Philosopher views

Bibliography

Alexandra Kollontai, “Around workers’ Europe.” In ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI: SELECTED WRITINGS. Trans. Alex Holt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977, pp. 88-98.

SELECTED WRITINGS. Trans. Alex Holt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977,

pp. 261-275.
Alexandra Kollontai, “Sexual relations and the class struggle.” In ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI:

SELECTED WRITINGS. Trans. Alex Holt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977,

pp. 237-249.
Alexandra Kollontai, “Sisters.” In ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI: SELECTED WRITINGS. Trans. Alex Holt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977, pp. 216-224.
Alexandra, Kollontai, “Soviet woman: Citizeness with equal rights.” In ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI:

SELECTED WRITINGS. Trans. Alex Holt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977,

pp. 316-317.
Alexandra, Kollontai, “The labour of women in the evolution of the economy.” In ALEXANDRA

KOLLONTAI: SELECTED WRITINGS. Trans. Mix Holt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company,

Inc., 1977, pp. 142-150.
Alexandra Kollontai, “The social basis of the woman question.” In ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI:

SELECTED WRITINGS. Trans. Alex Holt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977,

pp. 58-74.
Alexandra Kollontai, “Theses on communist morality in the sphere of marital relations.” In ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI: SELECTED WRITINGS. Trans. Alex Holt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977, pp. 225-231.
Alexandra Kollontai, “Towards a history of the working women’s movement in Russia.” In ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI: SELECTED WRITINGS. Trans. Mix Holt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977, pp. 39-57.

SOCIALISM IS GOOD FOR WOMEN

1. SOCIALISM LEADS TO EQUALITY FOR WOMEN

Alexandra Kollontai, Russian-socialist feminist author, ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI: SELECTED

WRITINGS, 1977, p. 52.

The more politically conscious of the working women are aware that neither political nor legal equality can finally settle the “woman question”. As long as a women has to sell her labour power and suffer capitalist

slavery, she will not be a free and independent person, she cannot be a wife who chooses her husband only as her heart dictates, a mother who does not need to fear for the future of her children. Women will only

become free and equal in a world where labour has been socialized and where communism has been victorious
2. ONLY SOCIALISM CAN PROVIDE WOMEN WITH ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE

Beatrice Farnsworth, author, ALEKSANDRA KOLLONTAI: SOCIALISM, FEMINISM AND THE

BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION, 1980, p. 36-37.

Society must pride a means of survival and self-expression for women of average abilities with few economic advantages. Kollontai put the issue politically. Did the feminists believe that the contemporary

class state, however democratically structured, could make free love possible? Would it take on itself the obligations relating to maternity and the upbringing of children that were fulfilled now by the individual family? Only socialism could create the conditions that would enable women to be economically independent and that would at the same time protect them from the negative consequences of love free of

economic considerations.

Alexandra Kollontai, Russian-socialist feminist author, ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI: SELECTED WRITINGS, 1977, p. 63.

There is not one party in the world that has taken up the defense of women as social democracy has done. The working woman is first and foremost a member of the working class, and the more satisfactory the position and the general welfare of each member of the proletarian family, the greater the benefit in the long run to the whole of the working class.

THERE IS A LACK OF UNITY WITHIN THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT

1. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN RICH AND POOR WOMEN PREVENT A UNITED MOVEMENT Alexandra Kollontai, Russian-socialist feminist author, ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI: SELECTED WRITINGS, 1977, p. 59.

The women’s world is divided, just as is the world of men, into two camps; the interests and aspirations of one group of women bring it close to the bourgeois class, while the other group has close connections with the proletariat, and its claims for liberation encompass a full solution to the women question. Thus although both camps follow the general Slogan of the “liberation of women”, their aims and interests are different. Each of the groups unconsciously takes its starting point from the interests of its own class, which gives a specific class colouring to the targets and tasks it sets itself.
2. WOMEN OF THE LIBERATION MOVEMENT ARE NOT A HOMOGENEOUS GROUP Beatrice Farnsworth, author, ALEKSANDRA KOLLONTAI: SOCIALISM, FEMINISM AND THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION, 1980, p. 18.

Kollontai could not have been satisfied with Russian feminism as it was defined in the late nineteenth century. As she grew in political awareness, probing political and economic theory, she came to recognize that the bourgeois feminists could do little for women of the working class. They could not affect the lives of the factory women whose children were perishing in the workers’ barracks. Nor -- and more to the point

-- could they really do anything for her.
3. THERE IS NO UNITY AMONG FEMINISTS

Beatrice Farnsworth, author, ALEKSANDRA KOLLONTAI: SOCIALISM, FEMINISM AND THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION, 1980, p. 32.

Kollontai denied that the feminists fought for similar demands, despite their talk about the unity of women’s interests and the necessity for a general women’s movement, she insisted that the world of women, like the world of men, was divided into two camps: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The feminists sought to make life better or women of a particular social category within the exploitative capitalist system.