The slogan of our latest visual, “Feminist Dictatorship”, promotes a concrete project that stands both in continuity with Marxism — a step in resolving the contradiction between Man and Woman — and in rupture with the communist movement, especially with the virilist culture of the French militant movement. In this text, the contradiction between Man and Woman must be understood as a synonym of patriarchal domination (among feminists), or as a synonym of the family structure (according to Engels). What we describe as Man and Woman is a description of the social construction of gender.
I. Continuity with Marxism
1. Feminism is bourgeois
One of the reasons why communists do not claim to be feminists is because feminism is bourgeois: feminism defends all women regardless of their class. However, whether a struggle or an ideology is bourgeois or not does not make it insignificant. That is obvious when speaking of struggles for national liberation, but it is less so when speaking of defending women’s political interests and, consequently, of attacking men’s privileges (including proletarian men).For example, in a colonial or a semi-colonial country, and therefore in cases of struggles for national liberation, the principal contradiction is between the oppressed people and imperialism; the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is secondary.In order to have a proletarian revolution, a democratic revolution is necessary at first, a phase of development for democratic duties, which is, thus, bourgeois — it is the uninterrupted revolution by stages coined by Lenin. In a country of the imperialist center, the principal contradiction is between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, while the contradiction between Man and Woman is secondary.
When we say that a contradiction is principal, we must understand what phenomenon we are referring to, because a principal contradiction is the main determinant of a particular phenomenon. A contradiction is principal in a given time and place, in a particular temporal and spatial scale.
In imperialist countries, the principal contradiction is between Labor and Capital, therefore, the principal contradiction for women from imperialist countries is between Labor and Capital. But in a million of moments in a woman’s life, in every interaction she has with men, the principal contradiction which determines the interactions between men and women is the Man-Woman contradiction. When we speak of the daily life of a woman, we change the analysis’s time and place. For instance, when a woman walks in the street and comes across a group of men, what determines her immediate future is not her social class but her gender. When a woman is sexually assaulted by her boss on her working place, it is not because of her social class but because of her gender. Therefore, even if the principal contradiction is always the Capital-Labor contradiction, for all women and for a woman during all her life, the principal contradiction in her daily life is the Man-Woman contradiction. The main determinant is patriarchal violence.
We only talk about women in the imperialist center for two reasons. Firstly, the formation of a labor aristocracy in imperialist centers alleviates the felt violence of the Capital-Labor contradiction. Secondly, in the imperialist centers, the progress of women’s democratic rights and legal equality show that the violence of patriarchy is deeper than what communists believe. Man’s violence on women aims at reminding them their place in the relations of production: regardless of legal equality, women are still inferior and exploited for their unpaid domestic reproductive work. Moreover, this legal equality makes Man’s resistance even more violent: it is the emergence of the masculinist movement.
To take part in the class struggle, to be in a communist organization, a woman must be a feminist and a communist. It is not right to see things unilaterally and to grow one aspect without the other — to become communist without being feminist. Unilateralism is always between two aspects of a contradiction; we speak here of the contradiction between women’s liberation and the proletariat’s liberation. A communist woman who is not feminist will end being caught by the Man-Woman contradiction. A feminist woman who is not communist will be caught up by the class contradiction and will not be able to change the world.
More generally, feminism without class struggle is doomed to failure because capitalism leans on patriarchy. The bourgeois feminists are bound to face a limit where, eventually, they will see that women’s interests as a whole and capitalism are not compatible. Therefore, it is impossible that feminists lose themselves in defending capitalism without sacrificing feminism itself. But some of them will do so. We can take an extreme example: the “feminist” far-right group Némésis. They based their propaganda on the fight against immigration, while leaning on feminism; more specifically, while struggling against street harassment, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), slut shaming, etc. However, they currently champion the duty of procreation for white women, thus moving towards the most reactionary positions possible for women, chaining them to a role as procreators. These far-right women defend their reactionary ideas before defending women. The mainly bourgeois feminist movements are bound to end in the same way: defending the bourgeoisie before defending women.
Communists limit themselves to seeing the women’s liberation only by the socialization of the production, by women’s access to participation in this production and by the socialization of domestic work. Today, this analysis is outdated — the struggle for woman’s liberation must also be a political struggle — but without the socialization of production, patriarchy cannot be overthrown either. Patriarchy is materially reproducedby the capitalist mode of production. If women are economically dependent on men, how could they fight for political rights? Feminism must coincide with class struggle, towards a proletarian line.
Women’s democratic rights (legal and economic ones) have made progress in imperialist countries. Today, in France, almost half of the workers are women, women have access to higher education, they have the right to vote, to financial independence, etc. An economic division and a division in domestic work still exist. But women have access to social production, they are part of the proletariat. However, it is obvious that access to production does not reduce patriarchal violence: street harassment, work harassment, rape, feminicides, etc., are no more than reminders that Woman’s place is in the home — in the private sphere, and not in the public one. Even under passed dictatorships of the proletariat, progress in legal and economic equality has permitted a progress in the women’s struggle, but patriarchy was still omnipresent.
Class struggle cannot go without feminism. Every revolutionary communist movement, or close to communists, saw the development of women’s movements and the mobilization of women. Whether it be on the military, civil on theoretical level. Class struggle requires the proletariat’s mobilization, and especially the proletarian women’s mobilization. Proletarian women are the heart of the class struggle; they are the ones who organize and who conceive the collective. Whether it be during the revolution or during the dictatorship of the proletariat, women’s mobilization is a necessity. One of the striking recent examples is obviously the women’s struggle in Rojava, where the women’s guerillas are not only a military advantage, but also a political one, because the women’s movement is the most progressive one: women have a greater interest in transforming the world.
The class struggle needs emancipated and trained revolutionary women, who are conscious of the necessity to change the world. Revolutionary women need a healthy space of camaraderie and thus need feminist rules of discipline imposed to both men and women.
2. In what ways does feminist dictatorship align with Marxist orthodoxy?
When we want to change society, it is important to study every contradiction within it, and not only the principal contradiction. Therefore, as Marxists, not only do we study the class struggle and its movement, but also other contradictions. The contradiction between Man and Woman is secondary, but it is an important contradiction, which regularly becomes the principal contradiction in everyday life, and in the life of communist sects, as we saw in the preceding part.
“It is essential to clearly distinguish between principal and secondary contradictions in each context, because without a correct analysis of the world, there can be no correct strategy. But we must not misunderstand the meaning of ‘principal’ and ‘secondary,’ nor draw erroneous conclusions about the political agenda. A determining factor is not judged to be principal or secondary on the basis of strictly quantitative criteria, by adding up experiences to calculate a ‘total’ measure of exploitation, domination, alienation, violence, etc. What makes it principal is a qualitative question: what is the role of this relationship in society? Nothing is fixed: in history, a principal contradiction can become secondary, and vice versa. Similarly, this transformation can take place on a general (worldwide) scale or be limited to a particular scale (a crisis situation, a country, etc.). Nor should we believe that the principal contradictions came first and then produced the secondary contradictions. All contradictions have their own genealogy and autonomy (even if none are independent).
To say that an oppression is ‘secondary’ can sometimes be interpreted as disregarding the suffering and trauma associated with it, and relegating it to a position of lesser political importance (a secondary struggle). This is not the case. When we say that a contradiction is secondary, we are saying that it is more determined than determining in the system of contradictions — in History. In a given society, a social contradiction is not judged to be principal or secondary according to its impact on individual trajectories (on each person’s life), but on social trajectories (on that society). At the microscopic level (biographical, i.e., individual), all social contradictions overlap and are experienced intertwined, but at the macroscopic level (historical, i.e., social), degrees of importance and non-trivial relationships can be detected — the assessment of the principal and the secondary is a question of magnitude in time and space.
[…]
Applied to the problem of women’s emancipation, what should we deduce from this reasoning? The Man-Woman contradiction is, along with the Society-Nature contradiction, the oldest social contradiction in History. From principal contradiction, it became secondary with the emergence of classes — which it enabled. Is the struggle against patriarchy therefore a secondary struggle? No, because the struggle to resolve all contradictions is on the political agenda of communists — we are the most progressive force possible. Communism is a society without historical social contradictions, and the immediate task of communists is therefore to address and resolve all the contradictions of History. […]2”
This contradiction must be studied seriously, so that we can find solutions towards its sublation. The contradiction’s resolution does not lie in the affirmation of one element over the other — though the way towards its sublation may temporarily require the affirmation of one element over the other — the contradiction’s resolution lies in the contradiction’s sublation, the negation of the negation. For example, the proletariat must take power, which shall then be exerted on the bourgeoisie: it is the dictatorship of the proletariat, aiming at the annihilation of both classes. It is the same thing for Man and Woman: we shall go through a phase of feminist dictatorship, in which Woman shall annihilate Man’s domination, to annihilate Man and Woman, i.e., annihilate gender. The dictatorship of the proletariat will allow for the implementation of feminist dictatorship — and of total ecology, as part of the resolution of the contradiction between Society and Nature. Sexual differences will still exist after the abolition of gender, but the social distinction between Man and Woman created by human society will no longer exist.
By saying that gender shall be destroyed, we place ourselves in continuity with the TKP-ML comrades, who teach their male cadres to “kill the Man within them”, i.e., to kill patriarchywithin them. By these words, they do not say that all male communists shall be castrated. They say that one must kill Man as a social entity. Similarly, feminist dictatorship kills both Man and Woman as social entity. That is to say that we must destroy men’s domination as well as women’s submission. We must destroy virilist camaraderie, the sexual predator, the petty tyrant, the selfish one, etc., as well as feminine competition, jealousy, submission, the mother, passivity, the prey, the object, etc. Women kill the Woman in them, without becoming the Man.
The dialectical sublation of the Man-Woman contradiction implies the creation of a new human and therefore implies thinking and building fragments of this new human starting now. As long as this contradiction exists, we will still be Man and Woman, current humans are necessarily Man and Woman. But this fatality does not prevent us from finding piecesof transition which shall make us go towards a better way of functioning, at least within communist organizations. We can work on this question starting now the same way we are working on the question of socialist transition without being in a dictatorship of the proletariat. To kill Man and Woman, to kill gender, means that we shall concentrate ourselves on the creation of something else. We will start from the study of the Man-Woman contradiction in society, in History and in our communist organizations. We will speak and debate honestly of what lies deep inside each and every one of us, without fear of what may be ugliest. We will look straight in the eyes of the monsters inside of us and we will confront them. We start from reality in order to transform it, as we do with other contradictions.
Here, we do not speak of the “deconstruction” belonging to the intersectional approach. Intersectionality is a postmodern theory that only looks for a mechanical negation of the Man-Woman contradiction, and not for a dialectical one. That is to say that postmodern theories give up on the understanding and on the transformation of the world, therefore, their analysis and their action focus solely on individual change. Intersectionality is reformist, not revolutionary. We want individual transformation through collective transformation, and collective transformation through individual transformation — the individual and the collective are opposites, they are linked and identical. Such transformation can only be total through the transformation of the world, i.e., by the transformation of the reality in which humans live and which they reflect.
The establishment of feminist dictatorship will take place through the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., through the period of transition towards socialism and then communism, towards the end of the contradictions of History. Dictatorships of the proletariat which have been established in the past were eras of research, of attempt and of failure. They were eras during which class struggle intensified and took unexpected forms, like the reconstruction of the bourgeoisie within the Communist Party. Communists have underestimated the resilience of the capitalist mode of production from the inside. The way we must take regarding feminist dictatorship is equally complex; we mustn’t underestimate patriarchy’s strength and resilience.
In the past, when communists have taken power, they were “in advance” regarding the evolution of their mode of production and they had to find means in order to hasten the transition without pushing the economy or the population around (developing the productive forces while turning the relations of production upside down). They were also in advance regarding other contradictions, particularly the Man-Woman contradiction. Thereby, in the USSR and in the Popular Republic of China, women gained rights without there being a structured women’s movement, without demands, without a significant struggle. These rights came from above; they were given by the Communist Party which wanted to mobilize proletarian women. Obviously, these lines have won mainly thanks to communist women’s struggles inside the Party and throughout History. But they started with texts written by men: Engels regarding the destruction of the family, Lenin regarding supporting the creation of women’s organizations.
Women are present since the origins of Marxism. Jenny, Jenny (daughter), Laura and Eleanor Marx are easy to forget because they have been partially erased from Marxist history by Marxists and due to their gender (especially their role as mothers, except for Eleanor). However, the Marx women have taken part in Karl’s and Friedrich Engels’s works, through debates, corrections or research. It is particularly the case for Eleanor, who assisted her father to the point where he said “she is me”. She also fought for Marxism to prevail within the Second International. She died because of a man. From our history, we only remember great names because we have a bourgeois vision of History, created by “great men”. This bourgeois vision of History and of the communist struggle is cultivated by the cult of personality surrounding some Marxist theoreticians, but also by the ego and the individualism of some current authors from communist organizations. However, we believe that a theory is always developed collectively, from a collective practice. For that matter, that is why we do not have authors and only have texts written by Unité communiste.
Marxist history is the movement and the connection of multiple individuals which resonate across time and space. Even though these individuals are mainly men, the links between men are very often created by women, by Eleanors. Women are at the heart of Marxism, at the heart of our history, and yet they remain invisible.
3. But what is feminist dictatorship?
To describe feminist dictatorship, we start with the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The contradiction between Man and Woman is, obviously, different from the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, but we can get inspiration from works carried out in order to find a solution to the latter — i.e. destroying classes — in order to find a solution to the Man-Woman contradiction — i.e. destroying gender. In a bourgeois democracy, the bourgeoisie imposes its power on other classes. This inevitably leads to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie’s power by the proletariat and to the proletariat imposing its power on other classes. The dictatorship of the proletariat is temporary and transitory, and it aims at destroying the proletariat itself. Though this phase is short on the scale of History, it lasts for multiple decades, or even more. The proletariat has no choice but to seize power through violence, as the dominant class imposes its power through violence. To be able to break it, one needs an even greater violence. The proletariat has no choice but to organize itself and to transform itself to be able to take power and to practice power.
In the balance of power between Man and Woman, Man imposes a certain level of violence by physically and psychologically destroying Woman, by all possible means. Women have no choice but to seize power by force to break Man’s power. Such strength shall be built through organization and revolutionary women’s transformation.
Just like the dictatorship of the proletariat, such power shall represent the Woman’s long-term interests and not the immediate interests of female individuals. Woman’s long-term interests, like the proletariat’s long-term interests, are humanity’s long-term interests — liberated from class society and gender. Such logic can also be applied to the concept of total ecology: a dictatorship of the preservation of ecosystems and of life in general, in line with long-term interests.
The struggle for feminist dictatorship must start now. By taking power now within communist structures, and thus by performing better than men comrades, by imposing positive discrimination measures, women will more massively and more often hold positions of power during the revolution and during the dictatorship of the proletariat. Simultaneously, men comrades shall be actively trained to communist feminism and must become true “allies” of the feminist struggle, they must betray their gender deep inside themselves — like all bourgeois communists betray their class.
Of course, some comrades, both men and women, will resist this profound transformation — men much more than women. This is a normal reaction to any transformative process — cognitive ways of functioning are difficult to change —, and to the risk-taking required of women and to the loss of privileges for men. However, this transformation is no different from the one required to become a communist cadre: it is part of the cadre training. A militant becomes communist cadre after multiple years — often after multiple decades — of collective practical, theoretical and ideological work, i.e., after years of political militancy in one organization or in multiple organizations. Militants must be taught to kill the Man and the Woman, just like they must be taught to accept transformation, studying and humility, they must be taught to think collectively, to serve the people, to live a healthy life, etc. The cadres’ assets are not innate; cadres are not born as they are: cadres are individuals who seek to reach the maximum of their potential, because they are devoted to a superior cause — communism.
Feminist communists shall implement feminist dictatorship during the dictatorship of the proletariat, by arming themselves with everything that the dictatorship of the proletariat will provide them with. First, an acceleration towards economic independence and the socialization of domestic labor, thereby leading to a decreasing domination of Man on Woman, to a transformation of the relationships between men and women and to a transformation of their mentality. Secondly, a state repressive force enabling the re-educationby forceof those who defend Man’s domination and enabling the creation of armed feminist brigades. Thirdly, a feminist education among the people and the mobilization of the masses.
Feminist dictatorship won’t be possible without the mobilization of the masses, particularly that of women themselves, because the Man-Woman contradiction touches on the realm of private life and of intimacy. Feminist dictatorship won’t be possible as long as women accept their state of submission and fight actively against “their” men.
Women’s mobilization as a whole allows the balance of power to be truly shifted where it is most needed, where it is most unattainable for communists. Feminist dictatorship will go through periods of step-back if it does not reach women and private life enough, though private and public life are linked. Women’s mass movements shift the balance of power in private life, the balance of power shifting in private life allows the mass movement to intensify: a superior mass movement. To have millions of organized people in the streets allows the struggle for women’s power against men inside the family and inside spaces of patriarchal domination to intensify. To attack such patriarchal domination daily makes it possible to get involved in the collective balance of power, in the mass movement. Mass movements thus resolve the contradiction between the private and public spheres, enabling progress towards the resolution of the Man-Woman contradiction.
4. Have there been elements of feminist dictatorship throughout the communist movement’s history?
We can see elements and scraps of feminist dictatorship in communist theory and practice, as different communist Parties have taken measures to move towards the resolution of the Man-Woman contradiction, and not to respond to spontaneous claims from women.
First, Engels, very early on, spoke of the necessity of destroying the family — destroying the family as we now refer to it as destroying patriarchy.
“Thus when monogamous marriage first makes its appearance in history, it is not as the reconciliation of man and woman, still less as the highest form of such a reconciliation. Quite the contrary. Monogamous marriage comes on the scene as the subjugation of the one sex by the other; it announces a struggle between the sexes unknown throughout the whole previous prehistoric period. In an old unpublished manuscript, written by Marx and myself in 18463, I find the words: ‘The first division of labor is that between man and woman for the propagation of children.’ And today I can add: The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male. Monogamous marriage was a great historical step forward; nevertheless, together with slavery and private wealth, it opens the period that has lasted until today in which every step forward is also relatively a step backward, in which prosperity and development for some is won through the misery and frustration of others. It is the cellular form of civilized society, in which the nature of the oppositions and contradictions fully active in that society can be already studied.4”
Here, Engels states that the first division of labor is the division of labor for “the propagation of children” between male and female. For him, the Man-Woman contradiction appears at the same time as the first class division?
“Within the family he is the bourgeois and the wife represents the proletariat. In the industrial world, the specific character of the economic oppression burdening the proletariat is visible in all its sharpness only when all special legal privileges of the capitalist class have been abolished and complete legal equality of both classes established. The democratic republic does not do away with the opposition of the two classes; on the contrary, it provides the clear field on which the fight can be fought out. And in the same way, the peculiar character of the supremacy of the husband over the wife in the modern family, the necessity of creating real social equality between them, and the way to do it, will only be seen in the clear light of day when both possess legally complete equality of rights. Then it will be plain that the first condition for the liberation of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry, and that this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society.6”
Just as legal equality in the democratic republic between the proletarian worker and the bourgeois intensifies the class struggle and highlights the necessity of the socialization of production, legal equality between Man and Woman sheds light on the necessity of Woman’s participation in social production. For Woman to take part in production, patriarchy as the economic unit of society needs to be annihilated.
“The distinction of rich and poor appears beside that of freemen and slaves — with the new division of labor, a new cleavage of society into classes. The inequalities of property among the individual heads of families break up the old communal household communities wherever they had still managed to survive, and with them the common cultivation of the soil by and for these communities. The cultivated land is allotted for use to single families, at first temporarily, later permanently. The transition to full private property is gradually accomplished, parallel with the transition of the pairing marriage into monogamy. The monogamous family begins to become the economic unit of society.7”
According to Engels, the appearance of class society means that the economic unit of society must be based on patriarchy.
The question regarding the origins of Man’s domination on Woman will be developed in a later article.
In class societies, women are excluded from social production and are limited to domestic reproductive labor. There, exploiting unpaid domestic reproductive work is an economic necessity. In the capitalist mode of production, women’s exploitation remains through domestic reproductive labor which allows for a greater exploitation of the workers’ work force, and through the procreation of children, which allows for the proletarian population to be renewed. In semi-feudal countries, women are excluded from social productive labor and are limited to domestic reproductive labor. In capitalist countries, women are part of social productive labor, but they are the most exploited part of the proletariat and are still in charge of domestic reproductive labor.
The oppression of Woman is maintained until they are not fully part of social production, in equal measure to men, until the whole of society is not in charge of domestic reproductive labor — i.e., until we are not in a socialist society. Family structure, patriarchy, keeps capitalism and class society going, just as capitalism keeps patriarchy going. One cannot be abolished without the other, and vice versa. Patriarchy needs capitalist exploitation and capitalist exploitation needs patriarchy.
We have said it earlier, Engels considers that, just as the democratic republic emphasizes the class contradiction, legal equality for women will provide the “clear field on which the fight can be fought out”. Here, he speaks of women’s struggle to gain access to social production. But Engels did not think that capitalists would let women access social production and an almost legal equality, like it is the case today in France. Capitalism has one quality that allows women to enter production: in the capitalist mode of production, labor is a general abstract labor, therefore, there are no longer “labor for men” and “labor for women”, there are only general equivalents. This experience shows us that Engels was right, but not as he predicted. Today, women are exploited in the private sphere, but they take part in social production (the public sphere). Patriarchal domination is therefore emphasized; from its expression in the private sphere, it also passes onto the public sphere: sexual harassment and sexual assault in public spaces (street, workplace) are only reminders for women that they belong in the domestic sphere. Man’s violence intensifies, it is everywhere, it is visible. The progress in women’s democratic rights shows that there must be a political liberation for the legal and material liberation to be truly complete.
In colonies and in semi-colonies that are semi-feudal, communists follow Engels’s mistake by thinking that women’s legal and material emancipation would be possible without women’s specific political struggle (feminism). In these countries, women’s democratic rights are underdeveloped, therefore, it is understandable that these communists do not understand what we experience in our practice in France.
During the transition from a class society to a classless society, the Man-Woman contradiction will sometimes go from secondary to principal contradiction. It is therefore obvious that communists must do everything they can to fight for the resolution of this contradiction and for the abolition of family — of gender. Engels lays the foundations for different communist groups and parties to develop their Marxist feminism, or their women’s revolution programs. But, as we said earlier, these groups and parties have not sufficiently studied the progress of feminism, especially works carried out during the evolution of women’s legal status — progressively more equal to men in theory but not in practice — and during the evolution of their access to social productive labor in countries of the imperialist center. Yes, patriarchy and capitalism feed off each other, but patriarchy and the Man-Woman contradiction must be studied on every level. Therefore, even in the USSR, the progress in women’s legal rights and their integration in the social production didn’t succeed in abolishing this contradiction, on the contrary, some aspects were even more visible.
We must study concrete communist experiences in dictatorships of the proletariat. From the very beginning of the USSR, measures aimed at women’s emancipation were put in place, women’s organizations and congresses were held, driven from above, by the communist Party — though composed of a majority of men. Here, elements of feminist dictatorship were put in place during the dictatorship of the proletariat. These measures may seem normal today, a century later, however, they were incredibly ahead of their time, and have even contributed in women’s emancipation across the world by encouraging the development of women’s struggle and by competing with capitalist countries in the development of productive forces — the USSR had twice as many brainpower and workforce as the capitalist countries.
“For much of the twentieth century, Western capitalist countries also endeavored to outdo the East European countries in terms of women’s rights, fueling progressive social change. For example, the state socialists in the USSR and Eastern Europe were so successful at giving women economic opportunities outside the home that initially, for two decades after the end of World War II, women’s wage work was conflated with the evils of communism. The American way of life meant male breadwinners and female homemakers. But slowly, socialist championing of women’s emancipation began to chip away at the Leave It to Beaver ideal. The Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 spurred American leaders to rethink the costs of maintaining traditional gender roles. They feared the state socialists enjoyed an advantage in technological development because they had double the brainpower; the Russians educated women and funneled the best and the brightest into scientific research (Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, New York, Basic Books, 2008 [1988].) […] In response to state socialist prowess in the sciences, the American government sponsored an important study titled ‘Women in the Soviet Economy.’ The head of the study visited the USSR in 1955, 1962, and 1965 to examine Soviet policies to integrate women into the formal labor force as an example for American legislators. ‘Concern in recent years on the waste of women’s talent and labor potential led to the appointment of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, which has issued a series of reports on various problems affecting women and their participation in economic, political, and social life,’ the 1966 report began. ‘For any formulation of policy directed toward the better use of our women power, it is important to know the experience of other nations in utilizing the capabilities of women. For this reason as well as others, the Soviet experience is of particular interest at this time.’8”
Here, Kristen Ghodsee explains that competition between capitalist and socialist countries played a role in the progress of women’s democratic rights in capitalist countries.
“Understanding the demands of reproductive biology, they also attempted to socialize domestic work and child care by building a network of public creches, kindergartens, laundries, and cafeterias. Extended, job-protected maternity leaves and child benefits allowed women to find at least a modicum of work/family balance. Moreover, twentieth-century state socialism did improve the material conditions of millions of women’s lives; maternal and infant mortality declined, life expectancy increased, and illiteracy all but disappeared. To take just one example, the majority of Albanian women were illiterate before the imposition of socialism in 1945. Just ten years later, the entire population under forty could read and write, and by the 1980s half of Albania’s university students were women (Inessa Armand as quoted in Barbara Evans Clements, Bolshevik Feminist: The Life of Aleksandra Kollontai [Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1979], 155; Fatos Tarifa, ‘Disappearing from Politics [Albania],’ in Women in the Politics of Postcommunist Eastern Europe, edited by Marilyn Rueschemeyer [Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998], 269). […] While different countries pursued different policies, in general state socialist governments reduced women’s economic dependence on men by making men and women equal recipients of services from the socialist state. These policies helped to decouple love and intimacy from economic considerations. When women enjoy their own sources of income, and the state guarantees social security in old age, illness, and disability, women have no economic reason to stay in abusive, unfulfilling, or otherwise unhealthy relationships. In countries such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and East Germany, women’s economic independence translated into a culture in which personal relationships could be freed from market influences. Women didn’t have to marry formoney (Katherine Verdery, What Was Communism and What Comes Next [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996]; Josie McLellan, Love in the Time of Communism: Intimacy and Sexuality in the GDR [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011]).9”
The USRR worked to socialize domestic labor and to progress towards economic equality between men and women. Thereby, women were able to partially liberate themselves from male economic domination within the family space.
“Official statistics from the International Labor Organization (ILO) demonstrate the disparity between the workforce participation rates in state socialist economies and those in market economies. In 1950, the female share of the total Soviet labor force was 51.8 percent, and the female share of the total workforce in Eastern Europe was 40.9 percent, compared to 28.3 percent in North America and 29.6 percent in Western Europe. By 1975, the United Nations’ International Year of Women, women made up 49.7 percent of the Soviet Union’s workforce and 43.7 percent of that in the Eastern Bloc, compared to 37.4 percent in North America and 32.7 percent in Western Europe. These findings led the ILO to conclude that the ‘analysis of data on women’s participation in economic activity in the USSR and the socialist countries of Europe shows that men and women in these countries enjoy equal rights in all areas of economic, political, and social life. The exercise of these rights is guaranteed by granting women equal opportunities with men in access to education and vocational training and in work.’ (International Labor Organization, ‘Women in Economic Activity: A Global Statistical Survey [1950–2000],’ A Joint Publication of the International Labor Organization and INSTRAW, 1985.)10”
In the USSR, women had practically the same democratic rights as men.
“Socialists have long understood that creating equity between men and women despite their biological sex differences requires collective forms of support for child rearing. By the mid-nineteenth century, as women flooded into the industrial labor force of Europe, socialists theorized that you could not build strong worker’s movements without the participation of women. The German feminist Lily Braun promoted the idea of a state-funded ‘maternity insurance’ as early as 1897. […] whereas Zetkin believed that housework and child care should be socialized. […] The fourth point on the 1910 socialist platform laid the foundation for all subsequent socialist policies regarding state responsibilities toward women workers. […] Seven years later, Kollontai attempted to implement some of these policies in the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik revolution. Instead of burdening individual women with household chores and child care in addition to their industrial labor, the young Soviet state proposed to build kindergartens, crèches, children’s homes, and public cafeterias and laundries. By 1919, the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party handed Kollontai a mandate to expand her work for Soviet women, and she secured state commitments to expend the funds necessary to build a wide network of social services. The year 1919 also saw the creation of an organization called the Zhenotdel, the Women’s Section, which would oversee the work of implementing the radical program of social reform that would lead to women’s full emancipation (Richard Stites, The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism and Bolshevism, 1860–1930 [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978]; Gail Lapidus, Women in Soviet Society: Equality, Development, and Social Change [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978]; Beatrice Brodsky Farnsworth, ‘Bolshevism, the Woman Question, and Aleksandra Kollontai,’ The American Historical Review 81, no. 2 [1976]: 292–316, 296; Elizabeth Wood, The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997]). But Soviet enthusiasm for women’s emancipation soon evaporated in the face of more pressing demographic, economic, and political concerns. […] Compare this with the United States, which did not even pass a law outlawing discrimination against pregnant women until 1978. And American women didn’t have a federal law for job-protected unpaid leave until 1993. We still don’t have mandated paid maternity leave (but then again, we don’t have mandated paid sick leave either).11”
Yet, the socialization of housework was confronted with the reality of difficulties met by the USSR. Nevertheless, capitalist countries were still very late in transforming the relationships inside the family and on society taking charge of part of the housework.
“The 1973 Bulgarian Politburo decision also included language about reeducating men to be more active in the home: ‘The reduction and alleviation of woman’s household work depends greatly on the common participation of the two spouses in the organization of family life. It is therefore imperative: a) to combat outdated views, habits, and attitudes as regards the allocation of work within the family; b) to prepare young men for the performance of household duties from childhood and adolescence both by the school and society and by the family’ (Bulgarian Communist Party, Enhancing the Role of Women in the Building of a Developed Socialist Society: Decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party of March 6, 1973 [Sofia: Sofia Press, 1974], 10.).12”
This example shows us that some measures were coming from above, from the State, in order to fight against inequality in domestic labor. This is accepting the necessity of transforming Man to sublate the Man-Woman contradiction.
“Although these high-profile examples demonstrate the state socialist countries’ commitment to the ideal of women’s rights, actual practice did not always live up to the rhetoric. Between 2010 and 2017, I spent over a hundred and fifty hours interviewing the octogenarian Elena Lagadinova, the president of Bulgaria’s national women’s organization. Lagadinova admitted that the socialist states did not achieve as much as she had hoped. I once asked her why more women did not rise up to the highest positions of power given the general commitment to women’s rights. Lagadinova acknowledged that this had been an ongoing challenge for the Bulgarian women’s committee and claimed that East European countries did not have enough time to overcome the centuries-old idea that leaders should be men. It wasn’t just that men disliked women in power, Lagadinova argued; it was that women also felt uncomfortable with women’s leadership. As a result, they were less likely to support their female comrades and more reticent to pursue positions of authority. They preferred to work behind the scenes, she said. High politics in Eastern Europe, just like high politics elsewhere, was a treacherous place, infused with intrigues and betrayals. Lagadinova suggested that women were less inclined to engage in the necessary subterfuges. On the other hand, she believed that political life might have been more civilized if there had been more women at the top. Her organization tried to promote qualified candidates when they could, but the patriarchal culture of the Balkans, combined with the authoritarian nature of the state (ruled by the same man for thirty-five years), discouraged women from getting involved.13”
Here, Kristen Ghodsee shows that political inequality between men and women persisted despite the socialization of women’s labor, despite legal equality and despite women’s participation in social production. The USSR example proves that the struggle against patriarchal domination must be superior to economic demands. Economic demands must be surpassed. Women’s struggle must be a struggle for power.
Obviously, such improvements were confronted by men and women’s resistance, whether it be within soviets or within the Party, against women’s organization but mostly against their assumption of power. Man always protect their domination, and women struggle to get out of their assigned role and to kill the Woman in themselves. Here, the dangers of the lack of sorority and of the lack of motivation among women to take power are met again. Women’s rights, and the proletariat’s rights in general, declined because of the fall of the soviet bloc: they were replaced by brutal capitalism. Eastern European countries have become one of the nerve centers of trafficking in women, Russia has become an ultra-patriarchal state where feminist struggles are banned and where most communists support patriarchal ideas.
Today, we can study cases of Revolutionary wars led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (CPI Maoist), by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and by the Communist Party of Turkey — Marxist-Leninist (TKP-ML). The CPI (Maoist), who communicates very little because of their clandestine status, has nevertheless made public some executions of rapists, including high-ranking members of their red army. This is an example of concrete and radical anti-patriarchal violence highlighting the need to develop a form of aggressive struggle against the violence of men before the revolution. The TKP-ML, like many other Parties from Turkey and from Rojava since the women’s revolution, has its own women’s structure that takes part in armed struggle. In the whole area, the creation of women’s armed groups led to accelerated progress in women’s rights. This proves, in practice, that women’s violence and women’s organization lead to an inversion in the balance of power in favor of women. Since its creation in 1969, the CPP implemented a women’s Bureau. It, too, has women’s structures and a big proportion of women engaged in guerrilla warfare. The most advanced parties in the world right now have developed women’s structures which are in charge of theoretically and militarily training women: they thus become essential elements for those very Parties. This training, along with the implementation of quotas inside Parties and propaganda directed towards the recruitment of women, makes it possible to progress towards the resolution of the Man-Woman contradiction, without postponing it. This is an ongoing and living struggle, it is a recognition of the necessity for women’s revolution.
Our concept of feminist dictatorship isn’t far from the concept of women’s revolution and from the struggle against hetero-patriarchy, coined by our comrades of the KKB (Communist Union of Women) within the TKP-ML: an intense and violent struggle must be led against Man’s violence.
II.Rupture with the communist movement
Why break with the communist movement on the issue of feminism?
This question sends us back to our organization’s complex history, to our concrete experience and to that of our female comrades during the previous decades. We witness that the French militant environment is made to destroy women. Why?
First, because the members of French sects are predominantly men; they benefit from their numerical advantage and benefit from their patriarchal advantages — the accumulation of certain types of knowledge and mastery of debates, of violence, of conflict, of virile brotherhood, etc. Sects are predominantly composed of men and are thus infused with virilist culture. Men hold political leadership positions, they hold power, and they do everything in their power to keep it and to preserve a space of so-called camaraderie based on masculinity (inviting to them but repulsive to women). In fact, they see women’s demands as annoying and detrimental to their comfort and to the group’s well-being and thus to the entire organization. Feminists “spoil the mood of a party” like they do during a general assembly.
Secondly, because women are few, they get used to being in groups of men. Therefore, they do not see the problems brought by virilism in their organization anymore, because they make it a norm, and because they look for their male comrades’ validation by imitating and approving their virilist behaviors. All their life, they’ve been taught to erase themselves, through their upbringing and through their internalized sexism; they live in denial of the balance of power between men and women in their daily life, in their family and in their organization. Competition between women is thus amplified, and despite feminist rhetoric, there is no collective defense of women, even during serious events. Sorority does not exist, conflict between women is reinforced compared to the rest of the population. A high level of political commitment and of search for sorority goes with a lack in sorority that is higher to normal.
Thirdly, women naturally go in fields where they are better than men: organizational tasks. They neglect theoretical and political work and do not take the time nor the energy to study and to participate in political debates. It would be easy only to see one side of that situation, i.e., the lack of space accorded to women to successfully complete this theoretical development, without seeing the most important aspect. The change can only come from the inside: women must prioritize theoretical and political development, they must take their place and transform the organization’s structure without waiting for the organization to change on its own.
As we have seen, it is simplistic to think that communist organizations are harmful to women only because they are filled with rapists and dominated by men, and not to see the biggest problem to which all communist groups are confronted when it comes to addressing the Man-Woman contradiction: communist women are not feminist, they do not want to be feminist, and they refuse to truly fight for women’s political rights. We are not saying that there are no feminists in communist organizations, we speak of it from a general point of view, on average. We are not saying that violent male behaviors are not a problem; we are saying that the problem is the lack of intense struggle against these behaviors, linked to the lack of relevant analysis regarding the balance of power between men and women, and to the lack of women’s commitment. Women can only marginally transform the men in their organizations, but they have the power to organize themselves among women, they have the power to strive to take power. Before transforming men, they must transform themselves, on the individual and on the collective level.
1.Communists’ antifeminism
Within the international communist movement, feminist demands are extremely marginal. However, such a position is more understandable in dominated semi-feudal semi-colonial countries, because it has an anti-imperialist aspect, that is to say that communists from dominated countries reject western feminism. Men and women from communist groups generally fight against feminism and they only support a vague line of “women’s struggle”. However, when organizations and Parties of dominated countries speak of women’s struggle, they do so out of anti-imperialism. When organizations of imperialist countries speak of women’s struggle, they do so because they are antifeminist and reactionary. Therefore, communist organizations of dominated countries do not match entirely with our criticism, because these organizations also struggle for political rights, as well as economic rights: they fight against patriarchal domination in their organizations as well as in society. Some of these organizations also talk about carrying out women’s revolution. However, even organizations of dominated countries reject the study of feminist input and are therefore limited in their analysis of patriarchy: as seen previously, it is especially the case regarding the nature of the origins of the Man-Woman contradiction.
In the best-case scenario, communist groups from imperialist centers claim to be in line with Marxist feminism, a branch that neglects the input of other feminist movements and their scientific progress to focus only on democratic and economic demands. Of course, economic and democratic demands, such as the struggle for equal wages, for economic support to single mothers, etc., are important. But they are not sufficient. These are spontaneous demands from women towards instant benefit. But one of the principles of Leninism is to politicize economic demands and to conscientize spontaneous demands. For communists, refusing feminism is spontaneist and economist. The refusal of feminism implies limiting oneself to non-revolutionary demands, implies refusing to tackle the resolution of the Man-Woman contradiction and to tackle the transformation of the entire world for long-term gains for humanity. When this contradiction is ignored, then the class is divided. Proletarian women are submitted to proletarian men’s domination: “he is the bourgeois, and the wife represents the proletariat”.
Not only do communists from imperialist centers get mistaken, but they also show that they have no interest in finding a solution to the Man-Woman contradiction. We must therefore impose the struggle against patriarchy on them through women’s assumption of power. Feminists must be the communist revolution’s vanguard, but at the same time, they must use the communist revolution for a feminist revolution. Democratic revolution is necessary for communist revolution, but it is not the communist revolution, and communist revolution is necessary for feminist revolution, but it is not the feminist revolution.
The term of “women’s struggle” and the rejection of feminism are translated into an almost exclusive defense of economic rights and into political struggle being given up. That is how we now touch upon the core of the problem with French communist groups during the last decades: communists cannot only demand economic rights for women. According to them, women should wait to be able to fight for liberation from patriarchal domination and for their political demands; they should not be fighting now, and, most importantly, they should never use violence, and they should never divide the struggle’s unity.
However, feminist works of the last century, particularly those of radical materialist and socialist feminists, have highlighted the extent of men’s domination through violence in every field of society, especially in the private sphere — within the family. Of course, those works come from bourgeois science and are open to criticism and must be analyzed through dialectical materialism. But, beside the exploitation of their workforce, today, women are only valuable as sexual objects and for sexual reproduction. All their life, their upbringing and their relationships lead them to erase themselves. In Right-wing women, Andrea Dworkin analyzed male domination using two models: the brothel (prostitution, women as sexual objects), and the farm (maternity and domestic work). These models and the consequences they have on women’s life, on their private life and on their whole being, are difficult to admit, because they call our all life into question. Men are seen in their true nature, women understand they are surrounded by monsters. Communists reject that type of analysis because they are not superficial and because they analyze the Man-Woman contradiction on a deeper level. Yet, communist men sometimes understand that radical feminists are right regarding their violence and their privileges. They defend their interests as men before defending their communist duty — i.e., progressing towards the end of contradictions, among which there is the Man-Woman contradiction.
Men, regardless of their class, their race, their sexual orientation, etc., are used to exerting power over women. They are aware of the physical and psychological violence at the root of such power. Such violence lives within them constantly, directs their relationships with other human beings and interferes with their deepest desires. They are, at the same time, masters and slaves of that violence. As actors of violence, they understand its intensity, and that allows them to know that this violence cannot be overthrown without violence and that this new kind of violence cannot win without a superior intensity. Men are aware of the balance of power that exists between men and women, they are the dominant ones, and not only do they want to keep this place, but, most importantly, they understand the extent of the task that awaits women in their struggle.
Therefore, it is easier for communist men, who represent the majority of communist organizations’ members, to understand what violence women must exert, and, most importantly, to understand the inevitability of the latter. Communist men are afraid of feminism, just like masculinist movements. This leads multiple men and multiple communist organizations to place themselves against feminism, pretending to defend Marxist orthodoxy, out of opportunism. They know what it would cost them to topple their power and their domination, so they look for good reasons to justify their opportunism, by calling for unity between male and female comrades, by condemning an ideological deviation, by explaining that the feminist struggle denies the fact that class struggle is the principal contradiction under capitalism, etc. By doing so, they do exactly what they accuse feminists of: dividing women and men.
Refusing to support women’s struggles and feminists during the 20th century caused a rupture inside the labor movement. Communists have failed in their vanguard duty by having de facto a reactionary attitude and by staying frozen rather than going forward, with the course of history. The struggle for sublating the Man-Woman contradiction is a necessity that shall not wait for men nor for communist organizations to fight for this sublation. Mass movements and structured organizations will emerge and will fight for this sublation, fighting at the same time against every reactionary movement. The necessity of struggling for the sublation of this contradiction touches upon other contradictions such as the contradiction between Society and Nature — the environmental struggle, that is today international, massive and aggressive, and for which the communist movement is also late. The communist movement, currently decomposing, does not live up to its historical duty, its science is weakened, its strength is insufficient.
“Women’s struggle” can be defined as the struggle of women who are primarily proletarian, and secondarily women; and “feminism” can be defined as the struggle of women who are primarily women — women struggling against men. Our feminist comrades are communist because we need to free ourselves from capitalism to free ourselves from patriarchy. To assume this position is placing us necessarily in a position of rupture with the communist movement, because even though we know that the principal contradiction in French society is that between Labor and Capital, we stand by the fact that women must also fight primarily for women. We believe that this position will help us make the communist movement move forward as a whole, because it allows us to move in the direction of History, to break free from reactionary forces, and because it allows us to reinforce the commitment of communist women. Communist feminist women get involved more intensively in class struggle and in their development as communist cadres than if they stayed in the role assigned by their gender and submitted to male domination. Our feminist line responds to concrete needs highlighted by experience. We need trained and combative women to build the Party, we need to recruit women, we need them to be determined in their struggle, to be convinced that they will free themselves from Capital and from patriarchy, we need them to put their life at stake for humanity’s liberation and for the transformation of the world.
In order to get these trained women, we are putting in place a political line that is capable of fighting against patriarchal poisons widespread among men and women. This is a political line capable of fighting against men’s violence and against women’s stagnation and apathy.
2.How are patriarchal behaviors poisonous to the revolutionary struggle?
Man’s patriarchal upbringing reinforces its harmful behaviors towards others, and thus for the revolutionary struggle. In addition to sexual and gender-based violence, these flaws are: individualism, indiscipline, bragging, the creation of male hierarchies based on strength and charisma, etc. Patriarchy reproduces liberal behaviors just as much as the petty-bourgeois culture of the imperialist centers does. Thus, virilism keeps the mediocrity of the French communist movement going, and the apathy and mediocrity of the French communist movement reinforce virilist culture.
Communist men’s virilism makes their practice performative, and, most importantly, esthetic. When virilism makes the practice performative, actions are thought with the aim of showing one’s strength to other groups of men — including actions in women’s single-sex groups which use the same codes —, the strategy of such propaganda is virilist, esthetic and movementist. The propaganda actions are not well thought out, they lack discipline, and they lack consideration regarding the risk-benefit balance. Recruitment strategies are targeted towards men. In the end, the virilist tactic becomes the strategy. Virilism feeds the senseless aspect of the communist practice in imperialist centers. Our minds are distracted by an all-male communist sphere and so is therefore our practice. Practice, i.e. the application of theory in the real world, cannot be miraculously disconnected from the way we see the world — through a patriarchal filter. Communist men and women’s practice is spoiled by virilism: which we should fight, as do our comrades of the TKP-ML by saying that we need to “kill the Man in ourselves”.
Patriarchal behaviors create an antagonism between proletarian men and women. The Man-Woman contradiction possesses certain antagonistic and non-antagonistic aspects, like all contradictions. However, refusing to see the antagonistic aspect of a contradiction can only strengthen its antagonism. To resolve the Man-Woman contradiction in a non-antagonistic manner, its antagonism must first be resolved in an antagonistic manner. The antagonistic relation between men and women is not created by feminists, but it is made so by men and women who support patriarchal behaviors, refusing to fight their own misogyny: they reinforce the Man-Woman contradiction and make it antagonistic. Feminists fight for problems to be addressed and solutions to be found. That is to say that they require the line struggle to be made visible, they require self-criticism and criticism to be made, and they require concrete solutions to be found. It is only by accepting the reality of the struggle between men and women and by accepting the necessity of radical positions in favor of women that the antagonism shall truly be fought and that the revolutionary struggle shall be efficient.
Therefore, for a healthy line struggle inside the organization, for a healthy collective progression, feminist communist cadres must be trained.
3.Training women cadres
Today, communist organizations must prioritize training communist cadres, as we developed it in Notes on the situation and on strategy in France (2024, Notes sur la situation et la stratégie en France). To develop these cadres, we transform individuals starting with what they are now, meaning that we find the revolutionary spark in them and turn it into fire. Feminism and women’s anger towards men is a spark that must be fed and a significant revolutionary potential. Communist groups are afraid that this anger will turn into misandry lacking in political conscience and that it will destroy their organization. Whereas it is indeed the lack of feminist struggle within communist organizations that causes scissions. The lack of women as political cadres and all powers being in the hands of a male intellectual elite is the real problem in organizations. To deny the importance of the contradiction between men and women in everyday life and therefore in organizations is to strengthen such contradiction and to head towards crises and to be powerless when such crises happen.
To start with women’s anger to turn them into politically trained cadres can only lead to a just line being developed, as political training will allow us to prevent mistakes — misandry and the lack of sorority — while truly developing women’s concrete power within organizations. The lack of Marxist and feminist theory goes hand in hand with a chaotic and dangerous misandry; whereas developing Marxist and feminist theory, accepting the reality of the balance of power between the Man and the Woman and creating a strong sorority allow for the development of a truly healthy camaraderie between men and women and for a better training of cadres (both men and women).
Developing women communist feminist cadres happens at the same time as implementing elements of feminist dictatorship, of “positive discrimination”, with men comrades’ consent, who take the decision of fighting against their own domination — because they are informed and not because they are forced to. Why? Because communists fight for humanity’s historical interests. Communist men work towards giving up on their short-term patriarchal interests to fight for humanity’s long-term interests — including the end of the Man-Woman contradiction. Therefore, a male comrade who wants to transform himself in order to become a communist cadre must be taught on feminism and must submit himself to his communist feminist cadres’ authority. Men and women cadres work hand in hand towards collective transformation, and at the same time struggle against each other. This struggle strengthens unity and allows for a superior collective transformation.
But what does becoming a cadre mean today in France?
To become a communist cadre is to make the choice, today, to dedicate oneself to communism, to do everything to transform oneself and others. Becoming a cadre is dedicating oneself to a superior cause that links all communists of the entire world together and throughout time. On a more concrete level, cadres teach themselves constantly theoretically and ideologically with their comrades. Training is collective, because knowledge is always collective, evolution is always collective. Comrades learn from concrete experiences, from debates, and from each other. Being a cadre means putting theory into practice. To sum things up in broad outline: the just line is found collectively by analyzing concrete reality, then, cadres find how to apply this line, go into practice, with successes and with failures, allowing the group to learn from their mistakes, and so on. Obviously, in the current situation where there is no Party, where the communist movement is in a sectarian state, there are no “real” cadres.
More commonly put, being a communist cadre today means finding a way to transform liberal individuals into communist militants.
Communist organizations need to train as many cadres as possible, as the cadres are those who apply the organization’s lines, which have an impact on reality. These cadres must be of a high-quality level and must constantly make progress. It is therefore clear that the lack of training and of recruitment of women is an important handicap for communist organizations — half of the population cannot be recruited, women in organizations are not trained —, so they miss recruitment and potential cadre training. It is thus serious that communist women stagnate in organizational tasks, especially those from imperialist centers. Women’s political training is a priority.
In imperialist centers, women only campaign for feminist struggles, they won’t join communist organizations in great numbers if these organizations do not prove in theory and in practice that they are willing to tackle the suppression of the domination of the Man on the Woman.
But how can a woman become a cadre? How can a woman find her place in the communist movement, today, in France?
It is harder for women than for men to become a communist cadre. Women are less in numbers, they have more tasks to carry out in their private and militant life, they are confronted to situations which are emotionally harder to handle (for instance, handling sexual violences), their authority is constantly questioned, and most importantly, they must transform themselves even more than their male comrades. Why must they transform themselves more? Because women, even those with communist commitments, are generally more passive and submissive. They were conditioned to be so. They do everything to be invisible, to fill others’ needs before their own and to transform others before themselves. They must learn to be there, to take up space. They must learn to want power (without copying men’s virilist methods), they must learn and share knowledge, etc. Not only must they transform themselves, but they must also transform other women, and they must put in place a basis on which we can build a solid sorority. They must take up space for themselves and for other women. They must fight other women’s will to be “mothers” (fulfill maternal roles in organizations and with their male comrades).
A woman can become communist cadre if she decides to fight for herself and for all women from now on. It is communist women’s task to build communist feminism, to recruit and to train other women, while being in a mixed gender communist organization, while growing and transforming themselves with male comrades.
But how can women be recruited?
As a woman in France today, the principal contradiction in daily life is the contradiction between Man and Woman, as previously stated: “in a million of moments in a woman’s life, in every interaction she has with men, the principal contradiction which determines the interactions between men and women is the Man-Woman contradiction”. It therefore seems logical that in most cases women first get involved in feminist organizations and not in communist ones. Communists pay a high price for how late they are regarding feminism: women do not get involved in their organizations since they do not have an immediate and visible interest there. Why join organizations which do not fight for women right now? Why join organizations which treat women the same way they are treated in the rest of society? Why join a structure where the only perspective is that of being what we already are in our daily life? By asking these questions, it thus becomes obvious that the profile of women from feminist organizations is atypical — they are not our best representatives.
We make multiple assessments of the current situation regarding women’s recruitment in communist organizations. First, at their sectarian stage of development, it is normal that organizations are mainly composed of men — just as normal as them being composed of a minority of proletarian people. Therefore, we must develop communist feminism with few women and work to make way for women who are not already here. We must put efforts in recruiting women, while being aware that they will be less inclined to join our organizations. Multiple idealist solutions have already been suggested to us, such as setting quotas for instance. Such solutions mean death for a sect and the impossibility to develop. Communist organizations must always start from their concrete situation to find concrete solutions. The problem of women’s recruitment mainly depends on factors which we do not control — living conditions in an imperialist center —, but it depends, to a lesser extent, on a factor on which we do have power: theoretical quality. By speaking of feminism, by working on feminist theory, by theoretically training communist women cadres, we will be able to attract determined women.
III.Conclusion
“’What they cannot and do not want to see is that moral troubles are a sickness in the same way as any physical affection.’
Women’s hysteria is the result of this impasse that makes us go crazy, the will and the impossibility to find a way out:
‘I cannot stifle my desire to try something’.
They speak of women’s eternal wait — ‘wait indefinitely’, moans Eleanor — women who have no control over their time or their lives. Socialism urges them to class struggle… but to patience as regards their feminist demands. New Penelopes to whom Ulysses is the Revolution that never comes.18”
Half of humanity takes part in a struggle against the other half. This struggle unites us all women through the same emotions, the most intense of all being anger. The anger of being capable of having nothing, the anger of being confronted by the same walls, of being invisible in a world of men. This anger must not be isolated, aimless and wild. It must be channeled in the organization and in the communist struggle, in the transformation of the world.
Communist organizations and parties evolve slowly, but we are convinced that when the communist movement will once again be more advanced on the path of its development, so will communist feminism.
Today, communists are mainly men, who fantasize a virilist proletarian history. Women are not represented; they are not the aim for recruitments anyway. However, women like Eleanor Marx have laid the first foundations which allow us today to go further and to aim to seize power. The invisible figures of our past have taught us what awaits us if we do not understand the necessity of this fight, if we ask for less than feminist dictatorship.
Face to face with all women comrades’ sacrifices, those of the past and of the present, we cannot step back. We will never stop asking for more, we will never stop going forward because we will not be capable of “stifling [our] desire to try something”.
As communists, our goal is to change the world. To change humanity as a whole. Our ambition is huge. It can only be as huge regarding feminism. To Man’s war against women, we answer with Woman’s war against Man.
For a developed approach on this question, see “Pourquoi défendre la libération nationale ?” [“Why defend national liberation?”], Unité Communiste, 4th July 2024.
Unité communiste, Sur Unité communiste [On Communist Unity], 2023.
K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, 1846.
F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1884.
Here, we speak of the contradiction preceding patriarchy, between male and female. The Man-Woman contradiction is what Engels calls family, or what we can call patriarchy.
Ibid.
Ibid.
K. Ghodsee, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, 2018.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
We base ourselves on the testimony of our feminist comrades from the Union of Maoists of the Urals.
The creation of our organization is directly linked to a misogynistic attack against one of our comrades, to a rape, and to the Maoist Communist Party’s support to the rapist. Though a self-criticism had been carried out by this organization, our feminist line was already permanently marked by it. We witnessed up close what happens in the majority of organizations: women being destroyed by men.
For example, during the scission (triggered by a rape) of the Jeunes révolutionnaires, therefore during the creation of the Ligue de la jeunesse révolutionnaire, one of the first texts they wrote was antifeminist. The same women who defended the rapist focused on creating a group supporting “women’s struggle”, only claiming economic rights.
“True nature” here used to refer to Man as a socially constructed entity, not to refer to a male individual.
M. Perrot, “Introduction”, Les filles de Karl Marx [Karl Marx’s daughters], 1979.