed relief from this oppressive predicament for a long, long time.

The shortage, if not the absence, of public discussion about the feasibility of transforming housework into a social possibility bears witness to the blinding powers of bourgeois ideology. It is not even the case that women’s domestic role has received no attention at all. On the contrary, the contemporary women’s movement has represented housework as an essential ingredient of women’s oppression. There is even a movement in a number of capitalist countries, whose main concern is the plight of the housewife. Having reached the conclusion that housework is degrading and oppressive primarily because it is unpaid labour, this movement has raised the demand for wages. A weekly government paycheck, its activists argue, is the key to improving the housewife’s status and the social position of women in general.

The Wages for Housework Movement originated in Italy, where its first public demonstration took place in March, 1974.

Addressing the crowd assembled in the city of Mestre, one of the speakers proclaimed:

Half the world’s population is unpaid—this is the biggest class contradiction of all! And this is our struggle for wages for housework. It is the strategic demand; at this moment it is the most revolutionary demand for the whole working class. If we win, the class wins, if we lose, the class loses.[34]

According to this movement’s strategy, wages contain the key to the emancipation of housewives, and the demand itself is represented as the central focus of the campaign for women’s liberation in general. Moreover, the housewife’s struggle for wages is projected as the pivotal issue of the entire working-class movement.

The theoretical origins of the Wages for Housework Movement can be found in an essay by Mariarosa Dalla Costa entitled “Women and the Subversion of the Community.”[35] In this paper, Dalla Costa argues for a redefinition of housework based on her thesis that the private character of household services is actually an illusion. The housewife, she insists, only appears to be ministering to the private needs of her husband and children, for the real beneficiaries of her services are her husband’s present employer and the future employers of her children.

(The woman) has been isolated in the home, forced to carry out work that is considered unskilled, the work of giving birth to, raising, disciplining, and servicing the worker for production. Her role in the cycle of production remained invisible because only the product of her labour, the labourer, was visible.[36]

The demand that housewives be paid is based on the assumption that they produce a commodity as important and as valuable as the commodities their husbands produce on the job. Adopting Dalla Costa’s logic, the Wages for Housework Movement defines housewives as creators of the labour-power sold by their family members as commodities on the capitalist market.

Dalla Costa was not the first theorist to propose such an analysis of women’s oppression. Both Mary Inman’s In Women’s Defence (1940)[37] and Margaret Benston’s “The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation” (1969)[38] define housework in such a way as to establish women as a special class of workers exploited by capitalism called “housewives.” That women’s procreative, child-rearing and housekeeping roles make it possible for their family members to work—to exchange their labour-power for wages—can hardly be denied. But does it automatically follow that women in general, regardless of their class and race, can be fundamentally defined by their domestic functions? Does it automatically follow that the housewife is actually a secret worker inside the capitalist production process?

If the industrial revolution resulted in the structural separation of the home economy from the public economy, then housework cannot be defined as an integral component of capitalist production. It is, rather, related to production as a precondition. The employer is not concerned in the least about the way labour-power is produced and sustained, he is only concerned about its availability and its ability to generate profit. In other words, the capitalist production process presupposes the existence of a body of exploitable workers.

The replenishment of (workers’) labour-power is not a part of the process of social production but a prerequisite to it. It occurs outside of the labour process. Its function is the maintenance of human existence which is the ultimate purpose of production in all societies.[39]

In South African society, where racism has led economic exploitation to its most brutal limits, the capitalist economy betrays its structural separation from domestic life in a characteristically violent fashion. The social architects of apartheid have simply determined that Black labour yields higher profits when domestic life is all but entirely discarded. Black men are viewed as labour units whose productive potential renders them valuable to the capitalist class. But their wives and children

...are superfluous appendages—non-productive, the women being nothing more than adjuncts to the procreative capacity of the black male labour unit.[40]

This characterisation of African women as “superfluous appendages” is hardly a metaphor. In accordance with South African law, unemployed Black women are banned from the white areas (87 percent of the country!), even, in most cases, from the cities where their husbands live and work.

Black domestic life in South Africa’s industrial centres is viewed by Apartheid supporters as superfluous and unprofitable. But it is also seen as a threat.

Government officials recognise the homemaking role of the women and fear their presence in the cities will lead to the establishment of a stable black population.[41]

The consolidation of African families in the industrialised cities is perceived as a menace because domestic life might become a base for a heightened level of resistance to Apartheid. This is undoubtedly the reason why large numbers of women holding residence permits for white areas are assigned to live in sex-segregated hostels. Married as well as single women end up living in these projects. In such hostels, family life is rigorously prohibited—husbands and wives are unable to visit one another and neither mother nor father can receive visits from their children.[42]

This intense assault on Black women in South Africa has already taken its toll, for only 28.2 percent are currently opting for marriage.[43] For reasons of economic expediency and political security, Apartheid is eroding—with the apparent goal of destroying—the very fabric of Black domestic life. South African capitalism thus blatantly demonstrates the extent to which the capitalist economy is utterly dependent on domestic labour.

The deliberate dissolution of family life in South Africa could not have been undertaken by the government if it were truly the case that the services performed by women in the home are an essential constituent of wage labour under capitalism. That domestic life can be dispensed with by the South African version of capitalism is a consequence of the private home economy and the public production process which characterises capitalist society in general. It seems futile to argue that on the basis of capitalism’s internal logic, women ought to be paid wages for housework.

Assuming that the theory underlying the demand for wages is hopelessly flawed, might it not be nonetheless politically desirable to insist that housewives be paid? Couldn’t one invoke a moral imperative for women’s right to be paid for the hours they devote to housework? The idea of a paycheck for housewives would probably sound quite attractive to many women. But the attraction would probably be short-lived. For how many of those women would actually be willing to reconcile themselves to deadening, never-ending household tasks, all for the sake of a wage? Would a wage alter the fact, as Lenin said, that

...petty housework crushes, strangles, stultifies and degrades (the woman), chains her to the kitchen and to the nursery, and wastes her labour on barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-wracking, stultifying and crushing drudgery.[44]

It would seem that government paychecks for housewives would further legitimise this domestic slavery.

Is it not an implicit critique of the Wages for Housework Movement that women on welfare have rarely demanded compensation for keeping house? Not “wages for housework” but rather “a guaranteed annual income for all” is the slogan articulating the immediate alternative they have most frequently proposed to the dehumanising welfare system. What they want in the long run, however, is jobs and affordable public child care. The guaranteed annual income functions, therefore, as unemployment insurance pending the creation of more jobs with adequate wages along with subsidised systems of child care.

The experiences of yet another group of women reveal the probelmatic nature of the “wages for housework” strategy. Cleaning women, domestic workers, maids—these are the women who know better than anyone else what it means to receive wages for housework. Their tragic predicament is brilliantly captured in the film by Ousman Sembene entitled La Noire de.[45] The main character is a young Senegalese woman who, after a search for work, becomes a governess for a French family living in Dakar. When the family returns to France, she enthusiastically accompanies them. Once in France, however, she discovers she is responsible not only for the children, but for cooking, cleaning, washing, and all the other household chores. It is not long before her initial enthusiasm gives way to depression—a depression so profound that she refuses the pay offered her by her employers. Wages cannot compensate for her slavelike situation. Lacking the means to return to Senegal, she is so overwhelmed by her despair that she chooses suicide over an indefinite destiny of cooking, sweeping, dusting, scrubbing...

In the United States, women of colour—and especially Black women—have been receiving wages for housework for untold decades. In 1910, when over half of all Black females were working outside their homes, one-third of them were employed as paid domestic workers. By 1920 over one-half were domestic servants, and in 1930 the proportion had risen to three out of five.[46] One of the consequences of the enormous female employment shifts during World War II was a much-welcomed decline in the number of Black domestic workers. Yet in 1960 one-third of all Black women holding jobs were still confined to their traditional occupations.[47] It was not until clerical jobs became more accessible to Black women that the proportion of Black women domestics headed in a definitely downward direction. Today the figure hovers around 13 percent.[48]

The enervating domestic obligations of women in general provide flagrant evidence of the power of sexism. Because of the added intrusion of racism, vast numbers of Black women have had to do their own housekeeping and other women’s home chores as well. And frequently, the demands of the job in a white woman’s home have forced the domestic worker to neglect her own home and even her own children. As paid housekeepers, they have been called upon to be surrogate wives and mothers in millions of white homes.

During their more than fifty years of organising efforts, domestic workers have tried to redefine their work by rejecting the role of the surrogate housewife. The housewife’s chores are unending and undefined. Household workers have demanded in the first place a clear delineation of the jobs they are expected to perform. The name itself of one of the houseworkers’ major unions today—Household Technicians of America—emphasises their refusal to function as surrogate housewives whose job is “just housework.” As long as household workers stand in the shadow of the housewife, they will continue to receive wages which are more closely related to the housewife’s “allowance” than to a worker’s paycheck. According to the National Committee on Household Employment, the average, full-time household technician earned only $2,732 in 1976, two-thirds of them earning under $2,000.[49] Although household workers had been extended the protection of the minimum wage law several years previously, in 1976 an astounding 40 percent still received grossly substandard wages. The Wages for Housework Movement assumes that if women were paid for being housewives, they would accordingly enjoy a higher social status. Quite a different story is told by the age-old struggles of the paid household worker, whose condition is more miserable than any other group of workers under capitalism.

Over 50 percent of all U.S. women work for a living today, and they constitute 41 percent of the country’s labour force. Yet countless numbers of women are currently unable to find decent jobs. Like racism, sexism is one of the great justifications for high female unemployment rates. Many women are “just housewives” because in reality they are unemployed workers. Cannot, therefore, the “just housewife” role be most effectively challenged by demanding jobs for women on a level of equality with men and by pressing for social services (child care, for example) and job benefits (maternity leaves, etc.) which will allow more women to work outside the home?

The Wages for Housework Movement discourages women from seeking outside jobs, arguing that “slavery to an assembly line is not liberation from slavery to the kitchen sink.”[50] The campaign’s spokeswomen insist, nonetheless, that they don’t advocate the continued imprisonment of women within the isolated environment of their homes. They claim that while they refuse to work on the capitalist market per se, they do not wish to assign to women the permanent responsibility for housework. As a U.S. representative of this movement says:

...we are not interested in making our work more efficient or more productive for capital. We are interested in reducing our work, and ultimately refusing it altogether. But as long as we work in the home for nothing, no one really cares how long or how hard we work. For capital only introduces advanced technology to cut the costs of production after wage gains by the working class. Only if we make our work cost (i.e. only if we make it uneconomical) will capital “discover” the technology to reduce it. At present, we often have to go out for a second shift of work to afford the dishwasher that should cut down our housework.[51]

Once women have received the right to be paid for their work, they can raise demands for higher wages, thus compelling the capitalists to undertake the industrialisation of housework. Is this a concrete strategy for women’s liberation or is it an unrealisable dream?

How are women supposed to conduct the initial struggle for wages? Dalla Costa advocates the housewives strike:

We must reject the home, because we want to unite with other women, to struggle against all situations which presume that women will stay at home... To abandon the home is already a form of struggle, since the social services we perform there would then cease to be carried out in those conditions.[52]

But if women are to leave the home, where are they to go? How will they unite with other women? Will they really leave their homes motivated by no other desire than to protest their housework? Is it not much more realistic to call upon women to “leave home” in search of outside jobs—or at least to participate in a massive campaign for decent jobs for women? Granted, work under conditions of capitalism is brutalising work. Granted, it is uncreative and alienating. Yet with all this, the fact remains that on the job, women can unite with their sisters—and indeed with their brothers—in order to challenge the capitalists at the point of production. As workers, as militant activists in the labour movement, women can generate the real power to fight the mainstay and beneficiary of sexism which is the monopoly capitalist system.

If the wages-for-housework strategy does little in the way of providing a long-range solution to the problem of women’s oppression, neither does it substantively address the profound discontent of contemporary housewives. Recent sociological studies have revealed that housewives today are more frustrated by their lives than ever before. When Ann Oaley conducted interviews for her book The Sociology of Housework,[53] she discovered that even the housewives who initially seemed unbothered by their housework eventually expressed a very deep dissatisfaction. These comments came from a woman who held an outside factory job:

...(Do you like housework?) I don’t mind it...I suppose I don’t mind housework because I’m not at it all day. I go to work and I’m only on housework half a day. If I did it all day I wouldn’t like it—woman’s work is never done, she’s on the go all the time—even before you go to bed you’ve still got something to do—emptying ashtrays, wash a few cups up. You’re still working. It’s the same thing every day; you can’t sort of say you’re not going to do it, because you’ve got to do it—like preparing a meal: it’s got to be done because if you don’t do it, the children won’t eat...I suppose you get used to it, you just do it automatically...I’m happier at work than I am at home.

(What would you say are the worst things about being a housewife?) I suppose you get days when you feel you get up and you’ve got to do the same old things—you get bored, you’re stuck in the same routine. I think if you ask any housewife, if they’re honest, they’ll turn around and say they feel like a drudge half the time—everybody thinks when they get up in the morning “Oh no, I’ve got the same old things to do today, till I go to bed tonight.” It’s doing the same things—boredom.’[54]

Would wages diminish this boredom? This woman would certainly say no. A full-time housewife told Oakley about the compulsive nature of housework:

The worst thing is I suppose that you’ve got to do the work because you are at home. Even though I’ve got the option of not doing it, I don’t really feel I could not do it because I feel I ought to do it.’[55]

In all likelihood, receiving wages for doing this work would aggravate this woman’s obsession.

Oakley reached the conclusion that housework—particularly when it is a full-time job—so thoroughly invades the female personality that the housewife becomes indistinguishable from her job.

The housewife, in an important sense, is her job: separation between subjective and objective elements in the situation is therefore intrinsically more difficult.[56]

The psychological consequence is frequently a tragically stunted personality haunted by feelings of inferiority. Psychological liberation can hardly be achieved simply by paying the housewife a wage.

Other sociological studies have confirmed the acute disillusionment suffered by contemporary housewives. When Myra Ferree[57] interviewed over a hundred women in a working community near Boston, “almost twice as many housewives as employed wives said they were dissatisfied with their lives.” Needless to say, most of the working women did not have inherently fulfilling jobs: they were waitresses, factory workers, typists, supermarket and department store clerks, etc. Yet their ability to leave the isolation of their homes, “getting out and seeing other people,” was as important to them as their earnings. Would the housewives who felt they were “going crazy staying at home” welcome the idea of being paid for driving themselves crazy? One woman complained that “staying at home all day is like being in jail”—would wages tear down the walls of her jail? The only realistic escape path from this jail is the search for work outside the home.

Each one of the more than 50 percent of all U.S. women who work today is a powerful argument for the alleviation of the burden of housework. As a matter of fact, enterprising capitalists have already begun to exploit women’s new historical need to emancipate themselves from their roles as housewives. Endless profit-making fast-food chains like McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken bear witness to the fact that more women at work means fewer daily meals prepared at home. However unsavory and unnutritious the food, however exploitative of their workers, these fast-food operations call attention to the approaching obsolescence of housework. What is needed, of course, are new social institutions to assume a good portion of the housewife’s old duties. This is the challenge emanating from the swelling ranks of women in the working class. The demand for universal and subsidised child care is a direct consequence of the rising number of working mothers. And as more women organise around the demand for more jobs—for jobs on the basis of full equality with men—serious questions will increasingly be raised about the future viability of women’s housewife duties. It may well be true that “slavery to an assembly line” is not in itself “liberation from the kitchen sink,” but the assembly line is doubtlessly the most powerful incentive for women to press for the elimination of their age-old domestic slavery.

The abolition of housework as the private responsibility of individual women is clearly a strategic goal of women’s liberation. But the socialisation of housework—including meal preparation and child care—presupposes an end to the profit-motive’s reign over the economy. The only significant steps toward ending domestic slavery have in fact been taken in the existing socialist countries. Working women, therefore, have a special and vital interest in the struggle for socialism. Moreover, under capitalism, campaigns for jobs on an equal basis with men, combined with movements for institutions such as subsidised public health care, contain an explosive revolutionary potential. This strategy calls into question the validity of monopoly capitalism and must ultimately point in the direction of socialism.

1. This happened as part of the massive demonstration of women celebrating International Women’s Day in the US, August 1970.↩

2. This is to assume a whole new meaning for “education,” and the work now being done on the history of compulsory education—forced learning—proves this. In England teachers were conceived of as “moral police” who could 1) condition children against “crime”—curb working class reappropriation in the community; 2) destroy “the mob,” working class organization based on family which was still either a productive unit or at least a viable organizational unit; 3) make habitual regular attendance and good timekeeping so necessary to children’s later employment; and 4) stratify the class by grading and selection. As with the family itself, the transition to this new form of social control was not smooth and direct, and was the result of contradictory forces both within the class and within capital, as with every phase of the history of capitalism.↩

3. Wage labor is based on the subordination of all relationships to the wage relation. The worker must enter as an “individual” into a contract with capital stripped of the protection of kinships.↩

4. Karl Marx, “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of the State,” Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, ed. and trans. Lloyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat, N.Y., 1967, p.176.↩

5. We are not dealing here with the narrowness of the nuclear family that prevents children from having an easy transition to forming relations with other people; nor with what follows from this, the argument of psychologists that proper conditioning would have avoided such a crisis. We are dealing with the entire organization of the society, of which family, school and factory are each one ghettoized compartment. So every kind of passage from one to another of these compartments is a painful passage. The pain cannot be eliminated by tinkering with the relations between one ghetto and another but only by the destruction of every ghetto.↩

6. “Free fares, free lunches, free books” was one of the slogans of a section of the Italian students movement which aimed to connect the struggle of younger students with workers and university students.↩

7. In Britain and the US the psychologists Eysenck and Jensen, who are convinced “scientifically” that Blacks have a lower “intelligence” than whites, and the progressive educators like Ivan Illyich seem diametrically opposed. What they aim to achieve links them. They are divided by method. In any case the psychologists are not more racist than the rest, only more direct. “Intelligence” is the ability to assume your enemy’s case as wisdom and to shape your own logic on the basis of this. Where the whole society operates institutionally on the assumption of white racial superiority, these psychologists propose more conscious and thorough “conditioning” so that children who do not learn to read do not learn instead to make molotov cocktails. A sensible view with which Illyich, who is concerned with the “underachievement” of children (that is, rejection by them of “intelligence”), can agree.↩

8. In spite of the fact that capital manages the schools, control is never given once and for all. The working class continually and increasingly challenges the contents and refuses the costs of capitalist schooling. The response of the capitalist system is to re-establish its own control, and this control tends to be more and more regimented on factory-like lines. The new policies on education which are being hammered out even as we write, however, are more complex than this. We can only indicate here the impetus for these new policies: 1. Working class youth reject that education prepares them for anything but a factory, even if they will wear white collars there and use typewriters and drawing boards instead of riveting machines. 2. Middle class youth reject the role of mediator between the classes and the repressed personality this mediating role demands. 3. A new labor power more wage and status differentiated is called for. The present egalitarian trend must be reversed. 4. A new type of labor process may be created which will attempt to interest the worker in “participating” instead of refusing the monotony and fragmentation of the present assembly line.

If the traditional “road to success” and even “success” itself are rejected by the young, new goals will have to be found to which they can aspire, that is, for which they will go to school and go to work. New “experiments” in “free” education, where the children are encouraged to participate in planning their own education and there is greater democracy between teacher and taught are springing up daily. It is an illusion to believe that this is a defeat for capital any more than regimentation will be a victory. For in the creation of a labor power more creatively manipulated, capital will not in the process lose 0.1% of profit. “As a matter of fact,” they are in effect saying, “you can be far more efficient for us if you take your own road, so long as it is through our territory.” In some parts of the factory and in the social factory, capital’s slogan will increasingly be “Liberty and fraternity to guarantee and even extend equality.”↩

9. We are not at all ignoring the attempts at this moment to make test-tube babies. But today such mechanisms belong completely to capitalist science control. The use would be completely against us and against the class. It is not in our interest to abdicate procreation, to consign it to the hands of the enemy. It is in our interest to conquer the freedom to procreate for which we will pay neither the price of the wage nor the price of social exclusion.↩

10. To the extent that not technological innovation but only “human care” can raise children, the effective liberation from domestic work time, the qualatative change of domestic work, can derive only from a movement of women, from a struggle of women: the more the movement grows, the less men and first of all political militants—can count on female babyminding. And at the same time the new social ambiance that the movement constructs offers to children social space, with both men and women, that has nothing to do with the day care centers organized by the State. These are already victories of struggle. Precisely because they are the results of a movement that is by its nature a struggle, they do not aim to substitute any kind of co-operation for the struggle itself.↩

11. It is impossible to say for how long these tendencies will continue to drive the movement forward and when they will turn into their opposite.↩

12. Some first readers in English have found that this definition of women’s work should be more precise. What we meant precisely is that housework as work is productive in the Marxian sense, that is, is producing surplus value.

We speak immediately after about the productivity of the entire female role. To make clearer the productivity of the woman both as related to her work and as related to her entire role must wait for a later text on which we are now at work. In this the woman’s place is explained in a more articulated by from the point of view of the entire capitalist circuit.↩

13. This, however, is being countered by an opposite tendency, to bring women into industry in certain particular sectors. Differing needs of capital within the line geographical sector have produced differing and even opposing propaganda and policies. Where in the past family stability has been based on a relative standardized mythology (policy and propaganda being uniform and official uncontested), today various sectors of capital contradict each other and undermine the very definition of family as a stable, unchanging, “natural” unit. The classic example of this is the variety of views and financial policies on birth control. The British government has recently doubled its allocation of funds for this purpose. We must examine to what extent this policy is connected with a racist immigration policy, that is, manipulation of the sources of mature labor power; and with the increasing erosion of the work ethic which results in movements of the unemployed and unsupported mothers, that is, controlling births which pollute the purity of capital with revolutionary children.↩

14. Which is the policy, among others, of the Communist Party in Italy who for some years proposed a bill to the Italian parliament which would have give a pension to women at home, both housewives and single women, when they reached 55 years of age. The bill was never passed.↩

15. Today the demand of wages for housework is put forward increasingly and with less opposition in the women’s movement in Italy and elsewhere. Since this document was first drafted (June ’71), the debate has become more profound and many uncertainties that were due to the relative newness of the discussion have been dispelled. But above all, the weight of the needs of proletarian women has not only radicalized the demands of the movement. It has also given us greater strength and confidence to advance them. A year ago at the beginning of the movement in Italy, there were those who still thought that the State could easily suffocate the female rebellion against housework by “paying” it with a monthly allowance of 7–8 as they had already done especially with those “wretched of the earth” who were dependent on pensions.

Now these uncertainties are largely dissipated.

And it is clear in any case that the demand for a wage for housework is only a basis, a perspective, from which to start, whose merit is essentially to link immediately female oppression, subordination and isolation to their material foundation: female exploitation. At this moment this is perhaps the major function of the demand of wages for housework.

This gives at once an indication for struggle, a direction in organizational terms in which oppression and exploitation, situation of caste and class, find themselves insolubly linked.

The practical, continuous translation of this perspective is the task the movement is facing in Italy and elsewhere.↩

16. There has been some confusion over what we have said about canteens. A similar confusion expressed itself in the discussions in other countries as well as Italy about wages for housework. As we explained earlier, housework is as institutionalized as factory work and our ultimate goal is to destroy both institutions. But aside from which demand we are speaking about, there is a misunderstanding of what a demand is. It is a goal which is not only a thing but, like capital at any moment, essentially a stage of antagonism of a social relation. Whether the canteen or the wages we win will be a victory or a defeat depends on the force of our struggle. On that force depends whether the goal is an occasion for capital to more rationally command our labor or an occasion for us to weaken their hold on that command. What form the goal hikes when we achieve it, whether it is wages or canteens or free birth control, emerges and is in fact created in the struggle, and registers the degree of power that we reached in that struggle.↩

17. “The Colony of the Colonized: notes on race, class and sex,” Avis Brown, Race Today, June 1973. The writer refers to The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community by Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James (Falling Wall Press, Bristol 1972), as “brilliant.” The third edition was published as a book in 1975. Unless otherwise stated, all quotations are from Power of Women, 1975. (We were later to learn that Avis Brown was a pseudonym for A. Sivanandan, a man who is now head of the Institute of Race Relations, London.) Sex, Race and Class, the replay to “Avis Brown,” was first published in Race Today, January 1974.↩

18. For an analysis of the antagonistic relationship between workers and trade unions see S. James, Women, The Unions and Work, or what is not to be done, first published in 1972, republished with a new Postscript, Falling Wall Press, Bristol, 1976.↩

19. For the best demystification of culture I know which shows, for example, how West Indian cricket has carried in its heart racial and class conflicts, see C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary, Hutchinson, London 1963.↩

20. Signed by Lotta Femminista and the International Feminist Collective, reprinted in L’Offensiva (Turin: Musolini, 1972), 18–19.↩

21. Oakley, The Sociology of Housework, New York: Pantheon Books, 1974, p. 6.↩

22. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, “The Manufacture of Housework” Socialist Revolution, No. 26, Vol. 5 No. 4, October-December 1975, p. 6.↩

23. Frederich Engels, Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, edited, with an introduction, by Eleanor Burke Leacock, New York: International Publishers, 1973. See Chapter II. Leacock’s introduction to this edition contains numerous enlightening observations on Engels’ theory of the historical emergence of male supremacy.↩

24. Barbara Wertheimer, We Were There: The Story of Working Women in America, New York: Pantheon Books, 1977, p. 12.↩

25. Ehrenreich and English, op. cit., p. 9.↩

26. Wertheimer, op. cit., p. 12.↩

27. Rosalyn Baxendall, Linda Gordon, Susan Reverby, editors, America’s Working Women: A Documentary History—1600 to the Present (New York: Random House, 1976), p. 17.↩

28. Wertheimer, op. cit., p. 13.↩

29. Ehrenreich and English, op. cit., p. 10.↩

30. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Home: Its Work and Its Influence (Urbana, Chicago, London: University of Illinois Press, 1972. Reprint of the 1903 edition), pp. 30–31.↩

31. Ibid., p. 10.↩

32. Ibid., p. 217.↩

33. DuBois, Darkwater, p. 185.↩

34. Speech by Polga Fortunata. Quoted in Wendy Edmond and Suzie Fleming, (eds.), All Work and No Pay: Women, Housework and the Wages Due!, Bristol, England: Falling Wall Press, 1975, p. 18.↩

35. Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, Bristol, England: Falling Wall Press, 1973.↩

36. Ibid., p. 28.↩

37. Mary Inman, In Women’s Defense, Los Angeles: Committee to Organize the Advancement of Women, 1940. See also Inman, The Two Forms of Production Under Capitalism, Long Beach, Cal.: Published by the Author, 1964. Mary Inman, In Women’s Defense, Los Angeles: Committee to Organize the Advancement of Women, 1940. See also Inman, The Two Forms of Production Under Capitalism (Long Beach, Cal.: Published by the Author, 1964).↩

38. Margaret Benston, “The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation,” Monthly Review, Vol. XXI, No. 4, September, 1969.↩

39. “On the Economic Status of the Housewife.” Editorial Comment in Political Affairs, Vol LIII, No. 3, March, 1974, p. 4.↩

40. Hilda Bernstein, For Their Triumphs and For Their Tears: Women in Apartheid South Africa (London: International Defence and Aid Fund, 1975), p. 13.↩

41. Elizabeth Landis, “Apartheid and the Disabilities of Black Women in South Africa,” Objective: Justice, Vol. VII, No. 1, January–March, 1975, p. 6. Excerpts from this paper were published in Freedomways, Vol XV, No. 4., 1975.↩

42. Bernstein, op. cit., p. 33.↩

43. Landis, op. cit., p. 6.↩

44. V. I. Lenin, “A Great Beginning,” pamphlet published in July, 1919. Quoted in Collected Works, Vol. 29 (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1966), p. 429.↩

45. Released in the United States under the title Black Girl.↩

46. Jackson, op. cit., pp. 236–237.↩

47. Victor Perlo, Economics of Racism U.S.A., Roots of Black Inequality (New York: International Publishers, 1975), p. 24.↩

48. Staples, The Black Woman in America, p. 27.↩

49. Daily World, July 26, 1977, p. 9.↩

50. Dalla Costa and James, op. cit., p. 40.↩

51. Pat Sweeney, “Wages for Housework: The Strategy for Women’s Liberation,” Heresies, January, 1977, p. 104.↩

52. Dalla Costa and James, op. cit., p. 41.↩

53. Oakley, The Sociology of Housework, New York: Pantheon Books, 1974.↩

54. Ibid., p. 65.↩

55. Ibid., p. 44.↩

56. Ibid., p. 53.↩

57. Psychology Today, Vol. X, No. 4 (September, 1976), p. 76.↩

Materialist Feminism

In the late 70s, the journal Questions féministes emerged in France inspired by Simone de Beauvoir’s famous statement “One is not born a woman, one becomes one.” While the members of the group ultimately split in the mid-80s over questions of lesbian separatism, the rigor and coherence of their analytic framework is clear. Delphy and Wittig were both central members of Questions féministes. In “The Main Enemy,” Christine Delphy argued the men and women both constitute classes, embedded in the domestic household in a relationship of domination, constituting a distinct mode of production. It is this sense Wittig can argue lesbians are outside the fundamental category of women, and prefigurative of an abolition of gender relations. Elements of Wittig’s analysis would play a formative role in influencing much of feminist and queer thinking in the US in the 90s. Writing as a formative radical feminist from the US, Shulamith Firestone shared with Delphy and Wittig a commitment to gender abolition, and an attempt at using the analytical tools of Marxism to theorize gender as a materialist system of production, but rejected the centrality of capital and labor foundational to Marxist theory.

The secondary reading by Leonard and Adkins argue the materialist work of Questions féministes has been unreasonably overshadowed by other French feminist currents in the Anglophone world.

Secondary reading: Lisa Adkins and Diana Leonard, “Reconstruction French Feminism: Commodification, Materialism and Sex,” in Sex in Question: French materialist feminism, ed. by Diana Leonard and Lisa Adkins. Taylor and Francis, 1996.

https://caringlabor.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/sex-in-question_-french-materialist-femi-diana-leonard.pdf

Christine Delphy, The Main Enemy (1970)

Published: Christine Delphy, “Libération des femmes: année zéro.” Partisans, 1970.

Source: Feminist Issues. vol. 1, no. 1, Summer, 1980.

Since the birth of the Women’s Liberation Movement in France, in the United States, and wherever the question has been raised, the Marxist point of view has been represented by a line elaborated outside of the movement (common to the traditional Communist parties and to leftist groups) and propagated in the movement by militant women from these groups.

This line generally appears unsatisfactory to women in the movement, as much in terms of theory as in terms of strategy:

1. It does not take account of the oppression common to all women.

2. It is centered not on the oppression of women, but on the consequences of this oppression for the proletariat (cf. “Bread and Roses”).[1]

This Marxist line is only possible at the price of a flagrant contradiction between the principles which this line claims to uphold and the application which it makes of these principles to the situation of women. Historical materialism is based on the analysis of social antagonisms in terms of class, the classes themselves being defined by their place in the production process. But, whereas these principles have been supposedly used to analyze the situation of women as women, in fact, the specific relationships of women to production have been ignored, resulting in a failure to carry out a class analysis. The results of such a theoretical gap are not long in coming:

- The oppression of women is seen as a secondary consequence of (and derived from) the class struggle as it is currently defined—that is, as solely the oppression of the proletariat by capital.

- The oppression of women in countries where capitalism as such has been destroyed is attributed to purely ideological causes. This implies a non-Marxist and idealist definition of ideology as a factor which can subsist in the absence of a material oppression which it serves to rationalize.

These postulates are in contradiction with the dynamic of the women’s movement: the development of women’s awareness of two urgent needs:

- A theoretical need—to find the structural reasons why the abolition of the relations of capitalist production as such is not sufficient to free women.

- A political need—to constitute the women’s movement as an autonomous political force.

Scarcely born, the movement is thus confronted with this contradiction: at the very moment when it is constituting itself into a revolutionary force, the only analysis which integrates the women’s struggle into a global revolutionary perspective leaves out the first of these needs (the search for the causes of the specific oppression of women), and offers no theoretical base for the second (it permits but does not establish the necessity for the constitution of an autonomous movement).

The consequences of this contradiction are immediately felt in the movement by the appearance of a general malaise, of antagonistic factions, of a difficulty in functioning. These are all due to the impossibility of defining a coherent practice so long as a gap exists between the theory referred to and the real oppression being attacked, and as long as the existence itself of the movement as such is not solidly (that is, theoretically) based.

The existence of this Marxist line has the practical consequence of being a brake on the movement, and this fact is obviously not accidental. Our objective here is not to show the mechanisms by which this line was adopted by women themselves,[2] nor to show how this constitutes further proof of the existence of objective interests—and not limited to the capitalist class—in the oppression of women. Let it suffice to say that, by reason of its objective role in retarding the liberation of women, this line can only be regarded as the act of groups interested in the subjection of women; and by reason of its nonscientific character it can only be regarded as a Marxist camouflage for theories which justify this subjection—that is, as an ideology. But to repeat, our objective is not to do a critique of this line point by point (a critique which will be made elsewhere), but to try to provide to the movement what it crucially needs at this moment—that is, the bases for a materialist analysis of the oppression of women.

This concern certainly answers to an objective need of the movement, since in 1969–1970 there appeared simultaneously various essays by feminists (separated by thousands of miles and having no contact with each other) trying to conceptualize the oppression of women starting from its material basis: in the United States the article by Margaret Benston on “The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation,”[3] and that of Suzie Olah on “The Economic Function of the Oppression of Women”;[4] in Cuba the article “Against Invisible Work”;[5] and in France an unpublished manifesto of the F. M. A.group (Féminisme, Marxisme, Action).[6]

Every society, in order to survive, has to create material goods (production) and human beings (reproduction). These essays center their analysis of the oppression of women on women’s specific participation in production (and not only in reproduction): on domestic work and child rearing analyzed as productive work. In this respect they constitute the embryo of a radical feminist analysis based on Marxist principles. Rejecting the pseudotheories which make the family first and foremost the place for the ideological indoctrination of “future producers” destined to indirectly sustain capitalist exploitation only, and which ignore its economic function, these essays show that the family is the place of economic exploitation: that of women. Having shown that domestic work and child-rearing are: (1) the exclusive reponsibility of women, and (2) unpaid, these essays conclude that women have, as a result of this, a specific relationship to production, which is comparable to serfdom. However, it is not sufficient to stop there. We must:

- Analyze the relationships between the nature of domestic goods and services and the mode of production of these goods and services.

- Proceed to develop a class analysis of women.

- On the basis of this analysis, trace the main lines of the movement’s political perspectives, in terms of objectives, mobilization, and political alliances.

Relations of Production Entered into by Women

All contemporary societies, including “socialist” societies, are based on the unpaid labor of women for domestic services and child-rearing. These services can only be furnished within the framework of a particular relationship to an individual (the husband); they are excluded from the realm of exchange and consequently have no value. They are unpaid. The allowances received by women in return are independent of the work done and are not paid in exchange for that work, i.e., as a wage to which their work entitles them, but as a gift. The husband’s only obligation, which is obviously in his own interest, is to provide for his wife’s basic needs, in other words, to maintain her labor power.

In the American and Cuban texts cited above, there remains an ambiguity, or rather a remnant of the dominant ideology. While it is recognized that domestic work is productive, it is never the less suggested—or explicitly said—that its nonvalue, its nonremuneration, and its exclusion from the domain of economic exchange are the consequence of the very nature of domestic services. This idea is based on and is expressed by two postulates about women:

1. That they are “structurally not responsible for the production of goods”[7] and are “excluded from the realm of surplus value.”

2. That they are restricted to activities which produce “only use values” and not “exchange values,” creating no “surplus value.”[8]

We maintain, on the contrary, that rather than its being the nature of the work done by women which explains their relations of production, it is these relations of production which explain the fact that their work is excluded from the realm of value. It is women as economic agents who are excluded from the (exchange) market, and not their production.

I. The relations of production described above (nonremuneration) as applying to domestic work are not limited to products consumed within the family (child-rearing, domestic services) but also apply to products destined or the market when they are produced within the family.

Women’s participation in the creation of goods and vital necessities is attested to by the whole ethnographic literature, and this constitutes an obstacle for ideologists who try to explain the inferior status of women by their secondary role—at least “in the beginning”—in the “survival of the species.” This is not the place to discuss the phenomenon of how the “naturalist” ideology which underlays the system has been made into a myth of its origins, which is projected at will into all moments of history—a myth of which Engels himself was a victim. Suffice it to say that ethnographic documentation as a whole shows that the economic importance of the goods produced by women or by men is not related to the social preeminence of one or the other sex. On the contrary, all data (ethnographic, as well as sociological) reveal an inverse relationship: the dominant classes have the productive work done by the classes they have in their power.

In France today women’s work may be unpaid not only when it is applied to products for domestic use, but also when it is applied to goods for the market. This is true in all the sectors where the unit of production is the family (in contrast to the workshop or the factory), i.e., in most agriculture, in small businesses, and in craft workshops. Women’s work is by no means marginal: in 1968 farmers’ wives devoted on an average four hours a day to agricultural work.[9] The “rural crisis” is largely due to the fact that girls no longer want to marry farmers. In the general view, “a farm cannot be run without a woman.” Michelet said that when a farmer could not pay a servant, he took a wife. This is still true. “Michel needs someone to help him, and he can’t find a servant. If only he would get married...”[10] In France the jobs assigned to women on farms vary from region to region. Animal care (poultry, pigs, etc.) is a constant. Besides that, they are general help on the farm; they are the assistants, the workers on whom fall the subordinate, dirty, difficult, nonmechanized tasks (particularly the milking of cows when it is done by hand, a job which ties them to such an uncongenial schedule that some women now demand to be exempted from it in their marriage contract; men take over this job when it becomes mechanized). Often the only source of cash for the purchase of items not produced on the farm is the sale of goods specifically produced by the wife: milk, eggs, poultry. However, whatever her designated tasks on the farm may be, the woman’s work is absolutely necessary. A man alone cannot run a farm without assuming a double work load, and in fact he cannot run it at all, even by limiting himself only to the farm work (a man alone without children does not need a great many domestic services).

The wife’s unpaid labor thus counts in the general economy of the farm, as well as the unpaid labor of younger brothers and sisters, who are literally disinherited, and that of children. Although today in the majority of cases younger siblings and children threaten to leave, or actually do leave, unless they are paid a wage, it is important to remember that their exploitation was the rule in all sectors of the economy until industrialization (the end of the eighteenth century), and until the Second World War in agriculture.

Historically and etymologically the family is a unit of production. Familia in Latin designates the totality of the land, the slaves, the women, and the children who are under the control of (synonym for the property of) the father of the family. The father of the family dominates this unit: the labor of the individuals under his authority belongs to him. In other words, the family is that group of individuals who owe their labor to one “boss.”

Since the family is based on the exploitation by one individual of those who are related to him by blood or marriage, this exploitation exists wherever the mode of production is familial. In Morocco, for example: “In the rural area women look after fruit-picking and animal care. These women receive no payment for their work; they are entitled to their support by the head of the family.”[11]

In France today seven million women are designated as “employed,” that is, as participating in production. Of these seven million, one million are “family helpers,” which means unpaid; almost eight out of ten of these unpaid women are employed in agriculture. The category of “family helper” is the ratification of exploitation within the family, since it institutionalizes the fact that some producers are not paid, that is, that the profit from their production belongs to their relative, husband or father.

Many wives of farmers, merchants, and craftsmen nevertheless continue to declare themselves to be “just a housewife.” Also, the number of women who participate in the production of goods in the framework of family businesses is certainly larger than the number of women counted in the census as “family helpers.” Assuming that the number is underestimated by 40%, one comes up with an estimate of 1,400,000 women out of 14 million adult women (between 17 and 64 years of age) who are subject to these relations of production, that is, one woman in ten.

The unpaid character of women’s work continues to be taken for granted, even when the unpaid character of children’s work is being called into question. More and more frequently, when a farming household is made up of different generations, the son demands to be paid for his work, and not just “recompensed” by the mere maintenance of his labor power; but the suggestion that the wife could demand the same thing, that the couple should receive two wages for two jobs, is met with total incomprehension. Unpaid work by men is thus strongly attacked (only one out of 43 “employed” men is a family helper, compared to one out of 7 “employed” women), while unpaid work by women is institutionalized not only in practice but also in government bookkeeping (using the category of family helper) and in the demands of opposition political parties: the M.O.D.E.F.[12] demands that each family farm be assured of having an income equivalent to one wage. The implication is that the wife’s work, incorporated into household production, does not merit a wage; or, rather, that since the wife’s production is exchanged by the husband as his own, the wife’s work belongs to her husband.

II. There is no difference between the domestic services provided by wives and other goods and services, called productive, which are produced and consumed in the family.

In the traditional farm economy a large part of the goods consumed by the family are produced by it: it absorbs directly a part of its own production. However, this production is also saleable; that is, there is no distinction between use value and exchange value. The same product which is consumed by the family and which has a use value for it also naturally has an exchange value, since it can be taken to market. On the other hand, if it were not self-produced, it would have to be replaced by its equivalent bought on the market.

For this reason farm produce which is self-consumed is considered as income by those concerned and as production in the national accounting. The only question which comes up in national accounting is whether a pig eaten by the family should be evaluated at its production cost, the price for which it could have been sold (that is, by the farm’s would-be gain), or at its replacement price, the price the household would have had to pay if it had not produced it (that is, by the farm’s would-be expense).

When producer and consumer are one, as in the farm family, it is obvious that there is a continuum between production and consumption: wheat is sown in order to consume it; it is milled because it is not consumable as grain; it is cooked because it is not consumable as flour; and none of these operations is useful without the others, because the objective is the final consumption. It is thus absurd to introduce a break in this process. This is, nevertheless, what happens when only a certain part of this process is entered into the books as productive—up to and including the production of flour—and when the rest of the process, the baking of the bread, for example, is considered as nonproductive. Either all the work involved in producing the self-consumed product is productive, or none of it is. The latter hypothesis is absurd, because the pig which is eaten could have been sold on the market, and would have had to be replaced by its equivalent in food purchased. This is what happens with farmers who produce only one crop or animal, and even more so with workers who produce nothing that can be consumed. What masks the fact that the objective of all production is ultimately consumption is the fact that in these cases products must be exchanged twice before they can be consumed (sale of the product of one’s work and purchase of the product to be consumed). What introduces a break into the production-consumption continuum is not the fact that certain activities necessary to the final goal (consumption) are not productive, but the fact that when production is specialized, consumption (the final objective of all production) is mediated by exchange.

The example of self-consumption on the farm illustrates clearly the fact that there is no difference in nature between the activities called “productive” (like fattening a pig) and household activities called “nonproductive” (like cooking the said pig).

To summarize, in agriculture women and men together create use values which are:

1. Essentially exchange values: women and men produce milk, eggs, and agricultural produce for their own consumption and for exchange; the desired level of consumption and the desired quantity of cash determine what goes to the market and what is self-consumed.

2. Entered into the accounts as production (in the gross national product).

So-called productive use values are no different from so-called nonproductive use values created by “purely domestic” labor; they are part of the same process of creation and of transformation of raw products (they are directed at the same raw products for the production of consumable food), and they have the same end: self-consumption.[13]

III. Just as there is continuity and no break between the activities aimed at self-consumption and called productive and the activities aimed at self-consumption and called nonproductive (household activities), so there is a continuity between the services provided without pay by women and commercialized services.

Today many of the operations leading to the transformation of raw materials into consumable products have been industrialized; operations which formerly were part of household activities are now carried out outside of the house—activities such as bread-making, dressmaking, and preparation of preserved foods. Today bakeries, clothing manufacturers, and canning and freezing companies sell labor which was previously provided without pay by women. This manufacturing is considered as production and is officially counted in the gross national product: the labor involved in it is considered as productive and the individuals who carry out this work as producers—which was not the case as long as the goods were produced by the unpaid labor of women.

Most of these operations are no longer done by wives; they are not different in nature from domestic operations such as housework, cooking, child care, which continue to be carried out without pay by women in most cases. The fact that when women provide these services outside of the family, they are paid for them proves again that the lack of pay does not depend on the character of the work.

When these services cannot be provided by women in families, they must be procured by purchase. All these domestic services exist in fact on the market: delicatessens and restaurants offer prepared dishes, day-care centers and babysitters offer child care, cleaning agencies and servants carry out housework, etc.

Expenditures for food constitute the principal item in household budgets (from 50% to 80%). The household has a choice between buying ready-to-eat food (thus paying for the value added to the raw materials by the paid labor of the restaurateur, caterer, etc.) and buying it in raw form and applying to it the amount of labor necessary to make it consumable. The greatest part of the food budget is spent on the purchase of raw materials: “It can be said that the household itself produces final products for consumption. In order to do this the household essentially uses labor (domestic), machines (durable goods), and raw materials (intermediary products bought directly from the manufacturing firms), which are transformed by the household itself with the aid of a certain amount of labor and capital. Looked at in this way, the household is different from the firm only in that the household adds to production (which is the sole function of the firm) the activity of consumption (which is the goal of the production carried out by the household itself with the aid of goods produced by the firm).”[14]

The final goal of production for the producer is consumption, whether it be of his own products in a subsistence economy, or of other products in a specialized economy (as the final goal of production for the buyer is the consumption of these products). The wages derived from the exchange of specialized production or from labor power on the market is not sufficient to accomplish this goal. This goal is reached in two stages:

- By the purchase of raw materials for consumption with a wage earned by paid work.

- The transformation of these primary materials into directly consumable products, by virtue of household labor.

We have then, on the one hand, work inside the house which provides a certain quantity of directly consumable goods; and, on the other hand, outside work which brings in a certain monetary income. But what is the utilization of this monetary income? We suggest that it does not directly consist of the usefulness of the goods that this income purchases, as the traditional theory alleges; but, according to our hypotheses, that it consists of the contribution of this income to the production of consumable final goods; that is, that it consists of the contribution of capital goods acquired with this income (raw material and durable goods) to the production of consumable final goods.[15]

What this bourgeois economist does not mention is that if most “households” prefer to buy food in a raw form it is because household labor is unpaid and because this labor is entirely provided by wives. One can oppose these facts to the ideology which says that the husband’s wage alone pays for the total consumption of the household, while the housewife “does not earn her living.”

In France in 1955 out of 105 billion work hours, 43 billion were devoted to paid work, and 45 billion to unpaid domestic work.[16] The Swedish National Accounting Office incorporates this unpaid labor into the gross national product and evaluates it at one-fifth of the total.[17] In 1958 in France, married women provided on the average 60 hours a week of unpaid domestic labor: 35 hours for women with no children, 52 hours for women with one child, 64 hours for women with two children, 70 hours for women with three children.[18]

To conclude, the exclusion of women’s work from the field of exchange does not result from the nature of their production since their unpaid work is applied to:

1. The production of goods and services which reach and are exchanged on the market (in agriculture, crafts, and business).

2. The production of goods and services which are remunerated when performed outside of the family, and not remunerated when performed in the family. And this applies to all production carried out in the family, whatever its nature.

IV. Nowadays the appropriation of women’s labor power tends to be limited to the exploitation (the unpaid provision by them) of domestic work and child rearing.

With the advent of industrialization the family was dispossessed of its function as a unit of production, except in certain sectors. Industrialization means principally that most production intended for the market can no longer be done within the family.

As a result, none of this production can any longer incorporate the unpaid work of wives and children. In other words, wives’ work can no longer be included in productions destined for exchange, since this production is carried out outside the family. With the spread of this mode of production the number of independent workers able to exchange the work of their wives is declining, while the number of wage earners who cannot exchange this work is growing.

In the sectors where all the production intended for exchange is produced by wage labor, the unpaid labor of the wife can only be applied to production which is not intended for exchange. Or, more precisely, the mode of family production—the exploitation of wives’ unpaid labor—cannot be applied to production intended for exchange. It must be said, however, that this is a question of exchange by the husband. The wife, for example, is not paid for agricultural labor if it is performed within the family: she cannot exchange her family production on the market. She thus does not dispose of her own labor power. It is her husband alone who can exchange the production of his wife on the market. In the same way a woman does not dispose of her housework as long as it is done in the family, and can only exchange it outside of the family. Thus women’s production always has an exchange value (can be exchanged by them) except within the framework of the family. With the coming of industrialization family production is limited to housework; or more precisely, we call housework that to which the unpaid production of the wife has been reduced.

The entry of women into industry as wage earners is the immediate consequence of the impossibility of totally exploiting their labor power. The proportion of women wage earners in France remains the same today as it was in 1900. However, the appropriation of their labor power by their husbands is so absolute that, even when women work outside of the family, their wage still belongs to their husbands. Since 1907 a wife has the right—in law—to her own wage, but in fact marriage custom annuls this concession (all the earnings go into a common budget which the husband alone controls). Until l965 the whole labor power of the wife was appropriated: her husband could prevent her working outside the home. These arrangements having been abrogated in 1965, it can be said that since then women have legally recovered a part of their labor power. Legally free to work outside of the home, a woman is not in fact free to do so. A part of her labor power remains appropriated, since “she must fulfill her family responsibilities,” that is, provide housework and child rearing without pay. Not only does outside work not free her from housework, but also it must not interfere with it either. The woman is thus free only to do a double work load in exchange for a certain economic independence. The situation of the married woman with a job clearly reveals the legal appropriation of her labor power. In fact her providing of domestic work is no longer justified by the economic exchange to which the servitude of the “housewife” is abusively assimilated. It can no longer be maintained that domestic work is performed in exchange for support and that this support is the equivalent of a wage, and that this work is therefore paid. Women who go out to work support themselves and thus provide this domestic work for nothing.

Moreover, when the wage of a woman who works “outside” is calculated by the couple, the expenses of child care, extra taxes, etc., are deducted from her wage alone, instead of being paid from the couple’s income as a whole. This shows that:

1. It is considered that these services should be free, in contrast to services such as housing, transportation, etc., which are not deducted from earnings.

2. It is considered that these services should be provided exclusively by the wife, a part of her wage being considered by the couple as nonexistent, serving to pay for what she should have done free of charge.

Using these calculations, it is generally found by the couple that the wife earns “almost nothing.” In France, according to the 1968 census, 37.8% of married women work outside the home.[19]

V. On this basis, it is now possible to outline the premises of a class analysis.

The existence of two modes of production in our society is established: (1) most goods are produced in the industrial mode; (2) domestic services, child rearing, and a certain number of goods are produced in the family mode. The first mode of production gives rise to capitalist exploitation. The second gives rise to familial, or more precisely, patriarchal exploitation.

Out of about 15 million adult men, 307,000 men (family helpers) are subject to the latter form of exploitation: they provide (mainly in agriculture) unpaid skilled services within the family. All married women (that is, 80% of adult women at all times) are subject to this exploitation: they provide at least unpaid domestic services and child rearing within the family. The status of son or younger brother, which is the basis of familial exploitation of men, is temporary; the status of a woman lasts all her life. Moreover, male family helpers are not exploited because they are men, while women are exploited because they are women (wives). While other unpaid work on the farm, in the workshop or store can be furnished either by men or by women as members of a family, unpaid housework is done exclusively by women as wives of the heads of households.

Women’s labor is appropriated for all family production when the family is the unit of production for the market (wives of farmers, craftsmen, and shopkeepers—about one million out of 15.5 million adult women). Women’s labor is appropriated solely for housework when the family no longer produces directly for the market (wives of wage earners).

In the first case the woman’s labor power is entirely appropriated; in the second case it is totally appropriated if she does not work outside the home, or partially appropriated if she does have an outside job (37.8% of married women are “employed,” but from this figure must be subtracted the family helpers—approximately 800,000 wives of farmers, craftsmen, and shopkeepers).

Thus the majority of married women do not have an independent income and work in exchange for being supported. The difference between this mode of production and the mode of capitalist wage-earning production does not lie in the quantity of benefits furnished in exchange for work, in the difference between the value of the support received and a hypothetical wage, but lies in the relation of production itself.

The wage earner sells his labor power in exchange for a fixed wage which depends on the services provided: these services are also fixed, defined in amount (hours of work) and in type (qualification). The equivalents are determined according to a fixed scale (that is, by a price determined by the total supply and demand on the labor market in the capitalist system)—a scale which is not subject to the good will of the parties concerned. The individual employer and employee do not influence the terms of the contract, and the individuals are interchangeable. The labor which is furnished has a universal value, and it is this value which the employer buys, and which the wage earner turns into money, because he can take his labor power elsewhere. The fact that it is precise services which are bought means that the wage earner can increase his earnings by improving his services, either in amount or type.

The services which a married woman provides, on the contrary, are not fixed: they depend on the will of the employer, the husband. Nor are these services remunerated according to a fixed scale: the support furnished does not depend on the work done by the wife, but on the wealth and good will of her husband. For the same work (for example, the rearing of three children) the support received by the wife of a worker and the wife of a business executive can vary by as much as tenfold. Conversely, for the same support the wife furnishes very different services depending on the needs of her husband. Thus the housework of the wives of upper-class men is reduced in favor of social display and conspicuous consumption. Since the benefits received bear no relationship to the services provided, women do not have the option of improving their services in order to increase their standard of living. The only solution for them is to provide the same services to a richer man: the logical consequence of the nonvalue of their work is the competition for a good marriage. But even though marriage with a man of the propertied class can raise the standard of living of a woman, it does not make her a member of that class. She herself does not own the means of production. Thus her standard of living does not depend on her class relationship to the proletariat, but on her serf relations of production to her husband. In the vast majority of cases the wives of bourgeois men whose marriage ends must earn their own living as wage workers. They then become concretely the proletarians that they to all intents and purposes were—with the added handicap of age and/or the lack of professional training. Divorce reveals women’s virtual and real class position in the capitalist system.

The nonvalue of a woman’s work is attested to by the fact that the services rendered are independent of the support received. This is the consequence of the impossibility of exchanging her labor, which itself is the consequence of the impossibility of women’s changing employers (it is sufficient to compare the number of divorced women who remarry with the number of workers who change jobs in the same year). The contract can be broken unilaterally even when the wives continue to furnish adequate services (e.g., when given custody of the children in a divorce, they get only child-support payments—their work to rear them is not paid—when the payments are actually made).

To summarize: while the wage earner depends on the market (on a theoretically unlimited number of employers), the married woman depends on one individual. While the wage earner sells his labor power, the married woman gives hers: exclusive right and nonpayment are intimately linked.

VI. The furnishing of unpaid labor within the framework of a total and personal relationship (marriage) constitutes precisely a relationship of slavery.[20]

It can be said that since less than 10% of women over twenty-five years of age are unmarried, the chances are very high that all women will be married at some point in their lives, and that all women are doomed to enter into these relations of production. As a group effectively (at any given time) subject to this relation of production, they constitute a class; as a category of human beings destined by birth to become members of this class, they constitute a caste.[21]

The appropriation and exploitation of their labor in marriage constitutes the oppression common to all women. As women destined to become “the wife of” someone, women destined for the same relations of production constitute a single class. When they participate in capitalist production, they enter additionally into other relations of production. In France 5,900,000 women are integrated into capitalist (i.e., nonfamily) production; of these 5,160,000 are wage earners, and 675,000 are self-employed. In the whole of France 11,000 women are “industrialists.” A tiny minority of women belong to the capitalist class, while the majority of women who work outside the home belong to the proletariat. Within this class, they constitute a super-exploited “caste.” This fact is well known.

This super-exploitation is intimately connected to their specific exploitation as women.

In view of the preceding, it can be seen that it is about as accurate to say that the wives of bourgeois men are themselves bourgeois as to say that the slave of a plantation owner is himself a plantation owner. Nevertheless, this is heard all the time. Likewise there is currently a confusion between the wives of workers and women workers. That is to say, when speaking of women, sometimes their class membership is based on a Marxist definition of class (on their relations of production) and sometimes on an endorsement of the definition of women as the property and extension of their husbands.

However, if only the capitalist mode of production is considered (as is usually done), and if the same criteria are applied to women as to men, one realizes that all women who do not work outside the home are outside the class system (proletariat/capitalist). Otherwise, women can only be reintegrated into the class system by determining their class membership according to non-Marxist criteria (by the class of their husbands). “Society is divided into classes, and women are not outside these classes; consequently the lot of every woman is linked to that of other women and men who belong to the same class and social category.”[22] By pretending that women belong to their husband’s class in the capitalist system, the fact that women precisely belong by definition to another class in the other system than that of their husbands is masked. By claiming that marriage can take the place of relations of production in the capitalist system as the criterion for class membership in this system, one masks both the existence of another system of production and the fact that the relations of production in this latter system precisely place husbands and wives in antagonistic classes (the former drawing a material benefit from the exploitation of the latter). And finally, the “reintegration” of women into classes by defining them as property of their husbands has as its objective precisely to hide the fact that they are the property of their husbands.

In fact, if one only wanted to rally women to the anticapitalist struggle, it would be enough to show that to the extent that they are integrated into this mode of production (as wage workers) the vast majority of women (nine out of ten women who work outside the home) have an objective interest in this struggle insofar as they belong to the working class; whereas on the contrary, by attributing to them the class of their husbands, the wives of the bourgeoisie (who are not integrated into capitalist production) are made to look like enemies. One sees thus that it is not so much a question of rallying all women to the anticapitalist struggle as of denying the existence of a noncapitalist system of production. In denying the existence of this system of production, the existence of relations of production specific to this system are denied, and those concerned are prohibited from having the possibility of rebelling against these relations of production. It is a question then, above all, of preserving the patriarchal mode of production of domestic services—that is, the unpaid furnishing of these services by women. It is interesting in this regard to compare the current attitude of the French Communist Party with Lenin’s recommendations:

The real emancipation of women, real communism, will begin only where and when an all-out struggle begins (led by the proletariat wielding the state power) against this petty housekeeping, or rather when its wholesale transformation into a large-scale socialist economy begins.[23] (italics in original)

The Communist Party solution is to

make household appliances available to all households to bring about the mechanization of domestic services.[24]

For the Communist Party it is the obligation of employers and the public administration

to make it easier for the working woman to do her job as mother of a family.[25]

Lenin:

Unfortunately, we may still say of many of our comrades, “Scratch the Communist and a philistine appears”...Could there be any more palpable proof than the common sight of a man calmly watching a woman wear herself out with trivial, monotonous, strength- and time-consuming work, such as her housework... Very few husbands, not even the proletarians, think of how much they could lighten the burdens and worries of their wives, or relieve them entirely, if they lent a hand in this “women’s work.”[26]

The Communist Party:

...an equal division of difficulties and fatigue in the household is a limited (sic) concept of equality.[27] (emphasis added)

Political Perspectives

In conclusion, patriarchal exploitation constitutes the common, specific, and main oppression of women:

- Common: because it affects all married women (80% of all women at all times).

- Specific: because the obligation to furnish unpaid domestic services is only suffered by women.

- Main: because even when women work “outside,” the class membership that they derive from that work is conditioned by their exploitation as women in the following ways: (a) access to the ownership of the means of production was forbidden to them by marriage rules (until l968) and inheritance practices (the majority of women employers are either “only children” or widows); (b) their earnings are cancelled out by the deduction of the value of the services which they are obliged to pay for to replace their own unpaid services; (c) the material conditions for the exercise of their occupation are dictated by their patriarchal oppression:

- The very possibility of working is conditional on their performing first their “family duties,” with the result that outside work is either impossible or added to their domestic work.

- Family duties are established as a handicap and as a pretext by capitalism to superexploit women in their outside work.

It has not been possible within the framework of this article to study the relationship between the exploitation of women’s productive labor and the exploitation of their reproductive labor. The control of reproduction, which is both the cause and the means of the other great material oppression of women—sexual exploitation—constitutes the second facet of the oppression of women. Establishing why and how these two exploitations are conditioned and reinforced by each other, and why and how they have the same framework and the same institution—the family—must be one of the first theoretical objectives of the movement.

This analysis constitutes a preliminary to the study of the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy. It is important to know well what patriarchy consists of in order to understand to what extent it is theoretically independent of capitalism. Only this understanding will make it possible to account for the historically observed independence of these two systems. Only by doing this is it possible to establish the material basis for the articulation of the antipatriarchy struggle and the anticapitalist struggle. As long as this articulation remains based on unproven hierarchical postulates, and/or on ideological voluntariness, we are doomed to theoretical confusion and to political ineffectiveness in the short term, and to historical failure in the long term.

These analyses must be followed by class analyses which integrate individuals into both systems of exploitation (patriarchal and capitalist) based on their objective interests. This is necessary in the short run in order to be able to mobilize for the immediate struggle, and in the long run in order to envisage how the dynamics of the antipatriarchy and anticapitalist struggles could be oriented to combine them in revolutionary struggle. (Needless to say, this constitutes the object of a continuing study whose basic principles would be constantly modified by the evolution of the struggles.)

For the present, one can say that women will not be liberated except by the total destruction of the patriarchal system of production and reproduction. Since this system is central to all known societies, this liberation implies the total overthrow of the bases of all known societies. This overthrow cannot take place without a revolution.

Mobilization for this struggle should be based on patriarchal oppression, and thus includes all individuals oppressed by patriarchy and hence interested in its destruction, that is, all women. The work of mobilization must emphasize the solidarity of all people oppressed by the same system. To do this we must:

- Attack the problems of false consciousness, that is, class consciousness determined according to membership in capitalist classes rather than in patriarchal classes, and the identification of women under this pretext with the enemy patriarchal class.

- Show how this false consciousness serves the interests of patriarchy and detracts from our struggle.

For the present, the political and tactical alliances of the movement with other groups, movements, or revolutionary parties must be based only on an unambiguous commitment of the latter to the objectives of the movement—on the basis of their clearly and officially expressed intent to destroy patriarchy and their positive participation in the revolutionary struggle which has this destruction as its aim.

Monique Wittig, The Category of Sex (1976)

Published: Feminist Issues. vol. 2, issue 2, pp. 63–68, Fall 1982. Reported to have been written in 1976.

Published: Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Beacon Press, 1992.

O. expresses a virile idea. Virile or at least masculine. At last a woman who admits it! Who admits what? Something that women have always till now refused to admit (and today more than ever before). Something that men have always reproached them with: that they never cease obeying their nature, the call of their blood, that everything in them, even their minds, is sex.

–Jean Paulham, “Happiness in Slavery,” preface to The Story of O, by Pauline de Réage.

In the course of the year 1838, the peaceful island of Barbados was rocked by a strange and bloody revolt. About two hundred Negroes of both sexes, all of whom had recently been emancipated by the Proclamation of March, came one morning to beg their former master, a certain Glenelg, to take them back into bondage...I suspect...that Glenelg’s slaves were in love with their master, that they couldn’t bear to be without him.

–Jean Paulham, “Happiness in Slavery”

What should I be getting married for? I find life good enough as it is. What do I need a wife for?...And what’s so good about a woman?—A woman is a worker. A woman is a man’s servant.—But what would I be needing a worker for?—That’s just it. You like to have others pulling your chestnuts out of the fire...—Well, marry me off, if that’s the case.

–Ivan Turgenev, The Hunting Sketches

The perenniality of the sexes and the perenniality of slaves and masters proceed from the same belief, and, as there are no slaves without masters, there are no women without men. The ideology of sexual difference functions as censorship in our culture by masking, on the ground of nature, the social opposition between men and women. Masculine/feminine, male/female are the categories which serve to conceal the fact that social differences always belong to an economic, political, ideological order. Every system of domination establishes divisions at the material and economic level. Furthermore, the divisions are abstracted and turned into concepts by the masters, and later on by the slaves when they rebel and start to struggle. The masters explain and justify the established divisions as a result of natural differences. The slaves, when they rebel and start to struggle, read social oppositions into the so-called natural differences.

For there is no sex. There is but sex that is oppressed and sex that oppresses. It is oppression that creates sex and not the contrary. The contrary would be to say that sex creates oppression, or to say that the cause (origin) of oppression is to be found in sex itself, in a natural division of the sexes preexisting (or outside of) society.

The primacy of difference so constitutes our thought that it prevents turning inward on itself to question itself, no matter how necessary that may be to apprehend the basis of that which precisely constitutes it. To apprehend a difference in dialectical terms is to make apparent the contradictory terms to be resolved. To understand social reality in dialectical materialist terms is to apprehend the oppositions between classes, term to term, and make them meet under the same copula (a conflict in the social order), which is also a resolution (an abolition in the social order) of the apparent contradictions.

The class struggle is precisely that which resolves the contradictions between two opposed classes by abolishing them at the same time that it constitutes and reveals them as classes. The class struggle between women and men, which should be undertaken by all women, is that which resolves the contradictions between the sexes, abolishing them at the same time that it makes them understood. We must notice that the contradictions always belong to a material order. The important idea for me is that before the conflict (rebellion, struggle) there are no categories of opposition but only of difference. And it is not until the struggle breaks out that the violent reality of the oppositions and the political nature of the differences become manifest. For as long as oppositions (differences) appear as given, already there, before all thought, “natural”—as long as there is no conflict and no struggle—there is no dialectic, there is no change, no movement. The dominant thought refuses to turn inward on itself to apprehend that which questions it.

And, indeed, as long as there is no women’s struggle, there is no conflict between men and women. It is the fate of women to perform three-quarters of the work of society (in the public as well as in the private domain) plus the bodily work of reproduction according to a pre-established rate. Being murdered, mutilated, physically and mentally tortured and abused, being raped, being battered, and being forced to marry is the fate of women. And fate supposedly cannot be changed. Women do not know that they are totally dominated by men, and when they acknowledge the fact, they can “hardly believe it.” And often, as a last recourse before the bare and crude reality, they refuse to “believe” that men dominate them with full knowledge (for oppression is far more hideous for the oppressed than for the oppressors). Men, on the other hand, know perfectly well that they are dominating women (“We are the masters of women,” said André Breton) and are trained to do it.[28] They do not need to express it all the time, for one can scarcely talk of domination over what one owns.

What is this thought which refuses to reverse itself, which never puts into question what primarily constitutes it? This thought is the dominant thought. It is a thought which affirms an “already there” of the sexes, something which is supposed to have come before all thought, before all society. This thought is the thought of those who rule over women.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas: hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. (Marx and Engels, The German Ideology)

This thought based on the primacy of difference is the thought of domination.

Dominance provides women with a body of data, of givens, of a prioris, which, all the more for being questionable, form a huge political construct, a tight network that affects everything, our thoughts, our gestures, our acts, our work, our feelings, our relationships.

Dominance thus teaches us from all directions:

- that there are before all thinking, all society, “sexes” (two categories of individuals born) with a constitutive difference, a difference that has ontological consequences (the metaphysical approach),

- that there are before all thinking, all social order, “sexes” with a “natural” or “biological” or “hormonal” or “genetic” difference that has sociological consequences (the scientific approach),

- that there is before all thinking, all social order, a “natural division of labor in the family,” a “division of labor [that] was originally nothing but the division of labor in the sexual act” (the Marxist approach).

Whatever the approach, the idea remains basically the same. The sexes, in spite of their constitutive difference, must inevitably develop relationships from category to category. Belonging to the natural order, these relationships cannot be spoken of as social relationships. This thought which impregnates all discourses, including common-sense ones (Adam’s rib or Adam is, Eve is Adam’s rib), is the thought of domination. Its body of discourses is constantly reinforced on all levels of social reality and conceals the political fact of the subjugation of one sex and the other, the compulsory character of the category itself (which constitutes the first definition of the social being in civil status). The category of sex does not exist a priori, before all society. And as a category of dominance it cannot be a product of natural dominance but of the social dominance of women by men, for there is but social dominance.

The category of sex is the political category that founds society as heterosexual. As such it does not concern being but relationships (for women and men are the result of relationships), although the two aspects are always confused when they are discussed. The category of sex is the one that rules as “natural” the relation that is at the base of (heterosexual) society and through which half of the population, women, are “heterosexualized” (the making of women is like the making of eunuchs, the breeding of slaves, of animals) and submitted to a heterosexual economy. For the category of sex is the product of a heterosexual society which imposes on women the rigid obligation of the reproduction of the “species,” that is, the reproduction of heterosexual society. The compulsory reproduction of the “species” by women is the system of exploitation on which heterosexuality is economically based. Reproduction is essentially that work, that production by women, through which the appropriation by men of all the work of women proceeds. One must include here the appropriation of work which is associated “by nature” with reproduction, the raising of children and domestic chores. This appropriation of the work of women is effected in the same way as the appropriation of the work of the working class by the ruling class. It cannot be said that one of these two productions (reproduction) is “natural” while the other one is social. This argument is only the theoretical, ideological justification of oppression, an argument to make women believe that before society and in all societies they are subject to this obligation to reproduce. However, as we know nothing about work, about social production, outside of the context of exploitation, we know nothing about the reproduction of society outside of its context of exploitation.

The category of sex is the product of heterosexual society in which men appropriate for themselves the reproduction and production of women and also their physical persons by means of a contract called the marriage contract. Compare this contract with the contract that binds a worker to his employer. The contract binding the woman to the man is in principle a contract for life, which only law can break (divorce). It assigns the woman certain obligations, including unpaid work. The work (housework, raising children) and the obligations (surrender of her reproduction in the name of her husband, cohabitation by day and night, forced coitus, assignment of residence implied by the legal concept of “surrender to the conjugal domicile”) mean in their terms a surrender by the woman of her physical person to her husband. That the woman depends directly on her husband is implicit in the police’s policy of not intervening when a husband beats his wife. The police intervene with the specific charge of assault and battery when one citizen beats another citizen. But a woman who has signed a marriage contract has thereby ceased to be an ordinary citizen (protected by law). The police openly express their aversion to getting involved in domestic affairs (as opposed to civil affairs), where the authority of the state does not have to intervene directly since it is relayed through that of the husband. One has to go to the shelters for battered women to see how far this authority can be exercised.

The category of sex is the product of heterosexual society that turns half of the population into sexual beings, for sex is a category which women cannot be outside of. Wherever they are, whatever they do (including working in the public sector), they are seen (and made) sexually available to men, and they, breasts, buttocks, costume, must be visible. They must wear their yellow star, their constant smile, day and night. One might consider that every woman, married or not, has a period of forced sexual service, a sexual service which we may compare to the military one and which can vary between a day, a year, or twenty-five years or more. Some lesbians and nuns escape, but they are very few, although the number is growing. Although women are very visible as sexual beings, as social beings they are totally invisible, and as such must appear as little as possible, and always with some kind of excuse if they do so. One only has to read interviews with outstanding women to hear them apologizing. And the newspapers still today report that “two students and a woman,” “two lawyers and a woman,” “three travelers and a woman” were seen doing this or that. For the category of sex is the category that sticks to women, for only they cannot be conceived outside of it. Only they are sex, the sex, and sex they have been made in their minds, bodies, acts, gestures; even their murders and beatings are sexual. Indeed, the category of sex tightly holds women.

For the category of sex is a totalitarian one, which to prove true has its inquisitions, its courts, its tribunals, its body of laws, its terrors, its tortures, its mutilations, its executions, its police. It shapes the mind as well as the body since it controls all mental production. It grips our minds in such a way that we cannot think outside of it. This is why we must destroy it and start thinking beyond it if we want to start thinking at all, as we must destroy the sexes as a sociological reality if we want to start to exist. The category of sex is the category that ordains slavery for women, and it works specifically, as it did for black slaves, through an operation of reduction, by taking the part for the whole, a part (color, sex) through which the whole human group has to pass through a screen. Notice that in civil matters color as well as sex still must be “declared.” However, because of the abolition of slavery, the “declaration” of “color” is now considered discriminatory. But that does not hold true for the “declaration” of “sex,” which not even women dream of abolishing. I say: it is about time to do so.[29]

Monique Wittig, One is Not Born a Woman (1981)

Published: Monique Wittig, “On ne naît pas femme.” Questions féministes, 1981.

Source: Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Beacon Press, 1992.

A materialist feminist[30] approach to women’s oppression destroys the idea that women are a “natural group”: “a racial group of a special kind, a group perceived as natural, a group of men considered as materially specific in their bodies.”[31] What the analysis accomplishes on the level of ideas, practice makes actual at the level of facts: by its very existence, lesbian society destroys the artificial (social) fact constituting women as a “natural group.” A lesbian society[32] pragmatically reveals that the division from men of which women have been the object is a political one and shows that we have been ideologically rebuilt into a “natural group.” In the case of women, ideology goes far since our bodies as well as our minds are the product of this manipulation. We have been compelled in our bodies and in our minds to correspond, feature by feature, with the idea of nature that has been established for us. Distorted to such an extent that our deformed body is what they call “natural,” what is supposed to exist as such before oppression. Distorted to such an extent that in the end oppression seems to be a consequence of this “nature” within ourselves (a nature which is only an idea). What a materialist analysis does by reasoning, a lesbian society accomplishes practically: not only is there no natural group “women” (we lesbians are living proof of it), but as individuals as well we question “woman,” which for us, as for Simone de Beauvoir, is only a myth. She said: “One is not born, but becomes a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society: it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine.”[33]

However, most of the feminists and lesbian-feminists in America and elsewhere still believe that the basis of women’s oppression is biological as well as historical. Some of them even claim to find their sources in Simone de Beauvoir.[34] The belief in mother right and in a “prehistory” when women created civilization (because of a biological predisposition) while the coarse and brutal men hunted (because of a biological predisposition) is symmetrical with the biologizing interpretation of history produced up to now by the class of men. It is still the same method of finding in women and men a biological explanation of their division, outside of social facts. For me this could never constitute a lesbian approach to women’s oppression, since it assumes that the basis of society or the beginning of society lies in heterosexuality. Matriarchy is no less heterosexual than patriarchy: it is only the sex of the oppressor that changes. Furthermore, not only is this conception still imprisoned in the categories of sex (woman and man), but it holds onto the idea that the capacity to give birth (biology) is what defines a woman. Although practical facts and ways of living contradict this theory in lesbian society, there are lesbians who affirm that “women and men are different species or races (the words are used interchangeably): men are biologically inferior to women; male violence is a biological inevitability...”[35] By doing this, by admitting that there is a “natural” division between women and men, we naturalize history, we assume that “men” and “women” have always existed and will always exist. Not only do we naturalize history, but also consequently we naturalize the social phenomena which express our oppression, making change impossible. For example, instead of seeing giving birth as a forced production, we see it as a “natural,” “biological” process, forgetting that in our societies births are planned (demography), forgetting that we ourselves are programmed to produce children, while this is the only social activity “short of war”[36] that presents such a great danger of death. Thus, as long as we will be “unable to abandon by will or impulse a lifelong and centuries-old commitment to childbearing as the female creative act,”[37] gaining control of the production of children will mean much more than the mere control of the material means of this production: women will have to abstract themselves from the definition “woman” which is imposed upon them.

A materialist feminist approach shows that what we take for the cause or origin of oppression is in fact only the mark[38] imposed by the oppressor: the “myth of woman,”[39] plus its material effects and manifestations in the appropriated consciousness and bodies of women. Thus, this mark does not predate oppression: Colette Guillaumin has shown that before the socioeconomic reality of black slavery, the concept of race did not exist, at least not in its modern meaning, since it was applied to the lineage of families. However, now, race, exactly like sex, is taken as an “immediate given,” a “sensible given,” “physical features,” belonging to a natural order. But what we believe to be a physical and direct perception is only a sophisticated and mythic construction, an “imaginary formation,”[40] which reinterprets physical features (in themselves as neutral as any others but marked by the social system) through the network of relationships in which they are perceived. (They are seen as black, therefore they are black; they are seen as women, therefore, they are women. But before being seen that way, they first had to be made that way.) Lesbians should always remember and acknowledge how “unnatural,” compelling, totally oppressive, and destructive being “woman” was for us in the old days before the women’s liberation movement. It was a political constraint, and those who resisted it were accused of not being “real” women. But then we were proud of it, since in the accusation there was already something like a shadow of victory: the avowal by the oppressor that “woman” is not something that goes without saying, since to be one, one has to be a “real” one. We were at the same time accused of wanting to be men. Today this double accusation has been taken up again with enthusiasm in the context of the women’s liberation movement by some feminists and also, alas, by some lesbians whose political goal seems somehow to be becoming more and more “feminine.” To refuse to be a woman, however, does not mean that one has to become a man. Besides, if we take as an example the perfect “butch,” the classic example which provokes the most horror, whom Proust would have called a woman/man, how is her alienation different from that of someone who wants to become a woman? Tweedledum and Tweedledee. At least for a woman, wanting to become a man proves that she has escaped her initial programming. But even if she would like to, with all her strength, she cannot become a man. For becoming a man would demand from a woman not only a man’s external appearance but his consciousness as well, that is, the consciousness of one who disposes by right of at least two “natural” slaves during his life span. This is impossible, and one feature of lesbian oppression consists precisely of making women out of reach for us, since women belong to men. Thus a lesbian has to be something else, a not-woman, a not-man, a product of society, not a product of nature, for there is no nature in society.

The refusal to become (or to remain) heterosexual always meant to refuse to become a man or a woman, consciously or not. For a lesbian this goes further than the refusal of the role “woman.” It is the refusal of the economic, ideological, and political power of a man. This, we lesbians, and nonlesbians as well, knew before the beginning of the lesbian and feminist movement. However, as Andrea Dworkin emphasizes, many lesbians recently “have increasingly tried to transform the very ideology that has enslaved us into a dynamic, religious, psychologically compelling celebration of female biological potential.”[41] Thus, some avenues of the feminist and lesbian movement lead us back to the myth of woman which was created by men especially for us, and with it we sink back into a natural group. Having stood up to fight for a sexless society,[42] we now find ourselves entrapped in the familiar deadlock of “woman is wonderful.” Simone de Beauvoir underlined particularly the false consciousness which consists of selecting among the features of the myth (that women are different from men) those which look good and using them as a definition for women. What the concept “woman is wonderful” accomplishes is that it retains for defining women the best features (best according to whom?) which oppression has granted us, and it does not radically question the categories “man” and “woman,” which are political categories and not natural givens. It puts us in a position of fighting within the class “women” not as the other classes do, for the disappearance of our class, but for the defense of “woman” and its reenforcement. It leads us to develop with complacency “new” theories about our specificity: thus, we call our passivity “nonviolence,” when the main and emergent point for us is to fight our passivity (our fear, rather, a justified one). The ambiguity of the term “feminist” sums up the whole situation. What does “feminist” mean? Feminist is formed with the word “femme,” “woman,” and means: someone who fights for women. For many of us it means someone who fights for women as a class and for the disappearance of this class. For many others it means someone who fights for woman and her defense—for the myth, then, and its reenforcement. But why was the word “feminist” chosen if it retains the least ambiguity? We chose to call ourselves “feminists” ten years ago, not in order to support or reenforce the myth of woman, nor to identify ourselves with the oppressor’s definition of us, but rather to affirm that our movement had a history and to emphasize the political link with the old feminist movement.

It is, then, this movement that we can put in question for the meaning that it gave to feminism. It so happens that feminism in the last century could never resolve its contradictions on the subject of nature/culture, woman/society. Women started to fight for themselves as a group and rightly considered that they shared common features as a result of oppression. But for them these features were natural and biological rather than social. They went so far as to adopt the Darwinist theory of evolution. They did not believe like Darwin, however, “that women were less evolved than men, but they did believe that male and female natures had diverged in the course of evolutionary development and that society at large reflected this polarization.”[43] ``The failure of early feminism was that it only attacked the Darwinist charge of female inferiority, while accepting the foundations of this charge—namely, the view of woman as `unique.[44] And finally it was women scholars—and not feminists—who scientifically destroyed this theory. But the early feminists had failed to regard history as a dynamic process which develops from conflicts of interests. Furthermore, they still believed as men do that the cause (origin) of their oppression lay within themselves. And therefore after some astonishing victories the feminists of this first front found themselves at an impasse out of a lack of reasons to fight. They upheld the illogical principle of “equality in difference,” an idea now being born again. They fell back into the trap which threatens us once again: the myth of woman.

Thus it is our historical task, and only ours, to define what we call oppression in materialist terms, to make it evident that women are a class, which is to say that the category “woman” as well as the category “man” are political and economic categories not eternal ones. Our fight aims to suppress men as a class, not through a genocidal, but a political struggle. Once the class “men” disappears, “women” as a class will disappear as well, for there are no slaves without masters. Our first task, it seems, is to always thoroughly dissociate “women” (the class within which we fight) and “woman,” the myth. For “woman” does not exist for us: it is only an imaginary formation, while “women” is the product of a social relationship. We felt this strongly when everywhere we refused to be called a “woman’s liberation movement.” Furthermore, we have to destroy the myth inside and outside ourselves. “Woman” is not each one of us, but the political and ideological formation which negates “women” (the product of a relation of exploitation). “Woman” is there to confuse us, to hide the reality “women.” In order to be aware of being a class and to become a class we first have to kill the myth of “woman” including its most seductive aspects (I think about Virginia Woolf when she said the first task of a woman writer is to kill “the angel in the house”). But to become a class we do not have to suppress our individual selves, and since no individual can be reduced to her/his oppression we are also confronted with the historical necessity of constituting ourselves as the individual subjects of our history as well. I believe this is the reason why all these attempts at “new” definitions of woman are blossoming now. What is at stake (and of course not only for women) is an individual definition as well as a class definition. For once one has acknowledged oppression, one needs to know and experience the fact that one can constitute oneself as a subject (as opposed to an object of oppression), that one can become someone in spite of oppression, that one has one’s own identity. There is no possible fight for someone deprived of an identity, no internal motivation for fighting, since, although I can fight only with others, first I fight for myself.

The question of the individual subject is historically a difficult one for everybody. Marxism, the last avatar of materialism, the science which has politically formed us, does not want to hear anything about a “subject.” Marxism has rejected the transcendental subject, the subject as constitutive of knowledge, the “pure” consciousness. All that thinks per se, before all experience, has ended up in the garbage can of history, because it claimed to exist outside matter, prior to matter, and needed God, spirit, or soul to exist in such a way. This is what is called “idealism.” As for individuals, they are only the product of social relations, therefore their consciousness can only be “alienated.” (Marx, in The German Ideology, says precisely that individuals of the dominating class are also alienated, although they are the direct producers of the ideas that alienate the classes oppressed by them. But since they draw visible advantages from their own alienation they can bear it without too much suffering.) There exists such a thing as class consciousness, but a consciousness which does not refer to a particular subject, except as participating in general conditions of exploitation at the same time as the other subjects of their class, all sharing the same consciousness. As for the practical class problems—outside of the class problems as traditionally defined—that one could encounter (for example, sexual problems), they were considered “bourgeois” problems that would disappear with the final victory of the class struggle. “Individualistic,” “subjectivist,” “petit bourgeois,” these were the labels given to any person who had shown problems which could not be reduced to the “class struggle” itself.

Thus Marxism has denied the members of oppressed classes the attribute of being a subject. In doing this, Marxism, because of the ideological and political power this “revolutionary science” immediately exercised upon the workers’ movement and all other political groups, has prevented all categories of oppressed peoples from constituting themselves historically as subjects (subjects of their struggle, for example). This means that the “masses” did not fight for themselves but for the party or its organizations. And when an economic transformation took place (end of private property, constitution of the socialist state), no revolutionary change took place within the new society, because the people themselves did not change.

For women, Marxism had two results. It prevented them from being aware that they are a class and therefore from constituting themselves as a class for a very long time, by leaving the relation “women/men” outside of the social order, by turning it into a natural relation, doubtless for Marxists the only one, along with the relation of mothers to children, to be seen this way, and by hiding the class conflict between men and women behind a natural division of labor (The German Ideology). This concerns the theoretical (ideological) level. On the practical level, Lenin, the party, all the communist parties up to now, including all the most radical political groups, have always reacted to any attempt on the part of women to reflect and form groups based on their own class problem with an accusation of divisiveness. By uniting, we women are dividing the strength of the people. This means that for the Marxists women belong either to the bourgeois class or to the proletariat class, in other words, to the men of these classes. In addition, Marxist theory does not allow women any more than other classes of oppressed people to constitute themselves as historical subjects, because Marxism does not take into account the fact that a class also consists of individuals one by one. Class consciousness is not enough. We must try to understand philosophically (politically) these concepts of “subject” and “class consciousness” and how they work in relation to our history. When we discover that women are the objects of oppression and appropriation, at the very moment that we become able to perceive this, we become subjects in the sense of cognitive subjects, through an operation of abstraction. Consciousness of oppression is not only a reaction to (fight against) oppression. It is also the whole conceptual reevaluation of the social world, its whole reorganization with new concepts, from the point of view of oppression. It is what I would call the science of oppression created by the oppressed. This operation of understanding reality has to be undertaken by every one of us: call it a subjective, cognitive practice. The movement back and forth between the levels of reality (the conceptual reality and the material reality of oppression, which are both social realities) is accomplished through language.

It is we who historically must undertake the task of defining the individual subject in materialist terms. This certainly seems to be an impossibility since materialism and subjectivity have always been mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, and rather than despairing of ever understanding, we must recognize the need to reach subjectivity in the abandonment by many of us to the myth “woman” (the myth of woman being only a snare that holds us up). This real necessity for everyone to exist as an individual, as well as a member of a class, is perhaps the first condition for the accomplishment of a revolution, without which there can be no real fight or transformation. But the opposite is also true; without class and class consciousness there are no real subjects, only alienated individuals. For women to answer the question of the individual subject in materialist terms is first to show, as the lesbians and feminists did, that supposedly “subjective,” “individual,” “private” problems are in fact social problems, class problems; that sexuality is not for women an individual and subjective expression, but a social institution of violence. But once we have shown that all so-called personal problems are in fact class problems, we will still be left with the question of the subject of each singular woman—not the myth, but each one of us. At this point, let us say that a new personal and subjective definition for all humankind can only be found beyond the categories of sex (woman and man) and that the advent of individual subjects demands first destroying the categories of sex, ending the use of them, and rejecting all sciences which still use these categories as their fundamentals (practically all social sciences).

To destroy “woman” does not mean that we aim, short of physical destruction, to destroy lesbianism simultaneously with the categories of sex, because lesbianism provides for the moment the only social form in which we can live freely. Lesbian is the only concept I know of which is beyond the categories of sex (woman and man), because the designated subject (lesbian) is not a woman, either economically, or politically, or ideologically. For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man, a relation that we have previously called servitude,[45] a relation which implies personal and physical obligation as well as economic obligation (“forced residence,”[46] domestic corvée, conjugal duties, unlimited production of children, etc.), a relation which lesbians escape by refusing to become or to stay heterosexual. We are escapees from our class in the same way as the American runaway slaves were when escaping slavery and becoming free. For us this is an absolute necessity; our survival demands that we contribute all our strength to the destruction of the class of women within which men appropriate women. This can be accomplished only by the destruction of heterosexuality as a social system which is based on the oppression of women by men and which produces the doctrine of the difference between the sexes to justify this oppression.

Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (1979)

https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm

Shalamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. William Morrow and Co., 1970.

Ch. 1

Sex class is so deep as to be invisible. Or it may appear as a superficial inequality, one that can be solved by merely a few reforms, or perhaps by the full integration of women into the labor force. But the reaction of the common man, woman, and child—“That? Why you can’t change that! You must be out of your mind!”—is the closest to the truth. We are talking about something every bit as deep as that. This gut reaction—the assumption that, even when they don’t know it, feminists are talking about changing a fundamental biological condition—is an honest one. That so profound a change cannot be easily fitted into traditional categories of thought, e.g., “political,” is not because these categories do not apply but because they are not big enough: radical feminism bursts through them. If there were another word more all-embracing than revolution we would use it.

Until a certain level of evolution had been reached and technology had achieved its present sophistication, to question fundamental biological conditions was insanity. Why should a woman give up her precious seat in the cattle car for a bloody struggle she could not hope to win? But, for the first time in some countries, the preconditions for feminist revolution exist—indeed, the situation is beginning to demand such a revolution.

The first women are fleeing the massacre, and shaking and tottering, are beginning to find each other. Their first move is a careful joint observation, to resensitize a fractured consciousness. This is painful: no matter how many levels of consciousness one reaches, the problem always goes deeper. It is everywhere. The division yin and yang pervades all culture, history, economics, nature itself; modern Western versions of sex discrimination are only the most recent layer. To so heighten one’s sensitivity to sexism presents problems far worse than the black militant’s new awareness of racism: feminists have to question, not just all of Western culture, but the organization of culture itself, and further, even the very organization of nature. Many women give up in despair: if that’s how deep it goes they don’t want to know. Others continue strengthening and enlarging the movement, their painful sensitivity to female oppression existing for a purpose: eventually to eliminate it.

Before we can act to change a situation, however, we must know how it has arisen and evolved, and through what institutions it now operates. Engels’ “[We must] examine the historic succession of events from which the antagonism has sprung in order to discover in the conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict.” For feminist revolution we shall need an analysis of the dynamics of sex war as comprehensive as the Marx-Engels analysis of class antagonism was for the economic revolution. More comprehensive. For we are dealing with a larger problem, with an oppression that goes back beyond recorded history to the animal kingdom itself.

In creating such an analysis we can learn a lot from Marx and Engels: not their literal opinions about women—about the condition of women as an oppressed class they know next to nothing, recognising it only where it overlaps with economics—but rather their analytic method.

Marx and Engels outdid their socialist forerunners in that they developed a method of analysis which was both dialectical and materialist. The first in centuries to view history dialectically, they saw the world as process, a natural flux of action and reaction, of opposites yet inseparable and interpenetrating. Because they were able to perceive history as movie rather than as snapshot, they attempted to avoid falling into the stagnant “metaphysical” view that had trapped so many other great minds. (This sort of analysis itself may be a product of the sex division, as discussed in Chapter 9.) They combined this view of the dynamic interplay of historical forces with a materialist one, that is, they attempted for the first time to put historical and cultural change on a real basis, to trace the development of economic classes to organic causes. By understanding thoroughly the mechanics of history, they hoped to show men how to master it.

Socialist thinkers prior to Marx and Engels, such as Fourier, Owen, and Bebel, had been able to do no more than moralize about existing social inequalities, positing an ideal world where class privilege and exploitation should not exist—in the same way that early feminist thinkers posited a world where male privilege and exploitation ought not exist—by mere virtue of good will. In both cases, because the early thinkers did not really understand how the social injustice had evolved, maintained itself, or could be eliminated, their ideas existed in a cultural vacuum, utopian. Marx and Engels, on the other hand, attempted a scientific approach to history. They traced the class conflict to its real economic origins, projecting an economic solution based on objective economic preconditions already present: the seizure by the proletariat of the means of production would lead to a communism in which government had withered away, no longer needed to repress the lower class for the sake of the higher. In the classless society the interests of every individual would be synonymous with those of the larger society.

But the doctrine of historical materialism, much as it was a brilliant advance over previous historical analysis, was not the complete answer, as later events bore out. For though Marx and Engels grounded their theory in reality, it was only a partial reality. Here is Engels’ strictly economic definition of historical materialism from Socialism: Utopian or Scientific:

Historical materialism is that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all historical events in the economic development of society, in the changes of the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes against one another. (Italics mine)

Further, he claims:

...that all past history with the exception of the primitive stages was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and exchange—in a word, of the economic conditions of their time; that the economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical, and other ideas of a given historical period. (Italics mine)

It would be a mistake to attempt to explain the oppression of women according to this strictly economic interpretation. The class analysis is a beautiful piece of work, but limited: although correct in a linear sense, it does not go deep enough. There is a whole sexual substratum of the historical dialectic that Engels at times dimly perceives, but because he can see sexuality only through an economic filter, reducing everything to that, he is unable to evaluate in its own right.

Engels did observe that the original division of labor was between man and woman for the purposes of child-breeding; that within the family the husband was the owner, the wife the means of production, the children the labor; and that reproduction of the human species was an important economic system distinct from the means of production.

But Engels has been given too much credit for these scattered recognitions of the oppression of women as a class. In fact he acknowledged the sexual class system only where it overlapped and illuminated his economic construct. Engels didn’t do so well even in this respect. But Marx was worse: there is a growing recognition of Marx’s bias against women (a cultural bias shared by Freud as well as all men of culture), dangerous if one attempts to squeeze feminism into an orthodox Marxist framework—freezing what were only incidental insights of Marx and Engels about sex class into dogma. Instead, we must enlarge historical materialism to include the strictly Marxian, in the same way that the physics of relativity did not invalidate Newtonian physics so much as it drew a circle around it, limiting its application—but only through comparison—to a smaller sphere. For an economic diagnosis traced to ownership of the means of production, even of the means of reproduction, does not explain everything. There is a level of reality that does not stem directly from economics.

The assumption that, beneath economics, reality is psychosexual is often rejected as ahistorical by those who accept a dialectical materialist view of history because it seems to land us back where Marx began: groping through a fog of utopian hypotheses, philosophical systems that might be right, that might be wrong (there is no way to tell), systems that explain concrete historical developments by a priori categories of thought; historical materialism, however, attempted to explain “knowing” by “being” and not vice versa.

But there is still an untried third alternative: we can attempt to develop a materialist view of history based on sex itself.

The early feminist theorists were to a materialist view of sex what Fourier, Bebel, and Owen were to a materialist view of class. By and large, feminist theory has been as inadequate as were the early feminist attempts to correct sexism. This was to be expected. The problem is so immense that, at first try, only the surface could be skimmed, the most blatant inequalities described. Simone de Beauvoir was the only one who came close to—who perhaps has done—the definitive analysis. Her profound work The Second Sex—which appeared as recently as the early fifties to a world convinced that feminism was dead—for the first time attempted to ground feminism in its historical base. Of all feminist theorists De Beauvoir is the most comprehensive and far-reaching, relating feminism to the best ideas in our culture.

It may be this virtue is also her one failing: she is almost too sophisticated, too knowledgeable. Where this becomes a weakness—and this is still certainly debatable—is in her rigidly existentialist interpretation of feminism (one wonders how much Sartre had to do with this). This, in view of the fact that all cultural systems, including existentialism, are themselves determined by the sex dualism. She says:

Man never thinks of himself without thinking of the Other; he views the world under the sign of duality which is not in the first place sexual in character. But being different from man, who sets himself up as the Same, it is naturally to the category of the Other that woman is consigned; the Other includes woman. (Italics mine.)

Perhaps she has overshot her mark: why postulate a fundamental Hegelian concept of Otherness as the final explanation and then carefully document the biological and historical circumstances that have pushed the class “women” into such a category—when one has never seriously considered the much simpler and more likely possibility that this fundamental dualism sprang from the sexual division itself? To posit a priori categories of thought and existence—“Otherness,” “Transcendence,” “Immanence”—into which history then falls may not be necessary. Marx and Engels had discovered that these philosophical categories themselves grew out of history.

Before assuming such categories, let us first try to develop an analysis in which biology itself—procreation—is at the origin of the dualism. The immediate assumption of the layman that the unequal division of the sexes is “natural” may be well-founded. We need not immediately look beyond this. Unlike economic class, sex class sprang directly from a biological reality: men and women were created different, and not equally privileged. Although, as De Beauvoir points out, this difference of itself did not necessitate the development of a class system—the domination of one group by another—the reproductive functions of these differences did. The biological family is an inherently unequal power distribution. The need for power leading to the development of classes arises from the psychosexual formation of each individual according to this basic imbalance, rather than, as Freud, Norman O. Brown, and others have, once again overshooting their mark, postulated, some irreducible conflict of Life against Death, Eros vs. Thanatos.

The biological family—the basic reproductive unit of male/female/infant, in whatever form of social organization—is characterised by these fundamental—if not immutable—facts:

1. That women throughout history before the advent of birth control were at the continual mercy of their biology—menstruation, menopause, and “female ills,” constant painful childbirth, wet-nursing and care of infants, all of which made them dependent on males (whether brother, father, husband, lover, or clan, government, community-at-large) for physical survival.

2. That human infants take an even longer time to grow up than animals, and thus are helpless and, for some short period at least, dependent on adults for physical survival.

3. That a basic mother/child interdependency has existed in some form in every society, past or present, and thus has shaped some form in every society, past or present, and the psychology of every mature female and every infant.

4. That the natural reproductive difference between the sexes led directly to the first division of labor at the origins of class, as well as furnishing the paradigm of caste (discrimination based on biological characteristics).

These biological contingencies of the human family cannot be covered over with anthropological sophistries. Anyone observing animals mating, reproducing, and caring for their young will have a hard time accepting the “cultural relativity” line. For no matter how many tribes in Oceania you can find where the connection of the father to fertility is not known, no matter how many matrilineages, no matter how many cases of sex-role reversal, male housewifery, or even empathic labor pains, these facts prove only one thing: the amazing flexibility of human nature. But human nature is adaptable to something, it is, yes, determined by its environmental conditions. And the biological family that we have described has existed everywhere throughout time. Even in matriarchies where woman’s fertility is worshipped, and the father’s role is unknown or unimportant, if perhaps not on the genetic father, there is still some dependence of the female and the infant on the male. And though it is true that the nuclear family is only a recent development, one which, as I shall attempt to show, only intensifies the psychological penalties of the biological family, though it is true that throughout history there have been many variations on this biological family, the contingencies I have described existed in all of them, causing specific psychosexual distortions in the human personality.

But to grant that the sexual imbalance of power is biologically based is not to lose our case. We are no longer just animals. And the kingdom of nature does not reign absolute. As Simone de Beauvoir herself admits:

The theory of historical materialism has brought to light some important truths. Humanity is not an animal species, it is a historical reality. Human society is an antiphysis—in a sense it is against nature; it does not passively submit to the presence of nature but rather takes over the control of nature on its own behalf. This arrogation is not an inward, subjective operation; it is accomplished objectively in practical action.

Thus the “natural” is not necessarily a “human” value. Humanity has begun to outgrow nature: we can no longer justify the maintenance of a discriminatory sex class system on grounds of its origins in Nature. Indeed, for pragmatic reasons alone it is beginning to look as if we must get rid of it.

The problem becomes political, demanding more than a comprehensive historical analysis, when one realises that, though man is increasingly capable of freeing himself from the biological conditions that created his tyranny over women and children, he has little reason to want to give this tyranny up. As Engels said, in the context of economic revolution:

It is the law of division of labor that lies at the basis of the division into classes. [Note that this division itself grew out of a fundamental biological division.] But this does not prevent the ruling class, once having the upper hand, from consolidating its power at the expense of the working class, from turning its social leadership into an intensified exploitation of the masses.

Though the sex class system may have originated in fundamental biological conditions, this does not guarantee once the biological basis of their oppression has been swept away that women and children will be freed. On the contrary, the new technology, especially fertility control, may be used against them to reinforce the entrenched system of exploitation.

So that just as to assure elimination of economic classes requires the revolt of the underclass (the proletariat) and, in a temporary dictatorship, their seizure of the means of production, so to assure the elimination of sexual classes requires the revolt of the underclass (women) and the seizure of control of reproduction: not only the full restoration to women of ownership of their own bodies, but also their (temporary) seizure of control of human fertility—the new population biology as well as all the social institutions of child-bearing and child-rearing. And just as the end goal of socialist revolution was not only the elimination of the economic class privilege but of the economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally. (A reversion to an unobstructed pansexuality—Freud’s “polymorphous perversity”—would probably supersede hetero/homo/bi-sexuality.) The reproduction of the species by one sex for the benefit of both would be replaced by (at least the option of) artificial reproduction: children would be born to both sexes equally, or independently of either, however one chooses to look at it; the dependence of the child on the mother (and vice versa) would give way to a greatly shortened dependence on a small group of others in general, and any remaining inferiority to adults in physical strength would be compensated for culturally. The division of labor would be ended by the elimination of labor altogether (through cybernation). The tyranny of the biological family would be broken.

And with it the psychology of power. As Engels claimed for strictly socialist revolution: “The existence of not simply this or that ruling class but of any ruling class at all [will have] become an obsolete anachronism.” That socialism has never come near achieving this predicated goal is not only the result of unfulfilled or misfired economic preconditions, but also because the Marxian analysis itself was insufficient: it did not dig deep enough to the psychosexual roots of class. Marx was on to something more profound than he knew when he observed that the family contained within itself in embryo all the antagonisms that later develop on a wide scale within the society and the state. For unless revolution uproots the basic social organization, the biological family—the vinculum through which the psychology of power can always be smuggled—the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated. We shall need a sexual revolution much larger than—inclusive of—a socialist one to truly eradicate all class systems.

I have attempted to take the class analysis one step further to its roots in the biological division of the sexes. We have not thrown out the insights of the socialists; on the contrary, radical feminism can enlarge their analysis, granting it an even deeper basis in objective conditions and thereby explaining many of its insolubles. As a first step in this direction, and as the groundwork for our own analysis we shall expand Engels’ definition of historical materialism. Here is the same definition quoted above now rephrased to include the biological division of the sexes for the purpose of reproduction, which lies at the origins of class:

Historical materialism is that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all historic events in the dialectic of sex: the division of society into two distinct biological classes for procreative reproduction, and the struggles of these classes with one another; in the changes in the modes of marriage, reproduction and childcare created by these struggles; in the connected development of other physically-differentiated classes [castes]; and in the first division of labor based on sex which developed into the [economic-cultural] class system.

And here is the cultural superstructure, as well as the economic one, traced not just back to (economic) class, but all the way back to sex:

All past history [note that we can now eliminate “with the exception of primitive stages”] was the history of class struggle. These warring classes of society are always the product of the modes of organization of the biological family unit for reproduction of the species, as well as of the strictly economic modes of production and exchange of goods and services. The sexual-reproductive organization of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of economic, juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical and other ideas of a given historical period.

And now Engels’ projection of the results of a materialist approach to history is more realistic:

The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man and have hitherto ruled him now comes under the dominion and control of man who for the first time becomes the real conscious Lord of Nature, master of his own social organization.

In the following chapters we shall assume this definition of historical materialism, examining the cultural institutions that maintain and reinforce the biological family (especially its present manifestation, the nuclear family) and its result, the power psychology, an aggressive chauvinism now developed enough to destroy us. We shall integrate this with a feminist analysis of Freudianism: for Freud’s cultural bias, like that of Marx and Engels, does not invalidate his perception entirely. In fact, Freud had insights of even greater value than those of the socialist theorists for the building of a new dialectical materialism based on sex. We shall attempt, then, to correlate the best of Engels and Marx (the historical materialist approach) with the best of Freud (the understanding of inner man and women and what shapes them) to arrive at a solution both political and personal yet grounded in real conditions. We shall see that Freud observed the dynamics of psychology correctly in its immediate social context, but because the fundamental structure of that social context was basic to all humanity—to different degrees—it appeared to be nothing less than an absolute existential condition which it would be insane to question—forcing Freud and many of his followers to postulate a priori constructs like the Death Wish to explain the origins of these universal psychological drives. This in turn made the sicknesses of humanity irreducible and incurable—which is why his proposed solution (psychoanalytic therapy), a contradiction in terms, was so weak compared to the rest of his work, and such a resounding failure in practice—causing those of social/political sensibility to reject not only his therapeutic solution, but his most profound discoveries as well.

1. Kathy McAffee and Myrna Wood, “Bread and Roses,” Leviathan 3. June 1969. (Reprinted in Leslie B. Tanner, Voices from Women’s Liberation. New York: Signet, 1970.↩

2. These are mechanisms of alienation and false consciousness which serve to maintain oppression: women are victims of oppression, not responsible for it.↩

3. Margaret Benston, “The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation,” Monthly Review 21, no. 4, September 1969. A French translation was included in the original Partisans collection.↩

4. Suzie Olah, “The Economic Function of the Oppression of Women,” in Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt, Notes from the Second Year. New York, 1970.↩

5. Isabelle Larguia, “Contre le travail invisible,” Partisans no. 54–55, 1970.↩

6. Cf. also an article in L’ldiot international, May 1970, which particularly emphasizes the notion of menial work.↩

7. Benston, op. cit.↩

8. Larguia, op. cit.↩

9. Henri Bastide, “Les rurales,” La Nef. no. 38, 1969.↩

10. Personal communication from the mother of Michel, an unmarried farmer.↩

11. Article by Khadija Nouase in La Nef, no. 38, 1969.↩

12. Mouvement de Défense des Exploitations Familiales a French Communist Party organization concerned with agriculture.↩

13. Ernest Mandel in his Marxist Economic Theory, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968; confirms that the terms use value and exchange value designate neither the nature nor the intrinsic value nor the productivity of labor involved in diverse types of production, but simply the use to which the production is put: immediate consumption or consumption mediated by exchange.↩

14. Alain Wolfelsperger, Les biens durables es dansle patrimoine du consummateur, Paris: Presses Universitaires de france, 1970, p. 20.↩

15. Ibid., p. 22↩

16. D. Dayre in Etudes et Documents du Centre de Recherches Economiques et Sociales, May 1955.↩

17. The basis of this estimate is not known.↩

18. Alain Girard in Population, no. 4, 1958.↩

19. Claude Roux in Population et Societes, no. 23, 1970.↩

20. I have been criticized for using the terms “serfdom” and “slavery” interchangeably. Whereas this criticism exhibits a commendable degree of scholarly concern, it does not bear on my work, as the attentive reader will have noticed for herself. The differences between slavery (which is not, as the critics seem to assume, of just one variety; there is ancient, American and “new” [Slavic] slavery, not to mention indenture and other species, each very different from the other, so that if one wants to be really scholarly, it is impossible to talk of “slavery” at all) and serfdom (of which there are also quite a few varieties) are, here, immaterial. What I am looking for in these analogies is their common features, which are also what they have in common with marriage—i.e., the extortion of free work (as opposed to underpaid work or surplus value) within a personal (as opposed to impersonal) contract. Cf. in my article “Protofeminism and Antifeminism” (which will appear in Feminist Issues no. 4) my distinction between “oppressions of allegiance,” of personal dependence (slavery, serfdom, marriage) and oppressions of impersonal dependence (vis-á-vis a class—e.g. capitalist exploitation).↩

21. In revealing fashion the word femme in french means both woman and wife [while there are two words in the case of males: mari meaning husband, and homme meaning man, Tr.]. In the same way the word slave comes from Latin slavus, first meaning Slav, the ethnic population, and then, as this whole population was doomed by conquest to servitude, it came to mean slave. In the same way the whole female population is condemned to become the woman/wife of someone.↩

22. Parti Communist Francais, Les communistes et la condition de la femme (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1970), p. 129.↩

23. V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965, p. 429. (Reprinted in The Emancipation of Women. From the Writings of V.I. Lenin. New York: International Publishers, 1972, p. 64.)↩

24. Parti Communist Francais, op. cit.↩

25. Ibid.↩

26. Clara Zetkin, My Reminiscences of Lenin. New York: International Publishers, 1934. (Reprinted in The Emancipation of Women. From the Writings of V.I. Lenin, p. 114.)↩

27. Parti Communiste Francais, op. cit. Such attitudes are not restricted to the Communist Party alone within the Left. Le Programme Commun, the platform of the recently formed coalition of the Socialist Party and the Communist Party, recommends that women be allowed to leave their outside jobs five minutes early in order to do the shopping for their families before the stores close. A peculiar privilege indeed!↩

28. André Breton, Le Premier Manifeste du Sumtalisme, 1924.↩

29. Pleasure in sex is no more the subject of this paper than is happiness in slavery.↩

30. Christine Delphy, “Pour un feminisme materialiste,” L’Arc 61 (1975). Translated as “For a Materialist Feminism,” Feminist Issues 1, no. 2, Winter 1981.↩

31. Colette Guillaumin, “Race et Nature: Systéme des marques, idée de groupe naturel et rapports sociaux,” Pluriel, no. 11, 1977. Translated as “Race and Nature: The System of Marks, the Idea of a Natural Group and Social Relationships,” Feminist Issues 8, no. 2, Fall 1988.↩

32. I use the word society with an extended anthropological meaning; strictly speaking, it does not refer to societies, in that lesbian societies do not exist completely autonomously from heterosexual social systems.↩

33. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex. New York: Bantam, 1952, p. 249.↩

34. Redstockings, Feminist Revolution. New York: Random House, 1978, p. 18.↩

35. Andrea Dworkin, “Biological Superiority: The World’s Most Dangerous and Deadly Idea,” Heresies 6:46.↩

36. Ti-Grace Atkinson, Amazon Odyssey. New York: Links Books, 1974, p. 15.↩

37. Dworkin, op. cit.↩

38. Guillaumin, op. cit.↩

39. de Beauvoir, op. cit.↩

40. Guillaumin, op. cit.↩

41. Dworkin, op. cit.↩

42. Atkinson, p. 6: “If feminism has any logic at all, it must be working for a sexless society.”↩

43. Rosalind Rosenberg, “In Search of Woman’s Nature,” Feminist Studies 3, no. 1/2, 1975:144.↩

44. Ibid., p. 146.↩

45. In an article published in L’Idiot International 1970, whose original title was “Pour un mouvement de libération des femmes” (“For a Women’s Liberation Movement”)↩

46. Christiane Rochefort, Les stances à Sophie (Paris: Grasset, 1963).↩

Sexuality

Sexuality was extremely contentious for second wave feminists, beginning a series of debates that became known as the feminist “sex wars” in the 1980s. This chapter offers four radically different takes on the political relevance of sexuality, eroticism and sexual activity. Andrea Dworkin sees gender as a “pernicious delusion,” held in place by male violence and female masochism. Heterosexual intercourse represents the essence of sexual oppression, when men are entirely merged with their penis and will to domination. Silvia Federici is similarly skeptical of heterosexual intimacy, drawing attention to the subtle exploitative emotional labor required of women. Sexual mores, organized functionally towards the reproduction of labor power, imposed heterosexuality on women. Sex becomes an anxious burden, an extension of waged and unwaged work. Audre Lorde identifies sexuality as a source of strength and power for women, as a creative well-spring of potentially non-alienated expression. Patrick Califia (then Pat Califia) provides a feminist defense of sadomasochism as consensual, egalitarian fantasy. Califia condemns anti-pornography feminists as retrograde bigoted conservatives, undermining basic civil liberties.

Secondary reading: Alice Echols, Epilogue (pp. 287–298), Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967–1975, University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

Andrea Dworkin, Our Blood (1975)

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/OurBloodIII.html

Andrea Dworkin, Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics. Harper and Row, 1976.

Ch. 9, The Root Cause

Speech at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, September 26, 1975.

And the things best to know are first principles and causes. For through them and from them all other things may be known... –Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I

I want to talk to you tonight about some realities and some possibilities. The realities are brutal and savage; the possibilities may seem to you, quite frankly, impossible. I want to remind you that there was a time when everyone believed that the earth was flat. All navigation was based on this belief. All maps were drawn to the specifications of this belief. I call it a belief, but then it was a reality, the only imaginable reality. It was a reality because everyone believed it to be true. Everyone believed it to be true because it appeared to be true. The earth looked flat; there was no circumstance in which it did not have, in the distances, edges off which one might fall; people assumed that, somewhere, there was the final edge beyond which there was nothing. Imagination was circumscribed, as it most often is, by inherently limited and culturally conditioned physical senses, and those senses determined that the earth was flat. This principle of reality was not only theoretical; it was acted on. Ships never sailed too far in any direction because no one wanted to sail off the edge of the earth; no one wanted to die the dreadful death that would result from such a reckless, stupid act. In societies in which navigation was a major activity, the fear of such a fate was vivid and terrifying.

Now, as the story goes, somehow a man named Christopher Columbus imagined that the earth was round. He imagined that one could reach the Far East by sailing west. How he conceived of this idea, we do not know; but he did imagine it, and once he had imagined it, he could not forget it. For a long time, until he met Queen Isabella, no one would listen to him or consider his idea because, clearly, he was a lunatic. If anything was certain, it was that the earth was flat. Now we look at pictures of the earth taken from outer space, and we do not remember that once there was a universal belief that the earth was flat.

This story has been repeated many times. Marie Curie got the peculiar idea that there was an undiscovered element which was active, ever-changing, alive. All scientific thought was based on the notion that all the elements were inactive, inert, stable. Ridiculed, denied a proper laboratory by the scientific establishment, condemned to poverty and obscurity, Marie Curie, with her husband, Pierre, worked relentlessly to isolate radium which was, in the first instance, a figment of her imagination. The discovery of radium entirely destroyed the basic premise on which both physics and chemistry were built. What had been real until its discovery was real no longer.

The known tried-and-true principles of reality, then, universally believed and adhered to with a vengeance, are often shaped out of profound ignorance. We do not know what or how much we do not know. Ignoring our ignorance, even though it has been revealed to us time and time again, we believe that reality is whatever we do know.

One basic principle of reality, universally believed and adhered to with a vengeance, is that there are two sexes, man and woman, and that these sexes are not only distinct from each other, but are opposite. The model often used to describe the nature of these two sexes is that of magnetic poles. The male sex is likened to the positive pole, and the female sex is likened to the negative pole. Brought into proximity with each other, the magnetic fields of these two sexes are supposed to interact, locking the two poles together into a perfect whole. Needless to say, two like poles brought into proximity are supposed to repel each other.

The male sex, in keeping with its positive designation, has positive qualities; and the female sex, in keeping with its negative designation, does not have any of the positive qualities attributed to the male sex. For instance, according to this model, men are active, strong, and courageous; and women are passive, weak, and fearful. In other words, whatever men are, women are not; whatever men can do, women cannot do; whatever capacities men have, women do not have. Man is the positive and woman is his negative.

Apologists for this model claim that it is moral because it is inherently egalitarian. Each pole is supposed to have the dignity of its own separate identity; each pole is necessary to a harmonious whole. This notion, of course, is rooted in the conviction that the claims made as to the character of each sex are true, that the essence of each sex is accurately described. In other words, to say that man is the positive and woman is the negative is like saying that sand is dry and water is wet—the characteristic which most describes the thing itself is named in a true way and no judgment on the worth of these differing characteristics is implied. Simone de Beauvoir exposes the fallacy of this “separate but equal” doctrine in the preface to The Second Sex:

In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not...like that of two electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in general; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity...“The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities,” said Aristotle; “we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.” And St. Thomas for his part pronounced woman to be “an imperfect man,” all “incidental” being...

Thus, humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being.[1]

This diseased view of woman as the negative of man, “female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities,” infects the whole of culture. It is the cancer in the gut of every political and economic system, of every social institution. It is the rot which spoils all human relationships, infests all human psychological reality, and destroys the very fiber of human identity.

This pathological view of female negativity has been enforced on our flesh for thousands of years. The savage mutilation of the female body, undertaken to distinguish us absolutely from men, has occurred on a massive scale. For instance, in China, for one thousand years, women’s feet were reduced to stumps through footbinding. When a girl was seven or eight years old, her feet were washed in alum, a chemical that causes shrinkage. Then, all toes but the big toes were bent into the soles of her feet and bandaged as tightly as possible. This procedure was repeated over and over again for approximately three years. The girl, in agony, was forced to walk on her feet. Hard calluses formed; toenails grew into the skin; the feet were pus-filled and bloody; circulation was virtually stopped; often the big toes fell off. The ideal foot was three inches of smelly, rotting flesh. Men were positive and women were negative because men could walk and women could not. Men were strong and women were weak because men could walk and women could not. Men were independent and women were dependent because men could walk and women could not. Men were virile because women were crippled.

This atrocity committed against Chinese women is only one example of the systematic sadism acted out on the bodies of women to render us opposite to, and the negatives of, men. We have been, and are, whipped, beaten, and assaulted; we have been, and are, encased in clothing designed to distort our bodies, to make movement and breathing painful and difficult; we have been, and are, turned into ornaments, so deprived of physical presence that we cannot run or jump or climb or even walk with a natural posture; we have been, and are, veiled, our faces covered by layers of suffocating cloth or by layers of make-up, so that even possession of our own faces is denied us; we have been, and are, forced to remove the hair from our armpits, legs, eyebrows, and often even from our pubic areas, so that men can assert, without contradiction, the positivity of their own hairy virility. We have been, and are, sterilized against our will; our wombs are removed for no medical reason; our clitorises are cut off; our breasts and the whole musculature of our chests are removed with enthusiastic abandon. This last procedure, radical mastectomy, is eighty years old. I ask you to consider the development of weaponry in the last eighty years, nuclear bombs, poisonous gases, laser beams, noise bombs, and the like, and to question the development of technology in relation to women. Why are women still being mutilated so promiscuously in breast surgery; why has this savage form of mutilation, radical mastectomy, thrived if not to enhance the negativity of women in relation to men? These forms of physical mutilation are brands which designate us as female by negating our very bodies, by destroying them.

In the bizarre world made by men, the primary physical emblem of female negativity is pregnancy. Women have the capacity to bear children; men do not. But since men are positive and women are negative, the inability to bear children is designated as a positive characteristic, and the ability to bear children is designated as a negative characteristic. Since women are most easily distinguished from men by virtue of this single capacity, and since the negativity of women is always established in opposition to the positivity of men, the childbearing capacity of the female is used first to fix, then to confirm, her negative or inferior status. Pregnancy becomes a physical brand, a sign designating the pregnant one as authentically female. Childbearing, peculiarly, becomes the form and substance of female negativity.

Again, consider technology in relation to women. As men walk on the moon and a man-made satellite approaches Mars for a landing, the technology of contraception remains criminally inadequate. The two most effective means of contraception are the pill and the I.U.D. The pill is poisonous and the I.U.D is sadistic. Should a woman want to prevent conception, she must either fail eventually because she uses an ineffective method of contraception, in which case she risks death through childbearing; or she must risk dreadful disease with the pill, or suffer agonizing pain with the I.U.D.—and, of course, with either of these methods, the risk of death is also very real. Now that abortion techniques have been developed which are safe and easy, women are resolutely denied free access to them. Men require that women continue to become pregnant so as to embody female negativity, thus confirming male positivity.

While the physical assaults against female life are staggering, the outrages committed against our intellectual and creative faculties have been no less sadistic. Consigned to a negative intellectual and creative life, so as to affirm these capacities in men, women are considered to be mindless; femininity is roughly synonymous with stupidity. We are feminine to the degree that our mental faculties are annihilated or repudiated. To enforce this dimension of female negativity, we are systematically denied access to formal education, and every assertion of natural intelligence is punished until we do not dare to trust our perceptions, until we do not dare to honor our creative impulses, until we do not dare to exercise our critical faculties, until we do not dare to cultivate our imaginations, until we do not dare to respect our own mental or moral acuity. Whatever creative or intellectual work we do manage to do is trivialized, ignored, or ridiculed, so that even those few whose minds could not be degraded are driven to suicide or insanity, or back into marriage and childbearing. There are very few exceptions to this inexorable rule.

The most vivid literary manifestation of this pathology of female negation is found in pornography. Literature is always the most eloquent expression of cultural values; and pornography articulates the purest distillation of those values. In literary pornography, where female blood can flow without the real restraint of biological endurance, the ethos of this murderous male-positive culture is revealed in its skeletal form: male sadism feeds on female masochism; male dominance is nourished by female submission.

In pornography, sadism is the means by which men establish their dominance. Sadism is the authentic exercise of power which confirms manhood; and the first characteristic of manhood is that its existence is based on the negation of the female—manhood can only be certified by abject female degradation, a degradation never abject enough until the victim’s body and will have both been destroyed.

In literary pornography, the pulsating heart of darkness at the center of the male-positive system is exposed in all of its terrifying nakedness. That heart of darkness is this—that sexual sadism actualizes male identity. Women are tortured, whipped, and chained; women are bound and gagged, branded and burned, cut with knives and wires; women are pissed on and shit on; red-hot needles are driven into breasts, bones are broken, rectums are torn, mouths are ravaged, cunts are savagely bludgeoned by penis after penis, dildo after dildo—and all of this to establish in the male a viable sense of his own worth.

This idealized view of male fellowship exposes the essentially homosexual character of male society. Men use women’s bodies to form alliances or bonds with each other. Men use women’s bodies to achieve recognizable power which will certify male identity in the eyes of other men. Men use women’s bodies to enable them to engage in civil and peaceable social transactions with each other. We think that we live in a heterosexual society because most men are fixated on women as sexual objects; but, in fact, we live in a homosexual society because all credible transactions of power, authority, and authenticity take place among men; all transactions based on equity and individuality take place among men. Men are real; therefore, all real relationship is between men; all real communication is between men; all real reciprocity is between men; all real mutuality is between men. Heterosexuality, which can be defined as the sexual dominance of men over women, is like an acorn—from it grows the mighty oak of the male homosexual society, a society of men, by men, and for men, a society in which the positivity of male community is realized through the negation of the female, through the annihilation of women’s flesh and will.

In literary pornography, which is a distillation of life as we know it, women are gaping holes, hot slits, fuck tubes, and the like. The female body is supposed to consist of three empty holes, all of which were expressly designed to be filled with erect male positivity.

The female life-force itself is characterized as a negative one: we are defined as inherently masochistic; that is, we are driven toward pain and abuse, toward self-destruction, toward annihilation—and this drive toward our own negation is precisely what identifies us as women. In other words, we are born so that we may be destroyed. Sexual masochism actualizes female negativity, just as sexual sadism actualizes male positivity. A woman’s erotic femininity is measured by the degree to which she needs to be hurt, needs to be possessed, needs to be abused, needs to submit, needs to be beaten, needs to be humiliated, needs to be degraded. Any woman who resists acting out these so-called needs, or any woman who rebels against the values inherent in these needs, or any woman who refuses to sanction or participate in her own destruction is characterized as a deviant, one who denies her femininity, a shrew, a bitch, etc. Typically, such deviants are brought back into the female flock by rape, gang rape, or some form of bondage. The theory is that once such women have tasted the intoxicating sweetness of submission they will, like lemmings, rush to their own destruction.

Romantic love, in pornography as in life, is the mythic celebration of female negation. For a woman, love is defined as her willingness to submit to her own annihilation. As the saying goes, women are made for love—that is, submission. Love, or submission, must be both the substance and purpose of a woman’s life. For the female, the capacity to love is exactly synonymous with the capacity to sustain abuse and the appetite for it. For the woman, the proof of love is that she is willing to be destroyed by the one whom she loves, for his sake. For the woman, love is always self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of identity, will, and bodily integrity, in order to fulfill and redeem the masculinity of her lover.

In pornography, we see female love raw, its naked erotic skeleton; we can almost touch the bones of our dead. Love is the erotic masochistic drive; love is the frenzied passion which compels a woman to submit to a diminishing life in chains; love is the consuming sexual impulse toward degradation and abuse. The woman does literally give herself to the man; he does literally take and possess her.

The primary transaction which expresses this female submission and this male possession, in pornography as in life, is the act of fucking. Fucking is the basic physical expression of male positivity and female negativity. The relationship of sadist to masochist does not originate in the act of fucking; rather, it is expressed and renewed there.

For the male, fucking is a compulsive act, in pornography and in real life. But in real life, and not in pornography, it is an act fraught with danger, filled with dread. That sanctified organ of male positivity, the phallus, penetrates into the female void. During penetration, the male’s whole being is his penis—it and his will to domination are entirely one; the erect penis is his identity; all sensation is localized in the penis and in effect the rest of his body is insensate, dead. During penetration, a male’s very being is at once both risked and affirmed. Will the female void swallow him up, consume him, engulf and destroy his penis, his whole self? Will the female void pollute his virile positivity with its noxious negativity? Will the female void contaminate his tenuous maleness with the overwhelming toxicity of its femaleness? Or will he emerge from the terrifying emptiness of the female’s anatomical gaping hole intact—his positivity reified because, even when inside her, he managed to maintain the polarity of male and female by maintaining the discreteness and integrity of his steel-like rod; his masculinity affirmed because he did not in fact merge with her and in so doing lose himself, he did not dissolve into her, he did not become her nor did he become like her, he was not subsumed by her.

This dangerous journey into the female void must be undertaken again and again, compulsively, because masculinity is nothing in and of itself; in and of itself it does not exist; it has reality only over and against, or in contrast to, female negativity. Masculinity can only be experienced, achieved, recognized, and embodied in opposition to femininity. When men posit sex, violence, and death as elemental erotic truths, they mean this—that sex, or fucking, is the act which enables them to experience their own reality, or identity, or masculinity most concretely; that violence, or sadism, is the means by which they actualize that reality, or identity, or masculinity; and that death, or negation, or nothingness, or contamination by the female is what they risk each time they penetrate into what they imagine to be the emptiness of the female hole.

What then is behind the claim that fucking is pleasurable for the male? How can an act so saturated with the dread of loss of self, of loss of penis, be pleasurable? How can an act so obsessive, so anxiety-ridden, be characterized as pleasurable?

First, it is necessary to understand that this is precisely the fantasy dimension of pornography. In the rarefied environs of male pornography, male dread is excised from the act of fucking, censored, edited out. The sexual sadism of males rendered so vividly in pornography is real; women experience it daily. Male domination over and against female flesh is real; women experience it daily. The brutal uses to which female bodies are put in pornography are real; women suffer these abuses on a global scale, day after day, year after year, generation after generation. What is not real, what is fantasy, is the male claim at the heart of pornography that fucking is for them an ecstatic experience, the ultimate pleasure, an unmixed blessing, a natural and easy act in which there is no terror, no dread, no fear. Nothing in reality documents this claim. Whether we examine the slaughter of the nine million witches in Europe which was fueled by the male dread of female carnality, or examine the phenomenon of rape which exposes fucking as an act of overt hostility against the female enemy, or investigate impotence which is the involuntary inability to enter the female void, or trace the myth of the vagina dentata (the vagina full of teeth) which is derived from a paralyzing fear of female genitalia, or isolate menstrual taboos as an expression of male terror, we find that in real life the male is obsessed with his fear of the female, and that this fear is most vivid to him in the act of fucking.

Second, it is necessary to understand that pornography is a kind of propaganda designed to convince the male that he need not be afraid, that he is not afraid; to shore him up so that he can fuck; to convince him that fucking is an unalloyed joy; to obscure for him the reality of his own terror by providing a pornographic fantasy of pleasure which he can learn as a creed and from which he can act to dominate women as a real man must. We might say that in pornography the whips, the chains, and the other paraphernalia of brutality are security blankets which give the lie to the pornographic claim that fucking issues from manhood like light from the sun. But in life, even the systematized abuse of women and the global subjugation of women to men is not sufficient to stem the terror inherent for the male in the act of fucking.

Third, it is necessary to understand that what is experienced by the male as authentic pleasure is the affirmation of his own identity as a male. Each time he survives the peril of entering the female void, his masculinity is reified. He has proven both that he is not her and that he is like other hims. No pleasure on earth matches the pleasure of having proven himself real, positive and not negative, a man and not a woman, a bona fide member of the group which holds dominion over all other living things.

Fourth, it is necessary to understand that under the sexual system of male positivity and female negativity, there is literally nothing in the act of fucking, except accidental clitoral friction, which recognizes or actualizes the real eroticism of the female, even as it has survived under slave conditions. Within the confines of the male-positive system, this eroticism does not exist. After all, a negative is a negative is a negative. Fucking is entirely a male act designed to affirm the reality and power of the phallus, of masculinity. For women, the pleasure in being fucked is the masochistic pleasure of experiencing self-negation. Under the male-positive system, the masochistic pleasure of self-negation is both mythicized and mystified in order to compel women to believe that we experience fulfillment in selflessness, pleasure in pain, validation in self-sacrifice, femininity in submission to masculinity. Trained from birth to conform to the requirements of this peculiar world view, punished severely when we do not learn masochistic submission well enough, entirely encapsulated inside the boundaries of the male-positive system, few women ever experience themselves as real in and of themselves. Instead, women are real to themselves to the degree that they identify with and attach themselves to the positivity of males. In being fucked, a woman attaches herself to one who is real to himself and vicariously experiences reality, such as it is, through him; in being fucked, a woman experiences the masochistic pleasure of her own negation which is perversely articulated as the fulfillment of her femininity.

Now, I want to make a crucial distinction—the distinction between truth and reality. For humans, reality is social; reality is whatever people at a given time believe it to be. In saying this, I do not mean to suggest that reality is either whimsical or accidental. In my view, reality is always a function of politics in general and sexual politics in particular—that is, it serves the powerful by fortifying and justifying their right to domination over the powerless. Reality is whatever premises social and cultural institutions are built on. Reality is also the rape, the whip, the fuck, the hysterectomy, the clitoridectomy, the mastectomy, the bound foot, the high-heel shoe, the corset, the make-up, the veil, the assault and battery, the degradation and mutilation in their concrete manifestations. Reality is enforced by those whom it serves so that it appears to be self-evident. Reality is self-perpetuating, in that the cultural and social institutions built on its premises also embody and enforce those premises. Literature, religion, psychology, education, medicine, the science of biology as currently understood, the social sciences, the nuclear family, the nation-state, police, armies, and civil law—all embody the given reality and enforce it on us. The given reality is, of course, that there are two sexes, male and female; that these two sexes are opposite from each other, polar; that the male is inherently positive and the female inherently negative; and that the positive and negative poles of human existence unite naturally into a harmonious whole.

Truth, on the other hand, is not nearly so accessible as reality. In my view, truth is absolute in that it does exist and it can be found. Radium, for instance, always existed; it was always true that radium existed; but radium did not figure in the human notion of reality until Marie and Pierre Curie isolated it. When they did, the human notion of reality had to change in fundamental ways to accommodate the truth of radium. Similarly, the earth was always a sphere; this was always true; but until Columbus sailed west to find the East, it was not real. We might say that truth does exist, and that it is the human project to find it so that reality can be based on it.

I have made this distinction between truth and reality in order to enable me to say something very simple: that while the system of gender polarity is real, it is not true. It is not true that there are two sexes which are discrete and opposite, which are polar, which unite naturally and self-evidently into a harmonious whole. It is not true that the male embodies both positive and neutral human qualities and potentialities in contrast to the female who is female, according to Aristotle and all of male culture, “by virtue of a certain lack of qualities.” And once we do not accept the notion that men are positive and women are negative, we are essentially rejecting the notion that there are men and women at all. In other words, the system based on this polar model of existence is absolutely real; but the model itself is not true. We are living imprisoned inside a pernicious delusion, a delusion on which all reality as we know it is predicated.

In my view, those of us who are women inside this system of reality will never be free until the delusion of sexual polarity is destroyed and until the system of reality based on it is eradicated entirely from human society and from human memory. This is the notion of cultural transformation at the heart of feminism. This is the revolutionary possibility inherent in the feminist struggle.

As I see it, our revolutionary task is to destroy phallic identity in men and masochistic nonidentity in women—that is, to destroy the polar realities of men and women as we now know them so that this division of human flesh into two camps—one an armed camp and the other a concentration camp—is no longer possible. Phallic identity is real and it must be destroyed. Female masochism is real and it must be destroyed. The cultural institutions which embody and enforce those interlocked aberrations—for instance, law, art, religion, nation-states, the family, tribe, or commune based on father-right—these institutions are real and they must be destroyed. If they are not, we will be consigned as women to perpetual inferiority and subjugation.

I believe that freedom for women must begin in the repudiation of our own masochism. I believe that we must destroy in ourselves the drive to masochism at its sexual roots. I believe that we must establish our own authenticity, individually and among ourselves—to experience it, to create from it, and also to deprive men of occasions for reifying the lie of manhood over and against us. I believe that ridding ourselves of our own deeply entrenched masochism, which takes so many tortured forms, is the first priority; it is the first deadly blow that we can strike against systematized male dominance. In effect, when we succeed in excising masochism from our own personalities and constitutions, we will be cutting the male life line to power over and against us, to male worth in contradistinction to female degradation, to male identity posited on brutally enforced female negativity—we will be cutting the male life line to manhood itself. Only when manhood is dead—and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it—only then will we know what it is to be free.

Silvia Federici, Why Sexuality Is Work (1975)

First appeared as a presentation to the second international Wages for Housework conference in Toronto in January 1975.

Source: Sylvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle. PM Press, 2012.

Sexuality is the release we are given from the discipline of the work process. It is the necessary complement to the routine and regimentation of the workweek. It is a license to “go natural,” to “let go,” so that we can return more refreshed on Monday to our job. “Saturday night” is the irruption of the “spontaneous,” the irrational in the rationality of the capitalist discipline of our life. It is supposed to be the compensation for work and is ideologically sold to us as the “other” of work: a space of freedom in which we can presumably be our true selves—a possibility for intimate, “genuine” connections in a universe of social relations in which we are constantly forced to repress, defer, postpone, hide, even from ourselves, what we desire.

This being the promise, what we actually get is far from our expectations. As we cannot go back to nature by simply taking off our clothes, so cannot become “ourselves” simply because it is time to make love. Little spontaneity is possible when the timing, conditions, and the amount of energy available for love, are out of our control. After a week of work our bodies and feelings are numb, and we cannot turn them on like machines. But what comes out when we “let go” is more often our repressed frustration and violence than our hidden self ready to be reborn in bed.

Among other things, we are always aware of the falseness of this spontaneity. No matter how many screams, sighs, and erotic exercises we make in bed, we know that it is a parenthesis and tomorrow both of us will be back in our civilized clothes (we will have coffee together as we get ready for work). The more we know that this is a parenthesis which the rest of the day or the week will deny, the more difficult it becomes for us to try to turn into “savages” and “forget everything.” And we cannot avoid feeling ill at ease. It is the same embarrassment that we experience when we undress knowing that we will be making love; the embarrassment of the morning after, when we are already busy reestablishing distances; the embarrassment (finally) of pretending to be completely different from what we are during the rest of the day. This transition is painful particularly for women; men seem to be experts at it, possibly because they have been subjected to a more strict regimentation in their work. Women have always wondered how it was possible that after a nightly display of passion, “he” could get up already in a different world, so distant at times that it would be difficult to reestablish even a physical connection with him. In any case, it is always women who suffer most from the schizophrenic character of sexual relations, not only because we arrive at the end of the day with more work and more worries on our shoulders, but additionally because we have the responsibility of making the sexual experience pleasurable for the man. This is why women are usually less sexually responsive than men. Sex is work for us, it is a duty. The duty to please is so built into our sexuality that we have learned to get pleasure out of giving pleasure, out of getting men aroused and excited.

Since we are expected to provide a release, we inevitably become the object onto which men discharge their repressed violence. We are raped, both in our beds and in the streets, precisely because we have been set up to be the providers of sexual satisfaction, the safety valves for everything that goes wrong in a man’s life, and men have always been allowed to turn their anger against us if we do not measure up to the role, particularly when we refuse to perform.

Compartmentalization is only one aspect of the mutilation of our sexuality. The subordination of our sexuality to the reproduction of labor power has meant that heterosexuality has been imposed on us as the only acceptable sexual behavior. In reality, every genuine communication has a sexual component, for our bodies and emotions are indivisible and we communicate at all levels all the time. But sexual contact with women is forbidden because, in bourgeois morality, anything that is unproductive is obscene, unnatural, perverted. This has meant the imposition of a true schizophrenic condition upon us, as early in our lives we must learn to draw a line between the people we can love and the people we just talk to, those to whom we can open our body and those to whom we can only open our “souls,” our lovers and our friends. The result is that we are bodiless souls for our female friends, and soulless flesh for our male lovers. And this division separates us not only from other women, but from ourselves as well, in term of what we do or do not accept in our bodies and feelings, the “clean” parts that are there for display, and the “dirty,” “secret” parts which can only be disclosed (and thereby become clean) in the conjugal bed, at the point of production.

The same concern for production has demanded that sexuality, especially in women, be confined to certain periods of our lives. Sexuality is repressed in children and adolescents as well as in older women. Thus, the years in which we are allowed to be sexually active are the very years in which we are most burdened with work, when enjoying our sexual encounters becomes a feat.

But the main reason why we cannot enjoy the pleasure that sexuality may provide is that for women sex is work. Giving pleasure to man is an essential part of what is expected of every woman.

Sexual freedom does not help. Certainly it is important that we are not stoned to death if we are “unfaithful,” or if it is found that we are not “virgins.” But “sexual liberation” has intensified our work. In the past, we were just expected to raise children. Now we are expected to have a waged job, still clean the house and have children and, at the end of a double workday, be ready to hop in bed and be sexually enticing. For women the right to have sex is the duty to have sex and to enjoy it (something which is not expected of most jobs), which is why there have been so many investigations, in recent years, concerning which parts of our body—whether the vagina or the clitoris—are more sexually productive.

But whether in its liberalized or its more repressive form, our sexuality is still under control. The law, medicine, and our economic dependence on men, all guarantee that, although the rules are loosened, spontaneity is ruled out of our sexual life. Sexual repression within the family is a function of that control. In this respect, fathers, brothers, husbands, pimps all have acted as agents of the state, to supervise our sexual work, to ensure that we would provide sexual services according to the established, socially sanctioned productivity norms.

Economic dependence is the ultimate form of control over our sexuality. This is why sexual work is still one of the main occupations for women and prostitution underlines every sexual encounter. Under these conditions there cannot be any spontaneity for us in sex, and this is why pleasure is so ephemeral in our sexual life.

Precisely because of the exchange involved, sexuality for us is always accompanied by anxiety and it is undoubtedly the part of housework most responsible for our self-hatred. In addition, the commercialization of the female body makes it impossible for us to feel comfortable with our body regardless of its shape or form. No woman can happily undress in front of a man knowing that not only she is being evaluated, but there are standards of performance for female bodies to be reckoned with, that everyone, male or female, is aware of, as they are splashed all around us, on every wall in our cities and TV screen. Knowing that, in some way, we are selling ourselves has destroyed our confidence and our pleasure in our bodies.

This is why, whether we are skinny or plump, long or short nosed, tall or small, we all hate our bodies. We hate it because we are accustomed to looking at it from the outside, with the eyes of the men we meet, and with the body-market in mind. We hate it because we are used to thinking of it as something to sell, something that has become alienated from us and is always on the counter. We hate it because we know that so much depends on it. On how our body looks depends whether we can get a good or bad job (in marriage or out of the home), whether we can gain some social power, some company to defeat the loneliness that awaits us in our old age and often in our youth as well. And we always fear our body may turn against us, we may get fat, get wrinkles, age fast, make people indifferent to us, lose our right to intimacy, lose our chance of being touched or hugged.

In sum, we are too busy performing, too busy pleasing, too afraid of failing, to enjoy making love. The sense of our value is at stake in every sexual relation. If a man says we make love well, we excite him, whether or not we like making love with him, we feel great, it boosts our sense of power, even if we know that afterwards we still have to do the dishes. But we are never allowed to forget the exchange involved, because we never transcend the value-relation in our love relation with a man. “How much?” is the question that always governs our experience of sexuality. Most of our sexual encounters are spent in calculations. We sigh, sob, gasp, pant, jump up and down in bed, but in the meantime our mind keeps calculating “how much”—how much of ourselves can we give before we lose or undersell ourselves, how much will we get in return? If it is our first date, it is how much can we allow him to get: can he go up our skirt, open our blouse, put his fingers under our brassiere? At what point should we tell him “stop!”? How strongly should we refuse? How soon can we tell him that we like him before he starts thinking that we are “cheap”?

Keep the price up—that’s the rule, at least the one we are taught. If we are already in bed the calculations become even more complicated, because we also have to calculate our chances of getting pregnant, which means that throughout the sighing and gasping and other shows of passion we also have to quickly run down the schedule of our period. But faking excitement during the sexual act, in the absence of an orgasm, is extra work and a hard one, because when you’re faking it, you never know how far you should go, and you always end up doing more for fear of not doing enough.

Indeed, it has taken a lot of struggle and a leap of power on our side to finally begin to admit that nothing was happening.

Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic (1978)

Paper delivered at the Fourth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Mount Holyoke College. August 25, 1978. Published as a pamphlet by Out and Out Books.

Source: Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, The Crossing Press, 1984.

There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives.

We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within western society. On the one hand, the superficially erotic has been encouraged as a sign of female inferiority; on the other hand, women have been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence.

It is a short step from there to the false belief that only by the suppression of the erotic within our lives and consciousness can women be truly strong. But that strength is illusory, for it is fashioned within the context of male models of power.

As women, we have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and non-rational knowledge. We have been warned against it all our lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men, but which fears this same depth too much to examine the possibilities of it within themselves. So women are maintained at a distant/inferior position to be psychically milked, much the same way ants maintain colonies of aphids to provide a life-giving substance for their masters.

But the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough.

The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, or the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.

The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.

It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, and from our work. To go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.

The internal requirement toward excellence which we learn from the erotic must not be misconstrued as demanding the impossible from ourselves nor from others. Such a demand incapacitates everyone in the process. The erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.

The aim of each thing we do is to make our lives and the lives of our children richer and more possible. Within the celebration of the erotic in all our endeavors, my work becomes a conscious decision—a longed-for bed which I enter gratefully and from which I rise up empowered.

Of course, women so empowered are dangerous. So we are taught to separate the erotic demand from most vital areas of our lives other than sex. And the lack of concern for the erotic root and satisfactions of our work is felt in our disaffection from so much of what we do. For instance, how often do we truly love our work even at its most difficult?

The principal horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, or which defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional components of that need—the principal horror of such a system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power and life appeal and fulfillment. Such a system reduces work to a travesty of necessities, a duty by which we earn bread or oblivion for ourselves and those we love. But this is tantamount to blinding a painter and then telling her to improve her work, and to enjoy the act of painting. It is not only next to impossible, it is also profoundly cruel.

As women, we need to examine the ways in which our world can be truly different. I am speaking here of the necessity for reassessing the quality of all the aspects of our lives and of our work, and of how we move toward and through them.

The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects—born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, and our lives.

There are frequent attempts to equate pornography and eroticism, two diametrically opposed uses of the sexual. Because of these attempts, it has become fashionable to separate the spiritual (psychic and emotional) from the political, to see them as contradictory or antithetical. “What do you mean, a poetic revolutionary, a meditating gunrunner?” In the same way, we have attempted to separate the spiritual and the erotic, thereby reducing the spiritual to a world of flattened affect, a world of the ascetic who aspires to feel nothing. But nothing is farther from the truth. For the ascetic position is one of the highest fear, the gravest immobility. The severe abstinence of the ascetic becomes the ruling obsession. And it is one not of self-discipline but of self-abnegation.

The dichotomy between the spiritual and the political is also false, resulting from an incomplete attention to our erotic knowledge. For the bridge which connects them is formed by the erotic—the sensual—those physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being shared: the passions of love, in its deepest meanings.

Beyond the superficial, the considered phrase, “It feels right to me,” acknowledges the strength of the erotic into a true knowledge, for what that means is the first and most powerful guiding light toward any understanding. And understanding is a hand-maiden which can only wait upon, or clarify, that knowledge, deeply born. The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge.

The erotic functions for me in several ways, and the first is in providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy. In the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, hearkening to its deepest rhythms, so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, or examining an idea.

That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife.

This is one reason why the erotic is so feared, and so often relegated to the bedroom alone, when it is recognized at all. For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand to feel that joy, which we know ourselves to be capable of, about ourselves and about our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.

During World War II, we bought sealed plastic packets of white, uncolored margarine, with a tiny, intense pellet of yellow coloring perched like a topaz just inside the clear skin of the bag. We would leave the margarine out for a while to soften, and then we would pinch the little pellet to break it inside the bag, releasing the rich yellowness into the soft pale mass of margarine. Then taking it carefully between our fingers, we would knead it gently back and forth, over and over, until the color had spread throughout the whole pound bag of margarine, thoroughly coloring it.

I find the erotic such a kernel within myself. When released from its intense and constrained pellet, it flows through and colors my life with a kind of energy that heightens and sensitizes and strengthens all my experience.

We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. But, once recognized, those which do not enhance our future lose their power and can be altered. The fear of our desires keeps them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance. The fear that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our oppression as women.

When we live outside ourselves, and by that I mean on external directives only rather than from our internal knowledge and needs, when we live away from those erotic guides from within ourselves, then our lives are limited by external and alien forms, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on human need, let alone an individual’s. But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense. For as we begin to recognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self-negation, and with the numbness which so often seems like their only alternative in our society. Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within.

In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, or self-denial.

And yes, there is a hierarchy. There is a difference between painting a back fence and writing a poem, but only one of quantity. And there is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love.

This brings me to the last consideration of the erotic: to share the power of each other’s feelings is different from using another’s feelings as we would use a kleenex. When we look the other way from our experience, erotic or otherwise, we use rather than share the feelings of those others who participate in the experience with us. And use without consent of the used is abuse.

In order to be utilized, our erotic feelings must be recognized. The need for sharing deep feeling is a human need. But within the European-American tradition, this need is satisfied by certain proscribed erotic comings-together. These occasions are almost always characterized by a simultaneous looking away, a pretense of calling them something else, whether a religion, a fit, mob violence, or even playing doctor. And this misnaming of the need and the deed give rise to that distortion which results in pornography and obscenity—the abuse of feeling.

When we look away from the importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power, or when we look away from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with others, we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than make connection with our similarities and our differences. To refuse to be conscious of what we are feeling at any time, however comfortable that might seem, is to deny a large part of the experience, and to allow ourselves to be reduced to the pornographic, the abused, and the absurd.

The erotic cannot be felt secondhand. As a Black lesbian feminist, I have a particular feeling, knowledge, and understanding for those sisters with whom I have danced hard, played, or even fought. This deep participation has often been the forerunner for joint concerted actions not possible before.

But this erotic charge is not easily shared by women who continue to operate under an exclusively European-American male tradition. I know it was not available to me when I was trying to adapt my consciousness to this mode of living and sensation.

Only now, I find more and more women-identified women brave enough to risk sharing the erotic’s electrical charge without having to look away, and without distorting the enormously powerful and creative nature of that exchange. Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama.

For not only do we touch our most profoundly creative source, but we do that which is female and self-affirming in the face of a racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society.

Patrick Califia, Feminism and Sadomasochism (1981)

http://heresiesfilmproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/heresies12.pdf

Pat Califia, “Feminism and Sadomasochism,” Heresies vol. 3, no. 4, issue 12, 1981.

I hope you only do those things in leather bars. If I ever saw women doing S/M in a lesbian bar, it would make me so angry I’d want to beat them up.

–Anonymous gratuitous comment

Three years ago, I decided to stop ignoring my sexual fantasies. Since the age of two, I had been constructing a private world of dominance, submission, punishment, and pain. Abstinence, consciousness-raising, and therapy had not blighted the charm of these frightful reveries. I could not tolerate any more guilt, anxiety, or frustration, so I cautiously began to experiment with real sadomasochism. I did not lose my soul in the process. But in those three years, I lost a lover, several friends, a publisher, my apartment, and my good name because of the hostility and fear evoked by my openness about my true sexuality.

Writing this article is painful because it brings back the outrage and hurt I felt at being ostracized from the lesbian feminist community. I’ve been a feminist since I was 13 and a lesbian since I was 17. I didn’t lose just a ghetto or a subculture—lesbian feminism was the matrix I used to become an adult. Fortunately for my sanity and happiness, I managed to construct a new social network. My friends and lovers are bisexual women (some of whom do S/M professionally), gay and bisexual men, and other outlaw lesbians. If I were isolated, I would not be strong enough to speak out about something that makes me this vulnerable.

I describe my feelings about this issue because sadomasochism is usually dealt with in an abstract, self-righteous way by feminist theorists who believe it is the epitome of misogyny, sexism, and violence. In this article I shall examine sadomasochism in a theoretical way, and attempt a rapprochement between feminism and S/M. But I am motivated by my concern for the people who are frightened or ashamed of their erotic response to sadomasochistic fantasies. I don’t want to hear any more tragic stories from women who have repressed their own sexuality because they think that’s the only politically acceptable way to deal with a yearning for helplessness or sexual control. I don’t believe that any more than I believe homosexuals should be celibate so they can continue to be good Catholics. The women’s movement has become a moralistic force, and it can contribute to the self-loathing and misery experienced by sexual minorities. Because sexual dissenters are already being trampled on by monolithic, prudish institutions, I think it is time the women’s movement started taking more radical positions on sexual issues.

It is difficult to discuss sadomasochism in feminist terms because some of the slang S/M people use to talk about our sexuality has been appropriated by feminist propagandists. Terms like “roles,” “masochism,” “bondage,” “dominance,” and “submission” have become buzzwords. Their meanings in a feminist context differ sharply from their significance to S/M people. The discussion is rendered even more difficult because feminist theorists do not do their homework on human sexuality before pronouncing judgment on a sexual variation. Like Victorian missionaries in Polynesia, they insist on interpreting the sexual behavior of other people according to their own value systems. A perfect example of this is the “debate” over transsexuality.

In its present form, feminism is not necessarily the best theoretical framework for understanding sexual deviation, just as unmodified Marxism is an inadequate system for analyzing the oppression of women.

Since the label “feminist” has become debased coinage, let me explain why I call myself a feminist. I believe that the society I live in is a patriarchy, with power concentrated in the hands of men, and that this patriarchy actively prevents women from becoming complete and independent human beings. Women are oppressed by being denied access to economic resources, political power, and control over their own reproduction. This oppression is managed by several institutions, chiefly the family, religion, and the state. An essential part of the oppression of women is control over sexual ideology, mythology, and behavior. This social control affects the sexual nonconformist as well as the conformist. Because our training in conventional sexuality begins the minute we are born and because the penalties for rebellion are so high, no individual or group is completely free from erotic tyranny.

I am not a separatist. I believe that men can be committed to the destruction of the patriarchy. After all, the rewards of male dominance are given only to men who perpetuate and cooperate with the system. I am not “woman-identified,” i.e., I do not believe that women have more insight, intuition, virtue, identification with the earth, or love in their genes than men. Consequently, I cannot support everything women do, and I believe the women’s movement could learn a lot from politicized or deviant men. On the other hand, I do not find it easy to work with men, partly because male feminist theory is pitifully underdeveloped. I do not think separatism is worthless or bankrupt. It can be useful as an organizing strategy and teaches women valuable survival skills. The taste of autonomy that separatism provides is intoxicating, and can be a powerful incentive to struggle for real freedom.

I think it is imperative that feminists dismantle the institutions that foster the exploitation and abuse of women. The family, conventional sexuality, and gender are at the top of my hit list. These institutions control the emotional, intimate lives of every one of us, and they have done incalculable damage to women. I cannot imagine how such drastic change can be accomplished without armed struggle, the appropriation and reallocation of wealth, and a change in the ownership of the means of production. When women are liberated, women will probably cease to exist, since our whole structure of sex and gender must undergo a complete transformation.

The term “sadomasochism” has also been debased, primarily by the mass media, clinical psychology, and the anti-pornography movement. After all, homophobia is not the only form of sexual prejudice. Every minority sexual behavior has been mythologized and distorted. There is a paucity of accurate, explicit, nonjudgmental information about sex in modern America. This is one way sexual behavior is controlled. If people don’t know a particular technique or lifestyle exists, they aren’t likely to try it. If the only images they have of a certain sexual act are ugly, disgusting, or threatening, they will either not engage in that act or be furtive about enjoying it.

Since there is so much confusion about what S/M is, I want to describe my own sexual specialties and the sadomasochistic subculture. I am basically a sadist. About 10% of the time, I take the other role (bottom, slave, masochist). This makes me atypical, since the majority of women and men involved in S/M prefer to play bottom. I enjoy leathersex, bondage, various forms of erotic torture, flagellation (whipping), verbal humiliation, fist-fucking, and watersports (playing with enemas and piss). I do not enjoy oral sex unless I am receiving it as a form of sexual service, which means my partner must be on her knees, on her back, or at least in a collar. I have non-S/M sex rarely, mostly for old times’ sake, with vanilla[2] friends I want to stay close to. My primary relationship is with a woman who enjoys being my slave. We enjoy tricking with other people and telling each other the best parts afterward.

Because sadomasochism is usually portrayed as a violent, dangerous activity, most people do not think there is a great deal of difference between a rapist and a bondage enthusiast. Sadomasochism is not a form of sexual assault. It is a consensual activity that involves polarized roles and intense sensations. An S/M scene is always preceded by a negotiation in which the top and bottom decide whether or not they will play, what activities are likely to occur, what activities will not occur, and about how long the scene will last. The bottom is usually given a “safe word” or “code action” she can use to stop the scene. This safe word allows the bottom to enjoy a fantasy that the scene is not consensual, and to protest verbally or resist physically without halting stimulation.

The key word to understanding S/M is fantasy. The roles, dialogue, fetish costumes, and sexual activity are part of a drama or ritual. The participants are enhancing their sexual pleasure, not damaging or imprisoning one another. A sadomasochist is well aware that a role adopted during a scene is not appropriate during other interactions and that a fantasy role is not the sum total of her being.

S/M relationships are usually egalitarian. Very few bottoms want a full-time mistress. In fact, the stubbornness and aggressiveness of the masochist is a byword in the S/M community. Tops often make nervous jokes about being slaves to the whims of their bottoms. After all, the top’s pleasure is dependent on the bottom’s willingness to play. This gives most sadists a mild-to-severe case of performance anxiety. The S/M subculture is a theater in which sexual dramas can be acted out and appreciated. It also serves as a vehicle for passing on new fantasies, new equipment, warnings about police harassment, introductions to potential sex partners and friends, and safety information. Safety is a major concern of sadomasochists. A major part of the sadist’s turn-on consists of deliberately altering the emotional or physical state of the bottom. Even a minor accident like a rope burn can upset the top enough to mar the scene. And, of course, a bottom can’t relax and enjoy the sex if she doesn’t completely trust her top. The S/M community makes some attempt to regulate itself by warning newcomers away from individuals who are inconsiderate, insensitive, prone to playing when they are intoxicated, or unsafe for other reasons. The suppression of S/M isolates novice sadists and masochists from this body of information, which can make playing more rewarding and minimize danger.

For some people, the fact that S/M is consensual makes it acceptable. They may not understand why people enjoy it, but they begin to see that S/M people are not inhumane monsters.

For other people, including many feminists, the fact that it is consensual makes it even more appalling. A woman who deliberately seeks out a sexual situation in which she can be helpless is a traitor in their eyes. Hasn’t the women’s movement been trying to persuade people for years that women are not naturally masochistic?

Originally, this slogan meant that women do not create their own second-class status, do not enjoy it, and are the victims of socially constructed discrimination, not biology. A sexual masochist probably doesn’t want to be raped, battered, discriminated against on her job, or kept down by the system. Her desire to act out a specific sexual fantasy is very different from the pseudo-psychiatric dictum that a woman’s world is bound “by housework, intercourse, and childbirth.”

Some feminists object to the description of S/M as consensual. They believe that our society has conditioned all of us to accept inequities in power and hierarchical relationships. Therefore, S/M is simply a manifestation of the same system that dresses girls in pink and boys in blue, allows surplus value to accumulate in the coffers of capitalists and gives workers a minimum wage, and sends cops out to keep the disfranchised down.

It is true, as I stated before, that society shapes sexuality. We can make any decision about our sexual behavior we like, but our imagination and ability to carry out those decisions are limited by the surrounding culture. But I do not believe that sadomasochism is the result of institutionalized injustice to a greater extent than heterosexual marriage, lesbian bars, or gay male bathhouses. The system is unjust because it assigns privileges based on race, gender, and social class. During an S/M encounter, the participants select a particular role because it best expresses their sexual needs, how they feel about a particular partner, or which outfit is clean and ready to wear. The most significant reward for being a top or a bottom is sexual pleasure. If you don’t like being a top or a bottom, you switch your keys. Try doing that with your biological sex or your race or your socioeconomic status. The S/M subculture is affected by sexism, racism, and other fallout from the system, but the dynamic between a top and a bottom is quite different from the dynamic between men and women, whites and Blacks, or upper- and working-class people. The roles are acquired and used in very different ways.

Some feminists still find S/M roles disturbing because they believe they are derived from genuinely oppressive situations. They accuse sadomasochism of being fascistic because of the symbolism employed to create an S/M ambiance. And some S/M people do enjoy fantasies that are more elaborate than a simple structure of top versus bottom. An S/M scene can be played out using the personae of guard and prisoner, cop and suspect, Nazi and Jew, white and Black, straight man and queer, parent and child, priest and penitent, teacher and student, whore and client, etc.

However, no symbol has a single meaning. Its meaning is derived from the context in which it is used. Not everyone who wears a swastika is a Nazi, not everyone who has a pair of handcuffs on his belt is a cop, and not everyone who wears a nun’s habit is a Catholic. S/M is more a parody of the hidden sexual nature of fascism than it is a worship of or acquiescence to it. How many real Nazis, cops, priests, or teachers would be involved in a kinky sexual scene? It is also a mistake to assume that the historical oppressor is always the top in an S/M encounter. The child may be chastising the parent, the prisoner may have turned the tables on the cop, and the queer may be forcing the straight man to confront his sexual response to other men. The dialogue in some S/M scenes may sound sexist or homophobic from the outside, but its real meaning is probably neither. A top can call his bottom a cocksucker to give him an instruction (i.e., indicate that the top wants oral stimulation), encourage him to lose his inhibitions and perform an act he may be afraid of, or simply acknowledge shame and guilt and use it to enhance the sex act rather than prevent it.

S/M eroticism focuses on whatever feelings or actions are forbidden, and searches for a way to obtain pleasure from the forbidden. It is the quintessence of non-reproductive sex. Those feminists who accuse sadomasochists of mocking the oppressed by playing with dominance and submission forget that we are oppressed. We suffer police harassment, violence in the street, and discrimination in housing and in employment. We are not treated the way our system treats its collaborators and supporters.

The issue of pain is probably as difficult for feminists to understand as polarized roles. We tend to associate pain with illness or self-destruction. First of all, S/M does not necessarily involve pain. The exchange of power is more essential to S/M than intense sensation, punishment, or discipline. Second, pain is a subjective experience. Depending on the context, a certain sensation may frighten you, make you angry, urge you on, or get you hot. People choose to endure pain or discomfort if the goal they are striving for makes it worthwhile. Long-distance runners are not generally thought of as sex perverts, nor is St. Theresa. The fact that masochism is disapproved of when stressful athletic activity and religious martyrdom are not is an interesting example of the way sex is made a special case in our society. We seem to be incapable of using the same reason and compassion we apply to nonsexual issues to formulate our positions on sexual issues.

S/M violates a taboo that preserves the mysticism of romantic sex. Any pain involved is deliberate. Aroused human beings do not see, smell, hear, taste, or perceive pain as acutely as the non-aroused individual. Lots of people find bruises or scratches the morning after an exhilarating session of lovemaking and can’t remember exactly how or when they got them. The sensations involved in S/M are not that different. But we’re supposed to fall into bed and do it with our eyes closed. Good, enthusiastic sex is supposed to happen automatically between people who love each other. If the sex is less than stunning, we tend to blame the quality of our partner’s feelings for us. Planning a sexual encounter and using toys or equipment to produce specific feelings seems antithetical to romance.

What looks painful to an observer is probably being perceived as pleasure, heat, pressure, or a mixture of all these by the masochist. A good top builds sensation slowly, alternates pain with pleasure, rewards endurance with more pleasure, and teaches the bottom to transcend her own limits. With enough preparation, care, and encouragement, people are capable of doing wonderful things. There is a special pride which results from doing something unique and extraordinary for your lover. The sadomasochist has a passion for making use of the entire body, every nerve fiber, and every wayward thought.

Recently, I have heard feminists use the term “fetishistic” as an epithet and a synonym for “objectifying.” Sadomasochists are often accused of substituting things for people, of loving the leather or rubber or spike heels more than the person who is wearing them. Objectification originally referred to the use of images of stereotypically feminine women to sell products like automobiles and cigarettes. It also referred to the sexual harassment of women and the notion that we should be available to provide men with sexual gratification without receiving pleasure in return and without the right to refuse to engage in sex. A concept which was originally used to attack the marketing campaigns of international corporations and the sexual repression of women is now being used to attack a sexual minority.

Fetish costumes are worn privately or at S/M gatherings. They are as unacceptable to employers and advertising executives as a woman wearing overalls and smoking a cigar. Rather than being part of the sexual repression of women, fetish costumes can provide the women who wear them with sexual pleasure and power. Even when a fetish costume exaggerates the masculine or feminine attributes of the wearer, it cannot properly be called sexist. Our society strives to make masculinity in men and femininity in women appear natural and biologically determined. Fetish costumes violate this rule by being too theatrical and deliberate. Since fetish costumes may also be used to transform the gender of the wearer, they are a further violation of sexist standards for sex-specific dress and conduct.

The world is not divided into people who have sexual fetishes and people who don’t. There is a continuum of response to certain objects, substances, and parts of the body. Very few people are able to enjoy sex with anyone, regardless of their appearance. Much fetishism probably passes as “normal” sexuality because the required cues are so common and easy to obtain that no one notices how necessary they are.

Human sexuality is a complicated phenomenon. A cursory examination will not yield the entire significance of a sexual act. Fetishes have several qualities which make them erotically stimulating and unacceptable to the majority culture. Wearing leather, rubber, or a silk kimono distributes feeling over the entire skin. The isolated object may become a source of arousal. This challenges the identification of sex with the genitals. Fetishes draw all the senses into the sexual experience, especially the senses of smell and touch. Since they are often anachronistic or draw attention to erogenous zones, fetish costumes cannot be worn on the street. Fetishes are reserved for sexual use only, yet they are drawn from realms not traditionally associated with sexuality. Fetishism is the product of imagination and technology.

Sadomasochism is also accused of being a hostile or angry kind of sex, as opposed to the gentle and loving kind of sex that feminists should strive for. The women’s movement has become increasingly pro-romantic love in the last decade. Lesbians are especially prone to this sentimental trend. Rather than being critical of the idea that one can find enough fulfillment in a relationship to justify one’s existence, feminists are seeking membership in a perfect, egalitarian couple. I question the value of this.

There is no concrete evidence that the childhoods of sadomasochists contained any more corporal punishment, puritanism, or abuse than the childhoods of other people. There is also no evidence that we secretly fear and hate our partners. S/M relationships vary from no relationship at all (the S/M is experienced during fantasy or masturbation) to casual sex with many partners to monogamous couples, and include all shades in between. There are many different ways to express affection or sexual interest. Vanilla people send flowers, poetry, or candy, or they exchange rings. S/M people do all that, and may also lick boots, wear a locked collar, or build their loved one a rack in the basement. There is little objective difference between a feminist who is offended by the fact that my lover kneels to me in public and suburbanites calling the cops because the gay boys next door are sunbathing in the nude. My sexual semiotics differ from the mainstream. So what? I didn’t join the feminist movement to live inside a Hallmark greeting card.

Is there a single controversial sexual issue that the women’s movement has not reacted to with a conservative, feminine horror of the outrageous and the rebellious? A movement that started out saying biology is not destiny is trashing transsexuals and celebrating women’s “natural” connection to the earth and living things. A movement that spawned children’s liberation is trashing boy-lovers and supporting the passage of draconian sex laws that assign heavier sentences for having sex with a minor than you’d get for armed robbery. A movement that developed an analysis of housework as unpaid labor and acknowledged that women usually trade sex for what they want because that’s all they’ve got is joining the vice squad to get prostitutes off the street. A movement whose early literature was often called obscene and banned from circulation is campaigning to get rid of pornography. The only sex perverts this movement stands behind are lesbian mothers, and I suspect that’s because of the current propaganda about women being the nurturing, healing force that will save the world from destructive male energy.

Lesbianism is being desexualized as fast as movement dykes can apply the whitewash. We are no longer demanding that feminist organizations acknowledge their lesbian membership. We are pretending that the words “feminist” and “woman” are synonyms for “lesbian.”

The anti-pornography movement is the best of the worst of the women’s movement, and it must take responsibility for much of the bigotry circulating in the feminist community. This movement has consistently refused to take strong public positions supporting sex education, consenting-adult legislation, the right to privacy, the decriminalization of prostitution, children’s and adolescents’ rights to sexual information and freedom, and the First Amendment. It has encouraged violence against sexual minorities, especially sadomasochists, by slandering sexual deviation as violence against women. Their view of S/M is derived from one genre of commercial pornography (male-dominant and female submissive) and makes Krafft-Ebing look like a liberal.

Commercial pornography distorts all forms of sexual behavior. There are several reasons for this. One is that it is designed to make money, not to educate people or be aesthetically pleasing. The other is that it is quasi-legal, and thus must be produced as quickly and surreptitiously as possible. Another reason is that erotic material is intended to gratify fantasy, not serve as a model for actual behavior.

S/M pornography can be divided into several types, each designed for a different segment of the S/M subculture. Most of it represents women dominating and disciplining men, since the largest market for S/M porn is heterosexual submissive males. Very little S/M porn shows any actual physical damage or even implies that damage is occurring. Most of it depicts bondage, or tops dressed in fetish costumes and assuming threatening poses.

Very little S/M porn is well produced or informative. But eliminating it will have the effect of further impoverishing S/M culture and isolating sadomasochists from one another, since many of us make contact via personal ads carried in pornographic magazines. The excuse for banning “violent” porn is that this will end violence against women. The causal connection is dubious. It is indisputably true that very few people who consume pornography ever assault or rape another person. When a rape or assault is committed, it usually occurs after some forethought and planning. But legally, a free society must distinguish between the fantasy or thought of committing a crime and the actual crime. It is not a felony to fantasize committing an illegal act, and it should not be, unless we want our morals regulated by the Brain Police. Banning S/M porn is the equivalent of making fantasy a criminal act. Violence against women will not be reduced by increasing sexual repression. People desperately need better information about sex; more humanistic and attractive erotica; more readily available birth control, abortion, and sex therapy; and more models for nontraditional, non-exploitative relationships.

I am often asked if sadomasochism will survive the revolution. I think all the labels and categories we currently use to describe ourselves will change dramatically in the next 100 years, even if the revolution does not occur. My fantasy is that kinkiness and sexual variation will multiply, not disappear, if terrible penalties are no longer meted out for being sexually adventurous.

There is an assumption behind the question that bothers me. The assumption that sadomasochists are part of the system rather than part of the rebellion has already been dealt with in this article. But there is another assumption that we must enjoy being oppressed and mistreated. We like to wear uniforms? Then we must get off on having cops bust up our bars. We like to play with whips and nipple clamps and hot wax? Then it must turn us on when gangs of kids hunt us down, harass, and beat us. We’re not really human. We’re just a bunch of leather jackets and spike heels, a bunch of post office boxes at the bottom of sex ads.

We make you uncomfortable, partly because we’re different, partly because we’re sexual, and partly because we’re not so different. I’d like to know when you’re going to quit blaming us, the victims of sexual repression, for the oppression of women. I’d like to know when you’re going to quit objectifying us.

1. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), pp. xv-xvi.↩

2. Vanilla is to S/M what straight is to gay. I don’t use the term as a pejorative, but because I believe sexual preferences arc more like flavor preferences than like moral/political alliances.↩

Dual Systems

Heidi Hartmann offers the most influential account of a so-called “dual systems” theory. Dual systems theories argue that patriarchy and capitalism constitute two distinct, semi-autonomous systems of oppression. Neither should be overly privileged analytically or politically, and both bear on women’s lives. Hartmann formulates this through a critical examination of the history of patriarchy and sexism in Marxism, working class movements, and the socialist left.

Hartmann’s essay sparked many replies. Iris Marion Young’s critique synthesizes the oppression of waged workers and unwaged women’s tasks into the “gender division of labor,” locating gender relations as fundamental to production and attempting to explain gender oppression in structural terms.

There are no secondary readings for this chapter, though Women and Revolution (ed. by Lydia Sargent) collect the many critical responses to Hartmann.

Heidi Hartmann, The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism (1979)

Heidi Hartmann, “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a more Progressive Union.” Capital and Class, vol. 3, no. 2, 1–33, Summer 1979.

The “marriage” of marxism and feminism has been like the marriage of husband and wife depicted in English common law: marxism and feminism are one, and that one is marxism.[1] Recent attempts to integrate marxism and feminism are unsatisfactory to us as feminists because they subsume the feminist struggle into the “larger” struggle against capital. To continue our simile further, either we need a healthier marriage or we need a divorce.

The inequalities in this marriage, like most social phenomena, are no accident. Many marxists typically argue that feminism is at best less important than class conflict and at worst divisive of the working class. Thiswhite the approach political stance produces an analysis that absorbs feminism into the class struggle. Moreover, the analytic power of marxism with respect to capital has obscured its limitations with respect to sexism. We will argue here that while marxist analysis provides essential insight into the laws of historical development, and those of capital in particular, the categories of marxism are sex-blind. Only a specifically feminist analysis reveals the systemic character of relations between men and women. Yet feminist analysis by itself is inadequate because it has been blind to history and insufficiently materialist. Both marxist analysis, particularly its historical and materialist method, and feminist analysis, especially the identification of patriarchy as a social and historical structure, must be drawn upon if we are to understand the development of western capitalist societies and the predicament of women within them. In this essay we suggest a new direction for marxist feminist analysis.

Part I of our discussion examines several marxist approaches to the “woman question.” We then turn, in Part II, to the work of radical feminists. After noting the limitations of radical feminist definitions of patriarchy, we offer our own. In Part III we try to use the strengths of both marxism and feminism to make suggestions both about the development of capitalist societies and about the present situation of women. We attempt to use marxist methodology to analyze feminist objectives, correcting the imbalance in recent socialist feminist work, and suggesting a more complete analysis of our present socioeconomic formation. We argue that a materialist analysis demonstrates that patriarchy is not simply a psychic, but also a social and economic structure. We suggest that our society can best be understood once it is recognized that it is organized both in capitalist and in patriarchal ways. While pointing out tensions between patriarchal and capitalist interests, we argue that the accumulation of capital both accommodates itself to patriarchal social structure and helps to perpetuate it. We suggest in this context that sexist ideology has assumed a peculiarly capitalist form in the present, illustrating one way that patriarchal relations tend to bolster capitalism. We argue, in short, that a partnership of patriarchy and capitalism has evolved.

In the concluding section, Part IV, we argue that the political relations of marxism and feminism account for the dominance of marxism over feminism in the left’s understanding of the “woman question.” A more progressive union of marxism and feminism, then, requires not only improved intellectual understanding of relations of class and sex, but also that alliance replace dominance and subordination in left politics.

I. Marxism and the Woman Question

The “woman question” has never been the “feminist question.” The feminist question is directed at the causes of sexual inequality between women and men, of male dominance over women. Most marxist analyses of women’s position take as their question the relationship of women to the economic system, rather than that of women to men, apparently assuming the latter will be explained in their discussion of the former. Marxist analysis of the woman question has taken three main forms. All see women’s oppression in our connection (or lack of it) to production. Defining women as part of the working class, these analyses consistently subsume women’s relation to men under workers’ relation to capital. First, early marxists, including Marx, Engels, Kautsky, and Lenin, saw capitalism drawing all women into the wage labor force, and saw this process destroying the sexual division of labor. Second, contemporary marxists have incorporated women into an analysis of “everyday life” in capitalism. In this view, all aspects of our lives are seen to reproduce the capitalist system and we are all workers in that system. And third, marxist-feminists have focussed on housework and its relation to capital, some arguing that housework produces surplus value and that houseworkers work directly for capitalists. These three approaches are examined in turn.

Engels, in Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, recognized the inferior position of women and attributed it to the institution of private property.[2] In bourgeois families, Engels argued, women had to serve their masters, be monogamous, and produce heirs to inherit property. Among proletarians, Engels argued, women were not oppressed, because there was no private property to be passed on. Engels argued further that as the extension of wage labor destroyed the small-holding peasantry, and women and children were incorporated into the wage labor force along with men, the authority of the male head of household was undermined, and patriarchal relations were destroyed.

For Engels then, women’s participation in the labor force was the key to their emancipation. Capitalism would abolish sex differences and treat all workers equally. Women would become economically independent of men and would participate on an equal footing with men in bringing about the proletarian revolution. After the revolution, when all people would be workers and private property abolished, women would be emancipated from capital as well as from men. Marxists were aware of the hardships women’s labor force participation meant for women and families, which resulted in women having two jobs, housework and wage work. Nevertheless, their emphasis was less on the continued subordination of women in the home than on the progressive character of capitalism’s “erosion” of patriarchal relations. Under socialism housework too would be collectivized and women relieved of their double burden.[3]

The political implications of this first marxist approach are clear. Women’s liberation requires first, that women become wage workers like men, and second, that they join with men in the revolutionary struggle against capitalism. Capital and private property, the early marxists argued, are the cause of women’s particular oppression just as capital is the cause of the exploitation of workers in general.

Though aware of the deplorable situation of women in their time the early marxists failed to focus on the differences between men’s and women’s experiences under capitalism. They did not focus on the feminist questions—how and why women are oppressed as women. They did not, therefore, recognize the vested interest men had in women’s continued subordination. As we argue in Part III below, men benefitted from not having to do housework, from having their wives and daughters serve them and from having the better places in the labor market. Patriarchal relations, far from being atavistic leftovers, being rapidly outmoded by capitalism, as the early marxists suggested, have survived and thrived alongside it. And since capital and private property do not cause the oppression of women as women, their end alone will not result in the end of women’s oppression.

Perhaps the most popular of the recent articles exemplifying the second marxist approach, the everyday life school, is the series by Eli Zaretsky in Socialist Revolution.[4] Zaretsky agrees with feminist analysis when he argues that sexism is not a new phenomenon produced by capitalism, but he stresses that the particular form sexism takes now has been shaped by capital. He focusses on the differential experiences of men and women under capitalism. Writing a century after Engels, once capitalism had matured, Zaretsky points out that capitalism has not incorporated all women into the labor force on equal terms with men. Rather capital has created a separation between the home, family, and personal life on the one hand and the workplace on the other.[5]

Sexism has become more virulent under capitalism, according to Zaretsky, because of this separation between wage work and home work. Women’s increased oppression is caused by their exclusion from wage work. Zaretsky argues that while men are oppressed by having to do wage work, women are oppressed by not being allowed to do wage work. Women’s exclusion from the wage labor force has been caused primarily by capitalism, because capitalism both creates wage work outside the home and requires women to work in the home in order to reproduce wage workers for the capitalist system. Women reproduce the labor force, provide psychological nurturance for workers, and provide an island of intimacy in a sea of alienation. In Zaretsky’s view women are laboring for capital and not for men; it is only the separation of home from work place, and the privatization of housework brought about by capitalism that creates the appearance that women are working for men privately in the home. The difference between the appearance, that women work for men, and the reality, that women work for capital, has caused a misdirection of the energies of the women’s movement. Women should recognize that women, too, are part of the working class, even though they work at home.

In Zaretsky’s view, “the housewife emerged, alongside the proletarian [as] the two characteristic laborers of developed capitalist society,”[6] and the segmentation of their lives oppresses both the husband-proletarian and the wife-housekeeper. Only a reconceptualization of “production” which includes women’s work in the home and all other socially necessary activities will allow socialists to struggle to establish a society in which this destructive separation is overcome. According to Zaretsky, men and women together (or separately) should fight to reunite the divided spheres of their lives, to create a humane socialism that meets all our private as well as public needs. Recognizing capitalism as the root of their problem, men and women will fight capital and not each other. Since capitalism causes the separation of our private and public lives, the end of capitalism will end that separation, reunite our lives, and end the oppression of both men and women.

Zaretsky’s analysis owes much to the feminist movement, but he ultimately argues for a redirection of that movement. Zaretsky has accepted the feminist argument that sexism predates capitalism; he has accepted much of the marxist feminist argument that housework is crucial to the reproduction of capital; he recognizes that housework is hard work and does not belittle it; and he uses the concepts of male supremacy and sexism. But his analysis ultimately rests on the notion of separation, on the concept of division, as the crux of the problem, a division attributable to capitalism. Like the “complementary spheres” argument of the early twentieth century, which held that women’s and men’s spheres were complementary, separate but equally important, Zaretsky largely denies the existence and importance of inequality between men and women. His focus is on the relationship of women, the family, and the private sphere to capitalism. Moreover, even if capitalism created the private sphere, as Zaretsky argues, why did it happen that women work there, and men in the labor force? Surely this cannot be explained without reference to patriarchy, the systemic dominance of men over women. From our point of view, the problem in the family, the labor market, economy, and society is not simply a division of labor between men and women, but a division that places men in a superior, and women in a subordinate, position.

Just as Engels sees private property as the capitalist contribution to women’s oppression, so Zaretsky sees privacy. Because women are laboring privately at home they are oppressed. Zaretsky and Engels romanticize the preindustrial family and community—where men, women, adults, children worked together in family-centered enterprise and all participated in community life. Zaretsky’s humane socialism will reunite the family and recreate that “happy workshop.”

While we argue that socialism is in the interest of both men and women, it is not at all clear that we are all fighting for the same kind of “humane socialism,” or that we have the same conception of the struggle required to get there, much less that capital alone is responsible for our current oppression. While Zaretsky thinks women’s work appears to be for men but in reality is for capital, we think women’s work in the family really is for men, though it clearly reproduces capitalism as well. Reconceptualizing “production” may help us to think about the kind of society we want to create, but between now and its creation, the struggle between men and women will have to continue along with the struggle against capital.

Marxist feminists who have looked at housework have also subsumed the feminist struggle into the struggle against capital. Mariarosa Dalla Costa’s theoretical analysis of housework is essentially an argument about the relation of housework to capital and the place of housework in capitalist society and not about the relations of men and women as exemplified in housework.[7] Nevertheless, Dalla Costa’s political position, that women should demand wages for housework, has vastly increased consciousness of the importance of housework among women in the women’s movement. The demand was and still is debated in women’s groups all over the United States.[8] By making the claim that women at home not only provide essential services for capital by reproducing the labor force, but also create surplus value through that work,[9] Dalla Costa also vastly increased the left’s consciousness of the importance of housework, and provoked a long debate on the relation of housework to capital.[10]

Dalla Costa uses the feminist understanding of housework as real work to claim legitimacy for it under capitalism by arguing that it should be waged work. Women should demand wages for housework rather than allow themselves to be forced into the traditional labor force, where, doing a “double day,” women would still provide housework services to capital for free as well as wage labor. Dalla Costa suggests that women who received wages for housework would be able to organize their housework collectively, providing community child care, meal preparation, and the like. Demanding wages and having wages would raise their consciousness of the importance of their work; they would see its social significance, as well as its private necessity, a necessary first step toward more comprehensive social change.

Dalla Costa argues that what is socially important about housework is its necessity to capital. In this lies the strategic importance of women. By demanding wages for housework and by refusing to participate in the labor market women can lead the struggle against capital. Women’s community organisations can be subversive to capital and lay the basis not only for resistance to the encroachment of capital but also for the formation of a new society.

Dalla Costa recognizes that men will resist the liberation of women (that will occur as women organize in their communities) and that women will have to struggle against them, but this struggle is an auxiliary one that must be waged to bring about the ultimate goal of socialism. For Dalla Costa, women’s struggles are revolutionary not because they are feminist, but because they are anti-capitalist. Dalla Costa finds a place in the revolution for women’s struggle by making women producers of surplus value, and as a consequence part of the working class. This legitimates women’s political activity.[11]

The women’s movement has never doubted the importance of women’s struggle because for feminists the object is the liberation of women, which can only be brought about by women’s struggles. Dalla Costa’s contribution to increasing our understanding of the social nature of housework has been an incalculable advance. But like the other marxist approaches reviewed here her approach focusses on capital—not on relations between men and women. The fact that men and women have differences of interest, goals, and strategies is obscured by her very powerful analysis of how the capitalist system keeps us all down, and the important and perhaps strategic role of women’s work in this system. The rhetoric of feminism is present in Dalla Costa’s writing (the oppression of women, struggle with men) but the focus of feminism is not. If it were, Dalla Costa might argue, for example, that the importance of housework as a social relation lies in its crucial role in perpetuating male supremacy. That women do housework, performing labor for men, is crucial to the maintenance of patriarchy.

Engels, Zaretsky, and Dalla Costa all fail to analyze the labor process within the family sufficiently. Who benefits from women’s labor? Surely capitalists, but also surely men, who as husbands and fathers receive personalized services at home. The content and extent of the services may vary by class or ethnic or racial group, but the fact of their receipt does not. Men have a higher standard of living than women in terms of luxury consumption, leisure time, and personalized services.[12]

A materialist approach ought not to ignore this crucial point.[13] It follows that men have a material interest in women’s continued oppression. In the long run this may be “false consciousness,” since the majority of men could benefit from the abolition of hierarchy within the patriarchy. But in the short run this amounts to control over other people’s labor, control which men are unwilling to relinquish voluntarily.

While the approach of the early marxists ignored housework and stressed women’s labor force participation, the two more recent approaches emphasize housework to such an extent they ignore women’s current role in the labor market. Nevertheless, all three attempt to include women in the category working class and to understand women’s oppression as another aspect of class oppression. In doing so all give short shrift to the object of feminist analysis, the relations between women and men. While our “problems” have been elegantly analyzed, they have been misundertood. The focus of marxist analysis has been class relations; the object of marxist analysis has been understanding the laws of motion of capitalist society. While we believe marxist methodology can be used to formulate feminist strategy, these marxist feminist approaches discussed above clearly do not do so; their marxism clearly dominates their feminism.

As we have already suggested, this is due in part to the analytic power of marxism itself. Marxism is a theory of the development of class society, of the accumulation process in capitalist societies, of the reproduction of class dominance, and of the development of contradictions and class struggle. Capitalist societies are driven by the demands of the accumulation process, most succinctly summarized by the fact that production is oriented to exchange, not use. In a capitalist system production is important only insofar as it contributes to the making of profits, and the use value of products is only an incidental consideration. Profits derive from the capitalists’ ability to exploit labor power, to pay laborers less than the value of what they produce. The accumulation of profits systematically transforms social structure as it transforms the relations of production. The reserve army of labor, the poverty of great numbers of people and the near-poverty of still more, these human reproaches to capital are by-products of the accumulation process itself. From the capitalist’s point of view, the reproduction of the working class may “safely be left to itself.”[14] At the same time, capital creates an ideology, which grows up alongside of it, of individualism, competitiveness, domination, and in our time, consumption of a particular kind. Whatever one’s theory of the genesis of ideology one must recognize these as the dominant values of capitalist societies.

Marxism enables us to understand many things about capitalist societies: the structure of production, the generation of a particular occupational structure, and the nature of the dominant ideology. Marx’s theory of the development of capitalism is a theory of the development of “empty places.” Marx predicted, for example, the growth of the proletariat and the demise of the petit bourgeoisie. More precisely and in more detail, Braverman among others has explained the creation of the “places” clerical worker and service worker in advanced capitalist societies.[15] Just as capital creates these places indifferent to the individuals who fill them, the categories of marxist analysis, “class,” “reserve army of labor,” “wage-laborer,” do not explain why particular people fill particular places. They give no clues about why women are subordinate to men inside and outside the family and why it is not the other way around. Marxist categories, like capital itself, are sex-blind. The categories of marxism cannot tell us who will fill the “empty places.” Marxist analysis of the woman question has suffered from this basic problem.

[...]

II. Radical Feminism and Patriarchy

The great thrust of radical feminist writing has been directed to the documentation of the slogan “the personal is political.” Women’s discontent, they argued, is not the neurotic lament of the maladjusted, but a response to a social structure in which women are systematically dominated, exploited, and oppressed. Women’s inferior position in the labor market, the male-centered emotional structure of middle-class marriage, the use of women in advertising, the so-called understanding of women’s psyche as neurotic-popularized by academic and clinical psychology—aspect after aspect of women’s lives in advanced capitalist society was researched and analyzed. The radical feminist literature is enormous and defies easy summary. At the same time, its focus on psychology is consistent. The New York Radical Feminists’ organizing document was “The Politics of the Ego.” “The personal is political” means, for radical feminists, that the original and basic class division is between the sexes, and that the motive force in history is the striving of men for power and domination over women, the dialectic of sex.[16]

Accordingly, Firestone rewrote Freud to understand the development of boys and girls into men and women in terms of power.[17] Her characterizations of what are “male” and “female” character traits are typical of radical feminist writing. The male seeks power and domination; he is egocentric and individualistic, competitive and pragmatic; the “technological mode,” according to Firestone, is male. The female is nurturant, artistic, and philosophical; the “aesthetic mode” is female.

No doubt the idea that the “aesthetic mode” is female would have come as quite a shock to the ancient Greeks. Here lies the error of radical feminist analysis: the “dialectic of sex” as radical feminists present it projects “male” and “female” characteristics as they appear in the present back into all of history. Radical feminist analysis has greatest strength in its insights into the present. Its greatest weakness is a focus on the psychological which blinds it to history.

The reason for this lies not only in radical feminist method, but also in the nature of patriarchy itself, for patriarchy is a strikingly resilient form of social organization. Radical feminists use “patriarchy” to refer to a social system characterized by male domination over women. Kate Millet’s definition is classic:

our society...is a patriarchy. The fact is evident at once if one recalls that the military, industry, technology, universities, science, political offices, finances-in short, every avenue of power within the society, including the coercive force of the police, is entirely in male hands.[18]

This radical feminist definition of patriarchy applies to most societies we know of and cannot distinguish among them. The use of history by radical feminists is typically limited to providing examples of the existence of patriarchy in all times and places.[19] For both marxist and mainstream social scientists before the women’s movement, patriarchy referred to a system of relations between men, which formed the political and economic outlines of feudal and some pre-feudal societies, in which hierarchy followed ascribed characteristics. Capitalist societies are understood as meritocratic, bureaucratic, and impersonal by bourgeois social scientists; marxists see capitalist societies as systems of class domination.[20] For both kinds of social scientists neither the historical patriarchal societies nor today’s western capitalist societies are understood as systems of relations between men that enable them to dominate women.

Towards and Definition of Patriarchy

We can usefully define patriarchy as a set of social relations between men, which have a material base, and which, though hierarchical, establish or create interdependence and solidarity among men that enable them to dominate women. Though patriarchy is hierarchical and men of different classes, races, or ethnic groups have different places in the patriarchy, they also are united in their shared relationship of dominance over their women; they are dependent on each other to maintain that domination. Hierarchies “work” at least in part because they create vested interests in the status quo. Those at the higher levels can “buy off” those at the lower levels by offering them power over those still lower. In the hierarchy of patriarchy, all men, whatever their rank in the patriarchy, are bought off by being able to control at least some women. There is some evidence to suggest that when patriarchy was first institutionalized in state societies, the ascending rulers literally made men the heads of their families (enforcing their control over their wives and children) in exchange for the men’s ceding some of their tribal resources to the new rulers.[21] Men are dependent on one another (despite their hierarchical ordering) to maintain their control over women.

The material base upon which patriarchy rests lies most fundamentally in men’s control over women’s labor power. Men maintain this control by excluding women from access to some essential productive resources (in capitalist societies, for example, jobs that pay living wages) and by restricting women’s sexuality.[22] Monogamous heterosexual marriage is one relatively recent and efficient form that seems to allow men to control both these areas. Controlling women’s access to resources and their sexuality, in turn, allows men to control women’s labor power, both for the purpose of serving men in many personal and sexual ways and for the purpose of rearing children. The services women render men, and which exonerate men from having to perform many unpleasant tasks (like cleaning toilets) occur outside as well as inside the family setting. Examples outside the family include the harassment of women workers and students by male bosses and professors as well as the common use of secretaries to run personal errands, make coffee, and provide “sexy” surroundings. Rearing children (whether or not the children’s labor power is of immediate benefit to their fathers) is nevertheless a crucial task in perpetuating patriarchy as a system. Just as class society must be reproduced by schools, work places, consumption norms, etc., so must patriarchal social relations. In our society children are generally reared by women at home, women socially defined and recognized as inferior to men, while men appear in the domestic picture only rarely. Children raised in this way generally learn their places in the gender hierarchy well. Central to this process, however, are the areas outside the home where patriarchal behaviours are taught and the inferior position of women enforced and reinforced: churches, schools, sports, clubs, unions, armies, factories, offices, health centers, the media, etc.

The material base of patriarchy, then, does not rest solely on childrearing in the family, but on all the social structures that enable men to control women’s labor. The aspects of social structures that perpetuate patriarchy are theoretically identifiable, hence separable from their other aspects. Gayle Rubin has increased our ability to identify the patriarchal element of these social structures enormously by identifying “sex/gender systems”:

a ”sex/gender system“ is the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied.”[23]

We are born female and male, biological sexes, but we are created woman and man, socially recognized genders. How we are so created is that second aspect of the mode of production of which Engels spoke, ``the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species.

How people propagate the species is socially determined. For example, if people are biologically sexually polymorphous, reproduction would be accidental. The strict division of labor by sex, a social invention common to all known societies, creates two very separate genders and a need for men and women to get together for economic reasons. It thus helps direct their sexual needs towards heterosexual fulfillment. Although it is theoretically possible that a sexual division of labor should not imply inequality between the sexes, in most known societies, the socially acceptable division of labor by sex is one which accords lower status to women’s work. The sexual division of labor is also an underpinning of sexual subcultures in which men and women experience life differently; it is the material base of male power which is exercised (in our society) not just in not doing housework and in securing superior employment, but psychologically as well.

How people meet their sexual needs, how they reproduce, how they inculcate social norms in new generations, how they learn gender, how it feels to be a man or a woman—all occur in the realm Rubin labels the sex gender system. Rubin emphasizes the influence of kinship (which tells you with whom you can satisfy sexual needs) and the development of gender-specific personalities via child-rearing and the “oedipal machine.” In addition, however, we can use the concept of the sex/gender system to examine all other social institutions for the roles they play in defining and reinforcing gender hierarchies. Rubin notes that theoretically a sex/gender system could be female dominant, male dominant, or egalitarian, but declines to label various known sex/gender systems or to periodize history accordingly. We choose to label our present sex/gender system patriarchy, because it appropriately captures the notions of hierarchy and male dominance which we see as central to the present system.

Economic production (what marxists are used to referring to as the mode of production) and the production of people in the sex/gender sphere both determine “the social organization under which the people of a particular historical epoch and a particular country live,” according to Engels. The whole of society, then, can only be understood by looking at both these types of production and reproduction, people and things.[24] There is no such thing as “pure capitalism,” nor does “pure patriarchy” exist, for they must of necessity coexist. What exists is patriarchal capitalism, or patriarchal feudalism, or egalitarian hunting/gathering societies, or matriarchal horticultural societies, or patriarchal horticultural societies, and so on. There appears to be no necessary connection between changes in the one aspect of production and changes in the other. A society could undergo transition from capitalism to socialism, for example, and remain patriarchal.[25] Common sense, history, and our experience tell us, however, that these two aspects of production are so closely intertwined, that change in one ordinarily creates movement, tension, or contradiction in the other.

[...]

III. The Partnership of Patriarchy and Capital

How are we to recognize patriarchal social relations in capitalist societies? It appears as if each woman is oppressed by her own man alone; her oppression seems a private affair. Relationships among men and among families seem equally fragmented. It is hard to recognize relationships among men, and between men and women, as systematically patriarchal. We argue, however, that patriarchy as a system of relations between men and women exists in capitalism, and that in capitalist societies a healthy and strong partnership exists between patriarchy and capital. Yet if one begins with the concept of patriarchy and an understanding of the capitalist mode of production, one recognizes immediately that the partnership of patriarchy and capital was not inevitable, men and capitalists often have conflicting interests, particularly over the use of women’s labor power. Here is one way in which this conflict might manifest itself: the vast majority of men might want their women at home to personally service them. A smaller number of men, who are capitalists, might want most women (not their own) to work in the wage labor market. In examining the tensions of this conflict over women’s labor power historically, we will be able to identify the material base of patriarchal relations in capitalist societies, as well as the basis for the partnership between capital and patriarchy.

Industrialization and the Development of Family Wages

Marxists made quite logical inferences from a selection of the social phenomena they witnessed in the nineteenth century. But they ultimately underestimated the strength of the pre-existing patriarchal social forces with which fledgling capital had to contend and the need for capital to adjust to these forces. The industrial revolution was drawing all people into the labor force, including women and children; in fact the first factories used child and female labor almost exclusively.[26] That women and children could earn wages separately from men both undermined authority relations (as discussed in Part I above) and kept wages low for everyone. Kautsky, writing in 1892, described the process this way:

[Then with] the wife and young children of the working-man...able to take care of themselves, the wages of the male worker can safely be reduced to the level of his own personal needs without the risk of stopping the fresh supply of labor power.

The labor of women and children, moreover, affords the additional advantage that these are less capable of resistance than men [sic]; and their introduction into the ranks of the workers increases tremendously the quantity of labor that is offered for sale in the market.

Accordingly, the labor of women and children...also diminishes [the] capacity [of the male worker] for resistance in that it overstocks the market; owing to both these circumstances it lowers the wages of the working-man.[27]

The terrible effects on working class family life of the low wages and of the forced participation of all family members in the labor force were recognized by marxists. Kautsky wrote:

The capitalist system of production does not in most cases destroy the single household of the working-man, but robs it of all but its unpleasant features. The activity of woman today in industrial pursuits...means an increase of her former burden by a new one. But one cannot serve two masters. The household of the working-man suffers whenever his wife must help to earn the daily bread.[28]

Working men as well as Kautsky recognized the disadvantages of female wage-labor. Not only were women “cheap competition” but working women were their very wives, who could not “serve two masters” well.

Male workers resisted the wholesale entrance of women and children into the labor force, and sought to exclude them from union membership and the labor force as well. In 1846 the Ten-Hours’ Advocate stated:

It is needless for us to say, that all attempts to improve the morals and physical condition of female factory workers will be abortive, unless their hours are materially reduced. Indeed we may go so far as to say, that married females would be much better occupied in performing the domestic duties of the household, than following the never-tiring motion of machinery. We therefore hope the day is not distant, when the husband will be able to provide for his wife and family, without sending the former to endure the drudgery of a cotton mill.[29]

In the United States in 1854 the National Typographical Union resolved not to “encourage by its act the employment of female compositors.” Male unionists did not want to afford union protection to women workers; they tried to exclude them instead. In 1879 Adolph Strasser, president of the Cigarmakers International Union, said: “We cannot drive the females out of the trade, but we can restrict their daily quota of labor through factory laws.”[30]

While the problem of cheap competition could have been solved by organizing the wage-earning women and youths, the problem of disrupted family life could not be. Men reserved union protection for men and argued for protective labor laws for women and children.[31] Protective labor laws, while they may have ameliorated some of the worst abuses of female and child labor, also limited the participation of adult women in many “male” jobs.[32] Men sought to keep high wage jobs for themselves and to raise male wages generally. They argued for wages sufficient for their wage labor alone to support their families. This “family wage” system gradually came to be the norm for stable working class families at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth.[33] Several observers have declared the non wage working wife to be part of the standard of living of male workers.[34] Instead of fighting for equal wages for men and women, male workers sought the “family wage,” wanting to retain their wives’ services at home. In the absence of patriarchy a unified working class might have confronted capitalism, but patriarchal social relations divided the working class, allowing one part (men) to be bought off at the expense of the other (women). Both the hierarchy between men and the solidarity among them were crucial in this process of resolution. “Family wages” may be understood as a resolution of the conflict over women’s labor power which was occurring between patriarchal and capitalist interests at that time.

Family wages for most adult men imply men’s acceptance, and collusion in, lower wages for others, young people, women and socially defined inferior men as well (Irish, blacks, etc., the lowest groups in the patriarchal hierarchy who are denied many of the patriarchal benefits). Lower wages for women and children and inferior men are enforced by job segregation in the labor market, in turn maintained by unions and management as well as by auxiliary institutions like schools, training programs, and even families. Job segregation by sex, by ensuring that women have the lower paid jobs, both assures women’s economic dependence on men and reinforces notions of appropriate spheres for women and men. For most men, then, the development of family wages secured the material base of male domination in two ways. First women earn lower wages than men. The lower pay women receive in the labor market perpetuates men’s material advantage over women and encourages women to choose wifery as a career. Second, then, women do housework, childcare, and perform other services at home which benefit men directly.[35] Women’s home responsibilities in turn reinforce their inferior labor market position.[36]

The resolution that developed in the early twentieth century can be seen to benefit capitalist interests as well as patriarchal interests. Capitalists, it is often argued, recognized that in the extreme conditions which prevailed in the early nineteenth century industrialization, working class families could not adequately reproduce themselves. They realized that housewives produced and maintained healthier workers than wage-working wives and that educated children became better workers than noneducated ones. The bargain, paying family wages to men and keeping women home, suited the capitalists at the time as well as the male workers. Although the terms of the bargain have altered over time, it is still true that the family and women’s work in the family serve capital by providing a labor force and serve men as the space in which they exercise their privilege. Women, working to serve men and their families, also serve capital as consumers.[37] The family is also the place where dominance and submission are learned, as Firestone, the Frankfurt School, and many others have explained.[38] Obedient children become obedient workers; girls and boys each learn their proper roles.

While the family wage shows that capitalism adjusts to patriarchy, the changing status of children shows that patriarchy adjusts to capital. Children, like women, came to be excluded from wage labor. As children’s ability to earn money declined, their legal relationship to their parents changed. At the beginning of the industrial era in the United States, fulfilling children’s need for their fathers was thought to be crucial, even primary, to their happy development; fathers had legal priority in cases of contested custody. Carol Brown has shown that as children’s ability to contribute to the economic well-being of the family declined, mothers came increasingly to be viewed as crucial to the happy development of their children, and gained legal priority in cases of contested custody.[39] Here patriarchy adapted to the changing economic role of children: when children were productive, men claimed them; as children became unproductive, they were given to women.

The Partnership in the Twentieth Century

The prediction of nineteenth century marxists that patriarchy would wither away in the face of capitalism’s need to proletarianize everyone has not come true. Not only did they underestimate the strength and flexibility of patriarchy, they also overestimated the strength of capital. They envisioned the new social force of capitalism, which had torn feudal relations apart, as virtually all powerful. Contemporary observers are in a better position to see the difference between the tendencies of “pure” capitalism and those of “actual” capitalism as it confronts historical forces in everyday practice. Discussions of the “partnership” between capital and racial orders and of labor market segmentation provide additional examples of how “pure” capitalist forces meet up with historical reality. Great flexibility has been displayed by capitalism in this process.

Marxists who have studied South Africa argue that although racial orders may not allow the equal proletarianization of everyone, this does not mean that racial barriers prevent capital accumulation.[40] In the abstract, analysts could argue about which arrangements would allow capitalists to extract “the most” surplus value. Yet in a particular historical situation, capitalists must be concerned with social control, the resistance of groups of workers, and the intervention of the state. The state might intervene in order to reproduce the society as a whole; it might be necessary to police some capitalists, to overcome the worst tendencies of capital. Taking these factors into account, capitalists maximize greatest practicable profits. If for purposes of social control, capitalists organize work in a particular way, nothing about capital itself determines who (that is, which individuals with which ascriptive characteristics) shall occupy the higher, and who the lower rungs of the wage labor force. It helps, of course, that capitalists themselves are likely to be of the dominant social group and hence racist (and sexist). Capitalism inherits the ascribed characteristics of the dominant groups as well as of the subordinate ones.

Recent arguments about the tendency of monopoly capital to create labor market segmentation are consistent with this understanding.[41] Where capitalists purposely segment the labor force, using ascriptive characteristics to divide the working class, this clearly derives from the need for social control rather than accumulation imperatives in the narrow sense.[42] And over time, not all such divisive attempts are either successful (in dividing) nor profitable. The ability of capital to shape the workforce depends both on the particular imperatives of accumulation in a narrow sense (for example, is production organized in a way that requires communication among a large number of workers? if so, they had better all speak English)[43] and on social forces within a society which may encourage/force capital to adapt (the maintenance of separate wash-room facilities in South Africa for whites and blacks can only be understood as an economic cost to capitalists, but one less than the social cost of trying to force South African whites to wash up with blacks).

If the first element of our argument about the course of capitalist development is that capital is not all-powerful, the second is that capital is tremendously flexible. Capital accumulation encounters pre-existing social forms, and both destroys them and adapts to them. The “adaptation” of capital can be seen as a reflection of the strength of these pre-existing forms to persevere in new environments. Yet even as they persevere, they are not unchanged. The ideology with which race and sex are understood today, for example, is strongly shaped by the reinforcement of racial and sexual divisions in the accumulation process.

The Family and the Family Wage Today

We argued above, that, with respect to capitalism and patriarchy, the adaptation, or mutual accommodation, took the form of the development of the family wage in the early twentieth century. The family wage cemented the partnership between patriarchy and capital. Despite women’s increased labor force participation, particularly rapid since World War II, the family wage is still, we argue, the cornerstone of the present sexual division of labor—in which women are primarily responsible for housework and men primarily for wage work. Women’s lower wages in the labor market (combined with the need for children to be reared by someone) assure the continued existence of the family as a necessary income-pooling unit. The family, supported by the family wage, thus allows the control of women’s labor by men both within and without the family.

Though women’s increased wage work may cause stress for the family (similar to the stress Kautsky and Engels noted in the nineteenth century), it would be wrong to think that as a consequence, the concepts and the realities of the family and of the sexual division of labor will soon disappear. The sexual division of labor reappears in the labor market, where women work at women’s jobs, often the very jobs they used to do only at home—food preparation and service, cleaning of all kinds, caring for people, and so on. As these jobs are low-status and low-paying patriarchal relations remain intact, though their material base shifts somewhat from the family to the wage differential. Carol Brown, for example, has argued that we are moving from “family-based” to “industrially-based” patriarchy within capitalism.[44]

Industrially-based patriarchal relations are enforced in a variety of ways. Union contracts which specify lower wages, lesser benefits, and fewer advancement opportunities for women are not just atavistic hangovers—a case of sexist attitudes or male supremacist ideology—they maintain the material base of the patriarchal system. While some would go so far as to argue that patriarchy is already absent from the family (see, for example, Stewart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness,)[45] we would not. Although the terms of the compromise between capital and patriarchy are changing as additional tasks formerly located in the family are capitalized, and the location of the deployment of women’s labor power shifts,[46] it is nevertheless true, as we have argued above, that the wage differential caused by the extreme job segregation in the labor market reinforces the family, and, with it, the domestic division of labor, by encouraging women to marry. The “ideal” of the family wage—that a man can earn enough to support an entire family—may be giving way to a new ideal that both men and women contribute through wage earning to the cash income of the family. The wage differential, then, will become increasingly necessary in perpetuating patriarchy, the male control of women’s labor power. The wage differential will aid in defining women’s work as secondary to men’s at the same time as it necessitates women’s actual continued economic dependence on men. The sexual division of labor in the labor market and elsewhere should be understood as a manifestation of patriarchy which serves to perpetuate it.

Many people have argued that though the partnership between capital and patriarchy exists now, it may in the long run prove intolerable to capitalism; capital may eventually destroy both familial relations and patriarchy. The logic of the argument is that capitalist social relations (of which the family is not an example) tend to become universalized, that as women are increasingly able to earn money they will increasingly refuse to submit to subordination in the family, and that since the family is oppressive particularly to women and children, it will collapse as soon as people can support themselves outside it.

We do not think that the patriarchal relations embodied in the family can be destroyed so easily by capital, and we see little evidence that the family system is presently disintegrating. Although the increasing labor force participation of women has made divorce more feasible, the incentives to divorce are not overwhelming for women. Women’s wages allow very few women to support themselves and their children independently and adequately. The evidence for the decay of the traditional family is weak at best. The divorce rate has not so much increased, as it has evened out among classes; moreover, the remarriage rate is also very high. Up until the 1970 census, the first-marriage rate was continuing its historic decline. Since 1970 people seem to have been delaying marriage and childbearing, but most recently, the birth rate has begun to increase again. It is true that larger proportions of the population are now living outside traditional families. Young people, especially, are leaving their parents’ homes and establishing their own households before they marry and start traditional families. Older people, especially women, are finding themselves alone in their own households after their children are grown and they experience separation or death of a spouse. Nevertheless, trends indicate that the new generations of young people will form nuclear families at some time in their adult lives in higher proportions than ever before. The cohorts, or groups of people, born since 1930 have much higher rates of eventual marriage and child rearing than previous cohorts. The duration of marriage and childrearing may be shortening, but its incidence is still spreading.[47]

The argument that capital “destroys” the family also overlooks the social forces which make family life appealing. Despite critiques of nuclear families as psychologically destructive, in a competitive society the family still meets real needs for many people. This is true not only of long-term monogamy, but even more so for raising children. Single parents bear both financial and psychic burdens. For working class women, in particular, these burdens make the “independence” of labor force participation illusory. Single parent families have recently been seen by policy analysts as transitional family formations which become two-parent families upon remarriage.[48]

It could be that the effects of women’s increasing labor force participation are found in a declining sexual division of labor within the family, rather than in more frequent divorce, but evidence for this is also lacking. Statistics on who does housework, even in families with wage earning wives, show little change in recent years; women still do most of it.[49] The “double day” is a reality for wage-working women. This is hardly surprising since the sexual division of labor outside the family, in the labor market, keeps women financially dependent on men—even when they earn a wage themselves. The future of patriarchy does not, however, rest solely on the future of familial relations. For patriarchy, like capital, can be surprisingly flexible and adaptable.

Whether or not the patriarchal division of labor, inside the family and elsewhere, is “ultimately” intolerable to capital, it is shaping capitalism now. As we illustrate below, patriarchy both legitimates capitalist control and delegitimates certain forms of struggle against capital.

Ideology in the Twentieth Century

Patriarchy, by establishing and legitimating hierarchy among men (by allowing men of all groups to control at least some women), reinforces capitalist control, and capitalist values shape the definition of patriarchal good.

The psychological phenomena Firestone identifies are particular examples of what happens in relationships of dependence and domination. They follow from the realities of men’s social power—which women are denied—but they are shaped by the fact that they happen in the context of a capitalist society.[50] If we examine the characteristic of men as radical feminists describe them—competitive, rationalistic, dominating—they are much like our description of the dominant values of capitalist society.

This “coincidence” may be explained in two ways. In the first instance, men, as wage-laborers, are absorbed in capitalist social relations at work, driven into the competition these relations prescribe, and absorb the corresponding values.[51] The radical feminist description of men was not altogether out of line for capitalist societies. Secondly, even when men and women do not actually behave in the way sexual norms prescribe, men claim for themselves those characteristics which are valued in the dominant ideology. So, for example, the authors of Crestwood Heights found that while the men, who were professionals, spent their days manipulating subordinates (often using techniques that appeal to fundamentally irrational motives to elicit the preferred behaviour), men and women characterized men as “rational and pragmatic.” And while the women devoted great energies to studying scientific methods of child-rearing and child development, men and women in Crestwood Heights characterized women as “irrational and emotional.”[52]

This helps to account not only for “male” and “female” characteristics in capitalist societies, but for the particular form sexist ideology takes in capitalist societies. Just as women’s work serves the dual purpose of perpetuating male domination and capitalist production, so sexist ideology serves the dual purpose of glorifying male characteristics/capitalist values, and denigrating female characteristics/social need. If women were degraded or powerless in other societies, the reasons (rationalizations) men had for this were different. Only in a capitalist society does it make sense to look down on women as emotional or irrational. As epithets, they would not have made sense in the renaissance. Only in a capitalist society does it make sense to look down on women as “dependent.” “Dependent” as an epithet would not make sense in feudal societies. Since the division of labor ensures that women as wives and mothers in the family are largely concerned with the production of use values, the denigration of these activities obscures capital’s inability to meet socially-determined need at the same time that it degrades women in the eyes of men, providing a rationale for male dominance. An example of this may be seen in the peculiar ambivalence of television commercials. On one hand, they address themselves to the real obstacles to providing for socially-determined needs: detergents that destroy clothes and irritate skin, shoddily made goods of all sorts. On the other hand, concern with these problems must be denigrated; this is accomplished by mocking women, the workers who must deal with these problems.

A parallel argument demonstrating the partnership of patriarchy and capitalism may be made about the sexual division of labor in the work force. The sexual division of labor places women in low-paying jobs, and in tasks thought to be appropriate to women’s role. Women are teachers, welfare workers, and the great majority of workers in the health fields. The nurturant roles that women play in these jobs are of low status in part because men denigrate women’s work. They are also of low status because capitalism emphasizes personal independence and the ability of private enterprise to meet social needs, emphases contradicted by the need for collectively-provided social services. As long as the social importance of nurturant tasks can be denigrated because women perform them, the confrontation of capital’s priority on exchange value by a demand for use values can be avoided. In this way, it is not feminism, but sexism that divides and debilitates the working class.

IV. Towards a More Progressive Union

Many problems remain for us to explore. Patriarchy as we have used it here remains more a descriptive term than an analytical one. If we think marxism alone inadequate, and radical feminism itself insufficient, then we need to develop new categories. What makes our task a difficult one is that the same features, such as the division of labor, often reinforce both patriarchy and capitalism, and in a thoroughly patriarchal capitalist society, it is hard to isolate the mechanisms of patriarchy. Nevertheless, this is what we must do. We have pointed to some starting places: looking at who benefits from women’s labor power, uncovering the material base of patriarchy, investigating the mechanisms of hierarchy and solidarity among men. The questions we must ask are endless.

[...]

The struggle against capital and patriarchy cannot be successful if the study and practice of the issues of feminism are given up. A struggle aimed only at capitalist relations of oppression will fail, since their underlying supports in patriarchal relations of oppression will be overlooked. And the analysis of patriarchy is essential to a definition of the kind of socialism that would destroy patriarchy, the only kind of socialism useful to women. While men and women share a need to overthrow capitalism they retain interests particular to their gender group. It is not clear—from our sketch, from history, or from male socialists—that the “socialism” being struggled for is the same for both men and women. For a “humane socialism” would require not only consensus on what the new society should look like and what a healthy person should look like, but more concretely, it would require that men relinquish their privilege.

As women we must not allow ourselves to be talked out of the urgency and importance of our tasks, as we have so many times in the past. We must fight the attempted coercion, both subtle and not so subtle, to abandon feminist objectives.

This suggests two strategic considerations. First, a struggle to establish socialism must be a struggle in which groups with different interests form an alliance. Women should not trust men to “liberate” them “after the revolution,” in part because there is no reason to think they would know how; in part because there is no necessity for them to do so; in fact their immediate self interest lies in our continued oppression. Instead we must have our own organizations and our own power base. Second, we think the sexual division of labor within capitalism has given women a practice in which we have learned to understand what human interdependence and needs are. We agree with Lise Vogel that while men have long struggled against capital, women know what to struggle for.[53] As a general rule, men’s position in patriarchy and capitalism prevents them from recognizing both human needs for nurturance, sharing, and growth, and the potential for meeting those needs in a non-hierarchical, non-patriarchal society. But even if we raise their consciousness, men might assess the potential gains against the potential losses and choose the status quo. Men have more to lose than their chains.

As feminist socialists, we must organize a practice which addresses both the struggle against patriarchy and the struggle against capitalism. We must insist that the society we want to create is a society in which recognition of interdependence is liberation rather than shame, nurturance is a universal, not an oppressive practice, and in which women do not continue to support the false as well as the concrete freedoms of men.

Iris Marion Young, Beyond the Unhappy Marriage (1981)

Iris Young, “Beyond the Unhappy Marriage: A Critique of Dual Systems Theory,” Women & Revolution: A Discussion of the unhappy marriage of Marxism and Feminism, ed. by Lydia Sargent. Black Rose Books, 1981.

Even in its title Hartmann’s essay reflects what has been the specific project of socialist feminism: to “wed” the best aspects of the new wave of feminist theory developed in the sixties and seventies to marxian theory, thereby transforming marxian theory. Hartmann argues that this marriage has thus far not succeeded. She recommends that the marriage between marxism and feminism be put on a stronger footing by developing a theoretical account which gives as much weight to the system of patriarchy as to the system of capitalism. Rather than perceiving the particular situation of women as an effect of capitalism, as she believes Engels, Mitchell, Dalla Costa, and Zaretsky do, we should understand that the system of patriarchy is at least of equal importance for understanding the situation of women. Socialist feminist theory thus should seek the “laws of motion” of the system of patriarchy, the internal dynamic and contradictions of patriarchy, and articulate how these interact and perhaps conflict with the internal dynamic of capitalism.

Hartmann’s essay is not the first to have proposed this dual systems theory for socialist feminism. On the contrary, the majority of socialist feminists espouse some version of the dual systems theory. I shall argue, however, that the dual systems theory will not patch up the unhappy marriage of marxism and feminism. There are good reasons for believing that the situation of women is not conditioned by two distinct systems of social relations which have distinct structures, movement, and histories. Feminist marxism cannot be content with a mere “wedding” of two theories; marxism and feminism, reflecting two systems, capitalism and patriarchy. Rather, the project of socialist feminism should be to develop a single theory out of the best insights of both marxism and radical feminism, which can comprehend capitalist patriarchy as one system in which the oppression of women is a core attribute.

The Dual Systems Theory

As with most other proponents of the dual systems theory, dissatisfaction with both traditional marxism and radical feminism taken alone motivates Hartmann to develop her conception of the dual systems theory. She states that the categories of traditional marxism are essentially gender-blind and that therefore marxian analyses of women’s situation under capitalism have failed to bring issues of gender differentiation and hierarchy explicitly into focus.

Feminist theory has corrected this failing by developing the concept of patriarchy to describe and analyze gender hierarchy. Radical feminist theory, however, according to Hartmann, has several problems. It focuses too exclusively on child rearing as determining women’s situation. It tends to view patriarchy as merely a psychological or cultural phenomenon, rather than as a system having a material base in real social relations. Finally, the radical feminist account tends to view patriarchy as basically unchanging through most if not all of history.

Hartmann then proposes a dual systems theory to remedy the weaknesses both of traditional marxism and radical feminism. We must understand women’s oppression in our society as an effect of both capitalism and patriarchy. Patriarchy is defined as “a set of social relations between men, which have a material base, and which, though hierarchical, establish or create interdependence and solidarity among men that enable them to a dominate women” (Hartmann, p. 14). Patriarchal relations are phenomena distinct from the economic relations of production analyzed by traditional marxism. Capital and patriarchy are distinct forms of social relations and distinct sets of interests which do not stand in any necessary relationship and even exist in potential conflict. Even though it is difficult to separate analytically the specific elements of society which belong to patriarchy and those which belong to capitalism, we must do so. We must isolate the specific “laws of motion” of patriarchy, distinct from the mode and relations of production, and understand the specific contradictions of the system of patriarchy in their relation to the specific contradictions of the system of capitalism.[54]

All versions of the dual systems theory start from the premise that patriarchal relations designate a system of relations distinct from and independent of the relations of production described by traditional marxism. An account can take two possible directions in describing how patriarchy is separate from the economic system of production relations. On the one hand, one can retain the radical feminist concept of patriarchy as an ideological and psychological structure. The resulting dual systems theory will then attempt to give an account of the interaction of these ideological and psychological structures with the material relations of society. On the other hand, one can develop an account of patriarchy as itself a system of material social relations, existing independently of and interacting with the social relations of production.

Juliet Mitchell’s approach in Psychoanalysis and Feminism represents an example of the first of these alternatives. She takes patriarchy as a universal and formal ideological structure. “Patriarchy describes the universal culture—however, each specific mode of production expresses this in different ideological forms.”[55]

Men enter into the class dominated structures of history while women (as women, whatever their work in actual production) remain defined by the kinship pattern of organization. Differences of class, historical epoch, specific social situation alter the expression of femininity; but in relation to the law of the father, women’s position across the board is a comparable one.[56]

Mitchell’s idea seems to be that the patriarchal structures which she claims freudian theory articulates exist as a pre- or non-historical ideological backdrop to changes in the mode of production. This ideological and psychological structure lying outside economic relations persists in the same form throughout. She does not deny, of course, that women’s situations differ concretely in different social circumstances. We account for this variation in women’s situation by the way in which the particular structures of a given mode of production interact with the universal structures of patriarchy.

This version of the dual systems theory inappropriately dehistoricizes and universalizes women’s oppression. Representing patriarchy as a universal system having the same basic structure through history can lead to serious cultural, racial, and class biases.[57] Describing the differences in the form and character of women’s situation in different social circumstances as merely different “expressions” of one and the same universal system of patriarchy, moreover, trivializes the depth and complexity of women’s oppression.

The main problem with this version of the dual systems theory, however, is that it does not succeed in giving the alleged system of patriarchy equal weight with and independence from the system of a mode of production. It conceives of all concrete social relations as belonging to the economic system of production relations. Thus it leaves no material weight to the system of patriarchy, which it defines in its essence as independent of the system of production relations. Thus it ends by ceding to the traditional theory of production relations the primary role in giving an account of women’s situation. The theory of patriarchy supplies the form of women’s oppression, but traditional marxist theory supplies its content, specificity, differentiation, and motors of change. Thus this version of the dual systems theory fails in undermining traditional marxism because it cedes to that marxism theoretical hegemony over historically material social relations.[58]

Recognizing these weaknesses in the first option for a dual systems theory, Hartmann chooses the second. She emphasizes that patriarchy has a material base in the structure of concrete relations, and maintains that the system of patriarchy itself undergoes historical transformation. Precisely these strengths of Hartmann’s account, however, weaken her argument for a dual systems theory which conceives of patriarchy as a system distinct from the relations of production. If, as Hartmann maintains, “the material base upon which patriarchy rests lies most fundamentally in men’s control over women’s labor power,” and if “men maintain this control by excluding women from access to some essential productive resources” (Hartmann, p. 15), then it does not seem possible to separate patriarchy from a system of social relations of production even for analytical purposes. If, as Hartmann states, patriarchal social relations in contemporary capitalism are not confined to the family, but also exist in the capitalist workplace and other institutions outside the family, it is hard to see by what principle we can separate these patriarchal relations from the social relations of capitalism. Hartmann concedes that “the same features, such as division of labor, often reinforce both patriarchy and capitalism, and in a thoroughly patriarchal capitalist society, it is hard to isolate the mechanisms of patriarchy” (Hartmann, p. 29). Yet she insists that we must separate patriarchy. It seems reasonable, however, to admit that if patriarchy and capitalism are manifest in identical social and economic structures they belong to one system, not two.

Several dual systems theorists who take the second approach, conceiving of patriarchy as a set of distinct material relations, solve this problem by positing patriarchy as a system or mode of production itself, which exists alongside the mode of capitalist production. Ann Ferguson, for example, argues that the family through history is the locus of a particular type of production distinct from the production of material goods. She calls this type of production sex-affective production with its own relations of production distinct from capitalist relations. Men exploit women in the contemporary nuclear family by appropriating their sex-affective labor without reciprocation. Women thus constitute a distinct class in the traditional marxian sense. The interaction of patriarchy and capitalism in contemporary society consists in the mutual interaction of these two modes of production which both overlap and stand in tension with one another.[59] Socialist feminists who regard the family under capitalism as a vestige of the feudal mode of production[60] hold a similar position with regard to women’s situation in contemporary society (that is: structured by the interaction of two modes of production) as do those who wish to distinguish mode of reproduction from mode of production.[61] Hartmann similarly distinguishes between two different “types” or “aspects” of production, the production of people and the production of things. She does not, however, posit the “production of people” as a distinct mode of production,[62] however, nor does she want to restrict this type of production to the family, though it is not clear where or how it takes place, nor how it can be distinguished from relations in which people produce things.

In order to have a dual systems theory which conceives patriarchy as a system of concrete relations as well as an ideological and psychological structure, it appears necessary to posit patriarchy in this fashion as a distinct system of production. Almost invariably, however, this approach relies on what Rosalind Petchesky calls a “model of separate spheres” which usually takes the form of distinguishing the family from the economy, and in locating the specific relations of patriarchy within the family.[63] There are, however, a number of problems with the model of separate spheres.

One of the defining characteristics of capitalism is the separation of productive activity from kinship relations, and thereby the creation of two spheres of social life. Making this point, and showing how this separation has created a historically unique situation for women, has been one of the main achievements of socialist feminist analysis.[64] The model of separate spheres presupposed by many dual systems theorists tends to hypostasize this division between family and economy specific to capitalism into a universal form.[65] Even within capitalism, moreover, this separation may be illusory. In their paper, “The Other Side of the Paycheck,” Batya Weinbaum and Amy Bridges argue, for example, that contemporary capitalism has not only rationalized and socialized production operations in accordance with its domination and profit needs, but that it has also rationalized and socialized the allegedly private work of consumption.[66]

Because the model of separate spheres assumes the primary sphere of patriarchal relations is the family, it fails to bring into focus the character and degree of women’s specific oppression as women outside the family. For example, it is difficult to view contemporary capitalism’s use of women as sexual symbols to promote consumption as a function of some separate sphere distinct from the economic requirements of monopoly capitalism. More mundanely, a dual systems theory does not appear to have the theoretical equipment to identify and analyze the specific forms of sexist oppression which women suffer in the contemporary workplace. When more than half the women over sixteen in the U.S. are at work at any one time, and when over 90 percent work outside the home at some time in their lives, such a failing may serve the interests of contemporary capitalism itself.

This, more generally, is the ultimate objection to any dual systems theory. However one formulates it, the dual systems theory allows traditional marxism to maintain its theory of production relations, historical change, and analysis of the structure of capitalism in a basically unchanged form. That theory, as Hartmann points out, is completely gender-blind. The dual systems theory thus accepts this gender-blind analysis of the relations of production, wishing only to add onto it a separate conception of the relations of gender hierarchy. Thus, not unlike traditional marxism, the dual systems theory tends to see the question of women’s oppression as merely an additive to the main questions of marxism.

As long as feminists are willing to cede the theory of material social relations arising out of laboring activity to traditional marxism, however, the marriage between feminism and marxism cannot be happy. If, as Hartmann claims, patriarchy’s base is a control over women’s labor that excludes women from access to productive resources, then patriarchal relations are internally related to production relations as a whole. Thus traditional marxian theory will continue to dominate feminism as long as feminism does not challenge the adequacy of the traditional theory of production relations itself. If traditional marxism has no theoretical place for analysis of gender relations and the oppression of women, then that theory is an inadequate theory of production relations. Our historical research coupled with our feminist intuitions tells us that the labor of women occupies a central place in any system of production, and that sexual hierarchy is a crucial element in any system of domination.[67] To correspond to these intuitions we need a theory of relations of production and the social relations which derive from and reinforce those relations which takes gender relations and the situation of women as core elements. Instead of marrying marxism, feminism must take over marxism and transform it into such a theory. We must develop an analytical framework which regards the material social relations of a particular historical social formation as one system in which gender differentiation is a core attribute.

Division of Labor Analysis

In this essay I will propose that gender division of labor must be a central category for such a theory, and I will sketch how that category might function in a feminist historical materialism. In my reading, many concrete socialist feminist analyses, including some propounding a dual systems theory, do not actually take patriarchy, but rather gender division of labor, as their central category. Thus in arguing for gender division of labor as a central category of feminist historical materialism I believe I am making explicit a characteristic of socialist feminist theory which already exists.

Traditional marxism takes class as its central category of analysis. Feminists have rightly claimed that this category does not aid the analysis of women’s specific oppression, or even its identification. The concept of class is indeed gender-blind. Precisely this conceptual flaw of the category class helped bring about the dual systems theory. Since class functions as the core concept of the marxian theory of social relations, and since it provides no place for analysis of gender differentiation and gender hierarchy, there appears to be no alternative but to seek another category and another system in which gender relations can appear. I suggest that there is another alternative, however. Agreeing that the category of class is gender blind and hence incapable of exposing women’s situation, we can nevertheless remain within the materialist framework by elevating the category of division of labor to a position as fundamental as, if not more fundamental than, that of class. This category can provide us with means of analyzing the social relations of laboring activity in a gender differentiated way.

[...]

Gender Division of Labor

With the term “gender division of labor” I intend to refer to all structured gender differentiation of labor in a society. Such traditional women’s tasks as bearing and rearing children, caring for the sick, cleaning, cooking, etc., fall under the category of labor as much as the making of objects in a factory. Using the category of production or labor to designate only the making of concrete material objects in a modern factory has been one of the unnecessary tragedies of marxian theory.[68] “Relations of production” or “social relations arising from laboring activity” should mean the social relations involved in any task or activity which the society defines as necessary. Thus in our own society, for example, the relation between female prostitutes and the pimps or organizations they work for is a relation of production in this sense. Use of the gender division of labor category provides the means for analyzing the social relations arising from the laboring activity of a whole society along the axis of gender.[69]

At a minimum, it seems to me that a gender division of labor analysis would attempt to answer the following questions: What are the major lines of gender division of labor in a particular social formation, and what is the nature and social meaning of the gender specified tasks? How does gender division of labor underlie other aspects of economic organization, and how does it underlie relations of power and domination in society, including gender hierarchy? How does gender division of labor relate to the organization of sexual and kinship relations? What accounts for the origin and transformation in this particular structure of gender division of labor? How have transformations in gender division of labor led to changes in the relations of men and women, other economic relations, political relations, and ideological structures?

Gender division of labor analysis can have a number of advantages over the approach of the dual systems theory. It brings gender relations and the position of women to the center of historical materialist analysis. A marxian account of the social relations of production must bring women’s specific situation into focus through gender division of labor analysis. Failure to do so results not merely in diminishing or ignoring the significance of male domination, which is bad enough, but also in missing crucial elements of the structure of economic and social relations as a whole. For example, it surely makes a difference to the economic organization of Greek and Roman society, and to the slave mode of production there, that women managed the households. Women thus had the most direct relationship with family slaves while men had mobility for trade and warfare, as well as leisure for the production of culture and participation in politics.[70] A similar point might be made about the women of the ruling class in medieval Europe.[71]

Gender division of labor analysis may provide a way of regarding gender relations as not merely a central aspect of relations of production, but as fundamental to their structure. For the gender division of labor is the first division of labor, and in so-called Primitive societies it is the only institutionalized division of labor. The development of other forms of social division of labor, such as the division between mental and manual labor, may thus be explicable only by appeal to transformations in the gender division of labor and the effect such changes have on the relations between members of each sex, as well as potentialities such changes make available to them.

More importantly, serious empirical investigation may reveal that the radical feminist account of class as based on sex—an account which the dual system theory abandons—may turn out to be appropriate for historical materialist theory. To do so one would not argue that class domination derives from sex oppression, as Shulamith Firestone does is the Dialectic of Sex.[72] Rather one would give an account of the emergence of class society out of changes in the gender division of labor. Engels, in the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, suggests something along these lines though he fails to recognize its implications, a failure which biases the whole account. More recently, in The Underside of History, Elise Boulding has suggested a connection between the rise of class stratified society and the fact that at a certain point in early societies men began to specialize in one trade while women did not.[73]

Gender division of labor analysis can also explain the origins and maintenance of women’s subordination in social structural terms. Neither a biological account nor a psychological account, for example, can show how men in a particular society occupy an institutionalized position of superiority in a particular society. Men can occupy such an institutionalized position of superiority only if the organization of social relations arising from laboring activity gives them a level of control over and access to resources that women do not have. Gender division of labor can help explain this differential access to the means of labor and control, and thus can help explain how the institutions of male domination originate, are maintained, and change.[74]

Biological and psychological elements have their place, of course, in an account of women’s situation and oppression. One among many factors conditioning the gender division of labor in most societies, for example, is women’s biological reproductive function. Any account of the gender division of labor, moreover, presupposes that there are genders—that is, socio-cultural division and classification of people according to their biological sex. Since any particular gender division of labor presupposes gender identification and symbolic elaboration, we need some account of gender. Such an account, I think, must be psychological. The best account we have thus far of the origins, symbolic and ideological significance, and implications of gender differentiation is the feminist appropriation of the freudian perspective in such works as Dorothy Dinnerstein’s The Mermaid and the Minotaur and Nancy Chodorow’s The Reproduction of Mothering. Such works have cogently argued that women’s relation to young children determines the development of gender differentiation as we know it, and explains why women signify “the other” in most cultural ideologies.[75] One must not confuse such biological accounts of the origins of gender identity and its symbolic structure, however, with accounts of the social power men have over women and their position of relative privilege...While these different accounts may reinforce one another, they belong to different levels of analysis.

Hartmann herself appears to take the division of labor by sex as the foundation of male domination, perhaps even of gender itself.

The strict division of labor by sex, a social invention common to all known societies, creates two very separate genders and a need for men and women to get together for economic reasons...The sexual division of labor is also the underpinning of sexual subcultures in which men and women experience life differently; it is the material base of male power which is exercised (in our society) not just in not doing housework and in securing superior employment, but psychologically as well. (Hartmann, p. 16)

Gender division of labor analysis allows us to do material analysis of the social relations of labor in gender specific terms without assuming that all women in general or all women in a particular society have a common and unified situation. I believe this to be one of the primary virtues of such an analysis. Because the dual systems theory posits a distinct system underlying the oppression of women, it tends to claim that qua women we are in an identical situation whatever our historical location or situation. Gender division of labor analysis, however, can avoid this false identification while still focusing on the gender specific situation and oppression of women. Gender division of labor analysis notices the broad axes of gender structuration of the relations of labor and distribution, and notices that certain tasks and functions in a particular society are always or usually performed by members of one sex. This does not necessarily commit it to any claims about the common situation of all members of that sex. In some societies every woman must perform some tasks, but in most societies the tasks and positions of women vary, even though they are gender specific.

Not only can gender division of labor analysis take account of specific variations in the situations of women in its descriptions, but it can better explain such variations than can the dual systems theory. In particular, explaining variations in the kind or degree of women’s subordination in a society requires reference to what women concretely do in a society. For example, it is not surprising that women tend to stand in a more equal position to men when they have access to weapons and warfare than when men have a monopoly over these.[76] Gender division of labor analysis, moreover, may prove fruitful in giving an account of why in a few societies—the Iroquois, for example—women do not appear to occupy a subordinate position.[77]

In giving centrality to phenomena of gender division of labor I am not claiming that gender division of labor can explain all the aspects of women’s situation in a particular society. I am claiming only that in giving an account or explanation of some particular phenomenon of women’s situation one should articulate its relation to the gender division of labor. I conceive that gender division of labor should always be a part—but almost never the only part —of an explanation of some aspect of women’s situation.[78]

In proposing gender division of labor analysis for a feminist historical materialism, moreover, I am claiming that understanding the economic structure and relations of domination of a social formation as a whole requires paying attention to the structure of the gender division of labor. Through this category socialist feminists can view phenomena of class, domination, relations of production and distribution, on the one hand, and phenomena of women’s oppression, on the other hand, as aspects of the same socio-economic system. In this way we can demand of all marxists that they consider issues of women’s situation and oppression as integral to their analysis of a social formation. The major purpose of material in this section has been to suggest some directions for a feminist materialist theory which regards gender differentiation as a crucial element in an account of social relations of production in a society. The need for a theory that regards the position of women as crucial to the understanding of the system of capitalism should by now be clear. In the following section I will sketch a historical account of women’s situation in capitalism which might correspond to such a theory.

Gender Division and Capitalist Patriarchy

[...]

Throughout the history of capitalism women have served the classic functions Marx describes as those of the reserve army of labor.[79] They have served as a pool of workers who can be drawn into new areas of production without dislodging those already employed, and as a pool which can be used to keep both the wages and militancy of all workers low. Whenever in the history of capitalism large numbers of new workers have been needed in new and expanding industries, it is women more often than not who fill the need. The early textile mills in New England, for example, actively recruited women, as did the printers.[80] Many of the occupations which today are considered “women’s jobs” were areas of employment which opened in huge numbers during the nineteenth century and which required relatively skilled workers. This is true of nursing, for example, as well as saleswork, telephone workers, and clerical workers.[81]

Employers have always tended to exaggerate divisions among workers in order to keep wages low and to maintain worker docility. Women have been used consistently for such purposes. Throughout the history of capitalism women have served as a ready pool of strikebreakers. In the history of industrialization capitalists consistently replaced men with women and children when they mechanized the production process. Then once the will and expectations of the men had lowered, they rehired the men and removed the women and children.[82] A similar pattern seems to have operated during the depression of the 1930s. Employers replaced high priced men by lower priced women until the wage expectations of the men had fallen, at which point the employers once again replaced the women with men.[83] The literature on sex segregation of the contemporary labor force often suggests that sex segregated jobs are new to the twentieth century. A close look at the history of capitalism, however, reveals that a sexually mixed occupation has been rare. Those jobs in which women have dominated at any particular time, moreover, have usually been accorded less pay and prestige than male jobs of comparable skill.[84] In this way as well women have always served as a secondary labor force.

Preexistent patriarchal ideology and the traditional location of women’s labor near the home initially made possible the marginalization of women’s labor, according it secondary status. Bourgeois ideology, however, greatly expanded and romanticized, at the same time that it trivialized, women’s association with a domestic sphere and dissociation with work outside the home. The ideology of femininity which defined women as nonworking emerged as a consequence of and justification for the process of marginalization of women that had already begun. Not until well into the nineteenth century did treatises appear arguing that the true vocation of women was motherhood, that women were too frail to engage in heavy work, that women’s proper activity was to nurture and create an atmosphere of shelter and comfort for her family.[85]

Capitalists actively promoted, and continue to promote, the ideology of domestic womanhood to justify low wages for women, arguments for their indispensability, and to keep women from organizing.[86] Because only the bourgeois or petty bourgeois woman could live a life that corresponded to the ideology of femininity, that ideology acted as a powerful force in the upwardly mobile desires of the working class. Women internalized the image of femininity and both men and women took the “nonworking” wife as a sign of status. One should note here that among the working class a wife who was not a wage worker was freed to bring in income through petty commodity production or to produce food and clothing which would make buying less necessary.

Without question male workers had sexist motivations and used sexist arguments in the struggle for the family wage which Hartmann discusses and in the struggle for protective legislation for women and children which occurred at about the same time. Given the history of capitalism up until that time, however, one can see these motives and arguments as an effect and consolidation of the capitalist gender division of labor which accorded women a marginal and secondary position. One can, that is, explain the sexism of male workers without appealing to a system of social relations independent of capitalism, by seeing the essentially patriarchal character of the system of capitalism itself. One explains it by seeing how capitalism is an economic system in which a gender division of labor having a historically specific form and structure which by marginalizing women’s labor gives men a specific kind of privilege and status.

Capitalism does not merely use or adapt to gender hierarchy, as most dual systems theorists suggest. From the beginning it was founded on gender hierarchy which defined men as primary and women as secondary. The specific forms of the oppression of women which exist under capitalism are essential to its nature.[87] This does not mean, of course, that gender hierarchy did not exist prior to capitalism, nor does it mean that the development of capitalism’s gender division of labor did not depend on the prior existence of sexist ideology and a feudal gender division of labor. Many other aspects of capitalism developed out of feudal society, but at a certain point these developments took a specifically new form.

If we could find one instance of a capitalist society in which the marginalization of women’s labor did not occur, we might be entitled to consider it a characteristic external to the structure of capitalism. We can find no such instance, however. In her book Women’s Role in Economic Development, Ester Boserup documents in detail that the situation of women in third world economies seems to worsen with the introduction of capitalist and “modern” industrial methods. Even where capitalism enters a society in which women’s work is the center of the economy, it tends to effect the marginalization of women’s labor.[88] In claiming that the capitalist economy requires the marginalization of women, I am not claiming that we cannot logically conceive of a capitalism in which the marginalization of women did not occur. I am claiming, rather, that given an initial gender differentiation and a preexisting sexist ideology, a patriarchal capitalism in which women function as a secondary labor force is the only historical possibility.

Practical Implications

A theory must be evaluated by standards of coherence, consistency, simplicity, explanatory power, etc. A social theory, however, in addition to these, should be judged according to its practical implications. A theory intended as part of a political movement should be judged according to how well it may be expected to further the goals of that movement. Thus in this concluding section I argue that the dual systems theory has some undesirable practical implications which further indicate the need for a feminist materialist theory which is an integral part of a revised marxism, rather than merely married to marxism.

The dual systems theory originally developed for a determinate practical reason. The left was male dominated, blatantly sexist and dismissed feminist concerns as merely bourgeois. Angry and frustrated socialist women began forming all women’s groups and arguing for the need for an autonomous women’s movement to correct the problems of the left and to develop the practice and theory of feminism. The dual systems theory arose in part as an element in this argument for an autonomous women’s movement. If capitalism and patriarchy, classism and sexism, each have a source in distinct social systems, then the necessity for a women’s movement autonomous from the mixed left follows most reasonably.

Let me make clear that I believe that an autonomous women’s movement is absolutely necessary both for women and the left today, for all the practical reasons usually articulated by feminists. Women must have the space to develop positive relations with each other, apart from men. We can best learn to develop our own organizing, decision making, speaking and writing skills in a supportive environment free from male dominance or paternalism. An autonomous women’s movement can best reach women who see the need for the struggle against sexism, but have not yet seen that struggle as integrated with the struggle for socialism. And so on.

The indubitable practical necessity of an autonomous women’s movement, however, does not show the need for a dual systems theory. The different positions of men and women within the capitalist patriarchal gender division of labor creates the strategic necessity for women to organize separately so that we are in a position to develop our own skills, make our own decisions, and struggle against men and their sexism. One need not draw the conclusion from this necessity which many socialist feminists draw, namely that these are two separate struggles against two separate systems.

I have some trouble conceiving what struggle against patriarchy as distinct from the struggle against capitalism might mean at a practical level. The issues of women’s reproductive rights, for example, are unquestionably on the front lines of the struggle for women’s liberation. If any cluster of issues could be singled out as involving specifically the struggle against patriarchy as distinct from the struggle against capitalism, one would think this would be it. Yet the actual struggle has been and must be against the integrated and virulent capitalist patriarchy we live in. In light of the recent supreme court ruling on the Hyde Amendment we know more than ever that the reproductive rights of poor and Third World women are more seriously threatened than those of other women. Not recognizing this has in the past been a serious failing of the women’s movement. In raising issues of women’s reproductive freedom, women confront the reality of the capitalist patriarchal medical system. Current struggles for reproductive rights, moreover, necessarily involve confronting the structures of the capitalist patriarchal state, which is presently in the midst of a fiscal crisis. From a practical perspective, then, it is simply not possible to separate this most central aspect of the struggle against patriarchal structures from the struggle against capitalist structures.

One might propose the feminist struggle against the sexual abuse of women as a struggle against patriarchal structures which does not entail struggle against capitalism. A few actions in this struggle need not have an explicitly anticapitalist thrust, such as rape counseling, or “take back the night” patrols. But sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace, for example, cannot be separated from the total system of hierarchy and subordination essential to contemporary capitalist production relations. Sexual harassment of one form or another is a routine way of dealing with women workers, and is an integral part of the superior-subordinate relation in many factory and office settings. The larger structure of the sexual objectification of women certainly cannot be separated from the capitalist sales effort which constantly exploits and exposes women’s bodies as symbols of pleasure, luxury, and convenience.[89]

There are urgent practical reasons, in my opinion, for rejecting the notion that patriarchy and capitalism are separate systems entailing distinct political struggles. Such an approach continues to see feminist political action as over and above anticapitalist socialist political action. This puts a double burden on those who identify themselves as socialist feminists, while it fails to confront other socialists directly.

As a result of the influence of feminism, many socialist individuals and organizations have become more self-conscious about examining their own sexist prejudices and practices, and they are more aware of the need to organize women and deal with women’s issues. By and large, however, socialists do not consider fighting women’s oppression as a central aspect of the struggle against capitalism itself. The dual systems theory encourages this by insisting that women’s specific oppression has its locus in a system other than capitalism. As a result, within the socialist movement women’s issues remain segregated, generally dealt with only by women, and the mixed socialist movement as a whole fails to take issues related to women’s oppression as seriously as others.

A theory of women’s oppression under capitalism which showed capitalism as essentially patriarchal could change the relation between feminist political practice and the struggle to transform capitalist institutions and relations. If it is the case that the marginalization of women and our functioning as a secondary labor force are central to capitalism as it developed historically and as it exists today, then the struggle against the oppression or women and our marginalization in this society is itself anticapitalist.

Barbara Ehrenreich has defined a socialist feminist as a socialist who goes to twice as many meetings.[90] This definition is not entirely tongue in cheek, for the present understanding of socialist feminism still tends to see the feminist practice as additional to the socialist practice. In this marriage we are presently like the harried secretary who also has to do all the housework at home.

In my view what distinguishes the politics of socialist feminism is adherence to the principles that engaging in feminist organizing projects in itself counts as valid socialist political work, and that all socialist political work should have a feminist dimension at least to the extent that explicit questions have been raised about the implications of the work for women’s oppression of women’s relation to a socialist movement. The dual systems theory does not provide the theoretical basis for justifying this claim about the meaning of socialist feminist politics. Only a theory which regards the conditions of women’s oppression as located in one system in which that oppression is a core element can give that basis.

1. Often paraphrased as “the husband and wife are one and that one is the husband,” English law held that “by marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband,” I. Blackstone, Commentaries, 1765, pp. 442–445, cited in Kenneth M. Davidson (Ruth B. Ginsburg, and Herma H. Kay, Sex Based Discrimination, St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishing Co., 1974), p. 117.↩

2. Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, edited, with an introduction by Eleanor Burke Leacock (New York: International Publishers, 1972).↩

3. Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1958). See esp. pp. 162–66 and p. 296.↩

4. Eli Zaretsky, “Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life,” Socialist Revolution, Part I in No. 13–14 (Jan–April 1973), pp. 66–125, and Part II in No. 15 (May–June 1973), pp. 19–70. Also Zaretsky, “Socialist Politics and the Family,” Socialist Revolution (now Socialist Review), no. 19 (Jan-March 1974), pp. 83–98, and Capitalism, the Family and Personal Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1976). Insofar as they claim their analyses are relevant to women, Bruce Brown’s Marx, Freud, and the Critique of Everyday Life (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973) and Henri Lefebvre’s Everyday Life in the Modern World (New York: Harper and Row, 1971) may be grouped with Zaretsky.↩

5. In this Zaretsky is following Margaret Benston (“The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation,” Monthly Review, vol. 21, no. 4, Sept. 1969, pp. 13–27), who made the cornerstone of her analysis that women have a different relation to capitalism than men. She argued that women at home produce use values, and that men in the labor market produce exchange values. She labelled women’s work precapitalist (and found in women’s common work the basis for their political unity). Zaretsky builds on this essential difference in men’s and women’s work, but labels them both capitalist.↩

6. Zaretsky, “Personal Life,” Part I, p. 114.↩

7. Mariarosa Dalla Costa, “Women and the Subversion of the Community,” in The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community by Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James (Bristol, England: Falling Wall Press, 1973; second edition) pamphlet, 78 pps.↩

8. It is interesting to note that in the original article (cited in n. 7 above) Dalla Costa suggests that wages for housework would only further institutionalize woman’s housewife role (pp. 32, 34) but in a note (n. 16, pp. 52–53) she explains the demand’s popularity and its use as a consciousness raising tool. Since then she has actively supported the demand. See Dalla Costa, “A General Strike,” in All Work and No Pay: Women, Housework, and the Wages Due, ed. Wendy Edmond and Suzie Fleming (Bristol, England: Falling Wall Press, 1975).↩

9. The text of the article reads: “We have to make clear that, within the wage, domestic work produces not merely use values, but is essential to the production of surplus value” (p. 31). Note 12 reads: “What we mean precisely is that housework as work is productive in the Marxian sense, that is, producing surplus value” (p. 52, original emphasis). To our knowledge this claim has never been made more rigorously by the wages for housework group. Nevertheless marxists have responded to the claim copiously.↩

10. The literature of the debate includes Lise Vogel, “The Earthly Family,” Radical America, vol. 7, no. 4–5 (July–October 1973), pp. 9–50; Ira Gerstein, “Domestic Work and Capitalism,” Radical America, vol. 7, no. 4–5 (July–October 1973), pp. 101–128; John Harrison, “Political Economy of Housework,” Bulletin of the Conference of Socialist Economists, vol. 3, no. 1 (1973); Wally Seccombe, “The Housewife and her Labour under Capitalism,” New Left Review, no. 83 (January–February 1974), pp. 3–24; Margaret Coulson, Branka Magas, and Hilary Wainwright, “‘The Housewife and her Labour under Capitalism’, A Critique,” New Left Review, no. 89 (January–February 1975), pp. 59–71; Jean Gardiner, “Women’s Domestic Labour,” New Left Review, no. 89 (January–February 1975), pp. 47–58; lan Gough and John Harrison, “Unproductive Labour and Housework Again” Bulletin of the Conference of Socialist Economists, vol. 4, no. 1 (1975); Jean Gardiner, Susan Himmelweit and Maureen Mackintosh, “Women’s Domestic Labour”; Bulletin of the Conference of Socialist Economists, vol. 4, no. 2 (1975); Wally Seccombe, “Domestic Labour: Reply to Critics,” New Left Review, no. 94 (November–December 1975), pp. 85–96; Terry Fee, “Domestic Labor: An Analysis of Housework and its Relation to the Production Process,” Review of Radical Political Economics, vol. 8, no. 1 (Spring 1976), pp. 1–8; Susan Himmelweit and Simon Mohun, “Domestic Labour and Capital,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, vol. 1, no. 1 (March 1977), pp. 15–31.↩

11. In the U.S., the most often-heard political criticism of the wages for housework group has been its opportunism.↩

12. Laura Oren documents this for the working class in “The Welfare of Women in Laboring Families: England, 1860–1950,” Feminist Studies, vol. 1, no. 3–4 (Winter–Spring 1973), pp. 107–25.↩

13. The late Stephen Hymer pointed out to us a basic weakness in Engels’ analysis in Origins, a weakness that occurs because Engels fails to analyze the labor process within the family. Engels argues that men enforced monogamy because they wanted to leave their property to their own children. Hymer argued that far from being a “gift,” among the petit bourgeoisie, possible inheritance is used as a club to get children to work for their fathers. One must look at the labor process and who benefits from the labor of which others.↩

14. This is a paraphrase. Karl Marx wrote: “The maintenance and reproduction of the working class is, and must ever be, a necessary condition to the reproduction of capital. But the capitalist may safely leave its fulfilment to the labourer’s instincts of self-preservation and propagation.” (Capital, New York: International Publishers, 1977, vol. 1, p. 572.).↩

15. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975.↩

16. “Politics of Ego: A Manifesto for New York Radical Feminists,” can be found in Rebirth of Feminism, ed. Judith Hole and Ellen Levine (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1971), pp. 440–443. “Radical feminists” are those feminists who argue that the most fundamental dynamic of history is men’s striving to dominate women. “Radical” in this context does not mean anti-capitalist, socialist, countercultural, etc., but has the specific meaning of this particular set of feminist beliefs or group of feminists. Additional writings of radical feminists, of whom the New York Radical Feminists were probably the most influential, can be found in Radical Feminism, ed. Ann Koedt (New York: Quadrangle Press, 1972).↩

17. Focussing on power was an important step forward in the feminist critique of Freud. Firestone argues, for example, that if little girls “envied” penises it was because they recognized that little boys grew up to be members of a powerful class and little girls grew up to be dominated by them. Powerlessness, not neurosis, was the heart of women’s situation. More recently, feminists have criticized Firestone for rejecting the usefulness of the concept of the unconscious. In seeking to explain the strength and continuation of male dominance, recent feminist writing has emphasized the fundamental nature of gender-based personality differences, their origins in the unconscious, and the consequent difficulty of their eradication. See Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1977), Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), and Jane Flax, “The Conflict Between Nurturance and Autonomy in Mother-Daughter Relationships and Within Feminism,” Feminist Studies, vol. 4, no. 2 (June 1978), pp. 141–189.↩

18. Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (New York: Avon Books, 1971), p. 25.↩

19. One example of this type of radical feminist history is Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will, Men, Women, and Rape (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975).↩

20. For the bourgeois social science view of patriarchy, see, for example, Weber’s distinction between traditional and legal authority, Max Weber: The Theories of Social and Economic Organization, ed. Talcott Parsons (New York: The Free Press, 1964), pp. 328–357. These views are also discussed in Elizabeth Fee, “The Sexual Politics of Victorian Social Anthropology,” Feminist Studies, vol. 1, nos. 3–4 (Winter–Spring 1973), pp. 23–29, and in Robert A. Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition (New York: Basic Books, 1966), especially Chapter 3, “Community.”↩

21. See Viana Muller, “The Formation of the State and the Oppression of Women: Some Theoretical Considerations and a Case Study in England and Wales,” Review of Radical Political Economics, vol. 9, no. 3 (Fall 1977), pp. 7–21.↩

22. The particular ways in which men control women’s access to important economic resources and restrict their sexuality vary enormously, both from society to society, from sub-group to sub-group, and across time. The examples we use to illustrate patriarchy in this section, however, are drawn primarily from the experience of whites in western capitalist countries. The diversity is shown in Towards an Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna Rapp Reiter (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), Woman, Culture and Society, ed. Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1974), and Females, Males, Families: A Biosocial Approach, by Lila Leibowitz (North Scituate, Massachusetts: Duxbury Press, 1978). The control of women’s sexuality is tightly linked to the place of children. An understanding of the demand (by men and capitalists) for children is crucial to understanding changes in women’s subordination.

Where children are needed for their present or future labor power, women’s sexuality will tend to be directed towards reproduction and childrearing. When children are seen as superfluous, women’s sexuality for other than reproductive purposes is encouraged, but men will attempt to direct it towards satisfying male needs. The Cosmo girl is a good example of a woman “liberated” from childrearing only to find herself turning all her energies toward attracting and satisfying men. Capitalists can also use female sexuality to their own ends, as the success of Cosmo in advertising consumer products shows.↩

23. Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women,” in Anthropology of Women, ed. Reiter, p. 159.↩

24. Himmelweit and Mohun point out that both aspects of production (people and things) are logically necessary to describe a mode of production because by definition a mode of production must be capable of reproducing itself. Either aspect alone is not self-sufficient. To put it simply the production of things requires people, and the production of people requires things. Marx, though recognizing capitalism’s need for people did not concern himself with how they were produced or what the connections between the two aspects of production were. See Himmelweit and Mohun, “Domestic Labour and Capital” (note 10 above).↩

25. For an excellent discussion of one such transition to socialism, see Batya Weinbaum, “Women in Transition to Socialism: Perspectives on the Chinese Case,” Review of Radical Political Economics, vol. 8, no. 1 (Spring 1976), pp. 34–58.↩

26. It is important to remember that in the pre-industrial period, women contributed a large share to their families’ subsistence—either by participating in a family craft or by agricultural activities. The initiation of wage work for women both allowed and required this contribution to take place independently from the men in the family. The new departure, then, was not that women earned income, but that they did so beyond their husbands’ or fathers’ control. Alice Clark, The Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Kelly, 1969) and Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers in the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850 (New York: Kelly, 1969) describe women’s pre-industrial economic roles and the changes that occurred as capitalism progressed. It seems to be the case that Marx, Engels, and Kautsky were not fully aware of women’s economic role before capitalism.↩

27. Karl Kautsky, The Class Struggle (New York: Norton, 1971), pp. 25–26.↩

28. We might add, “outside the household,” Kautsky, Class Struggle, p. 26, our emphasis.↩

29. Cited in Neil Smelser, Social Change and the Industrial Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), p. 301.↩

30. These examples are from Heidi I. Hartmann, “Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Job Segregation by Sex,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 1, no. 3, pt. 2 (Spring 1976), pp. 162–163.↩

31. Just as the factory laws were enacted for the benefit of all capitalists against the protest of some, so too, protective legislation for women and children may have been enacted by the state with a view toward the reproduction of the working class. Only a completely instrumentalist view of the state would deny that the factory laws and protective legislation legitimate the state by providing concessions and are responses to the demands of the working class itself.↩

32. For a more complete discussion of protective labor legislation and women, see Ann C. Hill, “Protective Labor Legislation for Women: Its Origin and Effect,” mimeographed (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Law School, 1970) parts of which have been published in Barbara A. Babcock, Ann E. Freedman, Eleanor H. Norton, and Susan C. Ross, Sex Discrimination and the Law: Cases and Remedies (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1975), an excellent law text. Also see Hartmann, “Job Segregation by Sex,” pp. 164–166.↩

33. A reading of Alice Clark, The Working Life of Women, and Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers, suggests that the expropriation of production from the home was followed by a social adjustment process creating the social norm of the family wage. Heidi Hartmann, in Capitalism and Women’s Work in the Home, 1900–1930 (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1974; forthcoming Temple University Press, 1980) argues, based on qualitative data, that this process occurred in the U.S. in the early 20th century. One should be able to test this hypothesis quantitatively by examining family budget studies for different years and noting the trend of the proportion of the family income for different income groups, provided by the husband. However, this data is not available in comparable form for our period. The “family wage” resolution has probably been undermined in the post World War II period. Carolyn Shaw Bell, in “Working Women’s Contributions to Family Income,” Eastern Economic Journal, vol. 1, no. 3 (July 1974), pp. 185–201, presents current data and argues that it is now incorrect to assume that the man is the primary earner in the family. Yet whatever the actual situation today or earlier in the century, we would argue that the social norm was and is that men should earn enough to support their families. To say it has been the norm is not to say that it has been universally achieved. In fact, it is precisely the failure to achieve the norm that is noteworthy. Hence the observation that in the absence of sufficiently high wages, “normative” family patterns disappear, as for example, among immigrants in the nineteenth century and third world Americans today. Oscar Handlin, Boston’s Immigrants (New York: Atheneum, 1968) discusses mid-nineteenth century Boston, where Irish women were employed in textiles; women constituted more than half of all wage laborers and often supported unemployed husbands. The debate about family structure among Black Americans today still rages; see Carol B. Stack, All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), esp. Chap. 1. We would also argue (see below) that for most families the norm is upheld by the relative places men and women hold in the labor market.↩

34. Hartmann, Women’s Work, argues that the non-working wife was generally regarded as part of the male standard of living in the early twentieth century (see p. 136, n. 6) and Gerstein, “Domestic Work,” suggests that the norm of the working wife enters into the determination of the value of male labor power (see p. 12).↩

35. The importance of the fact that women perform labor services for men in the home cannot be overemphasized. As Pat Mainardi said in “The Politics of Housework,” “[t]he measure of your oppression is his resistance” (in Sisterhood is Powerful, ed. Robin Morgan (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), p. 451). Her article, perhaps as important for us as Firestone on love, is an analysis of power relations between women and men as exemplified by housework.↩

36. Libby Zimmerman has explored the relation of membership in the primary and secondary labor markets to family patterns in New England. See her Women in the Economy: A Case Study of Lynn, Massachusetts, 1760–1974 (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Heller School, Brandeis, 1977). Batya Weinbaum is currently exploring the relationship between family roles and places in the labor market. See her “Redefining the Question of Revolution,” Review of Radical Political Economics, vol. 9, no. 3 (Fall 1977), pp. 54, 78, and The Curious Courtship of Women’s Liberation and Socialism (Boston: South End Press, 1978). Additional studies of the interaction of capitalism and patriarchy can be found in Zillah Eisenstein, ed., Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminist Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978).↩

37. See Batya Weinbaum and Amy Bridges, “The Other Side of the Paycheck: Monopoly Capital and the Structure of Consumption,” Monthly Review, vol. 28, no. 3 (July–Aug 1976), pp. 88–103, for a discussion of women’s consumption work.↩

38. For the view of the Frankfurt School, see Max Horkheimer, “Authority and the Family,” in Critical Theory (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972) and Frankfurt Institute of Social Research, “The Family,” in Aspects of Sociology (Boston: Beacon, 1972).↩

39. Carol Brown, “Patriarchal Capitalism and the Female-Headed Family,” Social Scientist (India), no. 40–41 (November–December 1975), pp. 28–39.↩

40. For more on racial orders, see Stanley Greenberg, “Business Enterprise in A Racial Order,” Politics and Society, vol. 6, no. 2 (1976), pp. 213–240, and Michael Burroway, The Color of Class in the Copper Mines: From African Advancement to Zambianization (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, Zambia Papers no.7, 1972).↩

41. See Michael Reich, David Gordon, and Richard Edwards, “A Theory of Labor Market Segmentation,” American Economic Review, vol. 63, no. 2 (May 1973), pp. 359–365, and the book they edited, Labor Market Segmentation (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1975) for a discussion of labor market segmentation.↩

42. See David M. Gordon, “Capitalist Efficiency and Socialist Efficiency,” Monthly Review, vol. 28, no. 3 (July–August 1976), pp. 19–39, for a discussion of qualitative efficiency (social control needs) and quantitative efficiency (accumulation needs).↩

43. For example, Milwaukee manufacturers organized workers in production first according to ethnic groups, but later taught all workers to speak English, as technology and appropriate social control needs changed. See Gerd Korman, Industrialization, Immigrants, and Americanizers, the View from Milwaukee, 7866–7927 (Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1967).↩

44. Carol Brown, “Patriarchal Capitalism.” (New York: Random House, 1976.)↩

45. (New York: Random House, 1976.)↩

46. Jean Gardiner, in “Women’s Domestic Labour” (see n. 10), clarifies the causes for the shift in location of women’s labor, from capital’s point of view. She examines what capital needs (in terms of the level of real wages, the supply of labor, and the size of markets) at various stages of growth and of the business cycle. She argues that in times of boom or rapid growth it is likely that socializing housework (or more accurately capitalizing it) would be the dominant tendency, and that in times of recession, housework will be maintained in its traditional form. In attempting to assess the likely direction of the British economy, however, Gardiner does not assess the economic needs of patriarchy. We argue in this essay that unless one takes patriarchy as well as capital into account one cannot adequately assess the likely direction of the economic system.↩

47. For the proportion of people in nuclear families, see Peter Uhlenberg, “Cohort Variations in Family Life Cycle Experiences of U.S. Females,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, vol. 36, no. 5, (May 1974), pp. 284–92. For remarriage rates see Paul C. Glick and Arthur J. Norton, “Perspectives on the Recent Upturn in Divorce and Remarriage,” Demography, vol. 10 (1974), pp. 301–14. For divorce and income levels see Arthur J. Norton and Paul C. Glick, “Marital Instability: Past, Present, and Future,” Journal of Social Issues, vol. 32, no. 1 (1976), pp. 5–20. Also see Mary Jo Bane, Here to Stay: American Families in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1976).↩

48. Heather L. Ross and Isabel B. Sawhill, Time of Transition: The Growth of Families Headed by Women (Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute, 1975).↩

49. See Kathryn E. Walker and Margaret E. Woods, Time Use: A Measure of Household Production of Family Goods and Services (Washington, D.C.: American Home Economics Association, 1976).↩

50. Richard Sennett’s and Johnathan Cobb’s The Hidden Injuries of Class (New York: Random House, 1973) examines similar kinds of psychological phenomena within hierarchical relationships between men at work.↩

51. This should provide some clues to class differences in sexism, which we cannot explore here.↩

52. See John R. Seeley, et al., Crestwood Heights (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956), pp. 382–94. While men’s place may be characterized as “in production” this does not mean that women’s place is simply “not in production”—her tasks, too, are shaped by capital. Her non-wage work is the resolution, on a day-to-day basis, of production for exchange with socially determined need, the provision of use values in a capitalist society (this is the context of consumption). See Weinbaum and Bridges, “The Other Side of the Paycheck,” for a more complete discussion of this argument. The fact that women provide “merely” use values in a society dominated by exchange values can be used to denigrate women.↩

53. Lise Vogel, “The Earthly Family” (see no. 10).↩

54. For some other statements of the dual systems theory, see Linda Phelps, “Patriarchy and Capitalism,” Quest, vol. 2, no. 2, Fall 1975; Zillah Eisenstein, “Developing a Theory of Capitalist Patriarchy,” in Eisenstein, ed., Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979), pp. 5–40.↩

55. Juliet Mitchell, Psychoanalysis and Feminism (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), p.409.↩

56. Ibid, p.406.↩

57. See Mina Davis Caufield, “Universal Sex Oppression: A Critique from Marxist Anthropology,” Catalyst, no. l0–11, Summer 1977, pp. 60–77.↩

58. Compare McDonough and Harrison’s criticism of Mitchell in “Patriarchy and Relations of Production,” in Kuhn and Wolpe, ed., Feminism and Materialism (London: Routeledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 12–25.↩

59. Ann Ferguson, “Women as a New Revolutionary Class,” in Pat Walker, ed., Between Labor and Capital (Boston: South End Press, 1979), pp. 279–312.↩

60. This is basically the position Mitchell articulates in Women’s Estate (New York: Vintage Books, 1973); see also Sheila Rowbotham, Women’s Consciousness, Man’s World (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1973), pp. 61–63.↩

61. See Jane Flax, “Do Feminists Need Marxism?” Quest, vol. 3, no. l, Summer 1976, p. 55.↩

62. There are clear problems with Ferguson’s attempt to describe the nuclear family as a distinct mode of production, but I do not wish to take up space in the paper analyzing them. Firstly, in her idea of sex-affective production it does not seem that any material goods are produced; it is difficult to grasp the notion of a mode of production, in the marxian sense, which does not produce any material goods. Second, her idea presupposes that sex-affective mode of production could have some kind of independent existence from the capitalist mode of production. Given that no material goods are produced in it, however, such independence is not viable.↩

63. See Rosalind Petchesky, “Dissolving the Hyphen: A Report on Marxist Feminist Groups 1–5,” in Eisenstein, ed., op. cit., pp. 373–387.↩

64. See Eli Zaretsky, Capitalism, the Family and Personal Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1976); Ann Oakley, Women’s Work: The Housewife Past and Present (New York: Vintage Books, 1974); Roberta Hamilton, The Liberation of Women: A Study of Patriarchy and Capitalism (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978).↩

65. In his Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, which is the starting point for many of these analyses, Engels manifests the same tendency. He divides all labor through all historical periods into private labor and public labor.↩

66. Batya Weinbaum and Amy Bridges, “The Other Side of the Paycheck: Monopoly Capital and the Structure of Consumption,” in Eisenstein, ed., op. cit., pp. 190–205.↩

67. For an incisive and persuasive recent account of the basis of class society and the state in the patriarchal family, see Sherry B. Ortner, “The Virgin and the State,” Feminist Studies, vol. 4, no. 3, October 1978, pp.19–36.↩

68. See Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 75–95.↩

69. In previous versions of this paper I have designated this category “sexual division of labor,” in conformity with common usage. I have since come to the conclusion, however, that “gender division of labor” better captures the phenomenon, because through the concept of “gender” it focuses on the social meaning of the division, rather than a biological or “natural” division.↩

70. For an account of the economic and political implications of women’s relation to the household in ancient Greek society, see Marilyn Arthur, “‘Liberated’ Women: The Classical Era,” in Bridenthaland Koonz, ed., Becoming Visible (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), pp. 60–89; see also Elise Boulding, The Underside of History (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1976), pp. 257–263.↩

71. See JoAnn McNamara and Suzanne F. Wemple, “Sanctity and Power: The Dual Pursuit of Medieval Women,” in Bridenthal and Koonz, ed., op. cit.; see also Elizabeth Janeway, Man’s World, Woman’s Place (New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1971), pp. 13–22.↩

72. In The Dialectic of Sex (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), Firestone took herself to be giving a materialist account of women’s oppression. The problem with her account, I am suggesting, may not be this project of explaining class by sex, but the completely psychologistic manner in which she does so.↩

73. Boulding, op. cit.↩

74. There is much evidence, for example, that whether a society is matrifocal or patrifocal depends in large measure on the gender division of labor. See Bette S. Denich, “Sex and Power in the Balkans,” in Rosaldo and Lamphere, ed., Woman, Culture and Society (Stanford University Press, 1974).↩

75. Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: Berkeley Unversity Press, 1978); Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur (New York: Harper and Row, 1976).↩

76. Boulding, op. cit.↩

77. Much of Judith Brown’s account of Iroquois women’s relatively high status depends upon looking at their role in production and the control over resources they have by virtue of that role. See “Iroquois Women: An Ethnohistorical Note,” in Rayna Reiter, ed., Toward an Anthropology of Women (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976).↩

78. Mary Ryan’s book, Womanhood in America from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975) might be taken as an example of the application of the approach I am recommending. In her accounts and explanations she always makes reference to the economic situation of women and their laboring activity, both in and outside the home. She never reduces the totality of the situation at any time to this division of labor analysis, however, and always includes other elements in a particular account.↩

79. Marx, Capital, Vol. I (New York: International Publishers, 1967), pp. 631–639.↩

80. Elizabeth Faulkner Baker, Technology and Women’s Work (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), Chapter I.↩

81. Ibid., see also Alice Kessler-Harris, “Women, Work and the Social Order,” in Carroll, ed., op. cit., p. 335.↩

82. Baker, Chapter 1; Kessler-Harris, “Stratifying by Sex: Understanding the History of Working Women,” in Edwards, Reich, and Gordon, ed., Labor Market Segmentation (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company. 1975), pp. 217–242.↩

83. Jane Humphries, “Women: Scapegoats and Safety Valves in the Great Depression,” in Review of Radical Political Economics, vol. 8, no.1, Spring 1975. pp. 98–121.↩

84. Baker, op. cit. and Kessler-Harris, “Stratifying by Sex...” Both detail the degree of sex segregation in the U.S. in the nineteenth century; for a comparable account for Europe, see Teresa M. McBride, “The Long Road Home: Women’s Work and Industrialization,” in Bridenthal and Koonz, ed., op. cit.↩

85. Ehrenreich and English, For Her Own Good (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Press, 1978); Ryan, Chapter 3; Ann D. Gordon and Mari Jo Buhle, “Sex and Class in Colonial and Nineteenth Century America,” in Carroll, op. cit.↩

86. Kessler-Harris, “Women, Work and the Social Order,” pp. 333–337.↩

87. Ann Foreman argues that the specific type of domestic labor which is allocated to women under capitalism is a form of labor peculiar to and definitive of capitalism. Wage labor, that is to say, is not the only form of labor that capitalism creates; it also creates privatized househould labor, and Foreman argues that this is an integral clement of the capitalist mode of production. See Femininity as Alienation (London: Pluto Press, 1977).↩

88. Ester Boserup, Women’s Role in Economic Development (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1970); see also E.M. Chaney and M. Schmink, “Women and Modernization: Access to Tools,” in Nash and Safa, ed., Sex and Class in Latin America (New York: Praeger, 1976).↩

89. See Ryan, op. cit., pp. 251–304.↩

90. Working Papers in Socialist Feminism, pamphlet available from the New American Movement.↩

Social Reproduction

Lise Vogel’s book Marxism and the Oppression of Women sought to forge a “unitary theory” that locates household labor as a specific link in the cycle of capitalist reproduction. As a foundational text for the currently dynamic Marxist-Feminist current known as Social Reproduction feminism, here we include two chapters. The secondary reading is the more recent introduction to her book.

Secondary: David McNally and Susan Ferguson, “Introduction,” from Lise Vogel, Marxism and the Oppression of Women. Haymarket Books, 2014.

Lise Vogel, Marxism and the Oppression of Women (1983)

Published: Lise Vogel, Marxism and the Oppression of Women. Rutgers University Press, 1983.

Source: Published: Lise Vogel, Marxism and the Oppression of Women, introduction by Susan Ferguson and David McNally. Haymarket Books, 2013.

Chapter 10, The Reproduction of Labour-Power

The argument in these pages has taken the form of a critical reading of certain socialist texts pertaining to women’s oppression and women’s liberation. It is time to sum up the results. Marx, Engels, and their immediate followers contributed more to understanding the oppression of women than participants in the modern women’s movement usually recognise. At the same time, the socialist tradition’s approach to those issues presumed to make up the so-called woman-question has been not only incomplete but seriously flawed. In the absence of any stable analytical framework, socialists have had to rely for theoretical guidance on a potpourri of notions drawn from various sources. This hundred year legacy of ambiguity still hampers work on the question of women, although recent developments suggest that the conditions now exist for resolving it, both in theory and in practice. Women today take an increasingly active role in revolutionary change around the world, thereby forcing socialist movements to acknowledge and facilitate their participation. Against this background, recent advances made by socialist feminist theorists have a critical importance. They reflect a new impetus to develop an adequate theoretical foundation for socialist work on women. And they move beyond many of the weaknesses inherited from the socialist tradition.

Thus, objectively speaking, the concerns of socialists within the modern women’s movement and of revolutionaries within the socialist movement have converged. The relationship of women’s struggles to social transformation, a question that is simultaneously practical and theoretical, once again appears as a pressing matter on the revolutionary agenda.

In the theoretical sphere, the first requirement for further forward motion is to abandon the idea that the so-called woman-question represents an adequate category of analysis. Despite its long history as a serious issue for socialists, the term turns out to have no coherent meaning as a theoretical concept. The various notions associated with it actually conceal, as socialist feminists have pointed out, a theoretical problem of fundamental significance: the reproduction of labour-power in the context of overall social reproduction. Socialist theorists have never sufficiently confronted this problem, yet the rudiments of a usable approach lie buried just below the surface of Marx’s analysis of social reproduction in Capital.

The discussion in this and the following chapter suggests a theoretical framework that can situate the phenomenon of women’s oppression in terms of social reproduction. Given the weak tradition of theoretical work on the question of women, some words of caution are in order. Theory is, of course, critical to the development of specific analyses of women’s situation. Explicitly or implicitly, empirical phenomena must be organised in terms of a theoretical construct in order to be grasped conceptually. At the same time, theory is, by its very nature, severely limited. As a structure of concepts, a theoretical framework simply provides guidance for the understanding of actual societies, past and present.

However indispensable this theoretical guidance may be, specific strategies, programmes, or tactics for change cannot be deduced directly from theory. Nor can the phenomenon of variation in women’s situation over time, and in different societies, be addressed solely by means of theory. These are matters for concrete analysis and historical investigation. By contrast, the argument in these chapters is largely theoretical, and it is therefore necessarily abstract. No attempt is made to develop detailed analyses of women’s oppression in, for example, contemporary capitalist society. Such studies, and the political conclusions and tasks they imply, will be undertaken elsewhere.

The phenomenon of women’s oppression is a highly individual and subjective experience, often dissected in elabourate descriptive terms, with emphasis on issues of sexuality, inter-personal relations, and ideology. As Michèle Barrett observes, “the women’s liberation movement has laid great stress on the experiential aspects of oppression in marriage, in sexual relationships, and in the ideology of femininity and male dominance. In the establishment of ‘sexual politics’ as a central area of struggle it has succeeded in drawing back the veil on privatized relationships. This politicization of personal life...is a major achievement of feminist activity and one from which Marxism has learnt a great deal.”

Barrett argues that such analyses are not enough, however, for they have “tended to ignore the ways in which private oppression is related to broader questions of relations of production and the class structure.” In the following pages, the focus is on this latter question, in particular, on the economic, or material, aspect of women’s situation. However restricted the approach may seem from the point of view of the desire for a full-blown exposition of women’s oppression, it is necessary to establish these material foundations. Once laid, they will form the indispensable basis for further work. In sum, the starting point in these chapters is a theoretical perspective on social reproduction, but the ultimate goal is to confront the twin problems of women’s oppression and the conditions for women’s liberation.[1]

To situate women’s oppression in terms of social reproduction and the reproduction of labour-power, several concepts need to be specified, beginning with the concept of labour-power itself. Marx defines labour-power as something latent in all persons: “By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description.” A use-value is “a useful thing” something that “by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another.” Use-values, and the useful labour that may go into their production, exist in every society, although the precise social form they take varies. “So far...as labour is a creator of use-value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race.” Labour-power, which is simply the capacity for useful labour, is therefore also “independent of every social phase of [human] existence, or rather, is common to every such phase.”[2]

Labour-power is a latent capacity borne by a human being. Its potentiality is realised when labour-power is put to use—consumed—in a labour-process. Once having entered the labour-process, the bearer of labour-power contributes labour, for “labour-power in use is labour itself.”[3] Labour-power must, therefore, be distinguished from the bodily and social existence of its bearer.

Labour-processes do not exist in isolation. They are inserted in determinate modes of production. Furthermore, any production is, at one and the same time, reproduction. “A society can no more cease to produce than it can cease to consume. When viewed, therefore, as a connected whole, and as flowing on with incessant renewal, every social process of production is, at the same time, a process of reproduction.” Social reproduction entails, finally, the reproduction of the conditions of production. For example, in feudal society, “the product of the serf must...suffice to reproduce his conditions of labour, in addition to his subsistence.” This is “a circumstance which remains the same under all modes of production. For it is not the result of their specific form, but a natural requisite of all continuous and reproductive labour in general, of any continuing production, which is always simultaneously reproduction, i.e. including reproduction of its own operating conditions.”[4] Among other things, social reproduction requires that a supply of labour-power always be available to set the labour-process in motion.

The bearers of labour-power are, however, mortal. Those who work suffer wear and tear. Some are too young to participate in the labour-process, others too old. Eventually, every individual dies. Some process that meets the ongoing personal needs of the bearers of labour-power as human individuals is therefore a condition of social reproduction, as is some process that replaces workers who have died or withdrawn from the active work force. These processes of maintenance and replacement are often imprecisely, if usefully, conflated under the term reproduction of labour-power.[5]

Despite the linguistic similarity of the terms production and reproduction, the processes that make up the reproduction of labour-power and those that form part of a society’s production are not comparable from a theoretical point of view. Reproduction of labour-power is a condition of production, for it reposits or replaces the labour-power necessary for production. Reproduction of labour-power is not, however, itself a form of production. That is, it does not necessarily involve some determinate combination of raw materials and means of production in a labour-process whose result is the product labour-power. While some have argued that the reproduction of labour-power is a production-process taking place in family-households, in fact such activities represent only one possible mode of renewing the bearers of labour-power. Labour-camps or dormitory facilities can also be used to maintain workers, and the work-force can be replenished through immigration or enslavement as well as by generational replacement of existing workers.

To give preliminary theoretical shape to the problem of the reproduction of labour-power, Marx introduced the concept of individual consumption (discussed in Chapter 5). Individual consumption refers to the individual direct producer’s consumption of means of subsistence. Marx underscores the difference between individual consumption and the productive consumption that takes place in the social-labour process.

Such productive consumption is distinguished from individual consumption by this, that the latter uses up products, as means of subsistence for the living individual; the former, as means whereby alone, labour, the labour-power of the living individual, is enabled to act. The product, therefore, of individual consumption, is the consumer himself; the result of productive consumption, is a product distinct from the consumer.[6]

As used here, the concept of individual consumption refers essentially to the daily processes that restore the direct producer and enable him or her to return to work. That is, it does not cover generational replacement of existing workers, nor the maintenance of non-labouring individuals, such as the elderly and the sick. Neither does it pertain to the recruitment of new workers into the labourforce by, for example, enslavement or immigration. Individual consumption concerns solely the maintenance of an individual direct producer already enmeshed in the production-process; it permits the worker to engage, again and again, in the immediate production-process.[7]

The concept of individual consumption refers, then, to the reproduction of labour-power at the level of the immediate production-process. At the level of total social reproduction it is not the individual direct producer but the totality of labourers that is maintained and replaced.[8] It is evident that such renewal of the labour-force can be accomplished in a variety of ways. In principle, at least, the present set of labourers can be worked to death, and then replaced by an entirely new set. In the more likely case, an existing labour-force is replenished both generationally and by new labourers. Children of workers grow up and enter the labour-force. Women who had not previously been involved begin to participate in production. Immigrants or slaves from outside a society’s boundaries enter its labour-force. To the brief extent that Marx considered these questions in general terms, he spoke of laws of population. “Every special historic mode of production has its own special laws of population, historically valid within its limits alone. An abstract law of population exists for plants and animals only, and only in so far as man has not interfered with them.”[9] Moreover, not all present labourers will work in a subsequent production-period. Some will become sick, disabled, or too old. Others may be excluded, as when protective legislation is enacted to prohibit child-labour or women’s night-work. In sum, at the level of total social reproduction, the concept of the reproduction of labour-power does not in the least imply the reproduction of a bounded unit of population.[10]

The discussion so far has not required that the gender of direct producers be specified. From a theoretical perspective, it does not yet matter whether they are women or men, so long as they are somehow available to make up the labour-force. What raises the question of gender is, of course, the phenomenon of generational replacement of bearers of labour-power—that is, the replacement of existing workers by new workers from the next generation. If generational replacement is to happen, biological reproduction must intervene. And here, it must be admitted, human beings do not reproduce themselves by parthenogenesis. Women and men are different.

The critical theoretical import of the biological distinction between women and men with respect to child-bearing appears, then, at the level of total social reproduction. While reproduction of labour-power at the level of total social reproduction does not necessarily entail generational replacement, it is at this theoretical level that the issue must be located.

Before proceeding further, a popular analytical misconception should be acknowledged. People ordinarily experience the processes of generational replacement in individualised kin-based contexts, and attempts to develop a theory of the reproduction of labour-power often focus on the family-unit or household as a starting point. Such a procedure, however understandable, represents a serious confusion with respect to theoretical levels. As commonly understood, the family is a kin-based social structure in which take place processes contributing to the worker’s daily maintenance—his or her ongoing individual consumption. Families also provide the context in which children are born and grow up, and they frequently include individuals who are not currently participating in the labour-force. In most societies, families therefore act as important sites for both maintenance and generational replacement of existing and potential workers.[11] They are not, however, the only places where workers renew themselves on a daily basis. For example, many workers in South Africa live in barracks near their work, and are permitted to visit their families in outlying areas once a year. Furthermore, children do not necessarily constitute a family’s only contribution to the replenishment of society’s labour-power. Other family members may at times enter the work force, at harvest, for instance, or during economic crises. Finally, families are not the only source of such replenishment; other possibilities, as previously mentioned, include migration and enslavement of foreign populations. These observations demonstrate that the identification of the family as the sole site of maintenance of labour-power overstates its role at the level of immediate production. Simultaneously it fetishises the family at the level of total social reproduction, by representing generational replacement as the only source of renewal of society’s labour-force.

In any case, it is premature from a theoretical point of view to introduce a specific social site of the reproduction of labour-power, such as the family, into the discussion at this stage. Two further observations should, however, be made concerning the existence of a biological distinction between women and men in the area of child-bearing. First, biological differences constitute the material precondition for the social construction of gender-differences, as well as a direct material factor in the differential position of the sexes in a society.[12] Second, sex-differences cannot be considered apart from their existence within a definite social system, and nothing more can be said, at this point, about their significance for the process of the reproduction of labour-power. The concepts pertaining to the question of the reproduction of labour-power have been developed so far without reference to a specific mode of production. Hence, the discussion has necessarily proceeded at an extreme level of abstraction—or, as Marx puts it, speaking of the labour-process, “independently of the particular form it assumes under given social conditions”[13] Let us move, now, to a consideration of the reproduction of labour-power in class-society.

The appropriation of surplus-labour, or exploitation, constitutes the foundation of class-relations. In a class-society, the ruling class appropriates surplus-labour performed by an exploited class of direct producers. Marx sums up the essence of class-society in an important passage:

The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus-labor is pumped out of direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and, in turn, reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up out of the production relations themselves, thereby simultaneously its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers—a relation always naturally corresponding to a definite stage in the development of the methods of labor and thereby its social productivity—which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure, and with it the political form of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state.[14]

In a class-society, the concept of labour-power acquires a specific class-meaning. Labour-power refers to the capacity of a member of the class of direct producers to perform the surplus-labour appropriated by the ruling class. In other words, the bearers of labour-power make up the exploited class. For a class-society, the concept of the reproduction of labour-power pertains, strictly speaking, to the maintenance and renewal of the class of bearers of labour-power subject to exploitation. While a class-society must also develop some process of maintaining and replacing the individuals who make up the ruling class, it cannot be considered part of the reproduction of labour-power in society. By definition, labour-power in a class-society is borne only by members of the class of direct producers.[15]

Marx contrasts the surplus-labour performed by direct producers in a class society to their necessary labour, defining both kinds of labour in terms of the time expended by a single producer during one working day. Necessary labour is that portion of the day’s work through which the producer achieves his own reproduction. The remaining portion of the day’s work is surplus-labour, appropriated by the exploiting class.[16] In reality, a portion of the direct producer’s labour may also be devoted to securing the reproduction of other members of the exploited class. Where, for example, children, the elderly, or a wife do not themselves enter into surplus-production as direct producers, a certain amount of labour-time must be expended for their maintenance. Marx was never explicit about what is covered by the concepts of individual consumption and necessary labour. As discussed above, the concept of individual consumption has been restricted here to the direct producer’s immediate maintenance. Necessary labour is used, however, to cover all labour performed in the course of the maintenance and renewal of both direct producers and members of the subordinate class not currently working as direct producers.

Necessary labour ordinarily includes several constituent processes. In the first place, it provides a certain amount of means of subsistence for individual consumption by direct producers. In a feudal society, for example, direct producers may retain a portion of the total product. In a capitalist society, wages permit the purchase of commodities in the market. In most cases, the raw means of subsistence so acquired do not themselves ensure the maintenance of the labourer. A certain amount of supplementary labour must be performed in order that the necessaries can be consumed in appropriate form: firewood must be chopped, meals cooked, garden-plots tended, clothes repaired, and so forth. In addition to these labour-processes facilitating the individual consumption of direct producers, two other sets of labour-processes can be identified. A portion of necessary labour goes to provide means of subsistence to maintain members of the exploited classes not currently working as direct producers—the elderly, the sick, a wife. And an important series of labour-processes associated with the generational replacement of labour-power may also take place—that is, the bearing and raising of the children of the subordinate class. As discussed above, these various aspects of necessary labour have a certain autonomy from a theoretical point of view. Together they represent an indispensable condition for the reproduction of labour-power and therefore for overall social reproduction. It should be noted that the concept of necessary labour pertains strictly to tasks associated with the reproduction of labour-power in the exploited class. Individuals in the ruling class also require daily maintenance and ordinarily replace themselves through generational reproduction. Such activities do not qualify as necessary labour in Marx’s sense, however, for they do not concern the renewal of exploitable labour-power.

In a given class-society, the circumstances and outcome of the processes of reproduction of labour-power are essentially indeterminate or contingent. To maintain otherwise would be to fall into the functionalist argument that a system’s needs for labour-power must inevitably be fulfilled by the workings of that system. The social relations through which necessary labour is carried out therefore cannot be postulated independently of specific historical cases. In particular, the family, however defined, is not a timeless universal of human society. As with any social structure, the form kin-based relationships take always depends on social development, and is potentially a terrain of struggle.[17]

Although analytically distinct, necessary labour and surplus-labour may lose their specificity and separateness when experienced in the real life of concrete labour-processes. Several examples suggest the range of possibilities. First, in a feudal society in which serfs pay rent in kind, bringing the lord a share of the product, necessary labour and surplus-labour interpenetrate as labour-processes. In the case of labour-rent, by contrast, in which serfs work the lord’s fields independently from their own plot, a clear spatial and temporal demarcation divides surplus-labour from necessary labour. In capitalist societies, as we shall see in Chapter 11, a distinction appears between two components of necessary labour, one carried out in conjunction with surplus-labour and the other taking place outside the sphere of surplus-labour appropriation.

Last, consider the hypothetical example of a slave-system that imports labourers from outside its boundaries, and forces them to work at a literally killing pace. Under such conditions, generational replacement might become almost impossible, and the amount of necessary labour could be reduced to nearly zero.

Of the three aspects of necessary labour-maintenance of direct producers, maintenance of non-labouring members of the subordinate class, and generational replacement processes—only the last requires, in an absolute sense, that there be a sex-division of labour of at least a minimal kind. If children are to be born, it is women who will carry and deliver them. Women belonging to the subordinate class have, therefore, a special role with respect to the generational replacement of labour-power. While they may also be direct producers, it is their differential role in the reproduction of labour-power that lies at the root of their oppression in class-society. This differential role can be situated in theoretical terms. The paragraphs that follow, which elaborate the argument first made by Paddy Quick, offer such a theoretical framework as a basis for the analysis of women’s oppression.[18]

The argument hinges on the relationship of child-bearing to the appropriation of surplus-labour in class-society. Child-bearing threatens to diminish the contribution a woman in the subordinate class can make as a direct producer and as a participant in necessary labour. Pregnancy and lactation involve, at the minimum, several months of somewhat reduced capacity to work.[19] Even when a woman continues to participate in surplus-production, child-bearing therefore interferes to some extent with the immediate appropriation of surplus-labour. Moreover, her labour is ordinarily required for the maintenance of labour-power, and pregnancy and lactation may lessen a woman’s capacity in this area as well. From the ruling class’s short-term point of view, then, childbearing potentially entails a costly decline in the mother’s capacity to work, while at the same time requiring that she be maintained during the period of diminished contribution. In principle, some of the necessary labour that provides for her during that time might otherwise have formed part of the surplus-labour appropriated by the ruling class. That is, necessary labour ordinarily has to increase somewhat to cover her maintenance during the child-bearing period, implying a corresponding decrease in surplus-labour. At the same time, child-bearing is of benefit to the ruling class, for it must occur if the labour-force is to be replenished through generational replacement. From the point of view of the dominant class, there is, therefore, a potential contradiction between its immediate need to appropriate surplus-labour and its long-term requirement for a class to perform it.

The argument outlined in the previous paragraph analyses the potential implications of an empirical phenomenon—women’s capacity to bear children—for the processes of surplus-labour appropriation. The discussion operates, it must be emphasised, at the level of theory, and it reveals a contradiction. To resolve the contradiction in an actual society, the dominant class prefers strategies that minimise necessary labour over the long term while simultaneously ensuring the reproduction of labour-power. To what extent it actually succeeds in implementing such strategies is, of course, a matter of class-struggle.

As one element in the historical resolution of the contradiction, actual arrangements for the reproduction of labour-power usually take advantage of relationships between women and men that are based on sexuality and kinship. Other adults, ordinarily the biological father and his kin-group, or male kin of the child-bearing woman herself, historically have had the responsibility for making sure that the woman is provided for during the period of diminished activity associated with child-bearing. Men of the subordinate class thereby acquire a special historical role with respect to the generational replacement of labour-power: to ensure that means of subsistence are provided to the child-bearing woman.

In principle, women’s and men’s differential roles in the reproduction of labour-power are of finite duration. They come into play only during the woman’s actual child-bearing months. In reality, the roles take specific historical form in the variety of social structures known as the family. From a theoretical point of view, families in subordinate classes may be conceptualised as kin-based social units within which men have greater responsibility for the provision of means of subsistence to child-bearing women during the period of their reduced working contribution. As institutionalised structures in actual class-societies, the families of a subordinate class ordinarily become major social sites for the performance of the maintenance as well as the generational-replacement aspects of necessary labour. Here, then, is one source for the historical division of labour according to sex that assigns women and men different roles with respect to necessary and surplus-labour. Generally, women have greater responsibility for the ongoing tasks associated with necessary labour, and especially for work connected with children. Men, correspondingly, often have greater responsibility for the provision of material means of subsistence, a responsibility that is ordinarily accompanied by their disproportionately greater involvement in the performance of surplus-labour.

While women have historically had greater responsibility for the ongoing tasks of necessary labour in class-societies, it is not accurate to say that there is some universal domestic sphere separate from the world of public production. In class-societies based on agriculture—feudalism, for example—the labour-processes of necessary labour are frequently integrated with those of surplus-production.[20] It is the development of capitalism, as Chapter 11 shows, that creates a sharp demarcation between the arena in which surplus-labour is performed and a sphere that can properly be called domestic. To the extent that analysts assert the universality of some invariant domestic sphere, they are in fact projecting onto non-capitalist class-societies a distinction that is the product of capitalist relations of production.

The exact form by which men obtain more means of subsistence than needed for their own individual consumption varies from society to society, but the arrangement is ordinarily legitimated by their domination of women and reinforced by institutionalised structures of female oppression. The ruling class, in order to stabilise the reproduction of labour-power as well as to keep the amount of necessary labour at acceptable levels, encourages male supremacy within the exploited class. Quick outlines the dynamic:

Any attempt by women to appropriate to themselves more than is required for their subsistence is an indirect demand for part of the surplus appropriated by the ruling class. Thus male authority over women is supported and even enforced by the ruling class. On the hand, any attempt by men to evade their “responsibilities” for the support of women is also resisted, within the confines of a system which relies on male supremacy. Men’s control of means of subsistence greater than needed for their own reproduction on a day-to-day level is “granted” to them only in order to enable them to contribute to the reproduction of their class.[21]

Such strategies work on behalf of the dominant class, whatever the immediate advantages of male supremacy to men.

It is the provision by men of means of subsistence to women during the child-bearing period, and not the sex-division of labour in itself, that forms the material basis for women’s subordination in class-society. The fact that women and men are differentially involved in the reproduction of labour-power during pregnancy and lactation, and often for much longer, does not necessarily constitute a source of oppression. Divisions of labour exist in all societies. Even in the most egalitarian hunting and gathering society, a variety of tasks is accomplished everyday, requiring a division of labour. Differences among people arising out of biological and social development also characterise every society. Some individuals may be mentally retarded or physically handicapped. Some may be heterosexual, others homosexual. Some may marry, some may not. And, of course, some may be men, and others women, with the capacity to bear children. The social significance of divisions of labour and of individual differences is constructed in the context of the actual society in which they are embedded. In class-societies, women’s child-bearing capacity creates contradictions from the point of view of the dominant class’s need to appropriate surplus-labour. The oppression of women in the exploited class develops in the process of the class-struggle over the resolution of these contradictions.

Women in the ruling class may also be subordinated to the men of their class. Where such subordination exists it rests, ultimately, on their special role with respect to the generational replacement of individual members of the ruling class. As the socialist tradition has argued, the issue, here, is property. If property comes to be held by men and bequeathed to children, female oppression becomes a handy way to ensure the paternity of those children. In a particular society, shared experiences of and cultural responses to female oppression may produce a certain degree of solidarity among women across class-lines. While this solidarity has a basis in reality, and can be of serious political import, the situations of women in the dominant and exploited classes are fundamentally distinct from a theoretical perspective. Only women in the subordinate class participate in the maintenance and replacement of the indispensable force that keeps a class-society going—exploitable labour-power.

The existence of women’s oppression in class-societies is, it must be emphasised, a historical phenomenon. It can be analysed, as here, with the guidance of a theoretical framework, but it is not itself deducible theoretically. Confusion as to the character of women’s oppression has frequently generated an unproductive search for some ultimate theoretical cause or origin of women’s oppression. Origins exist, of course, but they are historical, not theoretical.[22]

The argument to this point may be recapitulated as follows. Human beings have the capacity to produce more use-values than they need for their own immediate subsistence. In a class-society, this potential is organised to the benefit of a ruling class, which appropriates the surplus-labour of a subordinate class according to some determinate set of social relations. For this class-society to survive, an exploitable labour-force must always be available to perform surplus-labour. Workers, however, do not live forever; they suffer “wear and tear and death, [and] must be continually replaced by, at the very least, an equal amount of fresh labor-power.” Where replacement is through generational reproduction, the fact that human beings fall into two distinct biological groups, women and men, comes into play. Women’s somewhat diminished capacity to work during the child-bearing period potentially creates a contradiction for the ruling class. Out of the class-struggle over resolving this contradiction, a wide variety of forms of reproduction of labour-power has developed in the course of history. In virtually all cases, they entail men’s greater responsibility for provision of material means of subsistence, women’s greater responsibility for the ongoing tasks of necessary labour, and institutionalised forms of male domination over women. While exceptions exist, and may indeed offer important insights on the question of reproduction of labour-power in class-society, the historical legacy remains one that has been characterised, for better or worse, as patriarchal. In this sense, Joan Kelly is right to point out that “patriarchy...is at home at home. The private family is its proper domain.”[23]

In most class-societies, women of the exploited class participate to some extent in surplus production as well as in necessary labour.[24] Their specific responsibilities and subordination in the tasks of necessary labour may carry consequences for the work they do in the area of surplus-production. For instance, individual responsibility for child-care in capitalist society renders women exceptionally vulnerable to the oppressive conditions of home-work. Conversely, involvement in surplus-labour may affect the forms of women’s necessary labour. On American plantations, for example, most slave-women worked in the master’s fields, while the tasks of cooking and child-care were collectively carried out by older women and very young children.[25] At a particular juncture in the development of a given class-society, the oppression of women in the exploited class is shaped not only by women’s relationship to the processes of maintenance and renewal of labour-power, but by the extent and character of their participation in surplus-labour.

The actual working out of a specific class-society’s forms of reproduction of labour-power is a matter for historical investigation—and, in the present, for political intervention as well. Certain tendencies can be deduced, however, from the theoretical framework just presented. In situations that minimise the importance of generational replacement of labour-power, sex-divisions of labour and family-institutions in the exploited class may be relatively weak. If a ruling class relies on migrant-labour from outside the society’s boundaries, for example, it might house these workers in barracks, put women and men to work at similar jobs, encourage contraception or sterilisation, and ignore the effects of heavy work on women in the last months of pregnancy. Ordinarily, generational replacement provides the major part of a society’s need for the reproduction of labour-power. Here, a severe labour-shortage caused by war, famine, or natural catastrophe would tend to exaggerate the contradictory pressures on women workers. Depending on the historical situation, either the role of the family as the site of generational reproduction, or the importance of women’s participation in surplus-labour, or both, might be emphasised. During a period in which the ruling class’s need to maximise surplus-labour overwhelms long-range considerations, all individuals in the exploited class might be mobilised into surplus production, causing severe dislocation in its institutions of family-life and male dominance. Such was the case in industrialising England during the nineteenth century, and, such, it can be argued, is again the case in the advanced capitalist countries today.

These tendencies will not proceed unopposed. Migrant-workers may fight against their isolation from kin. Native-born workers may oppose the use of foreign labour. Women may refuse to stay home to bear and raise children. Men may resist the participation of women in the labour-force. Workers may support legislation banning child-labour. Women and men may organise to defend the existing forms of their institutions of family life. In short, the processes of the reproduction of labour-power in class-society ordinarily constitute an important terrain of battle.

Chapter 11, Beyond Domestic Labour

The preceding chapter established some basic concepts pertaining to the reproduction of labour-power, and used them to address the question of women’s oppression in class-society. We can now turn to the problem of women’s oppression in the context of capitalist social reproduction. In capitalist societies, exploitation takes place through the appropriation of surplus-value, and surplus-labour appears in the form of wage-labour. Labour-power acquires the particular form of a commodity, bought and sold on the market. This commodity possesses the peculiarly useful property, as Marx discovered, of being a source of value. Although it is exchanged in the market, it is not a commodity like any other, for it is not produced capitalistically. Instead, some process of reproduction of the bearers of exploitable labour-power continually brings labour-power into being as a commodity. Such a process is a condition of existence for capital. In Marx’s words, the worker “constantly produces material, objective wealth, but in the form of capital, of an alien power that dominates and exploits him; and the capitalist as constantly produces labour-power, but in the form of a subjective source of wealth, separated from the objects in and by which it can alone be realised; in short he produces the labourer, but as a wage-labourer. This incessant reproduction, this perpetuation of the labourer, is the sine qua non of capitalist production.” Such dramatic statements are true in a broad sense, but they shed little light on the theoretical status of the reproduction of labour-power in capitalist society, and even less on the manner in which it takes place.[26]

Capitalist reproduction demands that labour-power be available as a commodity for purchase in adequate quantity and quality and at an appropriate price. However imperfectly, these needs shape the processes that maintain the existing bearers of labour-power, while at the same time the labour-force as a whole is continually reconstituted to accord with future needs. The manner in which the sellers of labour-power live out their lives is, in principle, a matter of indifference to the capitalist class. By contrast, it represents a central concern for the bearers of labour-power. In this sense, the circumstances under which reproduction of labour-power takes place, which include the determination of its price, are always an outcome of class-struggle.

Several characteristics of the reproduction of labour-power and women’s oppression in capitalist society arise from the logic of capitalist accumulation itself. Perhaps most consequential is the special form taken by necessary labour. Necessary labour becomes divided into two components. One, which we can call the social component of necessary labour, is indissolubly bound with surplus-labour in the capitalist production-process. As Marx showed, the working day in capitalist employment includes a certain amount of time during which the worker produces value equivalent to the value of the commodities necessary for the reproduction of his or her labour-power. This is, for Marx, the worker’s necessary labour, for which he or she is paid. For the rest of the working day, the worker produces surplus-value for the capitalist, value for which he or she is not paid. From the point of view of the worker, however, no distinction exists between necessary and surplus labour-time, and the wage appears to cover both. In Marx’s words, “the wage-form thus extinguishes every trace of the division of the working-day into necessary labour and surplus labour, into paid and unpaid labour. All labour appears as paid labour.”[27]

Marx did not identify a second component of necessary labour in capitalist society, one that we can call the domestic component of necessary labour—or domestic labour. Domestic labour is the portion of necessary labour that is performed outside the sphere of capitalist production. For the reproduction of labour-power to take place, both the domestic and the social components of necessary labour are required. That is, wages may enable a worker to purchase commodities, but additional labour—domestic labour—must generally be performed before they are consumed. In addition, many of the labour-processes associated with the generational replacement of labour-power are carried out as part of domestic labour. In capitalist societies, then, the relationship between surplus- and necessary-labour has two aspects. On the one hand, the demarcation between surplus-labour and the social component of necessary labour is obscured through the payment of wages in the capitalist labour-process. On the other hand, the domestic component of necessary labour becomes dissociated from wage-labour, the arena in which surplus-labour is performed.

As accumulation proceeds, the opposition between wage-labour and domestic labour sharpens. Capitalism’s drive to increase surplus-value by enhancing productivity, especially through industrialisation, forces a severe spatial, temporal, and institutional separation between domestic labour and the capitalist production-process. Capitalists must organise production so that more and more of it is under their direct control in workshops and factories, where wage-labour is performed for specified amounts of time. Wage-labour comes to have a character that is wholly distinct from the labourer’s life away from the job, including his or her involvement in the domestic component of necessary labour. At the same time the wage mediates both daily maintenance and generational-replacement processes, supplemented or sometimes replaced by state-contributions. That is, the social component of the worker’s necessary labour facilitates the reproduction of labour-power indirectly, by providing money that must then be exchanged to acquire commodities. These two characteristics—the separation of wage-labour from domestic labour and the payment of wages—are materialised in the development of specialised sites and social units for the performance of domestic labour. Working-class families located in private households represent the dominant form in most capitalist societies, but domestic labour also takes place in labour-camps, barracks, orphanages, hospitals, prisons, and other such institutions.[28]

In capitalist societies, the burden of the domestic component of necessary labour rests disproportionately on women, while the provision of commodities tends to be disproportionately the responsibility of men, fulfillable through participation in wage-labour. This differential positioning of women and men with respect to surplus-labour and the two components of necessary labour, which is generally accompanied by a system of male supremacy, originates as a historical legacy from oppressive divisions of labour in earlier class-societies. It is then strengthened by the particular separation between domestic and wage-labour generated by the capitalist mode of production. Domestic labour increasingly takes place in specialised social units, whose isolation in space and time from wage-labour is further emphasised by male supremacy. These conditions stamp domestic labour with its specific character.

Experientially, the particular nature of domestic labour in industrial-capitalist society gives rise, for both women and men, to intense feelings of opposition between one’s private life and some public-sphere. The highly institutionalised demarcation of domestic labour from wage-labour in a context of male supremacy forms the basis for a series of powerful ideological structures, which develop a forceful life of their own. Isolation of the units of domestic labour appears to be a natural separation of women from men as well. Confinement to a world that is walled off from capitalist production seems to be woman’s time-honoured natural setting. A series of correlated opposites embodies the seemingly universal division of life into two spheres of experience: private and public, domestic and social, family and work, women and men. Rooted in the economic workings of the capitalist mode of production, and reinforced by a system of male supremacy, this ideology of separate spheres has a force that is extremely difficult to transcend. Where some categories of male workers command wages sufficient to maintain a private household staffed by a non-working wife, the ideology takes a particularly stubborn institutional form.

The drive for accumulation causes constant change in capitalist societies, including changes in the quantity and character of the domestic component of necessary labour. As Marx demonstrated, capitalist accumulation depends on the growth of surplus-labour, appropriated in the form of absolute and relative surplus-value.[29] He discussed these two forms of augmented surplus-value in terms of a particular society’s established working day of ten hours in capitalist production, divided into five hours each of necessary and surplus-labour. If the hours of work are extended to, say, twelve hours, the capitalists appropriate two hours’ worth of absolute surplus-value for each worker. If the amount of necessary labour falls to, say, four hours, they appropriate an hour’s worth of relative surplus-value for each worker. While both processes contribute to capitalist accumulation, relative surplus-value ordinarily plays a greater part, for the established working day of an individual can only be extended so far. Marx analysed two major ways of producing relative surplus-value that are available to the capitalists: introduction of machinery, technological improvements, and the like, and reduction in the costs of the means of subsistence. Together, he noted, they fuel capitalism’s penetration into all sectors of social life.

Capital’s need to augment surplus-value implies a contradiction between domestic labour and wage-labour. As a component of necessary labour, domestic labour potentially takes away from the commitment workers can make to performing surplus-labour through participation in wage-work. Objectively, then, it competes with capital’s drive for accumulation. If one tends one’s own garden plot, chops one’s own firewood, cooks one’s own meals, and walks six miles to work, the amount of time and energy available for wage-labour is less than if one buys food in a supermarket, lives in a centrally-heated apartment-building, eats in restaurants, and takes public transportation to work. Similarly, if one supports another person, for example a wife, in order that she take care of domestic labour, that person is less available to participate in wage-labour, while at the same time one’s own wage must cover the costs of her means of consumption. To the extent that the domestic labour of a capitalist society takes place within private households, the pressure of capitalist accumulation results in a tendency to decrease the amount performed in each household. That is, the domestic component of necessary labour is severely reduced. At the same time, more household members may enter the work force, increasing the total amount of wage-labour performed by the household, a phenomenon akin to intensification of a single worker’s labour. In short, reduction of domestic labour potentially creates both relative and absolute surplus-value.

A major way to reduce domestic labour is to socialise its tasks. Laundromats, stores selling ready-made clothing, and fast-food chains, for instance, remove domestic labour tasks to the profit-making sector, where they also provide new opportunities for capitalist entrepreneurs. Public education and health-care make aspects of domestic labour the responsibility of the state, at the same time distributing the costs of the reproduction of labour-power more widely through contributions and taxes. A society’s total domestic labour can also be reduced by employing institutionalised populations (prison-labour, army-labour), and by importing migrant-labour from outside national boundaries. Over time, the tendency to reduce domestic labour affects the units in which it is performed in numerous ways, many of which have been documented by scholars in terms of changes in the family and in the relationship between work and the family. The history of the tendency’s impact on sites of the reproduction of labour-power that are not based on kin-relations (prisons, dormitories, migrant-labour camps) is less well-studied.

The domestic component of necessary labour cannot be completely socialised in capitalist society. The main barrier is economic, for the costs are extremely high in such areas as child-rearing and household-maintenance.[30] Profitable chains of day-care centres have yet to be developed, for example, and house-cleaning services have not been able to reduce costs to a level that makes them available to working-class households. Political and ideological barriers to the socialisation of domestic labour also play a role. Socialisation of work formerly done in the home may be experienced as an attack on established working-class lifestyles, as when the introduction of public education encountered opposition among some working-class militants fearful of capitalist indoctrination. The recent expansion of nursing-home care for the elderly has sometimes been opposed as part of a general decline in so-called traditional family-values. Working-class families in capitalist societies have generally welcomed advances in the socialisation of domestic labour, however. In so doing they register their appreciation of the labour saved, as well as of the potential qualitative enhancement of social experience.[31] A different type of political barrier to the socialisation of domestic labour exists in the case of migrant-workers housed in dormitories or labour-camps. Such arrangements reduce domestic labour and cheapen the cost of renewal, but, as recent events in South Africa show, they also represent a political threat to the ruling class by facilitating organisation. An ultimate barrier to the socialisation of domestic labour is constituted by biology. While domestic labour might conceivably be reduced to a minimum through the socialisation of most of its tasks, the basic physiological process of child-bearing will continue to be the province of women.[32]

The tendency for domestic labour to be reduced in capitalist society remains, of course, no more than a general trend. Actual arrangements develop out of and depend on the history of a particular society, and are affected by class-conflict within it. It is in this context that such phenomena as the family-wage, female labour-force participation, discrimination against women in the labour-market, protective legislation, and child-labour laws must be analysed. Generally speaking, the specific amounts and kinds of domestic labour performed in a particular society are an outcome of the struggle between contending classes at several levels. Domestic labour has, in fact, a highly contradictory role within capitalist social reproduction. On the one hand, it forms an essential condition for capitalism. If capitalist production is to take place, it must have labour-power, and if labour-power is to be available, domestic labour must be performed. On the other hand, domestic labour stands in the way of capitalism’s drive for profit, for it also limits the availability of labour-power. From the point of view of capital, domestic labour is simultaneously indispensable and an obstacle to accumulation. Over the long term, the capitalist class seeks to stabilise the reproduction of labour-power at a low cost and with a minimum of domestic labour. At the same time, the working class, either as a united force or fragmented into competing sectors, strives to win the best conditions possible for its own renewal, which may include a particular level and type of domestic labour.

Domestic labour takes as its raw material a certain quantity and quality of commodities bought with the wages workers obtain by selling labour-power on the market. How are wages determined?

In Marx’s view, the value of labour-power is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour incorporated in the means of subsistence needed to maintain and replace the labourer. That is, the value of labour-power equals the value of the commodities the worker requires. Marx cautions, however, that into the determination of this value enters a “historical and moral element.” Two other factors also affect the determination of the value of labour-power: first, the costs of developing labour-power with the appropriate skills; and second, “its natural diversity, the difference between the labour power of men and women, of children and adults,” a fact that “makes a great difference in the cost of maintaining the family of the labourer, and in the value of the labour power of the adult male.” Throughout most of his argument, Marx makes the simplifying assumption that the effect of these various factors can be excluded.[33]

Recent work on the value of labour-power, particularly that developed in the context of socialist feminism, has pointed to ambiguities in Marx’s formulation. Of special interest, here, is the discussion centred on the role of non-working women and other dependents supported by the worker’s wage. The question of the contribution, if any, made by domestic labour to the determination of the value of labour-power has given rise to a prolonged controversy known as the domestic labour debate. The most satisfactory answer to this question was first proposed by Ira Gerstein and developed in a more rigorous fashion by Paul Smith. Both argue that domestic labour, as concrete, useful labour, simply transfers the value of the commodities purchased with the wage to the labour-power borne by the worker. The norm of the family-wage—a wage paid to a single male worker sufficient to cover the consumption of his entire family—represents, for Gerstein, a specific instance of how the “historical and moral element” affects the determination of the value of labour-power.[34] That is, wage norms not only include a certain quantity and quality of commodities, they also imply a certain quantity and quality of domestic labour.

The wage of a worker corresponds, then, to the total value of the commodities required for his or her maintenance and replacement in particular, historically-established, conditions. These conditions may or may not include such non-working dependents as wives, children, aged parents, and so forth. Existence of the family-wage for some male workers has prompted discussion concerning the proper interpretation of the “historical and moral element” in this case. Some claim that the family-wage represents a higher standard of living and therefore a victory for the working class in its battle with capital. The family-wage has been available, however, only to certain sectors within the working class; most working-class households in capitalist societies cannot manage on one income. Other commentators therefore argue that the family-wage functions as a concession made by capital to certain sectors of the working class in return for a political stability based on male supremacy. In this view, the family-wage constitutes not a victory but a privilege offered to a sub-group of male workers. This controversy cannot be resolved in the abstract. The significance of the demand for, and achievement of, the family-wage must be ascertained through concrete analysis, not logical deduction. It should be clear, however, that the presence of a non-working wife does not lower the value of male labour-power, and therefore is not of inevitable benefit to the capitalist class. Quite the contrary: to have a wife not in the labour-force requires a male wage large enough to cover the consumption of two adults. The capitalist class will evaluate such a wage-level very carefully, weighing economic costs against political and ideological benefits and pressures.[35]

Socialists have sometimes endorsed the family-wage as part of a general strategy to defend the working-class family, meaning a heterosexual nuclear unit with a single male wage-earner. Defending the working class’s right to the best conditions for its own renewal in no way entails a particular fixed social form, however. In some situations, the demand for a family-wage may actually distort the legitimate fight for the best conditions possible for the reproduction of the working class as bearers of labour-power. For example, where female-headed households make up a large sector of the population, demand for a family-wage will most likely threaten women’s position in the labour-market and deepen divisions already existing within the working class. In short, the specific content of socialist demands in the area of the reproduction of labour-power (as elsewhere) must flow from a concrete analysis. As a first condition for developing such an analysis, socialists need to discard rigid ideological notions about the working-class family as invariant, as the sole social unit in which labour-power is maintained and replaced, and as the always-deserving recipient of a family-wage.

Viewed from the perspective of overall social reproduction, the reproduction of labour-power is not, it must be recalled, a bounded process of renewal of a fixed unit of population. Capitalist reproduction requires only that a more or less adequate labour-force be available to set the production process in motion. In principle, capitalists may work the present labour-force to death, so long as they have some means of recruiting a new one. In practice, they generally adopt other alternatives. Ordinarily, a society’s active labour-force is made up of some mix of established and new workers—the latter including children of established workers, members of the industrial reserve-army, and immigrants.

At this level, the reproduction of labour-power becomes a question of the reproduction of the working class as a whole. The term working class is sometimes interpreted as referring solely to wage-workers. In this usage, for instance, only women-workers would be considered working-class women. Such categorisation abandons all those not in the labour-force—children, the elderly, and the disabled, as well as non-working wives—to a theoretical limbo outside the class-structure. Here, the working class will be viewed as consisting of a society’s past, present, and potential wage-labour force, together with all those whose maintenance depends on the wage but who do not or cannot themselves enter wage-labour. At any given moment, it comprises the active labour-force, the industrial reserve-army, and that portion of the relative surplus-population not incorporated in the industrial reserve-army. The history of capitalism demonstrates that this last category has, at times, included very few persons, aside from infants and toddlers. Even those seriously handicapped from birth have sometimes been forced into the labour-market, and have, therefore, belonged, however tenuously, to the industrial reserve-army.

In order to place women theoretically in terms of the working class, some analysts have assigned them as a group to the industrial reserve-army. Women, they argue, form a reserve, which can easily be called upon during periods of expansion and returned to the home when no longer needed. Women not only participate in this cyclical movement, they represent an increasingly important element of the contemporary floating, latent, and stagnant layers within the industrial reserve-army. Most such discussions suggest, finally, that women’s entry into the ranks of the industrial reserve-army is rather recent, and leave unanswered the question of their previous location within the working class. While this analysis of women in terms of their position in the industrial reserve-army is suggestive, a more adequate view would acknowledge that major sectors of the female population have been present in the industrial reserve-army for decades, even if, in Engels’s words, “it is only at times of exceptionally good trade that they realize [it].” Those working-class women not in the industrial reserve-army would form part of the relative surplus-population.[36]

The question of women’s position with respect to the industrial reserve-army is not, in fact, a theoretical one, but a matter for concrete analysis. Which groups of women in a given society move more actively between the industrial reserve-army and wage-labour? How large are the numbers and how intense the participation in the various sectors? Which groups of women remain locked in the relative surplus-population outside the industrial reserve-army, and why? What are the political and ideological obstacles to certain women’s entry into wage-labour? What are the determinants of any movement that can be observed? In a particular capitalist society, for example, unmarried daughters living in their father’s households may work until marriage. Elsewhere, daughters from rural areas may migrate to industrial concentrations, where they become the major support of families left behind. Women in immigrant, but not in native households, or black, but not white mothers of school-age children, may enter wage-labour. Wives may normally hold jobs until children are born, or after children enter school, or after they leave home. In periods of intensifying labour-exploitation, mothers of pre-school children may engage in wage-labour. As Veronica Beechey points out, “the question of who constitutes the preferred sources of the industrial reserve army in any given historical situation must be concretely investigated. It cannot be derived from the logic of capitalism, but is determined by the class struggle—by the strategies employed by individual capitals, by trade union practices, and by state policies which are themselves a product of class struggle.”[37] Beechey argues that married women in Britain have been an important sector of the industrial reserve-army since World War II. To which it must be added that the general trend in the advanced capitalist countries is toward equalisation of participation rates among different categories of women, in the direction of increased commitment of all women to wage-labour. In the United States, for example, labour-force participation rates among different groups of women have been converging. As many white as black wives are in the work-force, more mothers of very young children are now working, and so forth.

Equalisation of female labour-force participation is a particular manifestation of the structural tendency in capitalist society toward free availability of all labour-power. Like the tendency toward the reduction of domestic labour, this tendency embodies the forward drive of capitalist accumulation. Marx discussed it explicitly in the context of his analysis of competition among individual capitals. Capital moves from sectors of relatively low profit-rate into sectors of high profit-rate, thereby contributing to the equalisation of the rate of profit in different branches of production and among different individual capitals. The more mobile capital and labour-power can be, the more easily and quickly can competition work its effects in establishing an average rate of profit. In principle, then, capitalist accumulation demands perfect mobility of labour-power and hence, in Marx’s words, “the abolition of all laws preventing the labourers from transferring from one sphere of production to another and from one local center of production to another; indifference of the labourer to the nature of his labour; the greatest possible reduction of labour in all spheres of production to simple labour; the elimination of all vocational prejudices among labourers; and last but not least, a subjugation of the labourer to the capitalist mode of production.” Where barriers to mobility exist, the force of capitalist expansion attempts to push them aside. If certain obstacles remain in place, they may in part reflect the contradictory position of the capitalist class, caught within the conflicting pressures of its long-term economic demand for perfect mobility, its short-term requirements for different categories of workers, and its need to maintain political and ideological hegemony over a divided working class. To the extent that women remain segregated within and without the labour-force, such conflicting factors play an important role.[38]

As those primarily responsible for domestic labour, women contribute heavily to the maintenance and renewal of the relative surplus-population, as well as the active labour-force. Traditionally, as Marx observes, “society in its fractional parts undertakes for Mr. Capitalist the business of keeping his virtual instrument of labour—its wear and tear—intact as reserve for later use.”[39] The working class pays for most of the upkeep of the surplus-population, and working-class women do most of the domestic tasks required. To the extent, however, that women enter wage-labour, they become less able to take care of members of the household not presently in the work force. In a particular situation, the advantages to capital of increased female labour-force participation may outweigh the inroads into women’s capacity to perform domestic labour. State-intervention of various kinds may then become more important in the maintenance of the relative surplus-population. In the United States today, for example, elderly and disabled persons increasingly become the direct responsibility of governmental agencies.

To this point, the concept of the reproduction of labour-power in capitalist society has been developed as an economic phenomenon. Political and ideological issues have entered the discussion mainly in the course of describing the way structural tendencies located at the economic level take specific form in actual societies. There is, however, an important political phenomenon that has its root in the economic workings of the capitalist mode of production. The tendency toward equality of all human beings, a fundamental political feature of bourgeois society, has a basis in the articulation within the economic level of production and circulation. (This is not to say that equality of persons, even in formal terms, is an inevitable accompaniment of capitalist relations of production. As it turns out, numerous obstacles get in the way of the development of this tendency. The extent to which the tendency toward equality of persons becomes a reality in a specific society depends on its historical development, and in particular on the strength of popular social movements in the subordinate classes.)

As Marx showed, the idea of equality takes different forms in different societies, only attaining a firm foundation with the capitalist mode of production. “Equality and freedom presuppose relations of production as yet unrealised in the ancient world and in the Middle Ages.”[40] Two aspects of equality in capitalist society are of interest for the analysis of women’s oppression: first, the manner in which the phenomenon of equality of persons is embedded in the economic workings of the capitalist mode of production itself; and second, the transformations of this phenomenon with the evolution of capitalism.

The particular form taken by equality in capitalist society derives, ultimately, from the special character of commodities. A commodity is a product of labour that possesses both value and use-value. In the opening pages of Volume I of Capital, Marx analyses the nature of commodities with great care, showing that value arises in a process of equalisation of human labour. The exchange of commodities puts the great variety of concrete useful labour that produces them on an equal footing. Through the exchange of these commodities, “the private useful labour of each producer ranks on an equality with that of all others.” Commodities can be exchanged because they each embody a certain amount of the same thing: human labour in the abstract, that is, value. “The equality of all sorts of human labour is expressed objectively by their products all being equally values.” The existence of value requires that differences among various types of labour be disregarded. “The equalization of the most different kinds of labour can be the result only of an abstraction from their inequalities, or of reducing them to their common denominator, viz. expenditure of human labour-power or human labour in the abstract.” In sum, equalisation of differences in human labour is a fundamental characteristic of the capitalist mode of production, providing the basis for the formation of value.[41] Expansion of capitalism brings with it, furthermore, an increasing equalisation of labour. Accumulation demands that human labour more and more take the form of undifferentiated abstract labour.

The very labour-power that, when put to use, releases labour, is itself a commodity, albeit a somewhat peculiar one. Like all commodities, labour-power has both value and use-value. Its value, as we have seen, consists of the sum of the values of the commodities required for the maintenance and replacement of its human bearer, taking into account the particular “historical and moral” circumstances. Its use-value, from the point of view of the capitalist, is its ability in production to contribute more value than it has itself, thereby yielding surplus-value. As a commodity, labour-power is bought and sold on the market. The worker enters the market bearing his or her commodity—labour-power—and looking for a buyer. Similarly, the capitalist comes to the market, carrying his commodity—money—and seeking to purchase labour-power. Each is an owner, desiring to sell a mass of abstract human-labour congealed in a commodity. As commodity owners, they are equal traders who meet in the market to contract an exchange—the wage-bargain. Their transaction follows the laws of commodity exchange. To buy the worker’s labour-power, the capitalist must offer a wage that is equivalent to its value. Marx devoted considerable effort to showing that this exchange of equivalents “on the basis of equal rights’ of buyer and seller goes hand in hand with the exploitation characteristic of capitalist production.”[42] In the sphere of circulation, paradoxically, the requirements of the capitalist mode of production itself decree that equality must reign.

In order for capitalists to buy labour-power, its bearers must be able to sell it. That is, the bearers of labour-power have to enter the market as independent traders, seeking an exchange of equivalents. In Marx’s ironic words, wage-labourers must be “free in the double sense.” First, they have to be the free owners of their labour-power, able to dispose of it as they wish. They cannot, for example, be enmeshed in feudal restrictions, personally dependent and incapable of autonomous action. Second, they must be free of any other way to put their labour-power to use for their own account. Those who have other sources of subsistence will not easily submit to the capitalist’s demands. It is precisely this double freedom that forces workers onto the market to sell their labour-power.[43]

Equality of persons is situated in the sphere of circulation, where labour-power is bought and sold. “To be sure,” Marx observes, “the matter looks quite different if we consider capitalist production in the uninterrupted flow of its renewal, and if, in place of the individual capitalist and the individual worker, we view in their totality, the capitalist class and the working class confronting each other. But in so doing we should be applying standards entirely foreign to [the wage bargain].”[44] Class-relations are rooted in the process of capitalist production, not in the sphere of circulation where the individual wage-bargain is concluded. It is in the production-process that the labour-power bought on the market is consumed and surplus-value produced. In the sphere of production, the rules of exploitation and economic power, rather than political equality, govern relations between capitalists and workers.

Powerful forces of class-oppression therefore lurk behind the tendency toward equality of persons established in the sphere of circulation. The phenomenon of individual freedom is not, however, an illusory projection of capitalist social relations. Rather, it is a real tendency, bound to class-exploitation by the very logic of capitalist reproduction. Capitalism couples political freedom with economic constraint in a tension that is characteristic of bourgeois society. It is this contradiction that Lenin analysed in terms of the concept of democratic rights.

Equality of persons is not, then, simply an abstract political principle or a false ideology. It is a complex phenomenon with material roots in capitalist relations of production. As capitalism develops, more and more social processes come under capital’s domination, with accompanying tendencies toward increasing equalisation of human labour and, potentially, increasing equality of persons. In reality, these tendencies meet a variety of obstacles, and history shows that capitalism is, in fact, compatible with a stratified labour-market as well as with highly undemocratic political arrangements. Even in those societies with a relatively continuous history of democracy, the phenomenon of equality of persons undergoes significant transformation over time.

In the early stages of capitalist society, the phenomenon of equality of persons emerged against a background of feudal restrictions on property and person. Early capitalism extended an inspiring pledge of freedom from such restrictions to all individuals, regardless of personal differences. Slave, serf, or free, propertied or propertyless, man or woman—to each capitalism offered hope of equality, freedom, and liberation. While the pledge of equality was fulfilled for some, large categories of the population ordinarily remained unfree, or at least excluded from full civil and political equality. The Declaration of Independence declared, for example, that it is “self-evident” that all persons are “created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Nonetheless, the United States Constitution excluded slaves, women, and the propertyless from equal status as citizens. Much of the history of the last century reflects struggles to achieve the basic freedom to dispose of one’s person and property denied to these groups.[45]

Two hundred years after the beginnings of industrial capitalism, gross civil and political inequalities have largely disappeared. Bourgeois society’s promise of equality remains in force, however, and campaigns to make it even more of a reality continue. Today, the kinds of personal differences that demand to be equalised are far more subtle. In the United States, for example, blacks and women pursue struggles started long ago, but now with a more finely drawn interpretation of discrimination. In addition, every ethnic or racial group that has a distinct history organises to eradicate its particular heritage of inequality. And numerous other sectors that have been identified as collectively different—homosexuals, the elderly, the disabled, ex-mental patients, even the obese—document their discrimination and fight for their rights.

Demands for equality in the late twentieth century in part reflect the trend toward the perfection of the conditions for the free sale of labour-power. At the same time, they embody the high degree of equalisation of human-labour that occurs with the extension of the sphere of value in advanced capitalism. Subjectively, they reveal an intensification of desire for the freedom promised by capitalism but never consistently delivered. Indeed, even as people struggle for it, the goal of equality within bourgeois society no longer seems so compelling, for it is increasingly losing its connotations of personal freedom and human liberation. In the closing decades of the twentieth century, capitalism’s wonderful promises of equality and individual fulfillment clash more openly than ever with its brutal realities. An old question persists, now posed with new energy: Why sell one’s labour-power—whether on a basis of equality or not—at all? Promising freedom from exploitation itself, socialist movements throughout the world suggest an answer.

Given the contradictory character of equality in capitalist society, struggles for democratic rights potentially have serious revolutionary import. To fight for equality means, in the first place, to demand and defend the best conditions possible for people within capitalist society. By their very nature, however, these conditions are severely limited. As Lenin puts it, “capitalism combines formal equality with economic and, consequently, social inequality.”[46] The tendency to increasing equality has, therefore, a highly contradictory outcome. The more democratic rights are extended to all persons, the more the oppressive economic and social character of capitalism stands revealed. The struggle for equality threatens the dominance of capitalist social relations on two fronts. It promises to reduce divisions within and among oppressed classes, as well as between these classes and other sectors, by placing all persons on a more equal footing. Simultaneously, it exposes the foundation of bourgeois society to be class-exploitation, not individual equality. Far from a useless exercise in bourgeois reformism, the battle for democratic rights can point beyond capitalism.

Many groups of varying make-up and character are denied equal rights within capitalist society. Some, like those comprised of persons of African or Native American origin in the United States, have specific histories as oppressed peoples. Their members’ lack of equality derives from a history of oppression that relentlessly passes from generation to generation, stamping each person’s experience from cradle to grave. Other groups, like homosexuals, the disabled, or the elderly, are made up of individuals with particular characteristics acquired more or less accidentally, and not necessarily shared by kin. These characteristics, which may or may not be permanent, form a basis for discrimination and denial of rights. Women in capitalist societies are neither an oppressed people with a distinct history nor a collection of individuals with certain characteristics. They are, rather, the 51 percent of human beings who have the capacity to bear children, which if done may replenish capital’s supply of labour-power. Their lack of equality has, in other words, a specific character that distinguishes it from the denial of democratic rights to other groups. It is a specific character rooted in women’s differential place within capitalist social reproduction. Correspondingly, the obstacles to the achievement of real social equality for women have their own character, separable from those blocking equality for other groups.

The discussion in this chapter has established a theoretical framework for analysing women’s oppression in the context of capitalist social reproduction. Women’s special position in capitalist society has two defining aspects. In the first place, as in all class-societies, women and men are differentially located with respect to important material aspects of social reproduction. In the second place, women, like many other groups in capitalist society, lack full democratic rights.

The differential location of women and men with respect to social reproduction varies according to class. Working-class women have disproportionate responsibility for the domestic component of necessary labour, that is, for the ongoing tasks involved in the maintenance and replacement of labour-power. Correspondingly, working-class men have disproportionate responsibility for the social component of necessary labour, that is, for provision of the means of subsistence that take the form of commodities, a responsibility they can only hope to fulfil by entering into wage-labour. In the capitalist class, women may have disproportionate responsibility for the processes involved in the generational replacement of individual class-members, while men may be disproportionately involved in maintaining the processes of capitalist accumulation. (The analysis of just which women in contemporary capitalist society fall into the category of working class is not attempted here. It properly forms part of the much debated and still confused Marxist investigation into the contemporary class-structure. Insofar as this problem remains unresolved, the movement for women’s liberation lacks necessary theoretical guidance.)

While only certain women perform domestic labour in capitalist society, namely, working-class women, whose efforts maintain and renew exploitable labour-power—all women suffer from a lack of equality under capitalism, at least in principle. Women’s lack of equality constitutes a specific feature of women’s oppression in capitalist as opposed to other class-societies. Discriminatory conventions that survive from earlier class-societies are supplemented and strengthened by newly developed mechanisms of bourgeois political discrimination. Both the legal system and an array of informal social practices support the oppression and inequality of women. At the same time, capitalism promises equality to all persons, and where it fails to deliver in the case of women, the lack is strongly felt. Like other groups denied equal rights, women struggle to achieve them. In the past, the feminist movement focused on the gross inequalities in civil society, especially those embedded in legal codes. In the advanced capitalist countries today, the battle for equality continues, and reaches into areas never dreamed of by nineteenth-century feminists. Women fight for equal rights in the so-called private sphere, formerly regarded as largely outside the scope of legal and social redress. For example, they focus on equality in the household, freedom of sexual choice, and the right to bear or not bear children. In the area of paid work, women push the issue of equality beyond demands for equal pay and equal opportunity, by calling as well for equal compensation for work of comparable worth. In essence, recent demands for equality often pose the question of the meaning of formal equality in a society based on real inequity. Advanced capitalist countries have become, furthermore, the first class-societies in which differences between women and men sometimes appear to outweigh differences between classes. In these countries, the expansion of the middle layers of the class-structure and the development of a homogenised consumerist life-style combine with the still powerful demarcation between “women’s sphere” of domestic labour and “men’s sphere” of wage-labour to provide a context in which lack of equality with respect to men may seem to be the most consequential social factor in many women’s lives. It is all too easy to overlook the fundamental distinction between the working class and other sectors of society. Socialist feminists insist that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is not, in any real sense, a sister, but other distinctions tend to fade.

The specific character of women’s oppression in capitalist societies is established, in short, by women’s particular dual position with respect to domestic labour and equal rights. At the same time, women’s special status constitutes an obstacle to certain trends inherent in capitalist accumulation. Thus, barriers to female labour-force participation and isolation in a private household inhibit the tendencies toward reduction of domestic labour and free availability of labour-power. Over time, most capitalist societies in fact experience a reduction of women’s isolation as well as an increase in female participation in wage-labour. To the extent that the special status of women continues, it permits discrimination against them that may work in capital’s favour. For example, wages for “women’s” jobs remain notoriously low. At the political level, women’s lack of rights comes into increasing contradiction with the tendency to widen the scope of equality in advanced capitalist countries. In the twentieth century, the barriers to equality for women have been enormously reduced, revealing the underlying tension between formal and substantive equality. For many women, as for most members of other oppressed groups in capitalist society, bourgeois equality now shows itself as sharply distinct from liberation in a just society.

Lack of equality as a group constitutes the basis for women’s movements that unite women from different classes and sectors. These movements will differ according to their interpretation, explicit or implicit, of the meaning of equality. Some may, for example, view equality of women and men within bourgeois society as an essentially satisfactory goal. Such movements would quite properly be called bourgeois women’s movements. The contradictions of late capitalism make it likely, however, that women’s movements will have at least some insight into the difference between bourgeois equality and real social equality. This could form a basis for the development of a women’s movement oriented toward socialism. Over the past twenty years, women’s movements in the advanced capitalist countries have often shown such potential. Unfortunately, the Left has rarely been capable of intervening constructively. Its weakness has resulted, in part, from the lack of an adequate theory of women’s oppression.

The position advanced, here—which analyses women’s oppression in terms of domestic labour and equal rights—differs greatly from much socialist and socialist-feminist analysis. Socialist-feminist writings often locate women’s oppression in capitalist society in their dual position as domestic workers and wage-labourers. In a typical formulation, Margaret Coulson, Branka Magas, and Hilary Wainwright assert, for example, that “the central feature of women’s position under capitalism is the fact that they are both domestic and wage labourers, that the two aspects of their existence are by no means harmoniously related and that this dual and contradictory role generates the specific dynamic of their oppression.” Jean Gardiner has elabourated the same distinction in terms of women’s “dual relationship to the class structure,” directly as wage-labourers, and indirectly as family-members dependent on men and responsible for domestic labour.[47] This argument, which often appears in contemporary-socialist as well as socialist-feminist work focuses solely on economic phenomena. It fails to account for the oppression of women not in the working class, and cannot explain the potential for building progressive women’s organisations that cross class-divisions, nor the possible obstacles to uniting women from distinct racial or national groups into a single women’s movement. Put another way, the claim that women’s oppression rests on their dual position with respect to domestic and wage-labour is economistic. Despite the socialist-feminist movement’s commitment to the liberation of all women, to organisational autonomy, and to the importance of subjective experience, it has paradoxically embraced a view of women’s oppression quite similar to the economism of much of the socialist tradition. By contrast, the argument that women’s oppression is rooted in their dual position with respect to domestic labour and equal rights provides a framework for both understanding women’s position in wage-labour and analysing how a broad-based women’s liberation-movement may represent an essential component in the fight for socialism.

Although many changes in the character of domestic labour and the status of equal rights have taken place in the era of capitalist domination, women’s oppression remains a fixture of capitalist society. As it does in every class-society, the ruling class manages, one way or another, to stabilise the reproduction of labour-power with a historically established minimum of necessary labour. The current constellation of domestic labour, women’s rights, and female oppression represents the outcome of specific struggles over the reproduction of labour-power.

So long as capitalism survives, domestic labour will be required for its reproduction, disproportionately performed by women and most likely accompanied by a system of male supremacy.

It is now possible to situate, in theoretical terms, the working-class family in the context of capitalist social reproduction. In essence, the working-class family is a kin-based site for the reproduction of labour-power. Like most units for domestic labour in capitalist society, it is socially isolated from the realm of wage-labour. Ordinarily, the site takes the form of a household, or a series of households linked by networks of mutual obligation. For example, a working-class family may include several generations of adults, with their children, living in adjacent rental units. Or it may consist of two persons, with or without children, living in their own home. In the case of migrant-labour, a single worker may participate in two households. One will be in his or her place of origin, and include dependent kin; the other will be at work, and may take the form of dormitory quarters, lodgings, and the like. In most capitalist societies, working-class family households have the major responsibility for the processes that maintain and renew the bearers of labour-power.

Performance of the domestic component of necessary labour constitutes the material pivot of the working-class family-household. Given that this task has historically been carried out primarily by women, in a context usually characteised by male supremacy, the working-class family becomes a highly institutionalised repository of women’s oppression. As domestic labourers in the private household, women seem to devote much of their time to performing unpaid services for wage-earning men, a situation that can give rise to antagonistic relationships between the sexes. In addition, women’s political and social inequality, and their struggle to acquire rights, provide another potential source of conflict between the sexes. In this atmosphere of chronic tension within private family households, women’s oppression may appear to be solely an oppression by men, rooted in a transhistorically—antagonistic sex-division of labour and embodied in the family. Nonetheless, it is responsibility for the domestic labour necessary to capitalist social reproduction—and not the sex-division of labour or the family per se—that materially underpins the perpetuation of women’s oppression and inequality in capitalist society.

These comments provide, it must be emphasised, only a sketch of the material foundation for the working-class family. Its actual form and character vary widely, according to the specific historical development of a given capitalist society. Ordinarily, working-class family-experience reflects the contradictory role in capitalist social reproduction of domestic labour and the reproduction of labour-power. On the one hand, family life in capitalist society is generally characterised by male supremacy and women’s oppression, producing tensions and conflict that may further fragment an already divided working class. On the other hand, families constitute important supportive institutions within working-class communities, offering meaning and warmth to their members, and potentially providing a base for opposition to attempts by the capitalist class to enforce or extend its economic, political, or ideological domination. In other words, the family is neither wholly a pillar of defence and solidarity for the working class, as some socialists would have it, nor an institution so torn by internal struggle and male domination that it must be abolished, as some socialist feminists might argue. Instead, working-class families generally embody elements of both support and conflict, bound together in a dynamic combination that is not necessarily fixed. Concrete investigation will reveal whether the supportive or the conflictual aspects dominate in a particular situation. In a successful strike, for example, solidarity within and among working-class families may be a major factor, although this defensive aspect of working-class family-life may recede after the conclusion of the battle. Elsewhere, a strike of male workers may be lost in part because organisers fail to involve dependent wives and children in support, thereby heightening already existing tensions in the family. Contention over the family-wage, or the sex-segregation of the occupational structure, also has roots in the contradictory experience of working-class family-life. Indeed, nineteenth- and twentieth-century social history abounds with case-studies demonstrating the key and contradictory role of the working-class family: a haven for its members against the onslaughts of capitalist accumulation, yet simultaneously a concentrated locus of patriarchal relations.[48]

In the late twentieth century, the success of working-class and popular struggles has become increasingly dependent on the mobilisation of women as well as men. Male chauvinism and women’s oppression in working-class families represent, therefore, a greater obstacle to the achievement of socialist goals than ever before. A socialist movement that uncritically supports existing forms of working-class family-life, or only perfunctorily addresses the problem of female subordination, risks alienating more than half its activists and allies. Conversely, popular movements that vigorously confront male chauvinism and oppose women’s oppression have the potential to lay the groundwork for a future society in which the real social equality of women and men can be built.

So long as a society is dominated by the capitalist mode of production, an opposition between surplus-labour and necessary labour, and between wage-labour and domestic labour, will exist. While it is conceivable that the tendency and struggle for equal rights might reduce sex-differences in the performance of the domestic component of necessary labour to a minimum, that minimum would still assign disproportionate responsibility to women in their capacity as child-bearers, and potentially provide the material foundation for a system of male supremacy. Extension of democracy, no matter how wide, can never abolish capitalist exploitation, nor can it liberate women.

[...]

Socialist society does not, it is clear, abolish the family in the sense of doing away with individual social units in which domestic labour is performed. Neither does it eliminate the sex-division of labour. What it does do is undermine the foundation for the oppression of women within the individual household and in society. The extension of democracy, the drawing of women into public production, and the progressive transformation of domestic labour during the socialist transition open up the possibility for what Marx calls “a higher form of the family and of relations between the sexes.” The exact form such relations will take cannot be predicted in advance. As Engels argues, “what we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear.” It is up to future generations to determine how they wish to live. “When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual—and that will be the end of it.”[49]

Confronted with the terrible reality of women’s oppression, nineteenth-century utopian socialists called for the abolition of the family. Their drastic demand continues to find advocates among socialists even today. In its place, however, historical materialism poses the difficult question of simultaneously reducing and redistributing domestic labour in the course of transforming it into an integral component of social production in communist society. Just as in the socialist transition “the state is not ‘abolished,’ it withers away,” so too, domestic labour must wither away.[50] The proper management of domestic labour and women’s work during the transition to communism is therefore a critical problem for socialist society, for only on this basis can the economic, political, and ideological conditions for women’s true liberation be established and maintained. In the process, the family in its particular historical form as a kin-based social unit for the reproduction of exploitable labour-power in class-society will also wither away—and with it both patriarchal family-relations and the oppression of women.

1. Barrett 1980, p. 79. I would like to thank Ira Gerstein for his many perceptive comments on the theoretical arguments in this and the following chapter.↩

2. Karl Marx 1971 [1867] Capital Volume 1, Moscow: Progress Publishers (hereafter Marx 1971a), pp. 164, 43, so, 179.↩

3. Marx 1971a, p. 173.↩

4. Marx 1971a, p. 531; Karl Marx 1971, Capital Volume 3, Moscow: Progress Publishers, (hereafter Marx 1971b), p. 790.↩

5. The term reproduction of labour-power has also been used in a variety of other ways. It is sometimes employed to designate processes associated with the development of skills and the maintenance of ideological hegemony. For example, the educational system in capitalist society plays an important part in social reproduction and has been analysed in terms of its role in the so-called reproduction of labour-power. Still another use of the term refers to the labour involved in the production and distribution of the means of subsistence. Workers in restaurants and clothing factories in capitalist society are said, for instance, to contribute to the reproduction of labour-power. While these various uses of the term reproduction of labour-power are suggestive, they disregard the special character of labour that is socially organised into an economy as opposed to labour that is not. See also the comments in Hindess and Hirst 1975 Pre-capitalist modes of production. London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, Chapter 1.↩

6. Marx 1971a, p. 179.↩

7. Marx was not at all consistent in his discussion of the concept of individual consumption. At times he clearly restricts it to the daily maintenance of the individual direct producer. Elsewhere, he slips into formulations that imply it covers the maintenance and renewal of the worker “and his family.” Socialist feminists have pointed to these inconsistencies as evidence of the inadequacies of the Marxist tradition. The difficulty lies not only with the remarks, but with the absence of any sustained examination of wage-labour in the other volumes of Capital, which consider social reproduction as a whole. Had Marx completed his original plan, which projected a separate volume on wage-labour, some of the problems might have been rectified. On the plans for Capital, see note 42 of Chapter 5↩

8. For the question of theoretical levels, see Establet 1973, and Gerstein 1976, “Production, Circulation and Value,” Economy and Society, 5: 243-91. The wording “total social reproduction” is used here to refer to the theoretical level at which Volume III of Capital operates, or, in Gerstein’s terms, to “the complex unity of production and circulation.” Gerstein 1976, p. 265; see also pp. 253–6.↩

9. Marx 1971a, p. 592.↩

10. The distinction of theoretical levels makes it clear that the domestic-labour debate discussed in Chapter 2 properly concerns the problem of individual consumption at the level of the immediate production-process in the capitalist mode of production—and not, as it seemed to some at the time, the reproduction of labour-power in general.↩

11. For a sensible discussion of common-sense meanings of the term family, see Rayna Rapp 1978, “Family and Class in Contemporary America: Notes Toward an Understanding of Ideology,” Science and Society, 42: 278–300 (hereafter Rapp 1978).↩

12. On the social construction of sex-differences, see: Barrett 1980, pp. 74–7; Lourdes Benería 1979, “Reproduction, Production and the Sexual Division of Labour,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 3: 203–25, (hereafter Benería 1979); Liz Brown 1979, “The Family and Its Genealogies: A Discussion of Engels’ Origin of the Family,” m/f, 3: 5–34.; Eisenstein, Zillah (ed.) 1978, Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, New York: Monthly Review Press; Edholm, Felicity, Olivia Harris and Kate Young 1977, “Conceptualising Women,” Critique of Anthropology, 9–10: 101–30; Maxine Molyneux 1977, “Androcentrism in Marxist Anthropology,” Critique of Anthropology, p. 20. (hereafter Molyneux 1977). For a fine critique of this literature, see Sayers 1982. See also the works cited in note 22 of this chapter.↩

13. Marx 1971a, p. 173.↩

14. Marx 1971b, p. 791; see also Marx 1971a, p. 209.↩

15. Socialist-feminist discussions of the reproduction of labour-power sometimes stretch the term, implicitly if not explicitly, to include the renewal of individuals in the ruling class. In so doing, they not only produce conceptual confusion, they do away with the essential distinction between classes—that between exploiters and exploited.↩

16. Marx 1971a, pp. 208–9, 226–9.↩

17. Bridget O’Laughlin 1977, “Production and Reproduction: Meillassoux’s Femmes, greniers et capitaux,” Critique of Anthropology, 8: 3–32. pp. 6–7; Rapp 1979, pp. 319, 321–2; Lise Vogel 1978, “The Contested Domain: A Note on the Family in the Transition to Capitalism,” Marxist Perspectives I, I: 50-73. For discussions of functionalism in socialist-feminist theory, see Michèle Barrett 1980, Women’s Oppression Today: Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis, London: Verso (hereafter Barrett 1980), pp. 93–6, and See Janet Sayers 1982, Biological Politics: Feminist and Anti-Feminist Perspectives, London: Tavistock Publications (hereafter Sayers 1982), p. 202.↩

18. Paddy Quick 1977, “The Class Nature of Women’s Oppression,” Review of Radical Political Economics, 9,3: 42–53, (hereafter Quick 1977). In addition to her consideration of women’s oppression in class-society, Quick develops a contrast between class- and non-class-societies, arguing that “it is only in class society that the involvement of women in child-bearing results in the oppression of women” (p. 45). Along similar lines, she makes the radical suggestion that “the family...is a term applicable only to class societies, in which production (and reproduction) have a meaning distinct from the organization of production in the interests of society as a whole (i.e. communist societies, both primitive and advanced)” (p. 47).↩

19. For discussions of the relationship between biology, sex-divisions of labour, and women’s oppression, see Barrett 1980, pp. 72–7, 195–9, and Sayers 1982. Mark Cousins claims that the biological distinction of sex cannot be addressed by Marxism, for ’the capitalist and the labourer are personifications [that are] abstract to and indifferent to the problem of sexual difference.” Cousins 1978, p. 63. By contrast, Marx did not disregard the role of biology in social reproduction. He insisted, for example, that the mortality of direct producers necessitates their maintenance and replacement, thereby making the problem of the reproduction of labour-power critical to the social reproduction of class-society. In the case of capitalism, “reproduction of labor-power forms, in fact, an essential of the reproduction of capital itself.” Marx 1971a, pp. 575–6. If the biological fact of mortality is central to Marxist analysis, why not the biological fact of sexual dimorphism as well!↩

20. See, for example, Christopher Middleton 1979, “The Sexual Division of Labour in Feudal England”, New Left Review, 113–14: 147–68, (hereafter Middleton 1979).↩

21. Quick 1977, p. 47↩

22. For discussion of the historical origins of women’s oppression, see Sally Alexander 1976, “Women’s Work in Nineteenth-Century London: A Study of the Years 1820-1850,” in Mitchell and Oakley (eds.) 1976, The Rights and Wrongs of Women, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books (hereafter Alexander 1976); Benería 1979; Mina Davis Caulfield 1981, “Equality, Sex and Mode of Production,” pp. 201–220 in Berreman, Gerald (ed.) 1981, Social Inequality: Comparative and Developmental Approaches, New York; Academic Press; Penelope Ciancanelli 1980, “Exchange, Reproduction and Sex Subordination among the Kikuyu of East Africa,” Review of Radical Political Economics 12, 2:25–36; Carmen Diana Deere, and Magdalena León de Leal 1981–2, “Peasant Production, Proletarianization, and the Sexual Division of Labor in the Andes,” Signs, 7: 338–60; Maurice Godelier, 1981, “The Origins of Male Domination,” New Left Review, 127: 3–17; Middleton 1979; Iris Young, 1981, “Beyond the Unhappy Marriage: A Critique of the Dual Systems Theory,” in Sargent (ed.) 1981. Women and Revolution: A Discussion of the Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism, Boston: South End Press.↩

23. Marx 1971a, 168; Joan Kelly-Gadol, 1975–6, “The Social Relation of the Sexes: Methodological Implications of Women’s History,” Signs, I: 809-23, p. 821.↩

24. Similarly, men ordinarily participate, to some extent, in the immediate tasks of necessary labour. It is important to recognise that personal maintenance tasks (washing oneself, brushing one’s teeth, and so on) constitute necessary labour, as does the work involved in getting to the site of production (walking six miles to the mill, commuting to the office by train, and so on).↩

25. Alexander 1976; Angela Davis 1971, “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves,” Black Scholar 3, 4: 3–15.↩

26. Marx 1971a, pp. 535–6; similar statements appear on pp. 533, 537, 538, and 542, as well as in Marx 1973 [1857] Grundrisse, Baltimore: Penguin Books (hereafter Marx 1973), pp. 458, 676–7, 717n. Marx’s famous comments that the labourer “belongs to himself, and performs his necessary vital functions outside the process of production,” a performance “the capitalist may safely leave...to the labourer’s instincts of self-preservation and of propagation,” implicitly recognise reproduction of labour-power as a process that must remain external to capitalist commodity-production. His unfortunate phrasing, quite rightly the object of feminist criticism, appears to exempt the process from theoretical examination, however, and conceals the kernel of genuine theoretical insight. Marx 1971a, pp. 536-7. Molyneux argues that “domestic labour, as privatized individual labour not subject to the law of value, lies outside the theory of the capitalist mode of production,” but she does not deny the importance of developing a Marxist analysis of domestic labour in capitalist society. Molyneux 1977, p. 20.↩

27. Marx 1971a, p. 505.↩

28. The units for the performance of the domestic component of necessary labour can be analysed in terms of what has been called the double “separation” of the direct producer, who neither “owns” nor “possesses” the means and conditions of capitalist production. The payment of wages and the isolated domestic labour site embody this double separation. Wage-labourers cannot appropriate, or own, surplus-value. Neither can they activate, or possess, the concrete labour-process. In this sense, the payment of wages corresponds to the worker’s lack of ownership of any property, save his or her own labour-power. Spatial, temporal, and institutional separation of the site of domestic labour from that of wage-labour reflects the worker’s inability to set the instruments of social labour in motion. In sum, the bearers of labour-power are in a state of non-ownership and non-possession of the means and conditions of production. From this point of view, the units for the performance of domestic labour constitute a special subset of social units in capitalist society. They are concrete forms taken by the relation between the working class’s non-ownership and non-possession of the means and conditions of production. Note Poulantzas’s characterisation of the enterprise as “the concrete form of the relation between an economic ownership and a possession that both belong to capital.” Nicos Poulantzas 1975, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, London: New Left Books, p. 123. See also Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar 1970, Reading Capital, London: New Left Books; and Charles Bettelheim 1975, Economic Calculation and Forms of Property, New York: Monthly Review Press. Because these social units materialise a definite relationship to the means and conditions of production—namely, non-ownership and non-possession on the part of the bearers of labour-power—they cannot be viewed as private enclaves developing in relative isolation from the processes of capitalist production. The form, composition, and internal structure of the special set of social units acting as sites for domestic labour are, in fact, directly affected by the course of capitalist accumulation.

In a limited sense, the social units in which the domestic component of necessary labour takes place are the counterparts of capitalist enterprises. From this point of view, Bettelheim’s discussion of the “displacement of the limits” of the enterprise with the rise of monopoly-capitalism suggests a similar conceptualisation of the development of family-households in capitalist society. The removal of certain functions from the private household, for example, and the development of collective consumption, represent analogous displacements of limits. It must be emphasised that to speak of the units of domestic labour as counterparts to those of capitalist production implies no simple parallelism.↩

29. Marx 1971a, Chapters 12 and 16↩

30. Emily Blumenfeld and Susan Mann 1980, “Domestic Labour and the Reproduction of Labour Power: Towards an Analysis of Women, the Family, and Class’ in Bennie Fox (ed.) 1980, Hidden in the Household: Women’s Domestic Labour under Capitalism, Toronto: Women’s Press; Nancy Holmstrom 1981, “’Women’s Work,” The Family and Capitalism,” Science and Society, 45(2): 186–211 (hereafter Holstrom 1981).↩

31. The liberating potential inherent in the socialisation of domestic labour was especially evident in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; see Dolores Hayden 1981, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.↩

32. In their desire for equality and liberation, feminists have sometimes tried to abolish the role of biology. For example, Firestone calls for “the freeing of women from the tyranny of their biology by any means available,” including artificial reproduction outside the womb. Shalumith Firestone 1970, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, New York: William Morrow and Co., p. 206; Sayers 1982; for discussion of the contradictory and anti-materialist character of such positions↩

33. Marx 1971a, pp. 168, 486. For a more detailed exposition of Marx’s discussion of the value and price of labour-power, and of wages, see Chapter 5.↩

34. Gerstein 1973, “Domestic Work and Capitalism,” Radical America 7, 4–5; Smith 1978, ``Domestic Labour and Marx’s Theory of Value’ in Annette Kuhn and Annemarie Wolpe (eds.) 1978, Feminism and Materialism: Women and Modes of Production, Boston: Rutledge and Kegan Paul. Smith does not address the question of the destination of the value contained in the means of subsistence consumed by non-working household-members, and says nothing about the family-wage. The implication is that persons not engaged in wage-labour somehow fall outside the capitalist mode of production.↩

35. For the controversy over the interpretation of the family-wage, see Michèle Barrett and Mary Mcintosh 1980, “The ‘Family Wage’: Some Problems for Socialists and Feminists,” Capital and Class, 11: 51-72. For clear discussions of how a dependent wife not in the labour-force raises (rather than lowers) the value of labour-power, see Holmstrom 1981 or Maxine Molyneux 1979, “Beyond the Domestic Labour Debate,” New Left Review, 116:3–27.↩

36. Frederich Engels 1972 [1884], The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, New York: International Publishers, p. 88 (hereafter Engels 1972). For a summary of the recent discussion about women and the industrial reserve-army, see Margaret Simeral 1978, “Women and the Reserve Army of Labor,” Insurgent Sociologist, 8, 2-3: 164–179. See also: Floya Anthias 1980, “Women and the Reserve Army of Labour: A Critique of Veronica Beechey,” Capital and Class, 10: 50–63; Barrett 1980, pp. 24-7, 158-62; Irene Bruegel 1979, “Women as a Reserve Army of Labour: A Note on Recent British Experience,” Feminist Review, 3: 12–23.↩

37. Veronica Beechey 1977, “Some Notes on Female Wage Labour in Capitalist Production,” Capital and Class, 3: 45–66, p. 58↩

38. Marx 1971b p. 196. Gaudemar has developed the concept of the tendency toward perfect mobility of labour-power. Not once, however, does he consider the barrier formed by the existence of domestic labour and the family-household (Jean-Paul de Gaudemar 1976, Mobilité du travail et accumulation du capital, Paris: François Maspero).↩

39. Marx 1973, pp. 609–10.↩

40. Marx 1973, p. 245. See also Engels 1947 [1877], Anti-Duhring, Moscow: Progress Publishers, pp. 124–9 (hereafter Engels 1947).↩

41. Marx 1971a, pp. 78, 76–7, 78. See also Marx 1971a, Chapter 1, Sections 2 and 4; Karl Marx 1970, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Moscow: Progress Publishers, Chapter 1; Isaak Illich Rubin 1972, Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, Detroit: Black and Red, chapters 10–14.↩

42. Marx 1971a, p. 165. See also Marx 1971a, pp. 156–7, 164–6, 172, 188, 547–50. On the laws of the exchange of commodities, see Marx 1971a, pp. 88–96, 106–15.↩

43. Marx 1971a, pp. 164-7. This “double freedom” embodies the double separation discussed in note 3 of this chapter.↩

44. Marx 1971a, p. 550. See also the citations in note 16 of this chapter.↩

45. For good discussions of the nature of equality in the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see: Alan Dawley 1976, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn, Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 1–10, 60–8, 207-11; Ellen Carol DuBois 1978, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America 1848-1869, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 40–7; W.E.B. Du Bois 1971 [1935], Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880, Reprint, New York: Atheneum Publishers, Chapters 1–2.↩

46. V.I. Lenin 1966, The Emancipation of Women, New York: International Publishers, p. 80.↩

47. Margaret Coulsen, Branka Magas and Hilary Wainwright 1975, “‘The Housewife and Her Labour under Capitalism’: A Critique,” New Left Review, 89: 59–71, p. 65; Jean Gardiner 1977, “Women in the Labour Process and Class Structure” in A. Hunt (ed.) Class and Class Structure, London: Lawrence and Wishart, p. 159.↩

48. Rayna Rapp summarises the literature on these variations in Rapp 1978–9, “Anthropology,” Signs, 4:497–513.↩

49. Marx 1971a, p. 460; Engels 1972, p. 145.↩

50. Engels 1947, p. 333; see also p. 338.↩

Epilogue to the Second Edition

By 1983, the year in which we conclude the reader, the revolutionary feminist project reached a turning point. A rightward political turn and the stagnation of feminist organizing in the United States and Europe brought an end to significant material gains in overcoming gender inequality. With a number of notable theoretical publications over that year, Marxist Feminism reached something of a high-point. That same year Marxism began a rapid disappearance from academic feminist thinking, as a “cultural turn” overtook feminist scholarship.

The broader left project faced an interrelated crisis. Social democracy in Europe was eroding and would never recover. The mass social movements of the 1960s and 1970s largely collapsed, and with them the plethora of socialist and nationalist organizations that had proliferated on the left. The independent post-colonial nations of Africa and Asia found themselves in a crippling debt crisis, and one after another adopted a range of neoliberal reforms. The peasant movements of Central and South America found themselves facing off against intensely brutal, US-backed military governments, intensifying a period of genocide and political violence.

Yet for many young revolutionary feminists today, 1983 is the beginning of our political stories. The feminist sex wars gave rise to a strong articulation of a pro-sex, pro-trans, pro-sex worker, and pro-queer politics that created the milieu in which many third-wave feminists came of age. Queer radicalism took off with ACT-UP—AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power—a direct action network against AIDS, and one of the most militant and fierce US and European struggles of the late 1980s. Trans liberation, gender experimentation, and butch/femme all entered the feminist political imaginary, contesting the very notion of gender. For all its faults, post-structuralism and the work of Michel Foucault opened up new theoretical avenues for queer theory. Academic feminism internalized a truncated form of the critique of Black and postcolonial feminists, supporting a growth of anti-racist, race-conscious and intersectional feminism.

Now, over thirty years later, many militants find ourselves trying to bridge the new and crucial insights of feminist thinking since the 1980s with another, lost thread of materialist, marxist and communist thinking on gender. Many of us are realizing that we need a grasp of the dynamics of capitalism if we hope to substantively advance in the struggle for gender liberation, requiring a turning back towards older traditions. This reader is meant to give a way into this older literature and its rich debates, to arm current revolutionary feminism in these past debates to reimagine the terms of a revolutionary horizon.

We have been honored and overwhelmed with the enthusiasm this reader has engendered. In the fall of 2015, we know of reading groups that begin in 17 cities and five countries, bringing together over 250 people. A few more groups started meeting recently. Many of these groups integrated other material, crossed over into multiple political traditions, and gave rise to a wealth of challenging political debates. We edited this second edition of this reader based on the feedback from these many groups.

For the remainder of this epilogue, we’re offering one materialist analysis of changes in gender from the mid-19th century to today, including the decades following the conclusion of this reader. This analysis emerged out of our study with the reader, mostly in New York, and will hopefully inform future writing efforts. For the first part of our narrative, we draw on Wally Seccombe’s book on the family during the industrial revolution, Weathering the Storm.

In the late 19th century, the working class nuclear family emerged as the solution to an intensifying crisis of reproduction. New wage workers of the mid-1800s found themselves unable to survive the grueling living conditions of industrial London and new centers of industry across Europe and the US. Staggeringly high rates of infant and child mortality, plummeting lifespans, and a proliferation of alternative family forms horrified social observers. The capitalists themselves became increasingly worried their workers would not survive from one generation to the next, and they supported new forms of welfare intervention to reshape the lives of the poor.

But it was working class insurgency itself that ultimately secured the conditions of survival, but one with a cost. Where for Engles ‘the family’ necessarily meant a bourgeois family, by the end of the 19th century, Europe’s working class movements had won for their more elite members their own means of sustaining a nuclear family: the family wage. Though mothers had never worked outside the home in substantial numbers, establishing the male breadwinner family entailed a number of major changes. Mothers stopped doing work in the home for money, as employers and capitalist development established a rigid separation between the factory and the home. Children stopped working in factories, and they were mandated by new state policies in public and religious schools. Women were increasingly excluded from wage labor. More and more families became entirely dependent on a single wage from a male worker. Coupled to major municipal changes such as running water and mass transit (relieving housing overcrowding), working class reproduction dramatically improved.

Kollontai and Lenin briefly offered another alternative vision to the male bread-winner family, one based on full proletarianization and collectivization of reproductive labor. However, most major workers’ movements in Europe and the US did not endorse pursue this Soviet transformation of the family. Instead, from the 1890s on, these movements sought the means to defend and expand a single-wage, working class, male breadwinner nuclear family structure. Following WWII, the state incorporated the male breadwinner norm into policymaking, and employers enforced it through demobilizing women from wartime industries. The working class nuclear family was integrated with a comprehensive project of suburban development, rightwing ideology, and exclusion of women from wage labor.

For many working class women, of course, the model of a single-wage earning household was never viable. African-American women worked at high rates throughout this period, as did other women in the lower rungs of the working class. Queer people occasionally found niches in some industries, but often barely survived on the fringes of working class life. Like all the major institutional victories of the workers’ movement, the benefits of the male bread-winner family were unevenly distributed. For the women who did stay home to raise the children, it seems they largely found misery and loneliness.

Second wave feminism took this experience of the housewife head-on. Nearly all agreed it was an oppressive condition, but few agreed on what should replace it. Attempts at collectivizing reproductive labor like free childcare, reminiscent of the experiments of early Soviet Russia, emerged as demands of feminist organizing. Many liberal and trade union feminists fought gender discrimination in the workplace, and some joined the wave of labor insurgency in the early 1970s. Many brilliant feminist thinkers examined the condition of women through the locus of the housewife, and her role in capitalist production. Several projects tried to organize housewives autonomously; more commonly, used an analytical focus on housewives to justify women’s autonomous movements. Wages for Housework, whatever the peculiarity of its demand, offered the most significant theoretical breakthrough towards a full analysis of capitalist reproduction as a totality, one to which we are much indebted.

These movements sought some radically different ways of organizing reproductive life, in which the drudgery and isolation of household labor was not the totality of women’s lives. In many ways, they succeeded phenomenally. A more revolutionary possibility was briefly glimpsed in Italy, where a period of intense worker militancy, including mass armed factory occupations, cascaded into broad social struggles around cost of living, sexuality, student life, unemployment and family. Women in the Third World fought their own struggles with postcolonial governments and within insurgent movements. In Europe and the US, the women’s movement made gains. By the mid-1970s, many women claimed more say in their intimate relationships, won a new level of control over their bodies and reproduction, and had greater access to work and institutional positions. The gender wage gap decreased throughout the 1970s, and gender discrimination in law and practice declined. These changes in women’s lives leveled out in the mid-1980s, with one exception: women’s workforce participation. The condition of the housewife, it turned out, would soon disappear from working class life.

To understand this, we need to turn to broader shifts in capitalism. In the mid-1970s, the world economy entered a prolonged slow-down. Global overcapacity in manufacturing lead a long-term decline in the rate of profit for capitalists. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, capitalists responded with an aggressive attack on trade unions and progressive social policy, forcing down wage gains and producing a prolonged stagnation in working class wages that continues to today. Through the 1980s and 1990s, right capitalist governments in the US and UK launched an attack on social welfare programs, forcing poor women into the low-wage labor markets. The economy never really recovered, it was just thrown from bubble to crisis. Blue-collar, male-dominated manufacturing industries were the hardest hit, with waves of deindustrialization across Europe and the US. Capitalists scrambled for new investment opportunities, turning increasingly towards growing service industries.

All these factors fueled women’s workforce participation, from multiple directions. Lower wages and uneven male employment meant that keeping a family afloat required women to go to work. Service industries had been historically dominated by women, and capitalists in these sectors relied on the lower wage standards for women, so more jobs were available for women. Further, many of these service industries offered a commodity-based alternative to the labor of a housewife. Dual wage-earning households, or working single parents, could now eat at a fast-food restaurant, drop off their child at a daycare, clothes at a laundromat and elder parent at a nursing home. Professional women could turn to immigrant domestic workers to do their household cleaning and child rearing. Feminists who wanted an end to the condition of the housewife found a new, cruel victory: the single-wage, two parent, nuclear family was no longer possible. Women’s exploitation only intensified, and much of the cruelty of family life—intimate partner abuse, inequitable distribution of housework, tyrannical disciplining of children—seems to remain. The feminist struggle is as urgent as ever.

This major transformation of family life has far-reaching implications. We identify three major trends we think are particularly important for communists today:

1. The rise of the homophobic, anti-feminist and racist right: Petit bourgeois and working class people throughout the world have experienced increasing pressure on the survival of their family units and a major destabilization in gender norms. This has provided the mass base to broad, capitalist-dominated new right movements—including American evangelical Christians, the Islamic State, European rightwing parties, and Hindu nationalism. These movements often blame queers, feminists and immigrants for social problems, and argue that the heterosexual patriarchal family offers the ideological foundation of social order. Here communists must confront the political attacks on the limited gains of feminist and queer movements, but not simply by defending a tepid gender liberalism now dominated by professional-class gays and women.

2. Queer insurgency: Queer movements have grown enormously through their own militancy and vision. They were subtly aided, however, by the disintegration of the material basis of the heterosexual family. Many of the same reproductive industries that enlisted low-wage women workers have also been partially open to queers. Queer movements are class polarized, with professionals securing the bulk of recent stunning political gains. For these wealthy gays, the economic transformation of family reproduction has made it much easier to live comfortable lives. Most queer and trans people, however, remain excluded from such benefits, instead barely surviving on the edges of the service industry and under the threat of state violence. These poor queers have lead the way in breaking open gender, innovating new forms of expression and relationships. Here, too the capitalist pressure on family life has some subtle causal importance: many poor queers come from families where their parents increasingly could not have supported them regardless of their children’s sexuality. Queer youth, therefore, faced less incentive to remain in closeted lives. These rebellious queer and trans youth are often the most political and most militant proletarians today.

3. Struggles in reproductive industries: The struggles of reproductive workers have become a leading struggle of labor militancy. They work both in public and non-profit institutions under attack, and in growing for-profit sectors. Domestic workers, hospital employees, educational workers, food service workers, and many other reproductive labor industries have been central to recent upsurges. As these industries are, in many cases, the only fields with steady growth, workers have a leverage they have lost in some other sectors of the economy. In some cases, these struggles have offered new opportunities to build alliances across divisions within the working class, as care workers have gained support from their patients or clients. Lastly, struggles in social reproduction industries have the benefits of often evoking for their participants new ways of organizing social life. We can imagine insurgent movements, seeking to secure the means of survival outside of wage labor or the state, emerging in the concrete work of trying to keep health clinics and schools open amidst intensifying social crisis.

All of these struggles—among proletarian queers, against the right, within reproductive care industries—must forge a new way forward in envisioning the place of gender in communist struggle. Capitalism has undermined the nuclear family in its own unexpected and cruel way, and now we must create new ties of solidarity, care, love and rebellion in its place. Gender has always been a central pivot of capitalist development and class rebellion. In the struggles to come, the changing terrain of gender will open up new avenues of attack and resistance. We hope that this reader, in a small way, aids these future militants to identify, analyze and seize on these opportunities.

– Communist Research Cluster, 2016

Appendix

Volumes from the Communist Research Cluster in the Communist Interventions series:

Volume I: European Socialism and Communism

Volume II: Black Revolutionaries in the United States

Volume III: Revolutionary Feminism

This document was prepared with LaTeX

Version

Major version: 2

Minor version: 0

Revolutionary Feminism Communist Interventions, Volume III

1. Revolutionary Feminism Communist Interventions, Volume III

2. Preface

3. The Origins of an Orthodoxy

1. Frederich Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884)

4. Second International

1. August Bebel, Woman and Socialism (1879/1910)

2. Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling, The Woman Question (1886)

3. Clara Zetkin, Only in Conjunction With the Proletarian Women Will Socialism Be Victorious (1896)

4. Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Suffrage and the Class Struggle (1912)

5. Rosa Luxemburg, The Proletarian Woman (1914)

5. Anarchism

1. Lucy Parsons, Woman: Her Evolutionary Development (1905)

2. Voltairine de Cleyre, The Woman Question (1897)

3. Emma Goldman, The Tragedy of Woman’s Emancipation (1906)

4. Emma Goldman, Woman Suffrage (1910)

5. Milly Witkop-Rocker, The Need for Women’s Unions (1925)

6. Russian Revolution

1. V.I. Lenin, Speech at the First All-Russia Congress of Working Women (1918)

2. V.I. Lenin, Soviet Power and the Status of Women (1919)

3. Clara Zetkin, Lenin on the Woman Question (1920)

4. Alexandra Kollontai, Communism and the Family (1920)

5. Leon Trotsky, Thermidor in the Family (1937)

7. American Communist Party

1. Margaret Cowl, Women and Equality (1935)

2. Mary Inman, In Woman’s Defense (1940)

3. Claudia Jones, We Seek Full Equality for Women (1949)

4. Claudia Jones, An End to the Neglect of the Problems of Negro Women (1949)

8. Women’s Liberation

1. Casey Hayden and Mary King, Sex and Caste (1965)

2. Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt, Redstockings Manifesto (1968)

3. Anne Koedt, The Politics of the Ego: A Manifesto for N.Y. Radical Feminists (1969)

4. Roxanne Dunbar, Female Liberation as the Basis for Social Revolution (1969)

5. Jo Freeman, The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1971)

6. Women of the Weather Underground, A Collective Letter to the Women’s Movement (1973)

9. Gay Liberation Front

1. Radicalesbians, The Woman Identified Woman Manifesto (1970)

2. Carl Wittman, A Gay Manifesto (1970)

3. Radicalqueens, Radicalqueens Manifestos (1973)

4. Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries, Street Transvestites for Gay Power Statement (1970)

5. Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, Transvestite-Transsexual Action Organization and Fems Against Sexism, Transvestite and Transsexual Liberation (1970)

6. Charlotte Bunch, Lesbians in Revolt (1972)

10. Socialist Feminism

1. Barbara Ehrenreich, What is Socialist Feminism? (1976)

2. Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, Socialist Feminism (1972)

3. Marlene Dixon, The Rise and Demise of Women’s Liberation (1977)

11. Sexual Violence

1. Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will (1975)

2. Alison Edwards, Rape, Racism, and the White Women’s Movement (1976)

3. Lilia Melani and Linda Fodaski, The Psychology of the Rapist and His Victim (1974)

4. Combahee River Collective, Why Did They Die? A Document of Black Feminism (1979)

12. Black Feminism

1. Mary Ann Weathers, An Argument for Black Women’s Liberation as a Revolutionary (1969)

2. Third World Women’s Alliance, Women in the Struggle (1971)

3. Frances Beal, Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female (1976)

4. Combahee River Collective, A Black Feminist Statement (1977)

5. Audre Lorde, Age, Race, Class and Sex (1980)

13. Wages for Housework

1. Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Women and the Subversion of the Community (1972)

2. Selma James, Sex, Race and Class (1975)

3. Angela Davis, The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework (1981)

14. Materialist Feminism

1. Christine Delphy, The Main Enemy (1970)

2. Monique Wittig, The Category of Sex (1976)

3. Monique Wittig, One is Not Born a Woman (1981)

4. Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (1979)

15. Sexuality

1. Andrea Dworkin, Our Blood (1975)

2. Silvia Federici, Why Sexuality Is Work (1975)

3. Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic (1978)

4. Patrick Califia, Feminism and Sadomasochism (1981)

16. Dual Systems

1. Heidi Hartmann, The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism (1979)

2. Iris Marion Young, Beyond the Unhappy Marriage (1981)

17. Social Reproduction

1. Lise Vogel, Marxism and the Oppression of Women (1983)

18. Epilogue to the Second Edition

19. Appendix