by Manav Sidhu (Notes) on Monday, April 22, 2013 at
1:24am!""#$%&&'''()*+,-../(+.0&1.",$&0*1*23$45!6&0*784$03*153 ),0414$0&9:;:<:;=;:>>>?@ Marxism and Feminism Amna Shahram
Is Marxism a theory of Feminism? Is Feminism a part of the Marxist-Leninist movement? Strange, as it may sound, I will argue against this notion. Marx, Engels, Lenin or Stalin never used the term "Feminism". On the contrary, they used the term "Womans' Question" to refer to the Marxist-Leninist standpoint on the question. Lenin says:
"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."
Therefore, Lenin says that the struggle for the emancipation of women is intricately connected to the proletarian movement. An elementary reading of "The Origin of the Family" shows that the roots of women's oppression lie in the emergence of private property, the defeat of matriarchy and the onslaught of patriarchal rule and the corresponding rise of classes and the state. This must be seen in contradistinction with feminism (not bearing in mind the various schools within feminist thought ranging from liberal feminism to radical feminism).
Feminists divide their movement into three historical phases. The first wave of feminism ( led by ideologues such as Voltairine de Cleyre, Margaret Sanger, Lucy Stone) primarily championed the sexual and marital rights of women. In a conversation with Clara Zetkin, Lenin said:
"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..What a waste!... 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."
Thus, Lenin believed that even within its first wave, feminism did not address issues pertaining to the general emancipation of the proletariat from the rule of capital. Lenin's statement that feminism "muddles the thoughts of the class conscious proletarian women" stands true even for the second and third wave of feminism. The second and third wave of feminist thought, continued on their mission for the emancipation of bourgeois women; through their struggle for sexual and marital freedoms. While some within them also fought for women's suffrage, their primary mode of analysis remained that the emancipation of women could be the result of political and legal reforms. While this may be true to an extent as far as the emancipation of bourgeois women was concerned, it certainly did not address the socio-economic problems of working class women.
Since the 1980's, the wave of post-modernist thought swept within it tide bourgeois feminism and invented fancy theories about feminism. By now, as Lenin had foreseen, sexual freedoms had become the primary mode of analysis for feminists. Casting aside the Marxist-Leninist conception on the woman's question as a struggle connected with the proletarian movement, feminism had by now successfully amputated the relationship. "All men are our enemies" and "All sex is rape" replaced the scientific slogans pushed forward by the Leninists and a seemingly radical but by its class essence bourgeois version of the woman's question came to the fore. Feminism regressed further into the realm of decadence, and its proponents such as Robin Morgan argued that heterosexual pornography was a central cause of women's oppression. Anarcho- feminists while paying lip-service to revolution, claimed that patriarchal relations were intricately connected with heirarchical structures, and sought to fight against patriarchy by fighting against heirarchy in general. The decadence of anarchism creeped into the movement for th emancipation of women; anarchist thought while paying lip-service to revolution remains a thought representative of the petty bourgeois proprietor. All notions of class struggle and historical materialist analysis were cast aside and in its place arose a bourgeois, unscientific and `moral' theory on the woman's question. The imaginative feminists linked women's emancipation with everything from pornography to ecology and from language to reproduction. They were however, cautious and careful in avoiding the word class from their analysis.
I therefore believe, that we must not use the term "feminism" to refer to our position on the question. Just as we have a stand on the national question, without labelling ourselves "nationalists", we must refer to our position as the women's question for that is how Marxist-Leninists have referred to it. We reject all bourgeois conceptions of the question, and must reject their incorrect and unscientific theses in order to build a genuine working class women's movement built not in isolation from, but in connection with the general movement for the emancipation of the proletariat from the rule of capital and private property. We reject the liberal ideologues who claim that women's emancipation can be achieved through legal reforms. We reject post-modernist feminists who bring to the fore idealistic and moral conceptions of the question. We reject anarcho-feminists who claim that women's emancipation can be achieved as a result of a struggle against hierarchy in general. while paying lip-service to revolution.
We uphold the Marxist-Leninist conception on the women's question: Women's emancipation cannot be achieved without the general emancipation of the proletariat from private property and the rule of capital. Women's emancipation can and will only be achieved through communism. We uphold the Communist Party, a democratic-centralist organization of the proletariat. "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." [Lenin]