WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH: Engels on the Origin of Women’s Oppression
The great significance of Friedrich Engels’s Origin of the Family, Private Property & the State is that it is one of the first Marxist analyses of development of family and origins of women’s oppression (the first was August Bebel’s Women & Socialism, 1879) — a subject in which most men were uninterested. A Short Summary…
Book Launch: Women & Class
Women and Class frames women’s oppression as central to the struggle against capitalism and oppression. It is essential reading for all communists and feminists alike. In this article, Professor Mary Davis introduces the latest edition of her book, Women and Class. Buy your copy here. The aim of this book is to assert and consolidate…
Book Review: Eleanor Marx A Biography
This single volume new edition of Yvonne Kapp’s biography of Eleanor Marx, first published over 40 years ago, was deservedly highly acclaimed at the time. EJ Hobsbawm praised it as “one of the few unquestionable masterpieces of 20th century biography” and Michael Foot described it as “a work of scholarship but also a work of…
Claudia Jones: Communist, Anti-racist and Feminist
It is surprising that not more has been written about Claudia Jones given her stunning achievements as an activist, freedom fighter ideologist and theoretician. The fact that she is buried next to Karl Marx is an appropriate but not an adequate epitaph. The bare bones of her all too short life — she died at…
The Women of the Russian Revolution
The centenary of the Russian Revolution has triggered a great deal of interest, not all of which is helpful or illuminating. However, one aspect of the two revolutions of 1917 which has been almost completely disregarded is the role of women. The commonly accepted view is that Russian women featured only twice in 1917. The…
Women, Class and Gender – a Communist Perspective
International Women’s Day (IWD) has become a corporate event reflecting the now mainstream ideology of ‘corporate feminism’. This year its theme is #BalanceforBetter. The anonymous organisers of IWD events assert that ‘balance’ is not a women’s issue, it’s a business issue and thus their ‘flagship events are backed by significant corporate and/or government sponsorship’. Sponsors…
Book Review: The Women’s Revolution by Judy Cox
Premised on the indisputable fact that women’s role in the revolutions in Russia of 1905 and the two revolutions of 1917 have been largely hidden from history, Judy Cox’s book redresses the imbalance in the torrent of publications two years ago marking the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution which largely ignored it. Her slim volume…
Gender Identity and Capitalism
Clearly there are different sides and many nuances within this debate, which is often beset by a wave of intolerance that not only clouds the subject but, from a Marxist perspective, diverts us from objective substantive analysis. The essence of the problem is a failure to understand two underlying issues. First, there is a confusion…