[This paper was first published in Liberation in three parts (June, July and August 2008 numbers)]

Part I

“Woman, wake up; the tocsin of reason is being heard throughout the whole universe; discover your rights. … Enslaved man has multiplied his strength and needs recourse to yours to break his chains. Having become free, he has become unjust to his companion. Oh, women, women! When will you cease to be blind?”

This was Olympe de Gouges speaking at the height of the French Revolution. The quotation is from her Declaration of the Rights of Woman (1791), a rejoinder to the Constituent Assembly’s Declaration of the Rights of Man adopted earlier. The very next year would see the publication of the epoch-making A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft. de Gouges and Wollstonecraft were certainly not the first in fighting for the women’s cause — early figures like Mary Astell (author of A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694)) easily come to mind – and certainly not the last. Many of them were magnificent visionaries. Wollstonecraft for example argued convincingly for equal suffrage for women and criticised the male prejudices of stalwarts like J J Rousseau who was against this. What these valiant fighters lacked was a scientific understanding of the actual causes of woman’s bondage and the real conditions for her emancipation. But this was no fault of theirs. Such an understanding could evolve only in the middle of the 19th century when, thanks to developments like the advent of the modern proletariat, great breakthroughs in natural and social sciences and so on, dialectical materialism, materialist interpretation of history and scientific socialism emerged. Marxism and its organisational embodiment, the communist party, now began to add a new revolutionary dimension to the centuries-old struggle for women’s enlightenment and emancipation — not by supplying a novel and special ‘theory’ or floating a new banner, but by connecting it, more closely than ever before and both on the planes of consciousness and organisation, with the united movement of all the downtrodden for revolutionary transformation of the entire oppressive social order. Parallel to this communist movement, the autonomous women’s movement also forged ahead, both streams benefiting from a cordial relation of unity and struggle.

The Holistic Approach

Questions of man-woman relationship, of women’s bondage and liberation, have been an integral part, a central component, of the Marxist worldview right from its formative stage. “The direct, natural, and necessary relation of person to person” — writes the young Marx in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 — “is the relation of man to woman. In this natural relationship of the sexes … is sensuously manifested, reduced to an observable fact, the extent to which the human essence has become nature to man … From this relationship one can therefore judge man’s whole level of development … the extent to which he in his individual existence is at the same time a social being.” One can cite many instances to show that Marx retained and developed this viewpoint in later years. But we shall avoid that and come straight to Marxism’s magnum opus on the subject: Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Frederick Engels (henceforth Origin). To an extent it was a joint work of Engels and Marx, for the former drew liberally on the latter’s extensive notes on Lewis H. Morgan’s Ancient Society (1877), on which Origin is mainly based.

Published in 1884, Origin analyses the oppression of women in terms of (a) the relationship between the modes of subsistence/ production and procreation and (b) the connection between forms of the family on one hand and systems of property ownership and the state on the other. This is clearly spelt out in the preface to the first edition:

“According to the materialist conception the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of the immediate essentials of life. This again is of a two-fold character. On the one side, the production of the means of existence, articles of food and clothing, dwellings and of the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The social organisation under which the people of a particular historical epoch and a particular community live is determined by both kinds of production, by the stage of development of labour on the one hand and of the family on the other.”

In this perspective, let us now take a short tour across Engels’ basic teachings on the subject. Save the subheadings, a few obvious insertions on our part and the last paragraph which seeks to summarise the relevant observations of Marx, Engels and Lenin, what follows in this instalment are excerpted entirely from Origin, with very nominal editing.

Stages in the Evolution of Family

“The Consanguine Family developed from the primitive state of promiscuous intercourse. Here only ancestors and progeny, and parents and children, are excluded from the rights and duties (as we should say) of marriage with one another. Brothers and sisters, male and female cousins of the first, second, and more remote degrees, are all brothers and sisters of one another, and precisely for that reason they are all husbands and wives of one another.

“The Punaluan Family (Punalua = companion, partner; with the husbands as a group addressing each other as Punalua and the wives also doing the same). If the first advance in organization consisted in the exclusion of parents and children from sexual intercourse with one another, the second was the exclusion of sister and brother. On account of the greater nearness in age, this second advance was infinitely more important, but also more difficult, than the first. It was effected gradually, beginning probably with the exclusion from sexual intercourse of own brothers and sisters (children of the same mother) first in isolated cases and then by degrees as a general rule …and ending with the prohibition of marriage even between … first, second, and third cousins. Thus emerged group marriage.

“In all forms of group family it is uncertain who the father of a child is; but it is certain who its mother is. Though she calls all the children of the whole family her children and has a mother’s duties towards them, she nevertheless knows her own children from the others. Therefore, in so far as group marriage prevails, descent can only be proved on the mother’s side and that therefore only the female line is recognized. This is called mother right.

“The Pairing Family emerged because gradually the gens developed and the classes of “brothers” and “sisters” between whom marriage was impossible became more numerous. At this stage, one man lives with one woman, but the relationship is such that polygamy and occasional infidelity remain the right of the men, even though for economic reasons polygamy is rare, while from the woman the strictest fidelity is generally demanded throughout the time she lives with the man, and adultery on her part is cruelly punished. The marriage tie can, however, be easily dissolved by either partner; after separation, the children still belong, as before, to the mother alone.

“Thus the evolution of the family in prehistoric times consists in the progressive narrowing of the circle, originally embracing the whole tribe, within which the two sexes have a common conjugal relation. The continuous exclusion, first of nearer, then of more and more remote relatives, and at last even of relatives by marriage, ends by making any kind of group marriage practically impossible. Finally, there remains only the single, still loosely linked pair.

“The pairing family, itself too weak and unstable to make an independent household necessary or even desirable, in no wise destroys the communistic household inherited from earlier times. Communistic housekeeping, however, means the supremacy of women in the house; just as the exclusive recognition of the female parent, owing to the impossibility of recognizing the male parent with certainty, means that the women — the mothers — are held in high respect. Among all savages and all barbarians of the lower and middle stages, and to a certain extent of the upper stage also, the position of women is not only free, but honourable.

“Gradually with the domestication of animals, introduction of cattle breeding, working up of metals, weaving and field cultivation, sources of wealth increased. The iron plough made it possible to cultivate larger tracts of land; for this and for other work slaves (taken from the vanquished foes, for example) came to be used more and more. In proportion as wealth (including the slaves) increased, it made the man’s position in the family more important than the woman’s, and on the other hand created an impulse to exploit this strengthened position in order to overthrow, in favour of his children, the traditional order of inheritance. This, however, was impossible so long as descent was reckoned according to mother-right. Mother-right, therefore, had to be overthrown, and overthrown it was. And this was the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude, she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children. This degraded position of the woman has gradually been embellished and glozed over, and sometimes clothed in a milder form; in no sense has it been abolished. Thus arose the patriarchal family based on paternal power.

Such a form of the family shows the transition of the pairing family to monogamy. In order to guarantee the fidelity of the wife, that is the paternity of the children, the woman is placed in the men’s absolute power; if he kills her, he is but exercising his right.

“The Monogamous Family

It is based on the supremacy of the man, the express purpose being to produce children of undisputed paternity; such paternity is demanded because these children are later to come into their father’s property as his natural heirs. It is distinguished from pairing marriage by the much greater strength of the marriage tie, which can no longer be dissolved at either partner’s wish. As a rule, it is now only the man who can dissolve it, and cast off his wife. The right of conjugal infidelity remains his even now.

“As we learn from, for example, Greek history, it was the existence of slavery side-by-side with monogamy, the existence of beautiful young slaves who belonged to the man, that from the very beginning stamped on monogamy its specific character as monogamy only for the woman, but not for the man. And it retains this character to this day.

“Monogamy was not in any way the fruit of individual sex-love; marriages remained as before marriages of convenience. It was the first form of the family to be based, not on natural, but on economic conditions – on the victory of private property over primitive, natural communal property. The Greeks themselves put the matter quite frankly: the sole aim of monogamous marriage was to make the man supreme in the family, and to propagate, as the future heirs to his wealth, children indisputably his own….”

“… monogamous marriage first makes its appearance in history not as the reconciliation of man and woman but as the subjugation of the one sex by the other. It announces a struggle between the sexes unknown throughout the whole previous prehistoric period. In an old unpublished manuscript, written by Marx and myself in 1846, [The reference here is to German Ideology – A Sen] I find the words: “The first division of labour is that between man and woman for the propagation of children.” And today I can add: The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male. Monogamous marriage was a great historical step forward; nevertheless, together with slavery and private wealth, it opens the period that has lasted until today in which every step forward is also relatively a step backward, in which prosperity and development for some is won through the misery and frustration of others. It is the cellular form of civilized society, in which the nature of the oppositions and contradictions fully active in that society can be already studied.”

– Engels, Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State)

However, it is just not possible to retain a whole apple in one’s hand after eating half. “But that seems to have been the husbands’ notion, until their wives taught them better. With monogamous marriage, two constant social types, unknown hitherto, make their appearance on the scene – the wife’s attendant lover and the cuckold [a man whose wife has committed adultery – A Sen] husband. The husbands had won the victory over the wives, but the act of crowning the victor was magnanimously undertaken by the vanquished. Together with monogamous marriage and hetaerism (extramarital sexual intercourse by men), adultery became an unavoidable social institution – denounced, severely penalized, but impossible to suppress.”

What Next?

Both Marx and Engels were acutely aware of the family as a site of gender oppression. But their views on the future of family as a socio-economic institution evolved over time. The Communist Manifesto (1848) flatly announced that “The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course” with the disappearance of capitalism. Probably this referred to the existing bourgeois form of family. In Principles of Communism (1847) Engels had been a bit more elaborate:

“It [communist society] will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage, the dependence, rooted in private property, of the woman on the man and of the children on the parents.”

It was, however, only in Origin that one gets a deep, thoroughgoing discussion of the question:

“We thus have three principal forms of marriage which correspond broadly to the three principal stages of human development. For the period of savagery, group marriage; for barbarism, pairing marriage; for civilization, monogamy, supplemented by adultery and prostitution. Between pairing marriage and monogamy intervenes a period in the upper stage of barbarism when men have female slaves at their command and polygamy is practiced.

“As our whole presentation has shown, the progress which manifests itself in these successive forms is connected with the peculiarity that women, but not men, are increasingly deprived of the sexual freedom of group marriage. In fact, for men group marriage actually still exists even to this day. Paradoxically, however, it demoralizes men far more than women. Among women, prostitution degrades only the unfortunate ones who become its victims, and even these by no means to the extent commonly believed. But it degrades the character of the whole male world.

“We are now approaching a social revolution in which the economic foundations of monogamy as they have existed hitherto will disappear just as surely as those of its complement — prostitution. Monogamy arose from the concentration of considerable wealth in the hands of a single individual — and a man at that — and from the need to bequeath this wealth to the children of that man and of no other. But by transforming by far the greater portion of permanent, heritable wealth – the means of production – into social property, the coming social revolution will reduce to a minimum all this anxiety about bequeathing and inheriting. Since monogamy arose from economic causes, will it disappear when these causes disappear?

“One might answer, not without reason: far from disappearing, it will, on the contrary, be realized completely. For with the transformation of the means of production into social property will also disappear wage-labour, the proletariat, and therefore the necessity for a certain number of women to surrender themselves for money. Prostitution disappears; monogamy, instead of collapsing, at last becomes a reality –for men as well.”

And it is not only the position of men that will be radically altered. “…the position of women, of all women, also undergoes significant change. With the transfer of the means of production into common ownership, the single family ceases to be the economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is transformed into a social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public affair; society looks after all children alike, whether they are legitimate or not. This removes all the anxiety about the ‘consequences,’ which today is the most essential social – moral as well as economic – factor that prevents a girl from giving herself completely to the man she loves. Will not that suffice to bring about the gradual growth of unconstrained sexual intercourse and with it a more tolerant public opinion in regard to a maiden’s honour and a woman’s shame? And, finally, have we not seen that in the modern world monogamy and prostitution are indeed contradictions, but inseparable contradictions, poles of the same state of society? Can prostitution disappear without dragging monogamy with it into the abyss?”

Abolition of monogamy — of marriage as such — is thus a real possibility. We may remember that the Communist Manifesto had flatly announced this. But in Origin Engels, while emphasising that there is bound to be a radical change in the nature of the man-woman relationship, refuses to be very definitive about the future. He weighs another possibility:

“Here a new element comes into play, an element which, at the time when monogamy was developing, existed at most in embryo: individual sex-love.

Our sex love differs essentially from the simple sexual desire, the Eros, of the ancients. In the first place, it assumes that the person loved returns the love; to this extent the woman is on an equal footing with the man, whereas in the Eros of antiquity she was often not even asked. Secondly, our sexual love has a degree of intensity and duration which makes both lovers feel that non-possession and separation are a great, if not the greatest, calamity; to possess one another, they risk high stakes, even life itself. In the ancient world this happened only, if at all, in adultery. And, finally, there arises a new moral standard in the judgment of a sexual relationship. We do not only ask, was it within or outside marriage? But also, did it spring from love and reciprocated love or not? Seldom practised though, the moral standard is at least recognized in theory, on paper. And for the present more than this cannot be expected.”

In future, of course, conditions can change:

“…full freedom of marriage can …be generally established when the abolition of capitalist production and of the property relations created by it has removed all the accompanying economic considerations which still exert such a powerful influence on the choice of a marriage partner. For then there is no other motive left except mutual affection.

“And as sex love is by its nature exclusive – although at present this exclusiveness is fully realized only in the woman – the marriage based on sex love is by its nature monogamy. If now the economic considerations also disappear which made women put up with the habitual infidelity of their husbands – concern for their own means of existence and still more for their children’s future – then, according to all previous experience, the equality of woman thereby achieved will tend infinitely more to make men really monogamous than to make women polyandrous.

“What will most definitely disappear from monogamy, however, is all the characteristics stamped on it in consequence of its having arisen out of property relationships. These are, first, the dominance of the man, and secondly, the indissolubility of marriage. The predominance of the man in marriage is simply a consequence of his economic predominance and will vanish with it automatically. The indissolubility of marriage is partly the result of the economic conditions under which monogamy arose, and partly a tradition from the time when the connection between these economic conditions and monogamy was not yet correctly understood and was exaggerated by religion. Today it has been breached a thousand-fold. If only marriages that are based on love are moral, then also only those are moral in which love continues. The duration of the urge of individual sex love differs very much according to the individual, particularly among men; and a definite cessation of affection, or its displacement by a new passionate love, makes separation a blessing for both parties as well as for society. People will only be spared the experience of wading through the useless mire of divorce proceedings.”

For the rest, however, Engels leaves the question open to solution by those more qualified than himself, viz. the men and women to come:

“Thus, what we can conjecture at present about the regulation of sex relationships after the impending effacement of capitalist production is, in the main, of a negative character, limited mostly to what will vanish. But what will be added? That will be settled after a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in all their lives have had occasion to purchase a woman’s surrender either with money or with any other means of social power, and of women who have never been obliged to surrender to any man out of any consideration other than that of real love, or to refrain from giving themselves to their beloved for fear of the economic consequences. Once such people appear, they will not care a rap about what we today think they should do. They will establish their own practice and their own public opinion, conformable therewith, on the practice of each individual – and that’s the end of it.”

Family, Private Property, and State – The Triad of Oppression

Above we have seen how gender oppression gets institutionalised in the family with the accumulation of private property and emergence of classes. This world-historic process of transition from primitive communal/communist society to class society naturally assumes different particular forms in different parts of the earth. In our country for example, class was intermingled with the Varna order and later the caste system, making oppression on women especially cruel and stubborn. But in addition to class (and in our country, caste) we must take a look at another product of the selfsame social evolution: the state. As Engels shows in Origin,

“… in order that these antagonisms and classes with conflicting economic interests might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power seemingly standing above society that would alleviate the conflict, and keep it within the bounds of “order”; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.”

An instrument in the hands of the exploiting and ruling classes to hold in subjugation the numerically much stronger toiling classes, the state too, like the family and forms of private property, passed through successive stages of evolution. From city states to kingdoms (queen’s rule was an exception because mother right had long been abolished and all inheritance was from the father to the son) to modern parliamentary democracy, the form has been changing a lot, but the content has remained essentially the same. As before, the state pretends neutrality but serves the rich and the powerful. It protects and promotes the male domination prevalent in society: the laws, the courts, the police, the military and the entire system of governance are biased against women. Women along with all oppressed sections and classes naturally find themselves engaged in a bitter struggle against the state and, led by the communist party, smash it to pieces. Its place is then taken by the revolutionary proletarian state which exercises dictatorship over the overthrown but not-yet-annihilated bourgeoisie and ensures genuine equality and democracy for all working people including, of course, the women. As post-revolutionary society advances from the lower to the higher stage of socialism/communism, as remnants of classes and class struggle gradually die out, the state as an instrument of class rule also loses its raison d’etre and withers away; just as the family as we know it today gets dissolved or transformed beyond recognition. Society reorganises production on the basis of a free and equal association of producers, radically reconstructs man-woman relationship (more about this at the end of the article), and the human race is ultimately liberated from all kinds of exploitation and oppression.

Part II

In the progress from group marriage to pairing marriage it was women who took the lead because the former proved extremely oppressive and degrading for them. Ironically, with the development of productive forces (the iron plough for example), generation of surplus product (particularly in agriculture) and accumulation of private property (cattle, slaves, land etc.) the pairing family proved to be a transition to monogamous family, which institutionalised women’s bondage. Gender, class and then state oppression have always been closely connected, and so must be the struggle against the oppressive triad. Such in nutshell was what we learned in Part I. Now we should extend the discussion beyond Origin to cover the present – that is, capitalist – age, but not before taking a brief glance at conditions of women in India of old.

Ancient India and beyond

Broadly approximating the universal trend, women in our country journeyed from a position of relative freedom to progressively tightening bondage. This was true both within the Vedic period (which spanned some 17 or 18 centuries from the 12th century BC to the 5th century AD) and the periods that followed. During the pastoral nomadic life as described in the Rgveda (the earliest of the Vedas) women participated in productive labour outside home and enjoyed relative freedom. The Rgveda takes note of what is now called incest between father and daughter as well as brother and sister (e.g. Yama and Yami). After Aryans settled down to an agricultural life, with the introduction of plough on a very fertile soil and the resumption of maritime trade with the Middle East, Greece and Rome, considerable wealth accumulated in the hands of a minority. Women, those from the upper classes and varnas to begin with, came to be divorced from productive labour (this was facilitated by the use of slave labour) and made subservient to the male breadwinner — father/brother/husband/son. By this time or simultaneously with this process, women had been deprived of the right to education and artistic/literary vocations. Their seclusion in the inner chambers of the wealthy families, where unrelated males had no access, ensured patrilineal inheritance to legitimate sons only.

At least since the 8th century BC or thereabouts, women had as a rule no right to property. And not even to her own body. “When a wife refuses to satisfy her husband’s sexual desire”, says Yagnavalkya, “he should first speak soft words, then try to purchase her with gifts, and if she still refuses he should thrash her with his hand or with a stick and force her into subjugation.” (Compare this to Verse 34 of an-Nisa, which says a husband should urge his reluctant wife to mend her ways, refuse to share beds with her, and admonish her by beating). Polygamy was widely practised: Manu was credited with ten wives. Prostitution, abduction of women, leniency towards men’s sexual lapses as contrasted against the severe punishments meted out to women for similar or lesser lapses, discrimination against the girl child and social ostracisation of mothers who begot only girls, dowry (which was generously sanctioned while kanyashulka, very rare by itself, was discouraged), sati — you name it and the ancient texts have it.

As the stories of rsikas like Gargi and Maitreyi tell us, in the early Vedic period women from higher strata participated in religious practices as well as theological-philosophical studies and debates. But this freedom was circumscribed by male domination. Recall the well-known episode of Gargi- Yagnavalkya debate. When the former cornered the latter – a more renowned sage – in logical arguments, she was silenced by an unwarranted censure: “stop questioning any further, or else your head will fall down.”

However, Gargi at least had the right to participate in an open debate with a religious scholar. In our age, when at a public religious function held in Kolkata in 1994 Arundhati Roy Chowdhury was about to recite from the Vedas as scheduled, the Shankaracharya of Puri rudely stopped her. Women are not allowed to read the Vedas, he ordered. But if this showed the negative trend – the continued and in some cases tightened grip of Brahmanical patriarchy – the positive aspect was also there. Gargi had no one to rise in her support; in the case of Ms. Roy Chowdhury the insult was strongly rebuffed by AIPWA comrades. The very next day they stormed the hotel where the Shankaracharya was staying and gave him a sound thrashing in the presence of mediapersons. The AIDWA was nowhere to be seen, but the incident sparked protests from all progressive and democratic quarters.

From Yagnavalkya through Manu to the Shankaracharyas (past and present, and Singhals and Togadias), Brahmanism-Hinduism-Hindutva have consistently served to legitimise and intensify gender oppression in this country. While this has been generally true for all religions all over the world, in certain periods class struggle in the ideological realm found expression, among other things, in the rise of relatively progressive faiths or sects. In our context mention may be made of Buddhism and Jainism – which gave women a place of honour including eligibility for admission to the religious order – and the bhakti movement which sought to weaken the grip of Brahmanism and thereby also to somewhat improve women’s status. Particularly notable was Sikhism, which in its initial period enjoyed the patronage of Emperor Akbar. Sikh Scriptures declared women to be men’s equal, with the right to lead religious congregations, to take part in the akhand path, to work as a granthi, to participate in social and secular activities, and so on. Female infanticide was prohibited, and use of the veil, sutak (the custom of keeping a woman in solitary confinement after childbirth) etc. discouraged. The precepts were, however, practised only partially. As time passed casteist and other influences from Hinduism infiltrated Sikhism in a large measure, making the positions of women as well as lower caste men more or less equal to their counterparts professing other religious faiths.

These and similar experiences in other faiths including Islam shows that women’s subordination was not created by religion nor can it be abolished by religious or humanitarian preaching. It originated from given socio-economic conditions of class societies and can be done away with only on the basis of revolutionary transformation of those conditions.

The universal as well as peculiarly Indian modes of oppression on women, which arose in ancient times, in most cases became more intensified during the mediaeval period and have continued to this day in what Engels called “embellished” forms. We cannot discuss the entire process here; it would be more pertinent to come straight to the basic socio-economic mechanism of exploitation of women in our era.

(Most of the information used here is from “Women and Society in Ancient India” by Professor Sukumari Bhattacharji)

Women under Capitalism: Advancement and Retrogression

“… the first premise for the emancipation of women”, wrote Engels in Origin, “is the re-introduction of the entire female sex into public industry, and this again demands that the quality possessed by the individual family of being the economic unit of society be abolished.” Compared to feudalism, capitalism opens up broader avenues for the “reintroduction” of women into industries and services, and here lies a progressive potential, an expanded scope for carrying forward the struggle for women’s liberation. But far from “abolishing” the character of family as “the economic unit of society”, the capitalist mode of production reinforces this as one of its prime economic requirements. Here is where capitalism obstructs/negates the potential it otherwise creates and acts as a retrogressive force. Let us see how.

“Today, in the great majority of cases, the man has to be the earner, the bread-winner of the family, at least among the propertied classes, and this gives him a dominating position which requires no special legal privileges. In the family, he is the bourgeois; the wife represents the proletariat.

… the peculiar character of man’s domination over woman in the modern family, and the necessity as well as the manner of establishing real social equality between the two, will be brought out into full relief only when both are completely equal before the law. It will then become evident that the first premise for the emancipation of women is the reintroduction of the entire female sex into public industry; and that this again demands that the quality possessed by the individual family of being the economic unit of society be abolished.”

— Engels, Origin of the Family, Private Property and State

Under capitalism, wage is determined not by the value of what the worker produces, but by the sum of the values of necessaries required to maintain the worker and his/her family (maintenance of the family is required to guarantee uninterrupted supply of labour power through generations). Now what are these necessaries? Not just food, cloth – but preparation of the food, stitching of the cloth, care of the dependent (children, the elderly and the sick), emotional sustenance and so on. When a woman provides the major part of these necessaries as an obligatory and unpaid function of her role as wife and mother, then the capitalist does not have to pay for these services (of cooking, childcare, nursing etc.). The domestic tasks performed by women is thus an invisible, unaccounted component of necessary labour, which remains unpaid, and helps keep the costs of the means of subsistence of the worker (with family) down. In other words, it helps keep the general wage level down.

For the capitalist the proletarian family is thus merely the site for low-cost reproduction of labour power. Even in the most advanced capitalist societies – and in the most ‘modern’ and wealthy families in countries like ours – women bear a disproportionate share of domestic work. This is perceived as a “private” matter, but objectively it is an essential part of capitalist exploitation. And this explains why in countries like the USA, as well as in semi-feudal ones like ours, “the family” is held in such high esteem.

In addition to such indirect exploitation of women in the family, capitalism also directly exploits women workers. Marx in Capital gives a graphic account of how this occurs/occurred in backdated as well as more mechanised methods of production:

“Before the labour of women and of children under 10 years of age was forbidden in mines, capitalists considered the employment of naked women and girls, often in company with men, so far sanctioned by their moral code, and especially by their ledgers, that it was only after the passing of the Act that they had recourse to machinery…. In England women are still occasionally used instead of horses for hauling canal boats, because the labour required to produce horses and machines is an accurately known quantity, while that required to maintain the women of the surplus population is below all calculation. Hence nowhere do we find a more shameful squandering of human labour-power for the most despicable purposes than in England, the land of machinery. …

“In so far as machinery dispenses with muscular power, it becomes a means of employing labourers of slight muscular strength, and those whose bodily development is incomplete, but whose limbs are all the more supple. The labour of women and children was, therefore, the first thing sought for by capitalists who used machinery….

“The value of labour-power was determined, not only by the labour-time necessary to maintain the individual adult labourer, but also by that necessary to maintain his family. Machinery, by throwing every member of that family on to the labour-market, spreads the value of the man’s labour-power over his whole family. It thus depreciates his labour-power. To purchase the labour-power of a family of four workers may, perhaps, cost more than it formerly did to purchase the labour-power of the head of the family, but, in return, four days’ labour takes the place of one…. In order that the family may live, four people must now, not only labour, but expend surplus-labour for the capitalist. Thus we see, that machinery, while augmenting the human material that forms the principal object of capital’s exploiting power, at the same time raises the degree of exploitation….”

These changes, however, also lead to significant changes within familial relations:

“Previously, the workman sold his own labour-power, which he disposed of nominally as a free agent. Now he sells wife and child. He has become a slave-dealer….” [In a footnote Marx here adds that whereas the shortening of the hours of labour of women and children in English factories was exacted from capital by the male operatives, they often acted also in an opposite way – like slave-dealers – in relation to their children – A Sen]

Capitalism thus has an inherently contradictory approach towards women. On one hand it respects no social niceties, and seeks to draw women and even children into social production. On the other, it suppresses the wage level by having women’s unpaid domestic labour subsidise the reproduction of workers’ labour. Their being tied to domestic labour provides the pretext for them to be paid less at the workplace too. The male-female wage differential is a common feature to be observed in capitalistically more as well as less advanced countries. And lastly, women also add to the reserve army of the unemployed that keeps general wage levels down.

Capitalism produces enough surpluses in society to free women completely from domestic labour – society now has the material means for complete socialisation of such labour. But capitalism will never use that surplus for this broad, shared social purpose – it will keep it for the profit of a tiny minority of capitalists. Only with the progression from capitalism to socialism can the potential generated in the former be actualised, and the economic prerequisite, together with a conducive political and cultural atmosphere, be created for the emancipation of women as an integral part of the emancipation of all working people.

It is with this scientific understanding that socialists and communists started the work of organising women as a contingent of the working class.

Communist Organising and Women’s Question: the Beginnings

“Anybody who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment”, wrote Marx in a letter to Dr Kugelmann in 1868. “Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex (the ugly ones included)”, he added.

One of the most notable instances of this “feminine ferment” was to be observed in the French revolution. It was the plebeian and semi-proletarian women of Paris who literally started the French Revolution in 1789. They rose up demanding bread, and the women’s question emerged in due course. They were joined by educated women from the upper strata who demanded votes for women and the right of women to hold the highest civilian and military posts in the Republic – that is, the right of women to full political equality with men, and the right to fight and die for the cause of the revolution.

Even with such a glorious backdrop, and the deep theoretical insights of Marx and Engels, it took a slow, long process – and also a fair amount of ideological struggle – for the women’s question to gain, in left politics and organisation, some of the importance it deserves.

Let us begin with the famous clarion call at the end of the Communist Manifesto: “Working Men of the World, Unite”. We are now accustomed to shout “workers of the world…”, but even the 1888 English edition prepared under Engels’ supervision addressed the “working men”. And this despite the fact that women already constituted a growing segment of the working class, and that Marx took careful note of the trend in Capital.

The First International, founded in 1864, was called “International Working Men’s Association”. In 1868 Marx had to assure a correspondent that ‘of course’ women could join the organisation just like men. In another letter he wrote, “In any case ladies cannot complain of the International, for it has elected a lady, Madame [Harriet] Law, to be a member of the General Council”. Marx later proposed a resolution to the General Council, and then also in the 1871 Conference of the International, calling for the “formation of working women’s branches”, or “female branches among the working class”, without however interfering “with the existing or formation of branches composed of both sexes”. The name, however, remained “… Men’s Association”.

At the unity congress at Gotha in 1875 between the Lassallean and the Marxist and semi-Marxist groups in Germany, August Bebel on behalf of the Marxist wing moved a proposal that the party go on record as favouring equal rights for women. This was rejected by the majority, on the traditional ground that women were ‘not prepared’ for the step. However, Bebel’s book Woman and Socialism (1879) proved to be very influential. At the Erfurt (1891) congress of Social-Democracy, which finally adopted a formally Marxist programme, the majority came out in support of women’s rights, particularly the demand for legal equality. Yet the same year, at the second congress of the Second International, the Marxist position was opposed by Emile Vandervelde and some others.

Germany, which was then at the forefront of the socialist workers’ movement, witnessed a bitter struggle between the two trends. While Die Gleichheit (Equality), a women’s paper published by Clara Zetkin eventually reached a circulation of 100,000, the Lassallean wing opposed socialist agitation for the emancipation of women and argued against the growing entrance of women into industry.

In Russia Bolsheviks organised the first International Women’s Day meeting in 1913. The same year, Pravda began regularly publishing a page devoted to questions facing women. A women’s newspaper, Rabotnitsa (Woman Worker), was launched in 1914, with the first issue appearing on International Women’s Day, when the party also organised demonstrations. It was supported financially by women factory workers and distributed by them in the workplaces. It reported on the conditions and struggles of women workers in Russia and abroad, and encouraged women to join in struggle with their male co-workers.

We all know about the eminent roles played by Alexandra Kollontai, Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg, Sylvia and Emmeline Pankhurst and others in fighting for women’s rights including the right to vote, the observance of International Women’s Day and so on; perhaps it is not necessary to go into details here.

The tsar was overthrown by a revolution that began on International Women’s Day in 1917 (we know it as February revolution because by the old Russian calendar 8th March fell in February). On that day women workers of Petrograd decided to strike and demonstrate despite the advice of the local Bolsheviks who feared there would be a massacre. Guided by their proletarian class instincts, they swept aside all objections and began the offensive.

The beginnings thus made reached new heights in the course of and after the great Russian revolution.

Lenin and the Communist International

Under Lenin’s guidance, the Communist International (CI) formulated detailed guidelines for communist work among women and held a number of “international conference(s) of communist women”. The “Methods and Forms of Work among Communist Party Women: Theses” adopted by the third Congress of CI — which comrade VM upheld as “the very programme of women’s liberation that determines your basic orientation even today” (The Question of Women’s Liberation in the Perspective of Marxism) — combines a pair of complementary approaches: (a) special attention, special initiatives on the women’s front on behalf of the entire party and (b) a fight against the separatist approach which tends to segregate this work from the general party work.

[A] Special apparatus for conducting work among women

The CI emphasised the need for “departments or commissions” comprising comrades specialised and skilled in this field, including tasks like issuing leaflets, bringing out magazines, contributing to general party magazines etc. Such departments, to work under the guidance of and be attached to party committees at various levels, were charged with the following duties:

“1) to educate women in Communist ideas and draw them into the ranks of the Party;

“2) to fight the prejudices against women held by the mass of the male proletariat, and increase the awareness of working men and women that they have common interests;

“3) to strengthen the will of working women by drawing them into all forms and types of civil conflict, encouraging women in the bourgeois countries to participate in the struggle against capitalist exploitation, in mass action against the high cost of living, against the housing shortage, unemployment and around other social problems, and women in the Soviet republics to take part in the formation of the Communist personality and the Communist way of life;

“4) to put on the Party’s agenda and to include in legislative proposals questions directly concerning the emancipation of women, confirming their liberation, defending their interests as child-bearers;

“5) to conduct a well-planned struggle against the power of tradition, bourgeois customs and religious ideas, clearing the way for healthier and more harmonious relations between the sexes, guaranteeing the physical and moral vitality of working people.”

The theses also held:

“The commissions of working women must make sure not only that women join the Party, the trade unions and other class organisations and have equal rights and equal obligations (they must counter any attempts to isolate or separate off working women), but that women are brought into the leading bodies of the Parties, unions and co-operatives on equal terms with men.

“The commissions must enable Communist women to make the most effective use of all political and educational institutions of the Party.”

At the Fourth Congress of the CI a brief balance sheet was drawn up, which observed:

“The necessity and value of special organisations for Communist work among women is also proved by the activity of the Women’s Secretariat in the East, which has carried out important and successful work under new and unusual conditions. Unfortunately, the Fourth World Congress of the Communist International has to admit that some sections have either completely failed to fulfil, or have only partially fulfilled, their responsibility to give consistent support to Communist work among women. To this day, they have either failed to take measures to organise women Communists within the Party, or failed to set up the Party organisations vital for work among the masses of women and for establishing links with them.

“The Fourth Congress urgently insists that the Parties concerned make up for all these omissions as quickly as possible.

[B] Fight against the separatist approach:

The CI stressed the need to integrate the work of women in the general Party work, and not segregate it as something separate:

“The Third Congress of the Communist International is firmly opposed to any kind of separate women’s associations in the Parties and trade unions or special women’s organizations….

“The commissions must work to strengthen the class consciousness and militancy of the young Communist women, involving them in general Party courses and discussion evenings. Special evenings of reading and discussion or a series of talks especially for working women should be organised only where they are really necessary and expedient.

“In order to strengthen comradeship between working women and working men, it is desirable not to organise special courses and schools for Communist women, but all general Party schools must without fail include a course on the methods of work among women. The departments must have the right to delegate a certain number of their representatives to the general Party courses. [in all quotations from the Theses, emphases added by us – A Sen]

Now obviously we cannot literally and mechanically follow everything that is written here. We must grasp the holistic approach – which we learnt from Engels in the previous issue of Liberation – in matters of organisation too and dialectically combine the two aspects according to our conditions. In view of the giant strides made by the women’s movement over the decades, it was obligatory on our part to form a women’s association with revolutionary orientation, and we have done that. We have not only formed a Women’s Department in the party as advised by the CI, but also considered it necessary to organise a special party school for women comrades at the highest level. We should continue to move ahead along this line, but simultaneously it is time we paid more attention to the other aspect: e.g., saw to it that topics like methods of work among women are included in party discussions and party schools with greater prominence.

Lenin had to fight for this anti-separatist approach within the CI. As he told Clara, the national sections of the Communist International “… regard agitation and propaganda among the women and the task of rousing and revolutionizing them as of secondary importance, as the job of just the women Communists. None but the latter are rebuked because the matter does not move ahead more quickly and strongly. This is wrong, fundamentally wrong! It is outright separatism. It is equality of women … reversed … In the final analysis, it is an underestimation of women and of their accomplishments” – (Clara Zetkin, My Reflection of Lenin, p. 114)

Part III

In this last part of the article we propose to elaborate on two important and interrelated areas of our concern, already touched in Part II: (a) grasping the proletarian approach to women’s movement and (b) promoting communist attitude to women in the party and society. The first we will discuss in light of the words and deeds of some prominent women leaders of the international communist movement; the second in that of Lenin’s teachings. To round off the whole discussion, we will then conclude with a few words on the connection between socialism and women’s liberation.

Class and Gender in the Works of Marx, Zetkin and Luxembourg

As we saw earlier, the theses of the Third Congress of CI put the whole stress on “drawing them into all forms and types of civil conflict…encouraging women to participate in the struggle against capitalist exploitation, in mass action against the high cost of living,…unemployment…” — in short, on mobilising women in the general stream of class struggle. And this was precisely what veterans like Eleanor Marx, Zetkin and Luxembourg had long been doing and advocating. In the process they had to wage a relentless battle against bourgeois feminists, whom they called ‘women’s-rightsers’ because the latter regarded women’s juridical rights (under the existing social order) to be the be-all and end-all of their agitation and programme.

Eleanor worked by preference among the most exploited workers of London’s East End, and was one of the founders the new-type Gas Workers’ and General Labourers Union– ‘by far the best union’ in Engels’ opinion — which organised the unskilled workers into a militant mass organisation. In Working-Women vs. Bourgeois Feminism she discussed in detail “…the difference between the party of the ‘women’s rightsers’ on the one side, who recognised no class struggle but only a struggle of sexes, who belong to the possessing class, and who want rights that would be an injustice against their working class sisters, and, on the other side, the real women’s party, the socialist party, which has a basic understanding of the economic causes of the present adverse position of workingwomen and which calls on the workingwomen to wage a common fight hand-in-hand with the men of their class against the common enemy, viz. the men and women of the capitalist class.”

Similarly, Zetkin observed: “… we have no special women’s agitation to carry on… rather socialist agitation among women. It is not women’s petty interests of the moment that we should put in the foreground; our task must be to enrol the modern proletarian women in the class struggle. … just as the proletariat can achieve its emancipation only if it fights together without distinction of nationality or distinction of occupation, so also it can achieve its emancipation, only if it holds together without distinction of sex. Insofar as there are reforms to be accomplished on behalf of women within present-day society, they are already demanded in the Minimum Programme of our party.” [“Only with the proletarian woman will socialism be victorious”! (Speech to the Gotha Congress)]

Now, does not all these smack of left sectarianism, if not an ultra-left deviation? That indeed would appear to be the case if we miss the historical context. In those initial years, the socialist or proletarian women’s movement had to demarcate itself most demonstratively from bourgeois feminism, to counter the influence the latter would have on working class women, and to strongly highlight the indivisibility of interests between proletarian men and women. This was the accepted line that the whole party unitedly implemented, with women comrades taking the lead from the forefront. Thus the “ First Socialist Women’s Conference” held in 1907 in Stuttgart elected Clara Zetkin as its secretary and passed a resolution calling upon socialist parties to fight actively for the “introduction of general women’s suffrage”. Thanks largely to the efforts of Luxembourg, Zetkin and others, the German Social Democratic party (SPD) became the first party to incorporate equal rights for women in its political agenda. We all know about the contributions of leaders like Alexandra Kollontai and Clara Zetkin in launching the International Women’s Day.

The apparently exclusive stress on class, however, meant no negation of gender, no unconcern for problems women encountered as women and as citizens. Eleanor Marx for example was acutely aware of the bitter fact that, in a certain sense, “Women are the creatures of an organised tyranny of men, as the workers are the creatures of an organised tyranny of idlers…”. Lenin acknowledged that it was Rosa who first posed the question of full freedom of divorce, the lack of which was an added oppression of the already oppressed sex. On another occasion he remarked, “Rosa acted and felt as a communist when in an article she championed the cause of the prostitutes who were imprisoned for any transgression of police regulations in carrying on their dreary trade.”

Luxemburg was among the first to draw attention to unpaid domestic labour put in by women. In the wage system under capitalist rule, she pointed out, “only that kind of work is considered productive which… creates capitalist profit or surplus value.” From this standpoint, the “music-hall dancer whose legs sweep profit into her employer’s pocket is a productive worker, whereas all the toil of the proletarian women and mothers in the four walls of their homes is considered unproductive. This sounds brutal and insane, but corresponds exactly to the brutality and insanity of our present capitalist economy. And seeing this brutal reality clearly and sharply is the proletarian woman’s first task. For, exactly from this point of view, the proletarian women’s claim to equal political rights is anchored in firm economic ground.”

Women’s suffrage is the goal. But the mass movement to bring it about is not a job for women alone, but is a common class concern for women and men of the proletariat….A hundred years ago, the Frenchman Charles Fourier, one of the first great prophets of socialist ideals, wrote these memorable words: In any society, the degree of female emancipation is the natural measure of the general emancipation. This is completely true for our present society. The current mass struggle for women’s political rights is only an expression and a part of the proletariat’s general struggle for liberation. In this lies its strength and its future. … Fighting for women’s suffrage, we will also hasten the coming of the hour when the present society falls in ruins under the hammer strokes of the revolutionary proletariat.”

— Luxembourg (Women’s Suffrage and Class Struggle — speech at the Second Social Democratic Women’s Rally, Stuttgart, Germany, May 12, 1912)

Thus, women communists always considered the gender question from a strictly scientific class viewpoint and as an inseparable part of the general proletarian movement. As Luxembourg observed, “proletarian consciousness transcended national and racial differences, so did it transcend sexual ones as well”. Zetkin had friendly relations with a number of bourgeois women’s rightsers and was quite willing to unite forces with the bourgeois women for common objectives, but not to subordinate the working women’s movement to the aims and style of the latter.

How do we interpret and learn from these principles and practices today?

The world has moved a long way since the formative decades of the communist movement when the latter was identified almost exclusively with workers’ (and in underdeveloped countries, peasants’) movements. Thanks to continual socio-economic and political changes, a whole range of other movements by different strata/sections — students, women, oppressed nations/nationalities, dalits, racial, religious or other minorities and so on — have grown powerful enough to carve out a distinct, autonomous political space for themselves. In all these areas the proletariat has to fight relentlessly for hegemony against both the spontaneous tendency of these movements to come under bourgeois influence and clever manipulations by bourgeois parties to influence and utilise these in their narrow interests. To this end a communist party steadfastly pursues the key thread of class struggle within these movements and this is what we mean by proletarian class approach. Thus Rosa Luxemburg and her party fought for women’s suffrage not because that would improve women’s conditions but in the interests of “the proletariat’s general struggle for liberation” (see box) and therefore presented this struggle as the responsibility of the whole party. (Broadly speaking, similar is our position today on the campaign for women’s reservation in legislative assemblies, as we will see in the third paper of this school).

In our context, the proletarian or communist approach to women’s movement would mean, first and foremost, that the women’s association should not be seen as the sole medium of the party’s work among women. No less vital in this regard are mass organisations of workers, students, cultural activists and, most importantly in our conditions, agrarian labourers. Here male organisers also should always — and especially during initial periods when, or in areas where, women organisers are not immediately available — take it as their responsibility to spread the work among women members of the respective class/strata. But this is possible only when and only to the extent they are educated to overcome the feudal values prevalent in our society, to fight and to repudiate what Lenin called “the separatist approach”( see end of Part II).

Secondly, majority of cadres in the women’s organisation should as a rule work directly and on a regular basis (not just during membership campaigns) in one particular class organisation or among unorganised/semi-organised working women like bidi workers, anganwadi and ASHA workers, domestic helps, etc.. Holding offices in say the TU centre or the agrarian labourers’ organisation is not the main thing, direct and responsible work is. It is necessary to naturalise this relation or working arrangement between the women’s organisation and class organisations; this the party committees must ensure at their respective levels, failing which higher committees should intervene. In this process alone can our women’s organisation acquire a good mass base and membership strength. This is not to deny, of course, the need to develop sustained work in selected slum areas and other localities in towns and cities, among school and college teachers in creative non-conventional ways and so on.

Thirdly, on the strength of the mass base thus developed, the women’s organisation should pursue a vigorous UF policy, which is very much a class policy of the proletariat. This means (a) mobilising progressive women and men from other strata in support of our movement and (b) wide interaction and joint initiatives with other women’s organisations on issues of common concern.

Combining the three elements noted above, we can develop a distinct stream of revolutionary democratic women’s movement in India and that is our task in the stage of democratic revolution.

A Women’s Question for the Communist Party?

Ideally, there should be no such thing as women’s question inside the party, which transcends all differences in class, caste, creed and sex. In reality, this is more or less true in the other cases but not quite in the case of gender. As the Fifth All India Congress (1992) observed, “Within the Party, we still face the problem of downgrading the importance of women cadres. There have also been recurring incidents of violation of the dignity of our women members and supporters. Several of our promising women cadres, especially in rural areas, failed to advance beyond a point and got embroiled in various complications. Feudal and male chauvinist tendencies continue to prevail among a good section of members and cadres. To say the least, the environment in the Party is still not conducive to the emergence of large number of women cadres and their taking up responsible party positions.”

How do matters stand now? Generally speaking, comrades everywhere recognize the special obstacles and hardships women comrades have to overcome in joining and working in the party and they are eager to help the latter. Especially since the Diphu conference we are paying much attention to recruiting women party members and promoting women cadres to leading party positions. While affirming all this as the principal aspect, we must concede that despite best intentions our actual efforts in this regard often remain rather formalistic and superficial. Party committees find it easy, for example, to nominate more women comrades to party conferences and schools and to award (and renew) party memberships to women activists on a more considerate basis. But do they make any special arrangements for their education and training? It is of course wrong to say that recruitment of women members should be put on hold till such arrangements are in place, but it is equally incorrect to leave these to spontaneity. Recruit, train and organise in party branches large number of women; take special care to develop women cadres; boldly promote them to responsible party positions — such should be our motto and much remains to be done in this respect.

Moreover, we often fail to take concrete steps for solving the typical problems faced by women comrades. Think of a situation when a woman cadre finds herself politically/organisationally/emotionally in a tight corner and perhaps commits some mistakes too, inviting further criticism from others. What is needed at such moments — and not only at such moments — is not just sympathy and certainly not ‘protection’ offered by benevolent patriarchy, but comradely discussion that is sensitive, accommodative, yet firm on principles; constructive criticism to help the comrade see and overcome her own mistakes /gaps, if any; and prompt organisational steps, whenever required, to sort out the practical problems. How often do we find party committees coming forward with such care and support?

In our semi-feudal society there is a deep discomfort with the idea of women having an affair, marrying in disregard of parental advice, divorcing, remarrying, etc; and such retrograde values tend to penetrate the party. The worst insensitivity and outright gender-prejudice manifest themselves when women comrades happen to violate the prevalent feudal/ petit-bourgeois notions of sexual morality. The principle of non-interference in personal life including choice of partners is crudely violated and this is justified by saying that communists must not cause a scandal in society, that they should sacrifice their personal likings because they have a larger responsibility to society and so on. There have been cases where we have managed to isolate a forward-looking comrade with patriarchal sermonising and restrictions — so much so that the party ends up losing her, especially if she is not yet that much integrated with the party.

Similar problems were — and are — to be found in other communist parties too. Historically, gender sensitiveness has grown in socialist/communist parties only gradually and slowly, and the struggle for that continues to this day. At the end of Part II of this article we saw Lenin frowning on what he called “equality of women reversed” (or “feminism upside down” —according to another version of translation from the original German) and an “underestimation of women and of their accomplishments”. He also remarked, “Scratch a Communist (male) and find a Philistine. Of course, you must scratch the sensitive spot, their mentality as regards women.” In other words, even hardcore communists often cherish highly retrograde, male chauvinist notions about women and their role in society and in the party. Lenin further says, “Could there be a more damning proof of this than the callous acquiescence of men who see how women grow worn-out in the petty, monotonous household work, their strength and time dissipated and wasted, their minds growing narrow and stale, their hearts beating slowly, their will weakened?”

“… don’t let us deceive ourselves. Our national sections … don’t understand that the development and management of such a mass movement is an important part of entire Party activity, indeed, a half of general Party work. Their occasional recognition of the necessity and value of a powerful, clear-headed communist women’s movement is a platonic verbal recognition, not the constant care and obligation of the Party.”

— Clara Zetkin, [Lenin on the Women’s Question]

“Our Communist work among women, our political work”, Lenin goes uninterruptedly on, “embraces a great deal of educational work among men. We must root out the old ‘master’ idea to its last and smallest root, in the party and among the masses. That is one of our political tasks, just like the urgent and necessary task of forming a staff of men and women comrades, well- trained in theory and practice, to carry on party activity among working women.”

Here, as well as in the accompanying box, we have italicized the words and phrases that deserve special attention.

First, “educational work among men” — and “a great deal” of that — constitutes a part and parcel (note the word “embraces”) of the party’s work among women. It is not sufficient to recognize that in addition to women comrades, male comrades also need education; it is the latter who stand in greater need for education and remoulding.

Second, “the old ‘master’ idea“ resides not only in the upper strata of society but also among the proletarian masses, and in the proletarian party. The ideological struggle to eradicate it constitutes one of our major tasks.

Third, the party’s leading bodies — district and state committees in particular — should distinguish between what Lenin called “verbal recognition” and “constant care and obligation of the Party”; they should consistently try and proceed from the former to the latter.

Fourth, to help the party carry forward such tasks and advance our work in all its dimensions, it is necessary to form specialised party groups (departments/commissions, as the CI would call them), with male as well as female comrades. Unable to grasp this communist approach and often infected with notions of gender equality that are extremely hollow and mechanical, some intellectuals discover ‘signs of male domination in the communist party’ when we follow this guideline in running our women’s department. Much wiser, our women comrades however see this as a most realistic and beneficial arrangement.

To promote communist moral values within the party and a modern democratic attitude in our mass base — don’t forget that the two are organically integrated — we must fight against certain erroneous ideas and feudal practices. We must oppose dowry, child-marriage, forced arranged marriage, the purdah etc. and uphold women’s right to choose their partners cutting across caste/ religious/ financial divides even in the face of familial/social opposition and their right to be fully consulted in all family matters. We must oppose confinement of women within four walls and encourage their participation in productive activities as well as social and political affairs.

Inside the party, which in its internal relations anticipates and abides by mature communist values, there must be no “second sex”; absolute equality of the sexes and not just dignity but full democratic rights of women in personal affairs must be demanded and fought for. In both cases — in society and in the party — the struggle has to be firm, patient and long-drawn out.

Women’s Liberation and Socialism

At the end of the first part of this article, we presented in barest outline the Marxist notion that gender, class and state oppression emerged almost simultaneously, as three dimensions of a single process, and so will they end together in course of the transition from capitalism to socialism to communism. This is a scientific abstraction, which constitutes a key element of the Marxist method that unfolds through the constant emergence and resolution of the contradiction between the abstract and the concrete. In the actual conditions of real-life socialism, of course, things were not expected to be, nor did they prove to be, so simple. In both the Soviet Union and China, initial gains on the women’s front were truly remarkable but they suffered partial — and in some instances severe — setbacks later. That however should not be seen in isolation as something especially anti- women. These were parts of the many shortcomings or mistakes of the primary phase of socialism that emerged in a few backward countries — mistakes or limitations which often militated against the immediate interests of workers and/or peasants too. Moreover, it is but natural that just as classes and class struggle continue under socialism and the state cannot be abolished in one stroke, more or less complete elimination of the remnants of male domination also would require a very protracted, very painstaking struggle spanning perhaps centuries.

So what do we mean when we say women can free themselves from bondage only under socialism? That with radical transformation of material and cultural conditions of life including transformation of family from an economic to an emotional unit of free partnership, the situation will arise for the first time in history to carry the struggle for women’s liberation through to the end. Nothing more, but nothing less. Comrade VM put this very eloquently at the end of the article “The Question of Women’s Liberation in the Perspective of Marxism” and we find no better words for concluding our whole discussion:

“Save the natural division between man and woman, all other divisions are artificial. A specific phase of historical development had institutionalised these divisions, and another phase of historical development, which has already been ushered in, will put an end to them, and only when the relationship between man and woman, the two forms of human species will grow frank, spontaneous and fraternal the humankind shall be able to regain its lost oneness. The path towards this destiny will route through a revolution bearing the banner with inscriptions “socialism and women’s liberation” on it.”