By Geillis Duncan
This pamphlet from the SWP aims to be a short guide to why women are unequal and oppressed in capitalist society, discussing how this came about, why women are not ‘naturally’ subordinate to men, plus some of the main problems faced by women in contemporary society. It does not, however, sufficiently explore how we can fight against women’s oppression and exploitation, or what politics are needed to achieve lasting equality—the overthrow of class society which is the basis for women’s oppression.
Class and family
The pamphlet sets out Engels’ arguments in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), in which he demonstrates how women suffered a ‘world historical defeat’ with the rise of the first societies based on private property. With settled agricultural communities producing a surplus of food and other sources of wealth under male hierarchies, monogamy was imposed on women to ensure a man’s wealth passed only to his ‘legitimate’ offspring.
In parallel, class societies developed based on the accumulation of wealth from the exploitation of the direct producers by rulers who exercised control over the means of production. The male-dominated family form evolved through the transition from slavery to feudalism, and, finally, to capitalism and the bourgeois family. In its archetypal form, men are the principal breadwinners, and women are the housemaids, cooks and mothers. Those who do go out to work usually have a double burden, still doing the bulk of the housework and childcare.
The pamphlet presents the classical Marxist case for liberating women from domestic slavery through the socialisation of household tasks and childcare. This is an important demand. Free, quality socialised care should be available to parents and all other carers.
The pamphlet acknowledges that ‘sexism itself does not come from individuals. There are deeper structures at work which shape men and women’s behaviour, and expectations and attitudes towards one another’ and notes the the economic and ideological benefits of the nuclear family to capitalism. It fails, however, to recognise the material benefits of sexism to men, and therefore underestimates the challenge of convincing working class men to eschew the short-term benefits of relative status, opportunities and comforts, in favour of fighting alongside women for a society free of oppression.
This belief that men do not benefit from women’s oppression (or white people from racism, cis people from transphobia, etc.) means the SWP believes that oppressive ideas are simply ‘ideology’ rather than a product of structurally ingrained privileges.
Organising against sexism
The pamphlet also mentions the views of Russian revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai, who argued in her writings for freedom from oppression and restriction within sexual relationships, so that truly socialist intimate relationships could develop. This has, at times, been distorted by socialist men to justify exploitative relationships and harmful behaviours. Kollontai’s views are about partners agreeing without coercion to ‘freedom’ in relationships, not people feeling obliged to accept behaviour that they are not happy with, which can happen even to women in socialist organisations.
If we recognise that sexism can and does raise its head within socialist organisations, trade unions and campaigns then we should organise to challenge it. Oppressed groups within our movement must have the right to caucus—to meet together to discuss our oppression, including particular incidents or policies and then speak with a collective voice to the rest of the organisation. Rather than being divisive, such a practice recognises the oppressions that class society engenders and seeks to overcome them by empowering the oppressed.
The SWP does not follow this practice and it has infamously led to sexism manifesting itself within its ranks in a terrible way. rs21, which split from the SWP on this issue has come a long way in changing its procedures. In Workers Power we have established women’s caucuses in our organisation for decades and fight for them in the labour and social movements as a way of combatting sexism and predatory behaviour of male comrades.
Revolutionary strategy
Finally, the pamphlet has a section on ‘Glimpses of Revolution.’ This points to uprisings and mass protests by women in Egypt in 2011 and women’s actions during the so-called Arab Spring, as well as in Iran more recently. However, we don’t learn from this pamphlet why those revolutions were defeated and what we can learn from them. We simply get calls for more mass movements, where reactionary ideas can be more effectively challenged. We read that more strikes, fights, and defensive actions are needed to fight for liberation and these fights must be linked. Finally, we are asked to join the SWP to smash sexism and fight for a different world.
This section rightly emphasises methods of working class struggle—strikes, price committees, workers’ control over production and distribution. But despite pointing to measures implemented by the Russian Revolution such as the socialisation of housework and childcare, and access to abortion and divorce, the pamphlet holds back from proposing a strategy for women’s liberation today. Instead, it simply says, ‘We need to organise to ensure the strikes go forward and win, against any attack on our rights, to defend the right to choose, to fight against objectification and harassment, and to challenge sexist stereotypes.’
Given the myriad of attacks on women’s rights across the world, if we argue that women’s liberation is intrinsically linked to the struggle for socialism we must also explain the changes we are fighting for and how to win.
Since the 1970s, Workers Power has argued that we need to entrench women’s collective power by building a mass working class women’s movement out of these struggles, such as the women of the British mining communities did during the 1984 strike.
A working class women’s movement needs to be informed by revolutionary politics, to connect the struggle for immediate goals with the perspective of final liberation through social revolution. A revolutionary party rooted in the working class and local communities to fight for this perspective is an indispensable contribution to that task.
Working class women fighting alongside men for rights and freedoms are essential in showing the way to a society where misogyny, the exploitation of women and profiting from trafficking is condemned by all, and rapists, wife-beaters and the likes of Andrew Tate will be thrown into the dustbin of history where they belong.
