othing 'natural' about women's oppression
The assertion that women's op- pression has origins is itself con- troversial. For the majority of people, the current position of men and women is a universal and "natural' phenomenon; and this view is reinforced by any number of anthropological text books and learned historical studies. The marxist tradition stands in sharp contrast with this prevailing line of thought. Friederich Engels in his pioneering work, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, (1884) clearly contradicts the view that women's subordination is a constant unbroken thread stretching back to the dawn of humankind. Drawing on the work of the early American anthropologist Lewis Mor- gan, Engels traces the changing posi- tion of women from the matriarchy of "primitive communism" to the patriar- chy of class societies and the poten- tial for liberation created by the ad- vent of capitalism. He ties these developments to the changes in the family form as the economic basis of society shifted. Thus Engels locates the origins of women's oppression (his words describe it as 'the world-historic defeat of the female sex") in the period of economic expan- ushered in by the developments of sion agriculture, stock-raising and metallurgy. The sexual division of labour which had always existed, whereby men hunted and women looked after the home and children, meant that the wealth created by these advances in production was controlled by men, who then enslaved women. So the subordination of women is the product of the beginnings of private property and the genesis of the state. There have always been those who have expressed reservations about the implications and analysis of The Origin. Engels" critics, however, divide into two main groups: on the one side those who agree with his materialist method and' accept the central theses of his work - that women's oppression is not an eter- nal truth, that the family is not an unchanging institution, and that the oppression of women is inextricably linked to the beginnings of class society, and on the other side those who reject Marxist methodology altogether. The former approach began leaders of the (then officially still marxist'") Page 28
FEATURES Who says women aren't cut out to be building workers? Engels value mistakenly treating the as many marxist among Stephanie Coontz and Frederique Vinteuil. with the
German Social Democratic Party (SPD) at the tum of the century, who rejected as "too redolent of bourgeois psychology the high
reluctantly placed monogamy, and the Russian socialists of the
several same period who took issue with The Origin
family as autonomous from society, and continues today
plough feminists such as
Indeed it is true that Engels was dependent on the intellectual and social context of his
ganisation. time. His work is shot through with patriarchal assumptions and an inability to break with bourgeois ideology on certain key points. The idea of a natural and universal sexual division of labour and the assertion that heterosexual, monogamous 'sex-love" is the natural and op timum state of sexual relations are just two examples of this. Much of his anthropological evidence, particularly on the existence of the matriarchy and the fact that male dominance has been found in some pre-class, pre-state societies lacking true private property, has since been brought into question or superceded in such a way as to require a substantial
reworking of his conclusions. However, Engels provides the solid foundations for any marxist analysis of the origins of women's op- pression. While all the anthropological evidence militates against the exist- ence of a matriarchy even in the most dim and distant past, it clearly shows that whereas in the first class socicties (for example slave societies) patriar- chy was already established, there is no evidence for it in primitive com- munistic societies. These societies were based on egalitarianism and in- terdependence, and were organised in very loose and extended kinship groups that traced descent through the mother's line. It was in those social formations existing before the first class societies but after primitive communism that male dominance first arose. Specifi- cally, it was the combination of "kin corporate property" (where property was owned collectively by a kinship group) which emerged with the series of transformations known as the neolithic revolution, and the growth of patrilocality (a kinship system where the wife goes to live with the husband's kin group after marriage) that created the preconditions for the development of male dominance. Patrilocality came to be the predominant form of social organisation, supplanting matrilocal and other kinship systems, for reasons. The determining factor, however, was that because of the greater value of women's labour and reproduction in pre- patrilocal agricultural systems, societies had a greater potential for expansion, were more economically dynamic, and so came to be the prodominant for of social or- It was indeed this economic dimension, in tandem with the very practical effects of a woman leaving her own kinship group and moving to live in the kinship group of her hus- band, that meant that patrilocality led to male domination. And once patrilocality was wide- ly established, the old matrilineal method of descent and inheritance become unsustainable and incompatible with the emerging forms of social organisation. Instead a patrilineal sytem of inheritance was introduced and fed still fur- ther the dynamic towards patriarchy and private property that had produced it. In this way the subordination of women SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 20, Dec Jan 1989-90
laid the foundation for the emergence of private property and so social classes. However, although the oppression of women precedes the development of private property. once set in motion the dynamics of gender op pression and other social differentiations are entwined. The oppression of women provided a means of differential appropriation among men, which in tum gave some men special access to the labour and reproductive power of women, as well as to the services of other men.
The privatisation of property ran alongside an alteration in the form of the family unit. The loose associations that existed within the collectivist environment of patrilocality were stabilised and broken up into smaller, tighter units as property became increasingly private property.
Patrilocality eventually gave way to patriarchy, institutionalised through the family. Male dominance became structurally embedded in society. It is a gradual, but powerful process by which such changes are formalised and ideologised in a systematic way.
Clearly then women's labour provided the material basis for a complex of interrelated processes that ended in their subordination to men and the cleavage of society into social classes. Ruling classes emerged that controlled the production of society as a whole. The exploitation of women gave way to class exploitation as the primary motor of social development. But this change did not suddenly free women from their oppression but dragged it deeper and deeper into a complex and ever shifting pattern of subordination and domination.
The search for origins begun by Engels and pursued with such ardour by successive generations of socialists and feminists is not merely an academic exercise, or intellectual self-indulgence. It is a crucial part of understanding the situation facing women today and formulating a realistic strategy for liberation.
For, as Stephanie Coontz and Peta Henderson say in their contribution to the book Women's Work, Men's Property, *Anthropology and history offer no justification for the opposition some political activists make between the struggle against class and the struggle against patriarchy. Rather, they underline the fact that class and gender inequalities are historically and materially inseparable.
However, the factor that is omitted from a discussion about origins and which is overlooked by Marx and Engels in their works concerning women - in a way that is not overlooked in their other writings - is the subjective factor. The central importance of women's struggle for their own liberation has been clearly demonstrated by more recent events, and central to the programme and political activity of revolutionary marxists today.
Rebecca Flemming SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 20, Dec-Jan 1989-90
DEBATE class? Issues 18 and 19 of Socialist Outlook have carried discussion articles on the emergence of green politics and its significance for socialists. Continuing the debate, HANS-JURGEN SCHULZ presents a critique of the politics and organisation of the longest-running and strongest of the Green parties.
Many people think that the Green Party in West Germany is a socialist or at least a radical party with a strong socialist current and influence in the working class. However this is not the view of the Greens themselves.
All of the currents of the Greens point out that their party does not belong to the workers" movement, because 'left socialism and the workers movement have failed (declaration of the former left" central leadership).
According to Rudolf Bahro, when he was the main theoretician of the party, the Greens do not represent "special social interests", but are the "organ of all common interests'. Even radical eco-socialists in the party agreed. According to Jutta Difurth, the Greens are "not a left party, but a party which tolerates left politics". Ebermann argues that "It is absurd to transform the Greens into a socialist party*.
To understand the rise and the political character of this party we have to understand its class base.
Rise of the intelligentsia
In the last thirty years the intelligentsia has become an important sector of society. _ 2.4 million attend colleges (Oberschulen) or universities, and 4 million have academic degrees. Those with formal education do not constitute a class or even a single layer: among them are capitalists (owners of important companies) and the bourgeois intelligentsia (leading personnel of companies and the state apparatus, and the self-employed, like lawyers or physicians) numbering 800,000 there is a salaried intelligentsia of some 1.5 million, composed of the leading and lower echelons of companies and the state apparatus and specialists (engineers, architects, teachers).
These are privileged, earning more than double the income of a worker, and their working conditions
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