READ and DISCUSS:

Women and the struggle for socialism (Christine Thomas) ²⁹

“The most famous Marxist contribution to the discussion of women’s oppression is the ‘Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State’, which was written by Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx’s closest political collaborator. Published in 1884, the ideas in this book were politically explosive – challenging not just the prevailing ideology about the roles of men and women in society but the whole social system itself.

Engels took the Marxist method of historical materialism and applied it to existing archaeological, anthropological and historical evidence to develop his revolutionary ideas on how and why women came to be oppressed and how they could be liberated. He argued that people’s social arrangements and the institutions, ideas and values in society are products of particular historical circumstances. So, for example, the family unit of male head of household and economically dependent wife and children was not, as existing capitalist ideology maintained, a natural, eternal and unchanging institution. Societies had existed where the ‘bourgeois family’, as it was known, had not been the basic unit of society – other social arrangements had predominated, and women were not systematically oppressed.

When the economic basis of society changes, wrote Engels – when new methods of production develop – then institutions and beliefs also change, albeit in a complex and non-mechanical way. And if this had been the case in the past then it could also be the case in the future. A transformation in the economic basis of society from capitalism to socialism would in turn alter social relations and lay the basis for ending all social inequalities and achieving the liberation of women. …

Engels wrote the ‘Origin of the Family’ … when archaeological and anthropological evidence was extremely scant in comparison with today. Inevitably some of the details which he outlines in the book have been proven incorrect in the light of subsequent scientific advances. Nevertheless, research by anthropologists over the years has vindicated the general thrust of Engels’ analysis. There is ample evidence to show that societies existed in the past which were not organised on the basis of private property and the division of society into classes; where there were no institutionalised hierarchical and exploitative social relations and women were not systematically dominated or oppressed by men. Such societies are usually referred to as ‘hunter-gatherer’, because of their economic basis, and account for 99% of human history. …

Although some individuals might have had more prestige or influence within the group due to their wisdom, experience and ability, decision-making was collective with people making decisions about the activities for which they were responsible. Individuals were not in a position to enforce their will on others, including men over women”.

State and Revolution (Lenin, 1917) ³⁰

“The following measures of the [1871 Paris] Commune, emphasised by Marx, are particularly noteworthy: the abolition of all representation allowances, and of all monetary privileges to officials, the reduction of the remuneration of all servants of the state to the level of ‘workmen's wages’. … The reduction of the remuneration of high state officials seems ‘simply’ a demand of naïve, primitive democracy [but …] ‘primitive democracy’ based on capitalism and capitalist culture is not the same as primitive democracy in prehistoric or precapitalist times. Capitalist culture has created large-scale production, factories, railways, the postal service, telephones, etc., and on this basis the great majority of the functions of the old ‘state power’ have become so simplified and can be reduced to such exceedingly simple operations of registration, filing, and checking that they can be easily performed by every literate person, can quite easily be performed for ordinary ‘workmen's wages’, and that these functions can (and must) be stripped of every shadow of privilege, of every semblance of ‘official grandeur’. … The workers, after winning political power, will smash the old bureaucratic apparatus, shatter it to its very foundations, and raze it to the ground; they will replace it by a new one, consisting of the very same workers and other employees, against whose transformation into a bureaucracy will at once be taken which were specified in detail by Marx and Engels: (1) not only election, but also recall at any time; (2) pay not to exceed that of a workman; (3) immediate introduction of control by all, so that all may become ‘bureaucrats’ for a time and that, therefore, nobody may be able to become a ‘bureaucrat’.”

1. Why, in a hunter-gatherer society, is everyone’s labour and contribution to the group valued, and why is there no room economically for a privileged elite to form?

[For the next questions, look back to Lesson 7 on ‘The negation of the negation’ if necessary]

2. Reading from ‘Women and the struggle for socialism’,

In ‘hunter-gatherer’ societies, women were not systematically oppressed – that arose under class society. But a socialist society could lay the basis for ceasing that oppression. How does the idea of the ‘negation of the negation’ therefore apply to women’s oppression in the history of human society?

3. Reading from Lenin on ‘State and Revolution’,

In the ‘primitive democracy’ of hunter-gatherer societies, decisions are reached by consensus, and authority is 'earned instead of enforced'. Marxists, learning from the experience of the 1871 Paris Commune, proposed that, under socialism, there would be a return to decision-making being made collectively, and an end to a separate, privileged, officialdom. How does the idea of the ‘negation of the negation’ apply in this case?