Socialist feminism
Sub-theories of socialist feminism
Sub\-theories of socialist feminism
-----------------------------------

### Anarcha\-feminism

[Anarcha\-feminism](/wiki/Anarcha-feminism "Anarcha-feminism"), also called anarchist feminism and anarcho\-feminism, combines [anarchism](/wiki/Anarchism "Anarchism") with [feminism](/wiki/Feminism "Feminism"). It generally views [patriarchy](/wiki/Patriarchy "Patriarchy") as a manifestation of involuntary [coercive](/wiki/Coercion "Coercion") hierarchy that should be replaced by [decentralized](/wiki/Decentralized "Decentralized") [free association](/wiki/Free_association_%28communism_and_anarchism%29 "Free association (communism and anarchism)"). Anarcha\-feminists believe that the struggle against patriarchy is an essential part of [class struggle](/wiki/Class_struggle "Class struggle"), and the [anarchist](/wiki/Anarchism "Anarchism") struggle against the [state](/wiki/State_%28polity%29 "State (polity)"). In essence, the philosophy sees anarchist struggle as a necessary component of feminist struggle and vice versa. [L. Susan Brown](/wiki/L._Susan_Brown "L. Susan Brown") claims that "as anarchism is a political philosophy that opposes all relationships of power, it is inherently feminist".Brown, L. Susan (1995\). "Beyond Feminism: Anarchism and Human Freedom". Reinventing Anarchy, Again. San Francisco: AK Press. pp. 149–154\. . p. 208\. [Bakunin](/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin "Mikhail Bakunin") opposed [patriarchy](/wiki/Patriarchy "Patriarchy") and the way the law "subjects \[women] to the absolute domination of the man". He argued that "\[e]qual rights must belong to men and women" so that women can "become independent and be free to forge their own way of life". Bakunin foresaw the end of "the [authoritarian](/wiki/Authoritarian "Authoritarian") [juridical](/wiki/Juridical "Juridical") [family](/wiki/Family "Family")" and "the full sexual freedom of women."An Anarchist FAQ. [What is Anarcha\-Feminism?](http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secA3.html) 

Anarcha\-feminism began with late 19th and early 20th century authors and theorists such as anarchist feminists [Emma Goldman](/wiki/Emma_Goldman "Emma Goldman"), [Voltairine de Cleyre](/wiki/Voltairine_de_Cleyre "Voltairine de Cleyre") and [Lucy Parsons](/wiki/Lucy_Parsons "Lucy Parsons").Dunbar\-Ortiz, p.9\. In the [Spanish Civil War](/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War "Spanish Civil War"), an anarcha\-feminist group,  (Free Women) linked to the , organized to defend both anarchist and feminist ideas,Ackelsberg. while the prominent Spanish anarchist and feminist leader [Federica Montseny](/wiki/Federica_Montseny "Federica Montseny") held that the "emancipation of women would lead to a quicker realization of the social revolution" and that "the revolution against sexism would have to come from intellectual and militant 'future\-women.' According to this Nietzschean concept of Federica Montseny's, women could realize through art and literature the need to revise their own roles."

In Argentina, [Virginia Bolten](/wiki/Virginia_Bolten "Virginia Bolten") is responsible for the publication of a newspaper called ** (*The Woman's Voice*), which was published nine times in Rosario between 8 January 1896 and 1 January 1897, and was revived, briefly, in 1901\. A similar paper with the same name was reportedly published later in [Montevideo](/wiki/Montevideo "Montevideo"), which suggests that Bolten may also have founded and edited it after her deportation. "La Voz de la Mujer described itself as "dedicated to the advancement of Communist Anarchism". Its central theme was that of the multiple nature of women's oppression. An editorial asserted, "We believe that in present\-day society nothing and nobody has a more wretched situation than unfortunate women." Women, they said, were doubly oppressed—by bourgeois society and by men. Its feminism can be seen from its attack on marriage and upon male power over women. Its contributors, like anarchist feminists elsewhere, developed a concept of oppression that focused on gender oppression. Marriage was a bourgeois institution which restricted women's freedom, including their sexual freedom. Marriages entered into without love, fidelity maintained through fear rather than desire, oppression of women by men they hated—all were seen as symptomatic of the coercion implied by the marriage contract. It was this alienation of the individual's will that the anarchist feminists deplored and sought to remedy, initially through free love and then, and more thoroughly, through social revolution."

 was an [anarchist](/wiki/Anarchism "Anarchism") women's organization in [Spain](/wiki/Spain "Spain") that aimed to empower working class women. It was founded in 1936 by [Lucía Sánchez Saornil](/wiki/Luc%C3%ADa_S%C3%A1nchez_Saornil "Lucía Sánchez Saornil"), [Mercedes Comaposada](/wiki/Mercedes_Comaposada "Mercedes Comaposada") and [Amparo Poch y Gascón](/wiki/Amparo_Poch_y_Gasc%C3%B3n "Amparo Poch y Gascón") and had approximately 30,000 members. The organization was based on the idea of a "double struggle" for [women's liberation](/wiki/Feminist_movement "Feminist movement") and [social revolution](/wiki/Social_revolution "Social revolution") and argued that the two objectives were equally important and should be pursued in parallel. In order to gain mutual support, they created networks of women anarchists. Flying day\-care centres were set up in efforts to involve more women in union activities. [Lucía Sánchez Saornil](/wiki/Luc%C3%ADa_S%C3%A1nchez_Saornil "Lucía Sánchez Saornil"), was a [Spanish](/wiki/Spanish_people "Spanish people") poet, militant [anarchist](/wiki/Anarchism "Anarchism") and [feminist](/wiki/Feminism "Feminism"). She is best known as one of the founders of *[Mujeres Libres](/wiki/Mujeres_Libres "Mujeres Libres")* and served in the [Confederación Nacional del Trabajo](/wiki/Confederaci%C3%B3n_Nacional_del_Trabajo "Confederación Nacional del Trabajo") (CNT) and [Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista](/wiki/Solidaridad_Internacional_Antifascista "Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista") (SIA). By 1919, she had been published in a variety of journals, including *Los Quijotes*, *Tableros*, *Plural*, *Manantial* and *La Gaceta Literaria*. Working under a male [pen name](/wiki/Pen_name "Pen name"), she was able to explore [lesbian](/wiki/Lesbian "Lesbian") themes"R. Fue una época transgresora, emergió el feminismo y la libertad sexual estuvo en el candelero. Hay rastreos de muchas lesbianas escritoras: Carmen Conde\[primera académica de número], Victorina Durán, Margarita Xirgu, Ana María Sagi, la periodista Irene Polo, Lucía Sánchez Saornil, fundadora de Mujeres Libres\[sección feminista de CNT]... Incluso existía un círculo sáfico en Madrid como lugar de encuentro y tertulia.P. ¿Se declaraban lesbianas?R. Había quien no se escondía mucho, como Polo o Durán, pero lesbiana era un insulto, algo innombrable. Excepto los poemas homosexuales de Sánchez Saornil, sus textos no eran explícitos para poder publicarlos, así que hay que reinterpretarlos."["Tener referentes serios de lesbianas elimina estereotipos" by Juan Fernandez at *El Pais*](http://elpais.com/diario/2007/12/06/paisvasco/1196973608_850215.html) at a time when homosexuality was criminalized and subject to [censorship](/wiki/Censorship "Censorship") and punishment. Writing in anarchist publications such as *Earth and Freedom*, the *White Magazine* and *[Workers' Solidarity](/wiki/Solidaridad_Obrera_%28periodical%29 "Solidaridad Obrera (periodical)")*, Lucía outlined her perspective as a feminist.

In the past decades, two films have been produced about anarcha\-feminism. *[Libertarias](/wiki/Libertarias "Libertarias")* is a historical drama made in 1996 about the Spanish anarcha\-feminist organization [Mujeres Libres](/wiki/Mujeres_Libres "Mujeres Libres"). In 2010, the Argentinian film *Ni dios, ni patrón, ni marido* was released which is centered on the story of anarcha\-feminist [Virginia Bolten](/wiki/Virginia_Bolten "Virginia Bolten") and her publishing of *La Voz de la Mujer*.

### Marxist feminism

[thumb\|left\|200px\|Socialist feminist [Clara Zetkin](/wiki/Clara_Zetkin "Clara Zetkin") and [Rosa Luxemburg](/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg "Rosa Luxemburg") in 1910](/wiki/File:Zetkin_luxemburg1910.jpg "Zetkin luxemburg1910.jpg")
[Marxist feminism](/wiki/Marxist_feminism "Marxist feminism") is a sub\-type of [feminist theory](/wiki/Feminist_theory "Feminist theory") which focuses on the social institutions of [private property](/wiki/Private_property "Private property") and [capitalism](/wiki/Capitalism "Capitalism") to explain and criticize gender inequality and oppression. According to Marxist feminists, private property gives rise to economic inequality, dependence, political and domestic struggle between the sexes, and is the root of women's oppression in the current social context.

Marxist feminism's foundation is laid by [Friedrich Engels](/wiki/Friedrich_Engels "Friedrich Engels") in his analysis of gender oppression in *[The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State](/wiki/The_Origin_of_the_Family%2C_Private_Property%2C_and_the_State "The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State")* (1884\). He argues that a woman's subordination is not a result of her biological disposition but of social relations, and that men's efforts to achieve their demands for control of women's labor and sexual faculties have gradually solidified and become institutionalized in the [nuclear family](/wiki/Nuclear_family "Nuclear family"). Through a Marxist [historical](/wiki/Historical_materialism "Historical materialism") perspective, Engels analyzes the widespread social phenomena associated with female sexual morality, such as fixation on [virginity](/wiki/Virginity "Virginity") and sexual purity, incrimination and violent punishment of women who commit [adultery](/wiki/Infidelity "Infidelity"), and demands that women be submissive to their husbands. Ultimately, Engels traces these phenomena to the recent development of exclusive control of private property by the patriarchs of the rising slaveowner class in the ancient mode of production, and the attendant desire to ensure that their inheritance is passed only to their own offspring: chastity and fidelity are rewarded, says Engels, because they guarantee exclusive access to the sexual and reproductive faculty of women possessed by men from the property\-owning class.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both [Clara Zetkin](/wiki/Clara_Zetkin "Clara Zetkin") and [Eleanor Marx](/wiki/Eleanor_Marx "Eleanor Marx") were against the [demonization](/wiki/Demonization "Demonization") of men and supported a [proletariat](/wiki/Proletarian "Proletarian") revolution that would overcome as many male–female inequalities as possible. In this way, a politic of solidarity was seen as the means to enact a socialist platform. As their movement already had the most radical demands in women's equality, most Marxist leaders, including Clara ZetkinZetkin, Clara, [*On a Bourgeois Feminist Petition*](http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1976/women/3-zetkin.html) (1895\).Zetkin, Clara, [*Lenin On the Women's Question*](http://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1920/lenin/zetkin1.htm). and [Alexandra Kollontai](/wiki/Alexandra_Kollontai "Alexandra Kollontai"),Kollontai, Alexandra, [*The Social Basis of the Woman Question*](http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1909/social-basis.htm) (1909\).Kollontai, Alexandra, [*Women Workers Struggle For Their Rights*](http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1919/women-workers/ch01.htm) (1919\). counterposed Marxism against bourgeois feminism, rather than trying to combine them.

Orthodox Marxists argue that most Marxist forerunners claimed by feminists or Marxist feminists including Clara ZetkinZetkin, Clara [On a Bourgeois Feminist Petition](http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1976/women/3-zetkin.html) 1895Zetkin, Clara [Lenin on the Women's Question](http://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1920/lenin/zetkin1.htm) and Alexandra KollontaiKollontai, Alexandra [The Social Basis of the Woman Question](http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1909/social-basis.htm) 1909Kollontai, Alexandra [Women Workers Struggle For Their Rights](http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1919/women-workers/ch01.htm) 1919 were against capitalist forms of feminism. They agreed with the main Marxist movement that feminism was a bourgeois ideology counterposed to Marxism and against the working class. Instead of feminism, the Marxists supported the more radical political program of liberating women through socialist revolution, with a special emphasis on work among women and in materially changing their conditions after the revolution. Orthodox Marxists view the later attempt to combine Marxism and feminism as a liberal creation of academics and reformist leftists who want to make alliances with bourgeois feminists. For instance, Alexandra Kollontai wrote in 1909: 
> For what reason, then, should the woman worker seek a union with the bourgeois feminists? Who, in actual fact, would stand to gain in the event of such an alliance? Certainly not the woman worker.

Kollontai was a prominent leader in the Bolshevik party in Russia, defending her stance on how capitalism had shaped a rather displeasing and oppressing position for females that are part of its system. She recognized and emphasized the difference between the proletariat and bourgeoise women in society, though it has been expressed by Kollontai's thought that all women under a capitalist economy were those of oppression. One of the reasons Kollontai had a strict opposition of the bourgeois women and proletariat or working\-class women to have an alliance is because the bourgeois was still inherently using the women of the working class to their advantage, and therefore prolonging the injustice that women in a capitalist society are treated. She theorized that a well\-balanced economic utopia was ingrained in the need for gender equality, but never identified as a feminist, though she greatly impacted the feminist movement within the ideology of feminism within and throughout socialism. Kollontai had a harsh stance on the feminist movement and believed feminist to be naïve in only addressing gender as the reason inequality was happening under a capitalist rule. She believed that the true issue of inequality was that of the division of classes that led to the immediate production of gender struggles, just how men in the structure of the classes shown a harsh divide as well. Kollontai analyzed the theories and historical implications of Marxism as a background for her ideologies, which she addressed the most profound obstacle for society to address be that of the gender inequality, which could never be eradicated under a capitalist society. As capitalism is inherently for private profit, Kollontai's argument toward the eradication of women suffrage within society under a capitalist rule also delved into how women cannot and will not be abolished under a capitalist society because of the ways in which women's "free labor" has been utilized. Kollontai criticized the feminist movement as also neglecting to emphasize how the working class, while trying to care and provide for a family and being paid less than that of men, was still expected to cater to and provide for the bourgeois or upper\-class women who were still oppressing the working\-class women by utilizing their stereotypical type of work. Kollontai also faced harsh scrutiny in being a woman leader in a time of a male dominated political stance during the Bolshevik movement. In keeping with her unusual position during her time, she also kept diaries of her plans and ideas on moving towards a more "modern" society where socialism would help uproot that of capitalism and the oppression that different groups of gender and class had been facing. Kollontai was a great example of a woman who was indeed still oppressed by the times and was removed from her own ideologies and progress for the mere fact she was a woman in times where being so in a powerful position was frowned upon and "great women" were only allowed to be placed alongside "great men" in history. Kollontai's most pertinent presence in feminist socialism was her stance on reproductive rights and her view on women being allowed the same luxuries that men have in finding love not only to be stable and supported, and to also be able to make their own money and be secure on their own two feet. She focused her attention on opening up society's allowance of women's liberation from a capitalist and bourgeois control and emphasizing women's suffrage in the working\-class.

A pioneering Marxist and feminist, [Mary Inman](/wiki/Mary_Inman "Mary Inman") of the [Communist Party USA](/wiki/Communist_Party_USA "Communist Party USA") challenged the party's orthodox position by arguing that the home is a center of production and housewives carry out productive labor. Her writings include *In Woman's Defense* (1940\) and *Woman\-Power* (1942\). Inman's work was at first warmly received by several top Communist women leaders, including [Elizabeth Gurley Flynn](/wiki/Elizabeth_Gurley_Flynn "Elizabeth Gurley Flynn") and [Ella Reeve Bloor](/wiki/Ella_Reeve_Bloor "Ella Reeve Bloor"), but the CPUSA leadership began an official attack on Inman's work for purported ideological deviation in 1941\. A series of articles written against Inman's ideas appeared in the party's literary monthly, *[The New Masses](/wiki/The_New_Masses "The New Masses"),* and the polemic was extended with the publication of a pamphlet by A. Landy, *Marxism and the Woman Question.*

[Radical Women](/wiki/Radical_Women "Radical Women"), a major Marxist\-feminist organization, bases its theory on Marx' and Engels' analysis that the enslavement of women was the first building block of an economic system based on private property. They contend that elimination of the capitalist profit\-driven economy will remove the motivation for sexism, racism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression.*The Radical Women Manifesto: Socialist Feminist Theory, Program and Organizational Structure*<http://www.redletterpress.org/rwmanifesto.html>, Red Letter Press, 2001, , pages 2–26\.


Why was Inman's work officially attacked by the CPUSA leadership?