‘Le donne, come gli uomini, sono divise in classi e quindi sotto il capitalismo sono oppresse in modo diverso, a seconda della loro classe’

“According to Vogel, Lenin first examined the nature of women’s subordination in 1894, while defending Marxism against the defamation of Nikolay Mikhailovsky. This critic ridiculed Marx and Engels’ claim that procreation is a major determinant of society’s superstructure, “in addition to the production of material values”. According to Mikhailovsky, this claim contradicted their doctrine of “economic materialism”, which supposedly viewed material production as the sole “determining factor”. Lenin responded by arguing that Marx and Engels never employed the term “economic materialism”. The founders spoke simply of materialism. They divided social relations into material and ideological ones, and procreation relations are material (Vogel, 2013, 122); Lenin, 1894, 148-152). Lenin’s point was that the production of goods and the production of life are part of one integrated process. Economic activity can continue only if the labor force itself is reproduced, so women perform an important function as the child bearers. But different economic systems favor different procreation relations, and these will usually be imposed through struggle. This means that the way women live, the roles they perform, and their relations to men, will differ in accordance with the mode of production. “This perspective … became the foundation of Lenins’s approach to the problem of women’s subordination” (Vogel, 2013, 122). (…) In applying his marxist analysis to European capitalist society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Lenin refused to treat “women” as a homogeneous abstract group. He recognized that women, like men, are divided into classes, and that they are therefore oppressed differently under capitalism, depending upon their class (Vogel, 2013, 139)” (pag 304-305) [Joe Pateman, ‘V.I. Lenin on the “Woman Question”. (Articles)’, Science & Society, N. 3 July 2021] [Lise Vogel, 2013 (1983), ‘Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory’, Revised edition, Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill – Boston, Mass.: Haymarked Books; Lenin, Vladimir, 1894 (1974) “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats’, pp. 129-332 in Vladimir Lenin, ‘Collected Works’, vol. I, Moscow, Progress Publishers] [Lenin-Bibliographical-Materials] [LBM]