Sexual politics

This article was published in the theoretical review Fourth International, Volume 12 No. 4, July-August 1951, pp.109-113. This version is republished from the Marxist International Archive Encyclopedia of Trotskyism. Transcription & mark-up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

Nadia De Mond is a feminist writer and militant living in Italy. Nadia was, until its recent dissolution, a member of the radical left party, Sinistra Critica. She remains a militant of the Fourth International (FI) and member of its International Women’s Commission. At the international youth camp organised by the FI in Greece in August 2013, Luke Cooper spoke to her about the role of feminist theory and practice in the renewal of Marxism.

We are publishing here the translation of the preface to the Spanish edition of the book by Cinzia Arruzza Las sin parte : Matrimonios y divorcios entre feminismo y marxismo published in the Critica & Alternativa collection by Izquierda Anticapitalista.

This article was written as the prologue to the English-language edition of Cinzia Arruzza’s book Dangerous Liaisons: The marriages and divorces of Marxism and Feminism published jointly by Merlin Press, Resistance Books and the IIRE in March 2013.

This long article was published in International Marxist Review Vol 2, Number 4 in 1987. It was the background work for the resolution adopted at the 1991 World Congress Dynamics of mass movements and feminist currents-Latin American Women’s Liberation after extensive travel around Latin America by the author.

This article was first published in International Marxist Review Vol 2, No 2 in Spring 1987. It is republished here as part of our effort to build an archive of contributions from within the Fourth International on questions of feminism.

It is usual that for International Women’s Day on March 8, this and other web sites commemorate the role that women played in the Russian revolution — in celebration of which International Women’s Day became a regular event. On other occasions we have looked at the role that women are playing in struggles today abroad as well as at home.
In this article I am doing something a bit different — to start to celebrate the role that socialist feminists played in second wave feminism in Britain.

The following working paper was presented to the Toronto conference of Historical Materialism on May 16, 2010. For Spanish-language translation, see IPS blog de debate. When we celebrate International Women’s Day, we often refer to its origins in U.S. labour struggles early in the last century. Less often mentioned, however, how it was relaunched and popularized in the 1920s by the Communist Women’s Movement. Moreover, this movement itself has been almost forgotten, as have most of its central leaders.

Gerda Lerner has been the single most influential figure in the development of women’s and gender history since the 1960s. Over the course of 50 years, a handful of brave and potentially marginal historians created a field with thousands of PhDs. The field expanded from Lerner’s development of an MA program at Sarah Lawrence College in 1972 to the presence of Women’s History faculty in the great majority of U.S. colleges and universities.

The idea that socialists should be feminists too is uncontroversial to many revolutionary socialists. But why socialism needs feminism is still worth spelling out.