Universal Struggle
30th May 2010, 12:45
http://www.holtlaborlibrary.org/images/lg%20Women%27s.JPG
Despite all the international conferences and ‘‘universal
declarations’’ in favor of female equality, the lives of
most women around the world remain confined by
prejudice and social oppression.
The means by which
male supremacy is enforced vary considerably from one
society to another (and between social classes within
each society), but everywhere men are taught to regard
themselves as superior, and women are taught to accept
this.
Very few women have access to power and privilege
except via their connection to a man. Most women
in the paid labor force are subject to the double burden
of domestic and wage slavery. According to the United
Nations, women perform two-thirds of the world’s
work, and produce about 45 percent of the world’s
food----yet they receive merely ten percent of the income,
and own only one percent of the property (cited by
Marilyn French in The War Against Women, 1992).
From its inception, the Marxist movement has championed
female equality and women’s rights, while regarding
women’s oppression (like racial, national and
other forms of special oppression) as something that
cannot be eradicated without overturning the capitalist
social system that nurtures and sustains it.
While Marxists and feminists often find themselves
on the same side in struggles for women’s rights, they
hold two fundamentally incompatible worldviews.
Feminism is an ideology premised on the idea that the
fundamental division in human society is between the
sexes, rather than between social classes.
Feminist ideologues
consequently see the struggle for female equality
as separate from the fight for socialism, which many
dismiss as merely an alternative form of ‘‘patriarchal’’
rule.
Full PDF here.
http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no19fem.pdf
Despite all the international conferences and ‘‘universal
declarations’’ in favor of female equality, the lives of
most women around the world remain confined by
prejudice and social oppression.
The means by which
male supremacy is enforced vary considerably from one
society to another (and between social classes within
each society), but everywhere men are taught to regard
themselves as superior, and women are taught to accept
this.
Very few women have access to power and privilege
except via their connection to a man. Most women
in the paid labor force are subject to the double burden
of domestic and wage slavery. According to the United
Nations, women perform two-thirds of the world’s
work, and produce about 45 percent of the world’s
food----yet they receive merely ten percent of the income,
and own only one percent of the property (cited by
Marilyn French in The War Against Women, 1992).
From its inception, the Marxist movement has championed
female equality and women’s rights, while regarding
women’s oppression (like racial, national and
other forms of special oppression) as something that
cannot be eradicated without overturning the capitalist
social system that nurtures and sustains it.
While Marxists and feminists often find themselves
on the same side in struggles for women’s rights, they
hold two fundamentally incompatible worldviews.
Feminism is an ideology premised on the idea that the
fundamental division in human society is between the
sexes, rather than between social classes.
Feminist ideologues
consequently see the struggle for female equality
as separate from the fight for socialism, which many
dismiss as merely an alternative form of ‘‘patriarchal’’
rule.
Full PDF here.
http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no19fem.pdf