Socialist Feminism brings together the most important recent socialist feminist writings on a wide range of topics: sex and reproduction, the family, wage labor, social welfare and public policy, the place of sex and gender in politics, and the philosophical foundations of socialist feminism.

Records the forging of the first Marxist feminist party in history -- the Freedom Socialist Party. Set in the tumultuous upsurges of the 1960s and '70s, Gloria Martin vividly describes the eruption of the women's liberation movement amidst the antiwar and civil rights struggles. Martin documents early lesbian and gay coalitions, the fight to legalize abortion in Washington State, radical labor organizing, community mobilizations against police brutality and poverty, campus upsurges, and the growth of the FSP's sister organization, Radical Women. She scathingly critiques the role of the Socialist Workers Party and other Left groups typified by sexism and opportunism. To them, she contrasts the Freedom Socialist Party's multi-issue focus on reaching those most oppressed as workingclass people of color, women, and sexual minorities. From the on-the-ground perspective of a seasoned organizer, Martin probes with a sharp scalpel the internal conflicts in the movements for social change. This is a story of years of intense work by radical women and men. It is a chronicle, a reference, an analysis, a judgment, and a guidebook. Its central message is inescapable: socialist feminism as a theme and strategy has never been more urgently needed than it is today.

A personal and political manifesto vying for an antiracist socialist feminist movement of movements The world is burning, flooding, and politically exploding, to the point where it’s become clear that neoliberal feminism—the kind that aims to elect The First Woman President—will never be enough. In this book, Zillah Eisenstein asks us to consider what it would mean to thread “socialism” to feminism; then, what it would mean to thread “abolitionism” to socialist feminism. She asks all of us, especially white women, to consider what it would mean to risk everything to abolish white supremacy, to uproot the structural knot of sex, race, gender, and class growing from that imperial whiteness. If we are to create a revolution that is totally liberatory, we need to pool together in a new working class, building a radical movement made of movements. Eisenstein’s manifesto is built on almost half a century of her antiracist socialist feminist work. But now, she writes with a new urgency and imaginativeness. Eisenstein asks us not to be limited by reforms, but to radicalize each other on differing fronts. Our task is to build bridges, to connect disparate and passionate people across aisles, state lines, picket lines, and more. The genius force demanding that we abolish white supremacy can also create a new “we” for all of us—a humanity universally accepting of our complexities and differences. We are in uncharted waters, but that is exactly where we need to be.

Finding Women in the State is a provocative hidden history of socialist state feminists maneuvering behind the scenes at the core of the Chinese Communist Party. These women worked to advance gender and class equality in the early PeopleÕs Republic and fought to transform sexist norms and practices, all while facing fierce opposition from a male-dominated CCP leadership from the Party Central to the local government. Wang Zheng extends this investigation to the cultural realm, showing how feminists within ChinaÕs film industry were working to actively create new cinematic heroines, and how they continued a New Culture anti-patriarchy heritage in socialist film production. This book illuminates not only the different visions of revolutionary transformation but also the dense entanglements among those in the top echelon of the party. Wang discusses the causes for failure of ChinaÕs socialist revolution and raises fundamental questions about male dominance in social movements that aim to pursue social justice and equality. This is the first book engendering the PRC high politics and has important theoretical and methodological implications for scholars and students working in gender studies as well as China studies.

From an international perspective, the contributors reassess the political and theoretical status of the feminist movement in relation to other political parties, the trade unions, the medical hierarchy, and Third World liberation movements.

Fourteen provocative papers on the oppression of women in capitalist countries, along with three articles on the subordinate position of women in two communist countries, Cuba and China. These important, often path-breaking articles are arranged in five basic sections, the titles of which indicate the broad range of issues being considered: Introduction; motherhood, reproduction, and male supremacy; socialist feminist historical analysis; patriarchy in revolutionary society; socialist feminism in the United States. The underlying thrust of the book is toward integrating the central ideas of radical feminist thought with those pivotal for Marxist or socialist class analysis.