Eulogy for a Kommunistka
Why Marxist Feminism? Why now?
Header image from left to right; Thomas Sankara, Kathleen Cleaver, Gerda Lerner, Sojourner Truth, Monique Wittig, Yang Kaihui, Alexandra Kollontai, Maria Mies, Elaine Brown, Francis M. Beal, Denise Oliver-Velez, Inessa Armand.)
Revolutionary movements are riddled with women who have been silenced. Bodies littering the path to revolution, one woman battered, another raped, all silenced. Ghosts of women who have abandoned the struggle as they realized they’ve had no place in it. The death of the Kommunistka represents the death many communist women come to face. Eventually, the men decide we have taken up too much space. Eventually, the Woman’s Question is silenced once more. It takes a Marxist Feminist lens to see the bodies, it takes a Marxist Feminist approach to address the issue.
Alexandra Kollontai was a Marxist Feminist. She was a woman who understood there was a special need to emphasize both economic class and the Woman’s Question. She was a woman who wrote from the context of Imperial Russia in the very early 1900’s, whose only other experience with women’s liberation movements were tied to bourgeoisie aspirations, born from the French Revolution.
With Inessa Armand she created the Kommunistka, meaning “Communist Woman,” a magazine by and for communist women. It was tied to the Zhenotdel, the woman's section of the central committee that of course focused specifically on women’s issues. The magazine, “… asserted that the revolution alone could not completely eradicate gender inequality or the oppression of women within families and society.” It was specifically targeted to poor women, and focused on social revolution. The Zhenotdel, along with the Kommunistka (as it was tied to the Zhenotdel), was ended by Joseph Stalin. It is understood as being directly ended by him, as he believed women’s liberation had already been sufficiently answered, thus women’s liberation was side-lined once more.
Those who deny Marxist Feminism do male chauvinists’ work, and ultimately serve the patriarchy. Shovel in hand they work to hide the evidence of male and cis chauvinism. Revolutionary movements have struggled to properly address the Woman’s Question, this includes socialist and other progressive organizations. Importantly, it is not just that they have failed in the past tense, but that they are failing in the present tense. Importantly, it is not just that they fail in the theoretical sense, but that they fail in a way that materially harms exploited genders. We may learn from their successes, but we must remember the failures. Each represents a person who was harmed by so-called comrades, each represents a person discarded by the movement.
Patriarchy and Gender Hierarchy.
Gender hierarchy abolition simply means abolishing the hierarchical condition of social sex. Sometimes this is just called "gender abolition" but it doesn't mean the removal of personal gender expression. In fact, gender hierarchy suppresses authentic personal gender expression. The hierarchy must be abolished to allow the personal to truly flourish.
Patriarchy is, in general, the exploitation of woman by man. It was formed regionally, slowly over hundreds of years, in almost all civilizations, and according to economic laws of development. The term patriarchy more or less translates to the rule of fathers, this formation goes hand-in-hand with feudalism, and until now has been the only patriarchy meant by historical materialists.
The conditions of feudal patriarchy are not abolished by capitalism in totality, only some of them. The gendered exploitation of women still exists in its new complex commodity form. When simple commodity exchange was inverted by the capitalist mode of production into commodity exchange, all inputs and outputs of production became commodities. This set up the conditions of feudal patriarchy to be abolished along with feudalism itself. Patriarchy then took on a new formation, capitalist patriarchy follows market logic, the logic of exchange. Femininity becomes a commodity, and is embodied in real people, women. This means that the exploitation of femininity is a cultural product of women by men, and constitutes the newest gendered division of labor in the production of life, that being capitalist patriarchy.
All societies marked by the exploitation of man by man have also been marked by the exploitation of women by man. Here, "man" reveals itself in a two-fold way: the first is in the general of all mankind, the second as its opposition to woman, a particular subset of all mankind. Thus this particular social contradiction has set up man the gender opposed to woman as synonymous with all mankind. The real unity of the two as harmonious parts of the whole of mankind is obstructed by this opposition and exploitation of woman by man. Abolition of all forms of patriarchy is therefore a prerequisite condition for the abolition of all exploitation.
Patriarchy today then represents the "boys club" that is formed from the material basis of feudal gender relations by capitalist exploitation of women and femininity, and thus its privileges to the boys club, and the social hierarchy forming social sex. Sex has always been a social relation not an anatomical relation and has always been a hierarchy not a binary. In other terms, “female” and “male” are socially constructed, and not rooted in biology. The boys club privileges existing in society for bourgeois men to exploit femininity exist universally and thus for all classes of men, constituting the first social sex. All the exploited or "other" are contained within the second sex, or exploited genders.
What is a Marxist Feminist?
A Marxist Feminist, put simply, is a person who recognizes that every revolutionary movement has emphasized the special importance of the Women’s Question within the revolutionary movement, while also being unable to adequately address it. Feminism on its own may address the Women’s Question, but is not a revolutionary movement without Marxism. A Marxist Feminist’s position is that the solution is simply the synthesis of the two. It begins from understanding that gender liberation for women and oppressed genders is a pre-condition for a Communist society. However it is not necessarily a pre-condition for Socialist society, and because of this, we lose focus, sight, and become distracted from completing our liberatory goals. Marxist Feminism is the materialist approach to the problem of the patriarchy, and is the necessary theory and practice for the abolition of gender hierarchy.
Marxist Feminists understand that Marxism is about the abolition of all class struggles. Class analysis and class contradictions, in the economic sense, are central, but we must also pay special attention to other classes or quasi-classes. For example, race, colonialism, and gender/social sex all have histories, material realities, and effects. They are all specific, knowable, study-able, and must not be discarded or put to the side for so-called ‘revolutionary’ aspirations—which are not so revolutionary when they repulse half the working class. When we say that Marxism is enough because it includes everything, it does not mean we then say, "I excluded this thing it includes because it's already included." Marxism is enough because its analytical tools enable us to analyze these problems, Feminism is the specific analysis. Marxist Feminism is the lens with which we can identify male and cis chauvinism, it is the methodology to address them when they arise.
Marxist Feminists acknowledge that iterations of Feminism, be it white, liberal, or choice, are inadequate and distortions of a truly liberatory Feminism. We do not deny the white supremacy that has festered in culturally dominant forms of feminism, be it “first wave” or beyond. We do, however, argue that distorters and revisionists of feminism do not denigrate it in totality. That Black Feminists have been present since the first wave, since before the first wave, and beyond. That things are not static, that Feminism is constantly evolving, and that, though it may begin as bourgeois, for example after the French Revolution, it is not eternally damned as such.
Additionally, the proletarian movement began as bourgeois-proletarian class collaboration. It was a historical necessity in France, America, and even in Russia and China where the revolution was already led by the communists before capitalism. Then, if Feminism is foredoomed as bourgeois and therefore reactionary or utopian, the proletarian movement and revolution must be equally foredoomed as utopian. But we reject this. When we emphasize change, we open up the path to correct Leninism, e.g. “The Tasks of the Youth Leagues”. Instead of simply rejecting previous cultures, including the bourgeois one, Lenin advocated for a critical mastery and selection process. “Bourgeois” feminism neatly fits into this process as it was developed by the bourgeoisie and has ripened into the fruits that the proletarian revolution so desperately needs in its nutrient starved anti-woman male chauvinism.
Marxist Feminists know that Feminism is class struggle. It is the answer to the question of women’s liberation, it is a spear headed towards the heart of gender hierarchies. It is the abolition of the mark of ‘woman.’ It is the answer that women of all classes, creeds, and localities stumble upon when they begin to speak about how men treat them. It is not a poison spread by white women, by lesbians, by westerners, by misandrists. It is an authentic desire for liberation found in revolutionaries like Mao Zedong and Thomas Sankara. It is found in autonomous women's groups in the global south, and even if it is not explicitly under the banner of Feminism, the essence is the same. Things are things even if they are not directly named as such, and things are not things even if they are named as such.
You need Marxism.
“Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one.”
-Karl Marx and Frederich Engels (Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, 1850)
Feminism alone is not a revolutionary movement. Feminism is simply the framework and tool to go about answering the question of Women’s liberation. Feminism is incomplete without Marxism. It is an attempt to end one class struggle, but not the attempt to end all class struggles, and therefore can give rise to another.
Previous feminist movements have failed because they lacked Marxist analysis. They searched for answers in reforms, in biology, in liberalism. Importantly, especially in the West, feminism has been focused on culture. Individual interactions as well as broader social engagement are overemphasized, this is because it lacks a Marxist perspective and therefore cannot address patriarchy in the multifaceted way that is required.
When anti-feminist Marxists say Feminism is X, be it bourgeois, euro-centric, white supremacist, in service of imperialism, etc. they have made an assertion with finality. They are insisting upon a tautology. This is un-dialectical and a rejection of the Marxism they claim to defend. These movements failed not because feminism itself is corrupted and untouchable, but because it requires marxism.
Feminism has arisen far more recently and is therefore in an infancy that can only grow to maturity via Marxism. Which, of course, principled Marxists understand. Marxists must consider every proposition only; historically, in connection with others, and in the concrete experience of history. By invoking metaphysical tautologies or finalities these so-called Marxists have abandoned scientific investigation for metaphysical tautologies. Instead of consciously guiding society according to its historical laws of development, which are never final, and are only ever in preparation for another higher motion.
Feminism alone is not enough, and it never has been, just as any liberation struggle is incomplete without Marxism. However, feminism is not static. It is constantly in development. When we support women’s liberation, when we engage in socially revolutionary work, and when we push for the liberation of exploited genders, we are engaging in Feminism. If the issue is with the word, rather than the socially revolutionary practice, then we are engaging in liberal semantics—then we are no better than rose-obsessed Democratic Socialists. We need Marxism.
That is not to say that Feminism is without its faults. Without a Marxist approach, the Woman’s Question falls short in feminist thought. Too often, bio-essentialist thought runs rampant. Instead of understanding the development of female and male as something dialectical, sociological, and historical, we reduce it to gametes and so-called biological differences. In bio-essentialism, we tie ourselves to the mark of ‘Woman’ and/or ‘female’ and therefore we place the site of our oppression in biological and inescapable fact. More importantly, we discard the Trans Women and other exploited genders who are with us in the struggle against the patriarchy. This is something that must be combated everywhere it appears. I address why “One is Not Born a Female” in far more depth here.
Feminism is often criticized as being disjointed, lacking unification and one clear vision. Women, in the bourgeois and populous sense, are a large group of people. However, women should instead be understood as the sub-division of each economic class. Women being considered universally makes it appear as though women of all classes share the same goals as women. This was ultimately a failure of the French feminists who advocated for “sisterhood” in the bourgeois sense to get their little sisters, or proletariat women, to do all of the heavy lifting for them. Ultimately promoting the interests of the bourgeoisie women. Proletariat women had already been in the work force, bourgeois women simply wanted reforms to make it easier for them to enter. This is a concrete historical experience showing that “woman” cannot nor will ever be women. The populous consideration of “woman” is a bourgeois big sister stand-in for all women, and obfuscates the reality of women, multiple sub-classes belonging to each class, sharing only a common history and mark. Conversely we can easily tie parallels to failures of white american suffragettes, or feminists, who betrayed black women in order to advance their own struggle.
These women have only negotiated liberation for their own sub-class of women, rejecting liberation for all women, which may only be achieved via socialist revolution, and instead trading it for liberal and bourgeoisie reforms. This is not and has never been an adequate response to the question of women's liberation. If it is not for all women then it is not proper Feminism.
Moreover, “equality” without revolutionary ideals simply means equality under patriarchy, simply means a re-shifting of the hierarchy. Sometimes it is even posited that a matriarchy is the solution, which is the conclusion of an individual who sees the false categorization of male as legitimate and inherently evil. The scope is too narrow, too selfish, too short-sighted.
Marxism without feminism isn't universally liberatory. Feminism without Marxism is unscientific.
You Need Feminism.
“Feminists are those who dare to break the conspiracy of silence about the oppressive, unequal man-woman relationship and who want to change it.”
-Maria Mies (Patriarchy and Accumulation on the World Scale, 1986)
Calling yourself a Marxist Feminist is an efficient way to bring chauvinists to the surface. As they scowl and spit and curse at you. As they call you a distorter, a bitch, a sensitive liberal. A Marxist may be a feminist even if they do not name themselves as such, but it is no coincidence that those who resist the label of feminist are often plagued by chauvinism. Many Marxists, especially men, will insist that this label is redundant, that is ineffective, that it is warped. These Marxists are not comrades, these Marxists are conspirators against exploited genders.
The critique that Feminism is divisive is commonplace. Chauvinism is commonplace. I often struggle to remain polite when this so-called critique is posited. Feminism alone may be divisive, but Marxist Feminism is not divisive. Men treating women as recruitment tactics, as bait, for other men is divisive. Men beating women is divisive. Men sexually harassing and/or assaulting women is divisive. Transphobia and cis chauvinism is divisive. Male chauvinism is divisive. Marxist Feminism is unifying.
Socialist movements have historically failed to address the chauvinism that permeates within. This is the shadow cast by movements that saw women as comrades, but not people. Worse, this belief system regarding exploited genders is often spontaneous. It is ignored, and therefore it is allowed to fester. At minimum these men are operating on spontaneity, which is a damning enough critique of a so-called communist. However, many men are acting consciously as class traitors in their use of male chauvinism. These lazy opportunists gleefully engage in traitorous behaviors in order to benefit from male chauvinism.
A lack of feminist theory means that you lack the tools to understand why social sex is the gendering of the body, means that you lack the tools to understand what the gendering of the body even does. Too often, Marxists will use the terms man and woman without realizing that the very words signify a power imbalance.
While the Woman’s Question has been acknowledged by Marx, Engels, and revolutionary movements, they have failed to adequately answer it. Indeed, questions surrounding social sex and gender hierarchy, as well as heterosexuality, homosexuality, and gender variance, have been ignored. It is presumed, when it is acknowledged, that women's introduction to the workforce will satisfy this inequality, as she is imagined to then be freed by the shackles that chain her to the domestic sphere.
Marx and Engels texts in specifics are heavily centered on men and the economy as it relates to men. When they do briefly mention Women, it is in the context of the family. Marx wrote significantly less on women, and it was ultimately up to Engels to conduct a fuller investigation and synthesis. Engels directly references one-sided forced monogamy of women as the creation of the woman. In Origins of the Family, he cites it as the “world historical defeat of the female sex.”
However, this ignores the expropriation of productive labor as a site of oppression. Maria Mies in Patriarchy and Accumulation on the World Scale expertly identifies that under their theory, women are reduced to nature, to pre-historicity. By focusing solely on private property, and on men’s labor as the force that allows us to enter history, we ignore the social and planned act of reproduction, especially in the maintenance of life post reproduction. These planned acts become nature, not interaction with nature. In the words of Mies, we are reducing the act of gestation and reproduction to “sheep-like” behavior. This flattens the historical development of the terms female and male, and veers into bio-essentialism. Without a feminist aspect of historical materialism, even Marx and Engels fall from dialectics into reductionism.
Gerda Lerner, in her text The Creation of Patriarchy, hammers this point in further. By citing the source of women’s oppression as private property, one easily concludes that the answer to women’s liberation is the abolition of private property. She goes further, saying, “…the insistence of Marxists that questions of sex relations must be subordinated to questions of class relations, [is] expressed not only theoretically but in practical politics, wherever they had the power to do so.” (p. 27) Moreover, the Woman’s Question has already been subordinated. Marxists do not need to subordinate it further, but rather must link the Women’s Question into the class question.
The incorrect view of private property as the source of women’s oppression results in a rigid and immaterial view of patriarchy. As one concludes that women do not do “men’s work” and therefore are oppressed, one ignores contexts in which this is not the case, for example, Vietnam. In which Women worked alongside men, but were still exploited under gender hierarchy. This rigidity blocks Marxists from approaching the question of patriarchy in a dialectical and scientific way. It is a failure of Marxists to do their due diligence, to meet the burden of investigation required of us.
This notion of private property as the sole source of oppression is key, as it sees the Woman bound up in capitalism. It sees patriarchy as capitalism. This is incorrect. Patriarchy is not specific to capitalism. Patriarchy has taken a specific formation under capitalism, and is a requirement of the capitalist mode of production, but can exist without capitalism. Additionally, historical materialists had no need to distinguish between forms of patriarchy and the content of society prior to capitalism. Feudal patriarchy is what many historical materialists refer to as “patriarchy,” which has now become capitalist patriarchy. We learn from Lerner that there is also slave or ancient patriarchy, though via cross referencing Lerner and Engels we can determine that we should not find a primitive communist patriarchy.
Women cannot be liberated under capitalism, to be sure. The history of bourgeois reforms to women's equality proves this by the fact that it has not birthed a revolution, and yet we see the bourgeois reaction today destroying many of the reforms won in the name of women's liberation. However, the destruction of patriarchy, of gender hierarchy, and of social sex, requires a socialist revolution as well as a cultural and social revolution. Private property does not oppress women, men oppress women. Men have simply used private property to oppress women. The expropriation and extraction of women's productive labor is the site of oppression, it is not done away with simply because capitalism is. We change the mode of production, but not the unequal man-woman relation, not the gender hierarchy and the violence it necessitates and flourishes off of. The very terms man and woman are oppressive and reveal an oppressive hierarchy. If we do not acknowledge this, we do not acknowledge the historical development of men exploiting women, we do not acknowledge the benefits men receive from exploiting women and exploited genders.
Dworkin, flawed as she may be, describes this well in Letters From a Warzone, “Women who were on the Left were there because they cared passionately for freedom. They were abused by men who said that they too cared for freedom, but not for the freedom of women. Women found the courage to include women in every demand for freedom, to make women primary, to make women essential. This angered the men, but more importantly, it left them without an abundance of sexual partners, envelope fillers, organizers, and dishwashers. It also left them without women to bear their (sic) children, a loss insufferable to all men.” (p. 129)
Moreover, even in revolutionary movements, women must “find their place.” They are separated, ostracized, othered, and deemed secondary to the struggle. It is no coincidence that as we side-line the Woman’s Question we end up side-lining Women themselves. Kathleen Cleaver, communication secretary of the Black Panther Party, when asked by the Washington Post what a Woman’s place in the revolution is, responded “No one ever asks what a man’s place in the revolution is.”
A Clarification on Feminism.
“4. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.”
-Alice Walker (In Search Of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose, 1983)
There must be some clarification on Feminism, not as a defense of all of its forms, but as a defense of its scientific form against ardent “anti-feminists.” Those who reject any and all manifestations of the movement. For example, those who say Feminism is inextricably rooted in white supremacy and eurocentrism, despite the Black Abolitionists and Suffragettes who were doing great work on ground zero of the "first wave." This is to not only legitimize the exclusion of Black Women from the movement, but to say that the white feminism is the default, the 'true' manifestation, and the Black Suffragettes movement was merely an imitation of what the white feminists were doing.
This is to segregate women like Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Maria Steward, and Frances E.W. Harper. It is to insult the intelligence of these women. It is to attempt to legitimize their separation from the movement they led and built. First wave feminism was born out of the abolitionist struggle as women were treated unequally in the fight for enslaved people’s freedom. It is true that she-devils such as Susan B. Anthony took the movement and utilized white supremacy to try and achieve equality under the law, but it is incorrect to say that this is the totality of the movement. Importantly, even if this was true of the “first wave” it would be opportunistic to say that the first manifestation in the american context defines feminism as a whole. This is also representative of why Feminism without Marxism is inadequate and encourages the movement to eat itself alive.
It is to reduce the entirety of the modern feminist movement to bad actors like Gloria Steinem. It is to ignore, or perhaps worse, overlook organizations such as the Third World Women’s Alliance, SisterSong, and Combahee River Collective. It is to ignore revolutionary work such as Double Jeopardy, written by Francis M. Beal, which discusses the material reality of being both Black and a Woman (I highly recommend this).
There is also a critique that Feminism is amorphous intentionally, that it is a sort of symbiote, attaching itself to whatever it needs to, claiming control of its host, and discarding when it no longer is advantageous. This is ridiculous, and reveals the ignorance that the accuser grips tightly. There is an obsession with the explicit declaration of “being a Feminist.” One must wonder if these accusers are aware that “first wave” feminism is not the Feminism. If they are aware that the “first wave” feminists were called suffragettes. If they are aware that the “first wave” is simply in reference to the first sustained American effort for Women’s equality, and not the “creation” of Feminism itself. The answer, of course, is no. When we correctly recognize a revolutionaries' passion for Women’s Liberation, for the socially revolutionary practice they engaged in, we are not desecrating their memory by saying that they were a feminist.
Moreover, there are no true waves of Feminism just as there are no waves of communism. It does not take on a unique american content, but rather is feminist in content, national in form. Feminism has materialized in America, but is not American in origin. Feminism is the real movement that abolishes the present state of women.
Interestingly, those who critique feminists who correctly identify feminists of the past as such, incorrectly apply the label of “anti-feminists” to women who were feminists. The legacy and memory of Alexandra Kollontai may be the most bastardized by these male chauvinists and gender traitors. Kollontai has experienced three deaths: the loss of her voice, the loss of her life, and the loss of her legacy. How disgusting to rob a woman of her voice twice. How disgusting to give her an improper eulogy. How disgusting to warp her memory in a way that would surely appall her. How disgusting to destroy her memory for your chauvinist aims. Anti-feminists seek to put a chloroform soaked rag over the mouth of feminists as soon as they are done critiquing distorters. To silence the women once they are done serving their purpose. It is both revolting and representative of “Comrades” who see women as tools but not people, as means to an ends.
What of Revolutionary Movements?
Revolutionary history, much like all of recorded history, treats women as props for men's development. Revolutionary movements are coded as men’s movements and are filled with men with names and histories and motivations, women’s movements are filled with unnamed masses. Women who are given names and identities are often only granted this blessing because of their attachment to a man. For example, it is always “Krupskaya (Lenin's wife)” and never Nadezhda Krupskaya, political theorist and revolutionary. Kim Jong-Suk is often only remembered for saving Kim Il-Sung.
Typically, revolutionary women are nameless and regarded as development for men or a lesson to be learned. "Nikolay Bauman had an affair with another party member's wife." No name, removed by multiple degrees. Is she a person? No, she's the "wife" of "another party member" who the real male revolutionary subject (don't laugh!), bullies to suicide, and then is "a lesson in theory."
Even more often, the women who are given names are sacrificed. Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya is often only considered when we praise her for dying, for not betraying her male comrades, for giving us a story about how angry Stalin became in response to her death. Yang Kaihui is often only known for dying so that Mao may live, for dying so that a man's legacy could continue. There is less emphasis on her contributions, on her revolutionary fervor and dedication, and more emphasis on the man that lived in her place.
Even when the men themselves, for example Mao, consider women like Yang to be heroes who should be revered, modern communist men treat them as footnotes. Each woman is treated as a stepping stone through the increasingly chauvinist lens that revolutionary history is viewed through. Each woman becomes a means for a man to self actualize, each woman becomes a part of him, absorbed, dissolved, consumed. For many men, a woman's role in the revolution is to be dissolved by any means necessary.
Talia Bhatt in her article, “Degendering and Regendering,” refers to this phenomena as epistemicide. She directly references the degendering of trans women as the process of “locking-out… transfems from all the processes of knowledge-production about us, resulting in a culture where we are spoken of frequently, but rarely heard…” Epistemicide is a commonly used weapon against trans women specifically via degendering and silencing, in this case we can see epistemicide as the killing of the knowledge of women as people generally. Where women are spoken of, but rarely heard.
But what of material gains and losses for women in post-socialist revolution contexts? Women in the USSR were encouraged to enter the “productive” workforce. It was imagined that she would be able to free herself and realize liberation from the patriarchy via wage labor. Via engaging in what was considered to be “men’s work.” Indeed, in 1930, Stalin considered women to now be fully liberated, thus ending the “distracting” focus on the Woman’s Question. This included reducing some of the rights women had gained under past family codes. While we have already seen the fate of women like Alexandria Kollontai, we should imagine the material reality of the average woman in the USSR.
Galina has three children, and is pregnant with her fourth. The USSR emphasizes pregnancy as a woman’s patriotic duty, and her husband does not shy away from reminding her of this. She works in the factory five days a week, seven hours a day. When she is home she is tasked with taking care of the children and is chained to the domestic sphere. She cannot go out and participate in politics as her husband does, she has no time. Her neighbor, Lyudmila, is being beaten by her husband. She knows this because she can hear him, drunk and angry, through the wall that they share. Soviet women are not surprised by domestic violence, but nobody likes to speak about it, nobody likes to admit that there is still work to be done.
Divorce is difficult and she risks social stigma as well as losing out on promotions even if she could secure one. It is important to note that women after the 1918 laws but before 1936 had equal right of no fault divorce. The family code of 1936 brought back many elements of what Lenin, in “Speech to the First All-Russia Congress of Working Women,” called divorce proceedings, “that source of bourgeois degradation, repression and humiliation” to women.
In quiet moments, the women sit and wonder if the revolution truly spelled freedom for them. The Tsar was overthrown, but there is still a cruel dictator inside of their homes. In the words of Aleksandra Artyukhina, in her letter “To The Highest Level” just 13 days after the Zhenotdel was disbanded, “In terms of everyday life, women’s affairs are terrible. All women workers, especially those in the Zhenotdel, say this is so.” Neither Socialism nor capitalism have abolished patriarchy, but rather abolished it into a new form. All of the old forms of patriarchy that have been abolished have given rise to new forms to fill in the gaps left by a society without enough prosperity to prevent them.
This is yet another one of Marxist men’s failures to apply commonly understood concepts to the Woman’s Question. It is understood that the abolition of wage slavery alone is not liberating, despite this being a goal of socialist revolution. So, while it is true that while women must enter the work-force equally to men, they are not starting on equal footing. Reforms are still required in all aspects of society to rid it of its backward forms of sex exploitation.
Maria Mies in her text Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale lays out how the USSR failed to adequately answer the Woman’s Question. It failed to properly end the expropriation of women’s reproductive labor. While there were some attempts to socialize child care, it ultimately failed because families identified that it was easier and cheaper to have reproductive labor done in the home. Instead of sharing this burden, women were chained to the domestic sphere once more.
Women were expected to do all of the reproductive labor, as well as engage in wage labor. While the state, media, and sources of propaganda encouraged and even instructed men and children to join in on domestic labor, pre-revolution patriarchal remnants of male chauvinism remained. In the USSR’s context, Tsarist male chauvinism. This resulted in overworked women who were unable to participate in politics in the ways men were. Importantly, this matches the state of Women in Capitalism today. Even in dual income households, women do a majority of the reproductive labor.
Moreover, Mies says, “…the Soviet Union has declared that it is women’s ‘patriotic duty’ to bear more children… women have had practically no say in the formulation of these policies. It is the state which regulates and controls their childbearing capacity.” (p. 185) As women have less involvement in politics, because the unequal man-woman relationship still exists, we run the risk of the state once more becoming a patriarch over women. Despite the change in the economy, the social revolution's failure to occur allows for patriarchy to shift and take on a new form for its new context.
Imagine the betrayal a woman must feel as she comes to realize the revolution that brought her husband salvation will only bring her more pain. That the revolution she fought for, killed for, lived for, will reward her with long days at work and longer days at home. What sort of demoralization must occur inside of the woman who worked on things like the Kommunistka, who was discarded when it was decided that women’s issues have been discussed for long enough.
While China made better strides towards women’s emancipation than the USSR, the best revolutionary movement can be found in Burkina Faso. Without a doubt, nobody has focused on the Woman’s Question better. We can see what a revolutionary movement might look like using a Marxist Feminist lens here. I don’t know that there is any revolutionary quite like Sankara. I don’t know what the world would look like if only he had more time, but I know that he didn’t have nearly enough of it. In his book, Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle, he says, “…inequality can be done away with only by establishing a new society, where men and women will enjoy equal rights, resulting from an upheaval in the means of production and in all social relations.” (p. 13) He understood that the Women’s Question required specific and focused attention. He understood that women’s liberation lied in revolution, and that it was a necessary component of it.
Under Sankara, Burkina Faso saw exponential growth and development across the board, and so did the rights of Women. Sankara did not forget Women once he claimed control of Burkina Faso. He did not discard the stereotypical Woman with the gun and the baby when he no longer needed her fire-power. Men were pushed to engage in housework, Women's rights were expanded and had express focus put on them, and he ensured Women had a place in politics by requiring 5 Women ministers at all times. While women can of course be gender traitors, this does clearly attempt to ensure that women had a say in the construction of their lives and government.
While Thomas Sankara may not have explicitly called himself a Marxist Feminist, we know that he was a Marxist, and we know he fought for Women’s liberation explicitly. Sankara was a disciplined leader that instituted a militant line on women's liberation, and was achieving the goals of proletarian feminism. He is therefore a scientific feminist, likewise he is a marxist and scientific socialist. Therefore he is a marxist feminist.
Feminism is simply a framework and a tool. It is the approach to the liberation of Women and exploited genders. Feminism is social revolutionary work towards gender liberation, and those who engage in that work are feminists even if they are not explicitly named as such. Sankara is a perfect example of how socialist revolutions are capable of liberating women, if only special attention is paid to the need for a social revolution. If only we are Marxist Feminists.
An American History of Chauvinism.
“To die for the revolution is a oneshot deal; to live for the revolution means taking on the more difficult commitment of changing our day-to-day life patterns.”
-Francis M. Beal (Black Women's Manifesto; Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female, 1969)
Historically we have seen chauvinism make membership in movements for Women difficult. This is not specific just to socialist organizations, but as Marxists, we do have a higher standard of conduct. For example, the “first wave” of American Feminism being born out of Women’s alienation from their participation in the abolitionist movement. Or, Women participating in the anti-war movement, and ultimately leaving.
Barbara L. Tischler lays this out in “Antiwar Activism and Emerging Feminism in the Late 1960s,” in which she describes Women's alienation from these movements. This was largely because women’s issues were regarded as unimportant or invaluable because they did not involve men, and therefore were discarded. She also references the creation of theory and texts such as the S.C.U.M Manifesto, which is a transphobic piece of so-called feminist literature. This emphasizes the need for Marxist Feminism, as we see that Feminism alone can be reduced to bio-essentialism. It also emphasizes the need for Feminism, as concerns involving the patriarchy are so routinely and easily discarded by movements that deem them unimportant. Cis chauvinism must be combatted as well, but it requires knowledge of feminist and TransFeminist theory to do so adequately.
Chauvinism has run rampant in nearly all socialist movement’s. In PLP: A Critique, reprinted in 1969, a damning allegation is levied, “PL[P]’s active opposition to the building of an autonomous women’s movement reveals not only its contempt for the oppression of women as a whole, but also its lack of flexibility in dealing with new objective conditions, for the women’s movement exists and is growing all over the country because people have a need for it.” A focus on the Woman’s Question is paramount in ensuring that we adequately handle it. Socialist movements insistence that this is divisive or distracting do more damage than good, and reveal a misunderstanding about what the abolition of all class struggles really means.
SDS: New Left Notes, Vol. 5, No. 1, published in 1969, outlines that organizations’ own struggle with male chauvinism within the party. The fifth page describes it clearly, “A quote from an issue of The RAT (NY SDS’s subterranean news) reads: ‘Last time we ran a naked chick on the cover we temporarily doubled our circulation. Thought we’d do it again.’” It later discusses that the PPNC and RSU both were circulating pamphlets that depicted a woman lifting her shirt. Need I enumerate all the ways that this shows an absolute hatred and contempt for their female comrades? Need I enumerate all the ways that this surely left these women disgusted, alienated, and upset? Should we be surprised when women split? When women leave our parties appalled by the behavior of so-called comrades who can’t think beyond economic class? Who levy patriarchy and the patriarchal violence of the porn industry to “temporarily double… [their] circulation.”
Many will cite an interview with Elaine Brown, former chairwoman of the Black Panther Party, as proof that Feminism is bourgeoisie, and that it must be discarded for the broader socialist movement. In this interview Brown rejects a journalists implication that the Black Panther Party was chauvinist, both highlighting that men were in the kitchen, and that the question itself is insulting and redundant.
Those who wield this interview like a weapon have never read the name Regina Davis, their eyes have never fixed on the words that often follow: “Broken jaw,” “hospitalized,” “reprimanded.” Davis publicly reprimanded a Panther who did not complete an assignment, unfortunately for her, that Panther was a man. Huey P. Newton approved the beating of Regina Davis. She was beaten so badly that she was hospitalized, her jaw was broken, and she received no apologies.
I wonder if Davis, who was described as “the school” by Brown, thought of her students as she was beaten. If Davis, who would put in 15 hour weeks, thought of the recovery time she was ‘rewarded’ with. If Davis, who stepped up to fill Ericka Huggins role, would have expected that she would have been “given” to the men of the party. If Davis, who gave her soul to the party had ever anticipated that she would know what a broken jaw would feel like, and if she would have ever expected that it would come from the hands of her comrades. Newton sided with the men, and Elaine Brown cites this incident as one of the aggravating factors that made her leave the party.
Later, in Elaine Brown’s memoir, A Taste Of Power, she is clear that her womanhood is also a source of oppression. “The feminists were right. The value of my life had been obliterated as much by being female as by being black and poor. Racism and sexism in America were equal partners in my oppression. Even men who were themselves oppressed wanted power over women.” (p. 367) Here she affirms the truth that Marxist Feminists hold, that we must pay attention to more than just class. That classes such as race and gender are sources of oppression, and that the intersection of these classes or quasi-classes affects the individuals material reality. She writes, “Something awful was not only driving a dangerous wedge between Sisters and Brothers, it was attacking the very foundation of the party.” (p. 445)
Some will be confused by this. How can Elaine Brown reject the interviewers implication that the Black Panther Party was chauvinist in an interview, but agree that feminists were right in her memoir? How can she issue such a strong retort, yet give such a clear example of how chauvinism manifests? It’s because the Black Panther Party wasn’t chauvinist. A chapter may have issues with chauvinism during its decay and ultimate end, but that does not mean that it is chauvinist in totality, and it does not mean that it should be discarded because of these issues. The Black Panther Party’s contributions, influence, and impact cannot be diminished or discarded. Moreover, the interviewer did not ask about Davis or even Eldridge Cleaver, she asked about who was in the kitchen. This ultimately reveals her as a bad faith actor. She is not treating this discussion with the nuance it deserves, and Brown correctly identifies her as someone trying to smear the legacy of the party.
This does not mean that they did not have any issues at all, and it does not mean that Regina Davis didn’t experience real violence which was the direct result of chauvinism. It also doesn’t mean that there were not missed opportunities to combat chauvinism along the way. This explicit chauvinism was marked by a general decline, Brown describes this as the parties drift from revolutionary aspirations. Chauvinism does not have to define a party, but it can help kill it. As Elaine Brown herself said, “The pain [of leaving the BPP] was entwined in the complexity, for I loved the Black Panther Party.” (p. 459)
Indeed, patriarchy may cause men to slip into reactionary behaviors, but this does not make them bad men. We all are capable of holding reactionary positions and ideals because we are conditioned to. Nothing is static, nothing is set, everything is capable of development and evolution, and a presence of chauvinism does not damn one as a chauvinist.
Those who wield Elaine Brown’s interview like a weapon, those who do not know Regina Davis’ name, those who refuse to engage in this discussion with the nuance it requires, are those who want women to be silent. It is not because they truly believe the Black Panther Party had no room to grow in terms of combatting chauvinism, but it is because they want women to be silent. It is not because they believe Elaine Brown or Regina Davis had a voice, but because they want women to be silent. They want us to be silent about the unequal man-woman relationship, as well as the violence that can and does come from it.
We can see what a Marxist Feminist lens did for an organization at the time. Denise Oliver-Velez, a Black organizer and former member of the Black Panther Party and The Young Lords, exemplifies this. In an interview with Black Women Radicals, and an article by Jamiee A. Swift titled “‘Machismo Will Never Be Fucking Revolutionary’: On The Radical Rebelliousness of Denise Oliver-Velez,” she describes the process of combatting male chauvinism specifically within The Young Lords.
Initially, The Young Lords saw Machismo as something that could be revolutionary as they aimed for Women’s equality. However, as Oliver-Velez and others began their own political education, focusing on Women in liberation movements, they became explicitly dissatisfied with the inner workings of The Young Lords New York chapter. This must be emphasized, as this specific focus on Women and their contributions across time and space allowed them to see the gaps in their organizations effort. It allowed them to adequately combat chauvinism.
She says, “…the [Lords] wanted to make an alliance with a nationalist group that treated women, as far as women were concerned, very poorly. We got together… we demoted the entire Central Committee and we set up a list of demands. One that the program and platform of the organization be changed because said––and it was obviously written by a man [Laughs]––that ‘machismo was revolutionary.’ We were like, ‘That is an oxymoron. Machismo will never be fucking revolutionary.’ [Laughs] We had that changed. We demanded there be women on the Central Committee in leadership and the Central Staff… I got put on the Central Committee and a number of women were made leaders of different ministries. Later, another woman was put on the Central Committee.”
She also emphasized the importance of Women writing for The Young Lords paper, Palante, and that Women’s issues be a focal point in its topics. These changes were all implemented, and while this iteration of The Young Lords did ultimately end, chauvinism did not play a central role. Though we must remember women who may have left the party before its reforms due to the chauvinism that had yet gone unaddressed. It is also important to note that Oliver-Velez then went on to join the Black Panther Party, further hammering in the point that the BPP was not chauvinist.
All of this is to say that movements in the past have failed, and succeeded, at addressing male chauvinism. That we should learn from these movements and treat these conversations with the nuance that it deserves. That we should not alienate women from our ranks and ensure that our organizations are a safe place for all. While there have been successes, we must also take time to remember the women who have been affected by the male chauvinism that has long permeated revolutionary movements and organizations. These are women who have experienced real harms, physical and/or psychological, and have been treated as collateral damage for far too long.
A Contemporary Look at Male Chauvinism.
“In every male languishes the soul of a feudal lord, a male chauvinist, which must be destroyed.”
-Thomas Sankara (Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle, 1990)
We have not learned. Big tent socialist organizations in the North American context have become institutions of rape. Central committees have become methods and means to silence victims. Leadership roles become brotherhoods that become sex abuse rings. Many godless Marxists take cues from catholicism, worshipping under the same idol of male chauvinism and rape. How many victims can we keep silent, how much time can we buy off of the backs of the brutalized?
PSL seems to be a rising star, pushing candidates like Claudia De La Cruz, organizing protests, and flyer-ing all around the country. PSL is also an institution of rape. Stephen Power’s is PSL’s only visible rapist. Griselda Aclarado (pseudonym) alleged that Power’s coerced her into a sex act and gave her a sexually transmitted disease. During an internal investigation they concluded that Powers did not rape Aclarado. During this investigation, conducted internally and by 13 women, they doxxed the victim repeatedly and allowed Power’s to engage in social events with at least one person on the investigatory committee. They also ostracized and effectively expelled a transgender man because he critiqued the investigation. For more information, the article “PSL President Candidate Claudia De la Cruz Responds to Infamous Steven Powers Case” goes in depth. There is also an alleged abuser who has been transferred from PSL Chicago to PSL Atlanta. Multiple PSL branches have also been accused of rampant transphobia and cis chauvinism.
PSL accused Alcarado of racist and erratic behavior. Alcarado has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, something PSL ignores in the pursuit of portraying her as hysterical and out of control. PSL’s inclusion of her anti-blackness is revolting as it weaponizes it for their own gain, to defend a white male rapist. Stephen Powers is a rapist. He did not rape Alcarado as punishment for her anti-blackness. He did not rape Alcarado because she wasn’t a good woman. He did not rape Alcarado because she deserved it. Rape is not a punishment for racism. Rapists rape good people, bad people, pretty people, ugly people. A rapist is a rapist is a rapist. Stephen Powers did not crucify the male chauvinist that languishes inside of him, and PSL helped that chauvinist take the helm. Stephen Powers, and PSL, serve the male chauvinists inside of them before they serve their comrades. It does not matter if 13 women (gender traitors) absolved him, it does not matter if he is a good son or a good brother or a good friend. Stephen Powers is a rapist, is a rapist, is a rapist.
RCA/RCI/IMT/CMI (possibly going by another new acronym) is a long standing trotskyist organization. One that specializes in newspapers, flyer-ing, and sticker-ing. The organization is very visible, their victims are not. In June of 2022, an open letter was issued. Three occurrences of sexual abuse, three cover-ups. After this letter was issued, top officials in the Canadian chapter retaliated, slandering the issuant as an enemy. In 2023, Alex Grant, top official of the RCI in Canada was quietly expelled. He is a sexual abuser.
Violet (anonymized), former member of the Chicago chapter, recounts her experience in “The Cult-Building Tendency,” by J. Katsfoter. When she asked to address the cover-up that had occurred in Canada, along with five other members, they were doxxed. Their full names were sent out in a national letter, calling them the “Chicago Clique” and “demanding [they] repent for discussing the scandal when [they] had been told not to.” When I myself had confronted an IMT member in Chicago about their handling of abuse, specifically in Chicago, I was given a puzzling reply. I was told that they “immediately expelled him,” which is inconsistent with the experience that Violet shares. It is possible, then, that there was another sexual predator in the Chicago chapter who was “immediately expelled,” quietly ejected like Alex Grant. A cult of silence controls RCA. A cult of silence allows a culture of sexual abuse to permeate and infest every corner of the organization.
DSA proudly identifies itself as the largest socialist organization in America. One would think that all of that structure, membership, and organizational power would result in a rigorous system for preventing and handling abuse. Instead, it has manifested in a plethora of allegations and cover-ups. Sexual misconduct and abuse festers in this organization, and few speak of it.
This is a rampant issue within the organization. RL Stephens is an alleged rapist, and the beneficiary of a DSA cover-up back in 2017. Nathan Fischer is an alleged stalker, and the beneficiary of a DSA cover-up back in 2019. DSA didn’t even have a method of addressing misconduct until 2017, and once they had it, they insisted they were not obligated to use it. Allegedly, the Cincinnati chapter’s entire executive committee stepped down after it was discovered they were in a polycule with an individual accused of misconduct. The grievance officer was in the polycule as well, this was in 2021.
I must highlight that these are the stories we do know. These are the stories that have slipped out, that have revealed themselves, that have broken free of the chains of silence and repression. These are the names and stories that we have been granted access to. When we see how abuse is handled in public settings, one can only imagine how many exploited genders have been further brutalized in silence.
These organizations have taken cues from cops and Catholics, both known for covering up abuse, both known for putting pillows over pistols, for pulling the trigger when it’s muffled. Silent killers who specialize in cover-ups and victims that never were. Internal investigations for white men who were already decided to be innocent before committees first convened. Internal investigations designed to ritualistically abuse the victims that choose to be loud. Punishing them for speaking up, punishing them for making them look bad. What good is an organization that treats raped and abused women like collateral damage? What good are comrades who take on the shapes of ravenous bourgeoisie pigs, treating bodies like something to be taken, something to be possessed.
Socialist organizations have become methods of maintaining and obtaining women to abuse. They have become viper dens that trade in the flesh of their members. There is a specter of rape that haunts our organizations, and treating it like something to be “gotten over” rather than flayed and crucified is a part of the problem. This blight is killing the fruits of revolution. This blight is raping our comrades. It becomes near impossible to feel solidarity with communist men when “comrade” has taken on a gendered layer. When men see you as a sexual object first, bitch second, and comrade third. Third, if you’re lucky. Third, if you’re useful. Third, if they’re feeling generous.
A culture of male and cis chauvinism permeates communist spaces, and it makes them inhospitable to those of exploited genders who are not traitors. Men who position communist women as sexually valuable because they agree with said men. Men who sexually harass women and treat organizational activities and protests as speed dating. Men who use words like bitch, whore, slut, and more. Men who watch porn and engage with the sex trade. Men who make jokes about women with a history of transition and non-binary people. Men who other, ostracize, and abuse women who engage in self-actualizing behaviors, e.g. lesbian and trans women. Men who tell any people who push back against this behavior that they are sensitive, or divisive, or doing fed-work.
Perhaps worse are organizations that paint themselves as allies, as feminists. Who slap the label of material feminism on their misogyny and believe it absolves them. Organizations that treat abuse as opportunities to prove how great they really are, because they do not immediately side with the abuser. As though this is deserving of a trophy, as though her pain was a means to an end. A method of proving their legitimacy, ultimately denying the woman her agency and personhood once more. Men who take on feminist language to silence and abuse women. Men who take on feminist language to posit themselves as communists first, and people second. Men who dehumanize women using communist language and buzz words to further depersonalize the killing of the revolutionary spirit within said woman.
Chauvinism does not have to define a movement, but it can and does kill it.
You Need Marxist Feminism.
When we turn a blind eye to the assault, to the rape, to the abuse, to the chauvinism, we protect the offenders. When we refuse to use a Marxist Feminist lens, we fail our values as Marxists. Marxism that centers men, that protects men, that worships men's political engagement, and encourages the great man aspirations that so many men hold, is not Marxism. It is a political larp for boys and men who want to feel big and strong and powerful and in control. It is men who want to restructure the hierarchy. When we focus solely on class, we leave struggles on the table. We allow hierarchies to shift.
We do not apply the same criticisms to other forms of Marxism. It is often a given to focus specifically on theories that center on race, colonialism, imperialism, and so on. We understand that these things must be given a specific focus, because historically they have been overlooked. Especially by white americans, especially by chauvinists. How could we possibly combat this chauvinism, then, without learning? Yet, when it comes time to learn about Feminism, many shy away or outright refuse. How can we properly combat cis and male chauvinism without applying a Marxist Feminist lens? How can we give proper eulogies to the women who have been discarded by our movement if we cannot even admit that they exist?
Many communist men have treated their women comrades as objects and tools. Wombs to birth the next generation of revolutionaries, hands to cook food, cunts to derive pleasure, mechanisms to sustain revolutionary movements. When the men succeed, or have tried for long enough, the women are discarded. They are beaten, abused, raped, and killed. Marxism that centers men, men’s work, men’s feelings, and their great man aspirations is no Marxism at all.
The death of the Kommunistka is a death many communist women have experienced. Worse, it is a death that many refuse to acknowledge. Bodies are piling up within our walls, and we must do something. The pestilence will not go away if you look away. It will not go away if you say that it is divisive. Death is divisive, and you will not build a movement on the bodies of the forgotten and discarded. You will not build a movement on collateral damage. We have looked the other way for long enough. You need Marxist Feminism, you need to open your eyes.
Many thanks to editor and consultant Ailing Bai (tagged ) and to all of the proof-readers who helped along the way! (Voice over for both this and the updated voice over for Liberal Feminism and the Commodification of the Cunt is on the way!)
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