90 SOCIAL SCIENTIST tried to break away from their colonial pasts. The dialogue between socialism and feminism imparted to women's interventions a more enduring quality, going beyond the accepted framework, even as it laid bare the strains on the sustainability of these interventions the world over. This book emphasises the point that, at this juncture it is important to recall that intellectually, ideologically and historically it was the socialists and, subsequently the Marxist political stream among them, which consistently argued and fought for a whole gamut of interventions which made the idea of women's liberation a possibility both at the level of theory and practice. Engels' famous observations on women's subordination in the family marking the world historic defeat of the female sex is more than a mere statement. As contributors to this volume assert, it marked a quantum leap in the way women's subordination was to be viewed within the discourse on equality in its actual praxis. Subsequent writing has pinpointed that liberal political theory, even as it presents itself as gender neutral, is in fact premised on the denial of a role for women in the political domain: hence also denial of equal citizenship. Marxism's highlighting the need to bring all women within the public sphere, hence needs to be viewed in this context — as a direct opposite of liberal philosophy predicating itself on a denial of the public sphere to women. This assertion of the need to accord a central place to women -first by the socialists and then by the Marxist political stream - marked a quantum leap forward in the way women's subordination was to be viewed within the discourse on equality in political theory. Socialist societies, subsequently engaged in policy making which sought to realise this dream - a point this book makes very strongly. This is not to argue that the weaknesses as well as setbacks to socialist efforts should be overlooked or dismissed as aberrations. Both in the specific context of women's rights and as an experience of socialist practice there is need for greater introspection and analysis to identify how and where blocks were set up. While the break-up of the socialist bloc drove home the need to undertake this exercise urgently, neither the communist movement nor the socialist feminists have seriously engaged with the problem. Rule's collection rightly highlights the need to put on record the contribution of Marxism as an ideology to the advance of socialist-feminism intervention in the women's movement as well as some of the gains made in socialist countries with regard to women's education, work opportunities, childcare and the relieving of women's domestic burden. However, it does not go