Women and Anarchy
They say that at the point they have reached they must examine the principle that has guided them. They say it is not for them to exhaust their strength in symbols. They say henceforward what they are is not subject to compromise. They say they must now stop exalting the vulva. They say they must break the last bond that binds them to a dead culture.—Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères
In the past decade, women have worked together, met together, and talked together in ways that have been considered novel, emerging from and at the same time creating a new attitude about group organization which proposes only egalitarian, non-hierarchical relationships. The methods used in support/collaboration (such as consciousness raising) and the kind of group created have seemed unique. However, this attitude and these methods have been generally restricted to the small group, while the dominant form of mass organization among middle class women has been conventionally reformist, aimed at changing legislation, working for the ERA and so forth. This kind of political work relies on organizing methods historically unrelated to significant social change.
Many women who were in radical politics in the late 1960s have fallen back on working methods that can have immediate, tangible effect. This is a recurrent problem for the left: should it work for immediate reforms, setting the stage for greater ones? Will reform (or opportunism, according to some) eventually produce a consciousness sufficiently advanced to change the social structure? The women's suffrage movements in England and America were also divided on this issue. Some saw the vote as leading to further reforms for women, while others saw it as leading to socialism. Today, reformist politics tactically involved with a more or less accepted social structure are at odds with attempts by radical feminists to rethink society and relationships within society. In the criticism of power, bureaucracy and institutional rigidity, in the emphasis on the personal, on the family (whatever its form), on education, child care and sex —feminists have proved, consciously or not, to be anarchists.
The anarchist premise of radical feminism is that only through collectivity and equality can individuality, autonomy and independence be achieved. Individuality, in this sense, means something like "personal and interpersonal realization." This is "therapeutic" only when the group helps women "survive" within the system, when the group becomes estheticized or escapist and class analysis doesn't provide a basis for further organization. Anarchist egalitarianism in women's groups has been based not only on political, but on ethical or moral grounds which presume that women should behave in a certain way—openly, honestly, with integrity. Women, by requiring this of each other, sometimes create a feeling of moral superiority over men who, by implication, and often in fact, are not honest among themselves, or "in touch with their feelings."
Historically, ethical and egalitarian relationships among women did not result only from choice, as was the case with anarchists, but from material conditions excluding women from full participation in production and power—and thus from the hierarchies of production. Whenever women began to work together, each contributing what she knew, there was relatively the same level of experience and skill—a necessary or "natural" equality, which often made democracy intrinsic to organization. Because woman's domain was traditionally more personal, women's political activities tended to center around personal questions. (Sheila Rowbotham suggests that this focus is a necessary precondition for the mobilization of women en masse.1. Sheila Rowbotham, Women, Resistance and Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), p. 124.) But the moral imperative, when elicited as a response to oppression, often bogs down in the attempt to reconcile morality with revolutionary strategy. The impetus behind a moral position is more often rational than revolutionary; it is a call to reason, to the recognition of how things should be and the decision to make them that way. But the idea that change is effected only by reason and understanding can be utopian and/or reactionary, since recognition of class and economic contradictions alone cannot affect the power relationships behind these conflicts. On the other hand, the alliance of feminism with political ideologies that stress revolution, especially marxism-leninism, has often been destructive to the radical content of feminism. The real question is, then: how can the content of change be maintained within a confusion about form? What organizational form will work without sacrificing feminist content to political ideologies that maintain sexist social institutions?
"The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!" "Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical... There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness."—Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed
Thus, feminism's major problem—how to concretize ideas about personal liberty within a form of organization that is not hierarchical, that does not contradict individual freedom, and that is not utopian—has been anarchism's traditional dilemma as well. Anarchist and often feminist arguments tend to be predicated on a moral-philosophical belief in a "natural" social state without government or male-created institutions—a condition that would be "naturally" reinstated if government or male institutions were abolished; that is, Nature herself, or women, would produce a better social organism.
Some of the most influential anarchists—Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, and later, Emma Goldman and Federica Montseny—provide the historical precedents for many aspects of women's groups. It must be kept in mind, however, that anarchists and feminists have often reached the same conclusions from different directions, which raises the question of intentionality. For example, William Godwin, husband of Mary Wollstonecraft and father of Mary Shelley, imagined the world structured around discussion groups with a purpose similar to consciousness raising. His ideal society, as described in Political Justice (1793) was based on "public inspection," "positive sincerity, and "political simplicity"—the foundation for the first two. This meant reorganization through federalism, nations broken down into small autonomous units. Psychological pressure would replace force, for people would have to be honest and virtuous in face-to-face confrontations. Small discussion groups would encourage the pursuit of knowledge, extending laterally to become a universal movement. Godwin's speculations, however, were based not in practice but in reaction against the retardation of the French Revolution by governmental authority.
The major impetus of consciousness raising has been Godwinian, centering around discussion and inquiry with trust, loyalty and honesty as criteria for respect. According to the Red Stockings, the purpose of consciousness raising was to "develop female class consciousness through sharing experience and publicly exposing the sexist foundations of all our institutions. While the call-to-arms was political, the methods were personal, based on the idea that the subjective experience of objective conditions can lead to objective analysis. "We regard our personal experience, and our feelings about that experience, as the basis for an analysis of our common situation.... The notion of equality, as conceived by feminists, has had a double mean ing: the struggle to be recognized as equal to men (the oppressors) and the struggle to maintain equality among women (so as not to oppress each other). "We are committed to achieving internal democracy. We will do whatever is necessary to ensure that every woman in our movement has an equal chance to participate, assume responsibility, and develop her political potential."2. All quotations in this paragraph are from the Redstockings Manifesto, July, 1969. Methods like "going around the circle" have been used to prevent dominance—and to recognize that personality is an instrument of domination.
However, when consciousness raising fails to distinguish between sex and class consciousness and does not acknowledge middle- and working-class contradictions, it falls into liberalism —"a moralistically humanitarian and egalitarian philosophy of social improvement through the re-education of psychological attitudes."3. Charnie Guettel, Marxism & Feminism (Ontario, Canada: Women's Educational Press, 1974), p. 3 From a marxist point of view, there can be no radical analysis if the critique of society rests upon change within the individual (or in self-help and education) rather than relations of production. While small-group interaction can extend laterally to become a mass movement, consciousness raising includes no strategy for mass organization. Consequently, while personal interaction can be helpful as a beginning—generating support building up individuals' confidence—it remains idealistic if every thing stops there.
"...wasn't it Odo who said that where there's property there's theft?" "[She said] To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.' The Social Organism. —Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed
Another strain of feminism is related to the theories of Pierre Joseph Proudhon, who carried anarchism into more concrete forms of organization. He wanted to rebuild society by creating a federation of communes and cooperatives based on "Mutual Aid," through contract and mutual credit, replacing "economic powers" with "economic forces. In his statement, "property is theft," Proudhon opposed the exploitative accumulation of capital but not property for use.
Some feminist organizations, such as health centers, credit unions and food co-ops, are Proudhonian in their reliance on mutual aid, on exchange of skills and services. While such groups can often radicalize a particular community, they restrict them selves to immediate need, affecting consumption rather than production, and they do not in themselves deal with the sources of production or help analyze the power of women in the labor force. This kind of cooperative activity is still linked to household activity, which is also about consumption, contrary to what the Wages for Housework women argue.
Cooperative organizations are Proudhonian in their hope that cooperation can extend laterally to change the economic and psychological bases of society. If the cooperative form is that of the extended family, if it is apolitical, and isolationist, like most communes, it simply avoids the realities of production. A commune is similar to a consciousness-raising group, it can radically change the individuals within it but it is imperialized, economically and socially, by external institutions, and can serve only as an example rather than as a political force.
The women say they have learned to rely on their own strength. They say they are aware of the force of their unity. They say, let those who call for a new language first learn violence. They say, let those who want to change the world first seize all the rifles. They say that they are starting from zero. They say that a new world is beginning.—Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères
Mikhail Bakunin's influence—on both anarchists and women—seems to be emotional; his ideas are based in conventionally "female" modes: "revolution is instinct rather than thought, it operates as an instinct, and as an instinct gives first battle."4. Mikhail Bakunin, quoted in Eugene Pyziur, The Doctrine of Anar chism of Michael A. Bakunin (Baltimore: Gateway Editions, 1955), p. 17 Unlike Proudhon, he did not think institutions could be rebuilt; they were to be demolished in a revolution that would culminate in the construction of a world where everyone would be free and equal. Bakunin was the only influential anarchist to make a constant litany of violence, and his statement, "the passion for destruction is a creative passion," became a romantic battle cry.
American middle-class feminist activism has usually not included physical violence, although from the time of the temperance societies and the suffragettes there have been bloodless demonstrations and guerrilla actions—women chaining them selves to benches and fences, hunger strikes, bar smashing, window breaking. In England, upper- and middle-class guerrilla actions were more violent than those of working-class women because poor wage-earners could not risk jail. For middle-class feminists, prison brought class conflict into the public eye; upper-class women were given privileges, while bourgeois women were treated miserably. They often left jail determined to work for prison reform.5. Sheila Rowbotham, "The Vote," Hidden from History (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), pp. 77-89. Contemporary feminists who have advocated violence and terrorism (such as the Weatherwomen and Susan Saxe) often operate in the Bakuninist spirit of acts that seem to be political theater rather than effective strategies, ever though these women are not professed anarchists. Being forced underground, however, away from usefulness in organization, has fostered greater impotence. It is ironic that the legal defense of some of these fugitives, once they have been caught, has become an organizational focus. Jane Alpert's surrender was an exception, because it appeared that she collaborated with the government in locating and arresting her friend Pat Swinton. To be jailed for being in contempt of grand juries, for refusing to turn state's evidence, has at times been seen as a high honor, serving to focus class and sex contradictions better than the original bank robberies or bombings.
Decentralization had been an essential element in Odo's plans for the society she did not live to see founded. She had no intention of trying to de-urbanize civilization. Though she suggested that the natural limit to the size of a community lay in its dependence on its own immedi- ate region for essential food and power, she intended that all communities be connected by communication and transportation networks, so that goods and ideas could get where they were wanted, and the administration of things might work with speed and ease, and no community be cut off from change and interchange. Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed
Pêtr Kropotkin may have set the most useful anarchist precedent. Many strands of feminism stem from his thought—from anthropologists and historians attempting to rewrite the history of women by material analysis of sexism in production in early societies, to socialists who have practically rejected marxist-leninist authoritarianism but still base their economic analyses on those theories. Both Emma Goldman and Federica Montseny were strongly influenced by Kropotkin's ideas, especially by his attempt to place anarchism on a scientific and evolutionary rather than moral ground. All three advocated a communism that went beyond collectives and mutualism, which Kropotkin saw as reflections of "mitigated individualism." He argued that communist possession of land and individualist production were too contradictory to survive, that the wage system should be abolished, that common possession of the means of production implied equal consumption, that people should be provided for according to their needs rather than the amount of labor they performed. Dismissing any technical necessity for large-scale industrialization, Kropotkin argued that the tendency of industry was toward decentralization. But small scale was also important for the same reason it was for Godwin and for today's feminists —for its reliance on trust and honesty in making and keeping agreements. However, Kropotkin's belief that change would come through evolution, shared by some feminists, is optimistic but utopian. Past glory is as problematic as future glory, and as useless to speculate about.
We have nothing but our freedom. We have nothing to give you but your own freedom. We have no law but the single principle of mutual aid between individuals We have no government but the single principle of free association. You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.—Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed
During and after the Russian Revolution, anarchists in Russia and elsewhere, hoping to create a political science by basing their analyses more concretely on economics, rejected the romantic utopianism of their nineteenth-century predecessors. There were two major lines of social-anarchist thought—that of the anarcho-communists, who were opposed to large-scale industry, and that of the anarcho-syndicalists, such as Emma Goldman, who supported trade unionism and thought that anarchists should use the capitalist system of production progressively to liberate rather than to alienate people. Both groups agreed in their opposition to the Bolsheviks when they saw that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" really meant the "dictatorship of the Social Democratic Party."
Emma Goldman, the most famous female anarchist, was one of the harshest critics of the Bolshevik government. She came to America as a young Russian immigrant and was radicalized by the condition of the working class—long hours in sweatshops, unsafe conditions, the sexual exploitation of women workers, the prejudice against Jews. Objecting to communist authoritarian ism, she was drawn to anarchism. Goldman was influenced by Bakunin's passion for revolt—("As to methods. Anarchism is not, as some may suppose, a theory of the future to be realized through divine inspiration. It is a living force in the affairs of our life, constantly creating new conditions"6. Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays (New York: Dover, 1969), p. 63.)—and by Kropotkin's economic analyses of decentralization, his attempt to make anarchism scientific—("Just as the animal cells, by mutual cooperation, express their latent powers in formation of the com plete organism, so does the individual, by cooperative effort with other individuals, attain Ithe) highest form of development ..."7. Ibid., p. 36.). Goldman became an anarcho-syndicalist, agitating for women's rights, birth control, and labor reforms. She was not primarily a feminist, although feminism was part of her anarchism, and she criticized women who were committed only to women's suffrage, asking why they would want the same right to be oppressed as men. She also lambasted middle-class suffragettes for failing to understand the problems of working-class women.
When Goldman was deported during the Red Scare after World War I, she went to Russia, but was bitterly disappointed by what she saw as the betrayal of the revolution.8. See "The Revolution Betrayed," Patterns of Anarchy (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1966), pp. 98-115. She argued that the people's passionate yearning for liberty had made the revolution possible, in spite of industrial backwardness. The "spirit of mutual purpose" in the labor organizations and cooperatives emerged in response to the need for them. However, the Bolsheviks limited the scope of popular power. Seeing that the Soviets threatened the supremacy of the state, Lenin put a "new economic policy" into effect, destroying the Soviets, the trade unions and the cooperatives in order to further centralize the political state. The revolution, though, had been fought with a different objective—the negation of authority and centralism. Goldman blamed not only the Bolsheviks, but the "fanatical governmentalism" of marxism—and felt that only anarcho-syndicalism—"the industrial power of the masses expressed through their libertarian associations"—could organize economic life. The power of the masses represented revolution to her: "The inherent tendency of the state is to concentrate, to narrow, and to monopolize all social activities; the nature of Revolution is, on the contrary, to grow, to broaden, and disseminate itself in even wider circles. In other words, the State is institutional and static, Revolution is fluent, dynamic.."9. Ibid., p. 110. Goldman also criticized the Russian Revolution for propagating anti-humanitarian feelings in its criticism of all ethics. The Bolsheviks saw the desire for justice, equality, and liberty as sentimental, bourgeois, superstitious and counter-revolutionary, this last a criticism especially leveled against outspoken women. All of history, she wrote, "is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization."10. Ibid., p. 113.
For Goldman, the primary ethical precept was the identity of means and ends. Like Kropotkin, she found ethics involved more than morals. How, in practice, could the dictatorship of the intelligentsia transform itself into the dictatorship of the proletariat? Wouldn't any class dictatorship be the same as any other? How could a revolution attempting to free the masses do away with all ethical concepts about why they should be free? This means-ends contradiction is important for feminists, preventing the advocation of revolutionary action where revolutionary method and end are not compatible.
They say that they foster disorder in all its forms. confusion troubles violent debates disarray upsets disturbances incoherences irregularities divergences complications disagreements discords clashes polemics discus sions contentions brawls disputes conflicts routs débâcles cataclysms disturbances quarrels agitation turbulence conflagrations chaos anarchy—Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères
It is interesting to compare Goldman's ideas with those of some of the leading female communists, for many of these women, no matter how allied their ideas were to an orthodox marxist line, tended to separate from their male compatriots and come closer to anarchism in their opposition to bureaucracy, to the subversion of revolution by the Bolsheviks, and to the use of purely efficacious means. Some of them resisted official policy so strongly that they were silenced by not receiving appointments, dismissals from posts or absurd "propaganda" missions to the hinterlands.
It has often been pointed out both in criticism and support that Rosa Luxemburg's treatment of the nature of organization, her belief in the creative power and spontaneity of mass action and her advocation of the mass strike were replete with anarchist assumptions. Though she was, in fact, strongly opposed to anarchism in any form, in relation to Lenin's authoritarian political analysis, Luxemburg's refusal to support any rigid relationship of leadership to masses seems more sensitive to the complexities of struggle. While her goal was the same as Lenin's the destruction of capitalism by the working class—she believed in creative improvisation of leadership rather than in precisely planned strategies. She did, of course, believe in leadership, but considered good organization the product of action rather than its precedent and saw organization as growing out of struggle.
While Luxemburg understood the necessity of centralism as a reaction against the "autonomy and isolation of the old organizational type, against localism and federalism,"11. The quotations in this and the following paragraph are from Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Political Writings, ed. Robert Looker (New York: Grove Press, 1974), pp. 96, 99, 101, 102, 104. the task was "to unite all workers and all worker organizations in a single party" despite national and religious differences. In the German Social Democratic Party, this was predicated upon the "direct, independent action of the masses," where the workers would "develop their own political activity through direct influence in public life." However, Luxemburg objected to Lenin's principles of centralism: "1. The blind subordination, in the smallest detail, of all party organs, to the party which alone thinks, guides, and decides for all. 2. The rigorous separation of the organized nucleus from its social-revolutionary surroundings. . . ." The German Social Democracy, she insisted, was not joined to the proletariat, it was the proletariat. The party was synonymous with the masses; it was to provide the "spirit of movement" to the masses. Luxemburg objected that the power of the Central Committee would be comprehensible only if it took the initiative of a "vast revolutionary act," paralleling Goldman's means-ends argument.
Luxemburg saw the development of class consciousness as a product of the frictions between the party and trade union activity. Lenin, denying this dialectical function, saw trade union activity as a mere reflection of bourgeois consciousness in the working class. Through her belief that continued agitation was the only way to prevent the retardation of the struggle, Luxemburg supported the traditionally anarchist idea of the mass strike. "Spontaneity, as she used the term, meant action as opposed to static or reformist attitudes; it was misinterpreted by the Bolsheviks to mean confusion or to suggest that the party's rational policies should be determined by the "spontaneous" desires of the masses. "But what has been the experience of the Russian socialist movement up to now? The most important and most fruitful changes have not been the inventions of several leaders and even less so of any central organizational organs. They have always been the spontaneous product of the movement in ferment." The tactical policy of social democracy was not "invented" but was the "product of a series of great creative acts." Luxemburg argued that Lenin's was not a "positive and creative spirit," that he tried to "narrow the movement rather than to develop it, to bind it rather than to unify it....For us it is not the letter but the living spirit carried into the organization by the membership that decides the value of this or that organizational form." It is here that she seems closest to anarchism. She wanted to replace system not with another system, but with the opposite — movement and dynamism.
Clara Zetkin, a close friend of Luxemburg, agreed with most of her ideas. However, Zetkin was a feminist, working for women's rights, editing a socialist women's paper, organizing biannual women's conferences in the German Social Democratic Party, the International Socialist Women's Conference, and International Women's Day. She felt that as long as there were sexist attitudes in the party, there was a need for separate women's organizations, meetings and groups for self-education and political agitation. She compared woman's relation to man to that of the worker to the capitalist (a favorite quotation was from Engels: "He is the bourgeois in the family, the woman represents the proletariat"12. Peter Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 415n.), and she believed that economic independence through socially productive labor was the key to women's freedom. Because of this, she thought at first that the destruction of private property would free women by transforming the family from an entity bound by economic ties to a "moral entity" united by love, understanding, and respect."13. There is very little available in English on Zetkin. Thus, a valuable essay is "Clara Zetkin: A Socialist Approach to the Problem of Women's Oppression" by Karen Honeycutt, Feminist Studies (Spring Summer, 1976), pp. 131-144 But like Goldman, Zetkin later recognized the difference between the role of women's rights for bourgeois women and for working-class women. Middle-class women could focus on issues of personal liberation and more individual concerns, while working-class women, exploited as women and as workers, did not have that kind of leisure. Because she believed that biological as well as social factors created oppression, she concentrated, perhaps too heavily in later life, on motherhood as the primary defining characteristic and fulfillment of women. Because of her feminism, Zetkin was victimized by the party and excluded from important positions.
Angelica Balabanoff, active primarily in Italy, was like Kropotkin a Russian aristocrat who rejected family and back ground for communism. Compared with Luxemburg and Zetkin, she seems a bit simplistic, naive about the political machinations going on around her, but she was broad-minded and loyal to her sense of what was right. She too initially criticized anarchy because it lacked a basis in objective conditions, but she changed her mind upon meeting Emma Goldman, realizing that she had accepted without question the official charges against anarchist dissenters. Balabanoff's objections to the Bolsheviks were similar to Goldman's and Luxemburg's. In her autobiography, My Life as a Rebel, she wrote: "I have always believed that the emancipation of labor must be achieved primarily by awakening and educating the masses to a consciousness of their human and social rights, whereas the Bolsheviks have maintained that the transformation of the social system must be accomplished by a rela tively small minority."14. The quotations of Balabanoff are from My Life as a Rebel (Blooming ton, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1973).
Balabanoff not only opposed minority rule, but the cult of leadership, convinced that revolutionary work should be anonymous "in order to prevent the development of hero-worship and the undue influence of the individual upon the movement. Objecting to the idea of revolution imposed from above, she argued that method must come from the experience of the workers themselves, as an exploited class, if the revolution were to maintain itself against reaction. She despised the Bolshevik practice of exterminating the opposition —the "path of least resistance, advocating instead the discussion of conflicting methods and the confrontation of honest differences of opinion rather than discrediting or buying off opponents. When she made these objections, she was accused of being too "soft-hearted" to understand the necessities of the revolution — that is, too female and sensitive, which amounted to being "counter-revolutionary" and "bourgeois."
Balabanoff's autobiography is informative on the subject of her comrade, Alexandra Kollantai, who led the first organized opposition to the policies of Lenin and Trotsky.
Alexandra was not an Old Bolshevik, but she had joined the Bolshevik Party even before Trotsky had done so and much earlier than I. During these first few years of the Revolution she was a frequent source of both per sonal and political annoyance to the Party leaders. On more than one occasion, the Central Committee had wanted me to substitute for her in the leadership of the women's movement, thus facilitating the campaign against her and isolating her from the women of the movement. Fortunately I understood this intrigue and refused these offers...By the Ninth Congress of the Russian Party, the last vestige of trade-union autonomy and workers' control in industry was swept away to be replaced by the control of the political commissars over the trade unions and the workers' soviets. Kollantai had become the leader of the "Workers' Opposition, a protest movement against the bureaucratic suffocation of the labor unions and the democratic rights of the workers. As there was no possibility, even at that time, of publicly criticizing the Central Committee or of placing an unofficial opinion before the Party rank and file, she was courageous enough to have a pamphlet secretly printed for distribution to the delegates of the Party I have never seen Lenin so angry, as when one of these pamphlets was handed to him at the Convention... Taking the platform, he denounced Kollantai as the Party's worst enemy, a menace to its unity...
Kollantai was accused of being an anarchist (a "syndicalist") because of her criticisms of the party for the absence of worker participation, its substitution of "specialists" for the working masses in decisions, its fear of criticism and freedom of thought. The Workers' Opposition, which demanded real participation of the workers in economic self-administration and the organization of production, was condemned by Lenin as "a petty bourgeois anarchist element hiding behind the back of the proletariat. Kollantai's view of revolution parallels that of Luxemburg and Goldman in its emphasis on spontaneity and creativity: "We can not decree Communism. It can be created only through active searching, through temporary setbacks but, at all events, through the creative force of the working class itself." 15. The quotations of Kollantai are from Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (New York: Schocken Books, 1971).
Kollantai also extended her criticisms to the absence of equality for women, arguing that the party was not genuinely concerned with women's liberation in practice. Women "still lived under the same yoke: without authority in family life, enslaved by a thousand menial household tasks, bearing the whole burden of maternity...." When she went to Germany and joined the Social Democratic Party, she was influenced by Zetkin and took part in the International Conference of Socialist Women. In Russia, as Minister of Social Welfare after the revolution, she was interested in redefining not only political conditions but social and psychological attitudes concerning women; she worked for maternity welfare, prenatal care and day nurseries, as well as birth control, and strove to change ideas about sexuality and the structure of the family. Like Goldman, Kollantai distinguished the existing bourgeois women's liberation movement (which was not primarily concerned with creating a new social order) from the need for a working-class movement based on the recognition of class contradiction. She was "accused" by the party of being a "feminist" for putting too much emphasis on matters concerning women. But even though she believed that women have special needs arising from their biology (a materialist argument), she criticized feminism for making only abstract demands for equal rights without any concrete material analysis of the situation for women at the time. This was her distinction between feminism and socialism, between the bourgeois and the working-class women's movements, which amounted to a distinction between liberalism and radicalism.
Tension between Kollantai and the party became more and more severe. "Now began a (dark time) of my life which I cannot treat of here since the events are still too fresh in my mind ... (There were differences of opinion in the Party.) I resigned from my post as People's Commissar (on the ground of total disagreement with current policy)."16. Ibid., p. 40. Parentheses indicate the passages Kollantai deleted from the published book, demonstrating her reluctance to reveal the con flicts between herself and the Party. She was sent on a "diplomatic mission" to Oslo as ambassador—supposedly a prestigious assignment but intended to get her out of the way. After years of being suppressed, her spirit of resistance was broken and she stopped publicly criticizing the party and adopted the official line.
With the myth of the State out of the way, the real mutuality and reciprocity of society and individual became clear. Sacrifice might be demanded of the individual, but never compromise: for though only the society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice—the power of change, the essential function of life.—Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed
The most extensive example of anarchism in practice occurred during the Spanish Civil War—a revolution that came closer to creating a stateless society on a large scale than any other. Aside from being a resistance to the fascist military take over, it was a social revolution by millions of workers and peasants trying to rebuild society in a libertarian way through collectives, self-management and changes in personal and social relationships, particularly in the status of women.
Before the war, in the first years of the Second Republic (a coalition of bourgeois republicans and socialists formed after the collapse of the monarchy), some legislation had been passed to improve conditions for women: paid maternity leaves, time to nurse children during the work day, suffrage and the legalization of civil marriage and divorce. Anarchist women, however, did not organize to implement these legal changes or form separate women's organizations because they, like the men, wanted total social revolution rather than reform. Yet even with more liberal attitudes, sexism and patriarchy were not abolished. Women with jobs were still resented and received lower wages. Because a token number of well-educated women achieved good government positions, middle-class feminism subsided. The greatest militancy was among working-class women, who had the worst, lowest-paying jobs. 17. Little material on this period is translated into English. An important article, then, is by Lourdes Beneria: "Women's Participation in Paid Production under Capitalism: The Spanish Experience, Women and the Economy (Spring, 1976), pp. 18-33.
The outbreak of the Civil War in 1936 brought vast changes, as a wartime economy inevitably does, because with the labor shortage, the need for women in factories and collectives increased, and because anarchist men and women agreed to fight for total social revolution. Feminism became an active political issue, and women felt the need to form separate organizations to work for their liberation. This was implemented by two major factors: formation of the women's group, Mujeres Libres (Free Women), and the activities of Federica Montseny, the only woman in Spain to hold a ministerial post.
Mujeres Libres, formed in Madrid, published a journal by the same name; it consisted primarily of anarchist working- and middle-class women, both illiterate and well educated. They were joined by Barcelona's Centro de Cultura Feminina (Feminine Culture Group), also predominantly anarcho-syndicalist working and middle-class women."18. An important source on Mujeres Libres is Temma Kaplan, "Spanish Anarchism and Women's Liberation," Journal of Contemporary His tory (Vol. VI, No. 2, 1971), pp. 100-110. By 1938, Mujeres Libres and its affiliates had become a mass organization centered around demands for freedom from oppression by capitalism and sexism; for developing skills for meaningful rather than menial work; for equal wages; for access to social services. Many of these demands — for birth control, abortion, changes in the attitude toward prostitution —were influenced by Emma Goldman's essays, which appeared in Mujeres Libres. The organization developed into a decentralized federation of local, regional and national committees allied with various anarchist groups. While there were also rightist, leftist, and Catholic women's groups, they mostly concentrated on wartime services. Mujeres Libres also set up units for transport, sanitation, manufacturing, public services, communal kitchens and the organized collection of food, but mainly they strove for the feminist-anarchist transformation of economic, social and personal institutions. They set up day-care centers in factories and collectives and special technical schools so that new skills would give women the power and means for their own social liberation.
Federica Montseny, under whose influence many of these aims became legal, was born in 1905 to anarchist parents, the publishers of the journal La Revista Blanca.19. I have drawn a lot from the only source on Montseny I was able to find: an unpublished dissertation by Shirley F. Fredricks, "Social and Politi cal Thought of Federica Montseny, Spanish Anarchist 1923-1937' (University of New Mexico, March 1972). I am thankful to Lawrence Pitkethly for lending me the microfilm. While close to the socialist tradition of Goldman, Kropotkin, Bakunin, and Proudhon, she was also influenced by the individualist anarchism of Stirner, Neitzsche and Ibsen, which stressed personal autonomy. While she approved the "egoism" of this position, Montseny rejected its often aristocratic tendency, arguing that the dialectical relationship between individual uniqueness and the anarchist's social commitment and responsibility prevented solipsism. Perhaps for a woman in patriarchal Spain, a more individualistic stance was necessary. In any case, it was the female anarchists Montseny and Goldman, who stressed the importance of the individualization of the masses and saw the prevailing concept of the masses as the annihilation of individuality and originality. Montseny's idea of revolution was that it had to be social, not political, internalized in each person and transforming all institutions; this would not be utopian because people have an unlimited potential for creating alternative social organizations.
During the Second Republic, Montseny wrote essays criticizing the government and propagandizing for anarchism; she organized anarchist labor groups and helped Mujeres Libres set up day-care centers and technical schools for women. By 1936, when the anarchists joined the Popular Front government, she had become a popular leader, as well as the leading anarchist theoretician, and was appointed Minister of Health and Social Services. Although she was criticized for accepting the "reformist" position, and betraying anarchist principles, her decision was affected by her sense of responsibility to society, and especially to women. While she worked for change in many areas — education, prison reform, abolishing the death penalty —she was primarily committed to changing the status of women. Within the deeply embedded Spanish patriarchal tradition, she realized that anarchist revolution alone could help women only economically; social attitudes would have to change if women were to be secure and independent. While in office, she drafted a law legalizing abortion and argued for birth control and the legal reform of prostitution, which she considered a result of rigid sexual relations and women's lack of significant work. Yet, like Goldman and Kollantai, Montseny was not a "feminist," and criticized the aims of feminism as narrow and reformist: "To propagate feminism is to foment masculinism; is to create an immoral and absurd struggle between the two sexes which no Natural law would tolerate ... Feminism? Neverl Humanism? Always!"20. Fredricks, p. 131, from Montseny, "Feminismo y Humaniso, p. 14.
Because political upheavals forced the anarchists out of government, Montseny held her ministerial post for only a year. After the Civil War, the strong anti-feminism that emerged in the right wing government wiped out most of the women's gains.
I think men mostly have to learn to be anarchists. Women don't have to learn.—Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed
Why are women attracted to the most basic anarchist premises? Why do women tend to believe that the highest development of the individual, that which leads to the least oppression, takes place within collective forms; that change has to come from below; that any "human" society must be based on direct contact, the destruction of hierarchy and ethical behavior? Women have always distrusted leadership and, in fact, there have been no powerful and charismatic female leaders who influenced anarchism or feminism in the way that, say, Marx and Lenin influenced communism. Anarchist and feminist emphasis is on the quality of life, on the basic structures of community, family and education. Many anarchist attitudes are seen as culturally female — the emphasis on intuition, instinct, feeling and spontaneity, the distrust of logic as authoritarian and dominating. While anarchism has directed its argument against government, women have fought against patriarchy as such, private as well as public. It may be that this rebellion against all patriarchal institutions is what has led women into anarchist positions. Paralleling a retrograde anarchism that sees freedom only in liberation from industry (non-syndicalist anarchism) is that retrograde feminism that sees freedom only in liberation from men (separatism). As the Spanish experience of feminism shows, permanent liberation depends upon a total social structure. Sexism must be fought as an integral part of the class contradiction, for it cannot be explained without it, but it must always be recalled that feminism is only part of the primary focus on class contradiction. The history of the socialist struggle in Russia and China, of feminist anarchism, and even of the Weather Underground, shows how easily feminist demands, expectations and rights get lost in or exaggerated by male habits of dominance.
Anarchist tendencies in feminism could come from two sources. The first is the concept that women are "naturally" more anarchistic because woman's "nature" is closer to the earth, to the anarchist idea of the "natural state." The second possibility is historical and cultural. Women have been excluded from full participation in government and industry, and have been confined to the smaller, more immediate contexts of family and community where harmony and cooperation are desirable and important. Because talk, gossip and expressing emotion were for so long the only expressions permitted women, direct contact in small groups seemed appropriate and necessary for the beginning of social transformation. But there have always been at least two women's movements. The middle-class movement, historically originating from the free time and the good education that permit women to rebel against the emptiness of their leisure and the absurdity of female roles, has been able to concentrate on issues of personality, personal freedom, structures of language and art, social interaction and individual response to conditions of oppression. More recently, middle-class women have been able to work in small groups in an attempt to build up mutual confidence. The work ing-class women's movement, on the other hand, has sometimes been invisible because it has been aligned with socialist struggles and unionism. For these women, oppressed by class as well as by sexism, feminism is not usually the primary strategy; they seek more immediate changes, tied to conditions in the working place, and often ignore their extension in the home. While their demands are often feminist —for equal pay, pay during maternity leave, day-care centers —these are sought within sexually integrated contexts. The task now seems to bring these two feminist movements together.
Anarchism presents an unresolvable contradiction. How can it be achieved in a world where everything is leading toward greater centralization? As soon as anarchists begin to build practical systems, they are forced to approach a more centralized communism through the necessity for concentration of capital. But in spite of this contradiction, anarchism is important, particularly to women. Perhaps it can't be put into effect unless allied with another system (socialism, communism); perhaps it has to serve as a constant criticism of authoritarianism, bureaucracy, paternalism, protesting the erosion or obfuscation of liberty. Its role may be to serve as a moral reminder that social change is, and always should be, for people.
There is a lesson in all of this: if in the entire history of women's struggles, we have been opposed to authoritarianism and hierarchy, it is masochistic and self-destructive to align feminism with party lines advocating what Goldman called "fanatical governmentalism." Marxism, for example, can also provide an economic analysis of the contradictions of capitalism, but there has to be, in addition, a movement toward direct democracy, self-management and freely associated workers —a feminist anarchist-socialism?
Extracts are from: Monique Wittig, Les Guërillères, trans. Peter Owen (New York: Viking Press, 1971); Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).
Lizzie Borden, a filmmaker and writer, lives in New York.