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Morning Star Monday March 5 2018
HE existence in all known societies of a sexual division of labour has led some to claim that inequality is “natural,” inevitable, due to innate differences in mental make-up or to biology, including women’s vulnerability during pregnancy and the demands of child-rearing. Others have assumed that, at some point in pre-history, men acquired power over women due to males’ greater strength and/or aggression, including intimidation and rape. Some maintain that there are two motors to history — the class struggle and an ongoing struggle between the sexes. They assert that gender — or at least man to woman — relationships were forged in our ancestral past or that they are fi xed in our genes. This ignores the fact that gender relationships have varied over time and they continue to do so between places and cultures. For Marxists, the roots of oppression are to be sought not in biological “givens” but in the dual processes of production of the means of subsistence — food, clothing, shelter and tools — and reproduction of individuals and social systems. As Mary Davis says in her book Women and Class, women’s oppression is “a problem of history not of biology.” With the development of capitalism this became manifest in the contradiction between the private nature of reproduction — women’s role in the home — and the social nature of production — women’s paid work outside the home. Archaeological and other evidence increasingly endorses Engels’s view in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) that the oppression of women emerged alongside class society and that both class exploitation and female oppression have their origins in the emergence of property relations based on private accumulation — particularly the male appropriation of what previously belonged to the community as a whole. Engels acknowledged the role of biology in influencing a sexual division of labour. However, such differences in role were initially not exploitative and they varied in different “primitive” societies. He maintains that the social significance of woman’s childbearing capacity and different roles of men and women lies in the production of a “surplus” beyond that required for producers and their dependants to survive. This underpinned the emergence of private property and the development of descent systems — based on monogamous marriage and the patriarchal family — for the transmission of accumulated wealth to male offspring. He declared: “The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in
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core concepts explained
Where does women’s oppression come from? The liberation of women must be at the heart of the struggle for socialism, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
monogamous marriage, and Rosa Luxemburg and Sylvia the first class oppression coin- Pankhurst were all critical of cides with that of the female forms of feminism that reinsex by the male.” force class status. Kollontai Both within that family and declared in 1909: “For what in the wider world of work, reason […] should the woman women were generally subordi- worker seek a union with the nate, often having to cope with bourgeois feminists? Who, housework and child-rearing in actual fact, would stand to at the same time as earning gain in the event of such an allia wage, inside or outside the ance? Certainly not the woman home. worker.” Under capitalism, Engels And Luxemburg wrote in maintained: “Within the fam- 1912 that “most of those bourily, the husband constitutes the geois women who act like lionbourgeoisie and the wife the esses in the struggle against proletariat.” ‘male prerogatives’ would trot Irish Marxist republican like docile lambs in the camp leader James Connolly of conservative and wrote that, if the clerical reaction male worker if they had sufProfessor was the slave frage.” Mary Davis will of capitalist Emmeline be delivering an society, then Pankhurst, International Women’s the female leader of Day Lecture on Women worker and the British and Class at the Marx home-maker suff ragette was doubly movement Memorial Library on exploited, together March 8. See mstar. “the slave of with her link/MMLcourses that slave.” daughter for details Marx himself Christabel, argued that any sigabandoned milinificant social progress tant activism on the would require an “upheaval” outbreak of the first world in the status of women, declar- war, becoming supporters of ing that “social progress can be the “white feather” campaign measured by the social position to shame men who had not of the female sex.” enlisted. Within socialism, from the Emmeline joined the Conearly days of the Soviet Union servative Party after the war. to Cuba, a century later, there Her statue stands adjacent to has been enormous progress the Houses of Parliament today. in securing equality between Sylvia Pankhurst, Christathe sexes. bel’s sister, by contrast became Under capitalism too there a socialist, founding what have been significant advances became the Workers’ Socialist in the “social position” of Federation, and eventually a women. communist. Capitalism is quite capable n 2018, 90 years after the of conceding “equality” where Act which allowed some it poses no threat to profit and women to vote, and after power. a long campaign, a statue Davis argues that it’s imporwill be erected to Sylvia tant to distinguish between outside Marx House in oppression and discrimination. Both need to be challenged, Clerkenwell Green — a much but oppression is an element of more prestigious location and class rule, “a function of class a fitting symbol of the fact that society as well as being a prod- women’s struggle and the class uct of it,” whereas discrimina- struggle are two sides of the tion can take multiple forms same coin. On the left, there is a tenand changes with time. While sexism, misogyny and dency to subsume “women’s discrimination against women issues” within the general class are still widespread in Britain, struggle — “socialism will sort they offer no necessary service it all out.” In the meantime, any speto capital. “Enlightened capitalism” is cific concentration on women’s perfectly happy to accommo- issues is seen as diversionary, a date equality in the workplace, deviation from the site of the if not in the home, where it real struggle. Davis, by contrast, argues suits the pursuit of profit and that the liberation of women capitalists’ hold on power. An end to the “glass ceiling,” must be at the heart of the which all socialists support, struggle for socialism. She admits more talent and com- argues: “The struggle for petition to higher-paid occupa- equal pay for equal work, for tions such as broadcasting or subsidised childcare, for the the upper realms of manage- socialisation of other aspects of domestic work and for other ment. But at the same time it issues of importance to women, obscures further the role of such as reproductive and full such occupations in sustain- legal rights, points ultimately ing capitalism. And equal pay to socialism. It is around issues in the workplace, which all gen- such as these that women are uine socialists struggle for, can, most likely to be mobilised and in the absence of workplace united.” The full political and social organisation, facilitate the universal tendency within capital- emancipation of women is ism to reduce all wages to levels central to the achievement required for the production and of socialism. And socialism is unlikely to be achieved unless reproduction of labour. Marxists such as Clara it forms part of the organised Zetkin, Alexandra Kollontai, struggle of women for equality.
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