Brothers and sisters, the Colorado Organization for Revolutionary Struggle (MLM), affirms its solidarity with the women and men who are struggling for a correct line to emancipate women, and with the masses of working and oppressed women who are daily and hourly challenging this oppressive capitalist system.
Women make up one-half of the world’s population, yet they are severely exploited. In the U.S. women are forced to work in the lowest paying and most tedious jobs, usually with no maternity benefits and are the first to be laid off. In addition, most working women have the added job of caring for children and the home. They usually have no political or social life of their own. These injustices and inequities reflect the suffering and oppression women face everyday. Why is this; where does the oppression come from and how do we get rid of it?
First of all, the U.S. economic and political system is based on capitalism, a system of greed whereby 1/10 of 1% of the population controls all the wealth of society. This wealth can only come through the exploitation of the labor of the working people.
U.S. imperialism is a higher development of capitalism. In order for the capitalists to survive, they need new markets to sell their goods. The imperialists have exhausted the U.S. markets and are forced to take their goods and capital investment to other countries. Thus they exploit the labor of third world peoples.
Imperialism has exploited and abused the people of Africa, Asia and South America. In South Africa, the white supremacist rulers in collusion with the U.S. imperialists enslave the majority Blacks. In the Horn of Africa today, the masses of women and men of Ethiopia, under the leadership of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party are struggling against a fascist regime and against both the U.S. imperialists and Soviet Social-Imperialists.
Nearly anywhere else in the world, we will find the same thing: wherever capitalism, imperialism and particularly the two superpowers have any control, the masses of people, and especially women, are oppressed. In the case of nationality working women, they are triply oppressed by imperialism: sexually because of male chauvinism, racially because of racism and exploited as workers.
From Chile to Iran, from Eritria to the Philippines, the working people and working women are not taking this passively. We are here celebrating a day that recognizes one such struggle by the working women of the U.S. Daily the masses of exploited women are joining the ranks of various revolutionary movements to struggle against all forms of imperialism.
And how should we in the U.S. view the liberation of women? There are many erroneous ideas about this. Bourgeois feminists say that men are the enemy, that homosexuality is the answer, that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) will liberate women and that this can be achieved without overthrowing capitalism. The CP-ML thinks that women’s liberation can be achieved without struggling against male chauvinism; and by collaborating with the State, the police. Following any of these so-called leaders, women will never achieve any liberation.
In the day-to-day struggles, revolutionaries must support and fight for such demands as equal pay for equal work, the rights to free and safe abortions, protective legislation, child care centers at the workplace and in the community, and maternity benefits. We support these because they will put women and the whole working class in a better position to struggle against capitalism as well as remove some of the woman’s burden. But we can never mislead women into thinking that reforming capitalism will completely liberate them.
Revolutionaries must oppose male chauvinism, pornography, any discrimination against women, and any attempt to deny a woman’s right to self-defense. We oppose these because they prevent women from involving themselves in the revolution or they represent a degradation of women. But we can never mislead women into thinking that the male half of the U.S. population is their enemy.
Many of you may have seen the film Salt of the Earth about a miners’ strike in Silver City, New Mexico. One of the great lessons of that strike is that in struggling against male chauvinism and against the capitalists, the solidarity between men and women is the only correct path for victory and once built, is invincible. The heroes and heroines of Salt of the Earth provide us with a shining example, just as today the men and women miners and their wives and husbands in the coal mines are showing that neither the capitalists Arnold Miller, nor President Carter and his federal powers can stop their struggle. We urge all revolutionaries to affirm their solidarity in practice with the miners’ historic strike.
Liberation for women can happen only if we unite both men and w»men to struggle for immediate demands for women, to struggle against male chauvinism and for the overthrow of U.S. capitalism.
Why must U.S. imperialism be overthrown for women to be truly liberated? It is imperialism that directly benefits from the ideology of male chauvinism. The working males have no interests in continuing male chauvinism. But capitalism does profit from this chauvinism by exploiting women and keeping the working class divided. As long as capitalism exists it will continue to propagate and reinforce male chauvinism among the people. Women will not be liberated by attacking only one example of male chauvinism such as pornography but must also direct their attacks against the main enemy, capitalism.
Another condition for liberating women is that they are given the opportunities to work in socialized production. As long as capitalism exists, there will never be jobs for everyone, but only unemployment, underemployment and inadequate welfare. Only when the workers control society will everyone be employed. It is in the capitalists interests to lay off workers, to lay women off first, to have a reserve army of labor to keep wages down for all of us.
Another factor for liberating women is that household work, cooking, washing, cleaning and child-raising must be socialized so that women can be freed from this drudgery to participate in society at all levels. As long as capitalism exists, housework will be the task of each wife and mother, individually. Capitalism makes no profits from this but it does benefit by the fact that this drudgery is part of the oppressive ideology to keep women passive and from struggling against capitalism. The answer is not to pay wages for women’s housework because this would reinforce the oppression and would further prevent them from participating in revolution. The answer is to overthrow capitalism.
Lastly, another factor to completely liberate women is that the family no longer be the basic economic unit of society. It is in the interests of the capitalists that this remain so. As the basic economic unit of society, this serves to keep the women chained to the husband and reinforces acceptance of male chauvinism. At the same time the capitalists are attacking the family with the aim of destroying our ranks. The answer is not to destroy the family but rather to free the family of any economic pressures and liberate the wife, as well as the husband.
What is it like in a country where the imperialists have been overthrown and where the working people have economic and political control – what is it like under socialism?
China and Albania are socialist countries. Women there enjoy such democratic rights as equal job opportunities. A woman can become an oil driller, a meteorologist and become head of a political branch equally with men. Women in China enjoy equality in pay for the same job and free medical services. Birth control and abortion are readily available, as well as socialized food preparation and quality child care and laundry facilities. Socialism in China and Albania have set up the conditions for women to enjoy equality and have freed them from domestic drudgery to get fully involved in the workings of their country.
It is only under socialism that these things can take place. This is why capitalism in the U.S. must be overthrown. The overthrow of capitalism here would also directly help the masses of oppressed women in the third world to get one step closer to their own liberation.
In conclusion, just as China, Albania and Ethiopia have their communist party of the working class, so too do we need one in the U.S. This party must fight not only for the immediate demands of women but also for the long range interests of women. The women’s liberation movement must be won over to that leadership of the working class and its party; all women who are truly struggling to end oppression must eventually understand that. And we must link our struggle here with those of the third world peoples. With their countries freed from imperialism, they would then be able to move their struggle forward to socialism. One enemy, one common front against the two superpowers and one common interest of liberating the masses of women and all people.
DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM!
SMASH MALE CHAUVANISM!
LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTIONARY THIRD WORLD LIBERATION MOVEMENTS!
LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE FOR WOMAN’S LIBERATION!