The Liberation of Women

“I am for my spouse, my spouse and I are for our children, our family is for our particular society, our society is for our nation, our nation is for the world, the world is for God, and God … is for me.” - Sun Myung Moon

Women’s liberation has recently become a rallying point for several Marxist-oriented movements within the United States, and the issue of alleged systemic exploitation of women in our society has alienated growing numbers of women and men alike from constructive participation in “The Establishment.”

The problem of women’s rights raises profound questions philosophically, politically, even linguistically. In speaking of “women’s liberation” we assume that women currently exist in a state of some kind of bondage, have no doubt that this is oppression and exploitation of women has been and remains a serious problem in many societies, including our own. But to adequately analyze the problem, we have to start with some basic questions. What is the nature of the oppression from which women must be liberated? Where does it have its origin? Where should we look for its solution?

Nature of the oppression

Through history, women have been oppressed in a variety of ways. Politically, they have been denied voting rights and many other civil liberties. Economically, they have faced discrimination and have found it difficult to venture out of their societally defined roles as wives and mothers.

(In some societies, they have been made literal slaves to their husbands.) Psychologically, they have been maltreated as the “inferior, weaker” sex and abused by a variety of attitudes and institutions created in a society dominated by males. Exploitation of women is nearly universal and very often extreme.

To solve the problem, we must look at its origins. This is where the philosophical question comes in, for the attitude one takes toward the question of women’s liberation will be molded by the assumptions he makes, knowingly or unknowingly, about the nature of humankind and the phenomenal world.

Marxist view of the family

The Marxist-based conception views human beings as highly developed animals — “matter in motion” — whose spiritual functions are created and determined by material interaction alone and whose social being is governed strictly by economic necessity. No God, no eternal existence for men and women, no divine moral order or principles-only cold, hard economic reality.

On the foundation of this philosophical outlook, Engels applied Marx’s theories to the question of the origin of the family unit. In his important work “The Origin of the State, Private Property and the Family,” Engels asserted that the nuclear family unit developed as a result of man’s acquisition of private property. He stated that the first human societies were communal ones in which sex partners were shared and children were viewed with parental concern by the entire community. As private property developed one of the first things which stronger men took for themselves was wives.

Thus Engels viewed marriage (both monogamous and polygamous) as necessarily exploitative, a kind of perversion of the original communal pattern. It was this view that led him and other later Marxists,

including Lenin, to assert that the nuclear family unit would be done away with after the world Communist Revolution had succeeded.

On the surface, Engels’ explanation seems plausible, and millions of Americans of the generation now under 30 years of age either ascribe to his postulation or are deeply influenced by leaders who ascribe to it. Tragically, however, Engels was dead wrong; and his error has been responsible for wasting vast energies of conscientious people seeking a solution to this very important problem.

Engel’s basic error

The nuclear family is the fundamental institution of all advanced societies. Even in Soviet Russia and China the Communist rulers have recognized that without strong nuclear families, “socialist” society cannot survive for long. Lenin’s and Stalin’s attempts to discourage the family and raise children totally communally met with disastrous consequences.

Morality began to break down entirely. One dramatic example: Gangs of parentless youths roved the streets during times of famine-robbing, killing, even eating other citizens of the State which was far too cold and removed to offer any relevant standard of personal morality. Today, divorce laws are stricter; having strong families is actively encouraged; and Engels’, Lenin’s and Stalin’s writings on the family downplayed, ignored or entirely left out of the textbooks.

The official strengthening of the family unit in Communist states, however, does not mean that Communist agents in the U.S. and elsewhere have stopped their attack on the family in societies where the Revolution has not yet come. In capitalist society, it is the aim of Marxist Leninists of every variety to increase contradictions, destroying the society’s moral foundations, its unity, its economic strength, and thus hastening the day of the Revolution. In America today, the corruption of the family unit-though brought about by many other independent factors as well — is a prime focus of Communist forces who wish to weaken this nation and bring it under Communist control.

Subversive forces work to alienate different segments of society from one another until division becomes stronger than solidarity. Thus Marxist movements have worked to heighten the individual identity and consciousness of various groups, and to set this consciousness in opposition to national identity, which is defined as white, male, military, technological or corporation dominated to suit the needs of Marxists working in the minority, women’s, peace, environmentalist or labor movements, respectively.

Tragically, this strategy is working. Many Blacks, for instance now view their Black identity as more basic than their identity as Americans, and contradictions are increasing in most other areas as well. If this trend is expanded and brought down to the level where women put their identity as women above that of their family, or their society, or their nation, then the nation itself is lost.

Need for unity

Our solidarity must become stronger than the forces which divide us if we are to survive. On the family level, this means chat men, women and children should be committed to the family above their individual desires. The family is the natural environment in which human beings grow to fulfillment, learning how to love as children, husband and wife, and finally as parents. Parental love is sacrificial love, and fulfillment of the role of parent requires sacrifice on the part of the mother or father in terms of their identity as individual men or women. In the final analysis, the true identity of a man or woman is realized in his relationship with his children or spouse, and for the religiously oriented with God.

Men and women must work together to build their families in an atmosphere of mutual respect, trust, loyalty, concern and love. This is the way, ultimately, in which the now declining American family unit can be saved and the future of our nation assured. Such a rebirth of family morality will produce a moral revolution which would rejuvenate our country, and ultimately liberate the world.