Volume 18, Number 7 · April 20, 1972
Women: What Is to be Done?
By Richard Sennett
The Dialectic of Sex
by Shulamith Firestone
Bantam, 274 pp., $1.25 (paper)
Women's Estate
by Juliet Mitchell
Pantheon, 208 pp., $5.95
In 1920 the German communist Clara Zetkin had a long talk with Lenin on the subject of women. Lenin railed against what now would be called the 'consciousness-raising' groups radical women in Germany were then conducting: 'The first state of proletarian dictatorship is battling with the counter-revolutionaries of the whole world,' he told her, '…but active Communist women are busy discussing sex problems and the forms of marriage.' Zetkin stood her ground. These discussions were necessary, she argued, to clear away the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Lenin and Zetkin talked and talked, they seemed close to an understanding, Lenin took her arguments seriously. Then, ushering her out at the end of the interview, 'You should dress more warmly,' he suggested. 'Moscow is not Stuttgart. You need someone to look after you.'
Review, 4130 words
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