Wed, May 28, 2014

by Susan Rosenthal

BOOK REVIEW: Women and Class: Towards a Socialist Feminism(2011), by Hal Draper, August Bebel, Eleanor Marx, Clara Zetkin, and Rosa Luxemburg.* Edited by E. Haberkern.

The organic connection between women’s liberation and socialism has been shoved so deeply down the Memory Hole that most people know nothing about it. Women and Class brings this rich history to light, revealing important lessons that our rulers prefer we not learn.

Part 1: “The Class Roots of the Feminist Movement” explains how the world’s first revolutionary women’s movement developed during the French Revolution, disappeared during the reaction, then re-emerged when the working class rose again in the mid-1800s.

Part II: ‘The Debate in the Social Democracy” chronicles the resurgence of the socialist and women’s movements during the later 1800s and early 1900s with a focus on efforts to combat capitalist feminism (commonly called ‘bourgeois’ feminism) in society and also inside the socialist movement.

A movement of women

As Draper explains, various women (and men) had written about women’s rights prior to the French Revolution, but no organized movement of women was possible until the mass of society began to move.

Read more here – http://susanrosenthal.com/articles/the-hidden-history-of-womens-liberation