Lenin communism and the emancipation of women

Marxist Theory · 2025-03-07

Core Argument¶

The article argues that genuine women's liberation is impossible under capitalism and that the Russian Revolution under Lenin's leadership remains the most advanced historical attempt to achieve it. The central thesis is that the struggle against women's oppression cannot be separated from the struggle against class society, and that liberal feminism's focus on formal equality within capitalism is not merely inadequate but actively serves ruling-class interests by obscuring the material roots of oppression. The author claims that the Bolsheviks' measures — legal equality, socialisation of housework, mass involvement of women in political life — were not simply progressive reforms but flowed logically from the Marxist understanding that oppression is rooted in class division and private ownership of the means of production.

Theoretical Grounding¶

The analysis is grounded in historical materialism, specifically the Marxist proposition that consciousness and culture are determined by material conditions. The article draws on Lenin's own writings — particularly his 1921 International Working Women's Day address, his Letters from Afar, and his conversations with Clara Zetkin — to argue that women's domestic labour under capitalism constitutes a form of "household bondage" that cannot be abolished by legal reform alone. The theoretical framework is explicitly anti-reformist: democracy does not abolish class oppression, Lenin is quoted as saying, but makes the class struggle "clearer, broader, more open and sharper." This positions the article within the classical Marxist tradition that treats the "woman question" not as a separate or secondary issue but as integral to the revolutionary project. The article also engages with the materialist distinction between formal equality (equality before the law) and actual emancipation (transformation of social and economic relations), a distinction central to Engels' Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

Conjunctural Relevance¶

The article is published on 7 March 2025, timed for International Working Women's Day, and explicitly addresses the current conjuncture of capitalist crisis. The author points to the deterioration of culture, the mental health crisis among young people, and the proliferation of wars and climate disasters as evidence that capitalism offers only "abysmal pessimism and individual solutions." The article situates itself against the rise of "girl boss" ideology — the individualistic, corporate-friendly feminism that tells women they can overcome systemic oppression through personal advancement within capitalism. The reference to Scandinavian social democracy is particularly pointed: Denmark, where the author is based, has long achieved formal legal equality, yet women still perform an average of one hour more housework per day than men, suffer salary and pension penalties after childbirth, and face persistent sexism. This serves as concrete evidence that liberal feminism's programme is exhausted. The article also notes the resurgence of sexism, racism and transphobia as symptoms of capitalism's historical crisis, and argues that this crisis is producing a "qualitative shift in consciousness" among young people seeking collective rather than individual solutions.

Where the Argument Continues¶

The article is a relatively self-contained popular exposition, but it opens several lines of argument that are developed elsewhere in the IDOM corpus and the broader Marxist tradition. The relationship between democratic demands and revolutionary strategy — the question of how to fight for reforms without becoming reformist — is a recurring theme in IDOM's theoretical work and is treated at greater length in articles on the transitional programme and the united front. The degeneration of the Soviet Union under Stalin, mentioned briefly here, is the subject of extensive analysis in IDOM's historical material on the Soviet Union and the theory of bureaucratic degeneration. The question of how to organise women within the revolutionary party — Lenin's insistence that this is the responsibility of all comrades, not just women — connects to broader debates about the relationship between class and other forms of oppression, which IDOM has addressed in articles on intersectionality and identity politics. Clara Zetkin's conversations with Lenin, quoted at length, are themselves a key text in the Marxist tradition on the woman question and deserve to be read in full alongside this article.

Connections¶

Clara Zetkin, Lenin on the Women's Question — the primary source for Lenin's views on organising women and combating male chauvinism within the party
Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State — the classical Marxist text on the historical origins of women's oppression
Alexandra Kollontai's writings and decrees on maternity and women's liberation in the early Soviet period
IDOM articles on the transitional programme and the united front, which develop the strategy of fighting for reforms within a revolutionary perspective
IDOM historical analyses of the Stalinist degeneration and its rollback of women's rights
The broader Marxist literature on the "woman question," including works by Eleanor Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, and contemporary Marxist-feminist theorists

Key Quotes¶

"The Russian Revolution went further than any other event in human history in freeing women from the slavery of class society. The Bolsheviks took giant steps towards real women's emancipation, sending shockwaves through the world, shaking those in power to their core, and inspiring working women (and men) globally."
"The second and most important step is the abolition of the private ownership of the land and the factories. This and this alone opens up the way towards a complete and actual emancipation of woman, her liberation from 'household bondage' through transition from petty individual housekeeping to large-scale socialised domestic services." (Lenin, quoted in the article)
"Marxists know that democracy does not abolish class oppression, but only makes the class struggle clearer, broader, more open and sharper; and this is what we want. The more complete freedom of divorce is, the clearer will it be to the woman that the source of her 'domestic slavery' is not the lack of rights, but capitalism." (Lenin, quoted in the article)
"We cannot exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat without having millions of women on our side. Nor can we engage in communist construction without them. We must find a way to reach them. We must study and search in order to find this way." (Lenin, quoted from Clara Zetkin's account)
"Our communist work among the masses of women, and our political work in general, involves considerable educational work among the men. We must root out the old slave-owner's point of view, both in the Party and among the masses." (Lenin, quoted from Clara Zetkin's account)
"The alternative to pessimism and individual solutions is to be found in Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Their response was a collective fight against the entire system. They did not stop within the framework of capitalism. They uprooted the very cause of oppression and inequality."