Marxist theory approaches the question of women’s oppression from a historical materialist standpoint, meaning that it does not speculate on the nature of man and woman but studies their development within human society. In his 1884 work the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels found that the oppression of women arose with the advent of an economic surplus and private property. Over a hundred years later, contemporary scholars agree with Engels that patriarchy emerged at this point, although disagree over the exact cause, which was different in different parts of the world.
Under primitive communism, sexual divisions of labour emerged differently in different societies. In some, this division was less pronounced, with both men and women engaging in hunting, gathering, domestic labour, childcare, etc. In others, men may have become the tribe’s hunters, while women performed labour closer to home, but it must be emphasised that whether or not this division existed, a division of labour does not constitute a source of oppression in of itself. Even under primitive communist tribes with a sexual division of labour, both sexes were mutually dependent, were able to feed themselves, had autonomy over their own spheres of work, and participated in the decision-making processes of the tribe. Engels also wrote that as group marriage formed the basis of reproduction, a man could not be certain which children were his and so inheritance followed the maternal line, preventing the accumulation of property under men which is a precondition for exploitation.
Engels found that the position of women relative to men first deteriorated with the development of more advanced methods of irrigation and the domestication of herds. Based on his research on tribes in the Mediterranean which had a sexual division of labour, Engels theorised that as men had been responsible for procuring the necessities of life, the surplus produced through these new methods of farming, along with the goods received in exchange for cattle, naturally accumulated within the hands of the male heads of families. This then gave rise to the pairing marriage, with the purpose of passing property from one generation to the next down the paternal line.
Other scholars identify different causes. Claude Meillassoux was an anthropologist influenced by Marx and Engels who conducted his fieldwork in Africa and argued that the root of not only women’s oppression, but also war in general, was the capture of women through tribal raiding parties. Since hunter-gatherer societies could only support small populations, an accidental shortage of female births could end up being an existential risk for the tribe, leading the remaining men to raid other tribes and abduct women to preserve their population. The men who performed the raids were then valorised as “mighty” warriors and “heroic” defenders of women, while women who were cut off from their own communities were made vulnerable, relegating them to a subordinate position both economically and socially. In yet other societies, such as some Celtic tribes, women’s oppression emerged much later, as evidenced by female leaders like Boudicca who continued to rule right up to the Roman invasions.
Whatever the cause, this transformation brought with it a degradation of women unknown in pre-class societies. Engels described, “the overthrow of mother right” as “the world historic defeat of the female sex.” This is because women became reduced to a position of domestic servitude and “delivered over unconditionally” to the power of the husband: “If he kills her, he is only exercising his rights.”
Society remained much this way until the onset of the industrial revolution in the 18th century, when women and children began entering the workforce en masse. Women were not only oppressed by capital, paid only a fraction of men’s wages, but also suffered under a double burden, reduced to the position of domestic slaves and “crushed by the pettiest, most menial, most arduous, and most stultifying work of the kitchen, and by isolated domestic, family economy in general” to use the words of Lenin.
Although the formal and legal equality of women has since been recognised in most capitalist nations, capitalism combines this formal equality with economic and social inequality. Women remain disproportionately employed in lower paid and less productive work, a form of oppression that is reinforced by discrimination and female stereotypes. For example, the categorisation of women as caregivers results in women dominating the social care workforce, chronically one of the lowest-paid industries.
Additionally, even in the most advanced capitalist nations, the moral degradation of women continues through prostitution and its online counterparts, through pornographic sites like “OnlyFans”. This affects not only the women involved but women as a whole and men as well, as Kollontai explains, “a man who buys the favours of a woman does not see her as a comrade or as a person with equal rights… The contempt he has for the prostitute, whose favours he has bought, affects his attitude to all women.”
Defenders of prostitution often quote the proud imperialist Rudyard Kipling in claiming it as the “world’s oldest profession”. In reality, women were acting as midwives long before social ills like prostitution had even emerged. Rather than seek its eventual abolition, these supporters therefore argue that we should make efforts to legitimise it as simply another form of work. This perspective comes out of liberal feminism and is simply untrue. The practice actually emerged alongside slavery after women’s oppression had become entrenched under class society, and due to the coercive nature of earning a living under capitalism, no amount of legal reform can ever make it truly safe or consensual. Marxists therefore fight for routes out of prostitution for those trapped on the road to socialist abolition, and for absolute opposition to buyers and sellers of women as enemies of women’s liberation and the working class as a whole.
In opposition to socialism, liberal feminists argue that the pathway to women’s liberation lies in electing women into positions of power under capitalism, and increasing the proportion of women relative to men as business owners, capitalists, landlords, CEOs, and so on. Alternatively, radical feminists argue that women’s oppression is caused explicitly by the male sex, not by class society, and therefore, they identify the solution as struggling against “patriarchy” alone, rather than the class that fosters it. Marxists recognise that the complete emancipation of women can only come through a socialist revolution with both working-class men and women at its centre.
As Lenin explained, “the real emancipation of women, real communism, will begin only when a mass struggle (led by the proletariat which is in power) is started against this petty domestic economy, or rather when it is transformed on a mass scale into large-scale socialist economy.”
It is only under such an economy when the economic basis for women’s oppression is dismantled; when societal development is driven by the needs of the people and the liberation of the productive forces, rather than the pursuit of private profit; and when it is no longer profitable to keep women in domestic servitude that the emancipation of women can become a genuine aspiration of society as a whole. The Soviet Union was the first country in the world to introduce free nurseries, free school meals, and cheap workplace canteens specifically intended to eliminate the double burden by making child-rearing and family nutrition the responsibility of the entire population, rather than just of women. This leads to a huge increase in the proportion of women entering typically male-dominated sectors of employment, as well as a far greater scope for political participation and representation, with countries like Cuba having more female representatives in their National Assembly than men.
In the words of the Burkinabé revolutionary Thomas Sankara: “There is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence. I hear the roar of women’s silence.”
Further Reading:
Woman and Socialism, A. Bebel
Women and Class, M. Davis
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, F. Engels
The Social Basis of the Woman Question, A. Kollontai
The Woman Worker, N. Krupskaya
Discussion Questions:
- What do radical feminists and Marxists agree on? What do they disagree on?
- What prevents women from entering the political or economic struggle? What can we do to counter this?
- What should we do so that more women join the Communist Party? What should we not do?
- What should we do to develop female leadership in the Communist Party? What should we not do?
- How do we fight support for prostitution, pornography, and other forms of commercial sexual exploitation?
