In 1963, the course of American history was changed with the publication
of Betty Friedan's book, The Feminine Mystique. Over five million copies
of this explosive book eventually would be sold.
In the book, Friedan claimed she had lived in a "comfortable
concentration camp" of New York City suburbia. And for years afterwards,
Friedan claimed that her awareness of woman's rights did not coalesce
until the late 1950s when she sat down to write the book in her stately
mansion in Grand View-on-Hudson.
But based on his analysis of Friedan's personal papers at the Smith
College library, historian Daniel Horowitz has dramatically refuted that
claim.
In his book, Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique,
Horowitz acknowledges that Friedan had a brilliant mind, was a prolific
writer, and pursued her cause with a single-minded devotion.
But Horowitz also reveals a dark side to Friedan's social activism:
Betty Friedan was a long-time participant in the American Communist
movement.
Here is Betty Friedan's true story (page numbers from the Horowitz book
are in parentheses):
- Friedan was first exposed to socialist thinking while an undergraduate
at Smith College in the late 1930s (pp. 39-49).
- Beginning in 1940, while still a junior at Smith, Friedan became an
outspoken advocate of the Popular Front, a pro-Communist umbrella that
embraced a broad range of radical groups (p. 10).
- While studying psychology at UC-Berkeley 1942-43, Friedan was a member
of the Young Communist League (p. 93).
- From 1943 to 1946, Friedan worked as journalist at the Federated
Press, a left-wing news service established by Socialist Party members
(p. 102).
- In 1944, Friedan requested to join the American Communist Party.
According to her FBI file, Friedan was turned down because "there
already were too many intellectuals in the labor movement" (p. 93).
- From 1946 to 1952, Friedan worked as a journalist (some would say
"propagandist" is the more accurate term) at the radical United
Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America. According to
historian Ronald Schatz, this labor union was "the largest
Communist-lead institution of any kind in the United States." (p. 133).
Horowitz also documents Friedan's numerous relationships with Communist
Party operatives, including her romantic involvement with physicist
David Bohm while a student at Berkeley (p. 92). Bohm would later invoke
the Fifth Amendment while testifying in front of the House Un-American
Activities Committee, and leave the United States shortly thereafter.
It is important to note that Horowitz did not intend to write his book
as an exposé. Indeed, throughout the book, Horowitz is clearly
sympathetic to Friedan's feminist objectives.
But this much is clear: beginning in 1940, Betty Friedan became a
committed and articulate advocate for the American socialist movement.
It is true that after 1952, her views become less strident. But
Friedan's basic outlook still reflected the socialist worldview of
capitalist oppression and female victimization.
Take this quote from Frederick Engel's famous 1884 essay, The Origin of
the Family, Private Property, and the State:
"The emancipation of women becomes possible only when women are enabled
to take part in production on a large, social scale, and when domestic
duties require their attention only to a minor degree."
Engel was saying that equality of the sexes would only happen when women
abandoned their homes and become worker-drones.
Friedan copied that sentence into her notes sometime around 1959, while
she was doing her research for The Feminine Mystique (p. 201).
That revolutionary passage would become the inspiration and guiding
principle for Friedan's book, and eventually for the entire feminist
movement.
