Women & Marxism.
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By Barbara Humphries
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Friday, 12 December 2008 |
 December 14th 2008 marks the 90th anniversary of a landmark election in
Britain. Following the end of World War I it was the first election in
which women were entitled to vote. The Representation of the People Act
which became law in February 1918 had granted the right to vote on a
restricted basis to women. Only women over 30 would be entitled to
vote. Voting rights for all women aged over 21 did not come until ten
years later, in 1928.
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By Steve McKenzie
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Wednesday, 24 September 2008 |
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 Eleanor
Marx was the youngest daughter of Karl Marx, the greatest philosophical,
political and social thinker of our times. She was born in Soho in London in 1855 and, not surprisingly, was a
precocious child mixing with adults who were the most advanced political
thinkers of their day. But her place in history isn't because of her name and who she was
related to. Her work, commitment to the cause and self sacrifice earned
her that place in her own right. From the time of her father’s death in 1883 until her own untimely
death in 1898 the workload she undertook in the labour and trade union
movement of the day was phenomenal.
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By Barbara Humphries
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Friday, 07 March 2008 |
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 Whatever happened to Women's liberation?
Tomorrow is International Women's Day. Although governments and political parties around the world pay lip service to women's liberation, the liberation of women remains elusive. Barbara Humphries, long-term labour movement activist and Marxist, spoke on Wednesday evening at the ULU Marxist Society on the origins of International Women's Day, the necessity for capitalism to divide society on the basis of sex and how the emergence of class society made women second-class citizens.
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By Barbara Humphries
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Thursday, 31 January 2008 |
 The liberation of women and the socialist revolution are inseperable tasks requiring the active participation of women workers in the organised labour movement. This recording of Barbara Humphries speaking at the Socialist Appeal xmas day school explains the double expoitation of women under the capitalist system, the history of women in the labour movement, the impact of imperialist aggression on women and the nature of feminism and positive discrimination.
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Monday, 08 March 2004 |
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The key role played by women in the 1984-1985 miners' strike has been an
inspiration to working class women everywhere. Many other issues affecting women
have yet to be fought. Cuts in education, housing, transport and health just to
name a few. Originally published in 1986. |
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By Sonia Previato
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Thursday, 10 October 2002 |
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Tomorrow, March 8, is International Working Women’s Day, and to mark
this important event we are publishing this article. It was first printed in
issue Number 5 of ‘In difesa del marxismo’, the theoretical magazine of the
Italian Marxist journal FalceMartello. Although originally written for an
Italian audience we believe it is of interest to labour movement activists and
youth around the world.
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By Sonia Previato
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Thursday, 10 October 2002 |
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Following on from our publication of Part One of this article to commemorate
March 8, International Working Women’s Day, we are publishing Part Two, which
starts with the role of women in the Italian resistance movement and then goes
on to analyse the Italian feminist movement from the Second World War up until
today.
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By Phil Mitchinson
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Friday, 08 March 2002 |
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The Irish population in a referendum has just rejected a government
move to further restrict women's limited access to abortions. This is a
blow for the reactionaries but the right to abortion is still out of
reach for most Irish women, being available only to those who can
afford to travel to Britain.
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By Marina Kosara, from the YS, Vienna
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Friday, 08 March 2002 |
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We are publishing a letter about the conditions of female immigrants to
Europe written by Marina Kosara, a member of the Young Socialists in
Vienna who works with immigrants.
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By Gaye D. C.
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Tuesday, 05 February 2002 |
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This is a short article about the terrible conditions women face in Nigeria.
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By Rob Sewell
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Wednesday, 05 September 2001 |
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While middle class feminists regard the oppression of women as an
inherent biological trait of men, Marxism explains that the root of
women's oppression lies not in biology, but in social conditions.
Marxism sees the liberation of working class women as a part of the
struggle for the liberation of the working class as a whole. While
feminists set women against men, the socialist movement attempts to
forge solidarity between male and female workers in a common struggle
against capitalist exploitation.
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By Alan Woods
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Thursday, 19 July 2001 |
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For Marxists, the root cause of all forms of oppression consists in the division of
society into classes. For many feminists, on the other hand, the oppression of
women is rooted in the nature of men. It is not a social but a biological
phenomenon. This is an entirely static, unscientific and undialectical
conception of the human race. It is an unhistorical vision of the human
condition, from which profoundly pessimistic conclusions must flow. For if we
accept that there is something inherent in men which causes them to
oppress women, it is difficult to see how the present situation will ever be
remedied. The conclusion must be that the oppression of women by men
has always existed and therefore, presumably, will always exist.
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By Ana Muñoz and Alan Woods
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Wednesday, 08 March 2000 |
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Marxism has always been at
the forefront of the cause of women's emancipation. The
8th of
March (International Women's Day) is a red letter day for us as it
symbolises the
struggle of working class women against
capitalism, oppression and discrimination throughout
the world.
We are publishing an updated version of the document we
published last year on
March 8, where we outline the first steps
given by Marxism to fight for women's rights,
what the first
successful revolution meant for the emancipation of women,
conditions of
women under capitalism both in advanced and Third
World countries and pose the question
of how to eliminate
inequality between men and women for good.
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By Jen Pickard
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Saturday, 01 May 1982 |
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The life of Sylvia Pankhurst is rich in experience for all activists in
the labour movement. The names of the Pankhurst family are synonymous
with the struggle to win the vote for women, but what distinguished
Sylvia Pankhurst's approach from that of her mother Emmeline and her
sister Christabel were class issues. It resulted in the 1920s, after
nearly twenty years of struggle, with Emmeline standing as Tory
Parliamentary candidate and Sylvia becoming a founder member of the
British Communist Party. The seeds of such a divide were there from the
early days of the suffragette organisation.
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