No Woman, No Revolution, Part 0
Introduction
to “No Woman, No Revolution”
The
efforts of women of the privileged classes to acquire rights that were
increasingly being gained by the male members of their class, notably the right
to own property and the right to vote, are called feminism.
This
struggle existed even under feudalism, and it grew stronger as the bourgeois
class began to assert itself and to become hegemonic. The feminists put forward
reformist demands that bourgeois society was able, and often willing, to
concede to bourgeois women.
This
course, “No Woman, No Revolution”, is not designed to present a full history
of feminism, but rather to pick up the story of feminism at the point where
contradiction arises between bourgeois feminism and the interests of the women
of the proletarian class.
This
contradiction manifested itself in the second half of the nineteenth century,
as a consequence of the proletarian revolutionary movements associated in the
first place with Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. It is found, not only in the
realm of theory, but also in the world of practice, notably in the First and
Second Internationals.
This course has been worked
on for many years. It now presents a strong view of the historical development
of revolutionary thought about women, and of revolutionary organisation among
women, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.
The roots of the course are
in the last decade of Karl Marx’s life. The German Social Democratic Party was
founded in 1875, Bebel published his “Women and Socialism” in 1879, and Marx
was studying Morgan’s “Ancient Society” prior to his death in 1883. Engels took
up Marx’s manuscript and worked it into a book, “The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and The State”, published in 1884, which is our first and
still our greatest text.
The course therefore follows
the pioneering development of thought about women and revolution within the
parties of the proletarian interest, from the time of Karl Marx, who died in
1883; Frederick Engels, who survived Marx by 12 years until 1895; and Clara
Zetkin, who was born in 1857, was already active in the labour movement in 1874
(the year that Charlotte Maxeke was born) at the age of 17. Zetkin lived until
1933.
It then proceeds via the work
of Rosa Luxemburg and Alexandra Kollontai, to a high point with Vladimir Lenin,
and then to the setback (for women) that was the 3rd Congress of the
Third International (the Comintern).
The course then picks up the
story in South Africa, where in the same decade that saw the foundation of the
ANC, the ICU and the CPSA, Charlotte Maxeke [pictured above] established the
Bantu Women’s League in 1918, the fore-runner of many subsequent liberatory and
revolutionary women’s organisations.
The course problematises the
relationship between attempts to found a mass-membership, dedicated women’s
organisation in South Africa, led by the working women; and the countervailing determination
of the liberation movement, the ANC, and its Women’s League, to tolerate no potential
rival.
The course examines
theoretical works dealing with structure and structurelessness, gender and
patriarchy, and the close relationship between bourgeois feminism and bourgeois
post-modernist philosophy.
The course finishes with
writings from the SACP (Jenny Schreiner and Blade Nzimande) and speeches from
the ANC (Jacob Zuma).
International Woman’s Day (8th of March each year) was proposed by Clara Zetkin, a contemporary and
comrade of Alexandra Kollontai, at
the Second International Women's Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in
1910. The first International Women’s Day was observed in 1911.
Feminism had a considerable
history by that time. In 1910 the campaign for votes for women was at its
height in some countries. But the bourgeois feminism of those days was being
challenged by the revolutionaries, as it still is today. This course, “No
Woman, No Revolution”, is motivated by revolutionary considerations like those
of Zetkin and Kollontai.
A successful revolution that
mobilised only half of the available support would be inconceivable. The half
of the population that is female must be as fully involved in any revolution as
the men are, or else there will be no revolution. Our series is designed to
problematise the question of women as a force in South Africa’s revolution, in
the specific conditions pertaining in this year of 2015. It will focus on the
necessity of organising working women as a mass.
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To download the full No Woman, No Revolution course in
PDF files, please click here
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