Is feminism really left wing?

[Comrade_Josh]

Ok i should introduce myself before i go any further. My name is josh and i am at the moment undecided as to what way i want to follow politically but i am just trying to sort things out


When i read the Communist Manifesto (a year ago) i read this part that said (if i remember correctly) the family unit should be abolished and women become an open economy.

[scarletghoul]

women become an open economy. ...wow, I must have missed this bit. :lol:

anyway, socialism is by its nature feminist because its about equality. I dont know where you get the idea of women being an 'open economy'...

[Comrade_Josh]

it was in the manifesto from how i understood it

[Jimmie Higgins]

When i read the Communist Manifesto (a year ago) i read this part that said (if i remember correctly) the family unit should be abolished and women become an open economy.

The section about women is basically saying that women should not be property. Divorce should be allowed (which it was not 100% at that time) and more importantly, the family unit where men were supposed to work and women take care of the children (and therefore dependent on the man economically even if the man was abusive or they were not in love) should be abolished.

Now with about 50% of the workforce being women, many people (both men and women) must stay together even if they have fallen out of love or it is a harmful relationship because it is difficult to raise kids and pay rent on one income alone.

If everyone had control over their own lives (politically, socially, and economically) love and compatibility would be the only real determining factor for relationships.

[scarletghoul]

You misunderstood it then. Maybe you should try reading some other introductions to communism, or read the manifesto again

[Comrade_Josh]

I will try that then

[redwinter]

i would say that the term "feminist" doesn't really encompass the emancipation of women...but is associated historically with a trend that actually seeks to get women "equality" (or believes that gender "equality" is possible) under the current system, rather than going for the emancipation of all of humanity from all oppressive ideas and social relations and the production relations that underlie all of them...

for the modern communist perspective on the emancipation of women, i would recommend the following declaration that was released last year by the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA:

A DECLARATION: FOR WOMEN'S LIBERATION AND THE EMANCIPATION OF ALL HUMANITY (http://www.revcom.us/a/158/Declaration-en.html)

A short excerpt:



Women need emancipation. Women need liberation from thousands of years of tradition’s chains. This is a declaration that stands on the clear recognition that for humanity as a whole to advance, half of humanity must be lifted from centuries of being condemned to being the property of men and pitilessly exploited, demeaned and degraded in a thousand ways.

Women are not breeders. Women are not lesser beings. Women are not objects created for the sexual pleasure of men. Women are human beings capable of participating fully and equally in every realm of human endeavor. When women are held down, all of humanity is held back. Women must win liberation, and they can only be liberated through the revolutionary transformation of the world and the emancipation of all of humanity, and through being a powerful motive force in that revolution.

At a time when many proclaim that finding “common ground” with religious fundamentalists is necessary, or even desirable, this declaration does not accept and will not compromise with women’s enslavement. This declaration has no patience for those who tell us to “be realistic” when what they mean is to tinker around within the horrible confines of the world as it is. This declaration calls out the moral and ideological bankruptcy of those who claim the mantle of women’s advance but mean only “getting in” on the world as it is—waging what can only be a losing and perverse battle for the “right” of women to have an equal share in running an empire, exploiting others, or even down to the humiliating level of owning and marketing their own bodies as sexual commodities.

When so few will dare, this declaration is calling for something unseen in generations: an uncompromising outpouring of women and men the world over who refuse to see women oppressed, beaten, imprisoned, insulted, raped, abused, harassed, exploited, murdered, spat upon, thrown acid at, groped, shamed and systematically diminished.
This declaration calls for a revolution—a revolution that takes the full emancipation of women as a cornerstone. A revolution that unleashes the fury of women as a mighty force, and that grasps how central this question is to uprooting and abolishing all exploitation, oppression and degrading social relations, and the ideas that go along with them, among human beings as a whole, all over the world.

This declaration is a communist declaration, summoning a revolutionary movement of emancipators of humanity.

This, and nothing less, is the challenge before us.