Would Women Be Better Off Under Communism? Exploring Marx’s Influence on the Feminism of the Contemporary Left
In 2017, it seems that the only parties left to combat gender inequality, pay gaps, and strict abortion laws are the parties most associated with communism. Unfortunately, they are the ones that are most openly criticised and targeted for those links. An example of such took place in 2014, at a conference dedicated to promoting tolerance, where a young man kept interrupting Leszek Miller’s (former leader of the Polish Democratic Left Alliance) speech by shouting “On the trees, instead of leafs, will be hanging Communists!” (Polish: A na drzewach, zamiast liści, będą wisieć komuniści). Last year, social democrat Bernie Sanders lost the presidency, but still managed to establish himself as the voice of the opposition. While POTUS Donald Trump works on defunding Planned Parenthood, Sanders calls it “an attack on women’s health” and states that it “is part of a long-term smear campaign by people who want to deny women in this country the right to control their own bodies.” More importantly, when asked whether he considers himself a feminist, he answered “Yes.” and explained that, to him, feminism means “a commitment to fighting for women’s rights. And I think if you check my record, you will find that that is what I’ve done throughout my entire political career.”
Just to compare: when Justin Trudeau was asked why his cabinet is “the first gender-balanced cabinet in Canadian history,” he replied shortly: “Because it’s 2015.” The answer felt right at the time, it was just so simple. Nevertheless, it was not enough to sustain the gender equality for which women had been fighting for decades at that point. Just because something seems so natural in Western democratic states does not mean that it is as simple in other parts of the world. A year after Trudeau’s statement, Poland’s government attempted to impose a total ban on abortion, despite being one of the only two countries, alongside the Republic of Ireland, with the most strict reproductive rights in the whole of Europe. American women were also met with restrictions on their rights to reproductive health, such as the aforementioned attempt to defund Planned Parenthood, along with Trump’s aggressive anti-Obamacare campaign (a programme which gave thousands of women access to state-funded birth control — something that Polish women, for instance, would never have dreamed of in the first place).
Thus, those simple answers, such as “Because it’s 2015,” are not enough to argue for the relevance and significance of a feminist society. The message only reaches a group of people who are already convinced by the ethos of the movement — not those who are standing in the way and who still need to be convinced. This applies to not only the equality of the sexes, but societies as a whole as well. Marxist ideas (especially at their extremes) and feminism go well together not only because their opponents tend to argue that they “only work on paper,” but because they are based on the same primal belief that social barriers are inherently unfavourable to society. Marxist politics itself entails feminism. Therefore, one way of convincing people (by argumentation and not vague announcements about what year it is) is to reach into the original writings of Karl Marx. In this essay, I will explore how they are still a source of inspiration for contemporary left-leaning political parties. I will analyse how Marx’s ideas manage to retain significant relevance in 2017, and how other political parties could learn from them in implementing better resolutions for women in the status quo.
Karl Marx on Women
“The labour of women and children was, therefore, the first thing sought for by capitalists who used machinery,” writes Karl Marx in Capital, “That mighty substitute for labour and labourers was forthwith changed into a means for increasing the number of wage-labourers by enrolling, under the direct sway of capital, every member of the workman’s family, without distinction of age or sex. Compulsory work for the capitalist usurped the place, not only of the children’s play, but also of free labour at home within moderate limits for the support of the family.”
One could argue that what Marx is trying to do in this quote is to elevate equity over equality, which, if true, is even more groundbreaking for his time. Capitalism used (and still uses) the equality-card for all the wrong reasons — not as a way of championing equal rights and respect, but as a way of placing even more responsibilities on the backs of the vulnerable (“by enrolling (…) every member of the workman’s family, without distinction of age or sex”) — and expecting of them as much as of a young, healthy man. It is a view often reflected in contemporary “colourblindness,” which a lot of white Americans seem to be quite proud of. They treat everyone the same (equally!) because they just refuse to acknowledge the differences of race. So colourblind, that they actively become blind in perceiving the institutionalised racism, the racial profiling resulting in targeting and even murdering through the hands of law enforcement. “Colourblind” white people treat everyone equally, so they fail to recognise that black people need help and immediate change.
In practice, equity works to elevate the status of the vulnerable to the surface of the average individual — by ensuring various forms of support to make it possible for everyone to have equal access to their needs.
150 years ago, Marx acknowledged that capitalism stands for “equality,” as opposed to communism’s equity (evident in the above passage) and in the meantime, tries to sell it as something negative the moment communism is associated with it — same goes for feminism. Capitalism would do nothing for the feminist movement if it was not considered a much-discussed topic relevant in 2017. Capitalism is not here to see the pay gap be closed, to ensure that all workers, not just men, get to rise above the glass ceiling. If they did, it would not be an issue today, as those things have been pretty apparent in the past few decades. However, the capitalist wants to, first and foremost, make a profit. Ten years ago, when Dove launched its Real Beauty campaign, “(…) critics were quick to point out that the brand’s owner, Unilever, was the parent company of Slimfast, Axe and Fair & Lovely skin-whitening cream. How could a message about “real beauty” coming from a corporation that sells diet products and advertises men’s body spray with sexist tropes about women possibly be authentic?” Because at the end of the day, the people in boardrooms do not care about contemporary feminist ideas like body positivity half as much as we expect them to. They care about targeting a large audience of women, so that they manage to sell their product to a greater number of women, thus further increasing their profit — and it just so happens that the majority of women happen to be over the UK size 8.
In a letter to Friedrich Engels, dated from December 1868, Karl Marx writes: “great progress was evident in the last Congress of the American “Labour Union” in that among other things, it treated working women with complete equality. While in this respect the English, and still more the gallant French, are burdened with a spirit of narrow-mindedness. Anybody who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex (the ugly ones included).”
Probably the most eye-catching and memorable part of the passage is the way Marx refers to women as “the fair sex” and distinguishes between the actually fair ones, and the not so much — “the ugly ones included.” This is not exactly the behaviour that one would expect from a feminist ally, and it is quite an insufficient excuse that it is in the context of private correspondence with a friend (much like Donald Trump’s scandal-inducing “locker-room talk” in the form of a stomach-turning brag about sexual harassment, also spoken in private). It is perfectly understandable that this part may cause outrage, despite the overall commonsensical nature of the quotation. The passage itself shatters the idealistic view of a uniquely enlightened philosopher and reminds the reader that Karl Marx was simply human — flaws and all. It proves the point that individuals are to an extent products of their own environment, time, and place — and 19th century Europe was not exactly known for its entrenched feminist norms.
A hundred and fifty years later, “the social position of the fair sex” is still cited as an indicator of “social progress.” Harjit Gill, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at ASEAN, stated that “The health of a mother and child is a more telling measure of a nation’s state than economic indicators.” The Chairman of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, Carlos Ghosn, has claimed that “Hiring and promoting talented women is the right thing to do for society — and it’s an economic imperative.” According to Nijdeka Harry, the President and CEP of Youth for Technology Foundation (YTF), “If Nigerian women had the same opportunities as men, they could drive GDP up by $13.9 billion.” Therefore, despite the one-and-a-half century difference, Marx’s indicator of “social progress” is still very much relevant, meaning that one can argue that it his ideology as a whole is still very much applicable to the 21st century, and that he may just have the answers that we are looking for.
Lise Vogel on Karl Marx
On the other hand, one cannot ignore the criticism that Communism and Socialism face from women themselves. In her 1983 book titled Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory, Lise Vogel argues that “past socialist movements, in spite of significant advances and contributions, did not fulfil the promise of a synthesis between feminism and Marxism, largely because of theoretical weaknesses and misunderstandings regarding the roots of women’s oppression, as well as a certain economistic framework.”
One should bear in mind that Lise Vogel is writing from the 1980s perspective, when the strong waves of the 60s and 70s feminism movement had already waned in the face of the Reagan administration (1981–9) and the overt conservatism. Nowadays, 30 years later, some parts of the Western democratic states have not really changed in regards to the right-wing political atmosphere. Nevertheless, this has only set ablaze the newly-found quest for women’s rights — not only by marches, public manifestations, but also by Facebook events, groups, Tweets and Instagram posts. One can regret that feminism has been reduced to a fashion statement that is currently en vogue (just like in the case of Dove’s campaigns, one can question the true intentions of major retailers who sell t-shirts with the embroidered word “feminist”). However, it has broadened the horizon of the personal understanding of what feminism is — for an individual and a society as whole. Moreover, social media itself has opened new channels of communication and ways of sharing one’s opinions with a broader audience, opening the door to discussion and enabling a more inclusive debate overall.
To be fair, Lise Vogel credits Marx and Engels for starting an important conversation for their times. She especially praises Marx, arguing that in order to fully comprehend the political economy of women’s oppression, one should focus on Capital more than Engels’ Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Lise Vogel seems to regret the fact that “unfortunately, the socialist movement that came after Marx, namely the Second International, tended to look more to Engels’s method than that of Marx.” Therefore, she is not criticising Karl Marx himself, but the movement of misinterpretation that followed.
To end this on a positive note, Lise Vogel makes an interesting point regarding the above-mentioned equality vs equity debate. According to her, “social equality for women will actually require unequal treatment at certain times: maternity-leaves, lighter work during later months of pregnancy, rest periods when necessary for menstruating women, and so on. In this way, the material conditions for women’s full participation in all areas of social life — production, politics, culture, personal relations, and so forth — can be developed.”
Conclusion
At one of the demonstrations against the abortion ban in April 2016, titled No For Torturing Women and organised by the aforementioned Razem party, the stage was dedicated to four women in different stages of their life. One of the speakers, a woman in her 60s, spoke about her youth during the Polish Communist era, outlining that despite the many, many downsides of life under the People’s Party, women had it better. According to her, they had full access to abortion, without much need for justification. Nowadays, the Polish state does not trust women half as much with the ability to make their own decisions — decisions which will impact her life most of all, not the politicians’ or the clergy’s. She told the crowd that during the PRL era, women were taught about their bodies thoroughly and comprehensibly, while in 2017, publicly-funded sexual education classes are being replaced by religious education classes (which are neither enough to combat teenage pregnancy issues, nor to teach girls and boys about consent).
In the face of the often repeated charge that “communism never works, no matter how many times you try,” it should be taken into consideration that basic principled intent and ideological capacity for certain ideas over others does matter: while capitalism has no inherent solutions for the emancipation of women, Marxist ideologies have embraced at least some notion of gender equity from the start. If feminist ideals, female emancipation, or women’s liberation in its simplest forms are indeed goals, pointing to past failed (and often intellectually dishonest) attempts at Marxist societies is insufficient. Communism in Marx’s original formulation was, indeed, a feminist social theory, and his writings, when divorced from their misinterpretations, remain a crucial guiding light to all who struggle for the equality of the sexes.
Bibliography
- Marx, Karl. Capital. Progress Publishers: Moscow, USSR. First published: in German in 1867, English edition first published in 1887.
- Marx, Karl. Marx and Engels Correspondence. Translated by Torr, Donna. London, December 12, 1868. International Publishers, 1968.
- Vogel, Lise. Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory. Pluto Press, 1983.
