Marx’s Dream

This short story was written as an assignment for my History of Ideas class with Dr. Van Engen. It’s a short story that combines ideas from Sultana in Sultana’s Dream: A Feminist Utopia and Karl Marx, the author of Manifesto of the Communist Party.

In this story, Sultana visits Karl Marx in one of his recurring dreams. Sultana introduces her new society to Marx, which evolved from a revelation received in a dream twenty years earlier. She demonstrates to Marx how her nonviolent revolution achieved a classless society further developed through education, scientific breakthroughs, and redistribution of property.

The goal of Karl Marx’s revolution was communism, also a classless society, that would be achieved by overthrowing the bourgeoisie and initially developed by centralizing property, production, and agriculture. Control of all resources, communication, transportation, and labor is held by the State, which from my point of view, lacks a specific definition. The disparity between their points of view lies in the nature of the oppressors and the oppressed.

I’ve included italicized footnotes in case you want to see the references.

Marx’s Dream

A cold, weary fog lay upon the city of London. Karl was covered in heavy bedclothes to keep the chill off, breathing deeply but mostly snoring. He was deep in a dream, one he often had.

Large wooden double doors adorned with elaborate hardware loomed in front of him as he ascended the steps of a mansion. An army of working-class men followed him, boisterous and excited. He stepped aside as they battered down the door and rushed into the home. Karl stormed into a magnificent bedroom. The owner of the house sat up in his bed, alarmed, then two more heads emerged from under the blankets. The man’s wife and the other woman, his best friend's wife, screamed in horror [1].

“Detain them!” Karl barked at the men behind him.

The naked man, held between two soldiers, struggled to free himself. “Do you know who I am? Let me go at once!” he bellowed.

Karl walked up and faced him directly, “Of course I know who you are. You’re the quiet puppet master that pulls the strings of government officials. Now, you’ll pull the strings we tell you to pull.”

“Bring them to the compound and hold them as hostages!” Karl ordered two burly soldiers armed with guns.

A woman’s soft voice came from behind him as if from inside his head, “Karl, Karl Marx?” Her voice startled him out of his threatening rant. He shook his head as if to clear it and heard his name again, “Karl”.

He turned around to find a beautiful woman in the doorway, dressed in a colorful sari, beckoning him. Everything grew quiet around him as he turned to face her. Entranced, he saw her outstretched hand, so he placed his hand in hers slowly, hypnotically.

“Tell me, Karl, what is happening here? Why are you abducting these people from their home?”

[1] Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives (Marx 488)

“This is a crucial moment, a vital step of the revolution! Karl’s heavy eyebrows furrowed, his voice tense, “The proletariat has finally organized and pooled resources to overthrow the capitalists. What you see happening here is happening all over the world!” [2]

“Oh, I see,” she said calmly as she led him out of the house like a small obedient child. The moon was full and illuminated a cobblestone path. As they walked, the cobblestones soon fell away, and a dirt path bordered by lush ground cover appeared under their feet. Yellow and peach-colored blushes of light emerged from the horizon painting the morning sky. Karl noticed people working together in the garden. Some were singing; a few children ran across their path.

“What is this place?” Karl asked.

Sultana ignored him and responded with a question. “Karl, why did you organize this revolution?”

“Modern Industry has created a society ruled by the bourgeoisie, like the man in the mansion you saw back there! Capitalists have reduced humans to nothing but constant trade. People are paid only enough to survive, so they’re caught in this endless cycle of toil. Machines and factories have made it so that even being a man doesn’t matter anymore! Women can produce just as much as men since humans have become nothing more than appendages of a machine[3]!  Even children are put to work! They’re slaves to a minimum wage[4]. This is inhumane. They must be stopped!”

[2] The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties : formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat (Marx 484).

[3] Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of the machinery, etc. (Marx 479).

[4] What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence (Marx 485).

“I understand, Karl.” Sultana replied empathetically. “We had a revolution of our own recently.”

Karl’s angry face softened and became inquisitive. “What was the nature of your revolution?”

“Society was split into two classes, much like your society. One half of society were oppressors, and the other half oppressed.” [5]

“Half? Karl asked, “In my society, the proletariat class is much larger than the ruling class.” [6]

[5] I expand upon the idea of education to include the realization of womens’ power of reproduction in the revolution that Sultana organizes upon waking from her informative revelation that occurred twenty years earlier based upon this passage,“Education was spread far and wide among women. And early marriage also was stopped. No woman was to be allowed to marry before she was twenty-one. I must tell you that, before this change, we had been kept in strict purdah” (Hossain 11), also in this quote, “If you cannot save your country for lack of physical strength, said the Queen, try to do so by brain power,” (Hossain 13).

[6] Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms: Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat (Marx 474).

“Yes, Karl, the oppressors were men. The men oppressed the other half, the women. It was a form of slavery, similar to your wage slavery where people are held in a stasis of bondage and dependency by being overworked, underpaid, and uneducated. It was the same for us, except that we weren’t paid, had no rights, no voice in government, and were refused an education, even as children. We were exploited not for our labor or any direct contribution to the economy, but for our reproductive power. Our power to produce heirs.”

“Producing heirs,” Karl said. “Your societal imbalance of power before your revolution is the same as in mine. I see now…two gross injustices against the working class and,” his voice trailed off, “and against our women.” Then Karl’s voice escalated, “Did you see the man and the two women we pulled out of bed?” Karl asked her.

“Yes.” she grinned, “how could I miss it?”

“A disgrace! The disrespect of women is deplorable! The prostitution of women spans both classes in my society. The proletarian head of the household farms their wives and children out to the factories as wage laborers working long hours for less pay than the men.”

Sultana watched the blood rise in Karl’s face, coloring his cheeks a bright red above his thick beard.

Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as he gestured wildly with his hands. “They think it will bring more money into their households, but they’re exacerbating the problem by doing exactly what the ruling class wants them to do! The capitalists reduce wages because of a surplus of able-bodied workers. We have no choice but to form a united front to march upon the ruling class and overthrow bourgeois supremacy!”

“You see that ‘your’ women are oppressed across both classes in your world,” Sultana said. “This obviously angers you. Do women hold positions of power in either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat?”

“Well, no!” Karl blustered and realized that he was walking quickly. Sultana was matching his pace. He stopped, took a breath, and looked around. They were in the middle of a village square bustling with people. “There are so many women and girls here. Are the men away at war?” Karl asked.

“No, we aren’t at war, Karl. We’re a nonviolent society,” Sultana answered patiently.

“But you said that you recently went through a revolution yourself. You said the men were like the oppressive bourgeoisie. So, you must have used violent means to overcome them.” Karl leaned away from Sultana with his arms crossed over his chest.

“I suppose it’s hard to grasp since you dream of a violent revolution. But isn’t that exactly how we got to this place, Karl? Violent wars fought to expand land holdings, to increase power by seizing people’s land?”

“But how else would we overthrow a powerful capitalistic ruling class than by violence?” Karl threw up his hands incredulously and faced her squarely.

“Simple refusal.”

“Refusal? To work? To strike, to form unions? We’ve done all of these things, yet the ruling class persists. It is not enough. How can you overthrow a military by refusal?”

“By our refusal to bear children.” She smiled broadly at him and tipped her head to one side. “You see, if our ‘ruling class’, the men, have no children to build their patriarchal land-grabbing empires, what then? We hold reproductive power, so we made demands based upon our refusal to reproduce.”

Karl’s eyes widened, and he asked, “What did the men do?”

“They fought among themselves mostly. They passed laws to outlaw abstinence. Most of it was borne of sexual frustration, I suppose. Our healers circulated an herbal recipe to stop pregnancies from happening and another to end them early on. Women drank these tonics, or learned to navigate their cycles, or simply refused sex. We laced our husbands’ food with phytoestrogens like soy and red clover. That helped to calm them. Some men, of course, went into a rage, and became extremely violent. The women’s Global United Refusal movement was courageous and heroic. Terrible sacrifices were made. Some women were killed. We built refuge communities and found allies to guard the women.”

“Clever…you gained the upper hand by refusal, by withdrawal. A quiet revolution, yes?” Karl asked.

Sultana nodded, “Yes, our intention was nonviolent; however, our oppressors inflicted violence, so it wasn’t free of violence. Because self-defense was necessary for survival, we discovered various means to protect ourselves. Eventually, one of our women scientists developed a heat shield that drove men from the room when we were threatened. It’s built into our bracelets. When activated, men can’t get within twenty feet of us.” [7]

Karl noticed two silver gem-encrusted cuff bracelets on each of Sultana’s wrists.

Sultana continued. “After a few years passed and very few children had been born, they finally realized they were beholden to us if they wanted a society at all. The first of our demands was free education for everyone. With all the time we had freed up, almost every woman finished college [8]. We demanded that 70% of government positions be filled by women. Once women held most of the positions of power in government, laws went into force that were more equitable for everyone. When women were ready to reproduce again, our scientists developed ways to be sure that 70% of children born were girls. It has proven to bring an interesting and newfound balance to our society.

“So that is why I see so few men here?” Karl asked.

“Yes, most of them are older since the women are just now deciding to build their families. It’s been nearly twenty years since the revolution began. The men are occupied in their trades or domestic chores. Many of them teach at the university since the demand for education skyrocketed. They’ve adjusted, and most are happy with this new way of life, especially since we don’t work long hours here. A few hours of common work per day is all that is required.” [9]

7 “Then the Lady Principal with her two thousand students marched to the battlefield, and arriving there directed all the rays of the concentrated sun light and heat toward the enemy. The heat and light were too much for them to bear.”

8 “Our good Queen liked science very much. She circulated an order that all the women in her country should be educated. Accordingly, a number of girls’ schools were founded and supported by the Government. Education was spread far and wide among women (Hossain 11)

9 “How can you find time to do all these? [embroidery work] You have to do the office work as well? Have you not?” “In two hours! How do you manage? In our land the officers, magistrates, for instance, work seven hours daily.”

“But how do you handle the imbalance of men to women when it comes to family life?”

“We have a community of men,” Sultana answered [10]. “Men generally like to wander anyway, so why fight it [10]? We have sex as we wish, we reproduce as we wish. The children follow a matrilineal system, so it really doesn’t matter. Uncles and siblings help to raise the little ones. The fathers of the children aren’t expected to live with the mother of their children, but some choose to. If they live within the same community to be close to their children, most live with their birth family or wherever they like.”

Karl was visibly flustered and appeared to be disoriented. “I must ponder this…it’s brilliant and disturbing, really.”

Sultana looked away, trying to suppress a smile.

He paused and tugged at his beard. “So you refused to bear children, giving you leverage to make demands for education. You demanded to become a part of the democratic process, actually to be a majority!” Karl paced in front of Sultana as he spoke. “But what about property? Who has property rights? Who owns this property?” He waved his hands across the quaint homes surrounding the square, “And this property?” he stamped his foot on the ground of the village square.

Just then, a young woman descended in a sky car and maneuvered it to a rack in the town square. Karl’s mouth dropped open as he watched it land gracefully on the lush ground cover in front of a fountain central to the square.

[10] This is a reversal of the explanation of the community of women by Marx. “The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women (Marx, 488).”

“Sakina!” Sultana ran over to her.

“Hi Sultana, do you need this sky car?” Sakina replied.

“Yes, thank you!” she said as Sakina guided it over to her and passed it, hovering, into Sultana’s hands.

“Hop on, Karl! Let’s go for a ride.” She pushed on the smooth hydrogen balls that provided lift so that the car was nearly touching the ground. “Go ahead, get in the back seat.” Karl climbed hesitantly into the second seat fastened to a wide colorful plank. Sultana pressed the button in front of her and two blades whirled above her head. The sky car ascended quietly. The hydrogen balls gave it lift while the blades simply helped to steer it [11].

“We’ll head east first,” Sultana said. Karl was gripping the handle in front of him with all his might. “Don’t worry, I won’t go too high,” Sultana laughed.

She continued, “We demanded the transfer of all property rights to wives or daughters. We required any land managed by the government be put in trust to councils of women in community allotments for redevelopment.” [12] The panaromic view in front of them showed many more villages like the one they had just been walking through. Each had a village square with homes and fields surrounding them. “With the transfer of land, we formed small self-governing communities with a population cap of three hundred and twenty people to every square mile, about two acres per person.”

[11] “When I asked her what the balls were for, she said they were hydrogen balls and they were used to overcome the force of gravity…she touched a knob and the blades began to whirl (Hossain 17)

[12] “Men, we find, are rather of lower morals and so we do not like dealing with them. We do not covet other people’s land (Hossain 17).

Karl scanned the horizon and saw circular communities as far as his sight would allow. He began to shake his head furiously, “No! No Sultana! You must centralize the control of this property with the State,” Karl argued [13]. “All forms of production and agriculture must be run by the State for the people!”

“Oh, and who is this State? How do you plan to run the government that you are revolutionizing?” She paused and turned around on the sky car to face him squarely, which clearly unsettled him, his knuckles turning white. “Are you the State, Karl?”

“Of course I’m not the State!” he said defiantly. “A transition of power must happen when we gain control before pure communism and a classless society is achieved. Until then, all property will be in the hands of the State. The State will charge rent and develop a graduated tax to benefit society. The State will control all modes of communication and transportation. Our industrial armies will run the factories, farms, and instruments of production.” [14]

[13] The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible. Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production (Marx 490). ]

[14] We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy. 1. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. 2. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff (Marx 477).

“Your form of government is too centralized, Karl. This ‘State’ will hold all the power over all of the people. Don’t you see? Isn’t this power structure that you’re proposing exactly what you’re fighting against? The rise of Modern Industry centralized power in the hands of the ruling class creating the oppression of the working class!” [15]

Karl’s eyes widened in defiance, his cheeks again hot and red, “Would you please turn around?”

Sultana’s face was intent, “Not until you tell me how you intend to keep corruption out of this incredibly condensed seat of power!”

“Through democracy of course!” Sultana shook her head and looked at him pathetically

She turned around on her seat. “Interesting. It sounds like a gross imbalance of power, with men running the show. It almost seems, Karl, like a reversal. With only men in charge, history will repeat itself. Your ‘State’ is simply another form of a ruling class and a working class. And why would the state continue the toxic industries, the factories, the centralized agriculture, when modern industry gave birth to the bourgeoisie?”

[15] The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff (Marx 477).

“The State would improve the conditions, ban child labor, limit the hours of the working day, and pay a fair wage!” Karl proclaimed.

“Open your eyes, Karl. Have you seen one factory? Have you seen smoke spilling from enormous stacks, poisoning our air and water?”

Karl scanned the green fertile landscape, quiet and pastoral. Flocks of sheep and herds of cattle spotted verdant hills [16].

“Here we have no property taxes, no rent. We executed a true redistribution of resources. Each village produces goods for trade based on indigenous materials. The traders travel and negotiate with women of other communities or countries. Men have been banned from the trading profession for now. Common property is shared equally in each community, held by merit and cooperation. Women hold all the private property that was transferred during the revolution. Both are important to our society.”

She pressed a lever, and the sky car began to descend. Karl’s grip lightened on the handle in front of him. He was relieved to see the earth coming up to meet him. He realized that Sultana had landed on the grounds of the mansion in his recurring dream. She landed the sky car and Karl slid off gratefully.

“Karl, someone visited me in a dream twenty years ago and inspired our revolution. I wish you well with yours.” She smiled kindly.

[16] “Our noble Queen is exceedingly fond of botany; it is her ambition to convert the whole country into one grand garden.” (Hossain 15)

Karl looked at her thoughtfully. He stared at the mansion, at the soldiers milling about. “I must go now Sultana; he bowed and kissed the top of her hand, taking a bit longer than would be natural as he examined her bracelet. He walked slowly up the rise. He stopped and paused for a moment. Looking over his shoulder he said, “Thank you” and smiled.

Sultana raised her hand and watched him disappear back into his dream.

References:

Marx, Karl et al. The Marx-Engels Reader. Norton, 1978.

Hossain, Rokeya Sakhawat Sultana’s Dream: A Feminist Utopia. The Feminist Press, New York, 1988