Leon Trotsky: On an old question

["Eastern Outlook" N 33-34, 14/27-15/28 February, 1901. My own translation of the Russian text in Сочинения. Том 4. Перед историческим рубежом. Политическая хроника. Москва-Ленинград, 1926 {Works, Vol. 4. Before the historical frontier. Political Chronicle, Moscow-Leningrad 1926}, p. 12-16. Corrections by English native speakers would be extremely welcome]

"From the field of the women's movement". Under this heading "Mir Bozhy" places everything that concerns the emancipation movement of women. Here they try, if possible, to register every female diploma, every lecturing desk occupied by a woman and, of course, they carefully monitor so as not to miss any female association. And there are many such associations at present. In Germany alone, according to the named magazine (1900, XI), 132 women's associations with about 70,000 members took part in a recent general meeting.

In principle, of course, one cannot have anything against the magazine's desire to acquaint its readers with all the vicissitudes of the feminist movement, but the author's apparent lack of a definite social point of view on the subject and the hypertrophic thoroughness with which he records all the fragments of the movement in his chronicle – up to and including a "very luxuriously furnished" women's club in Vienna, the activities of which, it's true, have not yet been "found out", but where you can get a cold snack "at very reasonable prices" (1900, XII), – involuntarily makes you recall the witty remarks of N.K. Mikhailovsky: "Let's imagine that you ... belong to the number of people who look askance at the profession of the guardian of public peace, and that you have two people close to you, one male and the other female, who simultaneously took similar places. It is very likely that you will utter two completely different exclamations about this: Oh, horror! He got into the quarter! – Oh, delight! She got into the quarter! " (vol. II, 654). What is there to really be happy about: well, a "luxuriously furnished" women's club, well, a woman lawyer, well, a women's cold snack "at very reasonable prices" – but what else?

Let us not be suspected of a negative attitude towards "female emancipation". There is no such sin on our conscience. But our – not only "our", of course, – difference from vulgar feminism lies in the fact that we look at the women's question – allow me to say – incomparably deeper than very many advocates of women's equality.

It is good, of course, that, at last, a wall has been broken that separates a woman from the world of male interests, a wall that was some kind of anachronism in the atmosphere of bourgeois society. But once the wall has been broken, we can say that the women's movement has already entered a channel from which it cannot get out – and there is no way to keep track of every one of its successes in this direction. The women's movement will go its own way, despite the fury of open enemies and the destruction by false friends ... The group of the latter is significant. After all, out of friendship for women, of course, the French Senator Gurjus [???] rebelled in the Senate against allowing women to practice law. Have mercy, gracious sirs! He, Senator Gurjus, saw with his own eyes lawyers who, after a "long defence speech," "were completely exhausted," “lawyers who had to take the most urgent measures to prevent pneumonia that threatened them." Alas! This goes above the powers of weak women, whose true vocation is "to rule over the world by their beauty, kindness and all their spiritual qualities and virtues." In a word, mesdames, welcome to the bedrooms and kitchens!

“But Sarah Bernhardt”, – Marguerite Durand in one feminist organ replies to the Senator, – after playing in "Phaedra", "Hamlet" or "L'Aiglon" is exactly the same condition and is exposed to the same dangers of pneumonia, however the senate does not find it necessary to lament her fate." With the permission of Madame Durand, we would find much sharper examples for the venerable Senate chatterbox than Sarah Bernhardt. – That laundress, Mr. Senator, who washes your clothes "at very reasonable prices", is she, of course, already protected by your solicitude from the danger of catching pneumonia due to excessive strain? And the women workers of the cigarette and cigar factories are, of course, already protected by you from consumption? And so on, and so on, and so on ...

Some of the remarks of a very witty German article by Mrs. Oda Olberg, a writer who is a whole head taller than ordinary feminists, can be entirely attributed to this kind of gentlemen. When some people talk about the demands of women, writes the aforementioned writer, they take on such an appearance "as if women wanted their own death and the death of society – and only out of pure "passion" for "equality"; meanwhile, "the legal demands of women hovering outside their nature, contradicting their gender peculiarities, exist only in the minds of our opponents ... Is it really, in fact, that so many women have lost the instinct of self-preservation?"

But is it worth answering to such gentlemen who, standing under the broad banner of women's "patrons", in essence only lament that it is becoming more and more difficult to find a woman who "could give a spicy kiss" and that, if among the coquettes of the highest style we did not meet here and there a creation of genius, which, by virtue of its own intuition, rises to aesthetic gestures of love, to a complex refined voluptuousness, then a decent person would not be worth living in the world at all. (Morasso "Contro quelli che non hanno e che non sanno" [Against those who have not and know not]. However, we digress a little to the side ...

So, we repeat, the struggle for women's equality has already managed to break through the ice crust of the dull isolation of middle-class women and the fearful mistrust of even the most "free-thinking" men – but from that moment on, the women's question on its own, an sich und für sich [in and of itself], ceases to exist: the grandiose social stream of our time takes it up and carries it away with its current. The fate of the women's question, like that of many other partial questions, is inextricably linked with the fate of the great world problem bearing the so worn-out name of the social question ...

It is precisely this connection and dependence that is most often overlooked when discussing the women's liberation movement. And yet the women's question not only does not represent something independent, it is not even something whole – a single one, so that, to be precise, there is not one women's question, but women's questions. These questions are as many as the given social differentiation has produced social groups. And therefore, we should not at all be surprised by the most contradictory voices that we have to listen to when discussing the women's question. The opinion of a member of the commanding class – be it a man or a woman – will differ as much from the opinion of a proletarian as their position on the rungs of the social ladder is generally different. And this depends not so much on the unequal degree of their moral and intellectual development, as on the position that woman occupies in each given social group.

What a woman of one class uses in abundance is merely an ideal for a woman of another class. A woman of the privileged class, languishing with idleness, dreams of sharing at least a part of social work with man; meanwhile, "the calamities (associated with poor organization of work) fall on women workers with a heavier oppression than on male workers" (Hobson, "Problems of Poverty and Unemployment"). “In the upper strata of society,” says Ziegler, “the women's question touches mainly family and education, but here (in the sphere of factory work) it was primarily the question of the material position of female factory workers” (“Mental and Social Trends of the XIX Century"). Here, let us say, the demands of women are in general so much in solidarity with those of men that almost, one might say, there is no women's labour question. If women workers make some other demands separate from male workers, depending on the characteristics of the woman's physical organization, then these detailed differences are drowned in the mass of common interests of both sexes.

It would sound as a mischievous irony for a female worker to demand the same rights to higher education as men. Why would she seek "rights" that her father, husband, brother have, but which they cannot use? Is she really going to waste her energy on enabling the female Plevakos to elevate the Mamontovs to the pearl of creation? After all, to provide an opportunity for a whole mass of bourgeois women to engage in work, which is still inaccessible to them, means to sharpen the enemy's weapon. After all, such a surge of new strength will probably refresh bourgeois society for a while. Our brilliant satirist fully appreciated this side of the issue. “I’m sure,” he says, “that it is precisely here – that is, among women who are admitted – I would find for myself a real support, real pillars. I do not argue, that there are many pillars among men, but, for God's sake, can a man be a real, that is, a fiery, enthusiastic pillar? No, he looks at this occupation indifferently, because he knows that it has been allowed for him from time immemorial, and that no one disputes his right to be a pillar. Something else would be a pillar, which still does not know very well whether it is a pillar or not, and therefore blazes, praises and expresses a desire to lay down one's life! " ("Well-intentioned speeches").

What else can an emancipated woman of the ruling classes be? It is not for nothing that all defenders of "emancipation" are trying to prove that it does not threaten any "foundations". And rightly so!

True, some dreamers, as it was shown, for example, at the exhibition congress in Paris, pin on the woman also broader hopes. In the shape of the emancipated woman, they dream of the coming conciliator of the great social antagonisms. They hope that, thanks to her specific qualities, the woman will be able to become a pacifying mediator between labour and capital. But the hope of resolving the great social question with the help of the special properties of a woman's mind and a woman's heart is just as reasonable as the fear of shaking the "foundations" by giving "rights" to women.

Alongside such utopian dreamers are the "liberal" manufacturers who are very little inclined towards Platonism. "The industrial emancipation of women," says Hobson, "supported by the liberal views of our century, has been heavily utilized by entrepreneurs who were looking for cheap labour," the very people who often put obstacles to the emancipation of women of their class. This is understandable: they need cheap labour, and they do not need competitors at all.

Let me suggest a conclusion.

We, of course, will not put a stick in the spokes of the wheels of the motley chariot of the emancipation movement of women of the ruling classes – but we, outsiders, are not given such power; we will even, perhaps, welcome the forward motion of this chariot, as an indicator of the growth of female self-awareness, but will we see in this movement and its successes a solution to "that eternal question about universal human ideals that keeps humankind in alarm", but will we “blaze and praise" about its successes, but will we “express a desire to lay down one's life for these successes" – no, thank you!