Karl Marx's Tenet Of Communism

When socialism was conceived, it carried the revolutionary message of equality and equal opportunity for all of humanity - Karl Marx believed this equality could be achieved through the elimination of social and wealth class. Very soon, theorists began viewing other inequalities through Marx’s lens, especially the question of women’s de jure and de facto inequality. Friedrich Engels, Marx’s colleague and co-author of the tenet of Marxism, the Communist Manifesto, began dealing with this issue as early as 1884 in his work The Origin of Family, Private Property, and the State. In this work, Engels qualifies men’s subjugation of women and their labor (their ability to produce male heirs that would inherit a father’s property) as perhaps the first

This implementation is what I would like to explore in this paper, from the first communist state, the Soviet Union, founded in 1917, to other socialist and communist nations springing up during the 20th century in Europe. The implementation of socialist rule in Yugoslavia is particularly important to me, as a child of immigrants from the former Yugoslavia and the granddaughter of people who remember the communists coming to power. I will also explore the transition of women, and their position in society, from a socialist or communist government into a capitalist economy. I would argue that socialist governments across Eastern Europe championed themselves as liberators of women, and while many women received unprecedented rights, the fight for women’s equality gradually took a backseat; however, when socialist governments collapsed, women often found themselves in a more precarious position than they enjoyed under

Beginning in the 1870’s, women workers participated in a series of strikes - in the words of Alexandra Kollontai, “it is indicative that the spontaneous wave of strikes that shook proletarian Russia in the 1870's and the early 1880's affected mainly the textile industry, in which the majority of the work force is made up of cheap female labour.” Exposed to harsh conditions and backbreaking work, it was natural that women, paid less than their male colleagues, stopped working in revolt. However, it was educated women that formed the most fanatical column of revolutionaries, revolutionaries not satisfied with only strike actions, but willing to use terror at their disposal. It is women like Vera Figner or Vera Zasulich who, along with other women comrades, in the words of Jane McDermid and Anna Hillyar, were not only present at the “birth of the new order,” nor did they precipitate it and hand it over to others - they were active, strong, and vocal participants throughout. As we shall see, it was women, especially middle class and educated, who were actively attempting to topple the monarchy, and it