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ACADEMIC | Women and Communism

Essentially, Karl Marx is the founding father of Communism and Engles developed and collaborated with Marx in order to create The Communist Manifesto. However the writings of Marx had a tendency to focus more on class inequalities and rarely challenged gender issues and disparities. The work of Engles suggests that he believed men and women were neutral subjects, void of any hierarchy, order or domination (Marx and Engles, 2002). Despite offering little commentary on the issue of gender inequality, his criticisms of the bourgeois society gave the foundations for socialist feminism. Brown (2014) suggests that the writings of both Marx and Engles, despite offering no specific commentary or criticism of the political, social or economic disadvantages faced by women in nineteenth century Europe were also influential to communist political programmes and societies throughout the twentieth century.


The fundamental themes that Marx offers in his social criticisms such as alienation and dominance, inequality as well as a critique of the social situation in which assist in the rise to these conditions have clear implications for a theory of gender inequality and emancipation. A prime example of this is the fact that alienation theory is premised on the assumptions in the nature of human beings such as the ideas of freedom, socialisation, creativity and self expression (Haraway, 2001). The situations of everyday life uphold sexist ideology and the patriarchy such as family life, marriage sex and the workplace. These situations are also responsible for creating feelings of alienation and domination and Marx’s theory of exploitation also naturally extends to the social relations of the patriarchy. This is best highlighted in the fact that the bourgeois family system naturally disadvantages women and exploits them in both the household and employment.


Between 1883 and the start of the first world war, female equality was vastly supported by socialist and communist theorists and gender equality was often placed close to the top of political agendas. The USSR, China and Cuba put it as a top priority for social transformation. Lenin showed his support for gender equality mainly through his journalism and via a well read interview in 1920 with a prominent german femenist, Clara Zetkin. Due to the support for female equality, Communist parties were among the most feminised in Europe, with prominent activists rising to positions of responsibility in the parties. These leaders included Clara Zetkin from Germany, Spaniard Dolores Ibárruri and Frenchwomen Jeannette Vermeersch and all three were elected to their country's parliament. On the word of Moser (2001) in the USSR the Code on Marriage, The Family and Guardianship was a key legal document in regards to emancipating women and lessening male dominance. Additionally the USSR had a higher level of equality in education and employment than any other european country during this time. During the 1960’s the conservative sexual morals of Stalin started to dissipate however Romania still practiced a pro- natalist policy which forbode abortions. The USSR easing of its pro life stance was in accordance with the developments in the west with regards to contraception. 


The China Communist Party as told by Fulton (2000) also placed female emancipation close to the top of their agenda for social transformation. Throughout China, feminist thought resonated and Fulton (2000) proposes could be traced back to the May Fourth Movement which was a student led protest against anti imperialism. The cultural and practical movement grew out of Beijing on 4th May 1919. It was a cultural and long-standing tradition in China to have arranged marriages followed by dominant mother-in -law and subordination of a wife to her husband, all of which were well established social norms. Fulton (2000) further puts forward that upon seizure in 1949, the Communist Party undertook a series of fundamental legal reforms to establish equality for women. These included reforms in areas such as family and marriages resulting in the Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China; 1950, additional reforms in  literacy and education as well as in the arena of electoral rights indicated in the Electoral Law of the PRC; 1952 as well as a guarantee of labour outside the household. It is a general consensus that the role and status of women in China has dramatically improved since 1949 especially in areas such education, employment, political participation, marital freedom and economic independence.


The work of Nazzari (1983) indicates that revolutions in Cuba also introduced female equality and became the model in the developing world due to its success in emancipation and decreasing the oppression of women, more so than both the USSR and China. Cuba successfully included female equality in both its constitution and legal framework and also was influential in impacting actual positive outcomes for women in wider Cuban society and in practically every division of society. These achievements are especially prevalent in the fact that the percentages of female lawyers, legislators, doctors and scientists in Cuba are amongst the highest in the world.


To conclude, communist parties championed female equality without ever addressing the disadvantages women faced in society because to do so would undermine the ideas of Marx (Molyneux, 1994). To politically defend feminist interests would be difficult without challenging the entire communist project . This is the main cause for tense relations in the west in the 1970s between feminists and communist parties and their shared opposition to regimes in the east. Overall, it is defendable that communism gave rise and enabled to popularity of feminism that was widespread but not overly prominent in politics and it is possible to speak of femenist without feminism when considering communism.



References 

Brown, H., 2014. Marx on gender and the family: A summary. Monthly Review, 66(2), pp.48-57.


Fulton, J., 2000. Holding up Half the Heavens: The Effect of Communist Rule on China's Women. IU South Bend Undergraduate Research Journal, 3, pp.35-38.


Haraway, D.J., 2001. “Gender” for a Marxist dictionary: the sexual politics of a word. In Women, Gender, Religion: A Reader (pp. 49-75). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.


Marx, K. and Engels, F., 2002. The communist manifesto. Penguin.


Molyneux, M., 1994. Women's Rights and the International Context: Some Reflections on the Post-Communist States1. Millennium, 23(2), pp.287-313.


Moser, R.G., 2001. The effects of electoral systems on women's representation in post-communist states. Electoral studies, 20(3), pp.353-369.


Nazzari, M., 1983. The" Woman Question" in Cuba: An Analysis of Material Constraints on Its Solution. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 9(2), pp.246-263.


Resnick, S.A. and Wolff, R.D., 2013. Class theory and history: Capitalism and communism in the USSR. Routledge.

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