Patriarchy is a pillar of capitalism and will fall with it

Societies divided into classes – slave society, feudalism, capitalism, succeeding each other to the present day after the much longer historical epoch of primitive communism – have been inevitable states in the passing of human history, which, while allowing the development of productive forces, have also alienated and temporarily deadened the social instinct of humanity to unite and work in common, to ensure the happy perpetuation and betterment of the species.

Women, who were held in the highest esteem in pre-class communist societies, were placed in bondage in the patriarchal order established with the development of private property, the family, and the state.

While the development of industrial production, i.e., capitalism, has partially improved the condition of women, it does not allow their emancipation from patriarchy, since patriarchy is inextricably intertwined with private property: as long as there is wealth to be passed on in inheritance or the market for labor power, patriarchy cannot be eliminated.

When the gears of the capitalist machine began to turn, proletarian women, who had been crushed for centuries in ancient societies, were given the false emancipation of wage labor, that is, the addition of a new condition of exploitation: becoming proletarian.

The emancipation of women coincides in part with the achievements of the bourgeois revolution, namely wage labor and equal civil rights, and with the demands of the proletarian class, such as reducing the length of the working day. But it remains incomplete without the suppression of domestic work by converting it into free, public services (e.g., catering and collective laundries); recognition of the importance of motherhood to the reproduction of the species with dispensation from work, crèches, and kindergartens; and the right to full reproductive choice.

The struggle for these goals begins with the struggle of the working class against capitalist exploitation – for significant wage increases, against layoffs, for full wages to the unemployed, for the reduction of the workday and working life (lowering the retirement age) – and is completed only with the abolition of capitalism, because the satisfaction of workers’ needs is incompatible with the law of profit!

For the sake of profit – which bourgeois politicians call "the good of the country" or "the good of the nation," depending on whether they are on the left or the right – capitalism now threatens the very survival of the human species. Innumerable workers die on the job every day, while imperialist war, in which proletarians are sent to slaughter behind national flags for the interests of their respective bourgeoisies, inexorably progresses toward world war.

While the appearance of agriculture, which was the economic basis of the class division of society, of private property and the family, and of the establishment of patriarchy, marked the end of primitive communism, the development of industry in the bosom of capitalism, with its overwhelming historical progress, makes modern communism possible again: society now has all the material means for the real welfare of all its members, but it is prevented from producing to meet human needs because it is subject to the economic laws of capital, defended by the bourgeois state and its political machinery.

Only the international revolution of the working class, organized in strong class unions and led by the authentic Communist Party, can overthrow the bourgeois political regimes that prevent this historical passage, that keep humanity chained to the historical prison of a society rent by individual and familial egoism, a society torn asunder by ethnic, xenophobic, and religious hatred; of which the oppression of women is a pillar and necessary product.

Only in a society liberated from the last form of slavery, that of wage labor, will patriarchy be superceded, and the final blow will at last be dealt to the already moribund family, founded on monogamic matrimony. Women will return to the center of social consideration and humanity will reconcile itself with its natural instinct to live socially, with its longing for communism.