Extramarital sexual relations are strictly forbidden in China. No fact about China is more widely known, and in general none is less well understood. Most people are quick to see Chinese sexual mores as a manifestation of bourgeois puritanism or as a Stalinist bureaucratic deviation, or even as proof of the impossibility of socialism liberating women. In short, they're seen as repressive.
But the question is more complicated than such simplistic criticisms suggest.
When it comes to revolutionary sexuality, everyone is an expert. We all know exactly what shape such sexuality will assume, and need no other yardstick by which to measure the failure of the Chinese revolution than our own preconceptions: people still marry, when marriage should have been abolished; people are rigidly monogamous, although monogamy is a sexual prison; and so on.
This sort of reasoning gets you nowhere but into the vicious circle of arguing that something is repressive because it's not free and it's free when it's not repressive. Unfortunately no one ever begins to explain what this freedom might consist of. We are reduced to mere guesswork, but even the attempt to define freedom is considered repressive.
The idea of 'natural' sexuality which supports these arguments is a very convenient one. We all have natural sexual needs and drives, so the theory goes. Different social norms suppress them and repress them in order to ensure male supremacy and to hammer submissiveness and fearful respect into us. If all such norms are eliminated, and morality itself is destroyed, sexuality will be liberated and will find its 'natural' expression. Incidentally, this subversive practice will also destroy the roots of authoritarian power in the ideological submissiveness which follows sexual repression.
This may be convenient, but unfortunately it's also completely wrong. There is no such thing as 'natural' sexuality, or else all the different forms of sexuality occurring throughout history are 'natural': it's natural that in a feudal society a man takes all the women he wants for his pleasure, his pleasure even being to take women without their consent; that in some primitive societies sexual relations take place with several partners; that in a capitalist society a woman should be a virgin when she marries, a faithful wife after her marriage to a man who is, in fact, polygamous before and after marriage; that in all exploiting societies battalions of women are reduced to sexual commerce, the production of pleasure for men. It's only when a ruling class collapses, dragging in its wake the morality it had forged for itself, that 'natural' sexuality is revealed for what it is: the presence that disguises a squalid relation of exploitation.
Furthermore, not only is the allegedly natural behaviour by which we satisfy our sexual needs determined by the existing social system, but those sexual needs themselves are also the products of society. Marx said: '. . . production produces consumption . . . by creating in the consumer a need for the objects which it first presents as products. It therefore produces the object of consumption, the mode of consumption and the urge to consume.' [1] This is no less true of sexuality.
Sexuality has become another commodity, bought and sold like the rest, subject to the laws of supply and demand like the rest, destroyed by consumption like the rest. It makes no difference whether this commodity changes hands legally or illegally, with society's blessing or without it between people of the opposite sex or of the same sex - it is still a commodity. We must ask ourselves what function our sexual culture serves in our society.
That is the fundamental question, and it must be answered before anything else.
Of course sex education (in which I include the lack of any formal sex education) inculcates, especially in children and women, a respect for bourgeois morality and submission to the established order. But sex education doesn't have the monopoly on teaching such attitudes, and that may not be the most important aspect of sex education. In a society where the division of labour becomes more accentuated, where the vast majority of people are deliberately deprived of creativity, where work has no other value than its explicit monetary one, sexuality becomes a means of escaping from society through self-centered sexual consumption, rather than the full expression of interpersonal relationships. This can only be an illusory escape in which the fugitive merely rediscovers all society's detestable features. The relationship between oppressed and oppressor, market value, selfishness, consumption for consumption's sake--are all there in another form. But illusion though it may be, it is nevertheless an important vehicle by means of which the ruling class can impose its own ethics and its vulgar materialism on the people in the guise of the true meaning of life.
'Work,' says the spokesman for bourgeois morality, 'is too often repetitive and tiring. This is, unfortunately, the hidden face of our industrial society. But while we pay a price for progress, it is a price we have to pay if progress is what we want. For production is progress and it is progress that gives everyone a television set and a car, that allows them to dress in the latest fashion, to enjoy themselves, to have some tree time for leisure, that, in short, enables them to consume.' This is his morality, and he would like it to be ours. Isn't sexuality's social function to serve as a compensation for joyless work, the justification for a hopeless existence? Bourgeois sexual culture is like danger money: in exchange for ill-health, maiming or death, the workers are offered a few extra pence in their pay packets. In turning sexuality and sexual pleasure (what pleasure? pleasure for whom?) into a reward, a leisure activity, capitalism has turned it into just another aspect of wage earning. For more than one reason, the idea of sex as a 'warrior's rest' is a scandal in our sexual lives. It involves 'service' by women, who are treated as mere commodities and objects. It puts sex on exactly the same level as eating, drinking and sleeping. It turns sexual satisfaction into a restorative for the workforce, it reduces sex to the same level of mundane requirement as proteins, clothing, television, education and leisure activities.
Bourgeois sexual politics, the specific lines drawn between bourgeois sexual freedoms and taboos, help to create a repressive sexual culture, partly by the prohibition of certain sexual practices, but mainly by giving sexual relations market values - by fuming the relationship into a transaction between an alienated man and a subjugated woman.
The man and woman can't help reproducing their social roles within what seems to them to be their own and free domain. They carry into it the social patterns of dominant male and dominated female. Sado-masochism, passivity aggression, potency and frigidity merely translate into sexual terms the everyday reality of oppression. Of course this doesn't mean that the woman will always be the masochistic, passive or frigid partner. Roles can always be reversed within an individual relationship, but the cultural form is perpetuated by the oppression of women and the generalized pattern of their subservience to men. A common attitude in the new women's movement is that precisely because sexuality is a taboo area for the bourgeoisie and should not be discussed, the movement must speak out. We shall criticize the prevailing morality! they proclaim. We shall leave no stone unturned! We shall prepare the ground for revolutionary attitudes! But as soon as the struggle starts, the new women's movement throws in the sponge. What have we heard from the movement since it took up this question? 'It's unfair for men to have sexual freedom when we don't.' It has proclaimed the right of women to enjoy the same freedom as men. But since when have the oppressed demanded the right to do as the oppressors do? If you understand (and therefore denounce) the repressiveness that is the outstanding feature of male sexuality, what can you hope to gain by adopting similar sexual attitudes? Basically, the bourgeoisie couldn't care less whether or not anybody talks about sexuality, but it dreads the moment when the sickening emptiness on which sexuality is founded will be exposed. To say that the bourgeoisie is repressive because it forbids the practice of sexual 'deviations' is to say exactly what the bourgeoisie wants to hear. 'Deviation' is not where the bourgeoisie says it is, but precisely where it says it is not - between the respectable sheets of the conjugal bed.
I have been using the terms 'male domination' and 'female passivity' because they refer to a facet of the reality I have been considering. But we must recognize that these two opposite aspects of our culture are simply complementary aspects of the same bourgeois sexual ideology. It isn't that bourgeois sadism on the one hand is ranged against progressive masochism on the other, just as sadism is never clearly a male attribute nor masochism a female one. There is a wide range of culturally significant forms of more or less covert sado-masochism, each one more or less confused with the others.
The bourgeoisie, like all exploiting classes, finds its pleasure in the master/slave relationship. The orgies of our rulers or marriages in the smartest churches in Paris; pornography; striptease, in Pigalle for the masses or at the Crazy Horse Saloon for company directors; prostitutes or high- class call-girls; the vice squad or the priests' confessional - all these are just variations on a single theme: the manufacture of pleasure out of intolerable oppression, at a price to suit every pocket and with an eye to all tastes.
The causes of our sexual repression do not lie in setting limitations on our behaviour, because all sexual behaviour has been repressed and perverted by the profound humiliation and commercialism natural to our society. Sexual repression is integral to sexuality; it does not conflict with sexuality, it determines it.
No one could hope to escape from this oppression merely by breaking out of the confines of legally sanctioned sexuality, because that's not what creates it. We have constant proof of this. For example there is a moral prohibition on extramarital sex for women. Whenever a married woman has sex with her husband, she acts in the socially prescribed manner - she acquiesces in and reinforces the subjugation of female to male, and her dependence on him. Whenever a woman wants to counter this repression and has sex with someone who is not her husband, she breaks the prohibition, but realizes, to her dismay, that the repression has not disappeared. Lenin, writing to Inès Armand, commented:
'Even a fleeting passion and intimacy' are 'more poetic and cleaner' than 'kisses without love' of a (vulgar and shallow) married couple. That is what you write . . . Is the contrast logical? Kisses without love between a vulgar couple are dirty. I agree to them one should contrast ... what? One would think: kisses with love? While you contrast them with 'fleeting' (why fleeting?) 'passion' (why not love?) - so, logically, it turns out that kisses without love (fleeting) are contrasted with kisses without love by married people . . . Strange . . . Would it not be better to contrast philistine-intellectual-peasant ... vulgar and dirty marriage without love to proletarian civil marriage with love . . .? [2]
Although it's easier now to understand the way in which sexual politics are alienating, humiliating and repressive, it's still no easier to understand w hat precise alternatives are posed in society. If we cannot see that side of the contradiction it will be impossible for us to understand why contemporary capitalism is characterized by confused and problematic sexual mores, while the sexual mores of feudal society, for example, which were fundamentally as repressive, did not create a conflict of such magnitude.
All the evidence shows that the interest aroused by the sexual question among young people and in the new women's movement cannot simply be the idle imaginings of the unemployed petty bourgeoisie.
We have already said that the repressive nature of bourgeois sexuality is manifested more in the type of practice it invites than in the activities it proscribes. Bourgeois sexuality is nothing more than an exchange of commodities, surreptitiously introduced under the guise of romantic love. This seems to be the nub of the contradiction. The desire for a love relationship conflicts with the economic aspect of that kind of relationship, which is increasingly being revealed. Capitalism engendered this important contradiction, because only capitalism provides the material base for romantic love.
When capitalism destroyed family-based feudal production and 'liberated' the proletariat, it also made it possible for new relationships to be based on personal inclination alone. There's no law against relationships between men and women from different social classes - a working-class man can marry a middle-class woman and a cinema usherette can become a millionaire's wife. But if the only reason for embarking on a relationship with one person rather than another is the 'frec choice' of those concerned, the fact that anyone embarks on such a relationship at all is always determined by external material circumstances. 'I'm getting married to Paulette because I love her and she loves me. But I'm getting married because I can't manage any other way.' So that love, being the only motive for the affair, is always contradicted by the material imperative of the affair. Loving freely and without constraint, while apparently within our reach, is always strangled by the prosaic demands of economics. I here is no freedom to love, only parole - our illusions of freedom are periodically shattered by our return to the penitentiary we are occasionally allowed to think we have left behind us. All love's 'free choices' are outlined against the background of material necessity, and this necessity is the decisive criterion. Not only do we find ourselves saying, 'I know I've got to get married, but at least I can choose who I marry!', but also, 'Since I've got to have a wife who will look after my home, manage on the housekeeping money, prepare my meals, give me affection and devote herself to my happiness so that I won't be alone any more, I shall have to try to fall in love with a woman who will make a good, thrifty, hard-working and loving housewife.' 'Freedom' to love is expressed in the last analysis in the same terms as all capitalist 'freedoms'. It looks fine on paper, but in fact it is almost casually flouted and contradicted daily.
Sexual repression becomes intolerable because it is based on a 'freely chosen' union which generates sexual, intellectual and emotional needs, while it is in fact a contract between two partners who are not free and who seek different and antagonistic goals in this union. The man looks for a way to fill his leisure time, while the woman looks for a way to justify her confinement in the service of her family. But even the most sincere feelings and the least calculated desires can't stand up for long to the pressure of reheated stews and washing socks. The freely selected wife, the chosen one, rapidly becomes 'a nagging bitch'; the husband becomes no more than the provider; and sex is just another entry in the catalogue of disappointments which runs the gamut from the most bitter to the most harmless.
The same thing happens to love as it does to all revolutionary aspirations that emerge from the heart of capitalist society. All of them are trampled under the inexorable tread of material necessity which opposes them. They are repressed; they aren't yet able to realize themselves in practice; but they do exist. Revolutionary aspirations are the exact opposite of myths: they are the future society in embryo. The desire for love also tolls the knell for the old world.
Only men and women who are equally free will be able to form nonrepressive and free sexual relationships. So without the emancipation of women there can be no end to sexual repression. Looking for sexual freedom without this emancipation and, even worse, seeing it as a means of achieving emancipation are more than just political traps. Such mistaken attitudes help unwittingly to strengthen a bourgeoisie which didn't even ask for help. There is no economic, political or ideological reason why the bourgeoisie couldn't eventually tolerate all the specific sexual activities that it now finds impermissible, but such licence is of no value in the struggle for liberation. The experience of the Scandinavian countries, or even of the United States, should be enough to convince anyone of that. To say otherwise is to imagine that the capitalist superstructure of bourgeois ideology, including sexual mores, is rigidly defined. In fact the reverse couldn't be more true. The superstructure is constantly adapting and continuously adjusting to developments at the material base. Contradictions which were latent only yesterday are nakedly revealed today. The bourgeoisie can authorize every sexual activity it wants and introduce any sexual novelty it likes, subject only to the condition that sexuality remains within the limits of its own immoral morality - an egocentric practice that is not simply divorced from the rest of society but, moreover, is a social drug of special significance. [3]
There is no returning to the 'paradise lost' of natural and free sexuality.
We can't confront bourgeois sexuality with some off-the-peg revolutionary
sexuality. We can only achieve revolutionary sexuality in the course of struggle
against bourgeois morality and as an aspect of the transformation of all
social relations between men and women. Women must undoubtedly be the architects
of the new revolutionary morality, for it is they who suffer most from bourgeois
sexuality and it is they who have known its most repressive moments. And
that means that they must be involved in the revolutionary transformation
of society.
The first task to be tackled is quite clearly to attack everything in the old sexual mores which formerly extolled male supremacy. Men and women must be allowed the same sexual standards, even if these standards are only temporary. This seems to me to be the major positive feature of the new Chinese sexual morality. There is no double standard and no special allowances are made for men. The ongoing ideological struggle for late marriages and the discrediting of extramarital sexual relations concern men and women equally. And if newly married women are usually sexually inexperienced, the same is true of their husbands.
One question springs to mind. If the correct approach is to put all male-female relations on an egalitarian footing, why is it necessary to preach this kind of equality in marriage? Wouldn't it have been better to allow women the sexual freedom that men already enjoyed? Wouldn't it have been better simply to allow marriage to transform itself into a voluntary association of equals? An experiment on these lines was tried in the Soviet Union immediately after the Revolution. A series of laws were introduced to make the transformation smoother. They ensured that a couple who lived together would have the same rights and duties as a legally married couple; that divorce could be obtained at the request of either partner; and that the partners would be allowed title to their own goods in a joint estate, so that a husband could no longer seize his wife's property.
But in a society where women have not escaped inferior status, such judicial equality can only reinforce actual inequality.
Men were given a free hand to practice a new, legalized form of polygamy. They changed wives as the fancy took them, abdicating all responsibility for their children. Since peasants could not employ paid labour, they would sometimes marry in the spring to get an extra hand for the harvest, and divorce after harvest time to avoid being saddled with an extra mouth to feed during the winter months. Within record time the Soviet courts were flooded with legal actions from women who'd been deserted as soon as they'd become pregnant. [1]
The majority of women weren't wage earners and they had no economic independence at all, so that the law setting up joint estates actually worked against them. Husbands controlled all the money they earned. They were the masters and their wives would be forced to choose between submitting to a man and being deserted and left penniless. And as for the idea of love that accompanied the Soviet measures, it reduced the sexual act to no more than the satisfaction of a base appetite. Only reactionary women, full of petty bourgeois notions, could refuse something as innocuous as drinking a glass of water. These ideas acquired the force of law and enabled men to exercise enormous ideological pressure on women in attempts to force them to relinquish their 'archaic sentimentality'. This is admirably illustrated in a survey made among Komsomol (Communist Youth) members at the beginning of the twenties. The question, 'Is the abolition of prostitution a problem for young men?' elicited the common reply that the young men had no need to turn to prostitutes, because 'we can have all the Komsomol girls we want for nothing'. This encouraged the revival of a reactionary movement among women, who, when asked the same question, would reply with a demand to reopen the brothels, which in their eyes gave them greater 'security'.
Laws exist only because there are social inequalities. Either they are meant to maintain these inequalities - bourgeois laws - or to eradicate them revolutionary laws. What use would laws be if there was true equality for everyone? From whom or what would such laws protect us? We need unequal laws to establish equality.
Every step in Chinese legislation is guided by this view. In discussing legislation about women, the periodical La Nouvelle Chine emphasizes: 'Not only does Chinese law contain no discriminatory clauses against women, not only does it repeatedly proclaim the equality of the sexes, but it also adds special protective measures, that is to say discriminating clauses against men.' The article goes on to give specific examples:
The Marriage Law stipulates, in article 18, that a man cannot apply for divorce while his wife is pregnant or during the year following the birth, but a pregnant woman or a woman who has just given birth is allowed to divorce. The first sentence of article 21 states that after the divorce, if the mother is given custody of a child, the father is responsible for part of the whole of the necessary cost of maintaining the child, but the law does not state that the mother is responsible for the cost of maintenance when the father is given custody. According to article 24, the husband is responsible for paying joint debts where the joint property is insufficient to cover that payment. Article 23 on the disposal of property after divorce specifies that only the wife is always allowed to retain property she owned before marriage. [2]
Incidentally, article 11 of the Marriage Law states that husband and wife have the right to keep his or her own family name and first name, and other articles ensure equal rights on similar issues.
While in the Soviet Union de facto marriage co-existed alongside legal marriage, China has deliberately opted for legal marriage (even though special measures are taken to ensure that children born outside marriage have the same rights and enjoy the same consideration as other children. In particular the natural father, like any divorced father, is held responsible for the maintenance of his child, and the child, like the child of an, married couple, is allowed to inherit property from his natural parents.) However a closer analysis shows that marriage in China is nearer to a voluntary association of equals than the Soviet de facto marriage was.
It's important in this discussion to understand that both legal marriage and voluntary association have the same basic function in any given society. In a pamphlet published by the Dimitriev group of the French Women's Liberation Movement the following demands are made: 'Abolition of the institution of marriage. Recognition of voluntary association.' [3]
Such 'recognition' of voluntary association can be of no value except as a means of accentuating the repressive character of the legal marriages it would mimic. It's scandalous that a man and woman who live together without legalizing their relationship should be deprived of the few rights and privileges accorded to married couples, such as legitimacy of their children, the right to Social Security benefits based on the husband's contributions, automatic rights of inheritance, and the right to a death grant and a widow's pension. It is right to demand the recognition of voluntary associations to free them from moral, social and material discrimination. But that is the only reason why such a demand should be made. For if the institution of marriage is abolished and voluntary association is recognized, doesn't the latter simply become marriage by another name? (In any case, voluntary associations, particularly among the working class, have in fact been just that for a long time. 'Setting up home' is one of the ways of being 'a family' and involves the same tasks and the same constraints as the legally recognized equivalent.) The Dimitriev group has put forward a laughable idea - the family structure itself is no longer the source of repression, selfishness and submissiveness; the source is now held to be the marriage contract instead. Get rid of the marriage service and release woman from her servitude!
In capitalist societies, marriage is reactionary for two reasons. The first is the wife's economic dependence on her husband, which entails her being seen as inferior - this inferior status may or may not be codified in law, in the familiar terms, for example, of 'to love, honour and obey'. The second is the legal indissolubility of the marriage bond, or at least the extreme difficulty of breaking it. Emphasizing a formal solution in voluntary association involves a preoccupation with this second aspect of oppression in marriage. But it' women (including some who aren't legally married), abandon the idea of regaining their freedom even when they're bitterly unhappy, they do so because the main obstacle to their freedom is the economic impossibility of supporting themselves and their children.
Thus economic independence for the woman is the first condition of any truly voluntary association. Without it the prescriptions for voluntary associations, or communes, or free love to transform relations between the sexes are no more effective than bandages round a wooden leg.
The material independence of women is an absolutely necessary precondition for volutitary associations to work, but it isn't, by any means, sufficient. Furthermore, no simple legal demand will alter the fact that the marriage bond is, in the main, considered to be indissoluble. Such a demand has to be backed up by a revolution in male ideas about the value of women. The complete freedom to break up a union must not simply enable men to continue to use women as disposable objects. There's no reason to hope that the legalization of this age-old male custom could effect in the slightest the desired transformation in male-female relations. The freedom to change partners, previously the undeclared prerogative of men, must aim to revalue the reasons why two people live together if it is actually to be progressive. When two people are no longer held together by material constraints they usually stay together because they love one another. Material freedom allows love to realize its full potential, but bourgeois society involves so many imperatives forcing people to stay together that love becomes redundant, at most a pretext for staying together.
Voluntary associations can represent real progress only if they are accompanied by sexual equality, the destruction of the economic function of the family and the transformation of relations between adults and children.
Words are not enough! Unless these conditions actually exist, the only freedoms represented by voluntary association are the freedom of men to oppress women and the freedom of parents to oppress their children - the same freedoms that the bourgeois institution of marriage offers today.
I could say that Chinese marriage, despite appearances, is approaching true voluntary association precisely because the Chinese revolution explicitly aims to realize the necessary conditions for voluntary associations to work. There is one other fact which indicates that China proposes voluntary association in practice if not in so many words. It is the feet that the Chinese have freedom of choice in selecting their spouses.
Two people in our society get together only after considering all sorts of practicalities and after making all manner of calculations. The calculations of the bourgeois are well known - they count the dowry, consider the inheritance and weigh the wife's new social life against her lost opportunities before making any decisions. It often begins to look as though the marriage has been prearranged. No demands are made on the woman except to provide heirs and to behave as befits a lady - but that's a categorical imperative. As for the husband, who will have the privilege of initiating his 'innocent' wife into the sorry duties of the conjugal bed, he will already have found compensations elsewhere and is secure in the knowledge that he will be able go on enjoying them outside the marriage.
However, the bourgeoisie doesn't have a monopoly on calculating the 'interest' or otherwise of a marriage. The other social classes also indulge in this practice, although their criteria are less degenerate. The peasant who has no alternative but to till his land will also look for a wife who displays the required qualities for her future tasks. She will be sturdy, hard-working and have a life-long familiarity with peasant life. A shorthand-typist doesn't easily exchange her notebook for a pitch fork. The young working-class girl also calculates her chances of getting a man with a secure job, a car and a home before she stumbles not-so-blindly into love. As for practicality, we have only to look at the many thousands of unromantic marriages to see that 'freedom of choice' is a phrase as empty as 'love at first sight'. One woman marries her next-door neighbour, because he's the first man who's proposed to her. Another marries the father of her child, because our society forces her to. These women marry so as not to be alone, because alone they are outcasts and economically at a disadvantage. Do any of these women - and they represent most women in our society exercise freedom of choice? If you are going to talk of the voluntary association of equals, you must at least recognize the need to create the conditions on which true freedom of choice depends. This is not simply a matter of banning arranged or other compulsory marriages. Men and women alike must achieve genuine control over their own lives - a control which need never yield to any economic or ideological constraints, which is exercised with complete awareness. This can be achieved only by following objective political criteria, in line with the present, diversified social practice determining the framework within which the choice of sexual partner is made.
What material conditions is China currently trying to develop so that true
voluntary associations of equals will be possible? The answer to this question
will judge the truth of the matter.
While the Chinese are allowed to marry from the age of eighteen, an extensive campaign is being waged throughout the country to urge the young not to act marries until they are in their late twenties. The importance of this issue was stressed everywhere we went on our visit. But the explanations we were given for it weren't always very convincing. For example we were often told, sometimes by officials, that late marriage was a way to keep the birthrate down. But to say that is to ignore the main aim of family planning: the advancement of women's emancipation.
Family planning in China is explicitly linked to women's liberation, as Han Suyin confirms; 'Voluntary motherhood must be founded on the emancipation of the woman, on her equality, her right to study and to participate in all political decision-making, as well as on her increased social awareness. The political and economic emancipation of women has been the first condition for the success of any mass family-planning campaign.' [4] We must also realize that abstinence as a 'contraceptive' method is a bit rudimentary. Which makes it difficult to understand how the one and only goal of reducing the birthrate could justify delaying marriages. The same extensive propaganda campaign could just as easily be used to encourage the young to use other contraceptive methods and to put off having a child until their late twenties. There is no reason to believe that the masses of young people who have voluntarily put off getting married couldn't have married when they wished and refrained from reproducing themselves by methods other than abstinence.
But despite these objections, late marriage in China remains a revolutionary measure of great importance, for altogether different reasons. These reasons are worth considering.
I have repeadly said that equality between the sexes is never complete during the socialist period. Without any doubt, late marriage is a means of promoting equality which takes account of this inequality. It's easy to understand that a woman of twenty-six who has worked and been self-sufficient, who has taken part in various cultural activities and youth work, who has shouldered political and social responsibilities, who has spent a year or more on a people's commune, who has been a member of the people's militia, who has then gone on to university or various study schools, who has made many friends from many different walks of life and who has, in short, broadened her outlook on society, will have carved out for herself a firm foothold from which to resist any future pressure from husband or society to 'keep to her kitchen'. The economic, political and ideological independence gained over a period of ten or so years is a powerful motive force for wives and mothers to continue the active struggle for their emancipation. The fact that Chinese women don't throw themselves blindly into marriage, that they don't escape their parents' nest just to start their own, is refreshing, but even more, it's enviable. If this were all, it would be enough to show that late marriage is a revolutionary measure. But there's even more to it than that.
The wide-ranging knowledge and practical experience of of Chinese youth have given them a new perspective on love and the family. That's not to say that they have rejected love as a futile gesture, but that they can now struggle against idealism in love from the position of strength of materialism. Oppressed women are particularly prone to this idealist disease. For them love becomes the bearer of all hopes and all disappointments - the extent of its idealization is in direct ratio to their lack of social experience, to their being cut off from other social activities. As a consequence, every interaction with their husband is distorted, as is every judgement about reality.
The proper perspective on love doesn't devalue it. On the contrary, love seen in context is revalued in the light of its practice. If love entails withdrawal from society, the abandonment of the revolution and complete devotion to one's partner, then it will be rejected, for it can only be damaging. But if you see love in its context, relative to all other aspects of social life, you see it as part of everything else you already wish to do. The special relationship you have with this man must help you and him to reach a complete and conscious fulfilment of your social roles.
The advantage of prolonged celibacy as it is practiced in China is to avoid the privatization of love and to give it back its context in a revolutionary society. The warmth and affection the Chinese couple give to one another arise naturally out of their devotion to the people and the warmth they give to all their comrades. The progressive transformation of the work situation, which we have already discussed, means that both partners can expect the other to be politically committed to his or her work. Since the family is no longer the centre of interest, each partner is expected to be involved in a variety of areas. Since relationships between parents and children are no longer run on authoritarian and self-centred lines, each partner is expected to have a responsible and fraternal attitude towards the children. Of course the social experience of the young is an enormous stimulus to the growth of practical knowledge about one another - knowledge which can be used to gauge objectively the different qualities people require of their partners. There can be no doubt at all that late marriage can contribute only as much to the revolution as that experience will allow. Without such experience, late marriage would be worse than useless.
How could a convent girl of the nineteenth century, unmarried at twenty-five, have learnt anything that would motivate her own emancipation? How could a son of the bourgeoisie, advised to remain a bachelor until his late twenties, bring to his late marriage anything but the corrupt morality of his parents? She would have spent a vital period cloistered with nuns. He will spend it in a highly lucrative job or as an officer doing military service in an imperialist army, ensuring his future marital bliss by bedding any and every girl he can, learning through the exercise of this 'inalienable right' that women are no better than the contemptible objects of his own juvenile pleasure. In our society it would actually be progressive for such a young man to break with tradition and marry, at eighteen, the young student he so 'innocently' loves.
In her commentary on the Marriage Law, Teng Ying-chao writes: 'Nevertheless we oppose the idea that 'love is supreme' just as much as we oppose those who trifle with love. Besides, we are opposed to those things which are insufficient to guarantee a lasting love, such as social status, motley, appearance, etc., as conditions of love and marriage.' [1]
There is a story about a young Chinese student leader during the Cultural Revolution. He was filled with the spirit and fire of revolution and was worshipped by a whole group of women students. One day some of the women got together to talk about why the comrade had so many women admirers. 'Several of you are in love with this comrade,' said one of the women. 'I've been told that you love him for his revolutionary qualities, but I'm not convinced of that. I think there's another reason which I'd like you to consider carefully. Because of his qualities this comrade has great prestige among the intellectuals. We have given him important responsibilities. He is listened to. Those who are troubled or confused willingly go to see him, to talk to him and to ask for his advice and help. This is only natural. But, I ask you, isn't it precisely because he is such a luminary that he is "loved" by so many girls? Isn't it really his leadership that they love? That's what I feel. And that's why I think there's something bourgeois about this infatuation. It seems to me that our comrade students are copying a bourgeois male-female relationship.'
This story illustrates the meaning of class love better than I could. It is not enough simply to state that you couldn't love a counter-revolutionary to destroy the class aspect of love and to transform it. You must also make sure that love is no longer full of bourgeois attitudes.
As Teng advocated, and as should by now be obvious, a person's looks are irrelevant to marriage. But how does the bourgeois image of beauty reveal its class nature, so that the canon of good looks can be discarded? In class society female beauty is always the prerogative of the ruling class. It decrees, for the whole of society, what a beautiful woman should look like. To be beautiful in the West is to look like a bourgeois woman, an indolent lady of means whose status is announced by her attitude and gestures, her clothes and hairstyle. And this is no natural beauty (if such a thing exists), but a confection of purchasable ingredients - a pinch of hairdressing, a dash of couture and a spoonful of low-calorie food all garnished with a sprinkling of make-up and a heavy dose of plastic surgery. The world of women's magazines is a hymn to this type of beauty. In 'my lady's' account books you can usually find one column for the 'beauty budget'. The ostentatious luxury of such beauty reflects not only the power and prestige of money in our society but also, and most significantly, the role of sex object that has fallen to women. All this is almost brazenly translated in the advertiser's image of women, in which 'a woman's face and figure are her fortune'.
Beauty like this is beyond the reach of most women, not just financially but also because of the lifestyle it entails. Even when she's dolled up the woman who works in the fields or on an assembly line won't be able to hide her calloused hands and her arms and body, which have become muscular with work. The housewife who spends her life washing clothes, ironing, cooking, cleaning windows won't be able to cover the marks of physical or nervous exhaustion with make-up, and no finery will disguise her weariness when evening comes. And yet the man she lives with, just like all the others, is conditioned to desire the very type of beauty which she can't afford - and that too is a significant facet of sexual repression.
This image of woman no longer exists in China. You will be greeted by a completely different image there - on wall posters, in newspapers, on the stage, everywhere. It is the picture of a worker or a peasant, with a determined expression and dressed very simply. She is always shown doing one of the daily tasks that the millions of Chinese women know from experience. You can see her working, studying, taking part in a demonstration or simply laughing, but you will never see her in any of the unreal and mystifying situations and stances that the advertising image-makers construct for us. This transformation of the female image reveals the new place of women in society, and undoubtedly also serves to focus men's attention on to the changes that are necessary in their relationships with women.
Contemporary Chinese theatre is concerned both to criticize the idea of love as a refuge and to advance the practice of the new love. This is particularly striking in The White-haired Girl. The co-author who revised it at the time of the Cultural Revolution discussed the play with us in great detail during our stay in Shanghai.
He told us that the kind of love that was depicted in the first version of the play had been the subject of bitter controversy. The two main protagonists are Hsi-erh - the white-haired girl - who is a poor peasant and an ardent revolutionary, and her fiancée, Ta-chun, who is also a poor peasant and a soldier in the PLA. The two meet again after the Japanese invaders have been driven from their village, and in the original ending, marry and live happily ever after. Some people approved of this ending and tried desperately hard to keep it, arguing that it was normal and right and proper that the couple should think of themselves once they had struggled against the Japanese and finally won. The revolutionaries, on the other hand, condemned the ending as sentimental and wanted it to be radically rewritten. Eventually the revolutionaries won this particular artistic battle and a new ending was written. In this version the victory over the Japanese leads to Hsi-erh and Ta-chun deciding to continue the struggle, but this time against Kuomintang troops. Now the play stresses that no one can 'live happily ever after' while his or her country is being put to fire and sword. A love born out of common hatred against oppression cannot grow freely under the yoke of that oppression, be it domestic, colonial or imperialist. This idea of love closely linked to social reality is diametrically opposed to the bourgeois idealistic conception of love. There is nothing mystical or magical in Hsi-ehr's and Ta-chun's love, there is no magnetic attraction and no love at first sight. But there is an identical background of suffering, a shared anger and a common will to struggle. They love one another because they share the same hatred of the old society and the same determination to create a new one. In her refusal to conform to the traditional stereotype of the seduced, fragile and submissive woman, Hsi-ehr loves Ta-chun as an equal. He doesn't protect her - they help one another. We don't have to choose between love or struggle, but only between the ways in which we will love one another. We can do it selfishly, escaping from reality, or we can do it by living in the real world and struggling to change it. Love can then become encouragement and mutual support in that struggle. Hsi-ehr's feelings are not incompatible with her revolutionary commitment; they are an expression of it.
It would be an obvious mistake to conclude from all that has gone before that love and sexuality no longer present problems in China. For one thing, how could any society produce a perfectly satisfactory or even an exemplary sexual culture when its women aren't yet fully liberated? As Mao Tse-tung has said, 'Every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of class.' What miracle could allow sexuality to escape this rule? For example it's clear that strictly demographic interpretations of late marriage can only diminish its revolutionary scope. But on the other hand it's one manifestation of the class struggle that all things are open to a variety of interpretations, and such diversity is unavoidable.
It seems to me that revolutionaries often make the mistake of not criticizing right-wing interpretations firmly enough, so that 'peaceful co-existence' appears to be the watchword in what should be the arena of ideological struggle. Naturally this absence of polemic can only have negative results in practice. Take the case of late marriage that I discussed above. The failure to criticize the overt rationale given for late marriage has resulted in many Chinese people accepting it and adhering to strict monogamy not because of their revolutionary convictions but out of moral conformity which is not the desired state of affairs.
The revolution and the people - men and women - who make it have nothing to fear from an open ideological struggle about love and sexuality. Why aren't the Chinese waging this struggle? Some Chinese comrades themselves attempted to give us an answer. 'Sexual education,' they said, 'is difficult, because even our political cadres have an inadequate political and ideological grounding in the subject, because the people are reticent, because the myth of virility is still strong, because the old mentality which sees this area as shameful still survives . . .' All the more reason, surely, to open the debate! There can be little worry that love and sexuality will become central preoccupations to the exclusion of other, more immediate, concerns. Chinese society manages to conduct many debates without any of them becoming popular and political obsessions.
In spite of these criticisms, the Chinese policy on love and sexuality is in no way comparable to conventional Judeo-Christian morality. This is another case where separating some social phenomenon from the new social relations underlying it results in a failure to understand anything at all about it. And judging policies on the basis of ostensible ideological explanations alone is less satisfactory in this area than in any other. For such judgements will always be misguided if they ignore the practical results of political decisions. With love and sexuality, for example, we must look at the effects of Chinese policy on the emancipation of women.
A society cannot conceal the evidence of its treatment of women as sex objects, and China shows no such evidence. I don't doubt that the new sexual attitudes held by Chinese youth, judged by some to be too severe, have actually had an enormous influence in helping Chinese women to shake off their former status. Furthermore, if sexuality and love are closely bound up together - as they are in China - sexuality will be altogether more valued and more valuable - as it is in China. To lose sight of these things would prevent us from making any judgement with a materialist basis.
We can have some idea, albeit embryonic, of what love, sexual morality and
the family will be like in the future by taking what exists today as a
starting-point. But the Chinese experience has taught us that there is no
'natural' or 'innate' revolutionary morality which is simply waiting to be
applied to concrete situations. A new and revolutionary sexual morality and
a proletarian viewpoint in sexuality, love and the family can only be gradually
constructed (and not necessarily in a linear fashion) through the practice
of the class struggle, and within the revolutionary movement against the
ancient traditions, divisions and reactionary functions that have enslaved
women.
The road to women's liberation via the Chinese revolution has been only roughly
sketched. To see it in greater detail requires a clear understanding of Chinese
society, its past history as well as its present contradictions - an
understanding, clearly, that we have yet to achieve.
We also need to understand more about all manifestations of women's oppression in our own countries. Such understanding comes only with an unlimited awareness and ever closer contact with the mass of our women compatriots. To the question, 'What is to be done?', the only proper answer is, 'Everything!'
The women of today are involved in their own struggle because in the past their oppression has always been denied, and their revolutionary hopes and dreams have always been reduced to a slim catalogue of legislative and budgetary demands appended to the end of any self-respecting party manifesto. And yet that struggle will not be understood, and therefore will not succeed, as long as we in the women's movement ignore the other forms of exploitation suffered by other oppressed people. Some members of the Women's Liberation Movement have attacked this idea in the mistaken belief that it would be mere charity. But to pay heed to others' oppression doesn't mean acting 'charitably' to those who are oppressed. Rather it means understanding that women's oppression is like all oppression - the product of an exploiting society, in our case a capitalist society. It means that the only way women have of achieving their liberation is via the revolution.
Whether we like it or not, women as a group and the proletariat are interdependent - not like two playing cards which support one another, nor like two nations allied together, but in the same way as the links of a chain arc interdependent If criticism of female roles and functions is our starting-point, and if our aim is truly to expose the real link link between the specific oppression of women and the entire social edifice of exploitation, then we must raise our sights to a global critique of society.
Seen in such a light this book stands as a contribution to the vital debate
on the role of women in our revolution - a debate that is only just beginning.
In general it is Party policy that a minimum of 30 per cent of women should
work in administrative departments. For example we were told that 30 per
cent of the national minorities organizers were women. In practice, whenever
an administrative post falls vacant a woman will be chosen in preference
to a man with equal political qualifications, if no man is found with higher
qualifications.
The factory at Chao Yan
| total | women | men | |
| workers | 360 | 288 (80%) | 72 (20%) |
| party cell | 9 | 8 | 1 |
| revolutionary committee | 8 | 6 | 2 |
| teams (5 teams of four members each) | 20 | 16 (80%) | 4 (20%) |
It's useful to compare the ratios of men in positions of administrative
responsibility to the total number of men, and of women in positions of
administrative responsibility to the total number of women.
| total | women | men | |
| inhabitants | 360 | 288 | 72 |
| party cell | 9 | 8 (2.7%*) | 1 (1.4%) |
| revolutionary committee | 8 | 6 (2. 1 %) | 2 (2.9%) |
| teams | 20 | 16 (5.5%) | 4 (5.5%) |
* percentages of total male and female populations respectively.
The Gynaecological Hospital in Peking
| total | women | men | |
| workers | 442 | 420 (95%) | 22 (5%) |
| party cell | 9 | 5 (55%) | 4 (45%) |
| revolutionary committee | 24 | 10 (40%) | 14 (60%) |
| teams (12 teams of 8 members each) | 96 | 77 (80%) | 19(20%) |
Because of the surplus of women in the hospital as a whole, the above figures are not as significant as the figures given in the table below, which shows percentages of the total make and female populations:
| women | men | |
| party cell | 5 (1.2%) | 4 (19%) |
| revolutionary committee | 10 (2.4%) | 14 (64%) |
| teams | 77 (18%) | 19 (86%) |
Since membership of party cell, revolutionary committee and team overlaps
(in fact all cell and committee members are also team members) there are
only 77 individual women and 19 individual men altogether in administrative
positions. While the degree of participation of women usually decreases the
higher you go up the leadership ladder, in this case the gap between men
and women is narrower at the higher level of party cell than it is in the
revolutionary committee. It may be that, given the small total of men, their
participation has been artificially increased by a policy of sending male
party cadres to this hospital.
The People' s Commune at Shawan (near Hangchow)
| total | women/girls | men/boys | |
| inhabitants | 22,926 | 11,296 | 11,630 |
| labour force | 12,252 | 5820 (47.5%) | 6432 (52.5%) |
| party committee members | 110 | 49 (45%) | 61 (55%) |
| 'the vanguard' (elected for a term of one year) | 300 | 287 | 13 |
| youth league | 422 | 280 (66%) | 142 (34%) |
| women's committee members | 5500 | 5500 | - |
| revolutionary committee | 260+ | 44 (16%+) | 216 (84%) |
| permanent office of the revolutionary committee | 5 | 2* | 3 |
* including the vice-president
The Sino-Albanian People s Commune
| total | women/girls | men/boys | |
| labour force | 10,400 | 5300 (51%) | 5100 (49%) |
| party | 35% | 65% | |
| revolutionary committee | 25% | 75% | |
| team officers | 50% | 50% |
The Children's Palace in Shanghai
| total | girls | boys | |
| full-time members | 200 | 100 | 100 |
| revolutionary committee | 45% | 55% | |
| brigade members (in 4 brigades) | 50% | 50% | |
| League of Red Guards | 20 | 65% | 35% |
'Confucius has been dead for more than two thousand years, but his rotten ideology, according to which men are lords and women their subjects is still influencing people and constantly shows itself.'
Here is an example of what can be read daily in the Chinese press. It is hardly surprising to see public recognition of the fact that ideas and doctrines against women still exist in today's China - that has been known for a long while. What is striking about these articles, and they are particularly common, is their tone, which doesn't shy away from the blunt truth, and the fact that they confirm the idea that much remains to be done before sexual equality is reached.
This stands in strong contrast to the rightist tendency that was becoming blatantly obvious until recently. This tendency held that men and women were already completely equal in China. It even led some people to come round to the view that there was no need to revive the inactive women's organization, because sexual equality was an established fact - no oppression, no problem.
This trend, fundamentally aiming to deny the class struggle and therefore the need to struggle, could have had grave consequences because it arises from the mistaken ideas of the people. In fact it sometimes did.
Apparently paradoxically, the rightist tendency coexisted peacefully with what could be called classic and universal anti-feminism - the sort of anti-feminism that consists of plainly and openly preaching contempt for women, on the grounds of alleged 'biological' and natural inferiority. These two trends in anti-female thought clearly differed in their terms and arguments, but both agreed on the central point: that women's initiative was to be blocked so that women would be prevented from following the recommendation printed in the People's Daily [2] editorial of 8 March 1973, 'to get down to action'.
This reactionary offensive is not confined to women but has the restoration of the old social order as its primary objective, and demands the relegation of women to their former inferior status as an inevitable consequence. It has met with a revolutionary counter-offensive, begun in early 1972. At that point, a few months after the death of Lin Piao, you could find calls in the press for more concern over the women's question. The 8 March editorial in the People's Daily gave a real boost to the grassroots revival of the Women's Liberation Movement. This revival was marked a few months later by the regional reconstruction of the Women's Federation, and the campaign has broadened as it has continued. The launching of the 'Pi Lin Pi Kong' [3] campaign at the beginning of 1973 called for massive participation by women, as we shall see.
By drawing up a provisional balance-sheet of this campaign, we can see clearly enough the areas in which the bourgeoisie has been trying hardest to effect its restoration, and how the revolutionary counter-offensive has been put into practice. At a time when women in the West are daily becoming more aware of their oppression and are joining the fight in greater and greater numbers, this new wave of the Women's Liberation Movement in China must be of interest to us.
To claim that men and women are already equal is to prevent the necessary practical steps being taken for the achievement by women of true equality. Those who express the arrogant and age-old contempt for housework find that completely to their taste. The development of domestic-service workshops, which are material measures of very great political significance for the liberation of women from domestic tasks, has been slowed down and sometimes even halted altogether, on the pretext that men and women are now sharing housework equally.
This pernicious tendency is doubly mistaken. Firstly, because it treats the avant-garde (although fairly widespread) practice of housework-sharing as though it was universal. Secondly, and most importantly, because the disappearance of women's work (that is domestic work) results mainly from the socialization and mechanization of specific household tasks, and not from a new egalitarian distribution of tasks between husband and wife, though such a distribution is still necessary for several reasons (see Part Two). The importance of this question is stressed in a Red Flag article called 'Make energetic efforts to train women cadres'.
With regard to the question of family complications of women, we must also conduct concrete analyses. In the old society, women were downgraded into 'slaves in their families'. For several thousand years the basic guiding thought of the feudal landlord and bourgeois classes was to take women as slaves and appendages, to put them in the kitchen, to tie them up with heavy household chores; and to deprive them of the right to participate in social production and political activities. One of the important tasks of the proletariat is to liberate women from this slavery. After liberation, the establishment of the socialist system and the participation in productive labour by the masses of women have brought fundamental changes in this situation. However, due to the influence of the idea of the exploiting classes of looking down on women and the restrictions of the material conditions the question of heavy household chores has not been completely solved. [4] In fact it was not just for the reasons expressed here that domestic tasks were overlooked in the revolutionary process. I have been able to discover others in the course of recent visits. For example the contempt in which any and every form of housework was held, although vigorously denounced today, obviously slowed down the socialization of housework. Some of the then current ideas are also revealing. For example: 'Working in a service workshop is not serving the people, it's serving the private interests of the people.' Or, 'The only productive work is factory work, and only productive work is noble', which was a fairly widespread attitude among young people at a certain date. [5] Then again there was the other side of this coin in the old Liuist demagogy: 'It's also a revolutionary task to look after your household and your children.' [6]
But the service workshops are only the beginning of the abolition of housework. Once the domestic tasks have been taken out of family hands and collectivized they still have to be mechanized. This mechanization has its roots in two separate areas. Firstly, it clearly depends on the basic improvements effected by service workers themselves. Secondly, it depends on the development of light industry in the relevant fields. One instance where the two areas have borne fruit is in the development of collective automatic laundries. In the same way, if the actual domestic needs of the masses are not sufficiently systematized and recognized by the industrial sector, it may be difficult to appreciate that producing this or that object could be important for the liberation of women. The Women's Federation has a vital part to play in all this - organizing the mass of women, researching and pointing to their needs, acting as a pressure group to push for change. The present 'restrictions of the material conditions' referred to in the Red Flag article will have to be broken down. And to this end political and ideological mobilization is essential.
This topic is especially interesting because it allows us to see the extent to which two allegedly opposed ideas, 'men and women are perfectly equal' and 'women are inferior to men', actually meet and coexist in perfect harmony.
The Red Flag article I have already cited makes it very explicit that,
. . . the growth of women cadres still fails to keep pace with the objective requirements of China's socialist revolution and socialist construction. In some localities the number of women party members is much too low compared with the number of revolutionary women, and there are too few women cadres in leading bodies. This unavoidably affects the development of the movement for the emancipation of women. One who fails to see this cannot see clearly the great significance of training and bringing up women cadres and developing party membership among women, to say nothing of taking the necessary measures to solve the relevant problems. [7]
How could measures be taken which specifically encourage the training of women cadres when people happily reiterate that women already have equal rights with men in whatever sphere you care to mention?
The people who say that will rationalize the fact that there is a relatively small number of women cadres, will fail to take the necessary steps and will even excuse themselves on the grounds that women are naturally back ward.
As a result, such people can do no more than regret that the cultural and political level of women happens to be too low, that women happen to have too little time because of their household duties and that, unfortunately, they can't be given any responsibilities until circumstances permit. Red Flag takes up this point:
Some of the comrades . . . believe that women possess 'low cultural standards and ability', that they have 'family complications', and that 'it is difficult to promote women cadres'. This kind of thinking greatly affects the growth of women cadres . . . The idea that women are less able than men is not justified by actual conditions in China . . . As for saying that the cultural standard and work ability of some women comrades are not high enough, it also has deep class origins and social historical origins. It is exactly because of this that we must show concern for them, train them, and help them improve themselves. We must never discriminate against them.
To say that women 'have family complications' is, to all appearances, a neutral and objective statement. To conclude from it that they can't be entrusted with responsibility is definitely a reactionary attitude, and one that the Party and the women's committees vehemently criticize. That there must be more concern for the actual and particular problems of women has been a constant theme of Chinese propaganda since the 8 March editorial. Of course performing household tasks still conflicts with the political, ideological and cultural tasks that women must assume. Denial, as we have seen, serves no purpose for women, but to be content with merely recording the conflict is not much of an advance either. Progress depends on the energetic implementation of a series of reforms which have already shown their value in many vanguard areas.[8]
That's why Red Flag reaffirms this necessary political stance:
... it is most essential ... to solve the contradictions between revolutionary work and family work. It is necessary to promote the practice that men and women must share household chores. At the same time, it is necessary to pay attention to the specific characteristics of women and help them solve specific problems. Late marriage and planned parenthood should be promoted. It is essential to do a good job in running social public welfare facilities, [9] such as health insurance for woman and children and nurseries. [10] So long as we adopt the correct attitude and a number of practical measures, it is not difficult to solve the specific difficulties of women.
Only a firm and systematic application of such reforms will resolve the contradictions. By the same token, there is only one objective criterion in contemporary China by which to judge whether a policy is revolutionary or not. It need involve no theoretical consideration of the 'feminist cause', for it is simply whether or not the policy brings about reforms.
For a long time to come the training of women cadres will remain a key battleground in the struggle between revolution and counter-revolution. To have women in positions of leadership goes right against the old reactionary morality. 'If women succeed in these tasks, then what use will men be?' writes a working-class woman, making a point that had been worrying some of the husbands. Some men, those who are not really convinced of the need for equality, feel self-satisfied and happy in the belief that they have accomplished a praiseworthy feat as soon as their organizational team is increased by a few women. The article in Red Flag retorts:
To select and promote women cadres and assign them to the leading bodies at various levels is only the beginning of our efforts to train and educate them and not the end of the work. To enable them to remain vigorous and keep their revolutionary spirit, we must do a lot of arduous and meticulous work. As a matter of fact, organizationally it is often relatively easy to select and appoint women cadres, but it is no easy task to help them really mature. The leadership at all levels must, therefore, attach importance to carrying out education in ideology and political line in training women cadres. It is necessary to encourage them to make progress and help them overcome their shortcomings and take up their responsibility with courage ... The essential step in training women cadres is to let them participate in the three great revolutionary movements and temper themselves in the struggles so as to raise their consciousness and work ability ... The party committees at all levels should create favourable conditions for them so as to enable them to learn more from their work and improve themselves through training . . . It is necessary to place confidence in them when we employ women cadres. It is also necessary to give them adequate support in critical times and actively help them to solve their difficulties ... To train women cadres is the task of the whole Party, and it cannot be considered to be work of only certain departments . . . Party committees at all levels should raise their understanding of this question to the level of the struggle between the two lines and of consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat . . . While adhering to the principle of studying on the jobs, it is necessary to carry out for them education on theory in a planned way by holding study classes, and sending them to '7 May' cadre schools . . . The broad masses of women cadres should also fully understand their honourable duties in the socialist revolution and construction, acquire the determination to fulfil their tasks, dare to practice and study assiduously so as to mature rapidly, and contribute their share in striving for still greater victories in socialist revolution and construction.
Production units throughout China have sent reports to the national press about the changes brought about by following this policy and rectifying their style of work. A people's commune in Kiangsu [11] told how all its work team leaders had been men, although twelve of the teams were composed mainly of women. This had led to bad feeling. The men would treat the women's problems lightly or even completely ignore them. The women, still in the grip of age-old tradition, didn't have the courage to air their own points of view, their differences and their difficulties. During the movement of criticism against Lin Piao and the rectification of styles of work, 'the brigade conscientiously studied this problem'. New team leaders, all women, were elected. The results soon began to show. Leaders and led are more closely united; it's now possible to investigate and solve concrete problems as they occur; and the teams have made great advances in their political studies. Productivity and output have both increased by leaps and bounds. From being shy at the outset, these women have steeled themselves to their new responsibilities. Their victory has revalued the status of all other women. The lesson is clear: those who believe that nature or destiny have created women to be docile and obedient and second-rate workers are, consciously or unconsciously, taking the road of counter-revolution.
The campaign to put the women's question back into the centre of the political arena is the context in which Chinese women have entered the movement of criticism against Confucius and Lin Piao. But another influence has been of great positive value to women in the current struggle the reconstruction of the Women's Federation. Grass-roots committees of the Women's Federation were revived all over China, and immediately became very active. Since June 1973 Women's Federation conferences have been held throughout the country.
There had been no formal organization for the majority of women since 1966. The Federation's lengthy absence can perhaps be attributed to the 'egalitarian' tendency mentioned above. Other traditional organizations were also quiescent for some years, but such inactivity must have been more harmful to women than it was to other sectors of the population. While the Youth League, the unions and the Women's Federation were all temporarily suspended, young people and workers had their own revolutionary organizations, which were necessary to that phase of the struggle which started with the great proletarian Cultural Revolution. In the Red Guard organizations, among the revolutionary rebels in the factories and later in factory conferences, young people and workers could put forward their problems and discuss them. However, women didn't usually have their own political meeting-place where they could work out together their criticisms of what was still oppressing them.
Because they suffer a specific form of oppression, women need specific organizations which will help them to participate fully in the total movement of the revolution, just as they will help the revolution to grasp the importance of any movement of half the people. [12]
The reactionary ideology of the four Confucian contempts has become a common talking-point since the beginning of the campaign of criticism levelled against Confucius and Lin Piao, which has comparatively recently become nationwide. The contempts are these: for manual work, for women, for the young and for those who are governed.
It's a safe bet that the new campaign will put the women's question in the forefront of the class struggle even more forcefully than the Cultural Revolution did.
The women who wrote the following words in the People's Daily hit the nail on the head: 'We working women suffered most from the doctrine of Confucius . . ., so we have the greatest right to speak out in the struggle to criticise Lin Piao and Confucius.' [13]
The committees of the Women's Federation have gone to war against Confucius. Through study and otherwise, Chinese women have started to settle their accounts with an ideology that is over two thousand years old. This was so widespread and deep-rooted that you could have taken it for 'common sense'; it held on for as long as it was appropriate to the material base of the old Chinese society; but it still maintains a hold in China, even after obvious and fundamental social change. Confucian ideas are deeply ingrained in Chinese culture, in Chinese thought and in the Chinese people. Moreover there still exist material vestiges of the old society which continue to support the existence of these old ideas.[14]
To put this criticism into practice will inevitably lead to a reform of all existing archaic social relations. And to mount the offensive it is imperative to mobilize the masses, men and women alike, for the criticism of old customs and the promotion of new socialist mores - even while relying on the revolutionary relations of production that are already established. Women must be given the chance to 'free their minds' and, step by step, to overthrow the 'eternal woman'.
The women of the Yuan Ping Street Federation, in Fukien, have written:
During the mobilization of the women in the district to criticize Confucius, we worked out 'the five destructions and the five reconstructions', taking into account current expressions of the class struggle on the ideological level. [15]
1.To destroy feudal superstititions and to establish the thesis that work creates the world2. To abolish the old matrimonial system of arbitrary (or 'forced') marriages arranged as a business transaction by parents on their children's behalf, and to strengthen the freedom of choice in marriage that is now exercised in a new form
3. To eliminate the ideology of male supremacy and female submissiveness, thus abolishing patriarchal authority, and to replace it with the concept of equal rights for both sexes. To practice the principle of equal pay for equal work, and to practice birth control
4. To eliminate the theory of women's backwardness, attacking it with the idea of women as 'half of heaven'
5. To eliminate the attitudes of 'studying to make yourself somebody' and 'going to work on the land so that you will be well thought of opposing them with the ideas that 'studying serves the people' and that agricultural labour must be given its proper value
The women of Yuan Ping Street organized a campaign centred on these 'five destructions and five reconstructions'. They gave some indication of the extent of their mobilization in the course of a few weeks. They held study sessions, criticism meetings, assemblies and debates. They edited newspapers, wrote articles in the press and on dazibaos (wall posters written in large characters). A total of 1200 women from Yuan Ping Street played an active part in this campaign. Extra evening classes in political study had to be organized, since the number of women attending doubled, and in those classes women who had felt too insignificant to talk in public before at last dared to speak out.
Other newspaper articles record the fact that the offensive against male chauvinism is being carried out simultaneously on three fronts.
Firstly, the real activities of women are publicized, thus demonstrating how times have changed. The achievements of women for their communities in one area or another are now written up on wall posters. One such poster comes from Yuan Ping:
Following the appeal of the May 7 directive, the women in the district undertook to prepare new fields for planting. They have prepared them. For three consecutive years they have harvested a crop yielding 75 quintals per hectare. Relying on their own strength, they have built small factories, and in that way have considerably increased industrial production. They have transformed the district from an area of 'consumption' to an area of 'production'. These undeniable facts constitute an irreversible refutation of the doctrine of contempt for women put forward by Confucius, Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao and others.
Women will often affirm their membership of vanguard women's units across the country. National newspaper articles glorifying their exploits are commented on, studied and pasted up locally.
Secondly, there is a simultaneous denunciation of the Confucian doctrines according to which 'women are created to serve' and are 'difficult to manage'. 'women and children must have rules of conduct to keep them on the straight and narrow'; 'a woman belongs to her husband as a hen belongs to the rooster'; and 'the greatest happiness comes with the largest number of sons'.
The People's Daily editorial of 8 March 1974 is specific on this point: 'The theory of male supremacy and the theory of female slavery and dependence must both be mercilessly condemned and their sinister in fluence must be eliminated. Not only women but men as well must criticize these theories.'
Most of the time these criticisms are made by means of the example of actual cases known throughout a given locality. One such example tells how Hsieh Siou-yin had four daughters. She kept trying for a son to carry the family name and therefore refused to practice contraception. Another woman refused to become a cadre because she was afraid of not being equal to the task. Yet another didn't dare go out to work because she considered that her fate was to stay at home. Such examples are remnants of Confucianism and are not uncommon. Cases are studied by the local Women's Federation. All the women help to find a collective solution, and every success is publicized to encourage the others.
Thirdly, and finally, concrete steps are being taken for the long term. In particular small workshops are being set up. I recently visited an old quarter of Peking where the housewives still stayed at home. For the most part they were fairly elderly women, retired workers or women who were handicapped or in delicate health. It was impossible in practice for these women to participate in the work of the neighbouring small factories. The residents' committee, having studied the problem, set up a small factory (a May 7 workshop) [16] to manufacture theatrical props like paper flowers or garlands. The workshop, situated right in the centre of a network of small streets, makes it possible for women to work when they can and for as long as they can. They organize the production themselves and they get a wage for work which is not only useful and necessary to the State, but which also enables them to meet together and to break through the isolation that they would otherwise suffer.
A critique of the three obediences and the four virtues has recently emerged. The three obediences were preached by Mencius and Confucius and demanded that a woman should obey her father and her elder brothers before marriage, her husband during marriage and her sons when widowed. The four virtues rigidly determined a woman's public behavior - her conduct, conversational subjects, dress and domestic tasks. A woman was obliged to be moderate in all circumstances and to observe the proper attitudes in her speech and her conduct. Her conversation was to be demure and restrained, so as not to bore men. When laughing she was obliged to cover her mouth, because it was considered immodest to show her teeth and tongue. Her choice of dress was dictated by the single need to please men. Last but not least, she had to fulfil all her domestic chores with good grace.
'Away with this decadent ideology!' can be heard and read everywhere even though you won't find many people in China today [17] openly defending the literal interpretation of these feudal rules.
But as I said at the beginning of this article, these ideas are still influencing people at every turn. Confucian doctrine has weighed the Chinese masses down for 2500 years and they still bear its marks. It is an extremely élitist doctrine, almost racist in its treatment of the people, and of women in particular. Today, the Chinese bourgeoisie still relies on Confucianism for its counter-revolutionary projects and the current anti-Confucian movement is, therefore, of crucial importance to the future of the Chinese revolution. Radically to discredit Confucianism among the masses is to deal a crippling blow to reaction. But this is no mean task and will involve a protracted struggle. In fact this struggle has not ceased in the whole fifty years of the life of the Chinese Communist Party. The difference is that this time the assault is planned and thoroughgoing.
Women are at the heart of the struggle. All the patriarchal relations inherited from feudalism are disrupted when age-old submissiveness is rejected. Solidarity comes to life among those women who struggle against the 'total power' of husbands, who fight against respect for the authority of educationalists, and who reject the religion of material incentives. The most important ideological themes of the struggle have profound consequences for women. Take, for instance, the radical critique of genius. Apart from the fact that 'geniuses' everywhere are usually men, the very idea of genius, of an innate and overwhelming predisposition for certain tasks at the expense of others, is at the root of all theoretical systems supporting discrimination against women. It is, therefore, understandable that women have much to say and much to gain from denouncing the idea of genius. Or take another example: the attack on contempt for manual work and for the governed masses. It is inconceivable that this attack could succeed unless the female masses, oppressed manual workers since time immemorial, by the dictate of ancient practice, fuse their experience with the ongoing revolution.
The 'Pi Lin Pi Kong' campaign is another means by which the people learn to delve below the surface in their attempts to reach and understand the fundamental nature of phenomena. 'It is essential to criticize the feudal thinking of looking down on women ... They were the most oppressed among the oppressed people. Such economic and political status of women gave rise to their strong desire for the revolution . . . and they are imbued with extremely great enthusiasm for socialism.'[18] Seeing only the superficial inferiority of women is not just an illusory vision, but will in practice deprive the revolution of its greatest enthusiasts.The 8 March 1973 editorial of the People's Daily denounced those who believed that women wouldn't be able to play a significant part in the 'Pi Lin Pi Kong' campaign because of their low cultural standards. These people would really like the campaign to remain no more than a mere academic exercise, an intellectual debate on the finer points of ancient history. As the struggle develops it will become obvious that women, far from being backward, are actually a vital motive force behind the 'Pi Lin Pi Kong' campaign.
Once again the Chinese revolution reminds us of the central role played by the class struggle. To deny that women are still discriminated against, to settle for legalistic verbiage, in other words to suggest casually that women's liberation has finally been victorious is to run counter to the movement of history and to impede the struggle of women for their emancipation. It is to oppose Mao Tse-tung, who has explicitly and constantly reaffirmed that the emancipation of women demands a protracted and continuous struggle. 'Only in the course of the socialist transformation of society can women gradually liberate themselves.' Until this transformation is complete, the liberation of women will be partial and still susceptible to a defeat that would return women to their earlier oppression.
Chinese women today have profoundly improved their position. That's the crucial point from which all their contemporary struggles start. Denying this change or underestimating it; limiting your vision to the surface of the matter or taking a few facts in isolation; refusing to see the overall direction of the revolution means, like it or not, adopting the viewpoint of a dead metaphysic. And to do that is to align yourself with the Chinese tendency that denies 'socialist innovations' and the gains of the Cultural Revolution.
This tendency has two phases. First of all there is the effort to impede or distort the changes brought about by the Cultural Revolution (the educational reforms, for example). Then, confronted by the temporary difficulties so created, there is the disingenuous exclamation: 'The Cultural Revolution has changed nothing and has served no purpose. What a waste, what a mess!' Women suffer the same indignities. The tendency opposes their initiatives as it opposes the revolution. Measures helping women are thwarted or sabotaged, and then comes the cry, 'Women are worried about nothing but their own little families. That's part of their nature and nothing can be done about it.' But Chinese women have risen against this tendency. Once more they confront reactionaries and reactionary nostalgia. Yet again they attack the eternal woman. One thing you can be sure of- this time won't be the last.