Published: Working Papers, October 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
In recent years, serious consideration of the oppression of women and the unique forms this oppression takes in advanced monopoly-capitalist societies has become a major priority of the left. This is largely due to the realization that the feminist movement, or more correctly, the mass movement of women for democratic rights, has raised many questions that cannot easily be answered by either trying to pigeonhole them into existing theoretical categories or by uncritically looking to the experience of women in other countries. All too often the left in the US has relied on abstractions and rhetoric when trying to analyze the nature and roots of the oppression of women, rather than looking to a study of facts and the development of a critical understanding of historical and class forces.
What follows is the position of the Buffalo Workers’ Movement on the oppression of women, its historical and material causes, its effects, both social and personal, and the strategies of the Marxist/Leninist movement in this country for combatting this oppression. It is largely based on three factors: l)the study of women’s history and of theories about the oppression of women 2)a critical understanding of the roles women have played in the development of the Buffalo Workers Movement from an anti-war group to a Marxist-Leninist one 3)a self-critical look at our personal relationships in the home, on the job, and in our political practice. This is neither a final nor a comprehensive document. It is intended as a basis around which we can consolidate our organizational policies and practice and as a stepping stone for further personal and ideological development.
The material basis of the oppression of women under the present system of monopoly-capitalism/imperialism can be most fully understood by examining its existence and workings in two interrelated areas: the oppression of women in the home and family and the super-exploitation of women on the job. The family, as the primary agency for the reproduction of life, both on a biological and a day-to-day basis - and work, the involvement in social production - are inherently linked and are both basic to human existence. The type and organization of labor determines the structure and content of family life; the family is the primary means by which people are socialized to assume their place as individuals in social production. In addition, the oppression of women can be seen by looking at the nature and scope of assaults on women’s sexuality and the rise of the current counter-offensive by the state and right-wing against the gains of the women’s movement.
First, however, three questions must be addressed: l)what are the historical roots of this oppression 2)how does it sustain itself in the superstructure of society and 3)what contradictions are contained within it.
There is a great deal of confusion and dogmatism concerning the question of the historical development of the oppression of women. Some ultra-leftist groups claim that this oppression arises directly from capitalism. Many radical feminists take the opposite view and state that this oppression has always existed and that it is caused by biological differences between men and women. Others distort Engels and rigidly assert that the oppression arose from the overthrow of matriarchal societies. We reject these arguments as being simplistic and undialectical. The reality of women’s oppression is far more complex and involves a dialectic of human biology and sexuality acted upon by, and reacting to, powerful class and economic forces.
Modern anthropological evidence tends to show that primitive societies were highly communistic and egalitarian. They were food-gathering societies with little distinction between the family and the tribe. People possessed no concept of property or of public versus private work. Everyone worked their fullest to guarantee the survival of the society. The only social divisions of any consequence were along the lines of sex and age. A sexual division of labor was based on the fact that pregnant and nursing women were less mobile than men. Generally, men hunted while women, children, and the elderly gathered and processed food. Women’s influence and status in these societies was strong due to the fact that they produced and controlled the bulk of the food. Group leadership was based largely on individual ability. Chiefs tended to be men as this function apparently grew out of the organization of war and the hunt, but shamans, or spiritual leaders, could be either men or women. These societies were frequently matrilineal, and the extended families and clans were led by women. Divorce was easy for both sexes and child rearing, past nursing, was generally a social function. There is no evidence that the sexual division of labor, in and of itself, produced social or sexual inequalities. Overwhelmingly, the evidence points to the opposite conclusion: that the status of women in the first societies was on a par with that of men.
In a process that encompassed thousands of years, however, society underwent drastic changes. These changes arose primarily from the accumulation of knowledge and the improvement of tools. Gradually, societies became based on an agricultural mode of production accompanied by the domestication of animals. This in turn allowed the accumulation of surplus, something impossible in food-gathering societies - in other words wealth was created. This arose first from control of the herds, largely the province of men from their earlier function as hunters. Increases in population followed the increased ability to produce food and consequently new social structures came into being. Chiefs increased their power, primarily along kinship lines. As the means and organization of production in society changed, other changes in the superstructure of society followed. These were the development of private property; the separation of some forms of work from the family; the emergence of individuals possessing large amounts of wealth and property which they sought to pass on to their descendants; the rise of patriarchy and male dominance within the family; the realignment of society into an unequal and hierarchal division of labor in which many worked to enrich a few; and the rise of war as a means of expropriating labor power and property. The result was to weaken the position of women in society relative to men and to make women’s work more private and individual so that it could be more easily exploited. The subjugation of women is inherently linked to the creation of private property and social classes.
In time, some of these agricultural societies developed into civilizations, from which emerged many of the social patterns that exist today. Extensive pre-capitalist societies range from ancient Egypt to the Inca Empire to the feudal states of Europe and China, but they developed along similar lines and share certain features in common. Among these features are clearly defined classes and the emergence of the state as the instrument of class rule; the use of money and credit; cities; state religions; legal codes with punishment based on class; and the maintenance of large standing armies used to both crush domestic rebellions and to war on neighboring states. And they all institutionalized the oppression of women for the ultimate benefit of their ruling classes. These “civilized” societies were based on either a feudal mode of production with the masses of people tied to the land as peasants, or on outright slavery, as in Greece and Rome, or on a combination of both. There also existed, in the cities, small classes of artisans, merchants, and professionals, but always subordinate to the land-owning class composed of nobles and the church.
Whatever the particular features of the individual civilizations, the great majority of the people toiled and died in abject misery, subjected to unending exploitation, superstition, and repression. Legal and democratic rights, if they existed at all, were restricted to a tiny handful of upper class men. No women, of any class, possessed these rights, but their position relative to men varied considerably from class to class. Ruling class women lived useless and parasitic lives, being forbidden to own property or participate in politics, the professions or the arts, but having life and death power over their slaves and servants. Peasant women shared the misery of their class, but generally held a better position relative to men of their class due to their role in food production, cottage industry, and as healers.
Some egalitarian traditions also continued to exist among the peasants from earlier times. Still, women lived in patriarchal families bolstered by all the customs and institutions of society. Marriages were arranged, subject to the approval of the feudal lords and the church. Love was viewed as a subversive emotion, akin to rebellion. The state religions played the major ideological role in maintaining the oppression of women, as they did in maintaining class oppression. These state religions, without exception, espoused a consolidated anti-feminist theology, holding women to be inferior and female sexuality to be sinful, except for procreation for the benefit of god and man. Peasant women were also subjected to the organized rape and brutality of the upper classes, both as the legal perogative of the feudal lords and as a form of counter-revolutionary violence used to terrorize and intimidate the peasantry. We see much of this in feudal Europe where the Catholic Church burned tens of thousands of women as “witches” during periods of unrest and peasant rebellions.
The rise of capitalism as the primary economic mode of production and the concurrent disintegration of feudalism, brought into being a new historical epoch. The process, which has taken hundreds of years and has been marked by widespread war, revolution, and class struggle, continues today in some underdeveloped areas of the world. Capitalism has retained certain features of earlier society, but in keeping with its mode of production, has added many new and characteristic ones: the predominance of industry over agriculture; the development of new productive forces and the replacement of tools by machines; the social phenomenon of alienation; the shift of the population to the cities; the emergence of wage-labor as the primary type of labor; the concentration and integration of production; and the rise of the capitalist and proletarian classes as the two major, counterposed classes in society.
A fuller discussion of the current nature of the oppression of women under capitalism follows in other sections of this paper. What is important here is to understand how the process by which capitalism has gone through two contradictory stages of development: first, the rise of commercial-capitalism over feudalism and the consolidation of nation-states and second, the rise of industrial capitalism, leading to the monopolization of the means of production by the capitalist class and eventually to imperialism, or the consolidation of capitalism into a world-wide system transcending national boundaries. The first stage had a tremendously liberating effect on large segments of society. This was especially true in the US during the colonial and Revolutionary war period. The economy was based primarily on small farming and cottage industry and this, along with the lack of feudal traditions and state religions, created a situation where women enjoyed a position of relative equality to men of their own class in comparison with other class societies.
Many of the gains of women during the first stage of capitalism were later lost during the second stage of capitalist development, sometimes called the “industrial revolution.” While the industrial revolution unleashed the productive forces necessary to make and distribute an almost overwhelming variety of goods and services on an unprecedented scale, it did so with grave consequences. As social production became concentrated into factories under the control of the industrial capitalist class, cottage industry was destroyed and wage-labor, or the sale of labor power as a commodity, became the dominant type of labor. The resultant social changes undermined what economic independence women has developed. Women became dependent on wages, usually their husbands’, sometimes their own. Women’s labor in the home was devalued, even as it was being indirectly expropriated to support wage-labor, all to the ultimate benefit of the capitalist class. Reflecting this increased economic dependency, sexist ideology became more sophisticated and prevalent in society and this led to, and was reinforced by, legal and institutional changes detrimental to women in particular and the working class as a whole. In time, the family changed from being the basic unit of social production to a unit of consumption and service, and it assumed its present nuclear form, with all of its stifling narrowness. Concurrently, many of the areas of work in which women could develop skills and become self-supporting have been taken over by “service” industries and professions dominated by men, organized on a monopoly basis. Finally, the ideas of bourgeois democracy, private property, and individualism which had once aided the advance of women, have shown their bankruptcy and inability to provide for real progress and security.
This, of course, is just a skeletal view. It downplays cultural factors such as patriarchy and the role of human sexuality in order to highlight the basic relationship between social production, class structure, and the oppression of women. From it we can see that the oppression of women has been a central and necessary feature of class society, without which classes as we know them would not exist. While this oppression clearly predates capitalism, the rise of the capitalist mode of production has given it unique characteristics relating to and shaped by that mode. The basic forces in these developments has been economic and not biological.
In any society, the oppression of women is rooted in its institutionalization in the workplace and the home and given its general shape and direction by the economic structure of society, which arises from that society’s particular mode of production. This oppression is manifested, however, through the society’s superstructure. This contains the institutions, activities, ideas, morality, communications, family structures, etc. of society and gives it content, expression and consciousness. It is within the superstructure that people, in their conscious social activity, become conscious of conflict and antagonism and struggle to resolve them. The superstructure, to exist, is dependent on the economic structure of society, but superstructural factors can retard, accelerate or channel historical development by constraining or opening up the choices available to any given society. Once institutions and ideologies (such as sexism) arise within the superstructure, they develop in part independent of the economic structure, but bound by its general confines.
As stated above, all class societies have institutionalized and benefitted from the oppression of women. It follows, then, that all class societies have rationalized and justified this by the development of sexist ideologies. Our society is no exception. Sexism is an ideology that, while it may not be consolidated or logical, is consistent in its depiction of women as inferior to men. Its expression ranges from the extreme hatred of women seen in much violent pornography to the subtle and paternalistic chauvinism most men won’t even acknowledge they possess. In essence, it is always an objectification of women. Sexism bolsters and justifies a wide variety of male supremacist practices, institutions and attitudes embodied in the full range of our social and private behavior. These, backed by both individual brute force and socialized force made available by the state, reinforce and perpetuate sexist ideas. One very important function of sexist ideology and practice is the manner in which it fosters and transmits attitudes and beliefs towards sexuality In both men and women and the degree to which these attitudes influence behavior.
In advanced capitalist societies, such as ours, the superstructural elements by which sexist ideas and male supremacist behavior are transmitted and assimilated are tremendously varied. Some are (or can be) consciously directed and some arise spontaneously. Others are so deeply entwined in centuries of human behavior and thought that they’re generally taken as psychological or physiological constants. The influence of TV and other media on our lives shows some of the impact of these elements. Women are portrayed as sex objects, housewife/consumers or dependent on men. The male-dominated nuclear family and the values of capitalism are constantly emphasized. And much of it, from TV news to disaster movies, fosters cynicism and fear of political action in both men and women. From discriminatory laws to the socialization process of our schools to fashions and cosmetics to male domination of the state, the superstructure affects and frames our perceptions and actions. Complex as this is, some obvious conclusions can be drawn: 1st) that many people, overwhelmingly male, profit from male supremacy and have a vested interest in maintaining it; 2nd) existing incentives to change or modify sexist behavior are inconsistent with the dominant tendencies of capitalist society and cannot have more than a negligible effect; and 3rd) the scope and pervasiveness of sexist ideas and practices that have developed in historic conjunction with class society provides a strong rational for attacks on women’s economic power and sexuality and will continue to do so until class society is overthrown. While reform of some institutions is possible, sexism is so deeply rooted in the entire superstructure that there can be no substantial progress for women until the existing political and economic systems are replaced and a revolutionary break is made with the past.
The understanding and utilization of contradictions is a key element of M/L thought, yet all too often the left in the U.S. has analysed the contradictions of women’s oppression in the most mechanical and off-hand fashion. The major error is to reduce the complex interrelationship between classes, society and this oppression to two ’contradictions’ – class versus men/women – and then flatly assert that one is primary and the other secondary. The BWM rejects this view. There are many differences and contradictions between men and women, sexual, biological, cultural, etc., leading to, and reinforcing, different socializing processes and life opportunities and choices. Some of the contradictions are latent, others highly antagonistic. Whether they add up to one major contradiction between men and women, however, is basically an abstract and meaningless point. The central contradiction of human society is that between classes as it is the struggle between them that has acted as the motive force of historical development. All other contradictions are shaped and affected, and in turn influence, this central contradiction. Even biological and sexual contradictions between men and women, for all their influence in the development of society, are given content by the struggle between classes. Consider the implications of the genetic research currently being conducted in a profit-oriented framework. Another example is the racist and genocidal mass sterilization of 3rd world women in a drive to perpetuate imperialism and neo-colonialism in a revolutionary world.
Another error is to view women as a caste, held together with a bond that transcends class differences, and counter-posed to a vaguely defined patriarchy. History negates this view. Class differences are as strong between women as they are between men and women of different classes are sometimes in direct contradiction as, for example, the women of Chile prior to the 1973 fascist coup. Women may choose different forms of struggle than men of their own class, and they may have different goals, but class unity has been a stronger factor in history than ’caste’ unity. A third error has been to define the study of women’s oppression as that of a “question”. This reduces a central concern of any revolutionary movement to that of a secondary consideration and implies that the problems and needs of women exist separate from those of the working class.
Women make up half the working class and, by means of the ’double shift’, perform more than their share of the socially necessary labor of this class, and their problems and needs must be recognized as those of the class. Even though the work women do, especially in the home, is the least socialized and among the most alienating in society, and frequently is not even considered work, it is central to the very existence of capitalism. There are issues that uniquely affect women, but they are still class issues. To minimize them is to risk writing off half the working class.
While a failure to understand contradictions and the working of the superstructure can be disastrous, understanding them in the abstract can be deceptive. Too many people on the left acquire a theoretical understanding but fail to see that, whatever the class and social forces, the agents of the oppression of women are, and always have been, men. This is why the oppression of women can only be gauged relative to the power of men, for it is by that power, physical, social and economic, that the oppression becomes a reality. The dialectical opposite of women’s oppression is male supremacy. It is important to recognize this, and incorporate it into our political work and our personal efforts to change, for to disregard it means to ignore the fact that men will be called upon to make real and objective sacrifices in the process of revolutionary transition. It makes clear the need to develop and test socialist theory with women’s objective needs as only then can we reach a clear understanding of the nature of women’s oppression and the choices we are faced with in seeking to liberate society and establish socialism.
Women make up a total of 46% of the entire workforce in the US. A large number of these women have children. Almost one-half of the women in the workforce are heads of households. The 39 million women in the workforce are subject to some of the most brutal exploitation and oppression dished out by this capitalist economy. The role of women and minority workers is to fill the semi-skilled, unskilled, and lowest paying jobs, usually in non-union shops. Thus, despite the publicity about women gaining ground in the professions and about increases in the minimum wage, women in the workforce average only 56%, of the pay that men do, and the gap in wages is widening instead of diminishing.
Since the early 19th century, when women entered the industrial workforce for the first time, women workers have worked at some of the hardest and most labor-intense jobs in the US. Initially many/women worked in textile factories or in marginal jobs in sweatshops in the needle trade. Since that time, women have begun to work in other industries, such as the food and drug industries, and in electronics. Many women work in service industries, such as nursing and teaching, and many work at clerical jobs. Despite the changing patterns of work done by women, what has been constant has been a rigid sexual division of labor. Certain work has been seen as “women’s work,” not fit for men, work which either could not or should not be done by men (supposedly), or work which paid too low for men. This mythology still dominates, for example, in health care and in teaching, where women’s labor is consistently undervalued yet absolutely essential in providing human services to the rest of society. As values change and such work becomes more prestigious, pay goes up and men enter the workforce (as is happening now in nursing, for example).
Sexual discrimination is used to maintain the sexual division of labor. It is also used to create barriers to women’s active participation in labor unions. For example, during a recent national convention of the AFL-CIO in San Francisco, there were only 12 women acting as regional representatives out of a total of 1200 participants. The union bureaucracy consistently holds back the struggles of women workers. Witness, for example, how the union bureaucracy stifled CLUW, an organization of unionized women which had the potential to represent the needs of rank-and-file women workers.
On the job itself sexual abuse is common. A recent nationwide survey by the Redbook magazine questioned 9000 women. 90% reported that they had experienced some form of sexual harassment on the job. Another survey of 15,000 women office workers in New York City found that 33% of the women polled reported physical sexual abuse on the job. Pleasing the boss, pleasing the customer, pleasing the male union leader- all are inspired by male supremacy which reinforces womens’ subordination on the job.
While more and more women are forced by economic necessity to work, and while more and more women are mothers and heads of households, child care facilities have not increased sufficiently. Today there are 6.1 million children under school age with working mothers, yet only 1 million licensed child-care places. This situation oppresses millions of working women.
It is important to note that within the ranks of working women, minority women have the lower paying and more difficult jobs. For example, 64% of white working women have jobs that the government classifies as white collar, while only 42% of black working women do. This trend is reversed for blue collar work for women. Comparatively more black women are also heads of household, largely because of racist attacks on the black family. One of every three black families is headed by a women.
Who benefits from the discrimination against women on the job, as described here? It is clear that it is the employer, the boss who represents the ruling class, who benefits by being able to pay women less wages and subject them to worse working conditions than men. By promoting male supremacy, the bourgeoisie helps keep men and women workers divided, increasing profits. Oppression of women at work, then provides a material basis for the perpetuation of male supremacy.
A second material basis for the ideas of male supremacy is the profit obtained by the bourgeoisie from the unpaid labor of women in the home. It is domestic labor, usually done by women, which frequently allows a man to work outside the home. The capitalist pays nothing for the work of raising children, cleaning the house, cooking, doing the laundry, etc. Yet this work is essential to the capitalist. It provides the support which enables many husbands to enter the labor market outside the home, producing surplus value there for the capitalist. The raising of children ultimately reproduces the labor force itself for the capitalist. By promoting the myth that women are inferior to men, are “second-class citizens,” the bourgeoisie is all the more able to profit from the unpaid labor of women in the home.
It is possible to determine the market value of all the unpaid labor done in the home. If you added up all the costs, if you had to pay for it, of all the cleaning, cooking, child care, laundry, etc., presently done for free in the home in the US, it would come to billions of dollars a year. But that figure still wouldn’t be accurate, because the present market value for these services is too low. Prices paid for domestic services are driven down by the fact that so much of such labor is done for free.
In times of economic expansion, more women enter the labor market – the capitalist is eager to produce more, and needs to hire more workers. At this time the capitalist is willing to pay for more domestic services because makes more money from the surplus value produced by the woman worker. During times of economic recession, such as now, the reverse is true. Women are driven out of the labor market, and less domestic services are available in the market (child care is cut back, for example).
Other factors influence whether capitalists are willing to expand paid domestic services. Technological innovations making work in the home cheaper can create new markets and also result in new services on the market to replace work previously done by the woman at home, (eg, laundromats). Also, as more and more women demand that housework be revalued, attitudes in society change and it becomes more common for domestic work to be paid for. This has happened to some degree due to the women’s movement in the last 10 years.
More and more women must work outside the home and do domestic work. This is known as the double shift, one shift on the job and a second at home. All too often men do little housework and take advantage of the double shift worked by their wives or mothers. This kind of oppression of women within the home has been the cause of many family struggles over the past few years, as women have rebelled against the double shift.
There are other aspects to women’s lives in the home under the present capitalist system. For one thing, the family is now a specialized unit of commodity consumption, where needs for goods and services are created. As a result it is essential that the isolated and often alienated woman in the home not only do all the unpaid labor in the home, but also that she identify with the commodities that capitalism provides, helping to promote them. Much of modern advertising is directed to the housewife, for example. Work in the home is still the least socialized, integrated work in capitalist societies – but those who do it are the target of intensive advertising campaigns to consume certain items.
Under present-day capitalism, women in the home are frequently responsible for providing an emotional retreat from the impersonal workplace. The woman in the home is responsible for the production of human beings, or social capital. This entails feeding and clothing them and also providing education and love to children, and to spouses. It has been only recently that a certain breakdown of the monogamous nuclear family has occurred. And with the increased consciousness of their oppression in the home, women have cut back on their unpaid day care, their free educational services, and to some degree to their “responsibility” to be the main provider of emotional support for the family. With this breakdown in the qualitative production of human capital, “women’s work” is now becoming more recognized as labor that is absolutely essential to the functioning of an industrial society.
In the present period, the much publicized “breakdown of the American family” has both good and bad aspects. The good aspect is that increased divorce rates are in part the result of the women’s liberation movement. Women are unwilling to tolerate physical and sexual abuse, or an oppressive double shift – a product of the male supremacist attitudes of their husbands. Many women prefer to assume full responsibility for their children – most have de facto responsibility anyway – in order to end an intolerable family situation.
The bad aspect of the breakdown of the family is that it’s part of the systematic attack by capitalism on the working class. Cutbacks in social services, welfare regulations which serve to break up couples, forced sterilization, inadequate education, inadequate housing - all these characteristics of the present capitalist recession contribute to the further decay of the working class family. We must fight against these kind of attacks, while encouraging a new kind of family based on mutual respect, shared labor in domestic work. When women concretely see men’s commitment to take up child care tasks systematically, and the willingness of men to work in the home, then they (women) will have more time and energy to struggle on fronts other than their own immediate oppression.
Women have been active both in general political struggles and in fights directed specifically against the oppression of women, throughout this nations history. In the first category we can mention the black women who fought against slavery, such as Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. At the same time white women played an important role in the abolitionist movement in the north. Later, women led trade union struggles in the textile mills of N. England, and later still, in the textile shops of New York City. This rich tradition has of course continued through the present day. Black women were leaders in the civil rights movement in the 60’s for example, and militant women trade unionists led the recent Farah strike. Women have been prominent throughout the history of the organized left: names such as Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldberg, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Mother Jones, Lolita Lebron, and Angela Davis remind us of this.
As for struggles directed specifically against the oppression of women, the fight by women to gain the right to vote is the best known in the past. But the women’s movement of the late 60’s and of the 70’s perhaps marks the high point of such struggles in the US. Enormous gains have been made in this recent period. The concrete gains include liberalized abortion and divorce laws, easier entry into the job market, higher wages, a lessening in overall discrimination against women, and the possible passage of the ERA. Although these gains fall far short of providing equal status for woman, they are nevertheless important steps forward. Parallel with these material gains has been the heightened consciousness gained by millions of women. This consciousness has meant recognition by millions of women of their common situation and has developed a solidarity among them. This same consciousness has forced a general reexamination of the sex stereotypes that pervade our society.
The ruling class, motivated by its perpetual efforts to subjugate and divide the working class, has always resisted women’s efforts to control their lives. Our country’s history has often been an ugly one, marked by the rape of black women, the murder of Native American Women, the beating and jailing of women labor organizers, suffragettes, and leftists. Hand in hand with this physical intimidation have come laws and customs that have no other purpose but to repress women. The ruling class is again on the offensive against the women’s movement, attacking its recent gains. The attack takes many forms, but the most visible is the cutback by legislation and court decisions of women’s gains in abortion, forced sterilization, day-care, and affirmative action. Further, the ERA is in danger of being defeated, and the attack on gay rights includes an attack on women’s struggles through reinforcement of the role of the nuclear family. Many of the recent gains of the women’s movement have been reversed and more will be unless an adequate response can be found.
When we speak of the women’s movement, we mean the recognition by women of the particular oppression that they meet solely because they are women, and their efforts to halt this oppression. Issues particular only to women often intertwine with other issues in a struggle against a common oppressor. Examples are the struggle of black women for their rights both as blacks and as women and the struggle of working women for better conditions for both the working class and for women. The present women’s movement is very diverse, but one major characteristic of it is its battle to secure rights for women solely as women. As such, it cuts across class and racial lines. The major predecessor to the present movement was the sufragette movement. It too cut across class lines and racial lines, but was dominated by white petty bourgeois women. It was successful in gaining the vote for women, but in the end this reform did little to change the actual conditions of women’s day-to-day lives. Further, the suffragettes based their strategy partly on an anti-working class and racist line; they appealed to the ruling class to allow women to vote in order to offset the votes of working class and minority males.
The present women’s movement is also dominated by white petty bourgeois leadership. However, it is much broader than the one-issue suffragette movement ever was. The present movement also does not have an explicit anti-working class or anti-minority line, although its actions (or inactions) often have the effect of leaving working class and minority women out of the movement’s mainstream. The women’s movement also includes a strong element of leftists who are key as to whether or not the movement will remain in the hands of the present leadership or will realize the enormous potential that exists in women’s demands.
It is only a revolutionary outlook that will bring about a society in which far-reaching, permanent changes can occur in women’s day-to-day lives. A petty bourgeois outlook does not recognize the economic foundations of many of the problems that affect women. Such a viewpoint sees the economic system as a static given; it says that the struggle must be carried on within this economic framework, and that the enemy is either men or people’s ignorance of women’s true worth, or both. This viewpoint relies on legislative methods to win its fights, but then becomes helpless to retaliate when these same legislative methods are used against women to take back abortion rights, day-care, affirmative action, etc. A revolutionary viewpoint examines the economic conditions of society. It understands that the recent gains of women were made possible by the interaction of women’s struggles with an expanding economy. Now that the economy is in difficulty the gains made by women are being squeezed out. This attack on women coincides with the general attack by the ruling class on the entire working class, with those portions of the class which are most vulnerable, such as women, being hit the hardest. This attack, especially since it follows a period of gains and rising expectations, creates spontaneous resistance and provides opportunities for leftists to direct this energy at the right enemies. But it is essential that the economic system be identified as the underlying cause of people’s oppression and that the blow be directed at the ruling class. It is here that socialist feminism is incomplete, for, while it sees capitalism as an enemy, it sees men as a coequal enemy. While it is true that in many situations and under many circumstances, such as when men act as rapists or wife-beaters, that men are the enemy for women – on the whole men are not the prime enemy. Directing a main or equal blow at men diverts and confuses the potentially revolutionary forces in the women’s movement. To rise above reforms, and ultimately even to protect those gains which women have already won, requires conscious Marxist-Leninist leadership in the women’s movement. Such leadership has been lacking.
It is not surprising that many activists in the women’s movement have become feminists rather than Marxists. First, Marxist-Leninist organizations in this country are still small, fragmented, underdeveloped, and often suffering from sectarianism. Second, both the theory and practice of various Marxist-Leninist groups over the last decade has been poor. There has been tokenism concerning women’s oppression, both within and without Marxist organizations. Tokenism consists of emphasizing the struggle against women’s oppression in words while maintaining sexist practices within the organization (women do the more menial drudgery, men are the leaders and theorists). Externally tokenism means paying lip service to the struggle against women’s oppression while doing nothing in practice to combat it (failure to take up discrimination against women at the workplace, lack of child care for members, or at events, etc.)
Second, beside tokenism, a number of Marxist-Leninist groups have adopted a reactionary position on women’s oppression. Witness, for example, the political position of the present-day dogmatists who call themselves Marxist-Leninists. Several of these dogmatist groups glorify the nuclear family, calling it the “proletarian unit” which is needed by the working class. While there are strengths to the family for the working class, nevertheless the position of these dogmatists in effect glorifies the oppression of women in the nuclear family.
Another gross error is the position on homosexuals adopted by many dogmatist groups, which denounce homosexuality as a disease, a symptom of bourgeois decadence. Other so-called Marxist-Leninists attack the ERA. The list could go on and on.
Genuine Marxist-Leninists must provide an example which can counter-act that of the dogmatist sects. Marxist-Leninists must work for an end to all forms of the oppression of women under capitalism, while at the same time putting forward the idea that eventually the root or women’s oppression lies in capitalism itself.
This means that Marxist-Leninists must be in the forefront of the fight for equal pay on the job for women, for expanded child care, for free abortion for all, for the ERA, etc. Marxist-Leninists must fight for all possible reforms which lessen the oppression of women. At the same time it is the task of Marxist-Leninists to put forward to their fellow workers that all these reforms are limited, and that the ultimate struggle is against capitalism itself. To do this is not easy, it must be done after winning the trust of others by a consistent struggle for these reforms.
Within Marxist-Leninist organizations there must be a continuing struggle against women’s oppression. This means that it is necessary to ensure the full participation of women in all the tasks of the organization, both practical and theoretical. Furthermore, it is necessary to ensure the full participation of women in leadership positions. The organization must have an internal mechanism for identifying sexist practices and correcting them. Attention must be paid to child care for mothers. Members of the organization should try to conduct their personal relations in a political context, so that there is no conflict between their behaviour towards their fellow workers and comrades and their behaviour towards those with whom they have a close personal relationship.
Marxist-Leninists should be able to work within mass women’s organizations (such as CLUW) or within women’s caucuses where the main fight is against male supremacy; but at the same time they must be able to argue against feminism and separatism, pointing out that eventually what is needed is to replace capitalism with socialism. And pointing out that in order to do this a multi-sexual and multiracial party of the working class must be created.