are the interests of men and women identical?

Are the Interests of Men and Women Identical?Author(s): Linda GordonSource: Signs, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Summer, 1976), pp. 1011-1018Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173257 .

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ARCHIVES

Are the Interests of Men and Women Identical?

Linda Gordon

One of the most influential attempts to organize working-class women in the United States was that of the Socialist party in its period of great strength between 1901 and 1912. By 1908, when party membership had climbed to over twenty thousand, Socialist women began a successful campaign of autonomous organization within the party and within two years had created women's branches in 156 Socialist party locals.' Socialist women's agitation, like Socialist politics in general, reached well beyond actual party members.

In the early twentieth century the Socialist party was the only political party to allow women's participation and to endorse women's suffrage and other equal rights issues. Among radical groups, the Socialist party was the only organization that directed its women's organizing program to the whole working class, not just to employed women-at that time a small minority among their sex. The three selections printed here, from Socialist publications, reflect the efforts of women activists in the party to encompass the needs of all working-class women and to seek out their fundamental unity of experience in workplace and family.

Many socialist women, in and out of the party, were developing at this time an analysis of women's problems based on this sense of unified experience. They avoided a primary loyalty either to the existing corpus

1. The best review of women's work in the Socialist party is MaryJo Buhle's pamphlet Women and the Socialist Party, 1901-1914 (Somerville, Mass.: New England Free Press, n.d.), originally published in Radical America (February 1970). [Signs: Journal of Tl'omen in Culture and Societv 1976, vol. 1, no. 4] ? 1976 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

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Interests of Women

of Marxist thought on the "woman question" or to the nineteenth- century feminist tradition, founded as it was in the problems of women of the professional and business classes mainly. Women like Josephine Conger-Kaneko, Kate Richards O'Hare, Crystal Eastman, Margaret Sanger, Rose Pastor Stokes, May Wood Simons, Emma Goldman, and others had analytic ability precisely because they were steeped in one or another of these traditions, Marxist and/or feminist. Yet their main commitment was to understanding and changing the lives of working- class women, and their politics reflected a realization that existing analytic traditions might not be equal to the task-might, indeed, require modification and further development. The Socialist party was lucky to have the energies of women like these, for they helped to save it from the dogmatism that has so often been a weakness of radical parties domi- nated by men removed from the working class itself.

This group of women failed in their project, which was to create a socialist feminism anchored in the working-class experience. There were many reasons for the failure. Ultimately, the Socialist party men proved resistant to the incorporation of feminism into their program. This stubbornness may well have accurately reflected the depth of the sexual cleavage among working people in the whole society. Another potential source of support for the socialist-feminists, the women's rights movement, grew increasingly legalistic and proved unable to alter either its style or its program to offer anything substantial to working-class women or to radicals of any class. Finally, the World War experience enabled the country's rulers to mount an effective campaign of defamation and re- pression against the entire Left, weakening socialism and feminism alike. After World War I the socialist strain in feminist thought was virtually unheard of until the women's liberation movement of the 1960s revived it. It is for that reason that much of the rudimentary socialist-feminist analysis being explored today seems to the historian to repeat, without much advance, the thought of fifty years ago.

Today, for example, one of the central intellectual problems that organizers of working-class women face is to create an analysis of sexism as a system in which the capitalist class, the male working class, and to some extent women all participate. In particular, Selma James, in her writings on the "wages for housework" perspective and in her important pamphlet Sex, Race and Class,2 has argued that women's experience as housewife forms an essential part of the whole working-class experience. Limiting the definition of the working class to wage earners and its consciousness-forming experiences to those at the workplace accepts the fragmentation of the working class that monopoly capitalism has promoted-sexually, racially, between the unionized and nonunionized,

2. Selma James, Sex, Race and Class (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, n.d.), originally published in Race Today.

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the so-called skilled and unskilled, the employed and the unemployed, the worker and the welfare recipient. In the early twentieth century, as today, socialist-feminist analyses contributed to an overall strategy for working-class socialism.

These short selections from Socialist party publications are intended to illustrate a rather rich production of ideas, hunches, and theory developing in the first years of this century, chosen in part because of their remarkable contemporary relevance.

The editorial, "Women's Work and Pay," from a Chicago Socialist daily, is but one of many Socialist comments on the economic role of housework in the capitalist mode of production. It suggests that among the Socialist party and its supporters speculation on this subject, and efforts to raise the social value and esteem of housework, were wide- spread. Similarly, the editorial from the New York Call on the increased price of coal reflects a feminist perception of the totality of capitalist exploitation under increasingly monopolistic conditions: that workers' gains at the workplace were often undercut by their separation from their wives' exclusive responsibility for consumption and other repro- ductive labor. These articles were not formal theoretical analyses, but editorials in Socialist daily newspapers with large circulations.

Josephine Conger-Kaneko's article, by contrast, was published in The Socialist Woman (later known as The Progressive Woman), a publication which for the seven years of its existence was the main voice of Socialist party women's activity. The angry tone of Conger-Kaneko's piece was a response to the hostile attitude toward autonomous women's groups displayed by the majority of party men. Conger-Kaneko was writing in preparation for the party's national convention of May, 1908, at which women forced the endorsement of an equal suffrage resolution and the creation of a National Woman's Committee in the party. The four years that followed contained the most extensive women's activity in and around the Socialist party. The militance of Conger-Kaneko's article was produced by a wave of Socialist feminist militancy which was based in part on working women's militancy in some of the greatest strikes of the period-the shirtwaist strike of 1909, the Lawrence textile strike of 1912, and the Paterson silkmill strike of 1913, all of them woman domi- nated.

This period of intensified working-class struggle allowed party women to begin something about which they had previously been very timid-confronting the sexism of the men of their own class. The easier way out had always been to blame women's oppression entirely on the capitalist class. Wanting the support of working-class men, socialist- feminists of this era were often led into an alliance which was unfortu- nately based on the perpetuation of significant male privileges within the working class. It was a weak alliance, resting on shaky supports, and it naturally did not stand up well under strain.

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Interests of Women

Conger-Kaneko's exceptional criticism of male Socialists here con- trasts with the more typical avoidance of such issues. For example, in the analyses of housework as work done for the capitalists, Socialists ne- glected to consider housework as direct service for men. They never challenged the sexual division of labor which made housework women's work in the first place. (Nor did any of the "bourgeois feminists," for that matter. These criticisms are not meant to suggest that the Socialist party was behind any other groups in its feminist consciousness.) They gener- ally bemoaned the necessity for earning that drove women into the wage-labor force. They did not question the immediate benefits that men got from the channeling of women wage workers into the lowest- paid and most menial jobs. In short, while they repeatedly criticized male Socialists for their chauvinism and their belittling of women's spe- cial problems, they did not suggest the only materialist Marxist explanation: that the chauvinism rested on material advantages that working- class men got from sexism.

This is not merely a criticism of Socialist party theory; it is equally a criticism of its practice and a partial explanation of its failure to create a lasting working-class feminist organization or even consciousness. Women like Margaret Sanger, who quickly left the socialist community entirely, in focusing on non-wage-labor issues like birth control and in confronting male supremacist attitudes in all classes directly, were more connected to the real needs of working-class women than the Socialist party as a whole. Despite the energy and bravery of women workers as demonstrated in their heroic strikes, radical organizers were not able to transform their orientation into a political one that could have challenged the sex or class power relations of the society and workplace. As Annemarie Troger has pointed out in her recent article on the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the exploitation of women workers today is conducted through a sexual division of labor in the workplace, which is in turn based on that division of labor in the family and working-class men's support for it.3

Still, the Socialist party was at least trying something that no one else had attempted, despite America's rich history of working-women's organization: an attempt to politicize the aspirations of working-class women, to create a socialist-feminist program that could be the basis for a mass movement. The Socialist party, especially between 1908 and 1912, remains the closest Americans have come to a mass movement of working-class and radical women. It produced an advance in the analysis of women's situation that can only come from a mass movement, and its writings deserve careful review today.

* * *

3. Annemarie Tr6ger, "Coalition of Labor Union Women: Strategic Hope, Tactical Despair," Radical America, vol. 9, no. 6 (November-December 1975).

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Woman's Work and Pay4

Women who are housewives do not receive wages directly from a capitalist boss, consequently they do not always see their connection with the economic system. It is a little indirect, but it is a close connection nevertheless.

When the boss buys the labor power of a workingman he also buys the labor power of his wife. The harder the labor which the man is called upon to do the more is required of his wife. A workman who rises in the early hours of the morning to eat his breakfast by lamplight and go off to the mills and mines for the day could not perform the task set for him if it were not for the faithful personal service and care of the woman who keeps his home. She rises in the early hours to prepare his breakfast, pack his dinner pail and set all things ready to his hand. His time must be spared, his energy saved. They belong to the boss. Hers must be spent to save him.

Through all the years this goes on. By degrees the man's vital power is given to create profits, while the woman's life is given to save him for his task. Besides this, she must give birth to the new generations of toilers, care for them, feed them and send them on to the mills to take their father's place.

The workingman's wife is not a wage earner, but nevertheless, the boss commands her labor.

In the family of the average workingman it is the wife who goes to the market. It is she who controls the beggarly income and tries to make it supply the necessities of the family. This gives the boss.another hold upon her. Every time the price of butter raises a cent and flour goes higher, the woman's income is cut lower and lower.

She knows that her children are being sacrificed in the struggle for bread. She feels the bitter disappointment as she makes sacrifice after sacrifice, as she sees them denied opportunities for education and the higher things of life. Little by little the hope is crowded out of the heart of the workingman's wife by a social system that does not even recognize her, nor pay her, nor consider her in any way.

The woman wage earners were the first of the female sex to awaken to a realization of their economic and political necessities because their connection with the capitalist structure of society was direct and obvious.

Housewives are waking more slowly, but they are awakening. They are beginning to see that the' capitalist boss of the mine and mill actually controls the labor power of the woman in the home, taking her vitality day by day, without pay or recognition.

* * *

4. Editorial from the Chicago Evening World, a Socialist newspaper (June 1912).

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Women and the Increased Price of Coal5

As the result of the increase in wages of the anthracite coal miners, who have now resumed work after their strike, the expected has hap- pened. Announcement has been made that coal will increase in price about 25 cents a ton.... Will the present 25-cent increase be followed by another 25-cent increase a little later? If it is not, it will be. ... For the coal owners do not intend that their profits shall be in the least di- minished because they are compelled to pay higher wages. No indeed. If they now find themselves in the position where they must rob their employees a little less, why, naturally, the only thing to do is to turn the other way and proceed to rob the public some more....

Now, who the robbed workers are we all know very well. They are the miners, a well-defined, easily recognizable body. But who are "the public"? .. . Obviously the coal barons are not included in "the public," because they are plundering the public. And we also know that the oil kings and the railroad magnates and the sugar lords and the lumber chiefs and the tobacco "dukes" are all plundering the public. It would seem, therefore, that the public consists of that portion of society that is being plundered. Yet this very obvious fact the public does not see at all, and each individual member of the public looks upon it as a sort of fine abstraction and not in the least as a real aggregation of human beings of which he himself constitutes an organic part.

Naturally is this especially true of the women. They know full well that when meat or milk or coal "goes up" it means that their hard lot is going to become even harder. But ... they would never think of their personal problem of the increasing difficulty of making both ends meet as being a problem of the entire public. If the women were told that the coal barons are going to rob the public of an extra 25 cents per ton to keep their profits up, they would not say: "Why, that means robbing US! ..." Once they realize how intimately their own life as well as the life of their entire class is affected by an event seemingly so remote from their immediate interests as a 25-cent increase in the price of a ton of coal, the causes of and reasons for such events will also become of interest to them. Only through showing women what the concrete events affecting the public mean to them can the deeper significance of these events be brought home....

* * *

Are the Interests of Men and Women Identical?6

It is an oft repeated phrase among Socialist agitators that the interests of men and women of the working class are identical, and there-

5. New York Call (June 2, 1912). 6. The Socialist Woman (May 1908).

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Summer 1976 1017

fore there should be no methods of education and appeal instituted for one sex alone; but that all efforts of this kind should be directed from one point, whether it be newspaper, pamphlet, street corner or plat- form, to all persons regardless of sex, creed, or color.

And on this theory our educational work has proceeded, in this country at least, for the past quarter of a century. That is, we think we have proceeded on this theory. But it does not take very careful thought on the matter to discover that we have not acted in accordance. with our theory at all, but have worked always as a matter of expediency along the line of least resistance with the male portion of humanity. It has never been very likely that we could reach the workingman in his wife's kitchen or nursery, or her little parlor, and as it has seemed more expedient to work with him than with her, we have followed him to his lair-to the street corner, to the trade union hall, to the saloon. We have opened our locals in localities where he could be most easily reached, and have accomodated the environment to his tastes and needs. The little room at the rear of the saloon has not been so comfortable as his wife's parlor or sitting room, and sometimes no larger, but he has felt more at ease in it when congregating with other men, so the locals have in some instances been established in the rear rooms of saloons, and frequently in other dreary, comfortless halls which are always obnoxious to women.

We have said, half-heartedly, that women could come to our locals in these dreary places. But they haven't cared to come to any great extent, any more than the men would have cared to meet in the women's parlors. It has been plainly a discrimination in favor of one sex above another. But it has always seemed a matter of expediency.

As we have chosen our meeting places in the favor of men, we have also directed our speeches and our published matter to mankind. His wrongs and his needs have filled our mouths and our newspaper col- umns with the exceptional moment when we have given publicity to the oppression and needs of women. This, too, has seemed a matter of expediency; we have always had male audiences and male leaders, and naturally have made our principal appeal to them.

But all this belonged to the cruder days of our movement. To a time when we were willing to trim a little in the matter of principle in order to get a foothold, to force an opening wedge. This latter task has been accomplished. Our national vote in 1904 was 403,000. This is something more than an entering wedge. It is a fair foundation upon which to build for the future.

It is time now, that we cease our appeal to men alone, and give some attention to womankind.

Women are tired of being "included," tired of being taken for granted. They demand definite recognition, even as men have it. They know that their interests and men's interests have not been identical since the dawn of human history, and it will take something more than a

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1018 Gordon Interests of Women

mere statement of the fact to make them believe that they can be identical under Socialism. They have got to be told, just as the workingman is told, with infinite patience and pains that his interests and those of his employer are NOT identical under capitalism.

She who was the first slave, the beast of burden, the bought and sold property of another, the forced mate of an unloved and unlovable com- panion, the enforced mother, the social underling, the non-citizen-she who has been exploited from the time that man first began to record his doings will not quickly believe us when we say, without further explanation, that her interests and those of her self-educated superior are identical.

University of Massachusetts, Boston



are the interests of men and women identical?

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