ISM Conference 2001
Women's Liberation, Marxism and the 21st Century
Conference paper by Catriona Grant
"The proletariat cannot achieve complete liberty until it has won complete liberty for women" Pravda Feb 1920 Lenin
Introduction
1. Women's Liberation should be paramount to Marxism, as without women being liberated there can be no true liberation of our class. Our position on Women's Liberation is fundamental and shapes our gaze on the whole of our political positions on everything we do. Let us be clear that we are not talking about equality of opportunity as the state and other organisations e.g. trade unions etc call for but true liberation of women.
2. Marxists understand that women suffer not just from their class position but also from their position as women - all women regardless of class, creed or colour are oppressed under class society. Obviously the bourgeois woman's oppression is not akin to the working class woman but she still is not free from the oppression of her sex regardless of her class and wealth.
3. Exploitation of one class by an other has existed in all class societies, where one group owns the means of production and forces an other group to work below their value, by not gaining the fruits of their labour.
4. So what makes women's oppression different from men's? As a class we are oppressed together however in that class women are oppressed via the sex-bias in society. Work is determined by sex and different value is given to work by the sex of those that do the work. Women's work is less valued. The Equal Opportunities Commission in 2000 found that women earned 72% of men's earnings and when overtime was taken into consideration it was 64%!
5. When unpaid labour is taken into consideration the oppression of women becomes more obvious. The majority of unpaid work is done by women i.e. cooking, cleaning, care and nurturing of children, shopping, care of relatives etc. On top of being devalued in the paid labour force, their work is even more devalued in the home and family.
6. Housework
7. Recent research however indicates that in cohabiting heterosexual couples under 30 that "housework" is nearly split equally between men and women however once children are brought into the relationship the correlation between women's unpaid work and men's unpaid work changes dramatically, even in the most egalitarian households the statistics indicate that women perform 70% of the unpaid work!! In some households it is greater.
8. Housework under capitalism is extremely peculiar, the same tasks of cooking, cleaning, gathering food, caring and nurturing children and relatives have been performed since time immemorial however never as it is under capitalism. Under capitalism as NO PROFIT is made from housework it is seen as unproductive, necessary but unproductive. The work itself loses value. It produces no commodities and those that do it are not seen as workers.
9. In societies before capitalism, house and work was not separated, they could possibly be the same thing, peasants, serfs, weavers, brewers, blacksmiths all worked in and around the home. The care for children was not separated from industry. Women may have still performed the majority of these tasks but all the work had some value to it, as it was part of her labour.
10. The point about housework is that it needs to be done to some degree or other, it is also like no other work. The worker (predominantly female) cannot leave her home and move to another if she does not like it, she cannot go on strike, negotiate better conditions as her home is usually intricately linked to personal relationships, none of these things can change without changing the intimate relationships around her with her parents, partner, children and/or relatives she cares for.
11. Housework can be rewarding but it mostly boring and repetitive. Simone de Beavoir described housework as "the soiled becomes clean, only to be soiled again and again" and Lenin, himself described housework to be "barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-racking, stultifying and crushing drudgery", not because he believed the work was unimportant but because the work was all of those things and took up the majority of women's time up for so little benefit.
12. Engels attempted to explain the specific oppression of women by men's dominance using historically materialism and women's a relationship to the "productive" forces. In "The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State' he attempted to explain that since the dawn of class society women were dependent on men due to economics. Marriage was an economic contract and not an expression of romantic love.
The Roots of Women's Oppression
13. In order to explain women's oppression we must understand where such oppression came from. However comrades we must put even Engels in context, the pamphlet "The Family, Private Property and the State " is one of the major Marxist theory of women's oppression, but it was written in 1884 by a man shaped by the morality and times of the 19th Century.
14. Many Marxists repeat Engels as being wholly correct ' however the core and sentiment were correct but in the detail he was wrong.
15. "The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State' must be put in context of the period it was set, Darwin had only just written Origin of Species; anthropological and archaeological evidence was very scant.
16. Political enemies of Marxism within feminism pick up on mistakes within Engels theory and attack the whole of Marxism. This is why it is important to understand contemporary knowledge and research, which indicates that Engels, was correct.
17. It is important to analysis the origins of Women's oppression in order to explain what we do about it and how do we campaign amongst women.
18. Engels argued that families and marriage haven't always existed but are products of class society. How humans organise socially is linked to economic circumstances it is not a mechanical correlation but a very complicated one.
19. Engels argued that women's oppression has not always existed, and if that was the case could be challenged and changed, it was not a natural state. 20. In order to challenge capitalism we must challenge women's oppression, as doing so is part of the revolutionary struggle. This is why the family is so important to capitalism, within the family; capitalists consolidate their wealth by using the family as a unit of consumers and production.
21. Families are used to socialise society, they look after and support the producers and consumers but also support the hierarchy, which through class society is patriarchal. Discipline of society is mostly done within the family; parents discipline their children and in the traditional family husbands discipline their wives.
22. Women's subordination is necessary to the family as it exists today. Women within the family under capitalism play important role as unpaid labour i.e. looking after children and family members and bringing up the next generation within an ideological setting. Marriage for capitalism brings stability to the traditional unit.
23. For many women (and men too) in advances capitalist society see marriage equating many things, emotional bond, love, support and companionship, do not always see the family as oppressive.
24. Ideology all around as backed up by traditions, religion and even science tells us that marriage and the family is natural, has always existed as an institution in some form or other.
25. In the past scientists tried to use scientific report after scientific report to explain the reason why women are inferior, women's brains are smaller, if they went to work their reproductive organs would shrink (didn't seem to be the issue for working class women though).
26. Engels ideas were revolutionary in the 19th Century and still are in the 21st Century, but we need to be more scientific and piece together more relevant evidence collected over the past 100 years.
27. Engels primarily argued that the development of class society and private property was the root to oppression of women. Engels explained how "primitive communists" lived together and had to co-operate with one an other to exist, primitive communism is more commonly called hunter/gatherer societies today. The hunter/gatherers collected and hunted just enough food and products to maintain themselves and no more. There was no surplus, or the surplus was very little.
28. The social relationships were organised in what Engels called the Gens - a kinship group, which may or may not be biologically/genetically related to one another. Men and women paired (i.e. had sex), this was not to the disadvantage of women, any children bore of such a relationship were brought up and cared for by the group and not by the woman necessarily who gave birth. The kinship group worked together and there probably was a division of labour by men and women, men and (women who were not nursing or pregnant) usually did hunt however the majority of the women gathered near the base in order to care for the children due to breast feeding, pregnancy and menstruation (animals can smell blood). Women played an important role in socialising the kinship group, as well as gathering and preparing the food, the food the women produced would be the staple part of the diet. We must also consider that there were no western values on the role of women in hunter/gatherer society, thus because women cared for children and the social base does NOT equate with women's oppression.
29. However Engels did not refer to women as gatherers and thus dismissing their contribution to the group in gatherer/hunter society. Gathered food mostly gathered by women produced 80% of the food consumed by the group.
30. The issue of "Man, the hunter" is an important one. However there is little evidence to suppose that in pre-history that "man" was the hunter. Meat made up little of the food consumed, particularly fresh hunted meat from "game", though much meat was scavenged or came from small animals and fish. Both men and women hunted and scavenged. Males were able to leave the group for longer times due to not having children to look after and did have responsibility for hunting more than women but it did not necessarily give them prestige that merited devaluing and oppressing women.
31. As there was no private property and no class division the kinship group had to rely on everyone's contribution. There would have been goods and tools but they belonged to the group and were not individual property, life was based on co-operation and sharing.
32. Decisions about what the whole group did, would have been taken by the whole group, there would have been those with more influence i.e. the older and wiser or warriors or braves but could not impose their ideas. This was a time of true democracy, when the group made decisions by and for the whole group with little detriment to any others.
33. This democracy reigned for 100s of 1000s of years until food was domesticated and humans stopped being nomadic, (it is estimated the first settled humans came about less than 10,000 years ago probably in the area occupied by Iran and Iraq).
34. Once humans settled in one place and accumulated food beyond what they needed they began to produce a surplus i.e. more than the group needed. This surplus could be bartered with for other goods i.e. the surplus of another group. The surplus began to become as important as the food and goods that were needed and consumed by the group. This surplus needed to be gathered, stored, protected and distributed. Those given the task of protecting and distributing the surplus began to gain more power in the group. Soon they began to "own" the surplus. The surplus soon became "private profit". For the first time in the history of humanity, one person or a group of people owned something for their own gain.
35. It was around this time, i.e. the time of domestication of grains and animals that the deity of the "mother goddess" began. Often seen as a time when women were revered because of her fertility, a time of the matriarchy. Sadly this probably was not the case. The cult of the "goddess", became a trick towards women. Under the new economic system, children were more valued than before, they were not a burden on the group. Before hand children were a necessary evil and could slow down a nomadic clan and particularly the woman the child may be dependent on, if food was scarce a small mouth was the last to be fed. Abortion and infanticide was a normal part of society.
36. Children were no longer a luxury but a necessity as their labour was needed both as children and as future adults. Crops were to be harvested, animals to be looked after, other commodities to be made, the group needed to be protected but more importantly what was produced. In order to create more children, women's fertility became revered; abortion and infanticide no longer were part of life and became tabooed. Women with many children would be seen as magical, those with none as against the natural order. Women around the time of domestication became more fertile or atleast produced more living children. The population began to grow enormously. More mouths to feed, more people to clothe, more work to be done.
37. As women produced more children, she became less mobile; less able to travel, her economic potential was decreased due to pregnancy, childbirth and breast-feeding. Her economic independence drifted away, she could not feed and protect her children on her own, and she soon became dependent on the man who fathered her children.
38. It also became apparent that in order to guarantee a child "belonged" to the man that her fertility would need to be controlled. Insuring that she only would produce his children. Anyway there were private things that belonged to him, he didn't want to give them away to just anyone, he wanted them to stay in the family. Crudely that is probably how the family, monogamy and marriage began. It would have taken generations however Engels states that private property was" the historical defeat of women".
39. As children became the "property" of the family as less so the group, it meant that a father began to control his daughter's fertility to, as economically he did not want her having children to a poor man with no "property" as it would mean he would need to share his property with someone who had less than him - bad economics! It made better sense for his daughter to have children with a man who owned something, then the families could gross more property.
40. As the society developed, so did the state around it. Someone had to organise the surplus, decide how it was used and who got it. Warriors were needed to protect the surplus and even gain more. As wars developed not only surplus was gained but people too, humans were property that could be bought and sold. The first slave societies came about. The first time where humans were forced to labour and produce things that were not for themselves.
41. This was the beginning of humanities downfall. So-called civilisation had brought about class society where democracy, egalitarianism and the interests of the majority were eradicated. Only the interests of those who owned private property were to be protected.
42. The birth of private property, class society, the forced labour of humans was also the birth of the Patriarchy - the rule of the father, which exists today.
43. Patriarchy
44. Some feminists attempt to explain women's historical oppression due to biological factors that men's strength, their genetic and biological make up cause them to be innately oppressive to women. And some Marxists however attempt to explain women's oppression through her devalued economic position by earning less wages than men earn.
45. Patriarchy, literally the rule of the father is a system that has existed throughout all class society, where men have more rights than women, in some societies women have no rights. Patriarchy is not a magical thing nor is it biological, it is ideological. It is supported through the structures of the state, science and religion, the structures of class society.
46. Just as Malcolm X stated that you couldn't have capitalism without racism, the same goes for the relationship with capitalism and patriarchy
47. . Women historically are socially, economically and sexually more disadvantaged than men. It cannot be concluded that all men oppress all women but individual women and men are affected by the ideological impact of patriarchy. However it allows for domestic abuse, rape, sexual assault, harassment, unfair distribution of unpaid work and women's low pay etc. to exist. .
48. Equal Opportunities or Women's Liberation?
49. Feminism is often seen as a dirty word in the fields of Marxism, middle class women infecting working class women with reformism and liberalism. Marxists criticise "feminists" for making alliances across the classes. Fighting against the symptoms of women's oppression is no good unless you are fighting against the totality of the system that oppresses women Feminism shaped by Marxist and revolutionary traditions is real communism. It was often said in Russia at the time of the Revolution that there were 2 communists, Vladimir Illicit Lenin and Alexandra Kollantai.
50. Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks led the successful proletariat revolution, which liberated the peasantry and the working class from their oppressors in the Russian Empire. Alexandra Kollantai was a Bolshevik leader too, however believed that working class could only be truly liberated when they achieved sexual liberation and women were 'free' from exploitation and oppression. She did not believe that the 'revolution' itself could liberate women. Kollantai and Lenin came to nasty tete a tete's about this and Lenin was very moralistic in his put downs of Kollantai. Kollantai was a revolutionary, she never argued that women must liberate themselves before liberating themselves from class society. She fought and led the revolution for both men and women in Russia and throughout the world.
51. Famously, Alexandra Kollantai argued that sex 'should be as easy as having a glass of water' meaning that there should be freedom from unwanted pregnancy, violence, jealousy, sexual transmitted disease, quality child care should a child be produced and that the women should not be economically disadvantaged for having a child. Such a statement appalled Lenin. He spoke at length about this to Clara Zetkin, German Revolutionary, he believed the young Bolsheviks sex life was 'purely bourgeois and simply an extension of the good old bourgeois brothel', he went on to say that 'I consider the famous 'glass of water 'theory as completely un-Marxist, and moreover, as anti-socialist'But would a normal person normally lie down in the gutter and drink from a puddle? Or even from a glass whose edge has been greased by many lips? ' From Clara Zetkin's recollections of Lenin (An interview on the Women's Question).
52. To be fair to Lenin these quotes were chosen to highlight his morality rather than politically what he had to say about sexual liberation, however he thought very differently about this matter than Kollantai and some of the women Bolsheviks.
53. After the 1917 Revolution, women in Russia were the most free than any other women on the planet, marriage and divorce became purely civil, abortion was provided legally by the state, cr'ches were built, women earned the same wages as men, homosexuality was legal. Kollantai's short stories 'Love of Worker Bees' and 'A Great Love' indicate changing ideas to relationships, sex and sexuality. However as the gains of the revolution were clawed back and Stalinism and bureaucracy took over women's short-lived freedom ebbed away. Abortion became illegal as did homosexuality, unmarried women with children were punished, cr'ches and public kitchens closed down. Women continued to work long hours in industry and long hours at home. The 'Workers State' brought little or no respite from the drudgery of women's lives, from violence, abuse and rape, from sexual harassment and objectification of their bodies. Women were encouraged to produce for the Soviet Union, medals and privileges were given to women who had more than 5 children.
54. Women have alongside men been involved in revolutionary struggles since such struggles began. Fighting to free themselves from oppression. Women played active roles in the English Revolution of the 1640's, the French Revolution of 1790's, the Paris Commune of 1871 and we should remember that the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia took place on International Women's Day!
55. The Women's Liberation Movement appeared in the advanced Capitalist Countries in the 1960's at the time of civil and revolutionary unrest, imperialism was being challenged, as was racism, homophobia and sexism. Around the globe movements demanded what was rightfully theirs. The Vietnam War, Czechoslovakia, France 68, the Stonewall Riots, Rosa Parks sitting on the front of the bus, the Black Panthers. These movements were part of a worldwide movement, capitalism was still booming and everyone wanted the gains. 56. Women wanted their rights, women particularly by the early 70s were organising and networking together to demand not equality to men but to be liberated from the oppression around them. They wanted equal pay, their right to gain credit, to have safe, free abortions, contraception, quality child care, access to education, to be promoted at work, to be free from harassment, violence and rape, to walk down the streets at night, for their bodies not to be seen as sex objects, to be able to choose who to have relationships with.
57. It is no mistake legislation - the Abortion Act (1967), the Equal Pay Act (1970), the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) were fought for by the labour movement, infected by the women's movement. These reforms were not revolutionary and had many faults but it also had impact on the society around it.
58. In the late 70's the TUC under pressure from the workers and women's movement organised a march of tens of thousands against the Corrie Bill, an attack on the Abortion Act, where both men and women were involved. Marches and activity again were organised in 1987 against the Alton Bill, another attack on the Abortion Act.
59. The movement began to divide though, in 1974 Socialist Woman (produced by the SWP) stated "most working class militants do not look to the Women's Liberation Movement to organise and co-ordinate their struggles." Some Marxists dismiss this hugely important movement as "middle class"!
60. The reforms won did not just benefit middle class women but benefited working class women too.
61. Some Marxists did involve themselves in the women's movement but withdrew when they became "sidelined" by "bourgeois feminists". The Marxist movement took a paternalistic stance on the women's liberation movement. E.g. women were to be "organised", political discussions about being involved in the women's movement were about "work amongst women", and women were to be recruited to the revolutionary party. Those that didn't join, wouldn't or damn right refused were caricatured as "middle class", "reformist", "opportunist", etc. Many of these women were these things but many were not. It excluded Marxists from the movement.
62. Of course socialists were active in the movement, debates and discussions were held in the Labour Party and wider workers movement. 63. Today the women's movement has stultified, there is almost no women's movement the experiences of Thatcher and capitalism of the 80' and the 90's almost killed off feminism. Many women activists today find themselves in the service industries such as Rape and Sexual Abuse Crisis Centres, Women's Aid, social work, community education etc, campaigning in single issue campaigns.
64. We are often told that women have gained equality, women have gained their confidence, they have achieved economic independence (atleast before having children), and they are independent from the traditional family. We now have to worry about the displacement of men in our society.
65. Yet this is not the case, domestic abuse, rape, child sexual abuse, sexual harassment, difficulty in getting abortion, contraceprtions that are banned in other countries i.e. Depo Provera are still prescribed to women in the UK (very unsuitable for women over 35), are still fundamental problems for women today. And women are still more likely to be made redundant than men and earn less than men. Feminist ideas have achieved some reforms through the workers movement but not enough to make us complacent. Most of these reforms are being taken back through privatisation, cut backs and closures, they must be continued to be fought for.
66. Women expect today to be treated equally to men, not to be treated as inferior or to be excluded particularly from public activity. In Scotland the female population is 52% of the population yet only 37% of MSPs in the Scottish Parliament are women, only 20% of councillors are women. In management, men still occupy senior positions, Scotland only has one High Court Judge, Lady Cosgrove (now she is bourgeois!), and women have not even achieved equality in public life. Why not?
67. The reason is clear, it is because it is difficult for women to "compete" equally with men. Male politicians are not better politicians than women they just have more opportunities. Women are "handicapped" by societal norms - having children, not being as confident, not competing on the same level ground, not having access to equal knowledge as men.
68. Female Labour MPs are called "Blair's Babes", they off course may be crap, but they are crap because they are supportive of the Blair Project - New Labour, privatisation of our public services and all the other New Labour neo-liberal agenda. New Labour women MPs are as crap as the male MPs.
69. New Labour have not addressed equal opportunities they have simply made sure that female versions of the men are elected i.e. managerial staff, lawyers etc, very few come from traditional blue collar industries or the public sector, they do not represent women any more than they represent men. They represent their own class interest and that definitely is not the working class.
70. However the argument that female New Labour MPs are as bad as male ones should not undermine the issue that women should be equally represented. What are we saying when we argue against "equal opportunities" or "positive discrimination"? Men have traditionally occupied these positions because of the sex bias in society. Men have male privilege, they are perceived as being clever, educated, political, powerful, and efficient and women are not these things! Women are excluded from places of power not because they don't merit being there but because they are women.
71. Of course representatives be they MSPs, MPs, trade union leaders or those in Party positions should be there for there merit, but for women to be under represented means either women are not up for the job or they are being looked over, denied opportunity and are excluded. If women universally are not up for the job then why are women participating in politics? Are all women in positions only there as tokens to equal opportunities? We need to address why women are excluded.
72. As Marxists we are fighting to change the world but until we manage to do that perhaps we can include women in the struggle. Yes there may be certain traits each person brings to the job but women do merit to be treated equally to men, not specially just equally.
73. As Marxists, women's liberation must be our ultimate goal along with emancipating the whole of the class, but we must fight for reforms along the way and we must recognise that women are disadvantaged due to their sex and need to be treated equally. Equal Opportunities should not be the goal of Marxists; equal opportunities should be something we automatically do as easy as breathing.
74. What do we do?
75. You can not declare women's liberation any more than you can declare the world revolution, but you can have aims to achieve both things. Our political work should prepare us for revolutionary politics.
76. The women's movement has gone backwards most political activity around women's politics particularly in the unions is around equal opportunities for women and not for women's liberation. Women must also organise against discrimination, sexual harassment, rape, domestic abuse, need for quality child care, being seen as sex object, reproductive rights etc. Women need support to fight for the reforms that would give respite from the conditions that oppress them alongside their economic oppression as a worker. If women aren't organising independently then what do we do? We cannot substitute the movement or make it happen. However within the SSP and ISM we can take up issues and campaigns that empower women. We do not need to be blind to sex in the party and wider movements.
77. Within our own group we need to take seriously women's politics and understand Marxist ideology around the issue of women's oppression and liberation. Struggles, campaigns and issues women comrades get involved in need to be taken seriously and with full support from the leadership and the movement as a whole, such campaigns are important to the socialist movement and NOT the hobbies of women.
78. Within the SSP, the ISM should take a lead in the issue around women's liberation and give explanations why women are oppressed. Full involvement of women needs to be encouraged through all the structures and life of the party. If women are not being developed and involving themselves in the SSP then this needs to be addressed. We need to involve women in order to get them to participate and take leadership in the Party.
79. Aims of the ISM
Frontline
* Frontline as representative of the ISM
* Women encouraged to write for Frontline - taking into account all of the above, support, information etc
Conferences
* Moving towards plenaries on Women's Liberation, rather than workshops - this would reinforce our commitment to promoting equality amongst the sexes
Women's Network
* Women's Network necessary part of the SSP and struggle for socialism. Allowing women to come together not to campaign separately from the SSP but to promote political, organisational and educational development of women comrades.
Revisiting Agreement of 1996 SML Recall Conference
* SML agreed to support 50:50 representation in a future Scottish Parliament. This policy needs to be re-discussed in order for the ISM to take the politics into the SSP.
Education
* Education needs to be the spinal cord of the ISM involving all comrades in developing politically in order to interpret and analyse the events happening around them. Such education would involve classic material and theories as well as contemporary texts.