Women under Capitalism: Advancement and Retrogression

“...the first premise for the emancipation of women”, wrote Engels in Origin, “is the re-introduction of the entire female sex into public industry, and this again demands that the quality possessed by the individual family of being the economic unit of society be abolished.” Compared to feudalism, capitalism opens up broader avenues for the “reintroduction” of women into industries and services, and here lies a progressive potential, an expanded scope for carrying forward the struggle for women’s liberation. But far from “abolishing” the character of family as “the economic unit of society”, the capitalist mode of production reinforces this as one of its prime economic requirements. Here is where capitalism obstructs/negates the potential it otherwise creates and acts as a retrogressive force. Let us see how.

 

Under capitalism, wage is determined not by the value of what the worker produces, but by the sum of the values of necessaries required to maintain the worker and his/her family (maintenance of the family is required to guarantee uninterrupted supply of labour power through generations). Now what are these necessaries? Not just food, cloth – but preparation of the food, stitching of the cloth, care of the dependent (children, the elderly and the sick), emotional sustenance and so on. When a woman provides the major part of these necessaries as an obligatory and unpaid function of her role as wife and mother, then the capitalist does not have to pay for these services (of cooking, childcare, nursing etc.). The domestic tasks performed by women is thus an invisible, unaccounted component of necessary labour, which remains unpaid, and helps keep the costs of the means of subsistence of the worker (with family) down. In other words, it helps keep the general wage level down.

For the capitalist the proletarian family is thus merely the site for low-cost reproduction of labour power. Even in the most advanced capitalist societies – and in the most ‘modern’ and wealthy families in countries like ours – women bear a disproportionate share of domestic work. This is perceived as a “private” matter, but objectively it is an essential part of capitalist exploitation. And this explains why in countries like the USA, as well as in semi-feudal ones like ours, “the family” is held in such high esteem.

In addition to such indirect exploitation of women in the family, capitalism also directly exploits women workers. Marx in Capital gives a graphic account of how this occurs/occurred in backdated as well as more mechanised methods of production:

“Before the labour of women and of children under 10 years of age was forbidden in mines, capitalists considered the employment of naked women and girls, often in company with men, so far sanctioned by their moral code, and especially by their ledgers, that it was only after the passing of the Act that they had recourse to machinery.... In England women are still occasionally used instead of horses for hauling canal boats, because the labour required to produce horses and machines is an accurately known quantity, while that required to maintain the women of the surplus-population is below all calculation. Hence nowhere do we find a more shameful squandering of human labour-power for the most despicable purposes than in England, the land of machinery. …

“In so far as machinery dispenses with muscular power, it becomes a means of employing labourers of slight muscular strength, and those whose bodily development is incomplete, but whose limbs are all the more supple. The labour of women and children was, therefore, the first thing sought for by capitalists who used machinery....

“The value of labour-power was determined, not only by the labour-time necessary to maintain the individual adult labourer, but also by that necessary to maintain his family. Machinery, by throwing every member of that family on to the labour-market, spreads the value of the man’s labour-power over his whole family. It thus depreciates his labour-power. To purchase the labour-power of a family of four workers may, perhaps, cost more than it formerly did to purchase the labour-power of the head of the family, but, in return, four days’ labour takes the place of one.... In order that the family may live, four people must now, not only labour, but expend surplus-labour for the capitalist. Thus we see, that machinery, while augmenting the human material that forms the principal object of capital’s exploiting power, at the same time raises the degree of exploitation....”

These changes, however, also lead to significant changes within familial relations:

“Previously, the workman sold his own labour-power, which he disposed of nominally as a free agent. Now he sells wife and child. He has become a slave-dealer....” [In a footnote Marx here adds that whereas the shortening of the hours of labour of women and children in English factories was exacted from capital by the male operatives, they often acted also in an opposite way – like slave-dealers – in relation to their children – A Sen]

Capitalism thus has an inherently contradictory approach towards women. On one hand it respects no social niceties, and seeks to draw women and even children into social production. On the other, it suppresses the wage level by having women’s unpaid domestic labour subsidise the reproduction of workers’ labour. Their being tied to domestic labour provides the pretext for them to be paid less at the workplace too. The male-female wage differential is a common feature to be observed in capitalistically more as well as less advanced countries. And lastly, women also add to the reserve army of the unemployed that keeps general wage levels down.

Capitalism produces enough surpluses in society to free women completely from domestic labour – society now has the material means for complete socialisation of such labour. But capitalism will never use that surplus for this broad, shared social purpose – it will keep it for the profit of a tiny minority of capitalists. Only with the progression from capitalism to socialism can the potential generated in the former be actualised, and the economic prerequisite, together with a conducive political and cultural atmosphere, be created for the emancipation of women as an integral part of the emancipation of all working people.

It is with this scientific understanding that socialists and communists started the work of organising women as a contingent of the working class.

Communist Organising and Women’s Question: the Beginnings

“Anybody who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment”, wrote Marx in a letter to Dr Kugelmann in 1868. “Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex (the ugly ones included)”, he added.

One of the most notable instances of this “feminine ferment” was to be observed in the French revolution. It was the plebeian and semi-proletarian women of Paris who literally started the French Revolution in 1789. They rose up demanding bread, and the women’s question emerged in due course. They were joined by educated women from the upper strata who demanded votes for women and the right of women to hold the highest civilian and military posts in the Republic – that is, the right of women to full political equality with men, and the right to fight and die for the cause of the revolution.

Even with such a glorious backdrop, and the deep theoretical insights of Marx and Engels, it took a slow, long process – and also a fair amount of ideological struggle – for the women’s question to gain, in left politics and organisation, some of the importance it deserves.

Let us begin with the famous clarion call at the end of the Communist Manifesto: “Working Men of the World, Unite”. We are now accustomed to shout “workers of the world...”, but even the 1888 English edition prepared under Engels’ supervision addressed the “working men”. And this despite the fact that women already constituted a growing segment of the working class, and that Marx took careful note of the trend in Capital.

The First International, founded in 1864, was called “International Working Men’s Association”. In 1868 Marx had to assure a correspondent that ‘of course’ women could join the organisation just like men. In another letter he wrote, “In any case ladies cannot complain of the International, for it has elected a lady, Madame [Harriet] Law, to be a member of the General Council”. Marx later proposed a resolution to the General Council, and then also in the 1871 Conference of the International, calling for the “formation of working women’s branches”, or “female branches among the working class”, without however interfering “with the existing or formation of branches composed of both sexes”. The name, however, remained “... Men’s Association”.

At the unity congress at Gotha in 1875 between the Lassallean and the Marxist and semi-Marxist groups in Germany, August Bebel on behalf of the Marxist wing moved a proposal that the party go on record as favouring equal rights for women. This was rejected by the majority, on the traditional ground that women were ‘not prepared’ for the step. However, Bebel’s book Woman and Socialism (1879) proved to be very influential. At the Erfurt (1891) congress of Social-Democracy, which finally adopted a formally Marxist programme, the majority came out in support of women’s rights, particularly the demand for legal equality. Yet the same year, at the second congress of the Second International, the Marxist position was opposed by Emile Vandervelde and some others.

Germany, which was then at the forefront of the socialist workers’ movement, witnessed a bitter struggle between the two trends. While Die Gleichheit (Equality), a women’s paper published by Clara Zetkin eventually reached a circulation of 100,000, the Lassallean wing opposed socialist agitation for the emancipation of women and argued against the growing entrance of women into industry.

In Russia Bolsheviks organised the first International Women’s Day meeting in 1913. The same year, Pravda began regularly publishing a page devoted to questions facing women. A women’s newspaper, Rabotnitsa (Woman Worker), was launched in 1914, with the first issue appearing on International Women’s Day, when the party also organised demonstrations. It was supported financially by women factory workers and distributed by them in the workplaces. It reported on the conditions and struggles of women workers in Russia and abroad, and encouraged women to join in struggle with their male co-workers.

We all know about the eminent roles played by Alexandra Kollontai, Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg, Sylvia and Emmeline Pankhurst and others in fighting for women’s rights including the right to vote, the observance of International Women’s Day and so on; perhaps it is not necessary to go into details here.

The tsar was overthrown by a revolution that began on International Women’s Day in 1917 (we know it as February revolution because by the old Russian calendar 8th March fell in February). On that day women workers of Petrograd decided to strike and demonstrate despite the advice of the local Bolsheviks who feared there would be a massacre. Guided by their proletarian class instincts, they swept aside all objections and began the offensive.

The beginnings thus made reached new heights in the course of and after the great Russian revolution.