Promissory Notes: Women and the Transition to Socialism

Revolutionary socialist movements have held out the promise, in both theory and practice, that women can achieve liberation through their participation in the revolutionary process. But many women in post-revolutionary societies have watched in frustration as this promise has been pushed into the future or dropped from the agenda altogether. The essays in Promissory Notes renew the debate about the connections between feminism and socialism by examining the position of women in socialist thought from the time of Marx to the present. The book looks at the central theoretical formulations of the "Woman Question" in classical Marxist thought, then explores their applications first in the Soviet Union and China, then in a series of third world regimes and contemporary Eastern European countries. The volume ends with a roundtable debate in which a number of scholars and activists take up the central theoretical issues raised throughout the book. Contributors include Joan B. Landes, Elizabeth Waters, Wendy Zeva Goldman, Christina Gilmartin, Muriel Nazzari, Maxine D. Molyneux, Sonia Kurks and Ben Wisner, Christine Pelzer White, Amrita Basu, Marilyn B. Young, Mary Buckley, Barbara Einhorn, Martha Lampland, Lourdes Beneria, Zillah Eisenstein, Delia D. Aguilar, Delia Davin, Kumari Jayawardena, and Rayna Rapp.