This is the “woman question” It has been a source of controversy for over a century. in the late 19th Century, the work of anthropologists began to question that assumption Karl Marx and Frederick Engels located the origin of women’s oppression in the rise of class society- is defined as “a set of concepts in the social sciences and political theory centered on models of social stratification in which people are grouped into a set of hierarchical social categories. The most common being the upper, middle, and lower classes. If patriarchy exists as a social independent structure of class society, then the conclusion could be drawn that the main struggle, is one by women against men. This has in fact been the position of many feminists. Socialists and Marxists, however, In view of male dominance, both in its origin and in its current form, as intrinsically linked to the structures and inequalities of class society. The main struggle is therefore a class struggle, in which the struggles by women against their own specific oppression dovetail with those of the working class in general for a fundamental restructuring of society to end all inequality and oppression.Their analysis of women did not come after the analysis of class society but was integral to It from the very beginning. When Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848, ideas of women’s liberation were a ready a central part of revolutionary socialist theory. Marx and Engels developed a theory of women’s oppression over a lifetime, culminating in the Publication of the Orgin of the Family, Private Property and State in 1884.
Division of Labor existed in early societies, and men and women have continued to assume different roles throughout history, these differences must have a genetic base; that they represent behavior which is the result of genes which have been selected over time because of their importance for the survival of the species. So it is natural, therefore, and socially expedient, that men should go out to work and ‘hunt’ to provide for the family while women stay at home and look after the children and the household. But in Engels perspective, he rejects the oppression in a biological view, but accepts and develops that oppression of women is due to influence of society.
In the Origin of the Family, Engels took the Marxist method of historical materialism and applied it to his revolutionary ideas on how and why women came to be oppressed and how they could be liberated. Second, is the change of the Economic basis of society from Industrial capitalism to. Engels emphasized that the rise of industrial capitalism meant progress for women because it brought them into the social workforce. Along with the socialization of household tasks, this is a precondition for liberation. Under capitalism, however, women remained oppressed because they bore the burden of family labor even when drawn into social production. A change of economic environment From Capitalism to Socialism would in turn alter social relations and lay the basis for ending all social inequalities and achieving the liberation of women.
Division of Labor existed in early societies, and men and women have continued to assume different roles throughout history, these differences must have a genetic base; that they represent behavior which is the result of genes which have been selected over time because of their importance for the survival of the species. So it is natural, therefore, and socially expedient, that men should go out to work and ‘hunt’ to provide for the family while women stay at home and look after the children and the household. But in Engels perspective, he rejects the oppression in a biological view, but accepts and develops that oppression of women is due to influence of society.
In the Origin of the Family, Engels took the Marxist method of historical materialism and applied it to his revolutionary ideas on how and why women came to be oppressed and how they could be liberated. Second, is the change of the Economic basis of society from Industrial capitalism to. Engels emphasized that the rise of industrial capitalism meant progress for women because it brought them into the social workforce. Along with the socialization of household tasks, this is a precondition for liberation. Under capitalism, however, women remained oppressed because they bore the burden of family labor even when drawn into social production. A change of economic environment From Capitalism to Socialism would in turn alter social relations and lay the basis for ending all social inequalities and achieving the liberation of women.