> Can someone lay quick hands on the source and text of
> the passage where Marx says, roughly, that you can
> tell the measure or level of a civilization by its
> treatment of women?
Fourier, as I remember, not Marx.
Or, if Marx or Engels says it too, he got it from Fourier.
For a reference, p.195 of "The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier", ed. Beecher and Bienvenu has this:
"As a general proposition: Social progress and changes of period are brought about by virtue of the progress of women towards liberty, and social retrogression occurs as a result of a diminution in the liberty of women.
"Other events influence these political changes; but there is no cause which produces social progress or decline as rapidly as a change in the condition of women. I have already said that the simple adoption of closed harems would speedily turn us into Barbarians, and the mere opening of harems would enable the Barbarians to advance to Civilization. In summary, the extension of the privileges of women is the fundamental cause of all social progress".
And if you've got access to the French Oeuvres Completes, that's vol. 1, pp.131-133.
Chris