Feminism and Socialism in China (Routledge Revivals)

Elisabeth Croll

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136337314
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Personal Development
• Categoría: Travel

First published in 1978, Feminism and Socialism in China explores the inter-relationship of feminism and socialism and the contribution of each towards the redefinition of the role and status of women in China. In her history of the women's movement in China from the late nineteenth century onwards, Professor Croll provides an opportunity to study its construction, its ideological and structural development over a number of decades, and its often ambiguous relationship with a parallel movement to establish socialism. Based on a variety of material including eye witness accounts, the author examines a wide range of fundamental issues, including women's class and oppression, the relation of women's solidarity groups to class organisations, reproduction and the accommodation of domestic labour, women in the labour process, and the relationship between women's participation in social production and their access to and control of political and economic resources. The book includes excerpts from studies of village and communal life, documents of the women's movement and interviews with members of the movement.

1

Introduction: The Women’s Movement in China

They too were fired with a fanatical desire to fight to the death for the revolutionary cause. This very remarkable phenomenon of women taking an active part in the Chinese Revolution was observed in Shanghai as well as in the south.

(F. Farjenel, 1911)¹

One of the most striking manifestations of social change and awakening which has accompanied the Revolution in China has been the emergence of a vigorous and active Woman’s Movement.

(Irene Dean, 1927)²

The revolt of women has shaken China to its very depths…. In the women of China, the Communists possessed, almost ready made, one of the greatest masses of disinherited human beings the world has ever seen. And because they found the keys to the heart of these women, they also found one of the keys to victory over Chiang Kai-shek.

(J. Belden, 1946)³

Travelling through China we saw old women with feet painfully crippled from foot-binding, younger women working in the fields and operating machinery in factories, and middle-school girls shooting rifles in a militia drill. These contrasts convinced us that the changes in the lives of women since liberation may be one of the greatest miracles of the Chinese Revolution.

(Group of American Students of China, 1971)⁴

At every stage of the continuing revolution in twentieth-century China, one feature which has immediately impressed observers has been the active participation of women in the revolution, and the parallel changes in their public and domestic roles. What had been described as a ‘remarkable phenomenon’ in 1911, a ‘striking manifestation of social change and awakening’ in 1927 was said by 1946 to have ‘shaken China to its very depths’. In the 1970s an impressive array of prima facie evidence has caused many observers, like the group of American Students of China, to contrast the occupations and confidence of women in China today with the reports of bound-footed, hobbling and secluded women that reached Europe and America in the nineteenth century. Even at the turn of the present century women could still describe themselves as leading the existence of a ‘frog in a well’⁵ and Peking was observed to be ‘a city of men’.⁶ In the twentieth century women emerged as a new social category of public economic and political consequence. No longer did they think of themselves ‘as different from men as earth was from heaven’, but as half of China holding up or constituting the other ‘half of heaven’. Despite the impressions of contemporary observers at each stage of the revolution and the changing self-image of Chinese women, the details of this national and conscious attempt to collectively redefine the position of women in society has until recently remained largely undocumented in Western literature.⁷ There has been considerable research and debate on the role of peasant and labour movements, their history and contributions to the victory of the Communist Party, but these same scholars have largely ignored the fact that women, too, formed a significant group in Chinese society which in attempting to improve their own position could potentially furnish a separate and organised basis of support for the revolution. Only recently have students of Chinese society begun to document their life-patterns, the history of their separate movement and its relationship to the revolution.⁸

Throughout this century two forces, the wider revolutionary movement and the separate and organised women’s movement, have worked to redefine the role and status of women in China. The term ‘wider revolutionary movement’ is used to refer to the continuous attempt to redefine economic, political and social institutions in the twentieth century. It began with the reform and republican movements which culminated in the 1911 Revolution during which the Manchu dynasty was toppled, and it continued with the development of a nationalist revolutionary movement, led initially by Sun Yat-sen and later by the Communist Party, to unify China and establish a socialist society based on the principles of Marx and Lenin but adapted to the special social and economic conditions of agrarian China. The establishment of the Communist Party as the government in 1949, the period of social reconstruction, the Great Leap Forward (1958–60), the Cultural Revolution and the recent movements to criticise Confucius and Lin Biao (Lin Piao) all constitute stages in this continuing revolutionary process.

The organisation of women to achieve new rights of equality marked the emergence of a new social movement. The women’s movement in China as elsewhere is distinguished from other social movements by the sex of its members and its specific interests and pursuits. The redefinition of the role and status of women in public and domestic spheres required not only the ending of legal, social, political and economic discrimination against women, but also an analysis and consciousness of their position in society, together with a total change in their beliefs, self-image, obligations and expectations. That is, all those activities contained under the general rubric of the ‘emancipation of women’, the ‘liberation of women’ or ‘woman work’,^* which have deliberately been left as open-ended concepts by Chinese women to allow for constant redefinition. Feminism is not an easy term to define. In China its meaning has been constantly reinterpreted. For the first two decades it was used to denote the exclusive advocacy of women’s rights, later it referred to the women’s movement which worked to forward the interests of its members within the context of the wider revolutionary movement to alter the basic structures of society. In the last two decades the term feminism has become much more a term of abuse referring to those who exclusively pursue women’s interests without regard for the forms which political and economic systems take. It refers to those who survey or describe women’s oppression but stop short of an explanation which requires a class analysis and class struggle.

In China the integration of feminism with socialism has demanded that in addition to improving the status of women, the women’s movement also arouses an awareness of class interests and responds to all forms of oppression. While in theory the women’s movement was to be a separate but not autonomous part of the socialist revolution and the achievements of the goals of each were seen to be mutually interdependent, in practice the uneasy alliance between the wider revolutionary and women’s movements have sometimes brought competing claims on the identity of women. The balance of these dual demands has directly affected the history of the women’s movement. At various stages certain conditions have favoured a strong group identity among women which has led to its criticism for following an independent feminist policy and disregarding the wider goals of the socialist revolution. While at other times women have displayed a weak group identity in the face of these competing claims with the result that their interests have been neglected. The history of the women’s movement shows that it has been marked by certain ambiguities which have surrounded its position as an independent power-base in a society in which class struggle is viewed as the motivating force generating social change. The special oppression of women did call for the separation of women into their own solidarity groups, but women did not form a class however the term was defined. This book examines the historical and fundamental relationship between feminism and socialism in China.

The attempt to redefine the role and status of women in China has recently attracted the attention of members of the women’s movement the world over. Like many other contemporary analyses of the position of women in China, the present study arose out of a joint training and interest in the study of Chinese social institutions and an involvement in the women’s movement in London in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One of the main issues that has concerned the women’s movement in Europe and North America has been the relevance of radical societal change, revolution and socialism, to the emancipation or liberation of women. Some have concluded that socialism alone promises to change the social order enough to enable women to acquire new rights or to exercise in practice those rights increasingly accorded in principle. But it is this question which has divided the women’s movement in Europe and North America from the turn of the century to the present day. The apparent successes and the evident failures of the movement to redefine the position of women in China have equally been used by both sides to support their points of view.

I began this study fairly committed to the view that only the broader economic, social and political transformations that have occurred in China have made the unquestionable changes in the lives of women in China possible. And while not deflected from this view, the present study has raised a number of important questions. For example, how has the women’s movement, whose programme essentially suggested a struggle between the sexes, been integrated into the broader class struggle of the wider revolutionary movement? How have the problems of women been defined in relation to the definitions of class struggle in theory and in practice? Has the revolutionary movement as the government satisfied the expectations of women aroused in the early years of struggle when it required their support? Has the implementation of socialist policies and institutions brought with it a concomitant rise in the status of women? The way these questions have been defined and handled in China reveals that in practice the alliance between the women’s movement and a political party committed to radical social change is inherently uneasy, complex and, at certain junctures, antagonistic. Indeed in China it has been these same issues which have divided the women’s movement itself around the question: which should come first, political or class struggle and the establishment of socialism, or the struggle between the sexes or feminism? Tension between the two sets of priorities has marked the history of the women’s movement in China. But to grasp the full complexities of this alliance requires a detailed examination of the changing social, economic and political background of China.

The history of the wider revolutionary movement can be divided into a number of distinct phases each of which had particular implications for the ideological and structural development of the women’s movement in China, and raised pertinent questions for women’s movements elsewhere. First, this book identifies and summarises the ideological, physical and economic factors responsible for the oppression of women at the turn of the century (chapter 2). It examines the degree of suppression experienced by women at each stage of their life-cycle and for each social class, the forms of protection afforded to women and the attempts made prior to the twentieth century to challenge their subordination. The first two decades of this century were marked by the questioning and confrontation of the old and traditional ways and the search for new social and political institutions. The source of inspiration for the reform movement of 1898, the Republican Revolution of 1911 and the new Thought and Cultural Renaissance of 1916 which were all attempts to redefine social and political institutions in China, was the Western powers of North America and Europe which seemed to hold the secrets of wealth, power and stability. The period which saw the height of Western influence in China in political, social and economic thought and institutions was also marked by incidents of foreign aggression and penetration at the hands of scrambling foreign powers and capital. It was the age of the Punch cartoon in which China was shown as the enticing melon or cake ready to be portioned by the foreign powers at the Party table. The increasing incapacity of China’s governments of the day to respond to this challenge fed the reform, republican and patriotic movements of the first two decades. Along with other radical movements, the women’s movement developed in response to this foreign encroachment, to the growing urbanisation, and to the influence of Western principles of individualism, freedom and self-fulfilment. The women’s movement that emerged was primarily confined to, and its platforms reflected, the dominance of the privileged defined in terms of wealth and education. Its members were labelled and harassed as aberrant individuals engaged in quixotic combat with a predestined and established social order. It is the history of the early patriotic, romantic, revolutionary and feminist struggles of the women’s movement in this period (chapters 3 and 4), which raises a number of questions to do with the construction and development of similar movements elsewhere. What are the social conditions and the specific condition of women that may produce a revolt? What are the effects of a new imported ideology and/or new economic relations on the size, class-nature and activities of its participants? Where in society should the women’s movement identify the agents and institutions of power?

The second phase in the 1920s was marked by further penetration of foreign capital and the steady decline of the power of the central government in the face of competition from a number of regional warlords. The establishment of new economic relations in the cities contributed to the growth of urban areas and new social classes and the decline of the rural economy. In response to the deteriorating economic, social and political conditions of China there emerged a single new revolutionary movement made up of the Communist and Guomindang (Kuomintang) Party members under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen. It was dedicated to the unity of China and the reform of political and economic social institutions, but the latter were subordinated to the immediate military goals of defeating regional commanders and establishing a new and strong central government in China. The structural integration of the women’s movement into the nationalist revolutionary movement (1922–7), whereby feminism became linked to a social alternative, marked the turning point in the history of the women’s movement in China (chapter 5), and it also raises a number of fundamental questions concerning the integration of feminism and political movements. How did the expanded women’s movement go about soliciting the support of peasant and working women and attempt to establish a mass base to the women’s movement? What is the relationship between feminist struggle and the struggles of the oppressed? What conditions make for co-operation or conflict between the women’s movement and the wider revolutionary movements? What are the revolutionary theories or strategies that accords a distinct place to women’s oppression and their movement?

Following the split between the Communist Party and Guomindang Party in 1927 and the suppression of the Communist wing of the nationalist revolution, the Guomindang Party as the government turned to the traditional ideology of Confucianism and nurtured the traditional economic relations based on land rents, and the new economic relations of capitalism in the urban areas. They solicited and increasingly came to rely on foreign aid to restore national unity, mend the social fabric and defeat the Japanese invaders. However, the government was challenged by the growing revolutionary movement led by the Communist Party, which introduced a new ideology and new economic relations based on the writings of Marx, Lenin and later Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) and the experiences of the Soviet Union. The 1930s and 1940s were punctuated by periods of co-operation, mutual tolerance and deadly rivalry or civil war between the two. The division of China into two areas, one governed by Chiang Kai-shek and the Guomindang Party and the other by Mao Zedong and the Communist Party, provides a unique opportunity to follow the development and fate of the women’s movement within a decaying semi-feudal society with capitalist trappings (chapter 6) and a burgeoning socialist society (chapter 7). Its study raises the questions which are of great relevance to the reform versus revolution debate within the women’s movement. What are the differing political and social interests affected by the demands of women and how far can they be accommodated within certain political and economic systems? How can government policies affect the composition and platforms of the women’s movement? Is a change in the socio-economic structure of society necessary to the redefinition of the position of women? Must women wait till after the revolution to achieve their aims? What are the effects of economic development and modernisation on the status of women in rural and urban areas?

The proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 marked the beginning of a nationwide attempt to introduce new political, social and economic institutions in China. A number of major reforms were initiated in the early and middle 1950s: land reform, involving the redistribution of land and the organisation of peasants; the publicisation of the new Marriage Law; the founding of modern industry and the gradual displacement of individualized peasant production by collectivised agriculture. The period of the Great Leap Forward which followed from 1958 to 1960 is perhaps best known for the formation of the new forms of rural social organisation (the people’s communes), its utopian flavour, and the subsequent expansion of production. From the 1960s and culminating in the Cultural Revolution, the emphasis has been on the further consolidation of new forms of social organisation, socialist education to raise the political awareness of the people and the struggle against bureaucratic, routinised, capitalist and feudal forms of thought and behaviour. Within the context of these general programmes designed to change the economic base and create new social institutions and values, the women’s movement has worked to introduce the new policies and support the interests of women.

The history of the women’s movement since 1949 provides an opportunity to study its strategy, its theoretical basis and implementation in practice, in a developing socialist society (chapters 8–11). The relationship between the role...