ABOVE we have seen how gender oppression gets institutionalised in the family with the accumulation of private property and emergence of classes. This world-historic process of transition from primitive communal/communist society to class society naturally assumes different particular forms in different parts of the earth. In our country for example, class was intermingled with the Varna order and later the caste system, making oppression on women especially cruel and stubborn. But in addition to class (and in our country, caste) we must take a look at another product of the selfsame social evolution: the state. As Engels shows in Origin,

“... in order that these antagonisms and classes with conflicting economic interests might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power seemingly standing above society that would alleviate the conflict, and keep it within the bounds of “order”; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.”

An instrument in the hands of the exploiting and ruling classes to hold in subjugation the numerically much stronger toiling classes, the state too, like the family and forms of private property, passed through successive stages of evolution. From city states to kingdoms (queen’s rule was an exception because mother right had long been abolished and all inheritance was from the father to the son) to modern parliamentary democracy, the form has been changing a lot, but the content has remained essentially the same. As before, the state pretends neutrality but serves the rich and the powerful. It protects and promotes the male domination prevalent in society: the laws, the courts, the police, the military and the entire system of governance are biased against women. Women along with all oppressed sections and classes naturally find themselves engaged in a bitter struggle against the state and, led by the communist party, smash it to pieces. Its place is then taken by the revolutionary proletarian state which exercises dictatorship over the overthrown but not-yet-annihilated bourgeoisie and ensures genuine equality and democracy for all working people including, of course, the women. As post-revolutionary society advances from the lower to the higher stage of socialism/communism, as remnants of classes and class struggle gradually die out, the state as an instrument of class rule also loses its raison d’etre and withers away; just as the family as we know it today gets dissolved or transformed beyond recognition. Society reorganises production on the basis of a free and equal association of producers, radically reconstructs man-woman relationship (more about this at the end of the article), and the human race is ultimately liberated from all kinds of exploitation and oppression.