Socialism and Feminism

The movement that goes everywhere affirming itself deserves the attention and study of the socialists. In Italy too we are witnessing a revival of the women’s movement, and in the proletarian field it is directed by that group of valiant companions who publishes the Defense of the Women Workers, a periodical to which every true socialist must wish for the greatest development, to the spread of which we must all contribute.

Let’s say right away that the set of trends that are understood under the name of feminism, and culminates in the aspiration for universal suffrage, is not the same as the movement among socialist women, which is just beginning. Especially the principle of seeking partisans to vote for women in every political party, supported by bourgeois feminists, cannot be accepted by the socialists, representing a danger of class collaboration, and therefore cannot be reconciled with the fundamental characteristics of the socialist movement. And our companions Defense are keen not to go for “feminists”, and with reason.

But this does not mean that we need to be disinterested in feminism, far from it. Instead, it must be argued that gender equality is an essential part of the socialist program, that it cannot be achieved before the abolition of individual property, and that bourgeois feminism is on a false path which cannot lead it to successes that come from some passenger triumph.

Thus revealing the truly revolutionary soul of feminism, we will induce the best elements of this movement to come to us, and to abandon that not very serious people, made up of bourgeois ladies and young ladies, more or less intellectual, who would like to reach the vote for women conquering with their tender smiles half plus one of the 508 members of parliament who can grant it. It is therefore necessary to propagate in the female environment the thesis that the claim of the woman cannot take place in a society based, like the present one, on private property. Thus a good part of educated and intelligent women, belonging to that middle class which, in its male element, becomes more and more anti-socialist, can be conquered by revolutionary propaganda and be of precious help for the organization of the female proletariat.

At the same time, it is necessary to popularize the female question among the socialists, inducing the comrades and the organized ones to carry out active propaganda within the families, to destroy the bourgeois and conservative prejudice of female inferiority in the socialist proletariat.

To prove that the capitalist bourgeoisie will always be against feminism is not a difficult task. The class that has the monopoly of the means of production preserves it and transmits it through the successions and inheritances in the male line, and therefore guarantees the continuation of its monopoly through a series of legal provisions that represent a true tyranny of sex. In possessing classes the family now has only the value of the means of transmission of individual property; it is the family-owned business that suffocates the domestic hearth of romantic memory, and the capitalist class (which knows how to stop internal competition struggles when it comes to fighting a common danger) sees the very rare business entrusted to women, and the fights with legal provisions.

So the bourgeoisie will never accept women’s collaboration in the formulation of the law. It is true that some countries have already granted the vote to women, but they are limited cases of exception. On the other hand, women want the vote not as an extreme end of their agitation, but as a means of having all social legislation in defense of women.

Well, even the most advanced democracy hesitates to launch into this field. Changing the legal order of the family is dangerous for the whole edifice of capitalist society, and democracy, which is nothing but a historical attitude of conservatives who say they are evolutionists to ward off the revolution, hesitates and promises little to keep anything. Get to divorce or a little further. And divorce only mitigates a woman’s legal and moral inferiority.

The emancipation of the female sex is not a reform achievable within the present institutions, but an essentially achievement revolutionary. Only a party truly subversive, like the socialist party, can write it in its flag.

Male tyranny is based on the fact that the male is not responsible for the fruit of sexual intercourse, he is not obliged to maintain his offspring. This is why the woman who grants herself asks for a legal guarantee of maternity (marriage), or even a quota (I would say almost) of insurance against the risk of being a mother, and we have prostitution. The fundamental physiognomy of the two facts is the same, outside of any moral prejudice, and is resolved in a very simple conclusion: in today’s society, love is essentially reduced to an economic relationship buy-sell.

Marx showed that work is subject like any other commodity to the laws of supply and demand. A similar theory could be developed on merchandise-love.

And also in this field one can demonstrate the existence of a surplus value, which represents the exploitation of the male on the female, analogous to that of capital on wage earners.

A detailed analysis would show that no form of sexual intercourse can escape these laws. We can be called vulgar, but this does not shift our objectivity.

Socialism has already disturbed the “poetry” of those who wanted to enjoy without the stench that rises from the dung heap of the exploited reaching its delicate nostrils. And we will be able to tell those sentimental and intellectual young people who will accuse us of “cynicism” that they direct the best part of their activity precisely to this noble purpose: to love without paying.

The cause of female inferiority is therefore to be found in the economic constitution of society.

If a law could really exist on the search for paternity, it would have to establish, in an abstract line, this principle of law: the possessions of each man are shared equally to all the women with whom he had relationship for the maintenance of the offspring. Such a law would mark the end of capitalism. It is absurd for the bourgeoisie to vote for it. But it is possible that a democracy wise to overshadow its programs – along with others that space prohibits us to analyze – to divert the women’s movement by the revolutionary current.

Well, we say to all women who suffer, betrayed and deceived by male bullying, that they must not let themselves be led on the wrong path. As to proletarians who await their redemption from democratic reforms, we say to our companions: Raise your eyes, the light of redemption is there, in the great revolutionary conquest and not elsewhere.

Let us beware of female democracy which will be no less harmful than female clericalism.

Already in this field, freemasonry works, with unsuspected intensity, and has its phonographic records brought in a “soprano” voice: civilization, progress, free thought… It is an alarm that must go through the socialist ranks because the sad maneuver cannot succeed.

And in order for it not to succeed, we must work much more than they do, true, good, holy propaganda among women.