08.11.2001

Our history Women and the revolution, 1921

When the CPGB was formed in 1921 only one in eight of its members were women. While this proportion reflected the level of involvement of women in the labour movement generally, it pre?sented an obstacle to Party work among a strategically important and oppressed section of the working class. It was 11 months before the first significant article on the communist approach to the women?s question appeared in the Party paper. This situation was not unique to Britain. Within the Communist Party of Germany at this time - the Comintern?s largest section outside the Soviet Union - there were objec?tions that, despite repeated resolu?tions on developing work around women which had been voted through at successive congresses, little had been done to implement them. Nevertheless, the Communist International and its constituent par?ties carried forward and developed the best elements of the old Second International?s work among women, and with it some of its finest female cadre. For example, in Russia, Alex?andra Kollontai; in Germany, KPD founder and lead?ing theorist Rosa Luxemburg, women?s leader Clara Zetkin, and Party leader in the mid-1920s, Ruth Fischer. This short article by Leonora Tho?mas is very much of its time, reflecting the position of women as hosewives. This is combined with a utopian socialist, futuristic, recipe-mongering. Nevertheless in its fierce denunciation of inequality under capitalism it remains relevant. In January 1922 the Party set up a Women?s Department under Helen Crawford, who was also the ?women?s representative? on the Party?s political bureau. The first CPGB women?s conference was held in May 1924.

If a woman, greatly daring, suggests to the male revolutionist that there is a woman?s problem to be solved by revolution, she is met with one of two answers. The first and most common is that women are a damned nuisance. The second is that the women?s problem is the same as the man?s.

There is certainly much to be said for the first answer. The difficulties of the transition period of revolution would be less if there were no women; but as matters are it is worse than useless to funk the problem.

As to the second answer, only in so far as revolution is the only hope for women?s emancipation is the problem the same as the man?s. But just because the woman?s position under capitalism is different from the man?s, she has even more to gain than he has by the overthrow of that system.

Under capitalism women are, ac?cording to their class, either slaves or parasites. The agitation for the vote or the entry of women into industry and the professions has not altered women?s position in the mass. The greater freedom and independence of a few middle-class women does not af?fect the problem: and it was no desire for freedom that sent working class women into industry.

Observe the position of the latter. Economic circumstances forced the children of the workers into factories when they should have been at school, and economic circumstances keep the women in industry after marriage. Conditions are no better in those homes where both man and woman are work?ing, because wages under our present system are based on the family stan?dard. The effect of the entry of women into industry has been either to reduce men?s wages, as in the cotton industry, or to drive them out, as in the teaching industry. Working for wages has done nothing, and can do nothing, towards woman?s emancipation except to put her in the position to join the ranks of the organised workers

We do not get to grips with the problem until we realise that the great?est factor in a woman?s life is her sex and that the fact that she is a potential mother dominates all else. It not only concerns the home and social relations, but has its reaction throughout indus?try, too. A woman?s probable marriage and consequent departure from indus?try is an excuse for low wages and for blind alley occupations. Her occupation is marriage.

And what does marriage mean to the majority of working women? In the Daily Herald recently women gave timetables of their day?s work. Their working day lasted in most cases from 6.30am to 10pm. The conditions of some are worse than others, but all are bad. Anyone with knowledge of min?ing villages knows the horrible round of unmitigated toil which is the lot of the miner?s wife. Primitive housing conditions make matters worse, but better houses would not alter the fact that the average married woman works too long and has little or no recreation.

What is even more dreadful is her lack of communal life. Many women spend week after week, year after year, with no other human intercourse than that of husband and children - a terrible isolation, conducive to the retention of ancient superstitions and the dwarfing of the race.

The work of motherhood and house?keeping is arduous and highly techni?cal, involving as it does several other occupations, such as cooking, teaching and nursing. For this the working girl has no training. In other times girls were trained by their mothers, so that any natural inability was to some extent minimised.

It is customary to disguise the deep social injury of this lack of training under the false sentiment of ?a mother knows by instinct?. As well as a man knows by instinct how to be a doctor.

This, then, is a woman?s position under capitalism. Before marriage she is a wage slave usually under worse conditions than a man; after marriage she is a slave to a bad housekeeping system and forced to do work for which she is untrained and in many cases temperamentally unfitted, and she is shut off from any communal life.

What will be her position after the revolution? How will the revolution solve the problem?

The need for greater production and saving of available material will proba?bly force a communal housekeeping system even during the transition pe?riod. Women with the ability to do on a large scale what they did before on a small scale will quickly find their places. The others will be absorbed into occupations for which they are fitted, and, as time goes on, the process of selection and training will alter the whole status of the women doing the work that was previously done in sepa?rate houses.

Those doing house cleaning will be organised in a house cleaners? guild, which will not be composed entirely of married women, but of all - men and women - who are engaged in any part of house cleaning. As members of the guild they will be entitled to vote for or be the delegates to, the workers? com?mittee, and so take a part in the govern?ment of the commune.

The sensible and economic organi?sation of what is now classed under the head of housekeeping will not only abolish slave conditions but will also release an enormous volume of energy and ability to serve the community in other occupations.

How about the children? someone asks. A woman during her actual child?bearing period will be exempt from any work which would injure the health of herself or the child. When the time comes for the child to go to school the mother will resume her other occupa?tion.

Under the capitalist system the children of the workers are taken from their mothers at four or five years to be educated by the state. The probability is that this time will be lessened as the tendency is towards Montessori meth?ods, and nursery schools. This, of course, does not mean that the children will be separated from the mother: but for a certain period - four or five hours a day - the children will be with other children playing, and the mother will be working, perhaps in the nursery schools, perhaps at housework, perhaps as an architect.

So revolution will mean ?the break?ing up of the home?, but not in the sense that the users of that phrase imply. All social customs are a reflex of the economic system, and under communism the possessive impulse which is largely responsible for our present social customs will be re?stricted,

These are the developments which I think are bound to occur, but we ought to consider them, talk of them and prepare for them. Men are not revolutionists because they accept certain principles, but because they see that those principles, applied to society, would secure better conditions for them and their fellows. It is essential that women, whose interests are so largely confined to the home, should see that those principles have a direct reaction on the conditions in which they live their lives.

The Communist
July 9 1921