The Tree and Its Fruits. (1910)

From the October 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

What the workers really need.

Perhaps one of the most frequent statements we who are out for the emancipation of our class are confronted with is, that as such-and-such a thing exists at present “it always will be the same,” In other words, as evils exist to-day under capitalism, they will also exist under Socialism.

Now if the base of a tree is rotten it stands to reason that the tree itself will not be very strong, and in some cases propping up will become necessary. But if the tree has a good foundation, one can expect it to be sound and healthy, and no propping up will be required. The same applies to society.

Even some non-Socialists admit that the present basis of society—the ownership of all the productive wealth by a few to the detriment of the many—is rotten, and that the basis of Socialism—common ownership of the productive wealth of society—is sound, and yet they immediately state that any new form of society will bear similar fruit, and what is required is reformation of the system. The base is to be left untouched, and therefore still rotten.

Others argue that “human nature” must alter for Socialism to be practicable, at the same time overlooking the fact that what they are pleased to term “human nature” is very amenable to the influence of environment, and that with the totally different conditions of life obtaining under Socialism, the same necessity for detrimentally struggling one against the other will have disappeared.

Some recognise that at present antagonism arises between owners and non-owners of the means of life, but fail to recognise that when these means are socially owned such antagonism will cease.

If only those who continually enquire of the Socialists “would there be so-and-so under Socialism ?” would always remember that the whole community would possess the instruments of wealth production, and the interest of each would be the interest of all, and then think for himself or herself whether “so-and-so” would be necessary or to the advantage either of the individual or the whole community, Socialists would be relieved of a certain amount of the work that falls upon them.

Perhaps it would not be out of place to instance a few of the things that would not exist under Socialism.

In the first place there would be no POOR, as all the means of wealth production would be jointly owned by the whole community, and as a consequence CAPITAL (wealth used to create profit) would not exist. Seeing that there would be no poor and needy, the necessity for CHARITY and PAWNSHOPS would be dispensed with. STARVATION would not be known, for to starve a person would mean that society would be deprived of that person’s assistance.

The so-called UNEMPLOYABLE that exist to-day are persons who, having been unable to find a purchaser of their labour-power, have gradually sunk lower and lower—for even their clothes do not last for ever. They would not exist as such under Socialism, but would have the opportunity of performing their share of the labour necessary for the maintenance of society, and have their needs satisfied from the common store they had helped to produce.

The “FALLEN WOMEN” (numbering 80,000 in London alone, according to the report of the London Lock Hospital and Rescue Home) are those who, being unable to sell their labour-power, are forced to sell their bodies in prostitution in order to live. The necessity for any woman to descend to this awful depth of degradation could not arise under Socialism, for every woman would have unrestricted entry to the field of useful social service, the reward for which would be full enjoyment of the material products of the social labour.

There would be no necessity for WAR, under Socialism, as interests being common, no clash of interests could give occasion for armed strife. And of course, with the abolition of war would go the need for ARMIES, NAVIES, BOY SCOUTS and so forth.

There would be no need for CORRUPT PRACTICES (which still flourish in spite of the Act) under Socialism. They are prevalent to-day because those who cannot succeed in the competitive struggle in a straight-forward way, naturally find themselves compelled to adopt any other means that may be within their reach to advance their interests, and adulteration, fraud, lying and trickery are the result. It is quite clear therefore that there is an incentive to deceive, cheat and defraud, and while such incentive exists all the teachings of Christianity and all laws and police and judges and jailors in Christendom will never succeed in preventing corrupt practices.

The IGNORANCE which exists to-day is caused by the fact that it is to the interest of the master class to keep their victims in darkness, and because excessive toil and lack of leisure allows no opportunity, and crushes all desire, for study. Under Socialism, the abolition of classes and the consequent unification of interests would make it to the interest of all that everyone should receive a thorough education, in order that they might develope and be of best possible service to society.

The state of affairs which allows an IDLE CLASS to exist, while another class work all hours imaginable, would not be possible under Socialism. This present idle class would have to do their fair share of the necessary work, without privilege of any sort, and so help to alleviate the task of the others.

These examples of evils that certainly would not exist under Socialism could be added to very largely, of course, but they must suffice.

The present system of society is like the rotten tree referred to, and the fruit it bears are the institutions that now exist.

What the workers want, therefore, is no more fighting for props (according to Lord Loreburn, the present Liberal Lord Chancellor, the workers find life more strenuous to-day than 50 years ago, in spite of reforms); no more vain striving after palliation in a system the very nature of which defies palliation, but a great and final endeavour for emancipation through a new social system on a sound basis. The institution of such a form of society is the object of the S.P.G.B.

R. A. M.

Letter: A new view of woman's place (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new view of woman's place

I would like to comment and enquire on the following factors and the SPGB’s attitude on them.

First, that women under capitalism are voluntarily ideal economic slaves, not by what they do but what they don't do. For example one never hears of women doing smash-and-grab raids and bank robberies under present conditions.

Second, at one time the SPGB made great emphasis on the economic threads of religious ideas. Religions are based upon conserving private property interests, that’s why we hear bible-bashers saying “Thou shalt not steal” — just what the capitalist class want — not to steal their property! But the recent Socialist Party presentation is that industrial and scientific developments alone have discarded religious hokum and a recent article in the Socialist Standard makes no reference to the economic and political significance of religion.

R. Phillips 

London W.9.

Reply:

Some hardened married cynics claim that bourgeois marriage is a smash-and-grab raid: smashes up your life and grabs your money.

If you have not heard of women bank-robbers you cannot have been paying attention. What about Patti Hearst? “Bonnie and Clyde?” The chief partner in the Bader-Meinhof terrorist gang is a girl.

There is no such thing as a voluntary slave. The reason why women have been enslaved throughout the ages is because private property (until recently) was almost entirely vested in rich men.

The Socialist Party has not altered its viewpoint regarding religion and its real (economic) explanation. You are quite right about “Thou shalt not steal”, “Work for the night is coming”, “Blessed are the meek”, etc. The situation is simply that we have not had an article on it for some time, and will endeavour to produce one before long.

APOLOGIES TO CORRESPONDENTS still waiting. We hope to reply to them in the next issue.

50 Years Ago: What should Women do to be Free? (1994)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

An organisation called “Women for Westminster” has recently been born. It has a self-explanatory name and object. What a waste of time and energy such an organisation causes, and what future disillusionment must there be among its adherents ! Supposing they were to have a measure of success according to their aims, and get a predominance of women in the House of Commons. They would find that women, merely as women, can run capitalism no better than can the Labour or Tory Parties.

The Suffragettes have been appalled by the lack of enthusiasm for the vote, following their desperate efforts to gain it. Their lack of knowledge of the make-up of society is the reason for their indignation. Despite the constant propaganda of the press, screen and radio, woman as well as man is sceptical, often unconsciously so, regarding electioneering programmes, which cater for all tastes. Speaking generally, members of the working class are apathetic and not politically conscious. Many, unfortunately, are led away by reform parties, by idolaters of Russia, or by mushroom growths such as Commonwealth. (. . . )

Whilst capitalism lasts, women will remain, like men, in a subject position, no matter how far progress is made towards equality with men. The interests of women are therefore identical with men in struggling for the overthrow of the present system, as it is only under Socialism that both will find real emancipation.

[From and article by W. P. in the Socialist Standard, November 1944]

Letter: Squaring the family circle (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Squaring the family circle

The article on “The Future of the Family” in the February Socialist Standard gave me food for thought, and I’d like to make some comments.

First, about social groupings in Socialism. P. Deutz says — “People . . . belonging to the community does not have to mean living cheek-by-jowl in an undifferentiated mass! Rather, a mixture of private and communal life in accordance with individual choice.” I think she carries over into the new society the distinction between “private” and “public” life which exists in capitalism.

“Private” life in the nuclear family is often restricting and isolating, but it does have some human qualities — continuity, personal relations etc. — which are lacking in the even more manipulated and alienating forms of “public” life, such as the mass political meeting. In both, workers are kept separated from one another and dominated. No doubt people in a Socialist society will want different degrees of privacy at different times, but there is no need to fear that either the more or the less communal parts of their lives will bear any resemblance to the present-day family or mass events. People will want to break down the huge factory and office work settings into smaller and more friendly workshop-type teams. Discussion and decision-making will most conveniently be done in quite small meetings, linked together by delegate congresses and telecommunications. This will be made possible by automation and computer technology. On the other hand, people will have gained the security, material and emotional, that may enable them to extend their intimate relationships at the same time as improving their responsibility to one another’s needs.

Just as people will want to combine the most satisfying aspects of urban and rural life, so they’ll want to combine the most satisfying aspects of “public” and “private” life. At any rate, I’d want to.

I’m glad that P. Deutz recognizes that men and women will both take a full part in childcare, and whatever housework cannot be eliminated, as well as in production and so on. Finally, don’t the family and lack of Socialist understanding have some connection with one another? (I mean the family as it exists now.) In terms of restricted horizons and concerns for both men and women, the illusions of sex rôles, and all those people in little boxes staring at the goggle-box? Don’t we have to start thinking about the effects that different social institutions have on consciousness, and what we can do about it?

Stephen Stefan

London N2.

Reply

The history of the family shows that its form has adapted to suit prevailing economic conditions and not the other way round. Modern families may be preoccupied with their own affairs but they do not exist in a vacuum. Or do you seriously suggest that people are impervious to any influence from outside their family circle? (Many parents might wish it were so). Even television, as well as puerile slop, beams into workers’ homes pictures of the latest technological success which contrast starkly with other scenes of human deprivation and misery.

The view on the blend of private and public life assumed that in a harmonious society human individuals will still have varying personalities and needs. However congenial the communal life we may still wish to relate to, and live with, others on a more individual basis.

We have always stated that under Socialism men and women will, in accordance with their ability, co-operate to perform the tasks necessary to that society. You have never read anything to the contrary in this journal!

Editors.

Pathfinders: Human factories (2026)

The Pathfinders Column from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

With cinema takings falling in recent years due to online streaming, Hollywood has resorted to transparent attempts to lure in the lucrative female demographic through ‘girl-boss’ films, which show women in history dramas wielding huge swords and beating up men twice their size, outshining, outsmarting and indeed humiliating them at every turn. This has been widely derided as ‘wokism’, but women are unlikely to be fooled by such patronising efforts to ’empower’ them for the sake of box-office revenue. Unlike media executives spinning fantasies, they know what reality looks like in capitalism, where the pay gap is as wide as ever and domestic violence against women is at epidemic levels.

Late last year a Cornell University study looked at why so few women were found in senior job roles, and suggested that women had two strategies or ‘pathways’, one that gave them status, and the other that gave them power. The study concluded that women achieved status but not power through ‘gender-congruent’ behaviour (ie, being ‘ladylike’ and nice to men), whereas ‘gender-incongruent’ behaviour (ie, being assertive like men, aka ‘pushy’), might achieve power but was less likely to succeed.

Small wonder, perhaps, that writers from Charlotte Perkins Gilman onward have speculated about past or future feminist utopias. Back in October science writer Laura Spinney authored a somewhat tongue-in-cheek Guardian piece entitled ‘Was prehistory a feminist paradise?‘ Predictable answer: no. She discusses the ‘Marxist idea’ that the roots of patriarchy lay in the agricultural revolution, without once mentioning the word ‘property’, and with a hand-wavy vagueness that suggests she’s never read Engels on The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, or possibly even heard of it. That might be why the book does not appear in her ‘Further reading’ section.

One book that does appear, however, is The Patriarchs, by Angela Saini (2023) reviewed last January. This author clearly has read Engels, though initially she seems oddly dismissive. Some property-based communities in India and China, she points out, are known up to comparatively modern times to have been matrilineal (inheritance via the female line) and matrilocal (brides staying at home, husbands relocating). In these communities, women knew each other whereas the men didn’t, giving women the greater collective influence, and girls tended to be taller than in patrilocal groups, suggesting they were better fed. Given these examples, Saini proposes that Engels overstated the crucial importance of the property mechanism in bringing about the ‘world historic defeat of the female sex’. Essentially, she says, it was never that fast or that simple.

It becomes clear, in the second half of the book, that far from dismissing Engels, she is seeking to further develop the implicit consequences of his argument. Property may have provided the mechanism for this historic defeat, she says, but it wasn’t initially decisive. What was decisive was the growth of the ‘state machine’. Power, she argues, relies on a big army, and this in turn depends on population size. To increase the one, you need to increase the other. How to achieve this? Ruthlessly enforce strict gender roles, as either soldier or mother. Use disposable males for farm labour and the military, and turn women into baby factories and stay-at-home textile workers. Ancient wars, Saini says, were as much about grabbing extra women as extra land. Women were the first known slaves in Mesopotamia, and obedience to men was baked into ancient cultures and religious texts, including the Bible and Koran.

There is a contemporary resonance. Population size today may not equate to military might as it once did, but it’s still important to capitalist states. More workers, potentially, equal more productivity and more profits, properly staffed infrastructures, healthy tax-funded governments, thriving towns and small businesses, high house prices and high demand for construction, transport systems, energy use, and so on.

Globally, the opposite is happening. Almost everywhere outside sub-Saharan Africa, birth rates are well below replacement levels and falling. While voters in many countries are hypnotised by the populist fever-dream of the ‘immigration problem’, the better-informed know the truth. Capitalism is facing a demographic crisis. When population falls below a certain critical mass, things start to fall apart. Profits shrink, offices are deserted, whole towns are abandoned. Pension and health costs rise inexorably with the median age, paid from a shrinking tax fund and understaffed via a shrinking workforce. The European Commission predicts that by 2070 there will be barely two working-age people for every one person over 65 (Economist). China is thought to be massaging its official figures to disguise a catastrophic population decline. The reasons for all this are well known, to do with better education and access to contraception, and the rising costs of living, housing and parenthood. And states have begun to fight back.

The USSR in 1920 was the first country in the world to legalise abortion, but Stalin reversed the ruling just sixteen years later, when birth rates started falling. Now pressure is being applied to women in many countries to have more children. The right wing is morphing in sinister and cult-like pro-natalist and Christian trad-wife directions. In 2022 the US Supreme Court reversed the Roe vs Wade ruling, effectively banning abortion in many states. In 2024, US republicans voted against contraception as a federal right. China’s president Xi Jinping ‘told a meeting of the All-China Women’s Federation in 2023 that women should “actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and child-bearing”’.

If Saini’s historical analysis is right, the global outlook for women is not encouraging. Capitalist states need more babies, and never mind what women want. And never mind what men want either. The market system makes everyone suffer. For socialists, there’s really only one way to permanently destroy the forces that make us all into human factories, of one kind or another, for the benefit of the rich. And that’s by joining forces to bring down, not just glass ceilings, but ruling class power.

Paddy Shannon

Blogger's Note:

Laura Spinney replied to this article on the SPGB website.

Knock-out drops (1988)

From the October 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nearly two million people in Britain are addicted to drugs prescribed for them by their doctors. But. unlike the 80,000 heroin addicts who are mostly young and male, most tranquilliser addicts are women and predominantly elderly. Pain, misery, addiction or even death have frequently been associated with legitimately prescribed drugs. In the United States 130,000 deaths occur each year from drugs prescribed by medical practitioners; in Britain nearly one in thirty hospital admissions are due to prescribed drugs and about 2,500 people each year approach the charity Action for Victims of Medical Accidents for help.

With hindsight, some of the mistakes with addictive drugs seem incredible; when heroine was extracted from morphine in 1874 it was hailed as the new "miracle drug" for the safe treatment of morphine and opium addiction because it was considered safe and non-addictive. And it was to take over fifty years before the Rolleston Report identified heroin addiction in 1926. More recently, methadone was used extensively between 1971-1978 to treat morphine addiction and as an analgaesic substitute for morphine but, being itself highly addictive, led to a further spread of addiction.

Psychotropic drugs, prescribed for anxiety and depression, alter the patient's moods or mental processes. These drugs are much more likely to be prescribed for women; and extensive study in Oxfordshire found that psychotropic drugs accounted for one-fifth of all prescriptions and that women received more than twice as many tranquillisers and anti-depressant drugs as men. (Skegg et al British Medical Journal, 1977). The frequency of tranquilliser prescriptions increases with age; women over 75 years of age receive more of these than any other group.

In part, the larger quantities of mood altering drugs prescribed for elderly women can be attributed to the higher incidence of dementia in old age and the fact that most of the more common causes of dementia affect women more than men. But the excessive numbers of prescriptions for tranquillisers are not entirely justified on medical grounds alone. In recent years the closure of substantial numbers of hospital beds has led to increasing numbers of mentally and physically infirm elderly people being "cared for" in the community.

Providing safe care for mentally infirm old people in their own homes causes considerable problems for relatives. All too often tranquillisers have to be used to control the old person's behaviour and. even if the drugs are not addictive, the quality of life for the person is impaired. Caring for a demented person in a family home can prove to be a nightmare. Family life disintegrates due to disturbed nights, incontinence, noisy, aggressive behaviour and the need for somebody to be in attendance at all times. For such families there is no respite: holidays and nights out cannot be taken together and friends are deterred from visiting.

For middle aged women, in particular, caring for an elderly mother causes considerable anxiety because the traditional caring role is reversed and the awareness of the possibility of helplessness and insecurity for themselves in the future becomes all to evident. In such situations the temptation to resort to the use (and often the abuse) of tranquillisers is difficult to resist. Indeed, members of the family providing care may take tranquillisers themselves to cope with the difficult social circumstances forced on them by the lack of provision for care of the elderly. But for both the dependent elderly and their, mainly, female carers, tranquillisers are used as substitutes for social remedies which are not forthcoming under capitalism because workers are viewed as economic units.

The Royal Commission on Population put into perspective the disadvantageous position of the elderly under capitalism:

The burden of maintaining the old does not consist in the money paid out as Old Age Pensions. It consists in the excess of the consumption by the old over their production. It is the fact that (with some exceptions) the old consume without producing which differentiates them from the active population which makes them a factor reducing the average standard of living in the community, (pi 13)

This view of the elderly as redundant economic units has led to inferior standards of accommodation in the majority of hospitals for the long-stay elderly and the mentally ill.

The difficulty of attracting staff-in adequate numbers to work in poor conditions and inadequate facilities can lead to over-reliance on tranquillisers to control the patients as too few staff try to cope with relentlessly increasing numbers of admissions in the drive to make hospitals more "efficient" regardless of the social costs. And in private hospitals and nursing homes there is a greater temptation to resort to the use of tranquillisers to control disturbed elderly residents as trained nursing staff are reduced to a minimum in the drive to make profits.

Capitalist governments operate double standards when confronted with problems of drug abuse. In the past dangerous, addictive drugs have been sold abroad: human misery being an acceptable price to pay as long as profits are made. Drugs of doubtful therapeutic value but which have undesirable or even serious side-effects are produced and, where legislation prevents their use in this country, sold in countries which permit their use. Thus the addiction to tranquillisers and the misery that they cause, like addiction to tobacco and alcohol, only become the concern of the state when the efficiency of the workforce, and consequently profits, is threatened.

In 1987 only £500.000 was allocated to help tranquilliser addicts compared with £24.5 million for the much smaller group of heroin addicts. But. unlike heroin addiction, the use of tranquillisers is legitimate, respectable and widespread, with 14 million prescriptions being dispensed in Britain last year. The enormous profits which the drug industry makes has led to general practitioners being the targets of aggressive advertising campaigns to promote tranquillisers as a panacea for their patients' problems. But for patients who are prescribed benzodiazepine tranquillisers (Lorazepam; Oxazepam; Diazepam. Chlordiazepoxide) for periods of longer than four months physical dependency occurs even at therapeutic dose levels.

Withdrawal symptoms include anxiety, apprehension, tremor, insomnia, nausea and vomiting; in fact, many of the problems for which these drugs were prescribed in the first place.

Sexual dysfunction may be caused by both the phenothiazine group of drugs and the benzodiazepines. The phenothiazines, especially Phenergan, have been associated with cot deaths in infancy. The problems of toxicity and unpleasant side-effects of drugs arise because of the hasty and incomplete research carried out by pharmaceutical companies in their attempts to market their products ahead of their rivals. The continued demand for drugs to relieve anxiety is assured because competitiveness causes fear and insecurity. Capitalism's booms and slumps, wars, alienation at work and impoverishment in old age all generate anxiety for workers. And for women, the problems of isolation within the home for housewives or the stress of the "double shift" for working mothers leads to them consulting their doctors for the relief of tension more often than men.

Women's economic dependence on men (who themselves are economically insecure) has served capitalism's interests by providing future generations of workers within the conventional framework of the family.

Patrick Jenkin when he was Secretary of State for Social Services, stated.

I don't think that mothers have the same right to work as fathers. If the good Lord had intended us to have equal rights to go out to work, he wouldn't have created men and women. (Man Alive, October 1979)

The barriers placed in the way of working mothers by such attitudes; relegation to mostly part-time, unskilled, alienating work; low pay — women earned less than three-quarters of the average wages paid to men in 1982 — have all combined to place a greater emotional strain on women. The operation of factories around the clock to maximise profits leads to shift workers being forced to adopt unnatural life-styles. Insomnia causes some workers to resort to taking sleeping tablets to cope with this. Doctors are helpless to remedy the political causes of all these problems and offer tranquillisers to help patients cope with intolerable social circumstances.

Further abuses of tranquillisers occur in prisons where drugs are used to control prisoners who fail to "adjust" to their environment.

Undeniably, tranquillisers can be of value. Used carefully they can help to relieve distress. But it is the application of drugs under capitalism, which fails to heed the lessons of the past while the present is profitable, which is at fault. Medical advances, in common with all forms of technological advances, will be abused until the workers decide to place human needs before profits.

Carl Pinel

Letter: "Mother-right" (1980)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Mother-right"

Dear Editors,

The article “Battered Wives” in the July Socialist Standard follows Engels’ view in “The Origins of the Family” that mother-right was the general position before male-dominated, property, class institutions became established. Agreed: the position of women relative to men drastically deteriorated with the advent of private property, but it is open to question whether primitive societies were essentially matrilinear. Some were, others were definitely not. Why? is the subject of much controversy in anthropology. While the 19th century founding fathers of anthropology had precise, straightforward answers on how primitive humanity’s life was structured and functioned, present day anthropologists seem less certain of the meaning of the mass of data that has accumulated. I will quote just one of them—Leslie A. White a cultural evolutionist in the grand, system-building tradition of L. H. Morgan. His is by no means the last word, but at least he puts order into the question, and writes clearly.

As a general proposition we may say that prominence or predominance of men in the mode of life of the (primitive) society will tend to produce patrilinear lineages; prominence or predominance of women will tend to form matrilinear lineages. Thus a culture in which warfare, hunting or herding is an activity of paramount importance will tend toward patrilineal lineages because these occupations tend to be masculine pursuits. In systems where woman’s role in subsistence, house building and ownership, or in some handicraft, puts her in a position of considerable importance as compared with men in the mode of life, there will be a tendency toward matrilineal lineages. (The Evolution of Culture)

White adds that although this statement is sound enough, it could easily mislead because of the complexity of numerous, diverse factors at work in specific situations making for small to great variations.

S Lion

London, SE24

Faith, poverty and lies (1993)

From the October 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Religion has an irrational,
 non-materialist ideology 
which can result in
unrestrained barbarism. In 
the battle over birth
 control women workers are
in the front line and are 
suffering appallingly

During a recent visit to the United States, the Pope encountered considerable criticism of his views on "natural methods of birth control" and the rights of women to termination of pregnancy. Gallup polls conducted before his arrival such as in USA Today/RCC concluded that 75 percent would sooner follow their own consciences than accept papal doctrines. Another poll indicated that 83 percent of Catholics aged 18-25 years "believe they can disagree with Church teaching yet remain good Catholics". ("Catholics for Free Choice/KRC Research and Consulting", Lancet, 21 August). Other views expressed have been more critical. Frances Kissling, president of a movement called Catholics for Free Choice concludes that Pope John Paul is "lost in the pelvic zone as he increasingly insists on fidelity to his restrictive views on sex and reproduction".

The Catholic Church seeks to maintain and recruit followers based on strongly-held precepts or dogma. The purpose of the Pope's travels abroad is to reinforce these, including the Church’s views on contraception and termination of pregnancy.

Far from taking account of the views expressed in opinion polls by his adherents he is at present working on an encyclical entitled "Veritatis Splendor" which is said to be more extensive than the "Humanae vitae" put out 25 years ago. Leaked versions of the forthcoming encyclical do not indicate any compromise by the Pope on these issues. He is also working on yet another encyclical concerned about "questions of life" which will be concerned with questions of sexual morality.

Encyclicals are meant to be binding and obeyed. This may have been the ease in mediaeval times when the Catholic Church had total control of all information and ideas and their availability to the subject population but it is certainly not the case today.

The harsh reality of the world's problems and the futility of applying these outmoded concepts is brought home forcibly by A.A.Verkuyl, a gynaecologist working in Zimbabwe:

"In large areas of the world, health care is provided by the RCC and the Church’s powerful position prevents effective access to reliable contraception. In Rwanda one-third of the health facilities are administered by the RCC. The bishops refuse to discuss the possibility of promoting condoms for contraception or even for Aids prevention purposes while 40 percent of the under-five population are malnourished, the population doubles every I9years, and HIV prevalence in urban areas is more than 20 percent.As in sub Saharan Africa, so in tat in America and the Philippines " (Lancet, 21 August).

The author describes instances of what the Church's attitude results in:

"Take Maria. She is a girl of 17 living in abject poverty in one of the enormous third world cities. No running water or sanitation. Maria looks after her siblings while her mother can just scavenge enough to prevent starvation. Her only chance of escape is to marry someone with a good job. If she finds a candidate, he will most likely blackmail her into having sex before marriage. She assents out of fear of losing him. There are dozens of other girls who see him as an escape vehicle from terminal poverty, and thus he acts as a transport medium for gonorrhoea, syphilis, and HIV between them. The end result is that his girl friends experience infertility, ectopic pregnancies, backstreet abortions, and Aids. If they ever give birth, the baby may die of Aids or congenital syphilis, or become an orphan. Maria refuses to have an abortion. To provide for her child and herself she has to give sexual favours to a dozen men. Five years later she dies of Aids without dignity. Her son is a street urchin."

Another case deals with a recently-qualified nurse:

"she is happy to get a job in a remote RCC hospital even though her husband is obliged to stay in town and look for work. At Christmas her husband visits her . . . there are no condoms in the hospital. At the end of her 6 months’ probation the nuns in charge of the hospital will make here have a pregnancy test. If it is positive she will not get the job. Six weeks before the urine test she misses her period. A traditional doctor in a nearby village tries to help. She dies of a perforated uterus."

The Muslims are no less reactionary than the RCC in these matters. They consider a child to be a gift from Allah. Verkuyl quotes the case of a 12-year-old girl:

"Her father is a staunch Muslim, thinks that education is not important for girls. She had had her menarche so a marriage is arranged. She never had sex education and has no idea about antenatal care and what is supposed to happen during delivery. Her mother cannot tell her; she died during her eleventh pregnancy. After three days' labour at home she is encouraged with hot irons on her hack to push harder. In the end a dead baby is born. Three months later she is able to walk more or less normally and is rejected by her husband because the huge hole in her bladder causes her to smell and leak. Her family do not want her back. So much for 'natural methods ’."

The lifetime risk of death from pregnancy is greater than one in twenty-five in Zaire and in Muslim northern Nigeria whilst the risk in western Europe is one in 25,000 Both religions are united in their outmoded view that women should not have a say in deciding how many children they have.

Commenting on the argument that family planning is unnatural the author writes that:

"These arguments would not be used by somebody who flies in an aeroplane all over the globe and has a natural tumour removed by unnatural surgery under unnatural general anaesthesia."

On a recent visit to Brazil the Pope pursued the same authoritarian line that he has elsewhere. The murder of the street urchins in Rio recently emphasizes the consequences of these policies in Latin America."Almost two million Brazilian girls aged between 9 and 17 are prostitutes, an inquiry has been told in Brasilia" (Daily Telegraph, 24 August).

The Roman Catholic Church and the Islamic leaders have millions of followers. But how obedient are they to the outmoded view's of these religions that deny any fundamental right to women and take no account of the economic problems facing ordinary workers or agrarian workers anywhere? The vast majority of Catholics do not practice natural methods as defined by the Church. J. Poole writing in the Lancet in 1992, in an article entitled "Time for the Vatican to Bend" commented:

"It is hard to see how Western European and American Catholics, 80 percent of whom have themselves rejected the teaching of Humanae vitae, can vote to deny effective family-planning to the women of the poor nations of the world." In other words the Pope and the Muslim leaders are out of touch with the views of their own followers and fail to realize that they cannot turn the clock back as far as the development of human ideas are involved, which finally are shaped by the everyday material problems people have to face world-wide.

So what is the significance of the Pope’s visits abroad and the above comments from people grappling with the everyday problems of living and in many eases literally barely surviving? It is clearly incontrovertible evidence that chinks are appearing between these leaders and their followers as the views fail to have any application to the consequences of modern capitalism.

To the Socialist, religion or any concept based on the supernatural is a means of keeping the masses subservient to a given class-divided society. It is a barrier to social progress and can only exist where there is a minority owning the means of production and the bulk of the wealth produced. People who believe in a life hereafter are more likely to tolerate adverse conditions here on this planet.

Marx had no doubts about this. He wrote:

"It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion, as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions." (Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1843).

When the resources of the world are owned and shared by those that produce them, then the palliative needs satisfied in some cases by religion will disappear.

Terry Lawlor

New pamphlet: Women and Socialism (1986)

Party News from the September 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Available from Literature Dept, SPGB, 52 Clapham High Street, SW4 7UN. Price (inc. postage) 55p.

Blogger's Note:

The text of this pamphlet is available at the following link.

Suffragette Humbug. (1908)

From the June 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not long ago the hoardings of London startled the man in the street with ugly black and white posters asserting that women were poor, that women were sweated, that women walked the streets, and that misery and vice stalked in our midst, all because women had not the vote. Those statements, issued by the Suffragettes, were and are unblushing falsehoods, unsustained and unsustainable by any shred of evidence.

The Socialist is in no quandary as to why the many are poor. It is not because propertied women have not the vote, nor even because women in general are not electors—it is because the many are robbed. And the stopping of this robbery depends not upon a mere all round increase in the number of votes, but upon the intelligence of the workers and the correct use of the vote in their hands.

Democracy is not an end in itself, but a means to an end; and for us that end is Socialism. And were the workers to understand rightly their position and their policy, the political freedom they now possess would enable them to achieve their emancipation irrespective of sex. 

It is, moreover, not a sex war that  exists in Society but a class war, but the Suffragettes endeavour to blur this class issue by screeching qualifications.

What are the facts regarding the Suffragettes? Under the pretence of sex equality they are buttressing class privilege. Under the guise of democracy they are endeavouring to strengthen the political power of property. They plausibly propose that women be admitted to the franchise on the same terms as men, and since all Socialists want sex equality this looks attractive. But wait. What does it really mean? Men vote at present under the £10 franchise. The suffrage is thus upon a property basis with plural voting for the wealthy. Therefore, according to the proposals of the women Suffragists, only those women having the necessary property qualifications are to be allowed to vote. This excludes not only all those single working women unable to qualify because of their poverty, but it also bars practically the whole of the married women of the working class who have no property qualifications apart from their husbands’. Further, it increases enormously the voting power of the well-to-do, since the head of the wealthy household can always impart the necessary qualifications to all the women of his house, while the working-man, through his poverty, is entirely unable to do so.

The limited suffrage movement is consequently only a means of providing votes for the propertied women of the middle class, and faggot votes for the wealthy; possibly tipping the balance of votes against the workers—men and women. Yet the Suffragettes pretend that this is a movement for the benefit of working women! The huge sums spent in this agitation prove that it is not a workers’ movement. It is a movement by women of the wealthy and middle class to open up for themselves more fully careers of exploitation, and to share in the flesh-pots of political office, to get sinecures, position and emoluments among the governing caste.

In their cry for “equality” do not their methods betray them? Every move on their part is an appeal not to sex equality but to sex fetishism. Their tactics rely upon and appeal to the worship of sex. They know that their sex gives them privileges before the magistrate and protects them from the usual police brutality, and that any strong measures against them would immediately raise a storm in their favour amongst the sex worshippers. Hence their peculiar tactics, which have no other explanation. Let anyone compare mentally the treatment that would be meted out to working men did they pursue a similar policy to these Suffragettes. Let them compare the way the suffragist invasions of Downing Street or the House of Commons were dealt with, with that which would follow persistent forcible entries of the Commons by bands of unemployed. Broken heads, bullets, and long terms of imprisonment—and not in the second division—would be their lot, and instead of hysteric sympathy being created for the ill-treated unemployed, horror at their audacity and a determination to repress them brutally would take its place. And the middle class examples of sex arrogance rely upon this very woman worship and sex inequality to further their demands.

The Suffragette movement is upon all counts but a bulwark of capitalism. It is directly opposed to the interests of the working class—women as well as men, and the Independent Labour Party shows its capitalistic nature when it supports that movement in strengthening the political power of the propertied against the propertyless.

Both sexes of the workers are exploited and suffer. Both are  victims of those who live by the ownership of the means of life. Therefore the salvation of working class women lies in the emancipation of their class from this wage-slavery. Their interests are identical with those of working men, and the women of the middle class do but attempt to lure them with false phrases to desert their fellows and to aid the propertied enemies of their class.

The duty of working women is to refuse to allow themselves to be used as catspaws of the wealthy, and to join with their fellows in The Socialist Party, the organisation of their class; thus working for the emancipation of the toilers as a whole, irrespective of sex. Sex-equality cannot be the fruit of the Suffragette humbug, it can only come through economic equality—and economic equality is impossible except through Socialism.

F. C. Watts

Feminist theory — a socialist critique (1986)

From the Summer 1986 issue of the World Socialist

To attempt to write a socialist critique of feminist theory is difficult. This is not the result of any ambiguity in the attitude of socialists towards the role of women workers in capitalism, but because of the difficulty in finding a single body of theory that can be identified as feminist. While most feminists would agree that women are frequently discriminated against in such areas as employment, education and pay, and by the laws relating to taxation and social security, and would also argue that women feel oppressed in other ways too (for example by their frequent depiction in the media as either sex-objects or housewives), their analyses of the causes of such inequality vary considerably as do the strategies they adopt for overcoming it. Broadly speaking though, feminists can be categorised into three groups: liberal feminists, radical feminists and socialist feminists.

Liberal Feminism: Equal opportunity to be exploited

Liberal feminists tend to regard women's inequality as an unfortunate relic of former, less civilised times at a point in history when such attitudes are no longer appropriate. Their remedy for this situation is large doses of "justice" and "equal opportunities" for women backed up by the appropriate legislation. Such equal opportunities legislation as already exists on the statute books in most developed countries is indicative of this approach and, indeed, shows its inherent limitations. Equal opportunities and pay can be, and have been, granted and then withdrawn in accordance with what employees think they can afford and what they think they can get away with. Since the Equal Pay Act was passed in Britain in 1975 the gap between male and female earnings has actually widened. Liberal feminists seek equality between the sexes but within the context of the existing capitalist economic system. So the division of society into the capitalist class (the minority who own and control the wealth and the means of producing and distributing it) and the working class (the majority of us who produce the wealth through our labour but do not benefit from it) would still remain, together with all the suffering and injustice that that system entails.

It is true that equality of opportunity might result in more women as company directors, judges, politicians, financiers and other capitalist parasites, but this is irrelevant to women in the working class. Most working class women already work, selling their labour power in factories, offices, schools and hospitals. For them it is not equal opportunities legislation which has given them a new "right to work" but economic need which has forced them to do so. While their lives might be made a little easier if they received equal pay for their work and if there were better child care facilities, it should be remembered that their pay and conditions of work could only ever be equal to male members of the working class — they would never be equal to those of their employers, male or female. Similarly the oppressive necessity that forced them into the labour market in the first place would remain. Equal opportunity within capitalism amounts only to the equal opportunity to be exploited.

Radical Feminism: Sex against sex

Radical feminists claim (with little evidence to back up their claim) that there is a fundamental and deep-seated conflict of interests between men and women and that this is the main division of society cutting across divisions of class, race or religion. They maintain that all women are exploited by all men; that men, whatever their status or class, are always in the role of the oppressor and women always in the role of the oppressed; that it is in the interests of men to maintain this system of patriarchy and that they will endeavour to do so at all costs using violence or the threat of violence to defend their privileged position if necessary. Radical feminists have revitalised traditional stereotypes of men and women, suggesting that men are naturally aggressive, competitive and hierarchical while women are pacific and co-operative. As a result they claim that most social ills such as war, violent crime and racism arise out of patriarchy and so the overthrow of male domination would cure not only sexual inequality but also just about every social problem.

The focus of radical feminists has been the sexual abuse of women by men, the use of violence and the threat of violence. Their solution, apart from short-term attempts to draw attention to their cause by means of attacks on sex-shops (seen as symbols of aggressive male sexuality) and the picketing of cinemas showing films deemed to be offensive to, or exploitative of, women, is rarely made explicit in practical terms. Most do not actively seek to bring about the feminist revolution that they advocate in theory, but instead often choose to live within the existing system in separatist, all-women enclaves. This reflects their mistaken analysis of the problem — that is that men are necessarily the enemy. Most women know from their own experience that this is not the case. To suggest that all men are in more powerful positions than all women is clearly ridiculous. Is Margaret Thatcher to be considered to be in a less powerful position than a male factory worker just because she is a women? Is Ronald Reagan powerful because he is a man rather than because he is president of the United States? Are factory bosses more powerful because they are male or because they own wealth and are therefore in a position to exploit the work force? And what of women bosses? Do they have no power over their male employees?

Radical feminists constitute a tiny minority of women; the society they want to bring into being has little appeal for the majority of the population, male or female — not only does it seek to separate the sexes but also to regulate in a totalitarian manner their sexual relations, literature, films and theatre; their analysis of the causes of sexual inequality is crucially flawed with their own "revolutionary programme" such as it is, does not specify what it is to be its motive force.

"Socialist" Feminism: Confusing the issue

"Socialist-feminists" have attempted to reconcile socialism with feminism. On the one hand, most of them would accept the fact that capitalist society is necessarily a class-divided society from which the working class can never benefit. But, on the other hand, they want to incorporate the notion that society is also divided by gender. For this reason they reject the kind of Marxist analysis that the World Socialist movement has found useful in trying to understand the nature of capitalist society on the grounds that it fails to take account of what they see as the specific nature of women's oppression, or their particular position within capitalism. Women workers, they argue, because of their roles as unpaid mothers and domestic workers, do not have as strong links with their class as they do with their sex, and socialism, with its emphasis on class, cannot be the means of achieving their liberation.

This strand of feminism grew from three roots. Firstly, many "socialist-feminists" received their early political education in the left wing political movements and parties of the late sixties and early seventies. Within these organisations women often found themselves subjected to the same kind of abuse and belittling of their abilities that they had come to expect from those on the right of the political spectrum. They felt that their concerns were being dismissed as "women's issues" and therefore as trivial and unimportant. They correctly recognised that such organisations which spoke of freedom and equality but which failed to show respect towards their own women supporters, had little to offer. However, such women unfortunately drew the further conclusion that this was a fundamental shortcoming of socialism rather than of the particular organisations which had mis-appropriated that name to describe a politics which had very little to do with socialism as we understand it in the World Socialist movement: that is, a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interests of the whole community.

Secondly, many women had seen how, despite some early improvements in their position, women in the Russian empire were no better off under "communism" than they had been before 1917 and in many ways they were even worse off. Again it was wrongly believed that this meant that socialism had nothing to offer women since its apparent application in other parts of the world had so singularly failed to bring about women's liberation: women were still work-horses on the one hand and breeders of the next generation on the other. What they failed to see however was that Russian-style "communism" had not brought about the liberation of the male workers either. This was hardly surprising since the essential elements of the capitalist system remained intact — production for profit and the wages system.

Feminists also looked at the writings of socialist theorists like Karl Marx and criticised them for seeming not to take into account of what they regarded as the different circumstances which affect women as workers, most notably the fact that most women are, at least for part of their lives, not directly engaged in "productive" work outside the home because they are bringing up children and doing the multiplicity of chores that are entailed by "housework". It was felt that this difference between men and women was sufficiently wide to render women's links with the working class at best tenuous.

This is a mistaken view and one which plays into the hands of the capitalist class by causing divisions amongst workers. What was Marx's view of women workers? While it is true that he did not address himself to the question of women's oppression as women, he did consider the role of women in so far as they are a part of the working class, and, where they are exploited in some way differently from men by virtue of their gender, then he also deals specifically with women. Further, Marx thought that women's entry into the production process was necessary, and ultimately progressive, development within capitalism. It was a necessary development in that capitalists constantly strive to reduce their production costs in order to maximise their profits and since women's (and children's) labour could be bought more cheaply than that of men's it was inevitable that they would be recruited as wage-labourers as soon as the level of sophistication of machinery in factories was such that physical strength need no longer be considered. (Indeed, when labour was in short supply, women and children have been, and in some places still are, employed regardless of their physical fitness to do the job and the damage to their health that results.) So far then, it does not seem that women's role in capitalism is very different to that of men's: they are hired and fired, and exploited in accordance with the dictates of capital.

Domestic labour and productive work

Although many women spend a considerable part of their lives engaged full or part-time in domestic labour and child care, this does not make them any less members of the working class. Part of the problem is caused by the fact that housework is under-valued and is frequently regarded as not really work at all. This in turn is partly due to the ignorance of many men as to what is entailed in housework and child care. (It happens in other cases too, that someone else's job seems less arduous than our own because we don't fully appreciate what it involves.) A further cause of confusion is the idea of "productive work". Marx writes:

The only worker who is productive is one who produces surplus-value for the capitalist, or in other words contributes to the self-valorisation of capital (K. Marx, Capital, Vol.1, Chapter 16, Penguin Books, 1976, p.644).

But to say that a person is "productive" in this sense is to say nothing about that person's class position — a person may be productive or unproductive on this view and yet still be a member of the working class if they do not own or control the means to produce or distribute wealth and are forced to sell their labour power for a wage or salary or to draw state benefit if capital no longer needs their labour, or if they must depend for their livelihood on the wages or salary of someone else. Also the first part of Marx's statement quoted above is modified by the second part so that it includes those who contribute to the production of surplus value. Marx saw that as capitalism develops, the production process becomes more co-operative in nature as labour becomes more specialised and the division of labour more highly developed:

In order to work productively, it is no longer necessary for the individual himself to put his hand to the object; it is sufficient for him to be an organ of the collective labourer, and to perform any one of its subordinate functions (K. Marx, Capital, Vol.1, pp.643-4).

Similarly Marx recognised that reproduction of labour power was an important part of this total process:

The individual consumption of the worker, whether it occurs inside or outside the workshop, inside or outside the labour process, remains an aspect of the production and reproduction of capital, just as the cleaning of machinery does . .. (K. Marx, Capital, Vol.1, Chapter 23, p.718).

On this analysis then, the working class should be regarded as the "collective labourer" contributing to production either by making goods themselves, by contributing one of the many services needed to keep the wheels of the capitalist machine running smoothly, or by forming part of the reserve army of the unemployed. Even if we then make a distinction between those who receive a wage for what they do and those who do not (such as housewives) both groups can still be seen as productive in that they contribute to the overall capitalist process.

Domestic workers clearly are productive in this sense but in any case should consider themselves as full members of the working class since they do not have any share in the wealth owned by the capitalist class. It is also important to recognise that domestic work and child care are not in themselves uninteresting or menial (certainly not more so than many paid jobs) but it is often the context in which they are carried out which makes them seem so (e.g. the isolation of many young mothers and their lack of money).

"Socialist" feminists are thus creating a theoretical problem, and divisions within the working class where none really exists. Their tactic of forming women's caucuses, within trade unions for example, is misguided and counter-productive since it both divides the working class, making it appear that men and women have conflicting interests, and also marginalises women and so-called women's issues.

Socialism is for women too!

The extent to which feminist theories have highlighted the ways in which women's subject status is reinforced and maintained through social and cultural conditioning should not be under-estimated. Women need to be confident of their ability to engage in political activity and to believe that they are not the passive, helpless creatures that much of their education and conditioning has encouraged them to be. But to use these insights as the basis for arguments in favour of all-women political movements, or women's sections, however socialist their proclaimed intent, rests on a faulty assumption about society and has politically damaging results. That assumption is that in some way women's oppression is fundamentally different from that experienced by working class men. Whilst it is undeniable that women do experience certain forms of economic, cultural and social oppression and discrimination as a result of their gender, the economic basis for exploitative social relations is not gender-specific. To argue that women's experience of capitalism is crucially different from that of men risks falling into precisely the same trap of sex stereotyping that the feminist movement itself has struggled to resist. That is to say that women's roles as wives and mothers define them more completely than do their roles as workers.

If socialism is to have any chance of success and if the causes of oppression of women and every other oppressed group within society are to be removed for good, then we should seek to emphasise the essential similarities in lives and experiences of members of the working class irrespective of sex or race, rather than to draw attention to any superficial differences between them.

Socialism must include the liberation of women as a crucial part of the wider project of human emancipation, but of course that is not going to happen in an automatic or inevitable way. The World Socialist Movement cannot permit sexism to nourish within itself. For a political organisation to be at all credible it must embody the attitudes, values and practices that it seeks to institute in a future socialist society. Socialism is about liberation of the whole human race, men and women, which is why the socialist movement in theory and practice makes no distinction between people on the basis of sex or race. Our strength lies in unity and co-operation, not in separatism and division.

Janie Percy-Smith (Britain)

Suffrage and Sex. (1908)

From the February 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Civilization, carrying with it as it does, patent evidences of its savage ancestry, frantically endeavouring to hide its humble origin, vainly imagining Gardens of Eden and naked simplicity instead of primeval forest and low-browed beast man, indignant when the first glimmerings of truth appear, ashamed and apologetic by turns when its pedigree can no longer be denied, is necessarily the depository of shams and cant.

No cant that Civilization has uttered is more sickening than that indulged in with regard to the

POSITION OF WOMEN.

“Chivalry” is a rosy-hued dream, compounded of deeds of derring-do against wicked monsters and the rescue of innocent maidens. It is left for the Historical Materialist to lift the veil and to INSIST UPON the viewing of the sinister visage underneath ; “Booty and Beauty” in times of war, the feudal lord’s “right of the first night” in times of peace, for one Sir Galahad a dozen Lancelots ; “bars sinister” brazenly emblazoned on shield, and the Madonna enshrined a second Venus—not without corresponding rites.

Protestantism, the true religious reflex of capitalism, affects utmost concern for women, has no bounds for its indignation against monks and nuns who have converted monastery and nunnery into a stews, a virtuous Bluff King Hal and equally virtuous

GOOD QUEEN BESS

are deeply concerned for the morals of the nation, what time Luther is defending polygamy and a “virgin queen” is wantoning with Leicester.

The Industrial Revolution brings in its train a crowd of “philanthropists” and religious revivalists who hold up their hands in horror at the inevitable immorality in factory and field which surely follows the Revolution, the rising tide of prostitution which is actually one of the bulwarks of capitalist society.

And now, to-day, when men are being replaced by women in the industrial world, the woman misleader is apparently commencing to compete with the man of the same genus, and to draw her own particular red herring across the path of progress to the workers’ emancipation. From the platform and from the police dock, to ”courteous Cabinet minister and brutally businesslike “steward ” they shout

“VOTES FOR WOMEN”

—to which Herbert Burrows, member of the Social Democratic Federation, takes exception, and gently seeks to chide. He, as a “revolutionary Socialist,” points out that the fight is “disingenuous,” nay, even “crooked.” They are merely fighting for a limited franchise for women. He urges them to become, like himself, an “ardent adult suffragist.”

Burrows believes in progress—backwards. The Chartists 60 years ago “demanded” adult suffrage.

Above this din rings out the clarion cry in the

DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES

of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. “The emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race OR SEX.”

We of the Socialist Party of Great Britain refuse to be led aside by any of the discordant cries around us. Our goal is the Socialist Republic, where, economically free, the position of woman will be no longer determined by mere property “relations, where lip-service homage will give place to high devotion, where “the dark shadow ol haeterism” will be as the fast-fading memory of a bad dream, and the hateful marriage mart a hideous fossil found on the shores of Time to remind the race of its hard probation in the wilderness of capitalism, where woman will be

“Spouse, Sister, Angel ! Pilot of the Fate

Whose course has been so starless.

A divine presence in a place divine,

That on the fountain of our heart a seal

Will set to keep its waters pure and bright”

Augustus Snellgrove

Working-class women (1974)

From the June 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 70th anniversary issue of the Socialist Standard carried throughout its pages a series of snippets from old Socialist Standard articles highlighting the SPGB's unique position on issues of the day. Where possible, I've provided a link to the full article.

The suffragettes fought for the freedom of the vote so that they could have their say in the laws governing their property. The position of millions of working class women who had no property and were, in fact, bound hand and foot by their economic dependence upon the employer directly or upon some employed male relative did not rouse the ire of the suffragettes. Obtaining the vote has done nothing to alter that. Only when working class women learn their true position in society will they know how to use their vote wisely, and for this the suffragette movement had no time.

[From “Women’s Freedom”, Socialist Standard, June 1935]

The Proletariat (The Working Class). By Karl Kautsky (1907)

From the October 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

Specially translated for The Socialist Party of Great Britain and approved by the Author.

2.—Wages.

Wages cannot be so high as to make it impossible for the capitalist to carry on his business and to live from it. For under these circumstances it would be more advantageous for the capitalist to give up business altogether. Hence the wages of the worker can never rise high enough to equal the value of his product. They must always leave a margin, a surplus value, for only the prospect of this margin induces the capitalist to buy labour-power. Thus in capitalist society wages can never rise so high that the exploitation of the worker comes to an end.

But the margin, the surplus value, is greater than is generally supposed. It consists not only of the profit of the manufacturer, but also much that is reckoned as cost of production and sale, viz., ground rent, interest on invested capital, discount for the merchant who disposes of the goods produced by the industrialist, taxes, rates, etc. All this comes out of the surplus value which the product of the worker yields above his wages. This margin must consequently be considerable if an undertaking is to prove profitable. Wages can, therefore, never rise sufficiently high to enable the worker to receive in his wages anything approaching the value he has created. The capitalist wage system means under all circumstances exploitation of the worker. It is impossible to abolish exploitation so long as that system exists, and even where high wages are being paid the exploitation of the worker must be extensive.

But wages hardly ever reach the highest possible point, more often, however, they fall to the very lowest. That point is reached when the wages of the worker cease to purchase his very necessaries of life. If the worker not only starves but starves quickly, his work ceases altogether.

Between these two limits wages fluctuate, becoming lower as the customary wants of life of the workers decrease, as the supply of labour-power in the labour market increases, and as the power of resistance on the part of the workers decreases.

Generally wages must, of course, be high enough to keep the worker in a fit state to work, or better said, wages must be so high as to ensure to the capitalist the measure of labour-power needed by him. Wages must hence be high enough to make it possible for the worker not only to maintain himself in a fit state to work but also to reproduce children fit to work.

The economic development shows the tendency—so favourable to the capitalist—of reducing the cost of maintenance of the workers and of thereby decreasing wages.

Skill and strength were in times gone by indispensable to the worker. The period of apprenticeship of the handicraftsman was a very long one, and the cost of his maintenance was considerable. Progress in the division of labour and in machine construction caused special skill and strength in production to become superfluous. This progress makes it possible to replace skilled by unskilled—that is cheaper— labour-power; it makes it also possible to replace the labour of men by that of weak women, and even children. Even in manufacture this tendency was perceptible; but only with the introduction of machinery begins wholesale exploitation of women and of children of tender age, exploitation of the most helpless of the helpless who fall victims to revolting ill-treatment and spoliation. Here we get acquainted with a new characteristic of the machine in the hands of Capital.

The wage-worker who did not belong to the family of the employer had originally to receive in his wages not only the cost of his own maintenance but also that of his family if he were to be in a position to reproduce his species, to regenerate his labour-power. Without this reproduction of labour-power the heirs of the capitalist would find no proletariat to exploit. But if the wife, and, from early childhood, also the children of the worker are in a position to provide for themselves, the wages of the male worker can almost entirely he reduced to the cost of maintenance of his own person without the slightest danger to the reproduction of labour-power. And the labour of women and children has the further advantage of their being less capable of resistance than men. Moreover, through their entering the ranks of labour the supply of labour-power in the labour market is tremendously increased.

The labour of women and children does not only lower the cost of maintaining the worker, it reduces also his power of resistance and increases the supply of labour-power—in short, it has the effect under any of these circumstances of causing the wages of the worker to fall.

3.—The Dissolution of the Proletarian Family. 

The industrial labour of woman in capitalist society means the entire destruction of the worker’s family life without substituting a higher form of family. The capitalist mode of production, in most cases, does not dissolve the individual working-class household, but it deprives it of all its brightness, leaving only its dark side with the waste of woman’s energy and her exclusion from public life. The industrial labour of woman to-day does not mean her relief from household duties, it means adding a fresh burden to those she already bears. But one cannot serve two masters. The household of the worker goes to wreck and ruin if his wife has to assist in earning subsistence for the family ; but what present society puts in place of the individual household and the individual family is miserable refuse: the soup-kitchen and the day-nursery in which the leavings of the physical and mental nourishment of the rich are thrown to the lower classes.

Socialism is accused of aiming at the destruction of the family. Well, we know that each particular mode of production has its particular form of household to which corresponds a particular form of family. We do not consider the present form of family to be the last, and expect that a new form of Society will also develop a new form of family. But such expectation is something altogether different to an endeavour to dissolve all family ties. Those who destroy the family —who not merely want to do, but actually DO destroy it before our eyes—are not the Socialists but the capitalists. Many a slave-owner in the past has torn husband from wife, parents from children able to work : but capitalist methods surpass the abominations of slavery ; they tear the suckling from the mother, forcing her to entrust her infant to the care of strangers. And a society in which that occurs daily in hundreds and thousands of cases, a society that has specially founded “charitable institutions patronised by the ‘nobility'” for the purpose of making it easier for the mother to part from her child—such a society has the audacity to reproach us with intending to dissolve the family, because we are convinced that household-work will develop into a special branch of industry, thereby transforming the character of the household and of family life.

4. Prostitution.

Besides being reproached with the intention of dissolving the family we are accused of aiming at community of women. This reproach is as void of foundation as the other. We assert on the contrary that the very opposite of community of women, of sexual compulsion and immorality, namely, ideal love, will form the basis of all marital relations in the Socialist Commonwealth, and such love can generally prevail only in such a state of Society. But what do we see to-day ? The want of resistance on the part of women who have hitherto been confined to their households and have mostly but a faint conception of public life and the power of organisation—is so great, that the capitalist employer dare pay them wages which do not suffice for their sustenance, and incite them to prostitution as a means of augmenting their wages. An increase in the industrial employment of women has everywhere the tendency of causing au increase in prostitution. In the modern state of the fear of God and pious morals there exist entire “flourishing” branches of industry in which the women workers are so badly paid that they would have to starve to death were they not to stoop to prostitution. And the employers declare that just upon these low wages depends the possibility of their successful competition, and that higher wages would rain them.

Prostitution is as old as the contradiction between poverty and riches. But in ages gone by prostitutes occupied in the social scale a position falling between those of beggars and scamps, constituting a luxury in which Society could afford to indulge, and the loss of which would by no means have endangered the very existence of that society. To-day it is not only the women of the loafing proletariat but working women, who are compelled to sell their bodies for money. This selling of their bodies is no longer only a matter of luxury, no, it has become the basis of industrial development. In the capitalist system of production prostitution becomes one of the pillars of Society. The defenders of this society themselves practise community of women, the vice of which they accuse us; of course, community with women of the Proletariat. And this method of community of women has taken root so deeply in present society that its representatives declare prostitution to be a necessity. They cannot conceive that the abolition of the Proletariat must mean the abolition of prostitution, because they cannot possibly conceive a society without community of women.

The community of women of to-day is an invention of the “higher” grades of Society, not of the Proletariat. This community of women is one of the ways of exploiting the Proletariat. It is not Socialism, but its very opposite.

Blogger's Note:

It was the German SPGBer, Hans Neumann, who translated Kautsky's writings from the German into English for the Socialist Standard.

Origins of patriarchy (2025)

Book Review from the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule. By Angela Saini. 4th Estate £10.99.

Friedrich Engels referred to the ‘overthrow of mother-right’ as ‘the world historical defeat of the female sex’, meaning that women became subordinate to men and ‘the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude’. This implied an earlier time where women had far more power and authority, in matrilineal or matriarchal societies. The Socialist Party’s 1986 pamphlet Women and Socialism criticised this account on the grounds that there was no universal stage of matriarchy and that relationships between men and women have changed over time to meet the needs of society.

In this book Angela Saini makes a similar point, that early societies varied greatly, and ‘the emergence of patriarchy could never have been a single catastrophic event’. A lot of material, in different places and at different times, is covered, but often it is hard to draw firm conclusions.

Societies where descent is traced through the female line are found in many parts of the world, though rarely in Europe. The Khasi community in north-east India, for instance, is matrilineal, with a child belonging to her mother, and men do not have rights over property or children. But it is not matriarchal, as family authority rests with the mother’s brother, though this power is not absolute. Some men have objected to this system recently, but others have defended it. In North America the Seneca have adopted a patrilineal naming system, but tribal membership remains matrilineal, despite the efforts of missionaries and government agents to institute a more patriarchal system.

Unfortunately, the book’s main claims are let down by an unconvincing chapter on the status of women in Russia and Eastern Europe under Bolshevism, in what is termed here ‘state socialism’. Abortion was legalised in the USSR in 1920, though this was reversed under Stalin in 1936, in order to boost birth rates, and it was made legal again in 1955. East Germany saw a massive increase in the number of crèche places, and by 1959 almost every pharmacist in the Soviet Union was a woman. On the whole, though, patriarchy was ‘dented’ rather than smashed. Saini does not discuss this, but the division into rulers and ruled was of course not even dented (see chapter 3 of our 1986 pamphlet for more on women in Russia.)

In Iran many women supported the movement against the Shah, but the Islamic Republic clamped down on women’s freedoms, with abortion made illegal and the wearing of the veil being mandatory. As this and other examples show, patriarchy is ‘being constantly remade in the present, and sometimes with greater force than before.’ And patriarchy is not a single phenomenon, rather there are plural patriarchies, existing in different ways in different cultures.

Paul Bennett