Feminism and Marxism: ways of interaction in different societies

The article is devoted to the interaction of two philosophical socio-political theories that appeared in the 19th century - feminism and Marxism. Feminism as a philosophy and a socio-political movement was based on the concept of equal rights for citizens of the state, which women did not receive after the bourgeois revolutions in the states of Europe and America and which they as an oppressed group in society sought. Another theory that defended the oppressed, Marxism, was based on a class approach to the structure of society. At the beginning of the 20th century in Russia, the paths of equal rights activists (the representatives of the Russian feminist movement), who involved representatives of all strata of the population, including the proletariat and Marxists advocating for class unity of fighters against the bourgeoisie, diverged. A. Kollontai, who headed a group of female workers at the First All-Russian Women’s Congress organized by feminists, opposed vigorously the unification of proletarian women with «bourgeois women», considering it harmful to the unity of the workers’ social democratic movement, which would overthrow the bourgeois system. After the victory of the Bolsheviks in October 1917, Kollontai implemented the women’s policy of the new Soviet state based on Marxist-Leninist ideas, which improved the position of women in pre-revolutionary Russia. In the 20th century, Western feminist researchers developed several directions, using the key provisions of the theory of Marx and Engels: appropriation of surplus value created by a woman providing domestic care for a working husband, i. e. ensuring the restoration of the labour force; appropriation of women’s labour in the reproduction of labour force - exploitation of the reproductive function in the interests of the capitalists; double burden of working women - unpaid «second» or «third» working days.