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The Body Politic WOMENS This book is a collection of writings from the women's liberation movement. It consists of four separate sections dealing with women in various situations, with an introduction giving a general outline of women's struggle and oppression.
The first section is a mixed bag of experience dealing with the personal involvement and growing self-awareness of women both at work and at home. Sometimes these remain a self-conscious expression of their own particular oppression, an explanation of their frustrated home life. Occasionally it is generalised showing the exploitative nature of nur society.
The women's liberation movement makes up the second section. Sheila Rowbotham traces the growth of the movement through the campaigns of Lil Biloca ( a fisherman's wife who attempted to improve the safety of trawlers) and Rose Boland (one of the sewing machinists who brough Fords to a standstill) and the beginnings of NJACCWER. She acknowledges the part played by Socialist Woman and the IMG as well as recognising the problems that an organised tendency faces when working within such a loosely-knit group. In the same section Rosalind Delmar discusses the different views on the development of women's oppression. Criticising Engels when he states that as private property is abolished the conditions for liberation would be established, Rosalind Delmar points to the danger of women, after the revolution, doing socially what they now do privately. However, we are only too aware of this danger and realise that women's emancipation has to be fought for now, recognising the need for women to organise separately to combat our particular oppression.
The third section is perhaps the meatiest consisting of articles on women in society - in the family, at work, in prison and as individuals. A very interesting article by Sue Small shows the role the family plays in women's oppression. She analyses the economic and ideological functions that the family plays under capitalism by tracing its modern historical development and its role today. Examining women's involvement in the family process she shows the inter-relationships between education, family and employment. The question of employment is taken up by Leonora Lloyd whose article on Women, work and equal pay is an earlier version of her "Women Workers in Britain', which is a more detailed statistical analysis of women in this area Women and Action - Past and Present' make up the remainder of this book. However, it is impossible for a short review to even touch on all the topics covered and ideas raised in the Body Politic. This book does not follow any political line but shows the different currents and tendencies within the women's movement. As such it is a useful and interesting book covering a wide range of ideas from "consciousness raising' to Marxist thought and well.
Jane Smith ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI SEXUAL RELATIONS AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE LOVE AN IE NEW TRANLIED AND INTRRDICES ST ALIBBIT The problems raised by Alexandria Kollontai in these two essays are still with us today - how to resolve questions of personal relationships. When they were first published, in 1919, they may have seemed trivial problems in comparision to the enormous tasks of reconstruction faced by the new Revolution. But Revolutions are made by people; people who come with the prejudices and backwardnesses of the old society to the new; whose problems of personal living we as important to them as the building of new factories. After all; if the revolution is not about people and their lives it is about nothing.
Kollonati is writing about the difficulties caused precisely because of the prevelance of old attitudes - in relation to women's supposed inferiority, possessiveness in love, and the tendency to shut all others out in love affairs, She argues that women must think of themselves as equal, with equal rights to choose their partners without social condemnation, and must be traated as equal. Until this happens "free unions" will have even worse features than legal marriage. In general, the expectation or deisre for monogamous, life-long relationships, (on the woman's side at present) is against nature. Kollonati recognises that the problems of personal relationships are not simple. In the difficult times after the revolution, people turned inwards to find emotional satisfaction, leading to over-intense relationships and possessiveness. Until the nations' economic life was improved, this spiritual desolation was likely to be a factor in determining the nature of live love affairs. Until women's life in all areas were changed, they were likely to be treated as inferior.
Kollontai's ideas are still relevant today, In particular, we are aware that reforms" in personal relationships cannot be universal or particularly affective, because they arise out of a system still based on class. They was we live arises from the material world, and only idealists believe that changes in individual's life-styles can change that material world. At the same time, there is no excuse for revolutionaries not to seck to improve their behaviour and attitudes towards others. Her ideas in the pamphlet are well worth discussion and The Body Politic-Women's Liberation in Britain 1969-1972 Compiled by Michelene Wander. Printed by Stage I. price 15p.
Sexual Relation and the Class Struggle: Love and the new Morality, by Alexandra Kollantai. Translation and Introduction