Abstract
In my article ‘A very tangled knot’ I argued that official state socialist women’s organizations and their members ‘both were and were not agents on behalf of women, at times even actively preventing women’s agency’. I analyzed the concept of agency, and claimed that what is important is proactive agency, acting on what one wills, and that many in official state socialist women’s organizations could not be proactive, or at best could be so only in limited ways. I also made an epistemic argument that evidence offered by feminist revisionist authors did not establish women’s agency throughout the whole period of 1945–1989, and that more nuanced, limited claims regarding women’s agency would more closely reflect the realities of the period.
In ‘Untangling the knot: A response to Nanette Funk’, Kristen Ghodsee purports to challenge my claims. I appreciate this opportunity to respond to the points raised by Ghodsee, and to elaborate on my position. I propose to grant some points to Ghodsee in a constructive spirit and for the sake of greater clarity, but her main objections miss the mark, misinterpreting as they do my argument.
In the original article, I argued that at best the feminist revisionist literature I reviewed showed women acting proactively on their own principles, policies, and commitments only in some instances. I further claimed that the evidence was limited to the period up to 1955, did not extend to the whole of the 1945–1989 period, and did not always show that women were benefited. Ghodsee claims that women in state socialist women’s organizations did act proactively on their own principles, policies, commitments, and initiatives because many were committed to ‘the ideals of communism’, or were ‘ideological adherents to the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism’ or wanted: … to improve the lives of women: to expand education, to provide kindergartens for working mothers, to ensure social safety nets for widows and divorcees, etc. (Ghodsee, 2015: 249)
Some members of official state socialist women’s organizations certainly adhered to some of these principles, some of which are more abstract than others. But we do not know how many or what percent did, and it would certainly vary according to the time period and in relation to specific principles. Some women were members of state socialist women’s organizations solely to fulfill the political obligation to be active in an organization; others joined solely out of careerist interests, yet others only to follow instructions to do so. Nor was it only non-communist women in official women’s organizations who could not act as they willed and in a way that reflected their own wishes, as Ghodsee seems to presume, but also many women committed to socialist and communist principles. To think otherwise is to confuse principles and their application. One can agree with principles enshrined in the ‘communist’ state, but disagree with how they are applied, as both communist and non-communist women did at various junctures, and thus felt themselves unable to act as they willed. The gap between principle and application is greater the more abstract the principle, as in a guideline to work according to ‘the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism’.
Thus, basing themselves on Marxist principles, some communist women in official women’s organizations believed their organizations should be active in the workplace and as a separate women’s organization. Yet at times these concrete policies were opposed by central committees or the official women’s organizations. Basing themselves on Marxist principles, the Democratic Women’s League of Germany (DFD) in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) wanted to continue focusing their work on the workplace in 1949, but they were forced to restrict themselves to working in neighborhoods. In 1965 the majority communist leadership of the DFD and its members wanted the DFD, which in the interim had been granted permission to be active in the workplace, to continue to represent women’s interests, but the state subordinated them to the general trade union. Elli Schmidt, longtime Communist Party member (KPD) and head of the DFD in 1948 wanted the DFD to be active also with women workers in agricultural and consumer cooperatives, yet the Party refused. I do recognize that some women in state women’s organizations were committed to communist ideals. However, some of these very women were nonetheless unable to act as they willed (a will based on those selfsame principles), and were dismayed by policies which appeared to them to violate those principles.
Ghodsee suggests some women activists may have been acting as they willed, wanting to advance women’s interests within ‘the constraints of communism’. I do not doubt that some women so acted or believed they did, but this in itself shows how difficult it was for women to act proactively at that time. Moreover, at a certain point this rationale becomes self-deception: namely, hiding from oneself that one has become a person who ceases to do anything meaningful to advance women’s interests as women understand them, or even that one’s actions undermine the application of the very principles to which one is supposedly committed. When one is constrained to primarily promoting homemaking activities, and providing some social centers for women, as happened to many state socialist women’s organizations, rationally speaking, this is no longer compatible with being able to act in meaningful ways to advance women’s best interests.
Ghodsee offers four possible reconstructions of my argument, but I must say I do not recognize my argument in any of them. In each she ascribes to me a different hidden or suppressed premise necessary for my argument, each of which she claims is implausible. However, these reconstructions are ‘strawmen’ arguments for a position that is not mine, based on implausible suppressed premises that are not mine, and which can be easily debunked. In all her versions Ghodsee construes my argument to be that it is impossible for anyone to be proactive in state socialist women’s organizations. I did not argue this, and it could not have been my conclusion, since I cited instances in which women in state socialist organizations were in fact proactive. What I did argue was something quite different: namely that (1) it was empirically the case that as a matter of fact, at many different times, many women in state socialist women’s organizations could not be proactive, that it was most often difficult to be proactive, and usually only in a very limited way; and (2) that on the contrary, the evidence offered did not establish women’s agency throughout the life of state socialist women’s organizations. Ghodsee never proves any of these claims to be false.
In her last reconstruction Ghodsee suggests that my argument may be that women are only able to act as they will ‘if those who disagree with the policies of the state’, ‘including those “who hold beliefs anathema to communism” ’ are able to do so. The latter phrase refers to the disagreement of non-communist women. Though this is not my argument, it should be noted that non-communist women, even those who hold beliefs ‘anathema to communism’ do not necessarily disagree in any particular instance just because of those beliefs. Non-communist women hold many different beliefs, and their disagreement in any particular instance can stem from a principle they hold in common with communist women, e.g., to help working women. To claim otherwise is akin to a common state socialist argument that all critics of existing state socialism were anti-communists.
What I do grant in the interests of clarity is that, for several reasons, I focus on the lack of agency of those who wanted to do something different from what their organization did, while Ghodsee focuses on those who agreed with state decisions on their organizations’ direction and activities. I do so, first, because the revisionist feminist literature I reviewed refers to just such cases as evidence of women’s agency. Second, what women wanted is more discernible in those cases. Ghodsee is right to suggest that it is possible that some women were proactive agents, even while agreeing with policy, especially the very few highly placed bureaucrats. However, when one acts in accordance with proclaimed policy, as I stated in the article, it is difficult to establish whether one is doing so because of one’s own will, or because of an ‘adaptive preference’, based on having adapted and molded one’s will to whatever the authorities decide, just because that is the official policy, even if one was otherwise opposed to it. Proactively supporting a policy is not the same as strategically supporting a policy only because it is unwise to oppose it, or because one is simply acquiescing to whatever policy is in place by following orders and remaining agnostic about its content. One needs to distinguish between the autonomous agent in the usual sense, and the loyal agent in the service of a paymaster. In the latter case, it does not have the same import to say that one acted in accordance with one’s own will, since what one willed changed according to the will of one’s superior. Moreover, women who willed what the authorities also wanted were able to ‘act as they wished’, as Ghodsee states, but only because they agreed with the authorities. This itself shows the difficulties and constraints on being able to act as one willed in state socialist women’s organizations. If the only women who could act on their own will were those who agreed with state policy, were they acting freely? If you do not want to go out, and the door is locked in any case, are you freely doing what you want?
I would also grant, with caveats, that even later in the history of official women’s organizations some women sometimes had a certain kind of agency. However, this requires making several distinctions that Ghodsee does not make, and which I hinted at, but did not have room to develop in ‘A very tangled knot’. Using categories in part developed by Diana Meyers, one has to distinguish between episodic, programmatic and structural agency, as well as between degrees of each.
By episodic agency I mean deciding in particular situations, when, where and exactly how to implement or apply a program. Thus, once the Party in the GDR decided to draw more women into socialist organizations by organizing cultural activities outside the workplace in the 1970s, DFD members had limited episodic agency about exactly when, where and which particular cultural activities to organize.
Programmatic agency is proactively proposing, influencing or initiating laws, policies, and programs; for example, a program to draw women into the women’s organization. One can speak of weak programmatic agency of those who simply support a program but did not create it, but only if this was not a strategic acquiescence, simply following orders, or an adaptive preference. Some DFD women who assented to organizing cultural activities for women could be said to have exercised weak programmatic agency. But this contrasts with the full-fledged or strong programmatic agency of DFD members who actively initiated and developed the laws on women, marriage, children, and the family and the principle that men and women have equal rights from 1949 to 1955.
By structural agency I mean proactively proposing, influencing or creating the institutional structures of the women’s organizations and the offices in it, their functions, how decisions were made and elections held, and their relation to other institutions. Weak structural agency is supporting what the authorities have established, so long as this was not based on an adaptive preference or strategic acquiescence, and it was what one would have proposed if one could. In the GDR in 1965 it was the Party, not the DFD, that decided that the DFD should be subordinated to the unions, something hardly supported by any members. It was not the general membership that decided in 1956–1961 that the DFD presidium be chosen by the executive committee, rather than by the delegates to the DFD federal congress.
The degree of agency refers to the range of options one has. Thus, in the GDR the Party initiated the program to reconcile women’s home and work responsibilities, and the DFD members could decide on the rules for washing machines they had installed in the workplace for women to be better able to do the family laundry. However, they could not choose whether to do so in apartment buildings, neighborhood laundromats or the workplace, or whether men should also be doing the family laundry. This was a limited degree of episodic agency; some may have also supported this policy, and thus have also had a weak degree of programmatic agency. Mere support for a policy, program or institutional structure is a lesser degree of programmatic or structural agency than being able to proactively influence the policy or structure.
What I claim is that in some countries women had a limited degree of episodic agency, but most had at best only a weak degree of programmatic or structural agency. They were able to simply support a policy or institutional structure already decided on, but not to initiate one, with the possible occasional exception of a small number of elite leaders of the women’s organizations. Episodic agency, by its very nature, is much narrower and more circumscribed than programmatic agency. Most women’s episodic agency was also limited primarily to welfare agency directly assisting women. Ghodsee may be right that ‘many women’ in official state socialist women’s organizations acted on their own will, but she obscures both the periods in which this was true, the nature of that assent and of the agency. The more important the kind of agency, the less most women had of it. I acknowledged that prior to 1955, women in the GDR sometimes had strong programmatic agency.
Ghodsee rejects my concept of agency as acting as one wills. She counters that agency cannot extend to harming others. Of course, all agents are morally so constrained. But perhaps Ghodsee means that constraints on women’s organizations were all done to prevent harm to others. But this was simply not the case. If it were true, why would a Politburo in some cases later approve the very practice it first prohibited, such as the DFD being active in the workplace in the GDR? In fact, the Politburo had prohibited DFD workplace activity, not because it was harmful, but because the Party had at first acceded to the male-dominated unions’ wish to have exclusive power in the workplace.
What is true is that within any political organization, one does not always agree with all the programs and practices, and in that sense one cannot invariably act as one wills, even if it would not endanger others to do so. But if one has a meaningful say in determining policy, procedures, and organizational leaders, one has at least indirectly willed the organizational decisions. Official state socialist women’s organizations were not run like that. Or not typically. That strikes me as a claim of institutional fact that Ghodsee does not rebut.
Ghodsee further claims I am tainted by anti-communism for ‘ignoring’ US anti-communism in women’s organizations in the United States. My response to this is straightforward: ‘A very tangled knot’ was about state socialism and official state socialist women’s organizations in Eastern Europe, not about women’s organizations in the US! Ghodsee also suggests that state socialist women’s organizations’ earlier exclusion of non-communist women had no bearing on those organizations later on; but those excluded were never welcomed back into the organizations and could never be politically active. Had they not been excluded, the policies and practices of those women’s organizations from which they were excluded might have been different. Non-communist members of those organizations continued to have no power, even when technically in leadership positions, functioning as ‘alibi women’, to show that non-communist women were included in leadership positions. This makes Ghodsee’s analogy with the history of different US women’s organizations – those who practiced anti-communism in the 1940s and 1950s, and other women’s organizations in the 1960s and 1970 who did not – a specious analogy.
As I stated in ‘A very tangled knot’ official women’s organizations were ‘Janus faced’ even with respect to promoting women’s material interests. They advanced, but also harmed, ignored and neglected those interests, including women’s material interests, such as the harsh treatment and work conditions of many women workers, and they did little to address other material interests, such as the need for consumer products, and hardly addressed the harmful aspects of entrenched gender roles. Official women’s organizations were sometimes ‘women friendly’ but also ‘unfriendly to women’. This is an undefined term, but presumably means something weaker than being feminist. I do not reject the concept of ‘state feminism’ tout court, a rejection that Ghodsee ascribes to me, nor am I ‘committed’ solely ‘to political organizing independent of the state’. But whether one can be a ‘state’ feminist depends on the nature of the state, and the degree of compromises one has to make. Showing that women members of the official women’s organizations at times took action that benefited women does not prove that they were feminists, though those instances can be compatible with feminism. At the very least, one has to also show they did not also harm women.
Finally, I would like to add that I do not recognize myself in Ghodsee’s account of me as exhibiting Western conservative ‘lingering effects’ of Cold War thinking. In no way do I deny state socialism’s benefits to women nor the possibility of some women’s limited kinds of agency at some moments in state socialist women’s organizations. A central point I make is that revisionist feminists’ claims of women’s agency in state socialist women’s organizations were overstated and vague, and their evidence does not substantiate their claims. I have tried here to clarify why I made those arguments. Perhaps the number of problems in Ghodsee’s arguments reflects an honest failure to understand my arguments and I have read them in that way. My point was that questions relating to women’s agency are complex, and I tried to ‘untangle’ them in ‘A very tangled knot’, and I have further sought to clarify my position here. I hope Ghodsee agrees with me on the need for very careful argument on this matter, and that other writers make room for it in their discussions.