Making of a German Constitution : a Slow Revolution

Discontent in the Bürgerliche Society 1900–1933 • 229und der Sozialismus showed his underdevelopment as a Marxist. Evans found thatthe work could not be counted as a part of the canon, because it had ‘origins outsidethe Marxist tradition’. 78 ‘The historical picture presented in this book’, he reasoned,was ‘more liberal than socialist’. 79 In the same spirit, Moira Donald argued that it‘revealed an incomplete understanding of Marxism’. 80 In this interpretation, the centralposition of women in Die Frau und der Sozialismus was set aside as a curiousoddity, while scholars searched for the true Marxism in Bebel’s political thought.These interpretations suffered from an incomplete understanding of the centrality ofgender in the development of German political ideology on the whole.Since the 1980s, alternative methodologies have been employed to interpretBebel’s work within the German feminist movement, positing the existence of Marxistfeminism. Jean Quataert focused not on political ideology, but on the activitiesof what she termed ‘socialist feminists’, and identified Bebel as a feminist. 81 In hisanalysis of the feminist movement, Evans also viewed Bebel as a feminist. 82 Themost recent analysis, Men’s Feminism, by Anne Lopes and Gary Roth, has subjectedBebel to a Foucauldian analysis. They argue that many of his ideas were ‘eigenartig’,and that a Foucauldian genealogical analysis will make sense of ‘the out rightlytrivial and provides explanations for the sudden shifts in his views’. 83The feminist interpretation, however, does not adequately capture the deep politicsof the place of gender in Bebel’s writing and social democratic constitutionalism.Die Frau und der Sozialismus continued the gendered political discourse establishedby Grimm and Bachofen in German political thought. Indeed, Bachofen’s influencewas revealed not only in the content of the work, but in its very construction. The firstand second chapters are entirely dedicated to the evolution of the ‘Urgesellschaft’,namely the transitions from ‘Promiskuität’ to ‘Mutterrecht’ to the dissolution of thegens with the rise of patriarchy. 84 Accordingly, in the opening paragraphs of the chapter,‘Die Stellung der Frau in der Urgesellschaft’, Bebel clearly indicated the symbolicmeaning of the feminine in socialist ideology. He wrote that the condition ofwomen and workers had very much in common, but that ‘she was the first in humanexistence to be enslaved’. 85 The origin of exploitation extended from the hetaericprimordial epoch. He then described the changed conditions under Mutterrecht withthe rise of the gens, and that ‘property remained [collectively held] in the gens’. 86‘One spoke’, as he wrote of ‘matrimonium instead of patrimonium, of mater familiasinstead of pater familias, and the homeland was called, lovingly, Mutterland.’ 87 Withthe rise of patriarchy, however, ‘Mutterrecht disappeared and patriarchy emerged inits place ... man as the owner of the private property legitimated and looked after theinterests of the children.’ 88Die Frau und der Sozialismus was one of the most influential works of the period.Despite the tremendous role it played in awakening women to feminism, Bebelshould not be classified as a feminist. Rather, his theoretical ideals about gender werederived from Bachofen and rest squarely within the legal anthropological traditionof socialist political thought. The place of gender in his thinking was not peculiar,