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Kollontai and the History of Women’s Oppression
“Between April and June 1921, on the eve of the Third Congress of the Communist International, Alexandra Kollontai delivered fourteen lectures at Sverdlov University on Women’s Labour in the Evolution of the Economy. These were intended for women workers and peasants who were either members or close sympathizers . . .” read more
Answers to Queries from Simone de Beauvoir
“Well, Sartre, I want to probe your views on the woman question. Mainly because you have never expressed yourself on the subject, and this in fact is the first thing I want to ask you about. How is it that you have talked about all the oppressed groups—workers, . . .” read more
'Psychoanalysis and Feminism'
“Richard Wollheim (‘Psychoanalysis and Feminism’, nlr 93) argues for a biological interpretation of Freud’s account of sexual development. As a group of feminists concerned with the theoretical elaboration of unconscious sexual formations, we wish to argue that Wollheim’s view is both idealist and reactionary in its implications . . .” read more
'Psychoanalysis and Feminism': Rejoinder to Wollheim
“We would like to respond to Richard Wollheim’s review (nlr 93) of Juliet Mitchell’s Psychoanalysis and Feminism. The Left and the women’s movement traditionally reject Freud as a biological determinist. Mitchell’s book sought to redeem him by presenting a social and cultural reading of psychoanalytic theory. The . . .” read more
Domestic Labour: Reply to Critics
“The real merit of the critique made by Margaret Coulson, Branka Magaš and Hilary Wainwright of my analysis of domestic labour is that it focusses discussion about the strategic relation of women’s liberation to socialist revolution upon women’s double labour condition under capitalism. The fact that working-class women, . . .” read more
Psychoanalysis and Feminism
“It would be no gross exaggeration to say that the contemporary intellectual case for the women’s movement is pretty much that which the movement inherited from the thought of the 18th-century Enlightenment. The modern age, it is true, has added typical features of style to its presentation—elements of . . .” read more
Communication on Women’s Liberation
“In discussion of the two replies to Wally Seccombe’s article on domestic labour under capitalism, it is stated in the Themes of nlr 89: ‘Jean Gardiner, writing from a “Marxist feminist” position, criticizes it, among other things, for denying “any validity in their own right to the . . .” read more
Women’s Domestic Labour
“This contribution to current debates about the political economy of housework has two specific objectives. Firstly, it presents a critique of Wally Seccombe’s article in nlr 83, ‘The Housewife and her Labour under Capitalism’. Secondly, it looks at two questions currently under discussion amongst Marxist feminists concerning . . .” read more
'The Housewife and her Labour under Capitalism'--A Critique
“The political significance of Wally Seccombe’s analysis of domestic labour’s relation to capital lies in his attempt to show the material basis for the strategic unity of the struggle to liberate women and the struggle for proletarian revolution. Against those who view the family solely as an ideological . . .” read more
The Housewife and Her Labour Under Capitalism
“The re-emergence of a women’s movement in the late sixties brought with it a flood of radical literature on the oppression of women. The bulk of this writing was descriptive in character. While the portrayal of women’s life-circumstances was often vivid and accurate, the analysis was generally very . . .” read more
Comment on Lucien Rey
“The fundamental premiss of Rey’s comment runs as follows: ‘there is little of value written on women’s oppression within the Marxist tradition and perhaps even less within the Freudian tradition.’ Consequently, the feminist critique of Hegel, Freud, Rousseau, etc, is more important than a Marxist critique of feminism, . . .” read more
Comment on Magas’s 'Sex Politics: Class Politics'
“Lucien Rey writes: The main purpose of Branka Magas’s article, as I understand it, is to show that there are a number of crucial theoretical shortcomings in the three books she is reviewing. For instance, they are confused about the concept of ‘equality’, they have an unrealistic historical . . .” read more
Sex Politics: Class Politics
“In the course of the last year three books were written by women on women’s oppression and liberation. The Female Eunuch and Patriarchal Attitudes, although not written from within the women’s liberation movement, are nevertheless valuable contributions to it. They try to grapple with a number of problems . . .” read more
Comment on Magas
“Robin Blackburn writes: Branka Magas’ article touches on two themes to be found in much writing on the oppression of women. One is the very common rejection of Freud because of the blatant sexism which he frequently expressed, the other is a rejection of violence in the name . . .” read more
Sexual Oppression and Political Practice
“The problematic of Reimut Reiche’s Sexuality and Class Struggle is still largely foreign to socialist thought in Britain. In Germany, however, the necessity for Marxists to supplement their revolutionary theory in the light of Freud’s discovery of the unconscious was already made clear by the rise of Hitlerism. . . .” read more
Women’s Liberation
“This spring brought home to militants of both sexes the surprising fact that the Women’s Liberation Movement, which up to then had appeared to be merely so many small groups meeting at infrequent intervals, had in fact grown to the point that it could, without any extraordinary effort, . . .” read more
Discussion On 'Women: The Longest Revolution'
“In nlr 40 some thirteen and a half thousand words, rich in quotation from Marx, Engels and Lenin, from Louis Althusser, Claude LéviStrauss and Talcott Parsons, were used by Juliet Michell to back up her advocacy of four reforms: equal education, free state provision of oral contraception, . . .” read more
Women: The Longest Revolution
“The situation of women is different from that of any other social group. This is because they are not one of a number of isolable units, but half a totality: the human species. Women are essential and irreplaceable; they cannot therefore be exploited in the same way as . . .” read more
Women’s Education
“The tripartite system of secondary education, inaugurated in 1944, has been partially eroded throughout the fifties and early sixties. ‘Parity of esteem’ notoriously proved a synonym for ‘some are more equal than others.’ The comprehensive schools, the Leicestershire, Croydon, West Riding and Stoke experiments and proposals were explicit . . .” read more
Women’s Wages
“In 1960, realizing that ‘National insurance had been running more and more “into the red”’, the government introduced the Graduated Pensions Scheme. Based on the accumulation of annually increasing contributions from employer and employee this provides a built-in discrimination against all women earning between £10 and £15 . . .” read more
The Regiments of Women
“A damning indictment of our ‘social progress’ is contained in a current Daily Telegraph Gallup Poll report on women voters quoted in a recent bbc television programme. In every election since the war there has been a yawning disparity between men and women voters for the Labour . . .” read more
Wolfenden in the Wilderness
“at the beginning of last year I wrote to a friend, a magistrate and fellow councillor with whom I had for some years worked closely on Ward Committee business and in the local elections. I indicated that, since the next meeting of the Ward Committee was invited . . .” read more