The question of the emancipation of oppressed genders or abolishing patriarchy has been one of the prime questions in the communist movement since its inception. In this series, we will explore the historical social conditions that gave rise to this particular kind of oppression. We will also explore the myriad forms gender oppression has taken with changing socio-economic conditions in different epochs of human society.
Our great Marxist teacher Frederick Engels laid the foundation of our understanding of gender oppression in his pioneering work ‘Origin of Family, State, and Private Property’. He traced its origin to the emergence of class society from the womb of primitive communism. In this part, we will try to understand how the position of women suffered a qualitative change with the advent of class society. The question of whether patriarchy belongs to the economic base or the cultural sphere will also be addressed.
In the primitive communist society, the division of classes was yet to emerge. Humans used to live in herds of sorts, bound by communal activities of hunting and gathering in which all individuals would contribute as per their ability. In terms of inter-human relations, the concept of family as a socio-economic unit has yet to emerge. Sexual relations were free with ‘every woman belonging equally to every man and every man to every woman’. Naturally, there was no possible way to determine the paternity of a child born. The child could only be identified by their mother, establishing something called the mother-right over a child. This continued as long as the particular socio-economic conditions of the hunting-gathering lifestyle could continue in which women had a direct role in social as well as domestic production through hunting-gathering as well as child-rearing. Matriliny was the order of the day with women being held in high esteem by the society as a whole.
With the advent of class divisions and private property (land, tools of production etc.), transfer of property down the generations started. Thus, monogamous families came into existence that, ‘… is based on the supremacy of the man, the express purpose being to produce children of undisputed paternity; such paternity is demanded because these children are later to come into their father’s property as his natural heirs.’ Thus, mother-right and matriliny were overthrown and replaced by patriliny and the subjugation of women to ensure paternal certainty for future generations. Engels goes on to say, ‘The overthrow of mother-right was the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude, she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children.’ A situation we see continuing even today. Thus, a very clear connection can be found between the historical oppression faced by women and the origin of classes and families in society. Patriarchal societies are thus a product of the development of class division in society.
Different trends within the feminist movement have often incorrectly traced the origins of patriarchy in the realm of culture, in the idea of family, or in the existence of men itself. Unless the problem is grasped at the roots, such wrong trends will continue to flourish and derail efforts toward the emancipation of oppressed genders. To refute these trends, the two major aspects of the interrelation between class-divided societies and patriarchy have to be grasped.
Firstly, patriarchy denies women the right to own property be it under slavery, feudalism, or even capitalism. This denial provides the material basis for the subjugation of women. In the case of slave society or feudalism, this denial is encoded in the laws of the time (eg.-Manusmriti) unlike capitalism where ideas of ‘equality’ are peddled but not followed (only 13% of the top 100 billionaires of the world are women, among them many have inherited their fathers’ property). The denial of rights and control over the means of production (land, machinery, factory, etc.) relegates women to second-class citizenship under men.
Secondly, as explained earlier, under primitive communism there was no social division of labour that confined women to the domestic realm. With the advent of patriarchy, women were bonded within the domestic realm of production which is purely unpaid (household jobs, child-rearing, etc.), while men went into social production (pasturing, farming, etc.). Even when women had a part to play in social production, their place was rigidly defined through “women’s jobs” based on their perceived and perpetuated backwardness as compared to men. These jobs would either be unpaid or very low-paid in order to extract the most amount of value possible from women’s labour.
Thus, the denial of rights over private property and gendered division of labour form the economic bases of the subjugation of women for millennia. Hence, the growth of patriarchy has a direct bearing on the origin of private property or classes in society. An attack at the root of this problem would be a new kind of economy that abolishes private property. Thus, a material basis for the true emancipation of the oppressed genders from the shackles of patriarchy will be created.
