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tisdag 26 april 2011

Fem kvinnliga martyrer i Turkiet





Turkiets Kommunistiska Parti/Marxist-Leninisternas internationella byrå publicerade igår ett uttalande i vilket man informerar om att fem kvinnliga kämpar ur TIKKO (den revolutionära armé som leds av TKP/ML) omkommit i en olycka. Händelsen ska ha ägt rum i februari, varför det dröjt så pass länge innan kamraterna offentliggjort informationen är för oss oklart, men de har säkert en mycket god anledning. Vi hedrar idag de fem stupade kamraterna som än en gång bevisar hur revolutionära kvinnor spelar en ledande roll i de verkligt revolutionära rörelserna i världen idag. Nedan en översättning av uttalandet och bilder från en demostration i Turkiet där de stupade kamraterna hyllades.

"5 mayrters of TKP/ML-TIKKO died in Dersim

24 April 2011

TURKEY | 24 – 04 – 2011 | The Press statement of the TKP/ML-TIKKO Dersim Region Comittee from April 20th 2011 states that on 2nd February 2011, 5 guerillas of TKP/ML- TIKKO have lost their lives as a result of an avalanche. According to the statement of the Dersim Region; on February 2nd 2011 at 5am a avalanche destroyed the Winter-Camp and killed five female TIKKO guerillas.



1- Sefagul Kesgin: code name, Eylem; was born in Erzurum in 1977. She joined the guerilla struggle in 2007. She was the Political . Polit- Luitenant of the Dersim Region

2- Nursen Aslan: code name, Emel; was born in Tokat (Black Sea) in 1981. She joined the guerilla struggle in 1999. She was a forward sympathiser of the TKP/ML. She was a commander in the Dersim Region.

3- Gulizar Ozkan: code name, Ozlem; was born in 1967 in Dersim. She joined the guerilla in 2005. She was a forward sympathiser of the party. She was a TIKKO commander.

4- Fatma Acar, cod name, Dilek; was born in 1983 in Mersin. She joined the guerilla struggle in 2006. She was a forward sympathiser of the TKP/ML and a commander of TIKKO.

5- Derya Aras; cod name, Sevda: she was born in 1979 in Erzincan and joined the guerilla in 2009. She was a forward sympathiser of the TKP/ML and a TIKKO fighter.

Even if right after the landslide a immidiate interference took place, only the lifeless bodies of the five comrades were burried.



The Dersim Regional Committee further declares that “including comrade Sefagul Kesgin the marytrdom of our five comrades is a big loss for our organization. We know that these losses and death is part our war. In order to bear the price of this heavy loss we will focus on our struggle with all our abilities and strength and we will increase the struggle that has been handed over to us by our martyers in a way that our comrades deserve.”

“Our five comrades have left a note on the page of history; they have done this with their leading role in our war and in showing the oppressed women the way towards freedom. Their lives, just as their martyrdom, was a rebellion against the oppression of women since thousands of years and this rebellion will illuminate the path of the comrades who will continue the struggle. We can only keep our comrades alive with the weapons we have taken over from them for the struggle of democratic peoples’revolution, socialism and communism.”

As the international office of the TKP/ML we know that the path of proletarian world revolution is a path full of willpower, sacrifieces and determination. The way to final victory can only be reached with the knowledge of proletarian world revolution and the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology. For this we call upon all revolutionary and communist forces to take notice of the martyrdom of our comrades Sefagul Kesgin, Nursen Aslan, Gulizar Ozkan, Fatma Acar, Derya Aras.

Long Live Proletarian Internationalism!

Long Live Peoples War- Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!

TKP/ML-International Relation Office"

torsdag 17 mars 2011

Bangladesh: revolutionär kvinnoorganisation bildad!

Som vi tidigare tagit upp har den revolutionära rörelsen i Bangladesh starka traditioner. Det finns flera olika maoistiska partier i landet som har en rik erfrenhet av revolutionär väpnad kamp. Vi har nu mottagit ett uttalande från kamrater om att en ny revolutionär kvinnoorganisation bildats. Exakt vilket av de maoistiska partierna som organisationen är knuten till vet vi inte ännu. Hursomhelst, goda nyheter från Bangladesh!

Call of international Women’s Day:

New Democracy-Socialism-Communism is the path to women’s liberation

March 8 is the International Women’s Day. In this day in 1908, women workers in Chicago city in USA finally came up to the street in demand of reducing working hour, women’s right to vote, develop factory environment, maternity leave etc,.
What is the real condition of our women?
Regardless of rural or urban area, women of workers, peasants and middle class are bound to give birth of children, bring them up and all sorts of house hold work. In Garment prison [It’s like a prison] they use to work hard. Neither there is minimum wage nor working environment. In every step, calling names and discrimination. Many times, workers are burnt to death by being locked the main gate by the authority. They are working with less wage than a male worker socially get only because they are women.
What is this outlook?
This is male chauvinist outlook. This is a special method of exploitation of human by human in exploitative society. Its origin lies in imperialist world system and semi-feudal semi-colonial society. This outlook lies in each and every arteries of this society. Male domination over women started since the origin of class. When there was no class in primitive communist society, women were equal to men. Agriculture was women’s invention. Its work availability was more than hunting. On the other side, continuing human generation by giving birth to children was an honorable task. Later, when a few people who were clan chiefs, they, by exploiting the different opportunities, seized ownership of property and riches, then they made the mass majority people slave, class society emerged since then. After the invention of plough, men captured agriculture. Men started to keep male chauvinist system by establishing ownership over children. As consequence, women went under men all the way. This male chauvinist system was sustained in slave society, feudal society and present capitalist stage. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels first showed that the exploited class of society the proletariat will destroy this capitalist society and construct socialist and communist society. In Russia, under Lenin’s leadership, first socialist society was established what continued under Stalin’s leadership. In China, the systematic trend of new democracy-socialism-communism was initiated by overthrowing feudalism and imperialism. The trend of women’s liberation is closely linked with that trend of Great Marx, Lenin and Mao. There will be no exploitation in communist society, so male chauvinism too will be wiped out.
In Bangladesh, the imperialist collaborator bureaucrat bourgeoisie is dragging women to factories and confining them in over working to get maximum profit by giving fewer wages. Major portion of profit goes to imperialist buying house, shopping mall and big shops. In those garment industries, women workers don’t have any fixed working hour. They are bound to work overtime, sometimes whole night. Many times, those extra working hours have no payment or if they have that are very little while they are the one who are giving the country the major part of foreign currency.
On the other side, religious fascism is carrying absolute feudal repression over women. Still many women in rural area and smaller towns are subjected to repressive veil system. Every now and then women are being murdered by Fotwabaji [Fotwa is a so called Islamic rule in which the Mullah give the verdict]. Recently in South Bengal, a minor girl, Hena was killed by being target of Fotwa. The killing of Felani named handicapped minor girl by Indian BSF is an example of imperialist oppression over women.
A lot of women are working as housemaid with negligible wage. That work neither has any respect nor fixed wage. Actually, they are subjected to unpaid labor with very little return. Many times, they die by torture of house members. Many women work as cooker in hotel. A lot of women work in brick breaking (for building construction), soil digging (for road construction) and that types of various work.
Despite carrying great responsibility as nurse and maid in hospitals, women are being brutally discriminated.
Men use to take dowry for marrying women. Innumerable women are subjected to dowry system.
Apart from that, many women lead a discriminated life as divorced.
A lot of women, driven by poverty, or are forced to take the profession of a prostitute. There too, the owners grab the major portion of income.
Bourgeoisie is using women in Television, Cinema, and Theatre as commodity.
In cottage industry, in long days, women make very special commodities only to give big profit to capitalists and big markets while they themselves hardly can survive in daily life by too little payment.
Grameen bank, brac etc NGOs are exploiting and cheating rural women by taking compound interest. Many women commit suicide when they can’t pay back debt.
In the nineteenth century, Begum Rokeya dreamed of emancipation of women. She wanted to break the then restriction over women.
Priti Lata, Kalpana Dutt, erstwhile Ila Mitra and Shikha (of Payarabagan) are pride for Bengalee women.
Taslima Nasrin is a rebel but not useful for women because of her surrender to imperialism. Bourgeoisie feminists don’t want to join revolutionary movement as they don’t want revolutionary transformation of society. On the other hand, bourgeoisie reformists of women movement despite saying about some reform like female education and job are nothing useful to women because they want to protect the rotten semi feudal semi colonial society. But progressive part of these two trends should be convinced or swept to revolutionary women movement.
This is why, we have to commemorate Great women leader Klara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg and Chiang Ching who said about communist society where there will be no exploitation. There will be no capitalist upon our head. So, male chauvinism will vanish.

So, struggling women,
Let us unite to break the chain.
Let us unite under the banner of Revolutionary Women’s Movement to overthrow the semi feudal semi colonial society with goal of a communist society.

Revolutionary Women’s Movement

March 8, 2011

tisdag 8 mars 2011

Feminismens färger




"Ingen bör förvåna sig över att inte alla kvinnor förenar sig i en enhetlig feministisk rörelse. Feminismen har, nödvädnigtvis, flera färger, skilda tendenser. Man kan feminismen urskilja tre grundströmmningar, tre tydliga färger: borgerlig feminism, småborgerlig feminism och proletär feminism. Borgarkvinnan solidariserar sin feminism med den konservativa klassens intressen. Proletärkvinnan förena sin feminism med tron på de revolutionära massorna i framtidssamhället. Klasskampen - historiskt faktum och inte ett teoretiskt påstående - återspeglas på det feministiska planet. Kvinnorna, såsom männen, är reaktionärer, centrister eller revolutionärer. Därför kan de inte kämpa tillsammans i samma strid. I det nuvarande mänskliga panoramat, sklijer klass mer än kön individerna åt."

(Las Reivindicaciones Feministas, José Carlos Mariátegui)

måndag 29 november 2010

Italienska feminister om "Män som hatar kvinnor"




I Italien finns en organisation som heter "Proletära Revolutionära Feministiska Rörelsen". Det är en organisation knuten till ett parti som heter "Maoistiska Kommunistiska Partiet", vilket är en av flera maoistiska organistioner/partier som finns i landet. Med anledning av "FN:s internationella dag mot våld mot kvinnor", den 25 november, publicerade kamraterna ett dokument som vi publicerar nedan. Vi tycker dokumentet är relevant som ett bidrag till debatten även i Sverige, men vi delar inte alla uppfattningar som där förs fram och vi tycker även dokumentet utelämnar viktiga frågor. Intressant är också hur italienska maoister inte verkar se särskillt kritiskt på vad svenska trotskister skriver eller säger. På olika platser i Italien genomförde kamraterna också manifestationer med anledning av den 25 november, de bilder som vi idag publicerar är från Palermo. Översättning av dokumentet har kamraterna själva gjort.



KILLING OF WOMEN TODAY

It serves to frame the political climate, ideological, and social environment in which they occur today, the killings of women, demonstrating that there is no a question of isolated cases, to be seen on it’s own, but it is a trend that will unfortunately more pronounced and can be answered only as a direct mobilization of women.
The fact that the killings of women are assuming alarming proportions, a "low intensity war" against women, makes the same case you start talking about femicide.
We have used the title of a book to talk about the new level of relationship between man and woman. The "Men Who Hate Women" expressed - albeit within the limits of a title of the novel - these relationships at the stage of modern fascism.
The modern fascism is building a system of all that is reactionary, chauvinist.
In this sense, the killing will not stop, nor are there interventions by law to control that can slow down. The modern fascism feeds on a mass level: the killings have the characteristic of being repetitive, emulated - the more you talk, the more they are taken for example. The press, television, Berlusconi is a key tool in this: amplify or minimize or hide some of the events build up of obscene talk show, on the other they fall silent, so direct and / or divert attention, impose ideas, reviews, with the selection criteria / selection often racist, class or otherwise respond to the use of these killings and violence to strengthen political ideology, the "values" while hiding the dominant social causes, but where there are grounds This upsurge of killings of women are increasingly seen as an expression of the overall condition of women and social reality. Often we tend to motivate each other femicide as private, the result of jealousy, or a fit of madness. But focusing on a specific episode, we see that individuals who kill are the humus suitable, favorable, which in a sense makes them feel empowered, not at all guilty, in fact, almost allowed. This humus is the modern fascism, and this makes it different today, the issue of violence against women, particularly the killings.
Of course the killings, the violence there have also been in the past, because today is the problem. We must denounce and combat the current characteristics of the killings, sexual violence, internal: the political climate - humus sexist-racist - response to women who want to rebel, who want to break ties oppressive - the role of the family.
Today we face this war, that such land combat.

If the first women endured in silence a violence also continues, now as before the men can not rely on this silence. Today women tolerate less, break the relationship, they rebel, they hunt their boyfriends, husbands, etc.. "You have to be mine, or you're mine or not you are", this is what he said a man before killing his ex-girlfriend, is the breaking of this concept of possession of property that was there before but now by women is being questioned, not accepted.
These killings and violence as a reaction of men to women who want to break the previous links, the previous life crimes are fascists, because they moved from a conception of the fascist attack on every thrust of rebellion. As is often the fascist climate generated widespread complicity before and after the killings, in which men are considered respectable, and who knows does not speak and covers not only because it has an individualistic conception, but because it has the same concept sexist, fascist towards women .

The other issue that makes "new" femicide is the role of the family today. The family has always been the ground of oppression for women, the tomb of love, ghetto. We say "death in the family" because most of the killings take place within the family or family relationships. What is family? Because the family is dead? In social terms is the cell of society, which expresses in synthesis processes, and contradictions that occur across society. The problem is that now the family on the one hand is actually in crisis, can no longer keep, to be an element of conservation at the same time is hyper-excited by the Church, by the government, by the State. Once more, this makes it somewhat differently, the issue of killings of modern women.

The government, the State used instrumentally the killings of women to launch measures that do not help all women, but increase the climate of repression and control. The killing of women in 2007 in Rome of Giovanna Reggiani, the government of that day, center-set the stage for the security package as desired by Northern League mayors and sheriffs of right and left.
On that occasion we wrote: "... The security-climate, security measures, from public policy already adopted by the mayors in some cities such as Bologna, Florence, Rome itself, which have as their main target immigrants, who bring the city under control, desertified, are actually the best humus of the violence. There is a direct relationship between increased security measures and the increase in rapes and killings of women. "
Both in previous years, most recently, any measure of the Government against the killings, violence, etc., not really in a decrease of the same, but rather in a sense produced an opposite effect, both with the essentially repressive measures, and with those few measures that could be useful but for how they are managed are negative up to be counterproductive. The law on stalking Carfagna, for example. There are dozens and dozens of complaints from women, but were never taken into account, the bureaucratic processes that activate the police or the judiciary are complex and long and the whole apparatus deputy to enforce the law they are apathetic but it is especially designed to guide the police, the police who are investigating that is buggy at the start, impregnated, and it could not be, an ideology of male, macho, congenitally distant / contrary to women, their lives, and to their needs, rebellion.

Addressing the issue of violence with repressive measures, removing those elements of sociability, openness and solidarity to help us fight it, pointing instead to the closure, made fascist society, desertification of the city, promotes violence. In the cities they created a desert and 9 pm there is no more people on the street, and then are surprised that a woman who turns from alone in this condition is at risk? But who created this condition?
These measures create a climate obscurantist always ideal for the cultivation of ideas and practices fascist, sexist, or oppression, and then have an opposite effect of encouraging sexual violence at all levels, creating the city under control, uninhabitable, which are banned the normal freedom, sociability among young people, between people, the normal use of the city. And when this happens, more people from the cities desertification and become dangerous ground, especially for women, because they prevent, even criminalized, the collective sense, and the city's social problems, leading to a conception of individualism, anti-social companion of the oppression, ideology, however reactionary, racist and fascist, which against women is always expressed as sexism and violence.

Most murders occur in the north

Last year there was a massacre in the province of Varese, where a husband killed the night his wife and two children and then committed suicide. The context in which it occurred is typical: a small village, a closed reality, not only as a dwelling but as a concept and the "master of the house and the family." The man at the gate of the house had put a large sign that read: "Beware of the dog, the owner and the whole family" with a drawing of rifle, pistol and knife. A view from the master of life of his wife and children has led naturally to decide that they should not live without him (she wanted to separate).
EURES institute has analyzed that most of the murders of women by men and husbands is in the north, especially in Lombardy: 59.3% compared to 21-22% instead of 19% of the center and south. This is important data, in a sense unexpected, since it is the reality that the South is seen as backward and linked to patriarchal values. In fact, the most common complaint, even within feminist, is that the patriarchal sees the root cause of the murders of women.
If that were true, the result of the analysis should at least be reversed, because patriarchal attitudes and habits are most certainly in the south than the north. Then maybe this is not the main cause of feminicide!

Of course, the fact that in the south of violence and killings is less than in the north, is also the result of increased oppression, the fact that more women are still suffering in silence, who rebel against oppression less (but not in large cities in the south), which do not separate problems of lack of work, why would not bear to live alone, especially with children, while women in the north separate more easily, break family ties (but also in the south today are more and more women, especially working women);
Of course, in the south fundamentally social relationships with their families, kinship work more, and for better or for worse, the family is wider and there is a sort of generalized control. In the north there is a greater autonomy from the family of origin, and the separations especially for men upset the chances of survival, there is a very tight weave than the material difficulties of the people, the difficulties of living with a single salary facing the higher cost of living in the north. Many men are unable to fend for themselves, they have the ability to create another life, they want to dictate, and when the toy "family" is broken, do not accept it.

But then, why the North women are killed for? Because to understand the modern killings must look above all to the north? Because it is in fact more "advanced" that we understand the "new", here is the new "honor killing" that today we call "crime of property." Because there is some greater harmony between the living conditions on the one hand and fascist ideas, sexist, reactionary, general climate, on the other.
"Beware of the dog, the owner, the whole family” ... we're going to see in so many areas of the Lega Nord, closed in the areas of Brianza, of Bergamo, Veneto, there are many signs like this one!?
This is a fascist concept, modern fundamentalist, a concept which is to write the sign warning you that everything is "mine" and anyone who breaks this private property, from home to family, to keep off or be killed, if his own wife. A reactionary view, closed, so everything can be done in the family and anyone who dares to intrude, and the thief, both immigrants and those who break the unity of the family is the outsider, to be kicked out / deleted.
A full product design and in harmony with the League's ideology, modern clerical-fascist, racist, and now more and more present reality of the agent especially in the north, but also carried out organically from the main representatives of government, the church, their mass media, and widespread in areas of the masses, especially the lower middle class or upper layer of workers, but not all.
It 's the concept against the other, then that is the view against the immigrant, the security-first. Sometimes also the result of the condition today of greater economic insecurity of life and so on., Which, as saying a woman, to the south are more "used", then there is also an element of defence, "but it is clear in terms racist, closing, etc. against the other. Then the women who rebel are something that come to break a "balance" that rests on the oppression of women, private property for humans, safety nets for the capitalist society.

But the killings in the south must be analyzed within the current situation

The murder of Sarah Scazzi at the end of August 2010 in the province of Taranto is emblematic.
It sinks into reality and concept of family, close, oppressive, patriarchal family, to defend against the outside even when it is barbarism and death. A family is a chain, where within which if one falls all fall and that’ why must remain united to hold her, to defend its 'integrity’.

A family, especially for women, but also for young people, that is an unacceptable modern middle ages, which takes prisoners, diverts energies that should instead be free. But this is only possible if women, young peolple rebel and fight against the real culprits of the modern Middle Ages, State, Government, church, masters.
It’s the result of life of many girls in the south, sometimes made of vacuum, but also suppression often divert the desires of a different world, free, rich, in order to impose false, deviant individual needs, instead of finding the common reasons rebellion and struggle.
Although in this case it is possible that the murder of Sarah was also made by her cousin, then another woman, this speech does not change the background and shows a more raw, however, the condition of the girls made of oppression both life, but also ideological, that behind all violence and killing, there are social conditions in which the patriarchal / male (in its various forms), with its false values and feelings individualistic ideology is fundamental and constitutive for this and even dominant deviant and sometimes the conscience of those girls / women.

But today is primarily the drive by girls, women, especially women, entering objectively, though often not yet subjectively, in contrast to the patriarchal and causes breakage. Here the contrast between men and women appear more similar to the apparent contradiction between relations of production and development of productive forces: the forces of production (the need for women's "emancipation") growing increasingly come into open conflict, antagonistic relations with existing production (patriarchal / capitalist). But until they break those relations, are the productive forces that are destroyed or suppressed.

This reality and above this need to break / revolution also applies even more so for women / girls killed inside their immigrant families, and that must come to terms with a triple oppression: the patriarchal / feudal origin, men and women, imperialist country.

Important is the link between all this and politics, legitimated general humus

If in Varese an idiot in office puts out the sign "Beware of the dog, the owner, the whole family," can be only an idiot, but when Bossi or Maroni say these things, these conceptions, then they become rules and everyone feels entitled to do anything! Like: If Berlusconi exploits women and prostitution, why couldn’t do the same the idiot in office! It is now a general thing, this is the message that is passed.
Among other things, an article on the newspaper La Repubblica, titled "Italy at gunpoint," reported about a significant increase in the number of Italians, especially men and especially in the north, who buy guns and go shooting at the shooting range, as if this now becomes the means necessary to increase their perception of security, and economic too. The latest killings in the summer, took place with firearms at the hands of "good people" with firearms.

And these are almost all "normal" or even "decent" people, as said the employer of a coachbuilder who murdered two women. They are the "good" police officers and servants of the order and the rule, it is the "good" people who carry firearms because they like safety or for sport.
Most of these murders of women occur in the northern provinces, where good people grow and are encouraged to grow, as good representatives of parties and government, as mayors of each political side, by priests as police, an ideology of ownership, conservation, as well as objectively sexist ideology, fascist, and who call into question all this, whether women or immigrants, must be deleted.

In those same days when these murders of women occurred, July 2, a verdict of the Supreme Court were issued, which says that "if the wife is a strong woman it is not a crime to manhandle her." In the same period in the newspapers come out several articles on sex tourism, where the first are the Italians: "Italy holds the record of sex tourism mainly pedophile. First in Europe, 80,000 are males, of which almost 1 / 3 and over 80% of heterosexual pedophiles. In Kenya, Brazil, Thailand, Cuba, S. Domingo. For Brazil and Thailand in certain seasons charter flights are constant. In two weeks the predator is capable of having relationships with 20 different partners. You can find all kind of man, from family man to the priest. A pedophile is fully integrated in society: is the normal husband, he does not looks like the ogre." Who handles all this? Normally authorized travel agencies, which do this mainly.

With Berlusconi, prostitution for the purpose of political-electoral-show career is practiced and legitimized; the pornography of the show, a sort of renovated and modern fascist jus primae noctis for the pleasure of the emperor, mean culture and practice of rape and pedophilia that become "normal."

We are faced with the fact that the curriculum of women candidates and then also member of the largest parliamentary party in Italy should be formed passing through the Berlusconi’s villa or the "Big Brother"; we face the fact also that laws that will shape, ill-treated the lives of millions of people, of women, are determined by soubrettes/clown.

The concept of Berlusconi and his court, including women, on women, the consideration of their role in society, are in fact a litmus test, the tip of the iceberg of ideology and the degree of incivility of a caste that can not more hide and lie, now publicly claim as a legitimate expression of a feeling of mass that way of life and concept by openly stating that the design of their system is what we call synthetically modern middle ages, one in which "God, Motherland, Family " applies to others, must be even through the law applied to others, but does not apply to him.

Violence against women does nothing but continue the discrimination, injustice, double exploitation and oppression of which we are victims in capitalist society

Eva Gabrielsson, companion of the writer Stieg Larsson author of "Men Who Hate Women", faced with the question of a journalist who asked what were the roots of this hatred against women, he replied: "As Von Clausewitz said, war is not merely a continuation of politics by other means. The same applies to violence against women, which does nothing but continue on a different ground, discrimination and injustice of which we are victims in our society. That’s why violence against women is violence against all citizens, it is not a private matter between individuals. "

***

The employers, the government act to drive back home the women. Many in our country in recent months have been hit in the workforce, women workers have been laid off, more and more precarious, unemployed fighting for the labor charged by the police and fined, super-exploited women almost to the conditions modern slavery. The state directly with the attack on the school is conducting the largest mass layoff in a sector overwhelmingly female. At the same time, with a speech really hypocritical, that at the same time is a first step in a general attack, it raised the retirement age for women workers. All this has done nothing but worsen the already heavy and discriminatory working conditions and wages of women, and Italy is among the last countries in the employment rate of women.

On women are discharged the cuts and worsening social services, management of the crisis in the family. And it is women and children that pay cuts to health services and its productivity and purely utilitarian logic, with the return of the deaths in childbirth.
As the ideological bombing and practical attack by the government and the Vatican retakes against the freedom of choice for women, against their right to decide on the subject of motherhood; the recent attempts to block the use of the pill RU486 in our country represent a new attack yet against women accused of killing, to practice violence by abortion.
This policy made by the Government, employers, Government, Church against women, for women has increased as an inevitable consequence of the oppression of fascist machismo, sexual violence against women.

Let’s return to the question of the family

We say "In Death of the Family" in a provocative way of saying that the family is a key ring of the march towards the modern fascism of the government and the state. The modern fascism can not be achieved without making the family one of its main base, both in the sense of its subordination, to be folded, functional to the choices of the government and the State, and in the sense of active supporter, fighter in terms of ideological symbols and propaganda values of those policy choices.

The family, especially the proletarian one, is the central place where you manage an increasingly poor social economy, the administration of increasingly low wages or no wages at all, you manage the cost of living increases. The working-class family during the attack, the crisis, guarantees to mitigate the devastating impact of these policies. Assistance from family members, normal relationship based on emotional ties between people becomes an obligation, it becomes an unbearable slavery for women, and often leads to crisis and depression. In the family come back displaced workers, remain for years unemployed children. The family, however, guarantees their livelihood and limits the most serious and dangerous consequences for the social system.

The family, for this system, must be a parachute to the frustrations, to the putting in crisis for positions of privilege of men in the family. The family then is a sort of social safety net.
But the family, particularly the average-, and sometimes even petty bourgeois family, influencing also areas of working-class families, plays in the march towards the modern fascism also a function of active supporter of reactionary values, like the defence of safety, children to the homeland, control over young people, etc... There is no escape for women, the bonds of family become closer even though they are sometimes gilded. For the proletarian women, for the women of popular masses this family is more of a return to a modern middle ages, showed signs of degradation, violence and the apparent return to the past, especially in male-female relationships, which find their most striking manifestation precisely in feminicide.

For women, no progress can be lasting and definitive without revolution and the revolution in the revolution

This fact shows that in bourgeois society no progress for women can be lasting and definitive, that only a revolutionary struggle, in which the rebellion and the struggle of women is a vital and powerful force; only a new proletarian power based on the principles and practice by law of the full emancipation and liberation of women, and the ideological struggle of mass education, can make those final achievements definitive. For that it is not enough to establish a socialist government, or think that the revolution can immediately resolve all the sexist ideas. The experience of the communist movement has shown, and developed with the Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, that it is necessary a revolution in the revolution, a period in which you combine the law to prevent practices and sexist ideas and imposes other kind of practices, and education, the conviction at the mass level.

Bebel writes on "The emancipation of women" that the existing form of the family at a time determined can not be separated from the existing social conditions. Marx writes that the family contains within itself in miniature all the antagonisms which later develop widely in society and in his state. Engels said that the monogamous family was the cellular form of civil society and in it we can already study the nature of the antagonisms and contradictions in a culture that unfold in its fullness.

In today social condition in which the bourgeoisie can only produce destruction, wars with the horrors that are the negation of humanity, in which sex, also made by women American soldiers hyenas ridens, is used to commit the most brutal torture of Iraqi prisoners, where the government, the state is marching towards a modern fascism, a social system where women are worth less than an embryo, in which science is used against science, not to advance the welfare of humanity and therefore, health, but to build monstrosities, family and male/female relations change in relation and functionally to this modern medieval age and at the same time it contains in embryo all the contradictions. In this sense it is not a “backward” family compared to an advanced society, it is not male / female relationships that could appear inconceivable in relation to the progress of women, as is sometimes said, but it is a completely modern family, in the sense that it is appropriate to what is now the existing capitalist social system, and needed by this.

You can not fight against this family without upsetting this social system that produces it and of which he is shore. This fight has nothing to do (and indeed must unmask) with the politics of petty bourgeois feminism that wants to free himself from the family in an individualistic logic, nor it can be reduced to a mere struggle against men.

In the family, even in the proletarian one, men are privileged compared to the condition of women, but as these privileges are miserable! The family is a chain and it is unbearable for the workers, for young people too, who remain at home downloading their weight on women, who often use the family, but can not wait to escape from this prison coming to hate it.

This fight, surely must be done primarily in first person by women, who suffer all the chains, however, is interest not only of women but of all the proletarians, because it is a struggle for a new humanity, new social relations.
For us, Communists, “in death of the family" means to make the family, rather than prop of the capitalist system and today's march towards the modern fascism, a lever for women's rebellion to overthrow the system.

We hate "Men Who Hate Women."

We said "we hate ‘men who hate women’." We have taken these words from the novel by Stieg Larsson, who has some aspects of study:

It is set in Sweden, a society where women have made some achievements, are emancipated, but incidentally, in the last 2-3 years there have appeared many writers and women writers of detective stories set in Sweden, many of which have to centre women: raped women, killed women and so on. (In reality and not only in the novels). They are books about modern killings, killings that take place in most advanced capitalist societies, not those lagging behind, and that's why deny that violence today is only the result of a backward society, showing the decay of imperialism came to its end, which can not lead to anything progressive, but only in a modern Middle Ages.

The main character, Lisbeth Salander, is a rebel at any attempt to "normalize" / considered different for excellence, she tried to kill her father because he used to rape her mother, and so on. Lisbeth is rebellious to every rule and this rebellion is unbearable for others, particularly men who must "tame" her, till to rape her and groped to kill her.

But who are these men? They are great managers of industry, fascist, Nazi-hating women.
Lisbeth at some point, in discussion with the other book's protagonist, a journalist who also tries to justify the rapist / murderess, making a psychological analysis, exclaimed, "Damn, this man hates women." "Bullshit!" precisely, because we reject the interpretations / explanations that are often made after killings because they only serve to put a hat on, something different is to collect some of these interpretations,to show their entirely social character, common to thousands of men and explainable only with social, class and gender analysis.

This novel, also independently of the will of the writer, it helps to understand what we're saying. Today there is actually a kind of "hatred" toward women as toward immigrants, toward homosexuals and so on. This outright hatred toward women, because women think, act, decide, is a Fascist hatred. This hatred raises the bar, sets in motion the violence.
"Men Who Hate Women" expresses the image of the capitalist system in its phase of crisis, imperialist decay, a system that no longer has anything constructive, but it is only destruction. And so it must be destroyed. And women have double reason to do it!

feminist proletarian revolutionary mouvement italy
25 november 2010

måndag 8 mars 2010

Proletär feminism: ett bidrag till debatten


Det finns gott om feminister i Sverige, det rent av dräller av dom. Att fira den åttonde mars är därför inte speciellt kontroversiellt i sig. Det är det inte heller att fira den första maj. Den åttonde mars i Sverige - precis som första maj - är en i mångt och mycket neutraliserad dag. Anledning är att det saknas en verkligt revolutionär kvinnorörelse i landet - precis som det saknas en verkligt revolutionär arbetarrörelse att tala om. Anledning är, i huvudsak, att det saknas en revolutionär organisation som verkligen företräder arbetarklassens intressen, kämpar för dess befrielse och förmår att kanalisera alla förtrycktas kamp i revolutionär riktning. Vi vill denna åttonde mars - som nu firats av kommunister och revolutionärer världen över i hundra år - ta upp några frågor rörande behovet av en revolutionär kvinnorörelse.

För att överhuvudtaget börja ta oss an saken måste vi ta som utgångspunkt att varje tanke och handling - eller all samhällelig teori och praktik om man så vill - i ett klassamhälle oundvikligen bär en klasstämpel. Sedan privategendomens uppkomst är mänskligheten uppdelad i klasser och den kommer vara det så länge klasserna existerar. Idéer faller inte från himlen, de är ett resultat av samhällelig praktik och det finns ingen "mänsklig natur". I det moderna Sverige har därför våra tankar och handlingar karaktären av de klasser som finns i landet: bourgeoisie, småbourgeoisie och proletariat. Trasproletariatet, "denna passiva förruttnelse av de understa lagren i det gamla samhället", alstrar ingen egen specifik ideologi utan följer den kraft som är starkast och låter sig alltsomoftast köpas av bourgeoisien. Det kan följaktligen inte finnas en feminism som inte har en klasskaraktär - att argumentera för motsatsen betyder i slutändan att hävda att alla män och alla kvinnor, efter respektive könstillhörighet, har samma intressen, att dessa intressen är fristående från klasserna, dvs. att det finns en manlig och en kvinnlig "natur" vilket bara är en härledning ur tanken om "den mänskliga naturen", dvs. idealism. Vi bör alltså tala om borgerlig feminism, småborgerlig feminism och proletär feminism.

Den borgerliga feminismen i Sverige är den härskande klassens feminism. Då den svenska bourgeoisien, med dess olika delar och skikt, är den härskande klassen i ett imperialistiskt land, blir dess feminism imperialisternas feminism. Detta att Sverige är ett imperialistiskt land förklarar i mycket hur de svenska kvinnorna, i allmänhet, har en avsevärt bättre situation än kvinnor i länder i tredje världen. Den svenska imperialismens säregenheter i jämförelse med andra imperialistmakter förklarar skillnaderna som finns om man jämför kvinnornas läge i dessa. Samma sak gäller för arbetarklassens läge då man jämför med andra länder. Den borgerliga feminismen - eller rättare sagt den politiska tillämpningen av denna - är den som är ansvarig för kvinnans situation i Sverige idag: kvinnor är sämre betalda än män, dvs. exploateras mer, genomför mängder med socialt nödvändigt arbete (så kallat hushållsarbete) utan någon betalning alls, diskrimineras i alla sociala sammanhang, utsätts för patriarkalt våld (inte sällan med dödlig utgång), osv. Dess imperialistiska karaktär kommer till uttryck i: 1) hur den ställer sig solidarisk med det rådande samhällssystemet, den svenska imperialismen, och dess del i utsugningen och förtrycket av tredje världen och det därmed förbundna upprätthållandet av halvkoloniala och halvfeodala stater; 2) hur den ideologiskt rättfärdigar den "västerländska civilisationens", dvs imperialismens, övergrepp och skamligheter - "krig mot Afghanistan för kvinnornas befrielse", en kurdiska som mördas av sin make är "hedersmördad" medan en kvinna som heter Olsson i efternamn som slåss ihjäl av sin make inte är det, osv., och; 3) hur den systematiskt bekämpar revolutionära rörelser och nationella befrielserörelser världen över - revolutionära rörelser, som tex folkkrigen i Indien och Peru, anklagas, grundlöst, för våldtäkter och andra kränkningar av kvinnor och nationella befrielserörelsers kamp mot imperialismen demoniseras för deras "förtryck av kvinnor". Den borgerliga feminismen är synnerligen rasistisk, män som har en kvinnosyn präglad av de halvfeodala samhällen där de lever (eller har levt) framställs som undermänniskor som måste "integreras i det svenska samhället", dvs. ersätta sina halvfeodala fördomar med borgerliga sådana - men även de som kan sägas ha gjort det ifrågasätts konstant och misstros på grund av sin "etnicitet". Den borgerliga feminismen av idag är reaktionär i alla dess aspekter.

Den småborgerliga feminismen är en den otydliga, förvirrade, vacklande och opportunistiska feminismen. De småborgerliga feministerna vill göra slut på det förtryck som kvinnor utsätts för, men de har inget verkligt intresse av att krossa det imperialistiska systemet. Det är småbourgeoisiens läge i ett imperialistiskt land, å ena sidan drabbas de av monopolkapitalismens verkningar och de ser sig förvandlade till hantlangare för den härskande klassen, å andra är deras relativa välstånd avhängigt från herrarnas framgång. Denna feminism erkänner kvinnoförtrycket och erkänner klasskampen, i vissa fall använder man sig av ett helt batteri av marxistisk terminologi och uppfattar sig allt som oftast som ”socialistisk”. Man har en mängd vetenskapliga argument, ett par relativt skarpa teoretiker, och man kan analysera strukturer och individer. Man är nyskapande som få och synbart stridbara. Men, formen, inte innehållet, är det viktiga för dem; alla deras slutsatser blir oriktiga därför att de inte kommer från grundproblemet – privategendomen som ursprunget till kvinnoförtrycket och nödvändigheten av att besegra imperialismen som förutsättning för att kunna avancera på vägen till kvinnans emancipation – och de försöker gottgöra det hela med allehanda idealistiska formler. Följaktligen blir det att så fort det kommer till att ta ställning i ”allmänna frågor” halkar man in på samma svanspolitik som resten av den frasradikala vänstern; parlamentarism eller livsstilspolitik, imperialistisk chavunism eller ”tredjevärldenism”, ”vänlig pådrivare” eller individuell terrorism. I grunden blir denna feminism inte något annat än – i bästa fall – en kritik av systemet som tjänar till dess evolution men inte till en revolutionär rörelse.
Vi avser inte här gå djupare in på ”feminismen” hos olika partier/organisationer/grupper som viftar med röda fanor men för vilka den socialistiska revolutionen inte är ett reellt och konkret perspektiv – alla dessa som årtionde efter årtionde överallt finns att se säljandes tidningar, bär käcka knappar och manar folk att rösta på deras kandidat i kommunalvalet – och som aldrig i livet kommer att gå in för en verklig konfrontation med imperialiststaten. Det räcker med att konstatera att dessa sammanslutningar inte är revolutionära i allmänhet och därför knappast kan vara det när det gäller kvinnofrågan.
Den småborgerliga feminismen skapar stor förvirring och många kvinnor som kunde ha vunnits för den proletära revolutionens sak leds genom den in på sidospår som leder till dem ett par års intensiv aktivism för de att sedan pacificeras i systemets barm. Denna typ av feminism är i allt opportunistisk.

Den proletära feminismen utgår från marxismen – logiskt då marxismen är arbetarklassens ideologi. Den är den enda som tjänar kvinnans verkliga emancipation. Den inte bara erkänner utan är den som klargjort de verkliga orsakerna till kvinnans läge, till förtrycket av kvinnan och hur förhållandet mellan man och kvinna ter sig i klassamhället. Den proletära feminismen är i detta ”feminism i sin renaste form” eller ”feminismen som ren idé” om man så vill. De revolutionära rörelser som vägletts av marxismen är också de sociala rörelser som i högst grad involverat kvinnor och som medfört de viktigaste framstegen för kvinnosaken. Erfarenheterna från de socialistiska staterna – dvs. innan dessa usurperades av revisionismen – visar att socialismen är det samhällskick som överlägset är fördelaktigast för den stora majoriteten av kvinnor. Vi har sedan några dagar tillbaka publicerat texter som vi tycker ge en bra bild av marxismens syn på kvinnofrågan, framförallt om man läser vidare ur de texter som vi publicerat korta utdrag ur. Vi hänvisar till nämda texter för de som önskar fördjupa sig mer om vad den proletära feminismen är. Vi konstaterar här kort att den proletära feminismen är konsekvent revolutionär.

Förhoppningsvis ger ovanstående utläggning en grundståndpunkt för oss att gå vidare med och därmed kommer vi till det mer omedelbara läget som vi står inför i Sverige idag. Vi har idag inte en revolutionär organisation som leder proletariatets klasskamp – om vi ska vara ärliga så finns det knappt någon revolutionär organisering i Sverige – och därför finns det ej heller en ledning som organiserar det arbetande folkets kvinnor för att främja revolutionen. Kaderläget är minst sagt prekärt. Problemet för dom krafter som dock finns blir att formulera en riktig politik för kvinnorörelsen. En riktig politisk linje kan endast framkomma under kampens förlopp, som ett resultat av tillämpning av den revolutionära teorin i den samhälleliga praktiken och erfarenheterna av denna syntesiserats. Så vad göra? En bra början är att inse det verkliga läget i klasskampen, och våra egna krafters tillstånd, och driva fram den revolutionära praktiken, inte genom att utgå från fantasier - eller vad man destillerar ut ur ångorna från slutna möteslokaler där självgodheten snarare är norm än undantag - utan genom en absolut hängivenhet för våra höga mål. Vi behöver inte pompösa fjantar som inte försitter en möjlighet att utmåla sig själva som de rödaste av de röda och slå sig för bröstet för sina offer på revolutionens altare, men som inte försitter den minsta förståelse för rörelsens teoretiska och praktiska behov.

Vi bör beakta de avacerade erfarenheter som finns, och hur kvinnor deltar i den revolutionära kampen världen över och hur de olika partierna och organisationerna organiserar kvinnorörelsen. Vi måste ta av de fördummande eurocentristiska glasögonen och förstå att om vi idag ska finna exempel på kvinnor som verkligen utvecklar kamper i tjänst av kvinnans emancipation, måste vi titta på platser som Indien, Filippinerna och Peru. Av dessa är ett exempel som vi tycker bör framhävas hur de peruanska kommunisterna förmått främja kvinnornas deltagande i revolutionen. Oss veterlingen finns det ingen revolutionär rörelse i historien som haft så många kvinnor i framträddande positioner. Perus Kommunistiska Parti (PKP) publicerar inga uppgifter om sitt medlemsantal eller den interna statistiken över klassursprung, könstillhörighet osv. Men, såväl den peruanska revolutionens vänner som dess fiender brukar ofta tala om PKP som ett parti vars medlemar främst utgörs av kvinnor. Klart är att PKPs Centralkommitté under åtminstone en period haft en tydlig majortiet av kvinnliga medlemmar och dess Politiska Byrås Ständiga Utskott (vilket kan beskrivas som de viktigaste ledande instansen mellan partikongresserna och Centralkommitténs Plenum) bestod under en tid till två tredjedelar av kinnliga medlemmar. Att kvinnor även spelar en mycket framträddande roll inom den revolutionära armén är allmänt känt; så till den milda grad att till och med aktioner som inte har med PKP att göra – som tex. när en fängelsdirektör nyligen sköts ner av kriminella i Lima – men kvinnor deltar, så antas det omedelbart att PKP ligger bakom. Anledning till att PKP lyckats mobilisera och organisera kvinnor i så stor omfattning är att partiet redan flera år innan inleddes folkkriget bedrev ett mycket systematisk och målinriktat arbete för att utveckla en revolutionär kvinnorörelse. Dokumentet som vi igår publicerade ett utdrag ur visar vilka ideologiska och politiska grunder man utgick från. En hög ideologisk medvetenhetsnivå bland partimedlemmarna om kvinnofrågan, en levande intern disskution om frågan och konkreta åtgärder för att politisera och organisera kvinnorna enligt en klasslinje, och inte minst att man avdelat kader för uppgiften, har gett ett mycket imponerande resultat.

Det är även en nödvändighet för dagens revolutionärer att skaffa sig en klar bild över kvinnorörelsens historia i Sverige, vilka konkreta erfarenheter som finns och hur dessa bör utvärderas. Men det viktigaste på nuvarande tidpunkt torde vara att faktiskt försöka se hur man kan arbeta med de kvinnogrupper som redan finns, det borde vara möjligt att finna gemensamma beröringspunkter med grupper av internationalistiska kvinnor och kvinno/tjejgrupper verksamma i våra bostadsområden. Det är där man bör börja, inte genom att söka sig till livstilsinriktade småborgerliga feminister utan till dem som faktiskt intresserar sig för vår klass verkliga situation. Arbetarklassens kvinnor har en helt annorlunda situation, och därmed annorlunda problem, än småborgarskapets döttrar. Speciell uppmärksamhet bör läggas vid att aktivera kvinnor i de kamper som förs i proletära områden, som tex. kamperna som förts i Rosengård, och de kvinnliga kamraterna måste särskillt föregå med exempel i sådana fall. Kvinnornas politisering, precis som arbetarklassens i dess helhet, kan endast komma till stånd genom kamp. Vi kan skriva hur många välformulerade texter som helst, men om vi inte finns bland massorna – arbetar, lever och kämpar med dem – kommer vi ingenstans. När det gäller kvinnornas organisering så finns det naturligtvis ett behova av specifika organisationsformer för kvinnorörelsen – under grundförutsättningen att såväl kvinnor som män deltar i den revolutionära organisationen och dess ledande organ under lika vilkor. Den revolutionära organisationen måste vara särskillt uppmärksam på att befodra de kvinnliga kamraternas aktivitet; att olika kamrater har olika förusättningar är egentligen en självklarhet – en arbetare har vanligtvis en avsvärt mindre vana att uttrycka sig i skrift än en akademiker tex. - och därför måste vi veta att skaffa kollektiva strukturer som underlättar de kvinnliga kamraternas deltagande i revolutionen, att kamrater tex. skaffar barn är något helt naturligt och kollektiva lösningar för de praktiska svårigheter som kan uppstå måste besörjas.

En revolutionär organisering av kvinnorna, kan endast vara en sådan som tjänar till att främja proletariatets kamp. En sådan organisering måste vara av en sådan art att den kan avstå från de omedelbara fördelarna – som t.ex. en legal organisationsform innebär – för att behålla sitt oberoende från borgarstaten. En sådan organisering måste syfta till att släppa lös kvinnans revolutionära energi i kamp, inte med huvudsyftet att vinna några i princip oviktiga småsegrar för att man ska kunna uppvisa ”resultat” utan kampen för olika dagsaktuella frågor måste föras i tjänst av revolutionens seger, dvs. upprättandet av proletariatets statsmakt. En sådan organisering måste vara djupt präglad av en internationalistisk och anti-imperalistisk anda. Och framförallt, en sådan organisering måste vara inordnad i proletariatets revolutionära klasskamp, ledas av dess ideologi och tjäna dess mål, vilket omedelbart innebär att tjäna skapandet av en organisation av verkliga revolutionärer här i landet.

Vår fromma förhoppning är att vi med denna text kan ge ett litet bidrag till disskutionen om hur en revoltionär kvinnorörelse kan utvecklas, för en proletärlinje i kvinnorörelsen.

söndag 7 mars 2010

Proletär Feminism: ur ett dokument från PKP



"Feminist Movement

A central point and greatly important today is the Mariáteguist proposal on the general problems of women, with his theses on the feminist movement, on which subject three parts are noteworthy: feminism; politicization of women and organization.

With respect to FEMINISM, Mariátegui held that it emerges "neither artificially nor arbitrarily" among us but it corresponds with the incorporation of women into manual and intellectual work; in this viewpoint he highlights mainly that feminism thrives among women who work outside the home, and points out that the proper environments for the development of the feminist movement are the university classrooms and the labor unions. He then sets forth the directive of orienting ourselves towards those fronts so as to push forward the mobilization of women. Although it must be decided that such orientation in no way implies discounting peasant women; since we must remember that Mariátegui considered the peasant women as the most important class in our process, no doubt peasant women too are a front of mobilization and even more, the main source which the entire feminist movement as well as the proletariat want to reach.

In Feminist Demands Mariátegui proposes the essence of the feminist movement: "No one should be surprised if all women do not get together in a single feminist movement. Feminism has, necessarily, several colors, various tendencies. In feminism three fundamental tendencies can be distinguished, three substantive colors; bourgeois feminism, petty-bourgeois feminism and proletarian feminism. Each one of these feminisms formulates its own demands in a different way. The bourgeois woman unites feminism with the interests of the conservative class. The proletarian woman unifies her feminism with the faith of the revolutionary multitudes in the society of the future. The class struggle--an historical fact and not merely a theoretical assertion--is reflected on the feminist stage. Women, like men, are reactionaries, centrists or revolutionaries. They cannot, consequently, all fight the same battle side by side. In the current human panorama, class differentiates individuals more than sex."

This is the essence of our woman question, the class character of the entire feminist movement. And we must keep this very much in mind, today more than ever, since once more the organization of women is pushed forward; many groups arise, which in general are silent or hide the class character sustaining them, that is, the class which they serve, and preach a unification of women to demand their rights in opposition to men, as if to serve all women united, without distinction of class, for a supposed social transformation "humanist, Christian and in solidarity" social transformation, going through a few intermediate modalities of unclear or confused class positions. Substantially the problem is to ascertain the class root entailed by each women's group, organism, front or movement, to delimit positions and establish whom they serve, which class they serve, and if they are truly or are not on the side of the people.

These questions take us to a crucial problem: according to whose principles, which class criteria and orientation are we to build a feminist movement serving the people? Here Mariátegui's position is brilliant and concise "Feminism, as a pure idea, is essentially revolutionary." And to him, revolutionary essentially meant proletarian; that way the entire people's feminist movement which truly wants to serve the people and the revolution, has to be a feminist movement adhered to the proletariat, and today in our country adherence to the proletariat means adherence to the thinking of Mariátegui.

With respect to the POLITICIZATION OF WOMEN. The Marxist classics have always attached great importance to this point, since without it, it is impossible to develop the mobilization and organization of women, and without these women we cannot fight side by side with the proletariat for their own emancipation. Following his great example, the Peruvian working class like Mariátegui has pointed out the importance of the politicization of women, and highlighted that its deficiency or lack thereof serves reaction.

"Women, for the most part, due to their little or no political education, are not a renovating force in contemporary struggles but a reactionary force." (Figures and Aspects of Life in the World.)

This is sufficiently clear, what we must ask ourselves is this: What does this politicization mean? For the founder of the Communist Party it meant the determined and militant incorporation of women into the class struggle, their mobilization together with the people's interests, their integration into the organizations, individually learning themselves the ideology of the working class, and all this is part of, assessed by and under the leadership of the proletariat. In synthesis, to incorporate women into politics, into class struggle, under the leadership of the working class.

With respect to the ORGANIZATION OF WOMEN. Marxism teaches that in order to face their enemies and struggle for their class interests the proletariat has no other recourse than to organize itself; this principle is applied to the people, who are strong only if organized and therefore also to women, who can only fight successfully when they are organized.

As a "convicted and confessed Marxist" Mariátegui applied these principles creatively. He paid very special attention to organizing the women workers, as is seen in the proposals in the Manifesto of the CGTP referred to above:

"All this accumulation of 'calamities' weighing on the exploited woman cannot be resolved except by immediate organization. In the same way that unions have to build their youth cadres, they must create their women's sections, where our future women militants will be educated."

Mariátegui showed the same concern when under his guidance the statute of the mentioned Confederation was getting ready to form a Permanent Women's Commission at the Executive Committee level. Unfortunately, these orientations have not been correctly put into practice; it has remained a purely bureaucratic union position, called "feminine affairs" or some similar name, when it exits at all, without organically accommodating the women's sections of the unions, thus it remains as a pending task.

Later on, in March 1930, the Communist Party approved the following motion:

"First. Creating a Provisional Secretariat to organize socialist youth, under immediate control of the Party.

Second. Creating a Provisional Secretariat to organize the working women, under the leadership and control of the Party.

Third. Both secretariats will struggle for the immediate organization of youth of both sexes, for their political and ideological education, as a preparatory stage for their admission to the Party" (Martinez de la Torre, op. cit., Vol. II; our emphasis.)

Here Mariátegui's thesis is materialized by the need to pay attention to the women's organizations, even at the most advanced political levels; and his position is expressed that the organization of women is, ultimately, the question of organizing them under the leadership and control of the working class and the Party. Such proposals lead us to ask ourselves, about each women's group, organism, front or movement: For which class, how and for what are women organized? And keep in mind that these points can only be satisfactorily resolved, that is, for the class and the people, by adhering ourselves to the working class positions.

These three questions: feminism, politicization of women and organization of women, and the theses which Mariátegui established must be studied and applied consistently, since only that way can an authentic popular feminist movement be developed."
(MARXISM, MARIATEGUI AND THE WOMEN MOVEMENT, Central Committee, Communist Party of Peru (PCP), 1975.)

lördag 6 mars 2010

Proletär Feminism: två artiklar av kinesiska kommunister



"MARCH 8 is International Working Women’s Day. This festive day commemorates the glorious history of unity in struggle for liberation on the part of the working women of the whole world. This struggle is closely connected with the victorious advance of the cause of liberation of the world’s proletariat.
...

Why Women Were Oppressed

I took up work connected with women in 1937. China was then fighting a war of resistance against Japanese aggression and my task was to organize women in the countryside to join the movement to resist Japan and save the country. I was a student who had just come into contact with the revolution and knew little about revolutionary theory. I knew that the majority of women were working women and to talk about women’s liberation without them was only a deception by the exploiting classes and empty talk by intellectuals. But as to how the broad masses of working women were to gain their liberation, I had no clear idea. I saw the unhappy lot of women and questions crowded my anguished mind. Why were women so oppressed? Why weren’t women and men equal? How were the women to achieve liberation? At first I thought that because women were bullied by men and by parents-in-law, to win equality, women must win their due rights from the men and fight for freedom in the home. This view was not uncommon among some women and cadres at that time. This was trying to settle the women’s problem in isolation and proved to be quite impractical.

Engels pointed out: “The first class antagonism which appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamian marriage, and the first class oppression with that of the female sex by the male.” Women had occupied a highly respected position throughout the period of primitive society until the rise of the patrilineal gentes. The change in social status between men and women gradually took place with the breaking up of primitive society and the emergence of private ownership and the appearance of classes. Oppression of working women is first of all class oppression and sex inequality accompanies class inequality.

Since oppression of women has its social roots in private ownership and class exploitation, a thorough change in the unequal status of working women can be achieved only through revolution, through the elimination of private ownership and the exploiting classes. Precisely because of this the great task for the complete liberation of women falls on the shoulders of the proletariat whose historical mission is to eliminate private ownership and class exploitation. Hence, women’s liberation cannot but be a component part of the proletarian revolution. Since the women’s rights movements of the bourgeoisie pursue “equality of the sexes” in form, and do not take into account classes and class struggle and are divorced from the social revolutionary movement, they can only side-track the women’s liberation movement.
...

During the War of Resistance Against Japan (1937-45), I worked in several base areas behind enemy lines in southern Hopei Province. I vividly remember as if it were only yesterday how women enthusiastically participated in the war effort, urging husbands and sons to join the army and taking over all the farm work while the men were at the front. They also weaved cloth and made footwear for the people’s army, served as stretcher bearers, tended the sick and wounded and acted as couriers. Some women took up arms and fought in battles.


In the land reform and the movement to support the fighting front during the War of Liberation (1946-49), women took an active part and played a tremendous role. Many heroines emerged in the history of the Chinese revolution and their heroic deeds are still praised and sung by the people.

As the revolutionary struggle developed victoriously, the cause of women’s liberation also won great victories. The status of women improved step by step. I remember the first election of people’s representatives in the Shansi-Chahar-Hopei Border Region in 1940. Eighty-five per cent of the women citizens cast votes and 20 per cent of the representatives at the region, county and village levels were women. An increasing number of women held leading positions. For one engaged in work concerning women, this big change in their status was heartening.

Fundamental Change in Status of Women

Precisely because hundreds of millions’ of Chinese women took an active part in the revolutionary struggles together with the rest of the people, the dark rule of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism was overthrown in 1949 and the Chinese people were liberated. The liberation of the broad masses of women thus entered a new stage.

With the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the working people became masters of the country. The Party and Government drew up a constitution, laws and a whole series of policies to guarantee and promote the right of women to enjoy equality with men politically, economically, culturally, socially and in the home. The Marriage Law promulgated in 1950 completely did away with the arbitrary and compulsory feudal marriage system, prohibited the exaction of money or gifts in connection with marriage and introduced freedom of marriage for both men and women. The Labour Insurance Regulations promulgated in 1951 contained special provisions to safeguard the interests of women and children.

But the revolution did not end with these. When the People’s Republic was founded in 1949, Chairman Mao called on the women of the whole country: “Unite and take part in production, and political activity to improve the economic and political status of women.” In 1955, Chairman Mao pointed out that real equality between men and women could be realized only in the course of the socialist transformation of the whole society.

Under the guidance of Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line, women in China have over the past 20 years taken an active part in democratic reforms and in the socialist revolution. In particular, since the beginning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, women along with the rest of the people of China threw themselves into the battle to smash the two bourgeois headquarters headed by Liu Shao-chi and Lin Piao.

In the struggles they diligently studied Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and their consciousness in class struggle and the two-line struggle was greatly enhanced. They paid attention to affairs of the state and the world and they had their minds on how to better serve the people. They linked their work to building socialism, supporting the world revolution and the liberation of women of the whole world and the cause of liberation of all mankind. Large numbers of outstanding women have been admitted into the Communist Party and women delegates made up 20 per cent of the delegates to the Tenth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1973. Twelve per cent of the Members and Alternate Members of the Party Central Committee are women.

The swift development of the socialist economy and culture has provided a wide range of opportunities for women to take part in social productive labour. Every year, large numbers of them join the ranks of workers. In the cities many women have broken out of the restricted confines of the family to set up and run all kinds of factories and create wealth for the society and, at the same time, improve their own economic status.

In the countryside the broad masses of women, including tens of thousands of educated young women who have gone to settle in the countryside after completing their schooling, are working tenaciously to transform nature and build a new socialist countryside. A large contingent of women “barefoot doctors” has appeared in the countryside in recent years. They are a substantial force for improving the rather backward medical and health conditions in the rural areas. In education, the arts and science and other fields, large numbers of women are working diligently for socialism. All this speaks well for the fact that times have changed and today men and women are equal. Whatever men comrades can accomplish women comrades can too.


All over China public dining-rooms, creches and kindergartens, and other mother and child care facilities are increasing in number. Family planning is advocated and housework is shared by husbands and wives. All this ensures the health of the women and at the same time frees them from the burden of house hold chores, enabling them to have more opportunities to take part in political activities and productive labour.

Special mention must be made of the large number of outstanding young women workers and peasants who have been promoted to leading positions since liberation and, in particular, since the Great Cultural Revolution started. Women today hold leading posts ranging from the highest organs of the Party and Government as well as the National People’s Congress down to the various local organs, factories and people’s communes. Ordinary women textile workers have become Party and state leaders and former women serfs in Tibet are now leading cadres respected by everyone. They maintain close ties with the masses and serve them diligently, playing an increasingly great role. The emergence of large numbers of women cadres is an important indication of the liberation of Chinese women.

In recalling the fighting history of the Chinese women’s movement, it can be clearly seen that it is a component part of the new-democratic revolution and the socialist revolution led by the proletariat. Every advance in the revolution brought the women’s liberation movement a step further.(Women’s Liberation Is a Component Part of the Proletarian Revolution, Hsu Kwang, Peking Review, #10, March 8, 1974,)"

......................................................................................


"THE school of thought represented by Confucius and Mencius has strong contempt for women. It asserts male superiority and female inferiority and holds that women are subordinate to men. Confucius ranted: “Women and inferior men [meaning slaves] are hard to get along with, they get out of hand when befriended and they resent it when kept at a distance.” His loyal successor Mencius said: “Do not disobey your husband, because to look upon compliance as their correct course is the rule for women.” This means that women must do as men say and the wife must in no way act against the wishes of her husband.
....

Can “male superiority and female inferiority” really be the “will of Heaven”? Certainly not. This concept has always been a common feature of society under the rule of exploiting classes, a component part of the ideology of the exploiting classes. It is common to slave society, feudal society and capitalist society as well.

Early in 1927, in his work Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, Chairman Mao already had profoundly noted that of the four ropes—political authority, clan authority, religious authority and the masculine authority of the husband—that kept Chinese women in bondage, the political authority of the landlords was the backbone of all the other systems of authority. Warmly praising the revolutionary spirit of the peasant women, Chairman Mao wrote: “With the rise of the peasant movement, the women in many places have now begun to organize rural women’s associations; the opportunity has come for them to lift up their heads, and the authority of the husband is getting shakier every day.” “The old rule barring women and poor people from the banquets in the ancestral temples has also been broken. The women of Paikuo in Hengshan County gathered in force and swarmed into their ancestral temple, firmly planted their backsides in the seats and joined in the eating and drinking, while the venerable clan bigwigs had willy-nilly to let them do as they pleased.” This is a graphic illustration of the fact that the status of women can be radically changed once the reactionary exploiting class rule is toppled.
...

“The Communist Revolution,” solemnly declared Marx and Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, “is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.” The class basis of the concept of “male superiority and female inferiority” is the exploiting classes, and it is the masses of people, especially the masses of the working women, who are the victims. This ideology of the exploiting classes is completely incompatible with the socialist economic base and socialist political institutions. The mass movement to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius is forcefully sweeping away the old ideas of looking down on women and the ideology of the exploiting classes as a whole. This movement will surely create still more favourable conditions for the thorough emancipation of the women of China." (Doctrine of Confucius and Mencius —The Shackle That Keeps Women In Bondage,Fu Wen, Peking Review, #10, March 8, 1974)

fredag 5 mars 2010

Proletär Feminism: Komintern



"The most radical feminist demand – the extension of the suffrage to women in the framework of bourgeois parliamentarianism – does not solve the question of real equality for women, especially those of the propertyless classes. The experience of working women in all those capitalist countries in which, over recent years, the bourgeoisie has introduced formal equality of the sexes makes this clear. The vote does not destroy the prime cause of women’s enslavement in the family and society. Some bourgeois states have substituted civil marriage for indissoluble marriage. But as long as the proletarian woman remains economically dependent upon the capitalist boss and her husband, the breadwinner, and in the absence of comprehensive measures to protect motherhood and childhood and provide socialised child-care and education, this cannot equalise the position of women in marriage or solve the problem of relationships between the sexes.

The real equality of women, as opposed to formal and superficial equality, will be achieved only under Communism, when women and all the other members of the labouring class will become co-owners of the means of production and distribution and will take part in administering them, and women will share on an equal footing with all the members of the labour society the duty to work; in other words, it will be achieved by overthrowing the capitalist system of production and exploitation which is based on the exploitation of human labour,and by organising a Communist economy.

Only Communism creates conditions whereby the conflict between the natural function of woman – maternity – and her social obligations, which hinder her creative work for the collective, will disappear and the harmonious and many-sided development of a healthy and balanced personality firmly and closely in tune with the life and goals of the labour-collective will be completed. All women who fight for the emancipation of woman and the recognition of her rights must have as their aim the creation of a Communist society.

But Communism is also the final aim of the proletariat as a whole and therefore, in the interests of both sides, the two struggles must be fought as ‘a single and indivisible’ struggle."
(Methods and Forms of Work among Communist Party Women: Theses, 8 July 1921, Third Congress of the Communist International)

torsdag 4 mars 2010

Proletär Feminism: Lenin



"Principles of Organisation

Lenin glanced at the clock. “Half of the time I had set aside for you has already gone”, he said. “I have been chattering. You will draw up proposals for communist work among women. away. What sort of proposals have you in mind?”

I gave a concise account of them. Lenin nodded repeatedly in agreement without interrupting me. When I had finished, I looked at him questioningly.

“Agreed”, said he. “I only want to dwell on a few main points, in which I fully share your attitude. They seem to me to be important for our current agitation and propaganda work, if that work is to lead to action and successful struggles.

“The thesis must clearly point out that real freedom for women is possible only through communism. The inseparable connection between the social and human position of the woman, and private property in the means of production, must be strongly brought out. That will draw a clear and ineradicable line of distinction between our policy and feminism. And it will also supply the basis for regarding the woman question as a part of the social question, of the workers’ problem, and so bind it firmly to the proletarian class struggle and the revolution. The communist women’s movement must itself be a mass movement, a part of the general mass movement. Not only of the proletariat, but of all the exploited and oppressed, all the victims of capitalism or any other mastery. In that lies its significance for the class struggles of the proletariat and for its historical creation communist society. We can rightly be proud of the fact that in the Party, in the Communist International, we have the flower of revolutionary woman kind. But that is not enough. We must win over to our side the millions of working women in the towns and villages. Win them for our struggles and in particular for the communist transformation of society. There can be no real mass movement without women.

“Our ideological conceptions give rise to principles of organisation. No special organisations for women. A woman communist is a member of the Party just as a man communist, with equal rights and duties. There can be no difference of opinion on that score. Nevertheless, we must not close our eyes to the fact that the Party must have bodies, working groups, commissions, committees, bureaus or whatever you like, whose particular duty it is to arouse the masses of women workers, to bring them into contact with the Party, and to keep them under Its influence. That, of course, involves systematic work among them. We must train those whom we arouse and win, and equip them for the proletarian class struggle under the leadership of the Communist Party. I am thinking not only of proletarian women, whether they work in the factory or at home. The poor peasant women, the petty bourgeois – they, too, are the prey of capitalism, and more so than ever since the war. The unpolitical, unsocial, backward psychology of these women, their isolated sphere of activity, the entire manner of their life – these are facts. It would be absurd to overlook them, absolutely absurd. We need appropriate bodies to carry on work amongst them, special methods of agitation and forms of organisation. That is not feminism, that is practical, revolutionary expediency.”

I told Lenin that his words encouraged me greatly. Many comrades, and good comrades at that, strongly combated the idea that the Party should have special bodies for systematic work among women.


“That is neither new nor proof”, said Lenin. “You must not be misled by that. Why have we never had as many women as men in the Party – not at any time in Soviet Russia? Why is the number of women workers organised in trade unions so small? Facts give food for thought. The rejection of the necessity for separate bodies for our work among the women masses is a conception allied to those of our highly principled and most radical friends of the Communist Labour Party. According to them there must be only one form of organisation, workers’ unions. I know them. Many revolutionary but confused minds appeal to principle ‘whenever ideas are lacking’. That is, when the mind is closed to the sober facts, which must be considered. How do such guardians of ‘pure principle’ square their ideas with the necessities of the revolutionary policy historically forced upon us? All that sort of talk breaks down before inexorable necessity. Unless millions of women are with us we cannot exercise the proletarian dictatorship, cannot construct on communist lines. We must find our way to them, we must study and try to find that way."
(Clara Zetkin, Lenin on the Women’s Question)

onsdag 3 mars 2010

Internationella kvinnodagen 100 år


Sedan 1910 firar världens kommunister och revolutionärer den åttonde mars den internationella kvinnodagen. Vi vill uppmärksamma det hurdaårsjubileum som infaller i år genom att med början av idag och fram till den åttonde mars publicera utdrag ur viktiga texter som tjänar till en bättre förståelse av kvinnokampen och dess förbindelse med den revolutionära kampen i allmänhet. Vi börjar - ganska förutsägbart - med ett utdrag ur en text av Engels.

Proletär Feminism: Engels

"Vi lämnar nu Amerika, parningsfamiljens klassiska mark. Inga tecken tyder på, att någon högre familjeform utvecklats där, att det före dess upptäckande och erövrande där någonsin någonstädes existerat fast monogami. Annorlunda är det för den gamla världens vidkommande.

Här tämjde man husdjur och höll hjordar av boskap och därigenom hade en hittills oanad källa till rikedom utvecklats och fullständigt nya samhälleliga förhållanden skapats. Ända fram till barbariets lägre stadium hade den ständiga rikedomen bestått nästan uteslutande av hus, kläder, primitiva smycken och verktyg för att skaffa sig och bereda födan: båt, vapen, husgeråd av enklaste slag. Födan måste man varje dag tillkämpa sig på nytt. Nu hade de framträngande herdefolken - arierna i det indiska femflodslandet och Gangesområdet liksom på de då för tiden ännu långt vattenrikare stepperna vid Oxus och Jaxartes, semiterna vid Eufrat och Tigris - med sina hjordar av hästar, kameler, åsnor, nötkreatur, får, getter och svin fått en egendom, som bara behövde uppsikt och primitiv vård för att fortplanta sig i ständigt stigande antal och lämna den rikligaste föda i mjölk och kött. Alla tidigare medel för anskaffandet av föda trädde nu i bakgrunden. Jakten, som tidigare var en nödvändighet, blev nu en lyx.

Men vem tillhörde denna nya rikedom? Utan tvivel ursprungligen gensen. Men redan tidigt måste privatäganderätt till hjordarna ha utvecklats. Det är svårt att säga, huruvida författaren till den s.k. Första Mosebok fattar fader Abraham som ägare av sina hjordar i kraft av hans egen rätt som överhuvud för ett familjekollektiv eller i kraft av hans egenskap som överhuvud för en gens med ärvd värdighet. Säkert är endast, att vi inte kan fatta honom som ägare i modern mening. Och säkert är vidare, att vi på tröskeln till troshistorien redan överallt finner hjordarna som familjeöverhuvudets särskilda egendom, alldeles som ifråga om barbariets konstprodukter, husgeråd av metall, lyxartiklar och slutligen människoboskapen - slavarna.

Ty nu var också slaveriet uppfunnet. För barbaren på det lägre stadiet var slaven värdelös. Därför förfor också de amerikanska indianerna helt annorlunda med de besegrade fienderna än vad som skedde på ett högre stadium. Männen dödades eller också upptogs de som bröder i segrarnas stam. Kvinnorna togs till hustrur eller också blev de med sina överlevande barn likaledes adopterade. Den mänskliga arbetskraften lämnar på detta stadium ännu inget anmärkningsvärt överskott över sina underhållningskostnader. Med boskapsskötselns införande, metallbearbetningen, vävningen och slutligen lantbruket blev det annorlunda. Liksom hustrurna, vilka tidigare vanns med sådan lätthet, nu fått ett bytesvärde och köptes, så blev det också fallet med arbetskrafterna, särskilt sedan hjordarna slutgiltigt övergått i familjens ägo. Familjen förökade sig inte lika hastigt som boskapen. Det krävdes mer folk för att hålla uppsikt över den. Till det kunde den tillfångatagna fienden användas, vilken dessutom lät fortplanta sig lika bra som boskapen själv.

Så snart sådana rikedomar en gång övergått till familjers privategendom och som sådan raskt förökats, gav de parningsäktenskapet och det på modersrättsgensen vilande samhället en mäktig stöt framåt. Parningsäktenskapet hade infört ett nytt element i familjen. Vid sidan av den köttsliga modern hade det ställt den verkliga köttsliga fadern, som därtill förmodligen var mera verklig än många "fäder" nu för tiden. I enlighet med den dåvarande arbetsdelningen inom familjen tillkom det mannen att anskaffa födan och de därtill nödvändiga arbetsmedlen, han var alltså ägare av dessa sistnämnda. Han tog dem med sig i händelse av skilsmässa, liksom hustrun behöll sitt husgeråd. Enligt det dåtida samhällets bruk var mannen också ägare till de nya näringskällorna, boskapen, och senare de nya arbetsmedlen, slavarna. Enligt samma samhälles sedvänjor kunde emellertid hans barn inte ärva honom, ty med det stod det till på följande sätt.

Enligt modersrätten - alltså så länge härstamning endast räknades på kvinnolinjen - och enligt det ursprungliga arvsbruket i gensen ärvde först gentilförvanterna sin döda gentilkamrat. Förmögenheten måste stanna inom gensen. Då föremålen var få och obetydliga kunde de enligt urgammal praxis övergå till de närmaste gentilförvanterna, alltså till blodsförvanterna på moderns sida. Den döda mannens barn tillhörde emellertid inte hans gens utan moderns. De ärvde modern, till en början tillsammans med hennes övriga blodsförvanter, senare måhända med företrädesrätt. Men sin fader kunde de inte ärva, emedan de inte tillhörde hans gens och hans förmögenhet måste stanna inom denna. Vid hjordägarens död övergick alltså hans hjordar närmast till hans bröder och systrar och till hans systerbarn, eller till hans mostrars avkomma. Men hans egna barn blev urarva.

Allteftersom rikedomarna sålunda tillväxte gav de å ena sidan mannen en viktigare ställning i familjen än kvinnan, och gav å andra sidan impulsen till att utnyttja denna förstärkta ställning för att till förmån för barnen avskaffa den traditionella arvsföljden. Detta gick emellertid inte, så länge härstamningen enligt modersrätt var gällande. Denna måste alltså avskaffas, och den avskaffades. Detta var alls inte så svårt, som det i dag tyckes oss. Ty denna revolution - en av de betydelsefullaste som människorna upplevt - behövde inte beröra en enda levande medlem av gensen. Alla som hörde till densamma kunde nu liksom förut förbli vad de varit. Det räckte med det enkla beslutet, att de manliga medlemmarnas avkomma för framtiden skulle stanna inom gensen, men de kvinnligas uteslutas, i det de övergick till sin faders gens. Därmed hade man avskaffat härstamningsräkningen enligt kvinnolinje och modersarvsrätten och infört manligt härstamningsled och fadersarvsrätt. Hur denna revolution försiggått hos kulturfolken och när, om det vet vi ingenting. Den faller helt under förhistorisk tid. Att den emellertid ägt rum är mer än nog bevisat genom de rikliga spår av modersrätt, som i synnerhet Bachofen samlat. Med vilken lätthet den äger rum ser vi hos en hel rad indianstammar, där den först helt nyligen ägt rum och ännu äger rum, under inflytande dels av växande rikedom och förändrat levnadssätt (förflyttning från skogarna till prärien), dels moralisk påverkan av civilisationen och missionärerna. Av åtta missouristammar har sex manlig men två ännu kvinnlig härstamningslinje och arvsföljd. Hos shawnes, miamis och delawares är den sedvänjan vida spridd att överföra barnen till faderns gens genom att ge dem ett gensnamn, som tillhör denna, så att de kan ärva fadern. "Människornas medfödda spetsfundighet - att ändra tingen genom att ändra deras namn! Och att finna smyghål för att inom traditionen genombryta traditionen, där ett direkt intresse gett den tillräckliga eggelsen!" (Marx) Därigenom uppstod hopplös förvirring, som endast kunde avhjälpas och delvis också avhjälptes genom övergång till fadersrätten. "Detta förefaller överhuvudtaget som den naturligaste övergången." (Marx) - I fråga om vad de jämförande juristerna har att säga om det sätt och de vägar, på vilka denna övergång ägde rum hos den gamla världens kulturfolk - givetvis nästan bara hypoteser - jämför M. Kovalevsky: Tableau des origines et de l'évolution de la famille et de la propriété, Stockholm 1890.

Modersrättens störtande var det kvinnliga könets världshistoriska nederlag. Mannen blev den styrande också i hemmet, kvinnan degraderades, förslavades, blev slavinna åt hans lusta och enbart en automat för att sätta barn till världen. Denna kvinnans, förnedrande ställning, sådan den trädde i dagen framför allt hos den heroiska och ännu mer hos den klassiska tidens greker, har undan för undan hycklande skönmålats, och även på sina håll klätts i en mildare form men skaffats ur världen har den ingalunda.

Den första verkningen av männens envåldsmakt, som nu grundats, visar sig i den patriarkaliska familjens mellanform, som nu dyker upp. Vad som i huvudsak utmärker denna är inte flerhustru-äktenskapet - om vilket mera nedan - utan "organiseringen av ett antal fria och icke fria personer till en familj under familjeöverhuvudets fadersmakt. I dess semitiska form har detta familjeöverhuvud flera hustrur, de ofria har hustru och barn, och syftet med hela organisationen är att vakta hjordarna på ett avgränsat område". Det väsentliga är införlivandet av slavar samt fadersmakten. Därför är den romerska familjen den fulländade typen för denna familjeform. Ordet familia betyder från början inte den nutida kälkborgarens ideal, sammansatt av sentimentalitet och husliga tvister. Det syftar hos romarna ursprungligen inte ens på det äkta paret och dess barn, utan uteslutande på slavarna. Famulus betyder husslav, och familia är samtliga en man tillhöriga slavar. Ännu på Gajus tid testamenterades familia, id est patrimonium (d.v.s. arvedelen) i vederbörlig ordning. Uttrycket uppfanns av romarna för att beteckna en ny samhällelig organism, vars överhuvud utövade sin romerska fadersmakt över hustru och barn och ett antal slavar, med förfoganderätt över allas liv och död.

"Ordet är alltså inte äldre än de latinska stammarnas järnpansrade familjesystem, vilket uppkom sedan man infört lantbruket och det lagliga slaveriet och sedan de ariska italerna skilt sig från grekerna."

Marx tillägger:

"Den moderna familjen bär inom sig fröet inte bara till slaveriet (servitus) utan också till livegenskapen, då den från första början står i förbindelse med arbetsplikt för åkerbruket. Den innehåller i minatyr alla de motsättningar, som senare i bred skala utvecklar sig i samhället och i dess stat."

En sådan familjeform visar parningsfamiljens övergång till monogamin. För att trygga kvinnans trohet, alltså faderskapet till barnen, överlämnas kvinnan obetingat i mannens våld: om han dödar henne, så utövar han bara sin rätt."


(Friedrich Engels, Familjens, privategendomens och statens ursprung, 1884)