Why this paper?

The deep and destructive division between "socialist women" and feminists is based upon the serious lack of theory on the specific causes of female oppression. Economistic Marxists have said that the women's struggle is ideological and therefore not as basic as the main economic oppression suffered by the "working class". They have said that women cannot be discussed as a whole but must be divided into classes, forgetting that women in their own right do not fit into Marx's definition of class. Just as recent work on the sexual division of labour has begun to define women's class position, so we hope that this paper will begin to show how women's oppression is at the base of and is intertwined with the class struggle.

We hope to show, briefly, the material base of women's oppression. Just as capitalist domination springs from the capitalist control of the means of production so male political, economic and ideological domination springs from the male control of the means of reproduction.

Beyond Domestic Labour

We are fed up with being fitted into Marxism. The Marxist analysis of society is quite inadequate for the achievement of complete communism because it allows no place for a concept of patriarchy. This is not surprising since Marx was a patriarch and a victim of the ruling ideology of his time (the ruling class is male and the ruling ideas patriarchal). Almost all exponents of Marxist ideas to the present day have suffered the same limitations.

Marxist women have now done excellent analyses of the family and domestic labour. They have extended and adapted Marxism to account for the oppression of women under capitalism and to lay the guidelines for the elimination of this kind of oppression. Unfortunately the forms in which women are oppressed under capitalism are only symptoms of the disease. The disease is patriarchy and feminists have to be concerned with curing the disease.

What Marx Left Out

When Marx set out to explain historical materialism in The German Ideology, he stated the fundamental conditions of human existence. They included production and reproduction. He concentrated on "production" and very little is heard of "reproduction" thereafter. In order to analyse women's oppression we have to resurrect the precondition of reproduction and give it the attention it deserves. Under capitalism women are oppressed as workers. Under patriarchy women are oppressed as women

Patriarchy: The System of Male Domination

Patriarchy began when men took control of the Means of Reproduction. Woman's body is the means of reproduction; the products are children. Exactly why, when and how men gained control of the means of reproduction is not yet clear. There are obvious advantages in the ownership of children; child labour and the use of children (especially female) as a medium of exchange to cement alliances etc. The ownership of women meant free domestic as well as reproductive labour. It is possible that patriarchy began when men learned that women reproduced after copulation and not by some mysterious divine process. A man or a tribe could gain power by controlling access to women for reproduction. Hence the harem or the capture/ rape of the other tribe's women.

Today we live under the Patriarchal Mode of Reproduction: men control the Means of Reproduction (women). The way men and women relate to each other (the Relations of Reproduction) depends upon their access to the Means of Reproduction. At present, women do not have free access to themselves ,to their own bodies (they do not control their sexuality, contraception, abortion etc.); nor do they control the product, children, because of legal control by fathers and the male state.

Under Patriarchy,a woman is in the relationship of slave to the owner of the means of reproduction (man): unlike a wage-labourer, she is given only subsistence in kind (food, shelter) in return for the work of reproduction. Other possible modes of reproduction are Matriarchy (female control of the means of reproduction) or the egalitarian or communist mode in which both sexes share control.

The Forces of Reproduction

Changes in the forces of reproduction could bring about changes in the mode of reproduction. Patriarchy would end and a new mode commence. Examples of forces of reproduction are: advances in medical care such as forceps, anaesthesia, resuscitation, incubators; advances in methods of contraception and abortion; sperm kitties and so on. The pill, for example, is not simply a new contraceptive device. Its development has caused one of the vital contradictions which could lead women to rise and end patriarchy. For, whilst the pill frees women from unwanted pregnancies, it also "frees" men to enforce vaginal penetration without awkward consequences. Secondly, the pill is not easy to obtain. Its use and availability are controlled by men (male institutions): it clearly does not free all women to control their sexual lives. Only when women totally control the means of reproduction can they be free from male domination.

Men manipulate the forces of reproduction (the way we have children) in many ways. The female midwife is being replaced by the male hospital doctor, who often talks about "my babies" as if he alone is doing the work of reproduction. The conditions for joint female/male control of reproduction do not yet exist. Instead of being a progressive step, male presence during childbirth may be a desperate attempt to maintain control over the whole reproductive process.

The availability and techniques of contraceptive devices (often hazardous for women and non-existent for men) show clearly the interests of patriarchal governments and states in control of reproduction. If women had control of the means of reproduction, safe and simple abortion apparatus would be available for them to use in their own homes, self-help would be vastly increased and women would be able to deliver their own babies. If women had control, the use of sperm kitties (now well within our technical capacities but underdeveloped) would enable men to have their sperm stored for the time when a woman might want children by them, and then be vasectomized.

How Power Over Women is Exercised: Penile imperialism

The chief means by which men exercise control over women is by penile imperialism. Imperialist domination is so sophisticated that the oppressors (men) do not need to occupy the conquered territories (women's bodies) in order to maintain control: the inhabitants (women) are forced into feeling inferior and inadequate so that they do not even contemplate revolt.*The colonized internalize their own oppression. The threat of physical force is always there, but what is more often used instead of actual violence is a demonstration of the symbol of the oppressor e.g. flagwaving in the case of the British Empire or "flashing" in the oppression of women.

Penile Sexuality and the Impoverishment of life

The sexual act as defined by men takes the form of penetration; a form least likely to lead to satisfaction or participation of the woman in whom the organ of sexual pleasure, the clitoris, and the means of reproduction, womb and vagina, are quite separate. By demanding the right to penetration, the man constantly re-establishes his ownership of the means of reproduction and assures himself that he has access to it. Rape can be seen as forced access to the means of reproduction, a rite of ownership, as well as a form of social control by the punitive use of the imperial symbol.

In order for men to control women it is necessary that the penis be made the sole physical and psychological source of sensual pleasure and gratification for both sexes. Therefore under patriarchy, sexuality — genitality — phallocentricity. The seeking of sensual pleasure from any other source is a subversive act which threatens the power structure. Thus homosexuality, sensory excitement through drugs, dance, stroking one's own body, and the whole gamut of sensory delight which do not involve penetration are considered dangerous and sinful in our culture. The most obvious example of the control of the threatening clitoris is clitoridectomy.

The Superstructure - Family and the State.

The state has always, since its inception, operated in the interests of the ruling sex, men, as well as in the interests of whatever social class held power as a result of a particular mode of production. The state developed along with and is organized on the pattern of the patriarchal family which emerged in all its forms from the need for a structure within which men could control the means of production and its products. The family also exists to control sex antagonisms in the same way in which the state exists to regulate class antagonisms. Marriage is a contract which legalizes male ownership of women and children. Having an illegitimate baby was, and still is,an act subversive to male power. A woman having a child without being married to a man is asserting her right to control her own body and refusing to hand over the products of her labour to a man. Thus she invokes the full wrath of the patriarchal state e.g. the imprisoning of unmarried mothers in mental
hospitals which was a regular event until well into the twentieth century. Lesbian mothers are an especial threat and are still in danger of having their children removed from them.

The Father

The patriarchal state which bases its authority and organisation on the patriarchal family, maintains an efficient agent in every home. The present form of the family, the nuclear family, effectively polices the lower classes, women and kids, and controls the means of reproduction through the "Father". Patriarchal society justifies this set-up by constructing the role of "biological fatherhood". In a society in which women controlled their own bodies and their own sexuality, men would not have an automatic right to cohabit with women and children for long periods of time and exercise control over them, merely on the basis of an ejaculation.

In fact a man's part in reproduction is the work of a few seconds and the "fatherhood" role an artificial creation. He is like the capitalist investing a small sum of inherited money (sperm) which the worker (woman) will transform into an extremely valuable product worth infinitely more than the original investment, through the sweat of her labour and receiving only subsistence in return.

Sex Struggle and Class Struggle

Reproduction and production are the twin aspects of the material base of our society. This helps us to understand the relationship between sex struggle and class struggle and the ways in which feminism and marxism can work together and enables us to work out a strategy for the overthrow of patriarchy as well as capitalism. From production springs class struggle; similarly from reproduction springs sex struggle. Sex struggle pre-dates class struggle which developed only after the establishment of the patriarchal mode of reproduction. Where males dominate females there must be sex struggle. Patriarchy and sex struggle probably pre-date class society for the additional reason that domination of women and children facilitates and provides a model for the domination of other humans in general.

The institutions and ideas of the superstructure emerge from both the social relations of production and the social relations of reproduction. It is vital to understand that these are two separate, equal and simultaneous struggles if the peculiar nature of the family is to be understood. If the family is thought to arise from the relations of production alone, then it is clear why so many people believe that a change in the mode of production will "liberate" women from male domination, even though this has clearly not happened in any socialist experiments to date. The form that the family takes would to some extent be affected by the mode of production but its patriarchal nature should still remain.

When women struggle to end patriarchy, to regain control of their own bodies, their brothers whom they supported in the class struggle will probably turn out to be the enemy. When women control the means of reproduction, and the patriarchal family has been eliminated, then the patriarchal state in its socialist or capitalist form is inconceivable, since its main support will have gone.

The Dictatorship of Women

"Between capitalist (patriarchal) and communist (feminist) society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat (women)" **

Will men realize that women's claims are fair and just, hand over control of the means of reproduction, give equal power in social, political and economic life to women, and set about transforming their mental attitudes so that they no longer desire to oppress or exploit women? Will even the most sympathetic men, in the final analysis, want to fight for their own interests which are different from ours? We want to take from them, fatherhood, control of children, the unpaid labour of slaves, and half their share in the organization and direction of society.

The dictatorship of women may be the only answer. Women must have a transition period in which they can gain experience and confidence in all the spheres from which men have deliberately excluded them. The transition period will allow for the gradual "withering away" of marriage, monogamy and the family, as sexist ideas and actions are forcibly eliminated from men. When, and only when men have become truly human, indistinguishable from women save in respect of their sexual organs, can we afford to let them take part once more in the organization of society and in close relations with women and children.

The Socialist and the Feminist Revolution

Women are members of the proletariat whatever class they appear to men to be in since all women are potential child-bearers and are thus used as unpaid domestic slaves. The word proletariat comes from "proles" meaning "child-bearing" and "proletarius - one who served the state not with property but with offspring" (Oxford Dictionary definition). It is necessary for women to accomplish the socialist revolution at the same time as the feminist revolution. Women cannot be liberated within the capitalist system since capitalism can only exist through the extraction of surplus value by one group which exploits another. There are indissoluble bonds between patriarchy and capitalism. "Communism" does not mean the dominance of patriarchal socialism as a world system. In order to control the means of reproduction, women must take control of the means of production at the same time.

The Role of Men

There seems to be one way only, at present, in which women and men can work together towards the socialist revolution. Men on the left must recognize that women, as the largest and most oppressed group in the world's population, and whose oppression predates all other forms of oppression, are those best fitted to lead the revolutionary struggle. As these men have till now searched for genuine proletarians to lead the fight so in the future they must scrupulously defer to the leadership of women. It is possible that as they come to realize their role in the oppression of women and develop a genuine desire to end patriarchy at the same time as the establishment of socialism, they will be prepared to take a humble back seat. This is probably Utopian but it is good to end with a small ray of hope.

Sheila Jeffreys & Natasha Hodson

* See also the pamphlet Fourth World Manifesto by Barbara Burrls and others, Michigan 1971, reprinted in Notes from the Third Year and in other anthologies. (We are hoping to publish part of this in a future issue - Catcall Collective)

** Marx, in Critique of the Gotha Programme, p. 32 in Marx and Engels Selected Works Vol.2, Moscow 1962