The Family Way (1979)

From the December 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The position of women in society is one of the most significant examples of social, political and economic subordination; various major social movements have arisen committed to changing this situation, ranging from the Liberal feminism of the Suffragettes to the biological determinism of one of the current supporters of “Women's Liberation”. Women as a group share a common oppression for three main reasons: firstly, as potential child-bearers they lack the power of completely determining when and in what circumstances they will bear children; secondly, right across the class structure women are found in subordinate positions in economic and political organisations; lastly, women are socialised and educated to take a domestic role and to be attractive to men rather than to be part of economic activity outside the family.

In all capitalist economies there is a difference in power, income, status and responsibility which operates against women and turns them into a disadvantaged group. (Women are obviously also disadvantaged in other forms of society too. but in this article attention is focussed on capitalism). It is to the property relations of capitalism that we must look in order to explain this all-pervasive inferiority of women. Women's condition is an historically changing aspect of the material situation — the division of labour has developed from division based on sex. natural predisposition, physical strength and so on to a formal institutional division firmly based on the ownership of property. The structure of the present-day family and the role women play within it and in society at large, have been determined by past developments in the organisation of production and will continue to change in response to future changes in capitalism until eventually they are transformed in socialist society.

The transition period from feudalism of capitalism was a crucial one in this long process of change — the lives of women were inevitably profoundly affected. Engels pointed out that the monogamous family had come into being as a result of economic development. In The Origin of the Family. Private Property and the State, he writes “Monogamy was the first form of the family not founded on natural but on economic conditions, viz: the victory of private property over primitive and natural collectivism”. He goes on to elaborate on the change for women that these larger changes involved:

“Supremacy of the man in the family and generations of children that could be his offspring alone and were destined to be the heirs of his wealth — these were openly avowed by the Greeks to be the sole object of monogamy . . . Monogamy then does by no means enter history as reconciliation of man and wife, and still less as the highest form of marriage. On the contrary, it enters as the subjugation of one sex by the other".

The transition in Britain, from feudalism to capitalism destroyed and undermined many relations in the old society, not least of which was the structure of the family. Out of the upheaval were to come the bourgeois proletarian family. Under feudalism, land had been the immediate source of life for rich and poor alike — men and women had lived in predominantly self-sufficient rural households. The feudal family was the unit of production and women played an important and acknowledged role in the survival of the household. However, by the 1640s there were an estimated half million workers who had been ‘freed from the soil’ and their lack of property became the basis for the accumulation of wealth by the growing capitalist class. In Manifesto of the Communist Party Marx and Engels wrote 

“The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his '‘natural superiors’ and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest. than callous ‘cash payment’ . . . (It) has torn away from the family its sentimental veil and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.” 

The landless poor, their ranks swollen by dispossessed and unemployed craftsmen and tradesmen, were forced to rely entirely on selling their labour power. As a result a new family structure came into being, and many women found their lives profoundly altered. They could no longer combine child-bearing and rearing with their work: without land they could not contribute in the same way to their families’ livelihood. The family, in fact, ceased to be the basic economic unit and wives became dependent to a far greater extent on their husbands. Many peasant women became financial liabilities to their menfolk and the family was undermined as an institution.

Just as the lives of the peasant women were changing as the proletarian family was forced into existence, so too the growing affluence of the bourgeoisie meant that they developed a lifestyle and a family structure appropriate to their new economic roles. As the division of labour became more complex and specialised, the successful craftsman or tradesman hired others to work for him: his wife tended to withdraw from her previous activities in the workshop and she became increasingly confined to the home. The roles of husband and wife became more specifically differentiated and the home ceased to be a productive part of the community. “The external world of work became the sphere of the man exclusively. The internal world of the family and the household was the proper business of the women . . . Not to work, for the women of the middling people became the mark of class superiority at the very moment when their men were establishing work as the criterion of dignity and worth” (Women, Resistance and Revolution, Sheila Rowbotham). The administration of the household lost its public character and women were excluded from participation in social production.

Thus, as feudalism gave way to capitalism women's lives changed radically and they found themselves increasingly at a disadvantage in the new organisation of industry. The process was a continuing one, affecting different groups of women in very different ways. For some the separation of the workplace from the home reduced their productivity and limited their role. For others, the introduction of a new machine excluded them from production, or alternatively their position in the guilds and crafts organisations was weakened sufficiently to drive them out, and trades which had been reserved for women were taken over by men. Yet other women moved out of the search for work outside the home altogether and into leisure and domestic isolation. “Modern industry in overturning the economical foundation on which was based the traditional family and the family labour corresponding to it. had also loosened all traditional family ties” (Marx. Capital. Vol.l)

Women’s position in society and their role within the family have changed greatly in the past 400 years, and they will continue to change as capitalism itself develops. However, so long as capitalism remains, the exploitation of women will also remain Not until we establish a system of society based upon common ownership and democratic control of the means of production will everyone — both women and men — be able to realise their full potential.

J.S.