Lecture One: Feminism, Women and the Rev



Term Two: Women and the Working Class in Russia

Last term Annie focused on issues of race, class and gender in contemporary capitalist society

Persistent inequalities in capitalist society are not simply the result of differences in individual abilities but are embedded in the social institutions of capitalist society

Many people through the 20th century believed that socialism or communism promised a different kind of society in which institutionalised inequality and oppression would be eliminated.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of the communist heartlands apparently gave strong support to Margaret Thatcher’s famous cry ‘There is no alternative’.

This term we will look at what happened in Russia, focusing particularly on class and gender inequality in Soviet society and its legacy today.

This week I will talk about the ideas which lay behind the proclamation of the liberation of women by the Russian revolutionaries, focusing on Engels, Bebel and Kollontai.

Lecture One: Feminism, Women and the Revolution

Engels’s Origins of the Family

➢ In the earliest times there was a gender division of labour, but if anything women, who were based in the home, were superior to men.

➢ Private property in the means of production arose first in the men’s sphere.

➢ Men wanted to leave their property to their sons. This meant that they had to impose monogamy and patrilineal descent on women, to be assured of the identity of their own sons. Engels describes this as `the world historic defeat of the female sex’, the victory of men over women and private property over common ownership. But he also believed that it responded to women’s longing for chastity and for marriage with one man as they found free sexual relations `the more degrading and oppressive’ as society developed.

➢ This preoccupation with property and inheritance remains the basis of the bourgeois family. In the bourgeois family patriarchy remains firmly established, whatever the legal position, because of male property and female dependence. The bourgeois wife is enslaved, a prostitute to man, his private domestic servant.

➢ Women will only be freed with the abolition of private property, which is the basis of the family, so that marriage will be based on `free sex love’.

➢ Capitalism is destroying the family in the working class and the basis of patriarchy has been destroyed. As women go out to work the last remnants of male domination lose all foundation,

‘except perhaps, for some of that brutality towards women which became firmly rooted with the establishment of monogamy’

➢ But there is still a contradiction between the woman’s domestic responsibility in the private sphere and her public role in society as a worker.

➢ Only with the full entry of women into public industry and the abolition of the family as an economic unit of society will real equality between men and women be ensured.

Engels implies socialisation of child care and domestic labour, but has no programme and very little discussion of the future.

• In practice Marx and Engels paid little attention to the issue.

• In later life Engels was deeply suspicious of 'bourgeois' feminist movement.

• Women's liberation was seen as part of the struggle for the emancipation of the working class.

Orthodox Marxism at the turn of the century : Bebel

Bebel was a leading theorist of the German Social Democratic Party at the turn of the last century. His Women Under Socialism was the bible of the Socialist Second International. It presented in popular form the ideas of Marx and Engels with a mass of empirical illustrations.

For Bebel women suffered doubly through:

economic and social dependence on men.

And, like working class men, through wage slavery.

So working class women have an interest in working together with working class men to change society completely, not just to work for equal rights within capitalism.

The main part of the book is about women in the present. Bebel argues that:

The sexual impulse is ‘natural’, and marriage is thus beneficial to women.

Monogamous marriage is one of the cornerstones of capitalist society.

But modern society failed to meet the demands for a ‘natural life’ because marriage is not based on love

in capitalist society it is basically marriage by compulsion because

7. it is based on economic considerations and property relations - for women it is a means of support and for men a purely business relationship.

However, Bebel argues that modern marriage is already in a process of dissolution as demonstrated by the falling birth and marriage rates and the rise in the divorce rate. Most divorces were initiated by women despite the fact that they suffered the most and Bebel condemns the double standard of morality that operates in capitalist society.

Bebel argues more clearly than Engels that proletarian marriages are different.

workers marry out of inclination but

such marriages are damaged by poverty, exhaustion, sickness and by lack of work.

More favourable relations can be found in proletarian marriages because both husband and wife realise that they have the same aim, i.e. a radical transformation of society.

But the only way that the marriage ideal could be achieved was through the establishment of a new social order.

So for Bebel the key to women’s liberation rested on economic self-determination which involved:

1. the struggle for protective legislation and for legal and political equality

2. entry into the labour market for all women

3. liberation from domestic work

4. marriage based on free sex love

Women’s real liberation could only be achieved with

5. the abolition of private property, and

6. the liberation of both men and women from the monogamous family.

Bebel argues that this has to take place within a system devoid of profit, based on:

7. common ownership of the means of production

8. socialisation of reproduction.

9. Motherhood as a public service.

10. the obligation of all to work to their capacity.

In this new world women would become like men, productive and useful members of society, developing their mental and physical capacities to the full.

For Bebel women’s role in this transformation had to be an active one. Women had to mobilise themselves. The working class were women’s natural allies in this struggle because it was the ‘class state’ which also upheld the oppression of one sex by the other.

Bebel also argued that men had to rid themselves of their prejudices. But he:

a) insisted that the women's movement was an integral part of the labour movement, thus should have no contact with bourgeois feminists.

b) downplayed legal and political rights as a concern of bourgeois feminists, leading to formal equality but contributing little to substantive equality

c) regarded the emancipation of women as the automatic consequence of the liberation of the proletariat.

d) Bebel did not envisage any identity of roles between men and women. The reproductive realm is still women’s work and some sort of ‘natural sexual division of labour’ will survive.

Thus women were simply regarded as the most exploited part of the proletariat, and the organisation of women was subordinate to class organisation.

Despite the work of Engels and Bebel, the revolutionary parties paid little practical attention to the issue. Women were organised, but primarily as workers, and ‘bourgeois feminism’ was frowned on. Relatively few women were active in the leadership, and they were no feminists.

Rosa Luxemburg regarded the `woman question' as a diversion from the central priority of class organisation and class struggle.

Clara Zetkin stressed women's emancipation, but as part of proletarian emancipation and subordinate to it.

The Russian revolution: Kollontai

11. there was a relatively advanced middle class feminist movement in Russia at the end of the 19th century

12. women workers were very active in the revolutionary movement - set off the February 1917 revolution

13. but both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks shared the Second International orthodoxy.

Lenin wrote little on the woman question but was aware of the importance of women’s support for the success of the revolution.

He argued that there was a two fold task regarding women:

full legal equality of women

this was a prerequisite for women’s equality but not sufficient.

the entry of women into production, a socialised economy, and the participation of women in general productive labour (in women’s jobs)

But he saw this issue as a secondary issue: solely a women’s problem. It was ‘the women primarily who must undertake the work of building all these institutions’

After the revolution the issue of women's emancipation immediately came to the fore.

The most radical viewpoints within the Bolshevik movement were those of Inessa Armand and Alexandra Kollontai.

Alexandra Kollontai followed Engels and Bebel

14. in her historical account of the family and

15. in arguing that the liberation of women would come from their entry into social production,

but went beyond them in

16. emphasising the importance of emotions and sexuality

17. stressing the need for organisation of women

Kollontai’s work covers a number of themes. The basic themes in her work are:

18. the organisation of women.

19. the abolition of private property.

20. the entry of women into production.

21. the socialisation of domestic labour

22. and, a new proletarian sexual morality.

Kollontai recognised that the socialist state needed women both

23. for a large labour force and

24. to mother a new generation of workers.

Thus, she also lay a greater stress on the need to reconcile women’s roles as producers and reproducers as well as women’s own aspirations for independence.

Kollontai also made an important step in separating

25. domestic labour from mothering and

26. mothering from sexual relations.

But she still rejected the existence of a special woman question separate from the general social question of the day. The struggle for women’s liberation is an integral part of the struggle for socialism.

For bourgeois feminists the main enemy was men, but for proletarian women men were their comrades who shared the same social conditions, which oppressed both the women and their male comrades:

Emancipation of the proletarian woman could only be accomplished by the common effort of the entire proletariat without distinction of sex, and there could be no single united women’s movement.

Women under capitalism

In bourgeois society the family and marriage are grounded in:

material and financial considerations.

economic dependence of women on the male breadwinner, and

the need to care for children.

The family exists as an independent, individual economic unit within capitalism.

But under capitalism there was a progressive destruction of the family, which ceases ‘to be a necessity for its members as well as for the state’ because, according to Kollontai, the tasks that remained within the family (cleaning, cooking, and washing and mending linen) did not create any surplus value. The main cause of this change was the universal spread of wage labour on the part of woman.

Kollontai argued that women had a triple burden;

paid work,

housework and

child care.

Women in the Revolution

After the revolution the family remained as a legacy of the past, but communist society would break the ‘domestic yoke of woman in order to render her life richer, completer, happier and freer’ with public services.

Even after the revolution the legacy of the capitalist order had still not been eradicated.

Kolontai argued that

27. specialised work amongst proletarian women was a vital task so that

28. the setting up of separate women’s bureaux within the Party was essential

due to the particular conditions of women workers.

While there had been an enormous growth in female wage labour, nevertheless the family seemed unshakeable and the Party had to fight against these traditions every time it wanted to bring woman workers into the class struggle. Women particularly felt the inequality in their pay and their lack of voting rights, and this led to a psychological division between men and women workers.

The socialists also argued that women’s responsibilities to society would always be different to men’s. Women were not only independent workers and citizens - at the same time they were mothers, bearers of the future generations.

However, Kollontai insisted that the way in which women will fulfil these two roles will change in communist society.

To become really free, women had to throw off the chains of the current forms of the family, which oppressed women of all classes, and women needed to look to the state for support rather than, as in the past, to men.

A further task that remained within the family was the care of children but even here society would gradually take over the responsibilities of parents.

The care of children involved three distinct tasks;

the care of very young babies,

the upbringing of children, and

the instruction of the child

Education of children was already the duty of the state while the care of small babies remained, but even here the state has the duty to assure a livelihood to every mother, in order to permit the woman to serve the state in a useful manner and simultaneously to be a mother.

The family unit and domestic labour is therefore seen as uneconomic and involving the expenditure of unproductive labour, especially on the part of women. It was thus in conflict with the aims and interests of communist society for a single economic plan and the expedient use of the labour force, which included the use of women’s labour.

So under communism the family unit shrinks to a union of two people based on mutual agreement. It will not be necessary to abolish the family because it will simply ‘wither away’ once it loses its functions.

The state is no longer concerned with the family as an economic unit, but with

29. the ‘changing forms of marital relations’: relations between the sexes, and

30. the care of children, which is a social-state concern.

Maternity is protected and provided for

31. not only in the interests of the woman herself, but

32. still more in the interests of state and

33. the needs of the economy in the transition to a socialist system

Under socialism women are seen first and foremost as a member of the labour force;

maternity is important, but is a supplementary task: a social matter not a private family matter.

Thus Kollontai argues that abortion would disappear when institutions for protecting mothers were fully in place and when women realised that motherhood was a social obligation.

Thus Kollontai argues for public restaurants and kitchens, laundries, cleaning ladies, repair shops, creches, nurseries, kindergartens and income support which would:

remove the burden of motherhood and privatised parenthood

abolish the family as it has been known

leave Engels's marriage based on individual sex-love

Sexuality and Communist Morality

Kollontai also recognised the importance of sexuality for politics and it is in this area that her arguments go beyond most other Bolsheviks and indeed of Engels and Bebel. Her interest in morality and emotions however, is continually linked with the philosophy of class struggle.

In bourgeois society the family came first but for workers class interests must come first. This is one reason why it is essential for women to take part in productive labour outside the home. If women are tied to the kitchen they shut their eyes to the social struggle and this is in contradiction with the aims of a working class ideology of ‘comradely solidarity’.

Many socialists argued that sexual problems could only ‘be settled when the basic re-organisation of the social and economic structure of society has been tackled’. Kollontai, on the other hand, argued that ideology, and a new sexual morality had to be worked out in the process of the struggle with hostile forces.

For Kollontai the bourgeois ideal of marriage and love is directed towards the accumulation of capital, and thus it has no relevance for the working class. And one of the constant features of social struggle has been the attempt to change relationships between the sexes.

Within the capitalist system there are three types of relationships;

legal marriage,

prostitution and

‘free union’.

But all three types block and distort the human soul. Without a change of the human psyche and an increase in ‘man’s potential for loving’ there can be no way out of the sexual crisis that characterises society. Bourgeois marriage is extremely individualistic but also leads to the idea that one person within the marriage possesses the other and is based on a double morality.

Prostitution is even worse because it distorts the male personality and is the inevitable shadow of the official institution of marriage that was designed to preserve private property. Prostitution is however, a social phenomenon and is not only about women’s lack of sexual rights, but also connected with their economic dependence and role in domestic labour.

Bourgeois morality is in a process of disintegration but the beginnings of more healthy relations can only be found among the proletariat, because these are the only relationships that are not based on property relations.

On the ruins of the old family a new form will arise, involving

‘altogether different relations between men and women, and which will be a union of affection and comradeship, a union of two equal persons of the communist society, both of them free, both of them independent, both of them workers’ (Kollontai 1971 [1921]:17, emphasis in original).

Under communism domestic servitude will disappear and women will no longer be dependent on men but on their own work.

Thus Kollontai argues that new forms of relationships are necessary and the task of the party is to ‘re-educate the work collective and to bring its psychology into line with the economic tasks of the working class’.

For Kollontai moral norms have only two aims.

Firstly, to keep human beings and their children healthy and to ‘bring the selection of sexual partners in line with the interests of the human race’.

Secondly, ‘to develop and refine the human psyche; to develop in the human spirit feelings of comradeship, solidarity and the emotional experience of being part of the collective’.

However, she argues that contemporary bourgeois morality satisfies neither of these aims, but instead serves only the interests of property

Love is only one aspect of life but in contrast to the bourgeois attitude to sexual relations as ‘simply a matter of sex’, communist morality recognises a wide variety of relationships so long as they are based on mutual inclination. The monogamous union based on “great love” still remains the ideal. But this is not a permanent or set relationship’.

Love is not simply a private matter but is also a ‘uniting element which is valuable to the collective’. Proletarian love however, is not exclusive and it tries to direct these emotions towards the good of the collective, into ‘channels which are advantageous to the class during the struggle for and the construction of communist society’.

The sexual act is a natural one but the needs and interests of the individual must be subordinated to the interests and aims of the collective. Sex without love is contradictory to the interests of the working class. It involves

37. excess and physical exhaustion,

38. prevents the development of positive emotions and

39. rests on the dependence of the woman on the man and

40. on male complacency and insensitivity

Therefore the bonds of family and marriage must be weakened, and love-comradeship should be the ideal defining relationships. This involves three basic principles.

an equality within relationships.

mutual recognition of the rights of the other

‘comradely sensitivity’: an ability to understand the inner workings of the loved person

The old ideal was “all for the loved one”; communist morality demands all for the collective and the collective will always take precedence, will be firmer, more complex and organic’.

Criticisms of Kollontai:

We will discuss these in the seminar:

Kollontai

a) assumes that the provision of child care etc. is sufficient to secure liberation of women (it is still women who will cook, clean, care for children etc.)

b) assumes that the process of liberation is almost automatic – capitalism has (already) destroyed the family by making it impossible for women to perform their domestic role. Socialism will complete the transformation by socialising reproduction. Thus women’s liberation is an inevitable part of the revolution (c.f. Communist Manifesto).

c) agreed with Lenin that women's organisation should be subordinate to the Party.

This all rested on a very idealistic conception of the revolution and the building of the new society, to which the interests of men and women were to be subordinated. In retrospect, Kollontai’s ideas might seem very simplistic and naïve, but it was no more inevitable that the revolution should fail to liberate women than Kollontai had believed it was inevitable that it would liberate them.

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