Women and Communism: Selections from the Writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin

by Various, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels

English (translation)

104 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1973

About the author

Various is the correct author for any book with multiple unknown authors, and is acceptable for books with multiple known authors, especially if not all are known or the list is very long (over 50).

If an editor is known, however, Various is not necessary. List the name of the editor as the primary author (with role "editor"). Contributing authors' names follow it.

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Reviews

[Voyager · Rating 5 out of 5]

With a foreword and introduction to each section of this short book by the remarkable British communist Harry Pollitt, this book offers an excellent outline of the communist position on the family and the liberation of women.

In the foreword, Pollitt offers the advice that this book "...is not to be taken up and read at one sitting, but one to be studied from time to time, beginning with whatever section appeals to the reader at a given moment." Admittedly, I did not exactly heed this advice, finding the order in which this book was arranged more than satisfactory, reading it on and off throughout the day. But this does speak to the contents of the book overall.

Beginning with an examination of the conditions and exploitation of women and children under capitalism and the development of the family and monogamy, drawing mostly from Engels' work On Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, the following sections deal with the role of women in the proletarian revolution and socialist construction, how women are to be liberated in socialist society and how their liberation is to be linked with the development of socialism. The book concludes with a brief summary taken from the works of Stalin on the victories and massive role of women in the Soviet Union, a refutation by Lenin of the petty-bourgeois notions of "free love" and a defence of the proletarian family, a summary of how the institutions of marriage and the family will develop from bourgeois society into socialist society where the domination of man over women is ended, and finally an appendix containing a discussion between Lenin and Clara Zetkin wherein an excellent summary of the proletarian outlook on sexual morality is given, among other things.

An unparalleled selection of writings for any interested in women's liberation, the family, and sexual morality from the point of view of Marxism.