[Part of Groundings in the Communist World Outlook. Click here for the table of contents.]

Introduction

• When communists talk about “the woman question,” we mean the position of women in society and the struggle to end the oppression of women.
• Early communal humanity lived without any oppressive gender divisions. This was because there was no property, no question of who would inherit property, and no production to speak of so no oppressive division of labor.
• The first division of labor was that between men and women for child breeding and raising. This division of labor eventually gave rise to patriarchy, to men over women, with women subjugated to men as wives and mothers in the family.
• That division of labor was bound up with the development of private property, of who owned what within the context of the family and household. Patriarchy resolved that question in favor of the father, and lineage was traced by the male line for purposes of property inheritance. That’s why the common tradition is for children to take their father’s last name.
• Patriarchy and the inheritance of property along the male line was the overthrow of mother right, of lineage traced according to mother. It led to the development of the monogamous family—in reality the insistence on monogamy for women so that the male line could be traced, while husbands could get away with breaking monogamy. The family became a property relationship, with the wife and children treated as the property of the husband/father, and a relation of production, with the wife/mother performing the tasks of raising children and taking care of the home.

The patriarchal family under capitalism

• Patriarchy and the family changed under capitalism. The oppression of women was not eliminated, but modified to conform to bourgeois property and capitalist relations of production.
• Marriage became a contract between an individual man and an individual woman ostensibly based on free choice and individual love, rather than an arrangement between two families. However, that contract was based on bourgeois property relations, not genuine equality between men and women.
• In those bourgeois property relations, the family became the unit of financial account, with the father/husband at its head. (Example: taxes are paid by family units.)
• Among the working classes, in the bourgeois family structure the father/husband’s official role was as a “breadwinner” engaged in production and paid a wage to do so, which made him in charge of finances. The wife/mother’s role, by contrast, was to take care of the tasks of reproduction within the household: rearing and raising children, cooking and cleaning, etc. The exploitation of women’s reproductive labor takes place in the private, family domain, presided over by the husband/father, which facilitates capital accumulation by supporting the husband/father’s role as a wage-worker in capitalist production.
• Within capitalist commodity relations, tasks of reproduction are considered unproductive labor because they do not directly produce surplus value. Where they are socially necessary, such as public education, the bourgeois state is responsible for paying for them. Where they are individually necessary, such as in the family, the wife/mother is not paid for their reproductive labor, and is dependent on the husband/father for money.
• The bourgeois family was the ideal molecular form for the social organization of capitalist society more generally, subjugating women and children to the authority of men. It was violently imposed on women, with prior social relations, including forms of social obligation and opportunities for more egalitarian social relations, stamped out. The witch hunts in Europe at the dawn of capitalism are an example of the violent imposition of the bourgeois family, with women who defied it deemed witches and burned at the stake.
• From the witch hunts down to today, violence against women, including sexual violence, serves the social purpose of subjugating women to patriarchy. Domestic abuse, sexual harassment, and rape might be carried out by individuals, and often within private settings such as the family, but are individual enactments of a social phenomenon—patriarchy.
• The bourgeois family relegated women to the private sphere (of the family), while men were engaged in the public sphere—for proletarian men, working in socialized production; for petty-bourgeois men, entrepreneurial or professional activity.
• Gender roles, family structures, and sexuality that conflict with the bourgeois family have been subjected to repression and violence because they threaten to destabilize the patriarchal authority of the bourgeois family so crucial to capitalist society. This explains why homosexuality and third genders were brutally repressed in capitalist society.

The anarchy of capitalist production and the commodification of social relations

• The bourgeois family was established as the ideal molecular form of social stability in capitalist society in part to contend with the destabilizing effects of the anarchy of capitalist production and the uprooting of the masses from their traditional ways of life.
• Capitalist relations of production kicked the peasantry off their lands and out of their livelihoods, depriving them of means of subsistence. Under capitalism, the masses have to work for wages to survive, to make money to buy their means of subsistence.
• For the masses of women, that meant two choices:
  • (1) Subordinate yourself to a husband and depend on them for means of subsistence.
  • (2) Sell your labor on the market—find wage-work.
• Wage-work for women was and is usually in the lowest-paid positions in the proletariat, such as in the garment industry, in the service industry, as home health aids, etc.
• The rise of capitalism also saw a dramatic rise in prostitution: the literal commodification and exploitation of women’s bodies. Capitalism commodified not just the production and exchange of things, but also social relations and culture. The result was the objectification and commodification of women’s bodies and sexualities.
• With the consolidation of capitalism as a mode of production in the nineteenth century, the options for the masses of women became patriarchal control in the bourgeois family or brutal exploitation in wage work, or of their bodies in prostitution. When male wages were too low to support a proletarian family, proletarian women have to enter wage-work and perform the tasks of reproduction in the family.
• Throwing masses of women into wage-work for survival and the commodification of social relations upended traditional forms of social organization. The bourgeois family became a counterweight to the resulting social instability, which is why the bourgeoisie has propped it up for over two centuries.

The spread of the bourgeois family, the proletarianization of women, and the commodification of women’s bodies under capitalism-imperialism

• Imperialism spread the bourgeois family as the basic form of capitalist property relations around the world. In many African cultures, for example, the patriarchal family was not the norm of social organization, and it was imposed on them by colonialism. In the Americas, European settlers established the bourgeois family as the dominant form of social organization at the base of society.
• Imperialism also spread the commodification of social relations and of women’s bodies. Around every US military base, prostitution arises. The global culture industry, which the US bourgeoisie dominates, has spread the objectification of women’s bodies and the commodification of sexuality.
• In more recent decades, with industrial production spread to the oppressed countries and traditional ways of life upended by the anarchy of capitalist production, growing numbers of women have been proletarianized. Many low-wage manufacturing jobs in the export processing zones in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are populated by women workers. Imperialism today proletarianizes large numbers of women.
• When imperialism uproots traditional ways of life and family structures, and undermines men’s ability to play the role of breadwinner within the patriarchal family due to unemployment and the ruin of the peasantry, the result is often a violent and/or fundamentalist backlash against women. Examples: the epidemic of femicide in Ciudad Juarez (an export processing zone in Mexico near the US border); the rise in religious fundamentalist movements.
• The changing position of women in society under capitalism-imperialism becomes a key site of struggle, giving rise to resistance by women against their exploitation and oppression, and to reactionary movements seeking to impose patriarchal authority over women.

Patriarchy in the US

• In the US, the position of women in society has seen considerable struggle and transformation over the last century. Often those struggles take the form of demands for full bourgeois-democratic rights for women, such as the struggle for women’s right to vote a century ago.
• In the post-WWII decades, with the spread of an imperialist way of life throughout society, women in the middle classes were subjugated as suburban housewives. The ideal of the bourgeois family could be realized to a greater extent in the 1950s US on the basis of imperialist plunder, paying men to be breadwinners and removing women from public life under a regime of suburban homes and consumer spending.
• However, the social stability of the bourgeois family was upended by the 1960s generation. Masses of women rebelled against the role of the suburban housewife, in a situation where more women were going to college than ever before, and with the rise of radical and revolutionary movements questioning and challenging bourgeois rule. Women played important roles in those movements, and a feminist movement emerged demanding greater bourgeois-democratic rights and real equality for women. It won real victories: the legal right to abortion, more professional positions for women, greater equality within the family, etc. These victories tended to benefit petty-bourgeois women the most, and never fully eliminated patriarchy and the oppression of women because bourgeois rule depends on it for social stability. For proletarian women, who were never in the position of suburban housewives, exploitation in wage-work and bearing the burden of the tasks of reproduction at home remained the norm.
• Victories in struggles for equality for women have undermined but not overthrown patriarchal authority. The bourgeoisie as a whole needs to maintain the bourgeois family and patriarchal authority for purposes of social stability, and some sections of the bourgeoisie perceive any challenge to the bourgeois family and patriarchal authority as an existential threat to their class rule. That explains why there have been ongoing attempts to roll back victories for women since the 1970s, such as the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade by the US Supreme Court, and why the position of women in society remains a site of struggle.

Contemporary reconfiguration of the oppression of women

• The bourgeois family remains the key molecular social organization of capitalist society. While some people find real love and social support within their families, too often the family in the contemporary US is a site of abuse and violence. As the Manifesto of the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries puts it, “The family remains an institution of patriarchy, from the daily oppression of women bearing the burdens of childcare and cleaning to the more dire threats of abuse, violence, and even murder of women by their husbands.”
• The bourgeois family has also broken down to a significant degree in the contemporary US, with many single-parent households, gay marriages (legal or social), and other family arrangements. But these exist within the context of patriarchy prevailing more generally in society. For example, single mothers have to struggle to support children, often juggling proletarian jobs and childcare responsibilities while receiving inadequate support from government and fathers.
• Fascistic sections of the bourgeoisie have reacted to the breakdown of the bourgeois family by supporting reactionary movements seeking to reassert patriarchal control over women. Those reactionary movements go the furthest in a more general trend in capitalist society of subjecting people who defy patriarchal gender norms and roles and sexuality to discrimination, repression, and violence. For example, transgender people are subjected to laws criminalizing them, scapegoating, and violent attacks.
• At the same time as the reassertion of traditional patriarchal authority, some sections of the bourgeoisie have responded to the changing position of women in society and the breakdown of the bourgeois family with new forms of oppression for women and the promotion of bourgeois ideals for independent women. On the former, there’s been a growth in self-commodification of women’s bodies and sexualities, with new technologies such as OnlyFans. On the latter, we have #girlboss feminism promoting bourgeois success for a handful of women willing to step over others and become exploiters in capitalist production relations. None of these options offer liberation and real equality for the masses of women.
• While women participate in public life to a greater degree than in the 1950s era of the suburban bourgeois family, they are still “treated as second-class citizens, paid less, worked more, and discriminated against even within the halls of power” (in the words of the Manifesto of the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries). And women in the US still face a widespread culture of rape, sexual assault, and harassment that makes clear that patriarchy is still in command under capitalism.

How socialism can move to end the oppression of women

• For communists, women’s liberation is an essential part of proletarian revolution and the socialist transition to communism. Upending centuries of patriarchy is a necessary part of abolishing all class divisions, the exploitative production relations on which those class divisions rest, and the oppressive social relations, ideas, and culture that go hand in hand with those production relations.
• Up until—and as part of building the subjective forces for—revolution, communists must join in struggles against patriarchy and the oppression of women in all its forms. We unite with demands and struggles for real equality and full bourgeois-democratic rights for women, while seeking to take those struggles in a revolutionary direction.
• Where communists differ from other political forces fighting for women’s liberation is in our recognition that patriarchy and the oppression of women are bound up with the foundations and functioning of capitalism-imperialism, and the bourgeoisie cannot last a day in power without it. Therefore, complete women’s liberation and equality cannot be achieved without the overthrow of bourgeois rule.
• The establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism can take many immediate measures towards women’s liberation. As the Manifesto of the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries describes, under socialism, “Women’s bodies will no longer be bought and sold as commodities in the sex industry or used in advertisements and mass media to sell products. Rape and other forms of violence against women will not be tolerated, nor will discrimination and violence that seeks to reinforce gender and sexual norms. Christian fundamentalism and patriarchal ideas will have no place in the education system. Women’s organizations will be established to struggle against and overcome the various forms of oppression women face in their communities, families, relationships, and other institutions. Reproductive health services and access to abortion will be provided to all.”
• On the basis of those immediate measures, a longer-term struggle will take place during the socialist transition to communism to uproot patriarchy and the oppression of women in all dimensions of society, from production relations and class divisions, to social relations, culture, and ideas. That longer-term struggle will be a crucial engine pushing the socialist transition further in the direction of communism. People will be transformed through that struggle, and all oppressive gender relations will be eliminated.
• We can only guess as to what gender, sexuality, and family structures will look like under communism, including whether there will be such a thing as gender and if there is, what it will mean. Generations that have grown up without patriarchy, without commodity relations, where people no longer sell their labor or their bodies or have to seek the financial support of husbands, but instead collectively live by the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs,” will decide how to relate to each other. And they’ll decide that free from the muck and mire, free from the exploitation and oppression, free from the fucked up ways of thinking and relating to each other that define capitalist society. And it’s for those generations, for that future, that we struggle and sacrifice today to overthrow bourgeois rule and begin the socialist transition to communism.
• To end with a classic slogan in the communist movement: Break the chains! Unleash the fury of women as a mighty force for revolution!

Discussion questions

Why was there no patriarchy or oppressive gender divisions among early communal humanity?

How is the rise of patriarchy tied to the rise of private property and exploitative production relations?

What is the bourgeois family? What is the role of men and what is the role of women within it?

What is reproductive labor? Why, under capitalism, does reproductive labor in the private sphere go unpaid?

What role did and does violence play in enforcing patriarchy, the oppression of women, and the bourgeois family?

How does the oppression and repression of gender identities, gender roles, and sexualities that do not fit into the bourgeois family relate to patriarchy and the oppression of women?

Why and how is the bourgeois family a counterweight to the social instability caused by the anarchy of capitalist production?

How and why are women proletarianized and drawn (or forced) into wage-work? What is their position within the working class?

How and why does capitalism commodify women’s bodies and sexuality?

How did imperialism spread the bourgeois family, the proletarianization of women, and the commodification of women around the world?

Why are violent, patriarchal backlashes against women and LGBT people so common under capitalism?

Why and how was the bourgeois family strengthened in the post-WWII US? Why and how did women rebel against it, especially in the 1960s?

What did the women’s liberation struggle and the feminist movement accomplish in the 1970s? What did they not accomplish?

How is communist ideology and politics different from feminist ideology and politics? How do they approach the struggle for women’s liberation differently?

How has politics in the US since the 1970s been defined by backlash against the victories of women’s struggles for equality?

How has the oppression of women been reconfigured in the twentieth century?

What is the position of women in society today?

How and why can proletarian revolution and the socialist transition to communism end the oppression of women?

A more trippy question: What will communism look like? How will people relate to each other in the communism of the future?

Key terms

division of labor, oppressive gender divisions

patriarchy

private property

property inheritance

mother right

the monogamous family

bourgeois property

the bourgeois family, marriage as contract

tasks of reproduction, reproductive labor, “unproductive labor,” surplus value production

witch hunts

private sphere, public sphere

gender roles

social stability, anarchy of capitalist production

means of subsistence, wages

commodification, prostitution

imperialism

social relations

proletarianization

femicide

religious fundamentalist movements

bourgeois-democratic rights

self-commodification