Women
in class struggle
I thought I would post my presentation from a recent meeting on feminism and class struggle that was partly a response to Theft's rantings (seems like the only way to describe it really) but is also relevant to some extent to the discussion we had on the issues in the AF
Intro
In
Britain, we have had 50 years of the equal pay and equal opps type legislation,
many years of politicial correctness,2 female prime ministers, queen, womens
can play football and rugby and
accepted in pubs on their own.
Feminist
arguments have had a major influence on current thinking and especially
political correctness policies of recent years.
Do
such examples mean capitalism has given women freedom and equality? Of course
not, Women remain exploited
as workers and subjugated as women in a fundamentally paternalistic
society.
This
discussion will attempt to place the situation of women in a class society. It
is likely to discuss the social trends of recent years in that context. Discussion is likely to incorporate
issues such as the participation of women in the class struggle of the past,
how to view domestic labour, feminism in a class society , how the roles of men
and women have come about, what a society of equality could look like, and how
to fight for an equal society in future.
points
should be onto issues
On
the other hand women remain focal victims of rape, mysogenistic attitudes
stalking, postings on social media, stalkers, unequal pay and discrimination by
some employers due to their capacity to bear children, susceptibility to be drawn into law
pay, high pressure jobs as well as being seen by many as still the homekeeper.
How
can we make sense of this contradiction?
It is important to start by seeing the role of women in society as a
class issue. This may stlll leave
us with difficulties in foreseeing what an equal society would look like and
how it would leave relationships between males and females, but it does enable
a vision of how soc called female liberation is affecting todays society and
how to fight for an equal society in the future
It
is sad to say that like all
mainstream history , womens history is written by ruling class men for
ruling class men but by looking at the history of the working class it is
possible to see how women have been exploited and subjugated by capitalism and
how they have contributed to the working classes resistance as a whole to
capitalism
Presentation
Is
the issue of women’s oppression separate to class society and the struggle
between classes? No it is not, but
just because there is a patriarchal continuity in class societies does not mean
that the role of women, indeed of both mean and women, has not changed with
these class societies. We live
under a capitalism system and these roles of men and women are changed and
determined by capitalist relations.
Just because we have a continuity and still use building built or designed
in feudal times doesn’t mean that the people in them are defined by feudal
relations.
I cant do the whole history of sexual
relations however so under capitalism in my simplistic view , the role of women is defined by ruling
class ideas of domestic life. The
family takes a particular form in the bourgeois ruling class. The ruling class household becomes an
individual family home and yes the male is the breadwinner, the boss, he goes
out and earns money by employing others.
The woman stays at home as a wife and produces children, the bloodline -
but the role is much more than that, she is the management of the
household. Her status in
terms of the male female relationship is low agreed but personally and
socially, her status it is high. Money
standing in the community, roles in the community
Unfortunately
that lesser status in the ruling class family translates into the rest of
society and a significant burden on working class women. The property relations of that
family, the sexual role, the housebound role, that subservience to the male,
that protection of the bloodline become a series of oppressive social controls
which are compounded by the like hood of having to work as well to support the
family because the low income of the male is insufficient. Something that today has become worse
where 2 incomes have become almost essential to a reasonable living standard.
Main
point here then is that ruling ideology creates an a oppressive and limiting
environment for women socially (perhaps even common ground) but that the class
context leads to a distinct and opposing set of interests for women of
different classes
I struggled
with how to approach this topic it’s so broad and so many issues, I CANT DO IT
ALL. As is ay that was my
simplistic historical bit, now for a simplistic bit about class struggle. If its true that the history of society
has been written by ruling class men for the benefit of ruling class men, it is
also sad to not e that when we talk about workers and class struggle its all
too easy to picture men swinging hammers and so forth. Working class women are not part of a
separate group to working class men, they are all the workers. In the 19th century men went out to
work women worked at home as well as looked after the family
OK there is a division of labour with women more
connected to household duties and lighter work. There is also a segregation of type of employments some seen
as more suitable to men some to women. But even that is not absolute e.g. this description
of Black Country cottage industry:
Women that worked at home in shops behind or
near to their houses had to divide their time between getting their families
off to school and work, cooking, washing, baking bread, brewing home made beer
and making chain. Some of them would be tapping away making small chain links
until 9 or 10 o’clock at night.
Many women made chain, a great number at
home in backyard chainshops usually at the back of their houses, quite often
just across the yard or ‘fade’. Some were situated at the top of their gardens
and some were built in groups on spare ground near the houses (as in Plant
Street, Old Hill). Sometimes a dozen or so women would work together in larger
chainshops owned by a chainmaster or chain dealer. Women generally made the
lighter gauge chain as used in harness work.
Again
it’s all too easy to translate this view we have been given of women’s role to
the perceptions of the class struggle.
Is it only men that strike and go on demonstrations and confront the state? It what we see in our mind when we
think of these terms but NO it is clearly not the case. There may well be a division of labour
in strikes eg the miners on strike in the UK were significantly supported by active
miners wives groups – but I would argue that this is a product of a culture
imposed by capitalism not of
inherent wc behaviour.
I
think its actually a sad reflection of how we now separate issues of women and
class struggle in that we can pick examples such as the chain makers above.
Other similar strikes stand out like grunwicks and hailwood. So ill repeat women are not separate
but an intrinsic part of the struggle. One of the more famous strikes from the
black country were those female chainmakers who struck in 1911 for higher wages
in fact TUC/lp hold a festival each year commemorating
I
have had to focus things for this presentation and I have chosen to start with some
reflection on the Russian revolution again well it is 2017 and hence the women
in class struggle and relate to issues today
First point to note is that
the spark for the whole revolution was the international women’s day march. And
i am going for a lot of cudos
here, even brownie points, with an extended quote from a youngster writing
under the name jock
February 23 1917. A century ago,
on International Women’s Day (February 23 old style/ March 8 today), women
workers of both home and factory took to the streets of Petrograd. Five days of
strikes, demonstrations and over 1300 deaths later, the Tsarist edifice had
crumbled. In these events, hundreds of thousands of men also took part but,
“It was the
women who initiated the action in most cases, primarily working women from the
textile mills.”[2]
The final straw
for the women workers had come with the breakdown in the supply of bread which
began at the start of February when only half the food ordered for Petrograd
arrived.
“Long lines
stretched in front of shops and bakeries. A winter unprecedented in severity
had set in, filling the streets with ice and piling snowdrifts on the roofs of
homes, sidewalks and bridges of the city. Shivering from cold, poorly dressed
young people, women and old men waited hours for bread and often went home
empty-handed. Food shortages provoked an even greater ferment among the masses.
In line they discussed why there was no bread and why prices were still rising;
they wondered who was responsible for the people’s misery and who needed the
war. The Petrograd Okhrana observed that on days of severe crisis the queues
had the same force as revolutionary meetings and tens of thousands of
revolutionary leaflets. The street had become a political club.”[3]
The war made these conditions particularly exacting for women. Many were
left having to work long hours in war industries after their men were conscripted
for the front, as well as look after children, and spend what little free time
they had in long lines queuing for bread and kerosene. Bread became the issue
which sparked off uncontrollable rage. In the days before International Women’s
Day bakeries had been sacked and bread shops stoned but what now transformed
these bread riots into something more was that women (plus some male) workers
held “stormy” mass meetings and decided to celebrate the day by going on strike
and not just demonstrating. Having decided to down tools in one factory they
then went round others, sometimes throwing snowballs at windows to attract
other workers’ attention. Men and women poured out of factories to take part in
demonstrations. All told that day somewhere between 80,000 and 120,000 workers,
the vast majority of them women, went out on strike demanding bread, peace and,
more ominously for the regime, an end to Tsarism.[4]
My
point of looking at that detail is that it demonstrate precisely my argument
that workers struggle as a united class whatever gender, race sexuality etc.
The new workers’
state established by the revolution of October 1917, and led by the Bolsheviks,
quickly moved to declare a new approach to the issues of women’s rights and
sexuality. The December proclamation of the new state’s program struck out the
laws which criminalised homosexual acts; it abolished the concept of
illegitimacy, made marriage and divorce a secular matter which required simply
consent.
These social changes seen
as an integral part of a social revolution taking place but for Lenin the laws were not enough however: and we are by no means content with mere decrees. In the
sphere of legislation, however, we have done everything required of us to put
women in a position of equality and we have every right to be proud of it. The
position of women in Soviet Russia is now ideal as compared with their position
in the most advanced states. We tell ourselves, however, that this, of course,
is only the beginning
Kollontai and
Lenin for example had a great deal of common understanding of what they hoped
to build after 1917: childcare centres, new housing which allowed more communal
living, community kitchens, the socialisation of housework, laundry and
cooking. Its interesting
that the Stalin era reversed most of this Bolsheviks legislation but that
emphasis on women in work with a corresponding provision of child care
facilities remained until the wall came down
Trotsky suggested To institute the political equality of men and women in the
Soviet state was one problem and the simplest . . . But to achieve the actual
equality of man and woman within the family is an infinitely more arduous
problem.” He concluded, “All our domestic habits must be revolutionized before
that can happen. And yet it is quite obvious that unless there is actual equality
of husband and wife in the family, in a normal sense as well as in the
conditions of life, we cannot speak seriously of their equality in social work
or even in politics.”35
In summary the
achievement of workers’ rule is the preconditions for the goals set for women’s
rights but it is the threshold for the really significant battle to change behaviour
Socialism is not
a utopia which can be wished or willed into existence. The conditions for
liberation have to be created by workers transforming the economic and social
foundations of society which give rise to oppression. Once they are destroyed
and a new way of organising society – collectively and democratically, for
human needs rather than for profit – has been established, then the ideas of
the revolutionaries themselves are of secondary importance. The logic of the
end of exploitation is towards human freedom in all aspects of human experience.
Communism we say is to be created by a conscious working
class. This is consciousness of struggle and cooperation and of a goal to
achieve. This does not mean
however that wc can be conscious beforehand of every change that has to be made
to improve people’s behaviour.
That is impossibility. It’s
the fact of cooperation to eliminate class exploitation that will draw people
together in a way that eliminates alienation and creates equality. Most of the implications of that
activity we cant foresee now and we can’t predict.
This for me is what Marx meant when he said theory becomes a practical act.
The
philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The
point, however, is to change it.
The coincidence of the
changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be
conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.
So at this point I would say whilst it is true that history
is written by men for men, it not actually a true representation of
reality. The point is to change
society. Just as on all social issues,
Capitalism, because of its nature,
can pose the problems but it cannot solve them.
Back to today
Women struggles are part of the class struggle and we don’t
identify a separate struggle.
But that is precisely what bourgeois feminist movement does
from the suffragettes and their votes for women to today’s calls for wages for
housework or whatever. Bourgeois
feminism is based on women as individuals and fights for individual’s rights in
existing society not in conjunction with workers struggles for independence. There is no basis for gender
solidarity precisely because the experiences of wc women wc women, African
women, European Chinese America black white generate cultural differences which
inhibit solidarity. There is no
common social experience that lead to a coherent social unity and it is then the
individual’s experiences then lead to differing conceptions of both the
oppressions and the opportunities for freedom. This is the aspect that Dauve ignores in the article that
Mike recommended. He makes
interesting reading but in the end is just asserting that women’s liberation
has to be fought for at the same time as wc liberation with out identifying how
this has or can happen
Once we agree that women are subjugated, the next problem is
that we can look a the lives of black people, Asian, Chinese, gay, fat people
immigrants, workers, unemployed disabled, factory workers, white collar workers
and pretty soon we reach the conclusion that everybody is oppressed and
subjugation by today’s system So what can be done about the fact we are all
fucked, can we set a priority of importance of the different struggles? Course
not. We can feel sympathy and
empathy because or our experiences of this oppressive society. But people in general can’t even agree on precisely what is
wrong and what needs to be corrected because all of the issues related to
identity politics are by their very nature open to individual
interpretations. There is no group
identity that draws them together and towards a common solution for behaviour
whether within capitalism or not.
What we are left with when we investigate social oppression
is a whole mess of contradictions.
Not so long ago women abjeted to wearing bras. This is now seen as a bit of a joke but it was a serious
step against male repressiveness.
Again Miss and Mrs were once seen as sexist tags but nowadays feminism
seems quite happy to own these female roles.. Black women believe more liberated than white women
but black men are mysogenistic and backward yet will be happy to join in with gangsta
rap cos it supposedly is a voice against mainstream racism. I find it amazing that
white european culture still somehow believes that minority culture must be
left wing or liberal or revolutionary.
Both White and black women voted for Trump precisely because he is right wing nationalist, theres no
mystery as to why.
I just do not know what Theft is specifically arguing for,
he doesn’t explain anything. But I
do agree that rape is a product of the general situation of male power and
domination over females with capitalism. I object to that reality but I also object to Theft absurd
argument that males are consequently rape apologists if they do not say exactly
the right words all the time.
Further in this society Sexuality and sexism are far too easily confused. What one women wants is anathema to
another let alone men. Men are
prone to violent outbursts, women are prone to emotional outbursts and feminists argue that men should only
respond by genuinely ie not superficial and not to get a hand in her
pants, fitting in with the
women. Now I quite agree
that this is a reasonable and appropriate approach to relationships within
capitalism, this is always purely personal and an individual response and not a
solution to creating mass action to getting rid of capitalism. I again argue that that only the actual process of
building a communist society can extricate them.. to make things more complicated for theft, we can look
at the campaigns run by the UN and
various other agencies against rape as a weapon of war, but fighting a clean
war is maybe a laudable aim that
the wc should take up but it is clearly today a bourgeois campaign
Reforms, Reformism and the Welfare State
