Good article. In more recent history, the Industrial Revolution
played a major role in the separation and subjugation of women. But
even in the development of the American Empire, families practiced
equality. Extended families lived in close proximity to both share
the grueling tasks needed to survive, but also for purposes of
defense. Each member had their role, and each role was important for
the families success. Most early Americans lived close to the ground.
They were farmers, hunters and laborers who worked the land. When a
barn needed raising, or a church needed building or a crop was
threatened by storms, the people knew their roles, and they joined
together in self preservation.
In short, the People had only themselves to turn to for survival.
This is not America today.
Today we have moved away from the self-reliant extended family to a
nuclear family, to a self-serving individual society. And in so
doing, we have given away many of the tasks we once performed within
our "family". One obvious change has been the role of women. Once
the backbone of the family, baring and raising the children, keeping a
safe home, working the family gardens, sharing information and
training within the extended family and the community. Men's role
gained in importance as money became the glue that kept families
together. Women's role began to become subservient to that of men.
As we changed from rural to industrial to whatever we call today, we
have given away our personal freedom without ever understanding that
it is gone. We now are controlled by the needs of our new Master, the
International Corporations. We moved toward the cities, where the
factories were built. We moved to the suburbs when the cities became
too dangerous, dirty and expensive, and mass transportation became
accessible.
Without writing a book, we no longer have access to our nation's
Oligarchy. Back in pre-industrial days, any man who was strong,
healthy and lucky, could carve out a farm or ranch and, with good
weather, rise up to join the Landed Gentry and become accepted into
the Ruling Class. Today, few are allowed into that 1% club. Even
many who are highly successful are not given a seat. The day of
Nations is coming to an end. We are moving into the world of
Corporate Empires. For over 200 years the groundwork has been laid.
Now the move away from Nations is becoming a mad dash. We are
behaving like ants whose anthill has been turned inside out by the
plow, rushing in all directions, trying to make sense out of something
we have no control over.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/28/18, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
https://themilitant.com/2018/10/27/myth-of-womens-inferiority-is-rooted-in-rise-of-class-society/
Books of the Month
Myth of women’s inferiority is rooted in rise of class society
Vol. 82/No. 41
November 5, 2018
Myth of women’s inferiority is rooted in rise of class society
Maxi Luna/Téla
Buenos Aires, Argentina, protest March 8 demanding legalization of
abortion. “Inequality of the sexes has marked class society from its
very inception several thousand years ago,” wrote Evelyn Reed, and
“perpetuated by the system of private property, the state, and the church.”
Below is an excerpt from Problems of Women’s Liberation by Evelyn Reed,
one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for October. In speeches and
articles, Reed (1905-1979), a leader of the Socialist Workers Party,
explores the economic and social roots of women’s oppression from
prehistoric society to modern capitalism. She explains why the
oppression of women is a result of specific property relations, not
relations between sexes, and points the road forward toward women’s
emancipation. Copyright © 1969 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by
permission.
BY EVELYN REED
One of the conspicuous features of capitalism, and of class society in
general, is the inequality of the sexes. Men are the masters in
economic, cultural, political, and intellectual life, while women play a
subordinate and even submissive role. Only in recent years have women
come out of the kitchens and nurseries to challenge men’s monopoly. But
the essential inequality still remains.
This inequality of the sexes has marked class society from its very
inception several thousand years ago, and has persisted throughout its
three main stages: chattel slavery, feudalism, and capitalism. For this
reason class society is aptly characterized as male dominated. This
domination has been upheld and perpetuated by the system of private
property, the state, the church and the form of family that served men’s
interests.
On the basis of this historical situation, certain false claims
regarding the social superiority of the male sex have been propagated.
It is often set forth as an immutable axiom that men are socially
superior because they are naturally superior. Male supremacy, according
to this myth, is not a social phenomenon at a particular stage of
history, but a natural law. Men, it is claimed, are endowed by nature
with superior physical and mental attributes.
An equivalent myth about women has been propagated to support this
claim. It is set forth as an equally immutable axiom that women are
socially inferior because they are naturally inferior to men. And what
is the proof? They are the mothers! Nature, it is claimed, has condemned
the female sex to an inferior status.
This is a falsification of natural and social history. It is not nature
but class society which lowered women and elevated men. Men won their
social supremacy in struggle against and conquest over the women. But
this sexual struggle was part and parcel of a great social struggle —
the overturn of primitive society and the institution of class society.
Women’s inferiority is the product of a social system which has produced
and fostered innumerable other inequalities, inferiorities,
discriminations, and degradations. …
It is not nature but class society which robbed women of their right to
participate in the higher functions of society and placed the primary
emphasis upon their animal functions of maternity. And this robbery was
perpetrated through a twofold myth. On the one side, motherhood is
represented as a biological affliction arising out of the maternal
organs of women. Alongside this vulgar materialism, motherhood is
represented as being something almost mystical. To console women for
their status as second-class citizens, mothers are sanctified, endowed
with halos and blessed with special “instincts,” feelings and knowledge
forever beyond the comprehension of men. Sanctity and degradation are
simply two sides of the same coin of the social robbery of women under
class society.
But class society did not always exist; it is only a few thousand years
old. Men were not always the superior sex, for they were not always the
industrial, intellectual, and cultural leaders. Quite the contrary. In
primitive society, where women were neither sanctified nor degraded, it
was the women who were the social and cultural leaders.
Primitive society was organized as a matriarchy which, as indicated by
its very name, was a system where women, not men, were the leaders and
organizers. But the distinction between the two social systems goes
beyond this reversal of the leadership role of the two sexes. The
leadership of women in primitive society was not founded upon the
dispossession of the men. On the contrary, primitive society knew no
social inequalities, inferiorities, or discriminations of any kind.
Primitive society was completely equalitarian. In fact, it was through
the leadership of the women that the men were brought forward out of a
more backward condition into a higher social and cultural role.
In this early society maternity, far from being an affliction or a badge
of inferiority, was regarded as a great natural endowment. Motherhood
invested women with power and prestige — and there were very good
reasons for this.
Humanity arose out of the animal kingdom. Nature had endowed only one of
the sexes — the female sex — with the organs and functions of maternity.
This biological endowment provided the natural bridge to humanity. … It
was the female of the species who had the care and responsibility of
feeding, tending, and protecting the young.
However, as Marx and Engels have demonstrated, all societies both past
and present are founded upon labor. Thus, it was not simply the capacity
of women to give birth that played the decisive role, for all female
animals also give birth. What was decisive for the human species was the
fact that maternity led to labor — and it was in the fusion of maternity
and labor that the first human social system was founded.
It was the mothers who first took the road of labor, and by the same
token blazed the trail toward humanity. It was the mothers who became
the chief producers; the workers and farmers; the leaders in scientific,
intellectual and cultural life. And they became all this precisely
because they were the mothers, and in the beginning maternity was fused
with labor. This fusion still remains in the languages of primitive
peoples, where the term for “mother” is identical with
“producer-procreatrix.”
We do not draw the conclusion from this that women are thereby naturally
the superior sex. Each sex arose out of natural evolution, and each
played its specific and indispensable role. However, if we use the same
yardstick for women of the past as is used for men today — social
leadership — then we must say that women were the leaders in society
long before men, and for a far longer stretch of time.
In This Issue
Front Page Articles •Build the unions! Working people need our own party!
•Back striking hotel workers: ‘One job ought to be enough’
•Demand amnesty for all immigrants in the US!
•‘The power of workers is in their sticking together’
•Calif. Walmart cashiers win victory in fight for right to sit while at
work
•Capitalist rulers in Mideast step up rivalry after killing of Khashoggi
Feature Articles •Honduras immigrant caravan shows depth of capitalist
crisis
Also In This Issue •Oppose the Jew-hatred of UK Labour Party leaders
•US, Chinese rulers compete for influence and markets
•‘IS has been defeated in Mosul, now we’re fighting for ideas’
•Fall Campaign to sell Militant subscriptions and books Oct. 6 - Dec. 4
(Week 2)
•Socialist Workers Party Fund Drive Oct. 6 - Dec. 4 (Week 2)
On the Picket Line •Hospital workers in Pittsburgh mount one-day strike
•UK hospital workers strike for wage equality
Books of the Month •Myth of women’s inferiority is rooted in rise of
class society
25, 50 and 75 years ago
Letters
© Copyright 2018 The Militant - 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor - New
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_________________________________________________________________
Isaac Asimov
“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in
telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life
after death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved
negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?"
Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement,
and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no
matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and
more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the
evidence will have to be.”
― Isaac Asimov
