Engels and the Origin of Women's Oppression
HOW CAN we end women’s oppression? This question can only be answered by posing yet another question: why are women oppressed? Unless we determine the source of women’s oppression, we don’t know who or what needs changing. This, the "woman question," has been a source of controversy for well over a century. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels located the origin of women’s oppression in the rise of class society.
Women’s Liberation and Revolutionary Socialism
Revolutionary Marxists differ from all other people who stand for women’s liberation in one important respect. We do not believe women’s oppression is something that has always existed – either because of the biological differences between the sexes or because of something inherent in the male psyche. [1]
We hold that women’s oppression arose at a particular point in history – at the point at which society began to divide in classes. [2]
The Marxist tradition and women's liberation
The purpose of this pamphlet is to examine the theory and practice of Marxism as it relates to women's liberation. In response to feminist criticism, many Marxists have been unnecessarily defensive. In reality, the revolutionary Marxist tradition has a proud record. This is very clear when we compare the politics and activities of the "first-wave" bourgeois feminist movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century with those of their Marxist contemporaries. Indeed, many modem feminists would agree with at least some Marxist criticism of bourgeois feminism. However, any theory which sees gender rather than class divisions as fundamental ultimately ends up with the same limitations and weaknesses.
Theories of Patriarchy
Perhaps the most persistent and widespread theory around the Women’s Movement today is that of patriarchy. It takes many different forms but the ideas behind it – that male domination or sexism is something which exists not just as a product of capitalism but as something quite separate from the capitalist mode of production and which will endure beyond capitalism – are accepted so widely that a wholesale rejection of the theory is greeted with complete and genuine amazement.
What is Socialism?
In 1867, Karl Marx published his famous book, Capital. He began research a decade earlier after a banking crisis collapse in New York triggered a major economic depression.
Marx and the Alternative to Capitalism
Marx and the Alternative to Capitalism
In 1867, Karl Marx published his famous book, Capital. He began research a decade earlier after a banking crisis collapse in New York triggered a major economic depression. The book revealed the real workings of capitalism in a way that no conventional economist has ever done since. When read against the background of the current economic depression, it sounds almost prophetic.
