This area is still one in which a lot remains to be done; in many countries of the world including Switzerland women Sight for equal pay for women s entering a more militant Chese campaigns are only a hase in this country. But art of the general campaign:
he ability to equal exploitation by capitalist 's do not mark the romen: first, because they rust join men in the struggle within which they are trying achieve a measure of but more importantly inequality are merely one dim ension of women's Th women so des within thetation Women comes within the CreE aTe DrOUEAL UD LO Du a particular role, that of houseves. But there is no biological and faithful cason wny women snoutd do micework or look alter chileren Physical strength is rarely a vant qualification for ork. In theory, men could stay at home and look after the Fi while women earn the ursery schools enables men and omen to go out and Work. In sense they represent a step forward, but they still leav ntouched the whole area of muni relations. wolen Is un re of the whole problem. I omen are to be equal to men, they must have equal sexua. reedom as wel The standard ideology of our xiety, and that of many others - that women are supposca to be virgin before marriage and ithful afterwards; men are not xpected to be either. This deology divides women up into that conform, wnile those are penalised by a set and social constraints. are dependent ccononncilly on men in a society in which work and women look after children; the divorce laws still merlise women insorar as uncy ire financially weaker. The laws legitimacy also discriminate in hat the very concepts of and "illegitimacy ' Cumacy are a means of forcing women to ve children within marriag ather than allowing them to have them now and wach they want But the law is only one level of this oppression. The attitudes of equire considerable courage to truggle against for those without he financial strength to e eir own independence. Within the given nexus, expected to contain their sexuality thin the family; alternatively Denman marriage itself. There is no ranonanty in forcing people to formalise their relations by egistering them in church or a a renausea. permanent relationship is one that must be criticised, as unnecessary and in many cases cyl f people wish to live togethe Should be able to; if they ar nould De aDic to DarL WILBout di constraint. If they have children, the wil will comnlicate matters and to ensure that illegitimacy would disappear. If colties wanted to tommaise taeir relations, they could still do so.
Pre-marital sexuality, the spread ot knowiecte abour contracebuves and the gradual emergence of the unmarried family are signs of a racud taw in our socicty. Dui tney are oniy a beginning, and aim of any revolutionary movement must be one quaitative change in the hole T sociery. nor merely in te political institutions and th listribution of power. The oppression of workers is one dimension of the struggle: that of women a distinct though related one.
When Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manuresto, mey stressed the relation between the status of women and the society in which this status was denned. cor te bourgeoisie, the family was a means o TrousE much ances de bourgeois educaton a means of training their children to perpetuate their class politically and ideologically, as well as biologiezliv. The public schools in our society still carry role. For the proletariat, the pressure or moder matsu driving women and children into the factories, disintegrate the family and In calling for the abolition of the family, they calling for the abolition of a sue pie relauonsni perweet parent and netamely as a tor end of the family as a tool of capitalist society, and a which capitalism, in order to preserve itself, tried to turn into a feature of society which was Devone a ernesm.
Engels' (1884), The Origin of the State, is an analysis of the role of the family in capitalist society: although some of the historical anthropology that he puts forward has been superceded by subsequent 47/35 possibility of different minds of In trying to work out what the relation, since the material basis aims of a revolutionary for the monogamous family will movement in his area of have been removed. Secondly the women and sex are 1о Dea is also essential to incorporate criterion for relations between the sexes should be mutual reeling and the findings of contemporary constraint, economic pressure psychology. This is a dimen or legality. sion wnien was absent trom Marx and Engels but on which in no way contradiets their incanta Ist society. women are exploited as instruments both of roduction and of reproduction, l marxism and psychology Is the social and indians ass often phrased in terms of an bourgeoisie to breed their wives as mindless, ornamental servants and to force the women of the Or social anu maud! praletariat into factories to work considerably less shan Freud attacked the revolu chose pid to men. Although student movements i cracks have appeared in this SURE he west for trying to chang edifice, the structure of Marx's analysis remains unchanged. so ve their Dronem ov 26201 When Lenin confronted the ing to it; and some trends in socialist thought, being question or ine liberation ol women, he was in the position to excessively suspicious of the Eg. wareat to pomucal accon, nave failed to see the need for a 1s basis or as a l psychological dimension to vears immediatey socialist theory. revolution a series of laws were Pegised on dih women, Ca and the ychology is needed both family. Divorce was made free for explain 1 the ways in whi men and women; abortion and capitalist society reinforces its ontraceptior were made freely contron ana to explore une ways available; the distinction betweer in which man can be liberated through revolution. lemmacy and lucoremacy was abolished, as was the ban on The relation of psychology to the anav sis of our society nas been explored by Wilhelm Reich and was not enough, and he stressed the need for a change in the Herbert Marcuse. There is no attitudes that men had to women, need to follow either of these since this lay behind the whole thinkers al ine wav. out taev nave structure of male domination and laws in themselves were not at least begun to develop the study of how capitalism forms the enough to overcome the culture of mind. Marcuse stated at th Dialectics of Liberation Congres The sad fate of this tradition in last summer that capitalist society has invaded' the subconscious, and Reich in his work on The sexual revolution tree to revolution. The project of Marx describe what he called ' the sociology of the unconscious and and Engels, to abolish the For anusocial sexuancy material basis for it was abolished weapon in this capitalist invasion of the subconscious is the family all the most mystified forms o vas never implemented. loda From the first months of a existence capitalist society fills 11 admatis day the woman uniquety with the values, ideas and mystifications of its own reality and this socialisation through the as a mother - are nourishine deal of women as individual familv is reinforced when the child freely choosing how to carry out goes to school. in adaiton, une average family represse their personal and sexual relations sexuality in children and teache has neen torootten to be ren aced by the most bankrupt and shabby them to accept a repressive or at least hypocritical sexual morality. hypocrisy. There cannot be many parents in this country, of whatever in the hire word citeren issues are involved. One of the who would allow their children most universal features of the compere sexual treedom rom Lac day they were born, or who would impenaust impact on coronar let them make love at home. countries is the brothellisation of the women of the colonial territories. Shanghai before 1949 This constant repression of Havana before 1959, and Saigon sexuality in the young, reinforced by the morality of the family, is today are all proof of this. Any movement is in Reich's analysis the psychotherefore forced to stress the Society, whether fascist o importance or une ramy ma contrast to mercenary sex and this Stalinist. B restoring the has the danger sexuality of the young, and by or fortifying the traditional family forcine them to suomit neir own Feelings to an irrational anc n enna ana cue women have been brougnt ind xternal parental authority, th political and economic life; the voung are taught to accept, and most obvious forms of traditional i timateu to need an arranona external authorit The forms of Seen in this light, the family is a The changes in sexual nattern political instrument in an among the young in modern authoritarian society. The analysis industrial society are part of of this psychological dimension the crisis of our society, but does not mean nal caDilans. we need to ve seen mate rests on the existence of social and revolutionary unconscious repression alone, but berne rive sive make as a weakening this psychological moulding through the repression of sexuality Suce as a neide and through indoctrination within anticipations of conditions the family forms one means by socialism and not which the unconscious is invaded merely as the aberrations of ane turmer base tor manipulation and control is established. need to think unrougn the implications of these The alternative to this now developments . For the left, the become clear. The answer is not to demand for the freedom and apolish the family but to abolsh the family, and to stress that the on and mystication witnin part of their campaign: the family is only one possible form of personal and sexual relationship, already developed a vasi omer mutape communal anu asual forms being equally viable The point is not to condemn any accommodate deviations from particular form of social behaviou the ideal of marriage. out to orovide people will Lu choice and the reaisaton that no It is important also to make clear one form, sanctioned by our the revolutionary possibilities of a society for particular reasons liberated and responsible sexuality need be accepted as the ultimate - an era to au cedrisation, to dul criterion. restricuons on sexual freedom anc to the family as the tool of The liberation of women will only capitalist society. This programme be achieved through a total may shock not only the overthrow of all the forms of their conservative forces in our society oppression - industrial, legal, but also the traditional left whose sexual, psychological and cuotors; norbid condemnation of bourgeoi the precondition for such a tota decadence has often concealed a puritanical and repressed view of uberauon is me overturow or existing society, since only the world. evolution can create the materia asis for abolishing the repressiv No doubt we will be accused of familv. The first problem is to mayonly or decencracy in raisins get women themselves to realise these issues at all, but they he at the nature of their own situation, the heart of our critique of since far too many have been so modern society and of our attempt conditioned as to accept their to create an alternalive socicLy. multidimensional inferiority: the Perhaps it will be argued that second step is to achieve a change women are free and that we are in the attitudes of men, of left, right and centre. Ihe loosening xploitation to which they ar ot traditiona mes nas rar too subtecter - out tois colection 1s often replaced one form of sexual most likely to come from men. oppression by another, as the The question raised is what kind plight of the unmarried mother of revolution and what kind of in our soclety snows. ror taem socia ism We want to see na the abolition of the family has revolution towards which we are neant that they ar left in the moving will not be merely politica lurch by a society of mal but will be social and qualitative supremacists. altering not only who have power in our society but the nature of The way in which the sexual power itself, and it is up to us change is formulated in our society to acveroo a cuncuc or moccu at the moment is all wrong. One socierv net Is To In ITs SCoDe. has only to read the personal criticising all its institutions and columns of the Internationa not confining ourselves to what is Times to see that there are a lot tracionaly UHUCLSLOOG aS or very loney people arouna, anc part of the cause of this terrifying women and the quality of solitude and misery is the sexuality is part of this critique The aim is notto concern ar forms of sexual and personal onstraint, se has become an nstrument of salesmanship, anc tor creaune neuross on a mass scale among the young. The difficult not to get sexuality of Playboy is as much married in some form or other. It a result of capitalist society as is not marriage or the family that was that of the Victorian family: must be crucised, but ine selling and the frenetic pursuit of up of these as ideals, and the quantity in sex is also a crude pressure on individuals to get psychological response to the married or stay married when not ousnuncanon and compenavenes.: they, but society, reel like it of private enterprise. A Without the revolution in politics, mechanical ' free-love' is no more there will be no solution to the a solution man socialst purian- social and melviaual problems
The Black Dwarf 10 Jan 69
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research, hiscentral theses remain. arers and Tex 21/9h Photo incious amorals Apollo. Bax