During communalism women played a leading role in the society. There was a division of labor that developed in which for the most part men hunted and the women gathered in order to provide food for the collective.” History teaches us that the class or social group that plays the principal role in social production and performs the main functions in production must, in the course of time, inevitably take control of that production. There was a time, under the matriarchal, when women were regarded as the controllers of production. Why was this? Because under the kind of production then prevailing, primitive agriculture, women played the principal role in production, they performed the main functions, while the men roamed the forests in quest of game. Then came the time, under the patriarchal, when the predominant position in production passed to men. Why did this change take place? Because under the kind of production prevailing at that time, stock-breeding, in which the principal instruments of production were the spear, the lasso, and the bow and arrow, the principal role was played by men.” It was from the gathering that women learned that some of the plants could heal certain illnesses and thus women became the first doctors. It was women who discovered that you could start putting the seeds of the plants in the ground and from that process grow crops. It was women who discovered agriculture. It was women who figured out the relationship between having sex and a baby being produced some nine months later. Women were the first and primary teachers of both the boys and girls in the society. Women were responsible for organizing the collective.
It was when private property emerged, and as communalism gave way to slavery and feudalism, that the exploitation of humanity and women began. The overthrow of mother-right was the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude, she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children. Individualism and tendencies to private ownership grew while communalism disintegrated and the collective spirit declined. The increase of production in all branches—cattle raising, agriculture, domestic handicrafts—gave human labor-power the capacity to produce a larger product than was necessary for its maintenance…. It was now desirable to bring in new labor forces. War provided them; prisoners of war were turned into slaves. With its increase of the productivity of labor, and therefore of wealth, and its extension of the field of production, came the first great social division. From the first great social division of labor arose the first great cleavage of society into two classes; masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited.
