This is an interview originally entitled, Without Socialism There Can be No True Feminism, made by Rachael Boothroyd with feminist activist, Meglimar Melero, from the Insumisas Collective and the Feminist Spider network, discussing the feminist movement in Venezuela today. The above quote is from the interview. It was first published on:- http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6886 and on RCN member, Ewan Robertson’s blog. Ewan is currently working in Venezuela. His blog can be found at:-

http://theewanrobertsonblog.wordpress.com/

Can you tell us something about your collective, Insumisas and the Feminist Spider?

MM: The Feminist Spider is a communal space for discussion in which numerous collectives and social movements participate. We at Insumisas are participating as a collective within that space in different ways. The Spider is still not what you could describe as a feminist movement with militants just yet.

For instance, we at Insumisas carry out numerous events in Carabobo state, we participate in Mission Sucre with our student-comrades, with comrades from the communities, comrades who are organized in the communal councils. Basically what we are trying to do is carry out a type of political education with respect to feminism and socialism through the women’s organization processes in the communal councils, that’s to say, using whatever methods possible to promote and build gender equality and justice committees.

Venezuela celebrated International Women’s Day on March 8. Can you comment on the significance of the day and why it is important in Venezuela?

MM: I think it’s necessary to re-conceptualize International Women’s Day from the important perspective of being a working class woman. We need to win the day back from capitalism, which has tried to commercialize it. It’s now a day about buying flowers and saying, “Oh, look how great women are”. I think that we have to rescue its educational meaning, its message of struggle and rebellion, its concept of participation and organization, basically its revolutionary character, no?

On March 8 we celebrated the day (in Venezuela) and the atmosphere of enthusiasm was tangible, really militant. It seemed to me, being in the epicenter of the march with all the other women, from Mission Madres del Barrio and other working women from all over the country, you could really feel the spirit of the politically organized woman, the woman who is participating in the community, the woman who really believes in this revolutionary process.

In short, I think the day is really important on a global level for working class women, and it’s important to give the day its original character back, which is that of class struggle. Because historically, this day started to be commemorated because of working class women’s struggles, from their labor demands.

Can you comment a little bit about the politics of the Bolivarian government with respect to women? Have you noticed a change in terms of this government’s policies and those of previous governments?

MM: It is thanks to the revolutionary process that women’s participation is even taken into account, obviously we are grateful to the revolutionary process, because as women, we have greater participation and greater opportunities, not just in terms of our role but also in practice, because we have all those instances of popular power and participation.

The revolution has generated the spaces for us women to organize, and to respond to, debate and reflect over our reality within capitalist society, in which we are still living, no? I think that the communal councils have gender equality, as well as other spaces such as the governmental federal committees, the party, and in the recognition that social movements can generate policy. All of these are tools for participation in which women are recognized and which try to drive forward the participation of women.

What would you say to the feminists in other countries who criticize Venezuelan feminism for being too class orientated, as opposed to focusing on issues specific to women?

MM: I think it’s really about carrying out a historic revision of feminism. What has happened to feminism as a global movement?

I think that women from other places in the world, especially the West, should reflect at length about what has happened to the Marxist-feminist proposal, socialist-feminism; what has happened to those proposals in their respective countries? Because let’s say that we have had some currents which have broken away and have stayed within the arena of simply making liberal demands. They don’t organize towards the transformation or the surmounting of exploitation or the patriarchy, viewed as the complimentary functional system to capitalism.

Feminism has suffered from, just like the global left, ideological deviations that can’t be hidden. I think, what we are trying to do in Venezuela is to recover all of that material and those feminist proposals, Marxist-feminism with class consciousness. Because without feminism, socialism can’t exist, and without socialism, true feminism cannot exist.

Venezuela is famed for its beauty competitions. As a feminist collective do you have a position with respect to this?

MM: The culture of the media has had a really profound effect on society, and obviously there is a culture, not just in Venezuela but in other countries in Latin America and Europe, which seeks to market women’s bodies. It converts women into an object that is bought and sold, it dehumanizes women completely, it turns them into merchandise.

I think, in this sense, the struggle should be about opening more spaces in the media which reflect how diverse we are as women, in every sense, and that we become more aware. That’s a successful political strategy because (in Venezuela) there is alternative media, which little by little is starting to promote the fact that another type of woman exists, a woman who builds things, creates things and has things to contribute. Not the stereotypical woman that is sold by capitalism.

The Feminist Spider has been organizing workshops from a gender perspective for the new Labor Law which is due to be passed by the government in May of this year. What are the principal proposals that have been developed through these workshops?

MM: We as socialist feminists, with respect to the discussions surrounding the new labor law, are worried and concerned over the issue of women and the work environment. We are conscious that we as women have particular conditions in our work environment, whether we are on a salaried wage or working as part of the informal economy, which is made up of a lot of women.

Those are the kind of issues that we have been discussing at the workshops. We have tried to orientate the discussion towards how to regulate our working environments and what we can do for the huge mass of women inside the informal economy, such as women selling products in a catalogue, street-sellers, hairdressers, etc. This is all indirect work.

Our main preoccupation is how to regulate and guarantee labor rights for the female working population. Because our work also goes above and beyond the working day, our work also includes the intellectual and productive work that women carry out at home. We have a lot of challenges, above all because a lot of responsibilities fall onto the shoulders of women, a lot of social responsibilities.

It’s important to point out that these responsibilities aren’t just women’s responsibilities, but they are in fact social responsibilities; looking after children, the sick, the old, education. These are responsibilities that historically have fallen upon each one of us as women. We have to create, evaluate and socialize the concept of these tasks as social responsibilities, so that these areas become collective spaces of work and education. That is basically the focal point of our proposals towards the new labor law.

Source: Correo del Orinoco International

Some 400 Israeli, Palestinian and international women gathered in the West Bank village of Beit Omar, under the slogan of “Women for Civil Disobedience as part of the Non-violent Popular Resistance to the Israeli Occupation”. It was the 2^nd Conference marking the International Women’s Day.

 The conference was organized by the “Lo Metsaytot” (“Women who will not obey”) Group, initiated by author and translator Ilana Hamemerman and the women committee of the Center for Freedom and Justice: center4freedom.org/ and with the cooperation and coordination with the Beit Omar Popular Resistance Committee and the Palestinian Solidarity Project http://palestinesolidarityproject.org/

Ebtesam Zidan, Chairwoman of the Palestinian Union of Women’s Struggle Committee, opened the session with a strongly-worded condemnation to the Israeli occupation brutal murder of 16 Palestinian innocent citizens in Gaza Strip.  Ebtisam saluted the legendary steadfastness of Hana Shalabi who has been on hunger strike for the last 24 days in a protest against the Israeli occupation apartheid administrative detention laws. She also highlighted the Palestinian women’s resistance, side to side with Palestinian men, to the Israeli occupation, and spoke about the women’s achievements in the Palestinian society and system.

Khawla Abu Marir  is the only Palestinian woman coordinating a popular resistance committee  - the popular committee against the Israeli illegal settlement and apartheid wall of South Hebron Hills (Yatta). Khawla called for the escalation and expansion of peaceful popular resistance to include all the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. She valued the participation and solidarity of the International and Israeli peace activists who join the Palestinian protests throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip and called for more solidarity activities with the Palestinians’ just cause not only in Palestine but all over the world. She spoke briefly about the Israeli colonial attacks and activities in South Hebron Hills, and the enormous colonial expansion inside the Palestinians’ land in that area. There have been other Israeli attacks such as demolitions, and lately the assassination of the 17 years old citizen Zakariya Abu Eram, who was killed two days ago in cold blood by the Israeli occupation forces. She added, To Whom It May Concern, Area “C” should be marginalized no more, all official and civil society organizations should pay more attention to women and to have more development plans and projects for this area to support people’s steadfastness.

While the fifteen years old Rand Waleed Abdul Razzak from Silwan in East Jerusalem emphasized the children’s role in the Palestinian struggle against house seizure, demolitions, children’s arrests and ethnic cleansing carried out by the Israeli occupation authorities and settlers in East Jerusalem. She pointed out the necessity of providing protection for children according to the international Children’s Rights treaties.

The Israeli speakers presented their perspectives of the Israeli occupation oppression system. Professor Nurit Peled-Elhanani presented  the findings of the International (Russell) Tribunal of 2011 in Cape Town according to which Israel has “established an institutionalized regime of domination, amounting to apartheid as defined under international law. Israel is discriminating against and eliminating an entire nation on racial grounds in a systematic and institutionalized way, and therefore all collaboration with Israel should cease”.

Peled Elhanani, whose is an expert in Education, further added that “Israeli children have been learning for generations that their neighbors – whether they are Palestinian citizens of Israel or subjects of the State of Israel stripped of human rights – are nothing but a terrifying demographic problem and a security threat. Those very children have meanwhile grown up, their senses of truth, justice and human brotherhood have been dulled by racist education and they have been brought up to become politicians and generals who now declare openly and with the arrogance of all-powerful masters what was once concealed by hypocrisy: that the other face of the Judaization project is the elimination of the Palestinian people, fully and unreservedly supported by the United States and rich countries in Europe”.

Ilana Hamerman told the participants:”in the midst of “an ugly reality we have created a spot of clear and exquisite reality, a unique spot of women’s political opposition, humane and moral, against an evil Israeli military rule over millions of Palestinians. This opposition voice is heard in Israel, in Palestine and throughout the world.  This is a feminine voice of courage, friendship and joy of life. This voice carries a message that has no parallel in this torn, bleeding and cruel land”.

 She added: “We Israeli and Palestinian women refuse to be enemies. Our actions symbolize civil disobedience to evil, illegitimate and dangerous laws. We are enhancing our feminine power, the power to be free, to form friendships. We say NO to death and YES to life together. We shall pursue this path; we shall break through checkpoints and barriers within us and without. We are not afraid and we shall not give in.”

Louisa Morgenatti, former member of the European Parliament from Italy, who attended the conference, concluded the meeting by thanking the Palestinian and Israeli women “whose activity  has  rekindled our hope”.

Singer Rona Kenan performed pro-bono as an expression of her full identification with the message of the Conference and was received with enthusiast applause. The local Beit Omar girls’ Debbka Dance group swept all present into a whirlwind of dancing.

The conference was provided with a Hebrew-Arabic-English simultaneous translation service that facilitated the free flow of communication between the women. Regrettably, Knesset member Hanin Zuabi who was scheduled as one of the speakers had to cancel at the last moment owing to a demonstration planned by Israeli right-wingers in front of her Nazareth home.

The conference accomplished its goals on developing and expanding popular resistance efforts, the empowerment of women by officials and NGOs, and increasing female participation in political decision making within Palestinian society.  Additionally, conference participants spent time discussing allocating more time and resources to organizing micro economic self-sufficiency projects in communities in order to achieve an independent source of income for women.  Lastly, the conference was effective in increasing further cooperation and coordination between Palestinian and Israeli women activists in their efforts to bring about freedom and justice for all people who live in the area.

The conference organizers extend their appreciation to all those who put their time and resources into ensuing that the event was a success.  The following incomplete list are individuals who need to be thanked for efforts and support – Ebtisam Zidan, Khawla Abu Mrir, Nurit Alhanan, Le’a Zsemel, Rand Abdul Raziq, Nitza Aminof, Dr. Carmel Shalev, and all of the moderators including Iman Abu Mariya, Ofra.

____________________________________

AFGHAN WOMEN’S FREEDOM FROM THE CLUTCH OF FUNDAMENTALISM, OCCUPATION AND PATRIARCHY IS ONLY POSSIBLE WITH THEIR OWN STRUGGLE

Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan’s statement on the International Women’s Day

Afghanistan’s women spent another year under the burden of occupiers, dominance of a Jehadi-Mafia government and terror of the Taliban, the result of which was an increase in poverty, homelessness, immigration, loss of dear ones, domestic violence, rape, self-immolation, a high maternal and infant mortality rate and thousand other miseries.

According to figures from the UN, almost 5000 cases of violence against women were recorded last year, though the actual figure is several times higher than this. The last ten years of US and NATO occupied Afghanistan has been a burning hell for women and young girls who have been raped or gang-raped. According to a report of the European Union there are tens of women in jails who are rape victims but are imprisoned for being a “criminal”; rapists are high-ranked government officials or people related to them and Afghanistan’s corrupt judiciary made up of a number of stone-aged clerics can’t deal with or prosecute them. According to the State of the World’s Mothers 2011 report fifty mothers die every day in Afghanistan while giving birth, something that doesn’t hold the slightest importance in the eyes of the treacherous Afghan government officials, minister and ministry of women’s affairs, decoration pieces in the parliament, NGOs and finally the US and west, that occupied Afghanistan under the pretext of women’s rights.

US and its allies occupied Afghanistan ten years back under the excuse of uprooting terrorism, Al-Qaeda and Taliban. According to data collected by Professor Marc Herold, US took its revenge on Afghan civilians by bombarding and killing about the same number of civilians killed in the September 11th attacks in New York in just the first few months of Afghanistan’s occupation. Most of our people wanted the obliteration of the barbarous and criminal Talib regime but not at the cost of losing their independence. RAWA, just a few days after the start of the US attacks, said in a statement, “The actual issue our people face is the eradication of the plague of Taliban and Al Qaeda -though they (our people) didn’t have any part in its cultivation and germination- and the establishment of a government based on democratic values… Our compatriots, therefore, must rise up for a thorough demolition of Taliban and their Osamas…” RAWA’s demand along with the people of Afghanistan’s was that the Taliban dominance be abloshed by the uprisings and struggles of the people of Afghanistan and not by invasion of foreign aggressors.

The US government and NATO who were looking to invade and stay in Afghanistan for their own military, economic and strategic aims, misused the troubles and miseries of our women and have been busy playing a cat and mouse game with the Taliban for the past ten years. After shedding the blood of thousands of innocent women and children, young and old, they have now started another treacherous game of “peace and negotiations” with the Taliban. First they divided the sanguinary Taliban into “moderate“ and “extremist” and have now gone so far that Joe Biden, the vice president of US, announced that “Taliban are not our enemies”! This is true, the Taliban were a project of the US that was run by ISI, they can never be their enemies, they are the deadly enemies of our people, freedom, women, democracy and justice.

The first victims of a deal with the bloodthirsty Taliban will be the women of our country. By endorsing medieval laws for women, Karzai’s mafia-puppet regime wants to pave the way for association with the Taliban, these lackeys of Pakistan. The most recent example of these inhumane laws is the statement of a stooge government body called the Ulema Council of Afghanistan, which is a copy of the laws of the Taliban era of ignorance and terror. Karzai also shamelessly backed the statement.

The US aggressors proved RAWA’s perpetual claim that this country is always at war with the Afghan people and at peace with criminals. The US’s dark and blood-stained history shows that they have always collaborated with the most treacherous regimes, elements and bodies and conspired for the annihilation of governments and movements of the people. The US doesn’t care about the kind of government that takes power in Afghanistan, what only matters is that the regime should be made up of traitors who they reign, which doesn’t oppose their permanent military bases, allows them to use this land for threatening and controlling Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan and India; allows Afghanistan to become a place where the US and other imperialists use it to suppress every kind of revolutionary movements of the people in the region, and in general a government that protects the interests of the US and its allies. Now it’s of least importance to the US and NATO if that government is headed by a Talib or a Northern Alliance criminal, or some other criminal which oppresses the Afghan people.

Like every puppet ruler, Karzai uses all his power and abilities to serve the aims and policies of his foreign masters, especially the US, so he looks more useful to them and his corrupt regime can stay in power longer. The Traditional Jirga, which was a gathering of spies and traitors who do not have a speck of honour or patriotism, for agreeing to and legalizing the long-term presence of the US and its bases, was another effort in the same matter.

The limitless and boundless costs of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, the deep economic crisis in the capitalist societies and the huge anti-war, anti-capitalist system movements of the people in the western countries, has forced the US and other imperialists to deceive their people and reduce their military forces in some places and attack other nations instead and allow their plunder. The most recent example we saw was Libya, where the country was destructed and a fundamentalist regime of the kind of the savage Taliban was implemented upon its poor people.

Although the US and NATO talk about the exit of their forces in 2014, this is just a reduction and not a complete withdrawal. The US, now busy signing the agreement of building their permanent bases with their Afghan stooges, will in no way leave Afghanistan due to its important strategic position in Asia, unless they are driven away humiliatingly by our nation like the English and Russians.

After ten years of killing and destruction, the US and NATO leave a government to our people which is occupied by Northern Alliance, Taliban and Gulbuddini criminals and spies of foreign countries at every level; a country that is second in corruption in the world; a country that is the biggest producer of drugs in the world with two million addicts despite the influx of millions of dollars; a country that has half a million internally displaced persons and largest number of refugees in the world; a country whose 7 million out of 27 million people suffer from hunger; a country whose most important posts are occupied by the most infamous and traitorous people like Fahim, Khalili, Atta, Farooq Wardak, Rahim Wardak, Ismail Khan, Anwar-ul-Haq Ahadi, Spanta, Karim Khuram, Hadi Arghandiwal, Dostum and countless other murderers and plunderers.

Despite all the treacheries of the US and west, a handful of stooge intellectuals and so-called analysts without a conscience, tirelessly propagate for the permanent presence of the US through the government media every day, as if the fortune and prosperity of our country is tied to this military agreement, as if peace, stability and comfort of our people and women is only attainable if the US permanent bases exist. These intellectuals who have sold their souls and are blinded by the dollars the US pays them, cannot or do not want to see the extensive damage and crimes the US and its Afghan accomplices have committed. Maybe they will come to at a time when their own loved ones are killed by the ruthless NATO and US soldiers and then urinated upon or their fingers are cut and kept as trophies. They try to act stupid and ignore this important historical lesson that no nation can prosper by linking itself to an alien nation, and that like the US which has a history marked by the blood of countless, unless its people unite and make sacrifices for gaining grand values like democracy and their rights.

The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) on the International Women’s Day announces to all the women in Afghanistan that our freedom from the grasp of foreign occupiers, Northern Alliance mafia, vicious Taliban and other anti-women elements, is only achievable by our unity and struggle. It is impossible that domestic violence, rape, beating and self-immolation among women be ended by seminars or some discussions of the NGOs. It is only attainable by the organization of women of all ethnic backgrounds and tribes into an anti-fundamentalist movement against the occupation.

http://www.rawa.org/index.php

 March 2012

International Women’s Day is about power: theirs and ours. Their power puts courts and legislatures in charge of whether or not a woman can have an abortion. Our power leaves this decision where it belongs: with the woman herself. Their power dictates a profit-driven “managed care” health care system, at the service of the health insurance industry and transnational pharmaceutical companies. Our power lies in grassroots organizing, for a national system of universal health care under community control.

Their power rests in greedy corporations owned by an ultra-wealthy few that deplete the world’s resources and exploit its people. Our power depends on building a mass movement for a new society rooted in cooperation, equality, and workers’ control.

Their power dumps toxic waste sites in our poorest communities-of-color, and builds dams that destroy the livelihoods of countless farmers in our poorest countries. Our power demands environmental justice.  Their power busts unions. Our power is at our worksites, talking with our co-workers about the connections between workers’ rights, human rights, and women’s rights. Their power is “welfare reform” that pushes women into low-paid, dead-end jobs, and their children into inadequate child care. Our power is the fight for the creation of good jobs with pay equity and benefits, and the full funding of quality child care, education, and social services.

Their power dupes young men and women into signing away their rights and often their lives for the sake of U.S. imperialism. Our power gets the word out on alternatives to “jobs” in the military and calls for huge cuts in the military budget. Their power blames hunger and poverty on over-population. Our power blames hunger and poverty on policies and practices consciously designed to protect and enrich the global capitalist class, in particular the agribusiness of the most developed countries.

Their power gets channeled through politicians whose primary allegiance is to the economic requirements of global capitalism. Our power gets exerted through political action completely independent of both mainstream, capitalist parties. Their power resides in exploitation, inequality, domination, violence, and deception. Our power resides in cooperation, compassion, respectful communication, justice, and collective action.

March 8th — International Women’s Day– is our day. It’s our opportunity to come together to speak out for a world where democratic socialist feminist values and programs enable people to live lives in ways they never will be able to under capitalism and patriarchy. That’s the truth. That’s our power

Budget Cuts Are An Assault On Women

Now is the time for both women and men across Scotland, the UK, and internationally to take to the streets to demand an end to violence against women and the attitudes that support it.

The cuts which have descended on the public sector fall heavily on women, and aid and abet violence against women in all its forms.  It is likely to be women that are most severely affected by the changes to housing benefit and to working tax credit.  It is likely to be women who will pick up the slack as social care is slashed and subsidies for childcare disappear.  It is likely to be women who absorb the rising anger of a generation of youth cast aside unable to obtain either employment or further education.

As radical activists, we need to take advantage of all opportunities to put forward a socialist and feminist perspective on violence against women, including all budget cuts. We must make our position clear: capitalism and patriarchy breed violence.  What we are confronting today, in these austerity budgets, is systemic violence that includes poverty, unemployment; and inadequate housing, childcare, mass transit, social services, and access to education and training– all coupled with discrimination and bigotry based on gender, age, sexual preference, and physical appearance and ability.

Massive layoffs and budget cuts are guaranteeing further disintegration of the public sector– a global crisis that is causing an upsurge in the level of all forms of violence against women.

Zero tolerance of the abuse of women.  Defend and expand the public sector.  No cuts!  Tax the rich!

Susan Dorazio & Mhairi MacAlpine 

In August 1914? World War I erupted, leading to the slaughter of millions. Inter­national Women’s Day became a focal point for those calling for an immediate end to the war. On February 23, 1917, (March 8 on the Gregorian calendar), thousands of Russian women celebrated International Women’s Day by surging onto the streets of Petrograd demanding peace. These militant protests led to the downfall of the czar and, soon afterward, Russia’s decision to leave the war.

Senseless war continues. Once again we are told that military action in Iraq and Afghanistan is intended to promote free­dom and peace, and once again we know the real reasons are about power and wealth. As we demonstrate our opposition to war and occupation this and every In­ternational Women’s Day, we commemo­rate the heroic actions of the women in Petrograd in 1917 and the women in Te­hran in 1979. In doing so, we maintain an unbroken link in the struggle for peace, justice, and equality.

About International Women’s Day and Power

International Women’s Day is about power: theirs and ours. Their power puts courts and legislatures in charge of whether or not a woman can have an abortion. Our power leaves this decision where it belongs: with the woman her­self. Their power dictates a profit-driven managed care health care system, at the service of the health insurance industry and transnational pharmaceutical compa­nies. Our power lies in grassroots organiz­ing, for a national system of universal health care under community control.

Their power rests in greedy corporations owned by an ultra-wealthy few that deplete the world’s resources and exploit its peo­ple. Our power depends on building a mass movement for a new society rooted in coop­eration, equality, and workers’ control.

Their power dumps toxic waste sites in our poorest communities-of-color, and builds dams that destroy the livelihoods of count­less farmers in our poorest countries. Our power demands environmental jus­tice. Their power busts unions. Our power is at our worksites, talking with our co-workers about the connections between workers’ rights, human rights, and women’s rights. Their power is welfare reform that pushes women into low-paid, dead-end jobs, and their children into inadequate child care. Our power is the fight for the creation of good jobs with pay equity and benefits, and the full funding of quality child care, education, and social services.

Their power dupes young men and women into signing away their rights and often their lives for the sake of U.S. imperial­ism. Our power gets the word out on alternatives to jobs in the military and calls for huge cuts in the military budget Their power blames hunger and poverty on over-population. Our power blames hunger and poverty on policies and practices consciously designed to protect and enrich the global capitalist class, in particular the agribusiness of the most developed countries.

Their power gets channeled through politicians whose primary allegiance is to the economic requirements of global capitalism. Our power gets exerted through political action completely in­dependent of both mainstream, capital­ist parties. Their power resides in ex­ploitation, inequality, domination, vio­lence, and deception. Our power resides in cooperation, compassion, respectful communication, justice, and collective action.

March 8th — International Women’s Day is our day

It’s our opportunity to come together to speak out for a world where de­mocratic socialist feminist values and programs enable people to live lives in ways they never will be able to un­der capitalism and patriarchy. That’s the truth. That’s our power.

History

1909: The Woman’s National Committee of the Socialist Party calls for a national day of protest on the last Sunday of Feb­ruary to support women’s suffrage in the context of the broader movement for women’s rights, workers’ rights, and so­cial justice

1910: The Women’s Congress of the So­cialist International meets in August in Copenhagen and approves the call for an international day of protest. The specific date is left open to the participants in each country.

1913: Russian socialists begin celebrating International Women’s Day. Their inten­tion is to organize rallies for the same day as that set in the United States, but since their Julian calendar lags several days be­hind the Gregorian calendar, the events take place in early March by our reckon­ing.

1917: The date of March 8 for Interna­tional Women’s Day gets established when tens of thousands of women, dem­onstrating on that day in Petrograd, the capital of Russia, spark a revolution that topples three centuries of czarist autoc­racy.

Since then, the revolutionary history of In­ternational Women’s Day has been hon­ored by countless women around the world: for example, by the women of Iran who, in the face of the reactionary dictums of the Ayatollah Khomeini, took to the streets in 1979 to demand equality; and by the thousands of women who, since 1999, have taken part each March 8 in the Global Women’s Strike for a global society based on caring, not killing.

The Socialist Party is a socialist femi­nist organization that recognizes that a struggle against habitual male domi­nance and patriarchy must go hand in hand with any struggle against capital­ism. Therefore, we pledge our opposi­tion to all forms of sexism, and demand equality in all aspects of life.

Socialist Party USA Platform

The suffragette movement was a bourgeois movement

I’m a Marxist not a feminist, I stand for the liberation of all workers

The socialist movement played no significant role in the feminist movement of the 60s and 70s, which proves the Marxists really do not care about women

Historically, Marxism hasn’t recognised the oppression of women as a sex. It is only concerned with the oppression of women as workers.

I’m a socialist, I believe in equality for all workers. Positive discrimination is just discrimination against men

What is feminism?

Many of the above statements have been made in discussions and debates around socialism, feminism and Marxism. The SSP has been a microcosm of many of these discussions since its conception. There has been a battle regarding ideology around feminism, women’s liberation and oppression but at times the debate appears to lack praxis, the praxis of theory into practice.

No doubt women are changing. We need an appropriate word which will register this fact. The term feminism has been foisted upon us. It will do as well as any other word….It mean’s women’s struggle for freedom.

(New Review, 1914, paper of American Socialist Party)

What do we mean when we call someone a feminist or refer to feminism? Why does it have so many different meanings? And why can it be seen as a positive expression of liberation politics or a term of abuse? And more importantly what is socialism’s relationship to feminism?

Feminism, means many things to many people but perhaps the best way to explain feminism is to see it not as a theory, a practice or ideology but almost as part of anthropology regarding women’s position in society. Feminism is the naming of women’s oppression, women’s rights, the women’s question etc. This was first posed by Mary Wollstonecraft in 1790 in her book The Vindication On the Rights of Woman. Wollstonecraft named the problem, she described women’s relationship to men and to society as oppression, that women are infantilised, sexualised and ignored, they are denied their full human potential by lack of economic power, the vote or say in their own or anyone’s else’s lives. Many of Wollstonecraft’s ideas and questions were taken up and raised in the French Revolution and many women and men discussed her ideas. Indeed Wollstonecraft moved to Paris during the revolution.She was hailed by many liberals and revolutionaries as a true visionary.

Wollstonecraft brought the vindication of women’s rights into the liberal and utopian socialist movement and since then women’s rights have been discussed and debated as a moral, political, ideological, scientific and social problem.

Feminism is best explained (crudely) as a spectrum between radical and reformist. Feminists of all kinds oscillate on the spectrum between radical and reformist.

Feminists who describe themselves as radical feminists are the feminists who wish to change the system, have a radical approach to the world. However radical feminists rarely agree with one another. They are often diametrically opposed to one another. The two main spectrums are materialist feminists (usually Marxist but may be anarchistic) and the political feminists, who see patriarchy (men) as the problem.

Radical feminists share an understanding that society and even the class system need to be overthrown, however they may differ (greatly) on how to solve the problem. Political feminists are often wrongly described as bourgeois feminists (e.g. Andrea Dworkin etc). Materialist feminists want to defeat the class system with the working class; political feminists want to defeat the domination of men or the patriarchy by feminist action and may see little role for men.

Reformist feminists want to reform society to make it better for women, They can be liberal feminist (sometimes known as bourgeois feminists) who want to compete with men and have what men have within class society. On the other side, are economist feminists (socialist feminists fit into this categorically when calling for reforms), who want economic and legislative reforms to address women’s oppression.

The problem is that rarely does any feminist fit into any one category all of the time but the key issue is how we are influenced by the ideas and solutions in addressing women’s oppression.

A materialist feminist may be involved in an economistic demand for equal pay or a woman managing director (liberal feminist) in supporting a campaign against men’s violence against women (political feminism).

Many comrades dismiss feminism on the basis of coming across feminist ideas and/or practice they disagree with. Instead, the methodology should be – if you have identified that women are oppressed and something has to change that is identifying with feminism. The real dilemma is how do we address this oppression and bring about women’s liberation? Some people, usually men feel more comfortable describing themselves as pro-feminist.

Marxism & Feminism

However to understand politically the ideas of feminism i.e. the acknowledgement of women’s oppression and the need for women’s liberation, we must first understand it historically and materially. Revolutionary Marxists in the past (though not always consistently) have waged an unremitting struggle within the broad working-class movement in order to struggle for women’s liberation. Marxists were not only involved in raising the consciousness of women to recognise their oppression and to demand their liberation but to educate the advanced working class to an understanding of the significance of the struggles by women for full equality, emancipation and for the liberation from the centuries-old degradation of domestic slavery. Throughout the past 160 years the struggle has been more intense than at other times.

At the time of Marx, debates were held about women’s liberation and oppression. In Marx’s Communist Manifesto of 1848 he stated:

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family based? On capital, on private gain……The bourgeois sees in his wife, a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

Marx identified that women’s oppression was based on her relationship to production but also her relationship to men and to the family. There were many debates with the utopian socialists about this subject before the Communist Manifesto. Fourier and Owen were fervent champions of the emancipation of women but they saw it as a moral question rather than a materialist question. Marx explained that the oppression of women lay in its relationship to their role in the family and the system of production, based on private property and a society divided between a class that owned the wealth and a class that produced it. Marx (and Engels later in The Family, Private Property and the State) identified the role of the family in perpetuating the oppression of women.

Marx and Engels explained how the abolition of private property would provide a material basis from transferring to society, as a whole, all those social responsibilities borne by the individual family – the care of the old and sick, feeding, clothing and educating the young. Relieved of these burdens, Marx pointed out, the masses of women would be able to break the bonds of domestic servitude, and they would exercise their full human potential as creative and productive – not just reproductive – members of society.

Marx gave a solution. Just like Dorothy’s red shoes, the solution was there all the time, the solution being the working class, created by the capitalist system, which could become the force to overcome class society. However the wish wasn’t just for a better society but to begin to organise how to bring it about. In bringing about a communist transformation of society, women would be liberated. However women would only be liberated if they were organised and involved in their own liberation, as part of the liberation of the class.

In the First International there was a debate whether women should be allowed to join. Marx himself presented a motion in 1864 to the General Council that special women’s branches be organised in factories, industries and cities where there were a large concentration of women workers. He made it clear that this should not cut across building mixed branches as well.

However the next year a massive row broke out in the German section of the First International between the Marxists and the non-Marxists. In 1865, and for twenty years following, the German SDP was divided between the followers of Lassalle (the reformists) on one side and the Marxists under Bebel and Liebknecht on the other. There were sharp differences on organisation and ideology but one of the major debates was on women. The Lassalleans were opposed to demanding equal rights for women. Their demand was women should not be forced to work for a wage, that their rightful role was in the home with the family and that a man should have a family wage to support his wife and children. Liebknecht and Bebel argued ferociously that women had the right to be economically independent from men and to be liberated from the family. The SDP’s original demand was for full political rights for adults which left the demand open as to whether women were indeed considered adults or not.

The decisive arguments that won the victory for the demands were published in 1883 in Bebel’s Woman and Socialism and Engels’ The Family, Private Property and State published 1884. In 1891 the SDP demanded political rights for all, regardless of sex, and the abolition of every law which discriminates against women in any way.

The SDP in 1896 organised women into autonomous groups in order women could be educated and organised to concentrate on specific campaigns particularly political equality, insurance for childbirth, protective legislation for women workers, education and security for children. Until 1908 women were banned from joining political organisations in Germany but women could join societies. Women within the SDP had proportional representation from their societies and committees to the National Committee of the SDP.

Whilst the German SDP were debating whether women were adults or not or had the right to be independent both economically and sexually – the debate echoed around the world, particularly in the demand for the vote, the right for women’s franchise. (This article cannot properly address the suffragette movement)

The year before women won the vote (well those with property and over 30) in Britain in 1918, women in Russia went on strike under the demands of Bread for our children, bring home our husbands and sons from the trenches. Indeed it was International Women’s Day of 1917 that was the first day of the Russian Revolution. Women had organised themselves as women, despite being workers and Bolsheviks. Before the revolution, demands such as contraception, the right to abortion and to divorce were not common demands, however by 1918 they had become part of Soviet legislation.

Alexandra Kollontai, the only women on the Bolshevik Central Committee toured throughout the Soviet Union with her comrades Inessa Armand, Emma Goldman, Clara Zetkin and many others, in arguing women were central to the revolution and their own emancipation. Previously in 1913, Kollontai had organised a day long lecture in St Petersburg on the Women’s Question and all the organisers and speakers were arrested for immorality. In Britain, the British Communist Party organised a Kollontai lecture where working class women queued up in their hundreds to hear of the reforms of the Russian Revolution, though many believed they would be told how to practice birth control and be given Russian contraceptives.

In 1921 the Communist International made it obligatory for membership, that communist parties throughout the world had set up women’s bureaus and there had to be at least one full time member of staff to co-ordinate the work. There was an International Women’s Secretariat to oversee the work with six monthly conferences with representation from all sections to discuss the work with women and demands to put forward to support women’s liberation. Unfortunately the rise of Stalinism put an end to the progressive nature of this communist tradition and women were not to organise themselves so radically for another 50 years.

Conclusion

This article is in response to the confusion of whether, as socialists or Marxists, we can identify with feminism. To suggest that we do not is ahistorical. It does not fit the praxis of our theories about class society and human liberation.

Surely it cannot be argued that women, currently, are fully equal to men and even if they were, are they so liberated they can reach their full human potential? No sane socialist or Marxist would suggest such a thing. The debate to reject feminism in the socialist and Marxist movement is a false one, denying uncomfortable truths and realities. Many male socialists do not enjoy the accusation that they may wittingly or unwittingly benefit from women’s oppression and many female socialists do not want special treatment or to be victimised because of their gender, all of which can be addressed in a vibrant socialist organisation with debate, discussion and trying very hard to solve problems when they arise. The debate now needs to be about how do we address the specific issues of women’s oppression and exploitation and more importantly how does a party like the Scottish Socialist Party deal with feminist action and identification as part of the working class movement to change the world.

The images of voracious famine leaking out of the steamy deserts of the Northwest African nation of Niger, cuts to the soul’s quick.

Babies barely able to grasp a breath.

Mothers with breasts as flat, and milkless as boys.

Men and women, dizzy with hunger, laid low in the barren dust, awaiting whatever release that either death or food may bring.

Fathers weeping because there is a relentless drought, and there is nothing — nothing — to feed one’s wife, one’s children, one’s aged mother.

This is Niger, 2005, and according to broadcast reports, it will take about 4 weeks, or perhaps more, for any food relief to reach the nation.

It is a telling reflection of the lives we live that here, in the heart of the Empire, there are millions of people who have so much to eat, that the fastest growing health threat is morbid obesity, and it’s equally serious cousin, diabetes. Billions of dollars are spent annually on the latest fad diet, carbo diets, Atkins diets, grapefruit diets, and, if I’m not mistaken, a donut diet (OK — I’m joking about the last one).

But just barely.

What’s wrong with this picture?

How the world is organized, and how the world’s economic business is done, is what’s wrong.

Clearly, some people have too much; others have nothing.

One also couldn’t look face-on at these pictures, without thinking, almost immediately, of the recent worldwide music concerts which were designed to raise consciousness — not money! — about the starving millions in Africa.

As I looked at these famished people, babies so weak and drawn by hunger that they could no longer eat, as one girl’s tender mouth was a nest of parasites eating her tiny body alive, and wondered about the concerts that were designed to raise consciousness about the plight of the starving.

It reminded me that we live in an age when TV becomes, not merely an image, but a fact.

Millionaire musicians stage concerts around the globe, pulling in billions to the international media conglomerates, showing how nice and progressive and caring these stations are, while perhaps 600,000 people, in one country, will starve to death by week’s end.

Madness. Media madness. Corporate madness. Capitalist madness.

With perhaps one-hundredth of one percent of the monies used to stage the broadcast blockbuster event, virtually all of these people could’ve been fed, and saved, to live, at least through the rainy season. No doubt, those heart-rending pictures of human suffering will yet raise billions for organizations, NGOs, and charity agencies, and will continue to do so, long after these specific men, women and children, will have ceased living on this earth. Briefly consider the state of the world’s wealth and poverty:

• 1. 1.3 billion people lack access to clean water; 1.2 billion live on less than a dollar a day; 840 million are malnourished.
• 2. More than 20,000 people die each day from hunger-related diseases.
• 3. The richest three people in the world have assets greater than the combined output of the 48 poorest countries.

[Excerpts from: Seabrook, Jeremy, The No-Nonsense Guide to Class, Caste, & Hierarchies (Oxford/London: New Internationalist/Verso, 2002), p. 11.]

We live in a world where madness passes for normalcy, where the raging logic of the marketplace leaves tens, and hundreds of millions of people, in dire peril.

And the gap between the rich and poor grows exponentially, daily.

Yet, like little Neros, we play musical accompaniments to massacres of hunger, which can be prevented with virtual ease.

But, this is Africa; Niger, poor people, agricultural people. These are expendable people. These are but flickering images on a screen.

Copyright 2005 Mumia Abu-Jamal

I started reading the above pamphlet with some trepidation. It was produced in the midst of a heated, divisive and misleading debate on whether or not to adopt a mechanism for the party list section of the Scottish parliament elections, which would ensure that women and men were equally represented on the lists. It was therefore, I suppose, inevitable, that a pamphlet written at this time by two women in favour of the proposal should seek to find theoretical, historical and Marxist backing for their position. My concern was that in order to substantiate their position, these comrades would set out to bend the stick. Unfortunately, this pamphlet lived up to my fears.

It starts out with a dishonest description of the nature of the debate itself:

Debate is taking place within the Scottish Socialist Party about whether to have equal numbers of men and women on parliamentary candidate lists

This was not the debate. The SSP has always supported the position of complete gender equality. How this is achieved was the issue. The disagreement was over whether or not the SSP puts in place a mechanism, which determines the gender of the comrade most likely to be elected to the Scottish parliament, at the top of the list in each region.

(The RCN opposed the tokenistic proposal for a mechanism and fully backed the amendment from Dundee West and Kilmarnock branches that looked at ways of involving women in all levels of party work. The amendment rooted the cause of women’s double oppression under capitalism and sought to change the male dominance of the
SSP.)

The pamphlet goes on to claim that it, seeks to address these arguments, and explain why fighting sexism and ending women’s oppression are central to the struggle for socialism. It succeeds in achieving none of these aims.

As an opponent of the proposed change, I did expect the pamphlet to deal with the main arguments being aired up and down the country over the question of how gender equality can be achieved under capitalism. I had the right to expect that the many genuine questions raised by comrades in opposition would be answered: How do we attract more women to the ideas of socialism? How do we bring them into the structures of the SSP? How do we change the SSP to allow this to happen? How do we relieve women of their double oppression so they can fully participate? Does such a mechanism leave democracy in tatters? Does it not simply benefit a few ambitious women while doing nothing to change women’s position in society? And how will this mechanism help in fighting sexism, and ending women’s oppression?

Gesture politics

Instead of serious polemic, these questions are swept aside in the best tradition of gesture politics,

But these arguments do not take into consideration the long standing oppression of women which means that many women do not always put themselves forward to play a leading role. Many working class women lack confidence in their own abilities and don’t see themselves as political leaders in the workplace, community or within socialist organisations.

Tell us something we didn’t know like how this mechanism will change any of the above! Furthermore, reassure us that this imposed schema can be justified in terms of the questions posed by the opposition. There is little further direct reference to the debate but there is a strong suggestion that the proposal is the direct political manifestation of Marxism as applied by every great thinker of our Marxist tradition. Sylvia Pankhurst, Rosa Luxemberg and John MacLean are used in manner that suggests they would have had no possible quibble with this proposal!

As a history of the struggle for women’s liberation, it is a complete mish mash. It fails to develop any particular strand of the struggle to any depth nor does it make the reader feel identification with the women cited. It falls into the traditionally male trap of presenting political argument devoid of emotion. Consequently, the struggles of the suffragettes and the fight for legal safe abortions are depicted in a clinical matter of fact way that fails to move or inspire. And for any women who live outwith Glasgow, their struggles are completely invisible. Glasgow-centric-ism (I know that is not the right word but you know what I mean) debilitates the SSP in many spheres of its work but you always hope that new writers would recognise and try to deal with it. A mention of the women who have fought and sacrificed in factories, mills, fishing villages and on the land all throughout Scotland would at least have acknowledged that heroic battles have taken place outside the auspices of the Red Clydeside.

More than just a mechanism

No socialist could fail to agree with the main premise of each chapter:

• Fighting sexism and women’s oppression is central to the struggle for socialism
• Women are doubly oppressed under capitalism
• Women have led tremendous struggles for the liberation of themselves and others
• The Women’s Liberation Movement failed because of a lack of class politics
• Capitalism is the enemy not men
• Marxists fight for the liberation of all of humanity
• The struggle for women’s liberation goes on today

But we need more than such bald statements in order to take us forward. We need the combination of Marxist theory and practice. We need to develop fresh ways of thinking and acting towards each other. All of this means more than just passing a motion to put in place a mechanism.

The proposal for 50-50, had the backing of the SSP executive, SSP Women’s Nework and the Socialist Worker Platform. Given such prestigious backing, winning this mechanism should have been a walkover for the party leadership. Instead, it resulted in a massive split within the party, a split within the leadership ISM platform and a group of comrades walking out of the conference when their amendments were not voted on. The Executive/Women’s Network won, but the victory was pyrrhic. The conference debate was marred by the destructive nature of the arguments used by the movers. Telling comrades they should find another party if they disagreed with the motion, that their arguments were cretinous, and the attempts to bully a woman into not speaking against the motion left a very nasty taste in the mouth, and swayed votes, not to the proposers but, against them.

A couple of weeks after the conference I walked up to join my comrades setting up a Saturday stall, the only woman amongst a fairly macho looking bunch. I could not help wondering when the 50-50 proposal would make a difference to me as a woman in the SSP, or to the hundreds of working class women walking past us.

This pamphlet was, I think, quite a brave attempt to add some theory into a debate, which at times verged on the farcical. Sadly, the haste with which it was produced, and its failure to address the central elements of the argument mean that it reflects the state of gender politics in the SSP. Like the conference resolution itself, this pamphlet lacks the vision to provide real solutions.

As International Women’s Day comes around articles will again be written about how women are still not achieving parity with men. And of course that’s true but I want to look at things from a slightly different angle. I don’t want to be equal with men if that means having the right [and being expected] to work full time; if that means developing a male emotional psyche – or even if it means fighting to have a female emotional psyche validated in the workplace. The fight to be equally exploited and dehumanised by the needs of modern capitalist society is the wrong fight. [And, increasingly, we are facing a capitalism that has to squeeze more and more out of us to maintain itself.] Of course we, as communists, should be fighting to abolish all wage slavery; but even within the present system we can and should challenge the notion that what women need is to be equal with men, as men currently are. Because men aren’t brought up to be fully human – neither are women. We are socialised into our respective gender roles, each of which prepares us to operate in our given sphere. Of course this is a massive simplification and generalisation; people are much more complex than that. I also acknowledge the complications and contradictions of the class versus gender debate. However there is still enough of a socialised and internalised division between men and women to be able to use that as a starting point to look at what kind of change we really want to fight for.

Emotional development reflects the needs of capitalism

It might be argued that throughout time men and women have always been allocated different tasks and roles and have had different and differing status based on this. [For example, I quite liked the notion that in the beginning women were revered as goddesses and worshipped because they produced live mini-humans! Then men figured out that they had something to do with it and things haven’t been the same since!!] However, in the last couple of hundred years task or work related divisions have been intricately linked to the emotional. The emotional development of men and of women was to reflect the needs of capitalism. Women were to be at home with the children, being caring and nurturing and men were to be out in the world of work, being strong and rational. Even when contradictions became obvious, such as the need for working class women to ‘work’so that middle class women could be leisured, the middle class bourgeois ideal was upheld as something to aspire to.

Man for the field and woman for the hearth; Man for the sword and for the needle she; Man with the head and woman with the heart; Man to command and woman to obey; All else confusion.

Extract from The Princess by Alfred Lord Tennyson [1847] and 100 years later:

There is no doubt in the minds of the General Council that home is one of the most important spheres for a woman worker and it would be doing a grave injury to the life of the nation if women were persuaded or forced to neglect their domestic duties in order to enter industry, particularly where there are young children to cater for.

Trades Union Council [1947] These two extracts highlight the conditioning of women into separate spheres, even in the working class movement.

More recently bourgeois liberals have been challenging some of these divisions. We’ve seen the rise of the new man more in touch with his emotions and more involved in bringing up his children. Women have the right to a full-time job or career. However, for most women in this position the result has been even more exploitation in the form of double-work. This means being home maker as well as career woman, struggling with the guilt of neglecting their nurturing responsibilities at home and of allowing home life to intrude upon the world of work. Of course a lot of these bourgeois developments don’t touch our class. Many working class women have been doubleworking all along, their income essential to the family’s survival. And millions of working class men have lived with long term unemployment and the devastating effects that has had on a male psyche that has identity and purpose so tied up with work, job or career.

So men and women need to join together to fight for the right not to have to work full time and to fight for the right to develop and express the full range of our emotional being. Just as we work to challenge and change the relations of production, we must challenge the divisions and separations that stunt our emotional development. That isn’t to demand that men are more in touch with their feminine side – we must challenge the separation of certain emotions into masculine and feminine constructs. The left in particular needs to look at emotional development and how much that hinders our class. Of the many obstacles we need to overcome in order to overthrow capitalism the most unacknowledged are our psychological and emotional barriers. Our emotional development is where we internalise our own oppression and yet it’s accepted by many on the left that the emotional isn’t important – that it’s not real politics. For example for women to be real proper politicos they have to subsume the emotional to the rational and purely political [if there ever can be such a thing]. But this is to internalise middle class capitalistic values. For the rise of capitalism it became necessary to suppress and devalue the emotional. In order to exploit and compete in huge scale capitalism owners of production and wealth had to overcome and suppress their capacity to feel for others, to empathise. Hence the rise of the notion of the angel in the house, home as a haven from the harsh outside world of business, commerce and public office. The caring, nurturing, emotional side of humanity was deposited in women – men were to be the aggressive, competitive, unemotional ones. This was necessary for the maintenance and development of the mass exploitation of the working class [even paternalistic landowners were allowed to care about their workers and were seen to have obligations towards them].

Meaningful way of contributing to society’s needs

However, I’m also challenging the notion of what work is and why women are demanding the same as men in this sense – we should be arguing alongside men for a more meaningful way of contributing to what our community and society needs and wants. Even under the present system we can demand that parttime well-paid work becomes the norm for men and for women. This would allow for a more equitable distribution of the pleasures and responsibilities of life. Then the construction of genderroles with its artificial divisions in emotional development would become unnecessary. Men and women have an equal right to experience and express the full range of human emotions – and to express them openly.

Thus I would argue that to challenge capitalism, and within that to fight for gender equality, we need to look at our own emotional conditioning. The women’s movement talked of the personal being political, I’m arguing that the emotional is political, and that to challenge our internalised views of the importance of the emotional is a truly revolutionary thing to do. Emotionally, equality isn’t about men being seen to be crying on the football pitch, or about young women becoming laddettes. It’s about what’s usually dubbed the emotional being given equal consideration with the rational. We need both.