This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
Maoist Internationalist Movement

Women's Liberation in China


by Claudie Broyelle
Humanities Press, 1977

This is one of the most politically advanced books on the question of wimmin's liberation in the world. We don't agree with all of it, but we should give it a read-through, because there is too little in the world of what this book contributes.

One of Broyelle's most interesting observations about China is that children appear not to have a big distinction between "break" and study/work. She claims it appeared to her that children were "less bored" than in France.

Broyelle also makes a big point on the idea that raising children should not be taken over by experts. She says that French mothers want to potty-train babies at 8 months and should be allowed to do so despite the advice of experts. This is a point MIM is uncertain of--being able to distinguish bourgeois selfishness of the family from anti-expert attacks. Perhaps there really is a best time to potty-train babies.

Followers of MIM theory will also note Broyelle say,

"women are not only repressed, but also repressing." (p. 104)
This is in reference to children, an idea MIM has run with much further, because we see a great gap between France and China. Even so, Broyelle did say the following about where the wimmin's movement was going in the West before MIM came up with the phrase "gender aristocracy":
"Since when have the oppressed demanded the right to do as the oppressors do?" (p. 140)
She rips into Freudian ideas about sexual pleasure and the idea that the 1960s really did attack bourgeois sexual morality. Her defense of China's rigid monogamy will exasperate every last lifestyle anarchist.

Broyelle also takes the position that all sex is commodified under capitalism.

"It makes no difference whether this commodity changes hands legally or illegally, with society's blessing or without it between people of the opposite sex or the same sex-- it is still a commodity. We must ask ourselves what function our sexual culture serves in our society. That is the fundamental question, and it must be answered before anything else."(p. 139)
Broyelle is no dumb lifestyle Liberal.

Another area of controversy might be that Broyelle overdoes the difference between Mao's China and Stalin's USSR on the womyn question. It's not something to answer right here and we welcome Broyelle's discussion of the point. For example, she says the Soviet Union forbade the adoption of orphans, but Mao's China made sure it happened.(p. 131) This again is Broyelle attacking the role of the state in rearing of children. While we agree with her that the state role in the West ends up being blame on the mother for failures raising children, it is not clear to MIM that that is also true of the Soviet Union under Stalin.

According to Broyelle, the USSR's sexual liberal phase of the 1920s amounted to letting wimmin be equal with men in their sexual experiences. In contrast, China pushed down on men to make them equal with wimmin according to Broyelle.(p. 145) MIM found some particular combination of explanations not entirely convincing especially regarding love being neither the most important thing nor so unimportant that it can be done without. There are moments where it sounds like the line is a justification for expedience by the state, one giant arranged marriage institution. Moreover, Broyelle is correct to say that currently all sex is tied up with sexual repression. We can only steer toward a revolutionary sexuality, not achieve it in one swoop.

At the same time, MIM found a Chinese example of a criticism of the trashy guru line that people should "fall in love with political line."

"He was filled with the spirit and fire of revolution and was worshipped by a whole group of women students. One day some of the women got together to talk about why the comrade had so many women admirers. 'Several of you are in love with this comrade,' said one of the women. 'I've been told that you love him for his revolutionary qualities, but I'm not convinced of that. I think there's another reason which I'd like you to consider carefully. Because of his qualities this comrade has great prestige among intellectuals. We have given him important responsibilities. He is listened to. Those who are troubled or confused willingly go to see him, to talk to him and to ask for his advice and help. This is only natural. But, I ask you, isn't it precisely because he is such luminary that he is 'loved' by so many girls? Isn't it really his leadership that they love? That's what I feel. And that's why I think there's something bourgeois about this infatuation."(p. 151)
This is exactly what MIM has been saying about the difference between capitalism and socialism. It is a great advance over arranged marriage (feudalism) to fall in love with someone's political line, but for two decades it has been up to MIM and MIM alone to indicate why that superficially Maoist approach is not in fact Maoist and not a road into the communist future. Once we dispense with political line as a basis for love or gender relations of any kind, we return to sex and we must have a theory about the future of sex. Exaggerated Maoism turned into guru politics has been a hiding place for reducing gender to class. There is no getting around dealing with the question of all coercion in all sex. The above quote is an example of the Chinese comrades saying that females will continue to eroticize power under socialism and it's no step forward from capitalism. The same goes for all the fascination for politically correct couples today in the imperialist countries.

One of the best parts of the book is the sense of struggle with actual people and not just mythologized perfection. Some of the negative outlooks on wimmin's liberation that Broyelle saw the dictatorship of the proletariat repress came to power and changed China soon after Broyelle's publication of the book. Especially the question of wimmin working at all took a major turn for the worse, on a national level, along the lines Broyelle explained were popular among revisionists. Ironically though, wimmin took over in the fields as part of revisionism's program to keep wimmin out of new major businesses and professions.

Again, our Christians masquerading as Freudians or labor aristocracy philistines never get tired of pornography regarding Mao's persynal life, but they have nothing to say about what Broyelle was talking about. China did change color along the lines that Broyelle was worried and that is what is important. We can read her book as a prediction of sorts about the contours of class struggle. People bad-mouthing Mao today need to go back and look at what happened to the condition of wimmin since Mao's disappearance from the political stage.

Much of the book is relevant to the Third World but not to the imperialist countries. The largest part of the book is about hard-driving workers in what would be the productive sector under capitalism seeking to modernize China. MIM is somewhat afraid that some impressionable artistic types may read this book and fantasize that they are peasants or kettle workers in Mao's China and not parasites in an imperialist country. It is necessary to translate what Mao did into conditions for imperialist countries headed toward socialist joint dictatorship of the oppressed nations proletariat. Thus far, only MIM has done that in the imperialist countries.