Study examines the roots of women’s oppression
By
LeiLani Dowell
Published Mar 23, 2005 3:49 PM
“There is a virtual revolution
going on in the minds of women. It is a harbinger of the
general socialist revolution and at the same time is an indispensable
ingredient for its success.
The women’s struggle is not
subordinate to the class struggle. It is itself a form of
class struggle. ... Marx said that every political struggle is a
class struggle.”
So said Dorothy Ballan in the revolu
tion ary pamphlet, “Feminism and Marxism.” Ballan, a leading member
of Workers World Party, wrote the pamphlet in 1971 at the height of a burgeoning
movement in the United States for women’s liberation. At the time, she
said: “Many young women throughout the country are beginning to inquire
into the origins of present-day social relations of women.” Ballan’s
pamphlet provided an important theoretical contribution to this
debate.
Here and now, in 2005, Ballan’s words continue to have
important relevance to today’s struggles for women’s liberation, and
the attacks we as women face.
In “Feminism and Marxism,”
Ballan answered the positions put forward by some leading academic feminists who
asserted that the oppression of women by men has been an eternal struggle since
the dawn of time. Ballan explains that such teachings about the “innate
nature” of social interactions and social conditions only helps a ruling
class that wants to maintain those conditions.
Conversely, Ballan put
forward the teachings of Marx and Engels, who used anthropological findings to
prove that the oppression of women had not been a constant throughout time and
that, in fact, the earliest recorded societies were matriarchal and highly
cooperative between the sexes.
Today, when opponents of same-sex marriage
deny this basic right to lesbian and gay people, they are using the same logic
that Ballan answered. They think the bourgeois conception of marriage is an
everlasting fact of life, thus denying social evolution and the potential for
change, as well as a materialist view of marriage.
Ballan explains that
marriage as we know it developed as a result of the accumulation of surplus
wealth. Because women are the ones who give birth, the natural division of labor
was for women to work near their children while men went out and
hunted—although Ballan notes that at that time home was not the isolating
place that it has become with the development of private property, but rather
the center of the community. And lineage was traced through the
mother.
After women learned how to domesticate and breed smaller animals,
men eventually took over this area of work, applying that knowledge to the
domestication of pigs, sheep and other larger animals they had hunted. With this
development came an acceleration of surplus and the beginning of wealth, as well
as a need to pass that wealth on to heirs. Thus was the patriarchal family
born.
Ballan explained the use of the supposed “innateness” of
oppression by the bourgeoisie—their assertion that something is innate is
to imply that it is everlasting, unchangeable. This suggests that we shrug our
shoulders and walk away, rather than fight. She said, “A more ingen ious
self-serving theory for the ruling class could scarcely be
devised.”
This is also the theory recently put forward by the
president of Harvard Uni versity, Lawrence Summers, who completely ignored the
role of the oppression of women in saying that “in the special case of
science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude” that make
women less able to succeed in these areas.
Ballan also made an important
contribution, that continues to merit discussion, on the necessary connection
between the struggle for women’s liberation and the struggle against
racism. She challenged white women in the women’s liberation movement who
refused to recognize the added oppression that women of color face, and who
engender white supremacy by assuming the right to campaign against male
supremacy in communities of color.
This challenge to white women in the
movement is still relevant today. For instance, in the current women’s
liberation movement, the struggle continues to redefine the term
“reproductive rights” to be more inclusive of the reproductive needs
of all, and thus reflect the complex position of women of color. Reproductive
rights as a concept must include the need for economic security, access to
daycare, prenatal care, and abortion.
Ballan discusses the relation
of these immediate demands to the struggle for the ultimate liberation of women
through social ism. She tells us, “We must fight in every way possible to
improve the conditions of the workers, knowing full well that this in no way
changes the fundamental character of the capitalist exploitation of
wage-labor.”
Only by doing so will the spirit of struggle be imbued
in the working class, as well as the realization that concessions are not the
ultimate solution. Only by doing so will the struggle for socialism be
strengthened.
She also dismantles the idea that the solution to
women’s oppression, as well as all oppression, lies in the re-education of
the oppressor, rather than in militant struggle. Ballan shows that the hope for
liberation of women and all workers lies with socialist revolution through the
example of the Bolshevik Revolution, which began to dismantle the patriarchy.
And the gains made by women in Cuba since its revolution reinforce the
lessons of the Bolshevik Revolution today.
An article in Cuba’s
daily newspaper Granma International in 2000 cites some of these gains. The
article pointed out that, while across the world there is concern about the
feminization of poverty, “in Cuba there has been a feminization of the
technical and professional work force.”
In Cuba, women currently
work and hold key positions in many sectors. The article notes: “Cuban
women took full advantage of the revolutionary government’s initiatives
aimed at opening the doors to improvement and reintegration into the
country’s socioeconomic life in terms of education, health care,
employment and projects with the goal of attaining full gender
equality.”
Ballan’s book no doubt provided inspiration to
young women activists at the time it was written. It endures to this day. Her
words will continue to resonate until the victory of socialism over capitalism,
and will then only serve as a reminder of how very great a victory we’ve
won.
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