Those who hold power benefit from the divisive nature of systems of oppression that distract revolutionary parties by pitting them against one another. It is through solidarity that these groups can reform and reimagine societies. In this process, such groups need to identify and embrace difference without allowing such differences to erode solidarity. In The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, Audre Lorde emphasizes that liberation comes through finding a common cause not despite differences but because of differences; she stresses that “in our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower. (1971, p. 112)” Revolutionary parties must recognize the importance and centrality of diverse voices within their communities, learning from the knowledge of people with varied experiences and using this knowledge to reinvent revolutionary action outside the immovable constraints of oppressive systems. The connection between community and revolution is evident in historical contexts such as slavery, where communities were vital for nurturing resistance. Analysis of communities within pre-feudal societies underscores the value of solidarity and cooperation, fostering harmony and resilience within communities, and serves as imaginaries for the future. In this essay, I explore the transformative potential of solidarity and the extent to which the construction of community is integral in processes of deconstructing unjust systems of power. I will particularly be focusing on how such themes of solidarity and community appear in The Combahee River Collective Statement (1977), Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves (1971) written by Angela Davis, Woman and Socialism (1910) written by August Bebel, and Origin of Family, Private Property, and the State (1884) written by Frederick Engels.
The Combahee River Collective: The Combahee River Collective Statement
The Combahee River Collective Statement, written in 1977, is an instrumental document that necessitates the construction of community based on communal comprehension of the compounded institutional systems of oppression. Frustrated by the persistent racism in the women’s movement and sexism in the black liberation movement, The Combahee River Collective formed to battle what they acknowledge as the interlocking issues of racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression (1977, p. 15). The women in the Combahee River Collective recognize their unique and marginalized position at the intersection of sites of oppression; Michele Wallace, referenced in the Combahee River Collective Statement, remarks, “We exist as women who are Black who are feminists, each stranded for the moment, working independently because there is not yet an environment in this society remotely congenial to our struggle—because, being on the bottom, we would have to do what no one else has done: we would have to fight the world. (1977, p. 22)” Dismantling the compounded marginalization of queer black women signifies liberation for queerness, blackness, and womanhood and allows for the existence not only of the individuals at this particular intersection but for everyone who experiences oppression for their blackness, their queerness, and/or their womanhood.
Angela Davis: Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves
From the radical work of the Combahee River Collective, I follow their reference to the ideology of Angela Davis, a prominent revolutionary activist, philosopher, and writer, in the following statement: “[b]lack women have always embodied, if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to white male rule and have actively resisted its inroads upon them and their communities in both dramatic and subtle ways. (1977, p. 16)” This quote emphasizes the absolute power in completely understanding one’s experience and the deep solidarity among black women and between black women and men is rooted in their pursuit for liberty. The Combahee River Collective Statement emphasizes how important it is to recognize a long history of not only oppression against black women, but also their revolutions against such oppression. A clear connection between the ideology of the Combahee River Collective and Angela Davis’ work is their recognition of both the struggles black women experience of intersectional marginalization, but also their incredible capacity for radical change. Davis subverts the image of the docile and complacent slave and speaks at length of the continuous and revolutionary resistance undertaken by enslaved black people. (1977) These accomplishments are the central force and strength of radical social movements and represent a deep history of insurgency against and antipathy for oppressive and relentless systems of power. In the cited work, Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves, Davis speaks to revolutionary potential and realizations of black women subjugated by slavery in that their domestic role within the community allowed them to form a community and therefore a resistance. (1971) Despite the brutal and intentional dismemberment of the family and any communal identity within everyday life, Davis insinuates that the domestic sphere served as a space separate from the overseers where the enslaved people could retrieve their humanity and use this sense of freedom to inspire and unite in revolt. (Davis, 1977, pg. 48-50) And, while black women were not set apart from their black brethren with regard to the dehumanizing and cruel subjugation, the male supremacist ideology of the Americas and of Africa that requires women to manage household duties yields a certain amount of power to black women in the construction of community in the domestic sphere. It was through such communities that enslaved peoples defined their misery, nurtured one another, and recognized the power in their numbers. (Davis, 1977, pg. 48-50) This connection between community and revolution is vital and evident in the slave owners’ conscious and continuous efforts to disrupt any establishment of hierarchy, society, or family structure; “The American brand of slavery strove toward a rigidified disorganization in family life, just as it had to proscribe all potential social structures within which black people might forge a collective and conscious existence.(1971, p. 46)” Sexual domination, principally over enslaved black women, represented a violent and complete violation of the personhood of enslaved black women and denied them autonomy and control of their own bodies; these women were treated as the slave master’s tools for reproduction and pleasure.
August Bebel: Woman and Socialism
I now follow Davis’ reference of the “virgin tax”: a concept introduced by August Bebel, a prominent German socialist politician, writer, and co-founder of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which he discusses in his work Woman and Socialism: the virgin tax institutionalized a slaveholder’s sexual dominion over its subjects, and specific to Davis’ text, enslaved black people. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.) (1971, p.55) Such sexual violation of women serves further as an assault against the community by emasculating black men and stripping them of their patriarchal power over women. Within Medieval Germany, the “virgin tax” demonstrated the absolute control feudal lords maintained over common people and that, if it pleased them, not even a man’s position of power over his wife was privately controlled. (Bebel, 1910, p. 25) In a society that highlighted and valued masculine power, a man was robbed of his dignity and deemed unworthy of protecting his wife if he was unable to prevent his lord from assuming the role of the man in the house by literally performing the ritualistic ceremony of a man inhabiting the body of his wife and possibly even impregnating her. Davis speaks to the legacy of such legislation in the context of slavery: “In launching the sexual war on the woman, the master would not only assert his sovereignty over a critically important figure of the slave community, he would also be aiming a blow against the black man. (1971, pg. 55)” The structures underline the absence of community or solidarity between women and men and how maintained systems of oppression that permit private property, award men ownership over both land and women.
In Chapter 5 of Woman in the Mediaeval Age: The Position of Women among the Germans in his book Women in Socialism, Bebel speaks to the manners in which the role of women changes and the ways it stays static in relation to the development of a politically feudal state (1910, p. 63-78). In pre-feudal Germany, political bodies such as chiefdoms and the marked community –a democratic organization made up of family heads– were structured around communal vibrancy; while families had privately owned abodes, they divided land and resources annually (1910, p. 65). Under feudalism, the church and nobility took control and used their power to enforce a politics of serfdom under which peasants were impoverished and forced into servitude; according to Bebel, “with the rise of the feudal state the position of a great many commoners became considerably worse. (1910, p. 66)” Feudal lords were considered entitled to all property and liberty of the common people, including the “jus primae noctis” (the right of the first night) –also known as “bed-tribute” or “virgin’s tribute”– which entitles a lord the right to have sex with a bride before her newly wedded husband. (Bebel, 1910, p. 25-26) This law treats a woman as property not only of her husband, but primarily as property of the state. Therefore, women experience the multifaceted dehumanizing treatment of subservience to labor and the violation of their bodies as being not entirely their own.
Bebel writes “Women, as a result of constant oppression and a singular education, have become so accustomed to the conception of their rulers, that they still consider this condition quite natural. (1910, p.77)” Women are raised to be subservient to first men and then the state, and mainstream media, education, and government uphold a narrative that validates oppressive male-dominated systems of power. Bebel asserts that women must comprehend the aspects of their oppression and recognize that their experience is not a natural condition but a social construction; it is here that women are able to seek liberation. (1910, p.77) Out of these singular narratives, which do not permit women a role independent of their deference to men, women are not ever offered the freedom and the vivacity of multiple perspectives, let alone ideology that validates and permits diverse representations and modes of existence for female bodies. Under such complete domination, women are unable to develop nurturing and revolutionary communities based on their overlapping experiences of oppression that are vital in imagining a liberated future.
Fredrick Engels: Origin of Family, Private Property, and the State
Much of August Bebel’s explanation and analysis of feudalism comes from the ideology of Fredrick Engels –an economist, political theorist, and revolutionary socialist who worked closely with Karl Marx– book Origin of Family, Private Property, and the State particularly chapter 7 The Gens among Celts and Germans (Zodiac, n.d.) (1884). Engels speaks in more detail about the organizations of communities, specifically the gens: ancient tribal societies, in a pre-feudal society. Such an understanding of pre-feudal society was foundational to Bebel’s presentation of feudalism as threatening the communal nature of society to instead permit individual domination at the expense of the commons. Bebel directly references Engel’s text in the quote, “When the member of a gens gave his own son as a hostage and he was sacrificed by a breach of the agreement, it was the father’s own concern. But if his sister’s son had been sacrificed a sacred gentile right had been violated. The nearest gentile relation by duty bound to protect the boy or youth, had caused his death. He should either not have pledged him, or should have kept his agreement. (Bebel, 1910, pg. 64)” Engels emphasizes here a focus on maternal relations, where a man has an obligation to protect the children of his sister. Bebel builds on Engels’ statement and proposes that, “[m]emories of the old law also caused that profound respect of the German for the female sex […]. He also observed that the courage of the men was kindled to the utmost by the women. (Bebel, 1910, pg. 64-5)” Here, Bebel emphasizes that a man’s responsibility to care for his sister was because of a societal respect for women, but also that pre-feudal societies upheld, to a greater extent, a conscious understanding of the role women played in their communities.
Chapter 7 The Gens among Celts and Germans, Engels explores the transition from communal living to private property, particularly the decline of gens-based social structures mainly in reference to ancient German and Celtic tribes (1884). Engels highlights how, juxtaposed with egalitarian practices of annually dividing land, land ownership became concentrated in the hands of the aristocracy and a working class emerged, where peasants tended the land of the nobility. (1884, paras. 14-18) These texts focused on women’s significant role in ancient tribal communities; women often held prominent positions and enjoyed rights and privileges. Women were not confined to domestic roles, they participated in communal assemblies, and lineage and inheritance were traced maternally, influencing familial connections and property ownership. Such an elevated status stands in contrast to the restricted and monitored position of women within patriarchal structures. (Engels, 1884, para. 4) While Engels speaks indirectly about solidarity, he does focus heavily on community in pre-feudal tribal societies in which women held power. Since these societies were collectively governed, public well-being was valued. Engels writes that “the community cultivated a different piece of land every year, and allowed the land cultivated the previous year to lie fallow or run completely to waste; the population being scanty, there was always enough waste left over to make any disputes about land unnecessary. Only in the course of centuries, when the number of members in the household communities had increased so much that a common economy was no longer possible under the existing conditions of production, did the communities dissolve. (Engels, 1884, para. 18)” This quote explains not only how communities divided arable resources in a manner that prioritized the health of the land and the wellbeing of each family, but it also explains that communities dissolved due to the scarcity of land as a resource, which was caused by population growth. The community is in solidarity with one another in that they promote harmony and cooperation through redistributing the land. In caring for all arable land and ensuring that the land does not go to waste, the communities fostered solidarity with future generations because they ensured the longevity of the resource. It was the destruction of this practice, and the introduction of private property, a division of land that was often not equal nor equitable, that led to the deterioration of communities.
Conclusion
I followed the connection of solidarity, particularly the radical power of community in the Combahee River Collective Statement: where solidarity is necessary to demand liberation for black women at the intersection of blackness and womanhood, to Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves: where black women were central in revolution and solidarity and community were pertinent to survival, to Woman and Socialism: where women’s subjugation under feudalism was contrasted with the vibrant pre-feudal communities that offered women greater freedom, and finally to Origin of Family, Private Property, and the State: on which Bebel discusses at length in his novel, and also speaks to societal conditions pre-feudal and feudal, though with less of an emphasis on gender. In conclusion, it is evident that solidarity and the construction of revolutionary community are foundational elements in the fight against systemic oppression. I chose to focus my conceptual archeology on solidarity, particularly solidarity as the means to combat the divisive nature of systemic oppression, in order to explore the concept of community as revolutionary. It is continually frustrating to see movements actively reject solidarity with one another in order to blindly embrace identity politics that leave those at the intersection of marginalization invisible. Through historical contexts such as slavery and pre-feudal societies, it becomes evident that solidarity and cooperation within communities are vital for nurturing resistance and fostering harmony. It is within nurtured communities where difference is both encouraged and embraced, that radical change becomes a possibility.
References
Bebel, A. (1910). Woman in the Mediaeval Age: The Position of Women among the Germans. Woman and socialism. Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.
Beckles Hilary McD. (1996) ‘Property rights in pleasure: the marketing of slave women’s sexuality in the West Indies’ in McDONALD Roderick (1996) editor, West Indies Accounts: Essays on the History of the British Caribbean and the Atlantic Economy, Kingston: University of the West Indies Press.
Combahee River Collective statement [1977] (2009). African American Studies Center. https://www.reed.edu/cres/assets/Combahee-River-Collective,-Black-Feminist-Statement,-How-We-Get-Free—Taylor.pdf
Davis, A. (1981). Reflections on the Black woman’s role in the community of slaves. The Black Scholar, 12(6), 2-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.1981.11414214
Engels, F. (1884). Origins of the family– Chapter VII. Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch07.htm
Lorde, A. (2003). 1.1 ‘The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’. Feminist Postcolonial Theory, 25-28. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474470254-003
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (n.d.). August Bebel. Holocaust Encyclopedia| United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/august-bebel
Zodiac. (n.d.). Biography on Engels. Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/engels/en-1893.htm