“Egyptian Women Will Live with Dignity” Cairo, 2013, women protest against sexual assault
LOS ANGELES (USA)—I started discussing the Red Flag editorial about sexual harassment and assault with a bus driver. I told her about an experience I had many years ago when I kept quiet about sexual harassment on the job because I needed the minimum-wage pay check.
I explained that communist society will end wage slavery. No one will have the power to coerce sexual favors because you need a job.
However, I said, ending wage slavery isn’t enough. We’ll have to spend a lot of effort teaching men and women new ways of relating to each other, and combating sexist ideas in the culture.
“That’s for sure,” she said. “I wanted to see what the Bible said, so I’ve been listening to it on my phone. Do you know that the Bible says that God laid Adam down on the ground and created Eve out of his rib? And people believe that? That’s not how nature does it. Women give birth to everyone. I’ve got the stretch marks to prove it.”
“There are many myths and stories like that,” I said. “They all date from the end of pre-class communism, when people lived in gatherer-hunter societies. The story of the Garden of Eden, shared by Muslims, Christians and Jews, is only one of those stories. They recount the memory of pre-class society and the beginning of private property and class oppression. At the same time, they blame women for that change – ‘Eve ate the apple’ and justify women’s oppression.”
Before Sexism Equality
We know from anthropology that women and men in pre-class societies were treated equally.
Thomas Morgan lived among the Iroquois in North America in the 19th century. His work was an important source for Frederick Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Engels was one of the founders of scientific communism.
Iroquois men hunted, while women farmed and took care of the home. Those activities were consistent with pregnancy and nursing small children. Society was cooperative and egalitarian, and women’s work was valued equally with that of men. Women were honored and lived freely. Since women gave birth to children, family identity was naturally passed on through the mother’s line. Men would move from their family of origin into the family circles of their mate.
Another example is the !Kung San people of Southwest Africa. They lived in nomadic, hunter-gatherer societies until the 1960s. Women supplied most of the food supply by gathering. They were seen as responsible for the survival of the group by giving birth to the next generation. While there was division of responsibility, men and women had equal status and respect.
How did that change?
What historians call the “Neolithic revolution,” about ten thousand years ago, ended this period of pre-class communism. Private property, in cattle herding and farming, created the conditions for class society. This brought about what Engels called “the world historical defeat of the female sex.”
With private property came systems of inheritance through the father’s family line. To pass property on to their biological offspring, property-owning fathers now demanded that paternity be established beyond doubt. So they imposed strict limitations on female autonomy. Monogamy—at least for women—was the necessary condition for the inheritance of property through the male line. This is called “patriarchy.”
Writing the story
The stories we are taught, including the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, promote sexist cultural values and norms that reinforce patriarchal class relations. Because Eve was disobedient, and Adam listened to her, a vengeful male god condemned men to sweat to bring forth bread among thorns and thistles. This god condemned women to bring forth children in sorrow, and be ruled over by their husbands.
The lessons of this story – and others like it— have been passed down through generations of class society. Sexist ideas have robbed the working class of the leadership of women. They have seriously damaged the unity of our class. But the bus driver I was talking to and the woman we have recently recruited to a previously all-male party cell at another MTA division can help us change that.
Our earliest prehistory shows that sexism is not human nature. It is a product of class society. Fighting the sexist ideas and practices that we have been taught can build stronger class unity and allow us to fight for a communist society, where we can wipe out sexism once and for all.
It is our job to write new stories—in the fight for scientific communism.
Front page of this issue
