The Morning Star publishes the speech by writer and editor JULIA BARD of the Jewish Socialists’ Group given at the paper’s annual conference at the weekend
Women’s oppression, the origins of the family and the condition of the working class
The Star publishes here an abridged version of Engels Memorial Lecture given by PROFESSOR MARY DAVIS at the Marx Memorial Library earlier this week
Peasant Woman Cooking by a Fireplace by Vincent Van Gogh
Engels’ essay on our origins and distinctiveness built on Darwin’s own exploration of human evolution and has provided a framework for exploration and research which has stood the test of time, declares the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
ANSELM ELDERGILL looks at the legality of the wars in the Middle East and the means used to fight them. It is said that truth is the first casualty of war, so what is the truth with regard to the legality of America’s and Israel’s wars in Iran, Palestine and Lebanon?
Long before modern labour movements, England’s farmworkers fought back against their oppression – and for some, like Elizabeth Studham, the price was exile to Australia. MAT COWARD tells the story
As world leaders posture and local politicians bore, voters are left with a grim choice: despair, disengage — or start imagining something better, says MATT KERR
CARLOS MARTINEZ reports on China’s role in helping Cuba develop self-sufficiency in renewable energy, which would shield it from the sort of pain Donald Trump is inflicting with his oil blockade
THE great significance of Friedrich Engels’s Origins of the Family, Private Property & the State is that it is one of the first Marxist analyses of development of family and origins of women’s oppression (the first was August Bebel’s Women & Socialism, 1879) — a subject in which most men were uninterested.
A short summary of Origins
Much is made of the shortcomings of the anthropological evidence employed by Engels who drew much of his empirical material from two 19th-century anthropologists, Morgan and Bachofen.
Similar stories
Professor MARY DAVIS argues that feminism has been hollowed out by liberal co-option – and only a revival of socialist, class-based politics can restore International Working Women’s Day’s original, radical purpose
The legacy of socialist feminists such as Alexandra Kollontai challenges us today to confront an uncomfortable truth: framing prostitution as empowerment lets the abusers of the Epstein class off the hook, warns HELEN O’CONNOR
In Part 4 of her look at the Chinese revolution JENNY CLEGG addresses the relationship between the Peasant Movement and the National Movement
Speaking to a CND meeting in Cambridge this week, SIMON BRIGNELL traced how the alliance’s anti-communist machinery broke unions, diverted vital funds from public services, and turned workers into cannon fodder for profit