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| | Socialist Feminism |
 | | Exactly a century ago Engels consigned the ideas and hopes of the first British socialists, the Owenites, to a Utopian prehistory of scientific socialism, a period of 'crude theories' and 'grand fantasies' which had to be superseded by historical materialism before the communist struggle could be waged on a sound, scientific basic. |
 | | Feminism was therefore not merely an ancillary feature of the socialist project, but one of its key motivating impulses. |
 | | Unlike later socialist movements, in which working people organised as proletarians, the Owenites were organising against the process of proletarianisation, believing that through economic co-operation and the re-moulding of human character they could effectively short-circuit capitalist social relations. |
| faculty.goucher.edu /history231/taylor_socialist_feminism.htm (1929 words) |
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