Re: Marx & Engels on Prostitution (was Re: Women & Industrialization)

[Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx <xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Luko Willms wrote:

>
>  >I want to mention the letter to August Bebel written by Friedrich
> >Engels on December 22, 1892. August Bebel had made an >intervention in
> >the "Reichstag" (the German parliament of that time) on a law project
> >against prostitution, and Engels gives his comments. "As long as it is
> >impossible to abolish prostitution altogether, the liberation of the
> >women from all exceptional legislation is our prime demand", is the
> >first sentence (my translation from German).
>

As you know, comrade, August Bebel was a *social democrat*. Obviously, he had a
limited understanding of the woman question in Germany of his time. That Engels
criticized Bebel was *not* because Engels was endorsing prostitution. Engels
knew that the social democratic program of outlawing prostitution under
capitalism without changing the material circumstances of women would not help,
but legitimize the sexist order it was meant to replace. Engels had a broader
vision of the woman question in his socialist program-- that is of
transformation of social relations of production as a necessary requirement for
the transformation of gender relations--. Although, I should admit, Engels
sometimes slides into bourgeois feminism of the sort that sees working class
women as sexually liberated (because of their participation in labor force
under capitalism) and bourgeois women as oppressed in family by their husbands
(and hence over-dramatizing middle class women's oppression and idealizing the
other's liberation), it may be the case that he had solid reasons for opposing
Bebel from his own scientific materialist  point of view.


Xxxx




>
>    I don't know if Bebel's speech is available anywhere except the
> stenographic records of the imperial Reichstag...
>
> Yours,
> Lueko Willms
> /------------ L.WILLMS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx --
> /------------ Lueko.Willms@xxxxxxxxxxx      -- "Get PGP Key" im Betreff

--

Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx
PhD Student
Department of Political Science
SUNY at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller College
135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
Albany, NY 12222



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