Sex and the free market (1985)

From the September 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

What glorious offers the market presents us with: if you can afford to pay the price there is little that is not on sale. Food, clothing, shelter, theatre, books . . . and sex. The market knows no limit to what it can tempt the buyer with. You want sex? Then hand over the cash, sign the cheque. American Express will do nicely. In a buying and selling society sex is a commodity an item to be purchased — and money is the key to access.

The supplier of the sexual commodity is called a prostitute. There are some male prostitutes who sell to women and many males who sell their services to other men. but the overwhelming majority of prostitutes are women. As members of the working class, who have nothing to sell but their labour power, prostitutes sell sexual satisfaction — or, at least, the crude pretence of it — to male buyers.

What is the state of the market? It is difficult to assess how many prostitutes there are in Britain. Certainly, there are thousands of full-time prostitutes, thousands more who earn part of their income by selling sex, and — as will be explained further on — many thousands more who are effectively prostitutes, even if that is not in their job description. The number of prostitutes working in the cities is growing, with more women workers each month entering the supply end of the sex market. This recent increase can be explained: firstly, the recession which has led to mass unemployment has hit female workers hardest and therefore women and girls who would once have earned a wage through more conventional employment are now forced to make a living "on the game"; secondly, the low wages and unacceptably tedious jobs usually offered to young girls who are on the dole leave many of them deciding that any way of making a living is better than the indignity of the dole queue or extra-exploitative employment; thirdly, the growing rejection among female workers of the traditionally idealised image of being a wife within a happy family has led many to seek freedom from the stereotypical role of womanhood, only to discover that freedom under capitalism amounts to no more than the opportunity to become an independent item of sale on the market.

Romanticised images of prostitutes who are only in the job because they choose such work are mythical and insulting to the women who end up doing a job that no human being should have to do. Such images are akin to the popular depiction of tramps as "eccentrics" who sleep in the gutters by inclination rather than compulsion. We can dismiss the bogus picture of the high-class whore who lives in an apartment in Mayfair, dresses in Paris fashions, wears the best perfume and sends her children to public schools. In reality, most prostitutes are miserable, frightened and ashamed women who have been trapped into the job in the illusory hope that it will offer an escape route from poverty. Every day a stream of young girls travel to the big cities, their numbers increasing as small town poverty becomes more wretched believing that they will find relief from their impoverished existences in what proves to be a bewildering environment in which money is the sole passport to survival. It is no coincidence that red-light districts are usually in the close vicinity of main-line coach and train stations. In order to survive — to eat. to pay rent, to buy some clothes which might help them obtain a "decent" job — it is tempting to accept the offer of the pimp who tells them that they will be provided with security as his employees. Drug addicts, usually driven to their addiction by their frustration with a world of buying and selling, find themselves further frustrated by lack of money to buy drugs. These are ready recruits for the pimps. And the worn-out old women who are lonely and miserable and often sick, they too are driven onto the streets as discount commodities — “you can have her for half-price as she’s past her prime".

While seduction is erotic, the efforts of the sex-sellers are cold and loveless and hollow; if the pleasures of sex are exciting, the hurried moments of purchased sex are dull and dehumanising. The market not only turns practical existence into a struggle in which those without money lose, but also generates a sickly emotional poverty — a bankruptcy of human feelings.

Getting back to market values

In those glorious years of "Victorian Values”, so beloved by she who presides today over the screwing of the British working class, the rich grew prosperous thanks to unfettered exploitation while tens of thousands of women workers were turned into prostitutes. There were 80,000 prostitute women in Victorian London (Prostitution in London, Mayhew and Bracebridge. 1862). a figure supported by the most reliable academic source of the time, the medical journal, The Lancet, which declared in 1857 that one in every sixty houses in London was a brothel and one in every sixteen women a prostitute. Three years later The Saturday Review stated that there were 360,000 full-time prostitutes in Britain. Contrary to the conventional belief that Victorian sexual practices conformed to a strictly "decent" code of moral values, it is clear from an examination of historical facts that poverty, then as now, forced workers to throw decency and values to the wind. Indeed, with one in every sixteen London women forced to sell sex in order to earn a living, one can understand why our present Prime Minister, motivated by a desire to push workers off the dole queue, is so anxious to revive Victorian values. It was not only women "on the game" who were considered to be sexually purchasable in Victorian Britain: most servant and factory girls were considered open to offer by those with the money to take their pick. Victorian autobiographical tales abound with rich young capitalists who desired a female employee of theirs. How could women workers afford to refuse these offers, knowing that their future employment was at stake? (Still today, many a female employee has to make the undignified choice between accepting her boss’s advances or getting the sack). And how could women, slaving for hours for a pittance of a wage, find it easy to resist the temptation to sell their sexual favours for a sum greater than they might earn in a week? So it was that those who owned and controlled the means of wealth production and distribution demanded and obtained power over every aspect of those they exploited. (Incidentally, this was but a subtle continuation of feudal morality which gave the landlord the right, and the female serf the duty, to engage in property-determined sexual relationships.)

We would be wrong to imagine that Victorian conditions no longer exist in the modem capitalist world. In Bangkok, for example, it has been estimated that one in every three females is a prostitute. And even those employed as wage slaves in the hideous sweatshops of that city are vulnerable to the sexual demands of those who can afford to buy what is not officially for sale.

Where capitalism forces workers into undignified acts there are always moralists ready and waiting to blame the wage slaves for their sins. The vicars, never far from the scene when hookers are in town, are there to sample the wares and then tell the wretched women to repent. Repent for what for being too poor to afford to live in idleness. like the rich ladies of the capitalist class whose parasitism the vicars are there to defend? The venereologist. William Acton, writing in 1857. listed as the main causes of prostitution "natural sinfulness", "the preferment of indolent ease to labour" and "fall from virtue" (Prostitution. Considered In Its Moral, Social And Sanitary Aspects). According to William Bracebridge, prostitutes were not real women: "there is a great abandonment of everything that one may strictly speaking denominate womanly". And if prostitution was caused by sin. as was the common view, then the task of moralists had to be to offer the poor sinners severe correction an activity which many a vicar has indulged in with less than lofty motives. Gladstone, the Liberal Prime Minister, earned the popular nickname "Gladeye". in recognition of his strenuous efforts to redeem "fallen"" women — usually back at his place. Special refuges for so-called fallen women were set up in the mid-nineteenth century — places designed to deny their occupants any kind of sensual comfort in the hope that abstinence would make them forget their sinful impulses.

Prostitutes have always been expected to feel guilty for being the victims of poverty. Not all have complied: on 24 February. 1858 The Times published a letter from an unashamed prostitute — signing herself "Another Unfortunate'" — in which an extremely clear explanation of the cause of her misfortune was given. The letter led to widespread shock among the miserable moralists, causing the editor of The Times to respond, disgustedly:

They have no remorse or misgivings about the nature of their pursuit; on the contrary, they consider the calling an advantageous one, and they look upon their success in it with satisfaction (25 February. 1858)

One might apply the same words to the editor of The Times, being a man paid a fat salary to publish lies.

The letter from "Another Unfortunate” is a unique insight into why a working-class woman became a prostitute, which would apply today as then. She describes her colleagues as "we, who are not fallen, but were always down" and asks

Now, what if I am a prostitute, what business has society to abuse me? Have 1 received any favours at the hands of society? If I am a hideous cancer in society, are not the causes of the disease to be sought in the rottenness of the carcass? Am I not its legitimate child; no bastard. Sir?

She was correct: capitalism creates the walking symptoms of the market disease and it ill-becomes apologists for the market to condemn them.

In The Times of 3 July, 1985 Peter Kellner commented on an article which had appeared a week earlier in the Sun. The latter rag, in its usual effort to search the sewers for news unworthy of adult reading, ran a story under the headline PROSTITUTE CHRISTINE IS A TORY COUNCILLOR It seems that Christine Pearson, a councillor in Thanet, had been revealed by the Sun to be a practising prostitute. The validity of the report is of no concern here. Kellner's comment on the story is worth quoting, however:

I can see no coherent argument for terminating a Conservative councillor's political career on the grounds that she has been accused of selling sex . . . I defy anyone to name an occupation that applies Thatcherite principles more completely than prostitution. It is. surely, the ultimate form of flexible, non-unionised. labour-intensive small business.

People in glass houses

Under capitalism, if you are a member of the working class you need to sell what you possess — your mental and physical energies to whomever will make a purchase. All workers are prostitutes for wages. How many women are employed as barmaids, hostesses in clubs or waitresses in restaurants and are told, either explicitly or implicitly. that part of their function is to give a few thrills to the customers? How many secretaries and others employed in traditionally female jobs have little option but to accept that they are partly employed for their ornamental value? How many young girls are conditioned to want to be glamour models, even if that means being paid money to be humiliated? How many wives would soon lose their source of income from husbands if they refused to provide sex and who dictates the terms of its provision, the one with the money or the one who is dependent? How many parents condition their daughters to behave in ways which will make them desirable to men with money looking for wives? Did not Marx refer to marriage as "legalised prostitution" and, for millions of women, is it not their role in life to be the property of a keeper? Of course, there are important distinctions between these ways of earning an income and prostitution, but the distinctions are not half as great as some would like to pretend. A letter under the headline "Life In The Pool" in The London Standard of 2 July, 1985 makes the point:

I cynically regarded my former job as a secretary as mental prostitution. This was crystallised by a spell or two in Civil Service typing pools. A nice lady sits at a desk with a register in which she enters men who want their letters typed and selects from a mass of available girls somebody to minister to one of these men . . . When the girl returns from being dictated to her name and the time she spent with him is entered. Then how long she takes to do the work (A kind of madam, the supervisor7)

Capitalism conditions workers to deceive themselves into thinking they are not quite as downtrodden and humiliated as the next person: whites are thankful not to be black, men think they are better than women and women who are not "on the game" are glad to be living in more civilised conditions than those who walk the streets. But, in one way or another, all of the virtually propertyless class are walking the streets, selling what they have to whoever will pay to take it from them. Who is the wage slave to condemn the prostitute?

The right to sell your body

In recent years movements have emerged, not seeking to abolish the cause of prostitution but to make it easier to suffer as a prostitute. Without doubt the laws on soliciting, like most laws under capitalism, are designed to punish the victim. In Britain the law does not punish the consumer who buys sex, but the women who sell it meet with several legal impediments. Opposition to these laws has come from two sources. Firstly, there are those grotesque libertarians of the so-called Right groups like the Federation of Conservative Students and the Libertarian Alliance who argue that no laws should exist to fetter any commercial transaction, be it the sale of heroin or the selling of sex through regular market channels.

Secondly, there are those feminists who have demonstrated the limitation of their social understanding by demanding the right of prostitutes to carry on their business undisturbed. Being reformists — whose aim is to mend and not end this rotten system the feminist campaigners do not have as their objective the eradication of the poverty which forces women to sell their bodies to men surely, not the action of liberated women — but the entitlement of women to pursue their undignified and oppressed employment in legal safety. While there is nothing wrong with prostitute women forming a trade union to defend themselves against market pressure (as they have done in some countries with state brothels), it is utter stupidity to equate such action with the quest for “women's liberation".

The legal right to be a prostitute gives the opportunity to be abused, exploited and wasted as a human being. Those who identify with such a right are the enemies of all workers, both women and men, and should be treated with the hostility reserved for those who obstruct the path to genuine human liberation.

Steve Coleman

Letter: Soviets and Socialists (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Soviets and Socialists

I thought that the article in your December issue on the International Socialists made a lot of good points. But one point I am not yet convinced about is your preference for Parliament as a means for the Socialist working class to take power over and transform society.

Parliaments as institutions don’t seem to me to suit the practical work of delegates, under the direct control of their constituents and recallable by them. Parliament is geared to the deliberations of so-called representatives, controlled not by their constituents but by rival Party bureaucracies who make all important decisions behind the scenes.

“Soviet” is only a Russian word for “council”. If by Soviet we genuinely mean a council of direct delegates, then surely this would be a better way of establishing a society in which we all take an active rôle in social affairs. If they were based on workplaces of all kinds, educational institutions, neighbourhoods and so on, they could easily be made as universal and democratic as you think Parliament is. Of course, you could convert Parliament and other State bodies into the form of workers’ councils, or you could develop the councils independently in the course of the struggle, or maybe some of both — I don’t think that is the crucial point.

The Soviets which existed in 1917 were not real Soviets in the direct democratic sense, but often little parliaments in which different supposedly Socialist parties — Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, SRs and so on — competed for power. The Party leaders took the decisions, like in present-day Britain, not the workers. Otherwise how could Lenin and Trotsky have taken part in the Soviets — as delegates of fringe journalism? Lastly the Soviets were not a Bolshevik tactic, but a form of organization that Russian workers set up to cater to their needs. The Bolsheviks manipulated them (because the workers were not conscious enough to prevent them, and not because Soviets are particularly fishy organizations) and then suppressed them into tools of their Party dictatorship.

As far as State power is concerned, both your idea of capturing and using it, and the Bolshevik or anarchist idea of “smashing” it, seem to assume that the armed forces are things which must be seized or destroyed. But isn’t State power not a thing, but a form of social behaviour by which we all allow ourselves to be things, the blind tools of others? Surely conscious organized Socialists won’t allow themselves to be used against the revolution — in the armed forces (if they still exist) or in the industries and services which support the forces? State power would fade away.

By the way, do members of the SPGB have views on this or other subjects (Women’s Lib. etc.) which are different from the Party line — or have members differed on interesting issues in the recent past? If so, do they have the right to express minority views, clearly labelled as such, in the Socialist Standard? It would improve your journal still more if the ideas were sometimes discussed from more than one point of view. Otherwise some readers may gain the false impression that Socialists are all identical in their attitudes, without variety.

Cicely Joyce 

London N.10

Reply:

The capitalist class have economic power because they have political power and not the other way round. They control the state machine and the armed forces through Parliament and are confirmed in their control by the working class at election times.

We are organized as a political party not out of preference (which implies that there are other ways of achieving our object) but because all the evidence of history and an analysis of capitalist society shows that this is the only way to achieve working-class emancipation. Without first gaining control of the state (the public organ of coercion and repression) through which the capitalists maintain their privileged relationship to the means of life by keeping the working class in its propertyless position, any minority movement seeking to challenge them will inevitably be beaten by the armed forces and the police who remain under the control of the capitalist class.

It does not follow that because Parliament is at present an institution of so-called “representatives” it must necessarily remain so. Once a working class who know what they want and how to get it send their delegates to Parliament with a mandate to capture political control of the state machine, it will cease to function as an instrument of class rule and become the indispensable instrument for our emancipation.

Soviets cannot establish Socialism

1. because they are economic organizations and not political; and
2. because they are based on the workplace, not on the centre of political power (See Gilmac’s articles in the Socialist Standard for January and February, and Horatio’s article in the October Socialist Standard.)

Before an electoral demonstration of a Socialist majority, Socialist ideas will have penetrated all strata of society — including central and local government, the police and the armed forces and this would strengthen the growing demand for Socialism.

However, control of the state machine is necessary

1. to lop off its repressive features; and in order:
2. to prevent any possibility of their being used in desperate attempts by counter-revolutionary groups to frustrate the wishes of the majority.

Armed forces will continue as long as capitalism because capitalism needs them. The capitalist class won't simply give up armed forces in the face of opposition. That is, they will still exist until consciously done away with.

On your final point we must point out that membership of the SPGB is dependent on acceptance of our aims and object set out in our Declaration of Principles. No-one is forced to join or prevented from leaving through disagreement. What for example would be the point of an advocate of minority action attempting to join the SPGB, other than possibly to be disruptive? Such a person is at liberty to join organizations which advocate his or her views. Party members finding themselves in disagreement with the Declaration of Principles invariably leave the Party — what would be the point in remaining in an organization dedicated to a method and object with which you disagree?

New situations faced by the SPGB have to be thrashed out, e.g. the Russian revolution of 1917, the rise of CND etc. The Socialist Standard is under the control of the whole of the membership and must reflect the democratically arrived-at Party case. The Socialist Standard does not exist to propagate anti-Socialist views — these are to be found in abundance elsewhere.

Editors.

Letter: Women's Movements (1974)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Women's Movements

It is seldom that the Socialist Standard gives cause for complaint on factual grounds, and also it seems rather churlish to quibble at anything in the lavish, and extremely interesting, 70th anniversary issue.

But in The First and Only Liberationists I read that “the idea that (women) might need a wider horizon than could be provided by a home and family had scarcely dawned”. And the writer also asks, “Who else (other than the founders of the Socialist Party) in 1904 was interested in the freedom of women?”

The answer is, women. The modern assumption that the women’s movement only started up recently is false. The evidence is that there have been women demanding “emancipation” or “equal rights”, as a sex, since the Eighteenth century. In America the First Woman’s Rights Convention was held in Seneca Falls in 1848 and resolved “that the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities”.

Other national conventions were held annually in America right through the nineteenth century and the Washington Convention in 1900 was dominated by the question of working class women and women’s position as wage-earners—“without political expression woman’s economic value is at the bottom of the scale . . . She must do better work than men for equal pay or equal work for less pay”. (Voices from Women’s Liberation) That such a situation still prevails today is proof of our Party’s contention that it is nothing to have a vote if you don’t use it properly.

If I can add something personal on this question, it is that as a women I am proud to be a member of this Party which has never treated me as a (mere) women, has never pigeon-holed me into some specifically “woman’s” work, but has always treated all members, white or black, male or female, as comrades in a common struggle.

C. Sultan 

Woking

Reply:

Thanks for the compliments, which are among very many received, on the Anniversary Issue.

In the context of that article it was not possible to enlarge on the point but “scarcely dawned” was not meant to imply that no one had questioned the  rôle of women in society. Rather that this questioning was not widespread. It is of course true that some women, and a few men, had been actively involved in campaigns for women’s rights over many years. For example the first leaflet on female suffrage had been issued in 1847. The vote was originally seen as a way of obtaining “social justice”. To the sometime scorn of the modern women’s movement its attainment became an end in itself.

The question “who else” was, at that time, interested in women was about political parties. Here the position taken by the SPGB at its formation, in 1904, was unique.

Editors.

Feminist theory — a socialist critique (1986)

From the Summer 1986 issue of the World Socialist

To attempt to write a socialist critique of feminist theory is difficult. This is not the result of any ambiguity in the attitude of socialists towards the role of women workers in capitalism, but because of the difficulty in finding a single body of theory that can be identified as feminist. While most feminists would agree that women are frequently discriminated against in such areas as employment, education and pay, and by the laws relating to taxation and social security, and would also argue that women feel oppressed in other ways too (for example by their frequent depiction in the media as either sex-objects or housewives), their analyses of the causes of such inequality vary considerably as do the strategies they adopt for overcoming it. Broadly speaking though, feminists can be categorised into three groups: liberal feminists, radical feminists and socialist feminists.

Liberal Feminism: Equal opportunity to be exploited

Liberal feminists tend to regard women's inequality as an unfortunate relic of former, less civilised times at a point in history when such attitudes are no longer appropriate. Their remedy for this situation is large doses of "justice" and "equal opportunities" for women backed up by the appropriate legislation. Such equal opportunities legislation as already exists on the statute books in most developed countries is indicative of this approach and, indeed, shows its inherent limitations. Equal opportunities and pay can be, and have been, granted and then withdrawn in accordance with what employees think they can afford and what they think they can get away with. Since the Equal Pay Act was passed in Britain in 1975 the gap between male and female earnings has actually widened. Liberal feminists seek equality between the sexes but within the context of the existing capitalist economic system. So the division of society into the capitalist class (the minority who own and control the wealth and the means of producing and distributing it) and the working class (the majority of us who produce the wealth through our labour but do not benefit from it) would still remain, together with all the suffering and injustice that that system entails.

It is true that equality of opportunity might result in more women as company directors, judges, politicians, financiers and other capitalist parasites, but this is irrelevant to women in the working class. Most working class women already work, selling their labour power in factories, offices, schools and hospitals. For them it is not equal opportunities legislation which has given them a new "right to work" but economic need which has forced them to do so. While their lives might be made a little easier if they received equal pay for their work and if there were better child care facilities, it should be remembered that their pay and conditions of work could only ever be equal to male members of the working class — they would never be equal to those of their employers, male or female. Similarly the oppressive necessity that forced them into the labour market in the first place would remain. Equal opportunity within capitalism amounts only to the equal opportunity to be exploited.

Radical Feminism: Sex against sex

Radical feminists claim (with little evidence to back up their claim) that there is a fundamental and deep-seated conflict of interests between men and women and that this is the main division of society cutting across divisions of class, race or religion. They maintain that all women are exploited by all men; that men, whatever their status or class, are always in the role of the oppressor and women always in the role of the oppressed; that it is in the interests of men to maintain this system of patriarchy and that they will endeavour to do so at all costs using violence or the threat of violence to defend their privileged position if necessary. Radical feminists have revitalised traditional stereotypes of men and women, suggesting that men are naturally aggressive, competitive and hierarchical while women are pacific and co-operative. As a result they claim that most social ills such as war, violent crime and racism arise out of patriarchy and so the overthrow of male domination would cure not only sexual inequality but also just about every social problem.

The focus of radical feminists has been the sexual abuse of women by men, the use of violence and the threat of violence. Their solution, apart from short-term attempts to draw attention to their cause by means of attacks on sex-shops (seen as symbols of aggressive male sexuality) and the picketing of cinemas showing films deemed to be offensive to, or exploitative of, women, is rarely made explicit in practical terms. Most do not actively seek to bring about the feminist revolution that they advocate in theory, but instead often choose to live within the existing system in separatist, all-women enclaves. This reflects their mistaken analysis of the problem — that is that men are necessarily the enemy. Most women know from their own experience that this is not the case. To suggest that all men are in more powerful positions than all women is clearly ridiculous. Is Margaret Thatcher to be considered to be in a less powerful position than a male factory worker just because she is a women? Is Ronald Reagan powerful because he is a man rather than because he is president of the United States? Are factory bosses more powerful because they are male or because they own wealth and are therefore in a position to exploit the work force? And what of women bosses? Do they have no power over their male employees?

Radical feminists constitute a tiny minority of women; the society they want to bring into being has little appeal for the majority of the population, male or female — not only does it seek to separate the sexes but also to regulate in a totalitarian manner their sexual relations, literature, films and theatre; their analysis of the causes of sexual inequality is crucially flawed with their own "revolutionary programme" such as it is, does not specify what it is to be its motive force.

"Socialist" Feminism: Confusing the issue

"Socialist-feminists" have attempted to reconcile socialism with feminism. On the one hand, most of them would accept the fact that capitalist society is necessarily a class-divided society from which the working class can never benefit. But, on the other hand, they want to incorporate the notion that society is also divided by gender. For this reason they reject the kind of Marxist analysis that the World Socialist movement has found useful in trying to understand the nature of capitalist society on the grounds that it fails to take account of what they see as the specific nature of women's oppression, or their particular position within capitalism. Women workers, they argue, because of their roles as unpaid mothers and domestic workers, do not have as strong links with their class as they do with their sex, and socialism, with its emphasis on class, cannot be the means of achieving their liberation.

This strand of feminism grew from three roots. Firstly, many "socialist-feminists" received their early political education in the left wing political movements and parties of the late sixties and early seventies. Within these organisations women often found themselves subjected to the same kind of abuse and belittling of their abilities that they had come to expect from those on the right of the political spectrum. They felt that their concerns were being dismissed as "women's issues" and therefore as trivial and unimportant. They correctly recognised that such organisations which spoke of freedom and equality but which failed to show respect towards their own women supporters, had little to offer. However, such women unfortunately drew the further conclusion that this was a fundamental shortcoming of socialism rather than of the particular organisations which had mis-appropriated that name to describe a politics which had very little to do with socialism as we understand it in the World Socialist movement: that is, a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interests of the whole community.

Secondly, many women had seen how, despite some early improvements in their position, women in the Russian empire were no better off under "communism" than they had been before 1917 and in many ways they were even worse off. Again it was wrongly believed that this meant that socialism had nothing to offer women since its apparent application in other parts of the world had so singularly failed to bring about women's liberation: women were still work-horses on the one hand and breeders of the next generation on the other. What they failed to see however was that Russian-style "communism" had not brought about the liberation of the male workers either. This was hardly surprising since the essential elements of the capitalist system remained intact — production for profit and the wages system.

Feminists also looked at the writings of socialist theorists like Karl Marx and criticised them for seeming not to take into account of what they regarded as the different circumstances which affect women as workers, most notably the fact that most women are, at least for part of their lives, not directly engaged in "productive" work outside the home because they are bringing up children and doing the multiplicity of chores that are entailed by "housework". It was felt that this difference between men and women was sufficiently wide to render women's links with the working class at best tenuous.

This is a mistaken view and one which plays into the hands of the capitalist class by causing divisions amongst workers. What was Marx's view of women workers? While it is true that he did not address himself to the question of women's oppression as women, he did consider the role of women in so far as they are a part of the working class, and, where they are exploited in some way differently from men by virtue of their gender, then he also deals specifically with women. Further, Marx thought that women's entry into the production process was necessary, and ultimately progressive, development within capitalism. It was a necessary development in that capitalists constantly strive to reduce their production costs in order to maximise their profits and since women's (and children's) labour could be bought more cheaply than that of men's it was inevitable that they would be recruited as wage-labourers as soon as the level of sophistication of machinery in factories was such that physical strength need no longer be considered. (Indeed, when labour was in short supply, women and children have been, and in some places still are, employed regardless of their physical fitness to do the job and the damage to their health that results.) So far then, it does not seem that women's role in capitalism is very different to that of men's: they are hired and fired, and exploited in accordance with the dictates of capital.

Domestic labour and productive work

Although many women spend a considerable part of their lives engaged full or part-time in domestic labour and child care, this does not make them any less members of the working class. Part of the problem is caused by the fact that housework is under-valued and is frequently regarded as not really work at all. This in turn is partly due to the ignorance of many men as to what is entailed in housework and child care. (It happens in other cases too, that someone else's job seems less arduous than our own because we don't fully appreciate what it involves.) A further cause of confusion is the idea of "productive work". Marx writes:

The only worker who is productive is one who produces surplus-value for the capitalist, or in other words contributes to the self-valorisation of capital (K. Marx, Capital, Vol.1, Chapter 16, Penguin Books, 1976, p.644).

But to say that a person is "productive" in this sense is to say nothing about that person's class position — a person may be productive or unproductive on this view and yet still be a member of the working class if they do not own or control the means to produce or distribute wealth and are forced to sell their labour power for a wage or salary or to draw state benefit if capital no longer needs their labour, or if they must depend for their livelihood on the wages or salary of someone else. Also the first part of Marx's statement quoted above is modified by the second part so that it includes those who contribute to the production of surplus value. Marx saw that as capitalism develops, the production process becomes more co-operative in nature as labour becomes more specialised and the division of labour more highly developed:

In order to work productively, it is no longer necessary for the individual himself to put his hand to the object; it is sufficient for him to be an organ of the collective labourer, and to perform any one of its subordinate functions (K. Marx, Capital, Vol.1, pp.643-4).

Similarly Marx recognised that reproduction of labour power was an important part of this total process:

The individual consumption of the worker, whether it occurs inside or outside the workshop, inside or outside the labour process, remains an aspect of the production and reproduction of capital, just as the cleaning of machinery does . .. (K. Marx, Capital, Vol.1, Chapter 23, p.718).

On this analysis then, the working class should be regarded as the "collective labourer" contributing to production either by making goods themselves, by contributing one of the many services needed to keep the wheels of the capitalist machine running smoothly, or by forming part of the reserve army of the unemployed. Even if we then make a distinction between those who receive a wage for what they do and those who do not (such as housewives) both groups can still be seen as productive in that they contribute to the overall capitalist process.

Domestic workers clearly are productive in this sense but in any case should consider themselves as full members of the working class since they do not have any share in the wealth owned by the capitalist class. It is also important to recognise that domestic work and child care are not in themselves uninteresting or menial (certainly not more so than many paid jobs) but it is often the context in which they are carried out which makes them seem so (e.g. the isolation of many young mothers and their lack of money).

"Socialist" feminists are thus creating a theoretical problem, and divisions within the working class where none really exists. Their tactic of forming women's caucuses, within trade unions for example, is misguided and counter-productive since it both divides the working class, making it appear that men and women have conflicting interests, and also marginalises women and so-called women's issues.

Socialism is for women too!

The extent to which feminist theories have highlighted the ways in which women's subject status is reinforced and maintained through social and cultural conditioning should not be under-estimated. Women need to be confident of their ability to engage in political activity and to believe that they are not the passive, helpless creatures that much of their education and conditioning has encouraged them to be. But to use these insights as the basis for arguments in favour of all-women political movements, or women's sections, however socialist their proclaimed intent, rests on a faulty assumption about society and has politically damaging results. That assumption is that in some way women's oppression is fundamentally different from that experienced by working class men. Whilst it is undeniable that women do experience certain forms of economic, cultural and social oppression and discrimination as a result of their gender, the economic basis for exploitative social relations is not gender-specific. To argue that women's experience of capitalism is crucially different from that of men risks falling into precisely the same trap of sex stereotyping that the feminist movement itself has struggled to resist. That is to say that women's roles as wives and mothers define them more completely than do their roles as workers.

If socialism is to have any chance of success and if the causes of oppression of women and every other oppressed group within society are to be removed for good, then we should seek to emphasise the essential similarities in lives and experiences of members of the working class irrespective of sex or race, rather than to draw attention to any superficial differences between them.

Socialism must include the liberation of women as a crucial part of the wider project of human emancipation, but of course that is not going to happen in an automatic or inevitable way. The World Socialist Movement cannot permit sexism to nourish within itself. For a political organisation to be at all credible it must embody the attitudes, values and practices that it seeks to institute in a future socialist society. Socialism is about liberation of the whole human race, men and women, which is why the socialist movement in theory and practice makes no distinction between people on the basis of sex or race. Our strength lies in unity and co-operation, not in separatism and division.

Janie Percy-Smith (Britain)

Liberating Women's Lib (1979)

From the December 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The fact of women's oppression in many eras and in many places is undeniable; the determination of the ‘women’s movement’ to end this oppression is understandable; but their specific aims are much more dubious. They make their views known in many spheres with various demands: 24-hour nurseries, abortion on demand, wages for housework, freedom for women to work in manual trades, to name a few. None of these reforms is worth fighting for within the framework of capitalism, for even if they are achieved they could not radically alter the position of women as members of the working class, any more than reformist action will genuinely improve the position of any other oppressed group. Black people, children, the disabled, the old, for example, all have pressure groups devoting their energies to reforms which will supposedly alleviate their particular problems.

The futility of such reformist aims can be demonstrated by taking a look at some recent examples of women’s liberation campaigns taken to their logical conclusions. One such is the question of prostitution. Recently, at a well-attended meeting at Central Hall, Westminster, baronesses, MPs, and leading figures in the women’s movement shared a platform with prostitutes fighting for recognition of their right to sell their bodies freely without harassment from the police. This was followed by the first national meeting of PROS, which is campaigning to end the imprisonment of prostitutes, to abolish the offences of loitering and soliciting for the purpose of prostitution and to stop the use of the term ‘common prostitute’ in legal proceedings. They also want to “get more street women involved on a regular basis so that they are taking the initiatives and finding a voice for themselves. That is where real change will come from" (our italics) (Guardian, October 9, 1979). Just how such reforms could make any appreciable difference to the life of a prostitute is hard to imagine. Nearly all prostitutes are driven into their trade by poverty and no matter how many reforms are enacted this will not change. Yet we have the spectacle of ‘liberated’ women seriously suggesting that removing a few restrictions and harassments will enable prostitutes to ply their trade with dignity and honour.

Another example of the absurdity of certain women’s campaigns relates to the ‘inferior’ position of women in the armed forces. Here we are expected to struggle for equal “rights” of women to fight and kill alongside men, and unfavourable comparison is made between the British armed forces, where women may only perform auxiliary duties, and the armed forces of Israel and the USA, where they are entitled to undertake full combat duty. In other words “liberated” women should be calling for the right to kill their fellow workers (men and women alike) in other countries an example of emancipation at which the mind can only reel.

Similarly, the fact that only one per cent of bank managers and two per cent of chartered accountants are women (Observer, 23 September 1979) must reflect the subordinate position of women. But are we to demand that these professions, which exist merely to service capitalism, should henceforth employ equal numbers of men and women? If, overnight, 50 per cent of bank managers and accountants were women, capitalism would be exactly the same and socialism no nearer. Even with total equality in the labour market women will remain wage-slaves, like men.

It is mistaken to assume that men, because their pay is generally higher, and because hitherto they have done some jobs to the exclusion of women, and because they usually go out to work for most of their adult lives, therefore have something that is worth striving for. The serried rows of clerks, factory hands, salesmen, plumbers no more have jobs which are intrinsically satisfying than housework and childcare are intrinsically stultifying. This is not to say that women are better off staying at home but it is a warning that exchanging one situation for another is not an act of liberation. The main, if not only reason most members of the working class—male and female—go out to work is for the small brown envelope they receive on Fridays; and it confers not dignity but humiliation that their worth as human beings should be so narrowly defined. The fact that many men have misconceptions about their role in society and their relationship with women does not warrant either wholesale hostility to them nor the belief that equality with men within capitalism will lead to emancipation.

Another example of women tying themselves in knots in furtherance of their cause is the support given by some sections of the women's movement to Margaret Thatcher: simply by virtue of her sex we were encouraged to vote for her, what she might or might not do in power being apparently of secondary importance. Although some of those who took up this position before the election have now repented, there are those even now who cling to this absurd notion; the writer of a letter to Spare Rib (July 1979), although abhorring the Tory Party, writes, “But when I read or hear the words ‘the Prime Minister was present. She said . . . ’ I am filled with a deep, half-incredulous satisfaction”. Another example of equal irrelevance to women’s real interests, is the decision by the Swedish Parliament to make “the monarch’s first-born child rather than the first male child heir to the throne” (Guardian, 8 November 1979), thus disinheriting the young prince in favour of his elder sister. Big deal.

There are many other areas where women seek to remove petty restrictions and barriers which make no real difference at all, and yet they are hailed as some kind of achievement. We learn, for example, that American Catholics may remove ‘sexist language’ from prayers; apparently sexist “language in liturgy has been a target of feminist groups”, so now a revised prayer instead of reading Christ’s blood is “shed for you and for all men” would read “shed for you and for all” (Guardian. 25 October 1979). Now there's something to make us feel better.

Women are rightly disgusted by blatantly sexual advertisements which display their bodies to sell products, but although putting stickers on these posters to express their outrage will make some women feel better, it will have little effect. The capitalists must sell their products in order to realise their profits, and they will use whatever means they find most effective to do so. Furthermore, men are just as degraded by the macho, he-men advertisements also used to sell products, or the “It’s a Man’s Life in the Army” type of approach used to incite workers to kill other workers on behalf of their masters. But what about the television advertisements which, in the pre-Christmas period, aim to inspire in children a crazy lust for worthless toys? Even if an organisation such as Affirm—"a feminist alliance against ads, articles and images that exploit women” were to succeed in its aims “to abolish all sexism in the media” (Spare Rib. July 1978), where would that leave us? Advertising would still be there, capitalism would be intact. Protesting about any of these advertisements is useless without tackling the underlying cause.

The most positive thing to emerge from the women’s movement will be the active involvement of large numbers women in questioning their role in society. Let us hope it is not too long before they turn their attention to a more constructive approach to the problems which face us all, men and women.

J.

What is women’s liberation ? (1978)

From the November 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Women are not inferior to men. They are quite capable of participating to the same extent as men both in the production of wealth and in the general running of social affairs. That they do not do so today is not due to any inherent disability but to their having been denied the same opportunities as men to acquire the skills needed for such participation. This may seem to be stating the obvious, especially in the columns of a socialist publication, but there is a widespread popular prejudice, reflecting itself in discriminatory practices, which denies this.

An increasing number of women have come to resent and oppose this prejudice and discrimination in a movement which has become known as Women’s Liberation — misleadingly since this suggests that the disappearance of these anti-women prejudices and practices would amount to the liberation of women. Which would be far from being the case as all the demands of the women’s movement, even the most radical, are compatible with capitalism and in fact amount to no more than demanding the creation of conditions that would permit women to compete on the labour-market with men.

The capitalist state has long accepted equality of women with regard to the vote and property ownership and has recently legislated to try to ensure equality over wages, recruitment, promotion, pensions and social security. Socialists, who understand how the economic laws of capitalism function, have doubts about how effective legislation can be in ensuring equality of wages as long as the quality of the labour power of many women is impaired by the discrimination they suffered when they were brought up and educated. In these circumstances to force employers to pay equal wages for unequal labour powers can only lead to them choosing not to employ the poorer quality — to increased unemployment amongst women.

Paying “wages” for housework (presumably by the state) would come up against the same economic laws of capitalism and lead to a reduction in wages generally since the wage of a man with children at present includes an element for maintaining the family. If this were paid directly by the state then the employer would no longer have to pay it. This was long a trade union objection to family allowances which, now that they are paid direct to the mother, are a sort of “wage” for housework.

It is a recognition of this harsh economic fact that the skills of many women are at present inferior to those of many men that has led some sections of the women’s movement to go even further and challenge the way women are brought up and educated. They complain that, from the earliest age, girls are taught to consider themselves as the “weaker sex” and to concern themselves with activities connected with the home rather than with more outward-looking activities reserved for boys.

Of course this handicap is not insurmountable and many women have overcome it but it still remains an obstacle which results in women being at a disadvantage with men when competing on the labour-market. On the other hand, it leads to women accepting jobs that are more like the activities they were brought up to consider a women’s role such as teaching, nursing and being secretaries, thus reinforcing the prejudice that it is only these jobs that women are capable of doing.

It is in this sense that some sections of the women’s movement are quite logical, in terms of the aim of achieving equality of opportunity for women to compete with men, in directing their criticisms against the way in which girls are at present brought up. But however radical their proposals in this connection may be — and they involve a complete revision of all children’s books and even nursery rhymes — these still remain compatible with capitalism.

The same goes for other demands like challenging the necessity of a woman taking her husband’s name on marriage and the replacement of "Mrs” and "Miss” by a common "Ms”. There is in fact no way in which the current practices can be rationally defended once the premise that woman are human beings in their own right who should enjoy the same treatment as men is accepted, but who would argue that their abolition would pose a threat to capitalism?

Another of the handicaps women face when competing with men in the labour-market is their biological nature as child-bearers which requires them, whenever they have children, to withdraw from working for wages for a while. The women’s movement proposes as the solution here the provision of more nurseries including at the place of work; to which neither employers nor the capitalist state have any objection in principle and which they are often prepared to provide, even if as inadequately as all so- called “social services” under capitalism.

The demand of the more radical sections of the women’s movement for "free contraception” and “free abortion on demand" is also in the end a proposal to overcome this handicap to equal competition. For, if implemented, one of its aims would be to permit women, like men, to engage in sex without having to worry about their wages career being unexpectedly interrupted by having to bear children.

To say that the demands of the women’s movement are compatible with capitalism is not to say that these demands are not worth having (especially those concerning the treatment of women as equal human beings), but is to answer those who mistakenly argue that these demands are inherently anti-capitalist and that the women’s movement is therefore somehow implicitly socialist.

Capitalism is a system of society based on the exploitation of wage and salary earners for a profit. All wealth, including that portion which under capitalism takes the form of profits, is produced by the application of human labour power to Nature-given materials. The more productive workers are, the more profits they can produce. This is why capitalism as an economic system is not interested in the language or the skin colour or the sex of workers; it is interested only in their productive capacity.

Capitalist employers are now coming to realise that discrimination against women denies them a huge source of productive talent which they could be using to increase their profits; how many women who would make good mechanics, engineers or scientists are denied the opportunity to work in these fields because of out-dated prejudices and practices inherited from the patriarchal societies that preceded capitalism (and which capitalism was itself in its early days when family businesses were the predominant form) and from the religious dogmas that went with them?

This is why modern capitalism could easily tolerate, in fact would positively welcome, equality of opportunity for women in the labour-market. It could also tolerate even the radical changes in family structures that achieving this fully would have to involve. Despite the dubiously scientific psychology of those who argue with Wilhelm Reich that capitalism requires the patriarchal family in order to breed the authoritarian and repressed personalities needed to prevent people challenging it, capitalism could — and does — accept what used to be called “free unions” in which the man and woman don’t bother to get a licence from the state or church to live together and in which they treat each other as equal partners. Indeed the vast majority of those who practice this — which of course will be the basis of relations between the sexes in socialism — are not socialists but supporters of capitalism and even members of the capitalist class itself.

Capitalism, in other words, could "liberate” women if "liberation” is to be restricted to meaning the equal treatment of women with men on the labour-market and, as a condition for this, in the home too. If this is seen as a step forward for women even within capitalism, it does not represent the real liberation of women.

If we accepted that it is then we would have to accept that men — or rather, to be precise, those men, the great majority, who are forced to work for a wage or salary to gain a living, the men of the working class — are already liberated. Which denies that capitalism is a system based on the exploitation and oppression of the working class in which the producers are wage slaves in the sense that they are economically dependent on the class of capitalist employers to whom they must sell their mental and physical energies in order to live. The implementation of the full programme of the women’s movement would leave women equal wage slaves with men.

Real liberation for the women and men of the working class can only be achieved through the establishment of socialism — by the conversion of the means of production and distribution into common property under the democratic control of the whole community. On this basis the wages system — working for an employer for a wage or salary — would be abolished and the production and distribution of wealth proceed on the basis of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". Women and men would cooperate with each other in order to produce an abundance of wealth to which they would then individually have free access according to need. Individual free access for all members of society, including women and children, to consumer goods and services will put an end once and for ever to the economic dependence of women on men and of children on parents which so poisons relationships today.

In socialism women would participate equally in the running of every aspect of social life. An equality of women with men is, we have argued, theoretically compatible with capitalism but it would then only be an equality in wage slavery, leaving untouched the fundamental inequality between the women and men of the capitalist class on the other. Women's equality will only acquire real meaning in socialism where all humanity would be liberated, freed from the economic slavery of the wages system and from the inevitably anti-human operation of capitalism and its production for profit. This is why we argue that real “women’s liberation’’ can only be achieved as part of the general human liberation that the establishment of socialism will bring.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not support the women’s movement nor advocate its demands, not because we are necessarily opposed to the demands but because it is our general policy not to advocate reforms of capitalism however desirable they may seem.

As a matter of fact we agree entirely with the philosophy behind the women’s movement that women are not inferior to men and should be treated as equal human beings. This is an integral part of the socialist case, dating from the early part of the 19th century when the Utopian Socialists were amongst the pioneers of women’s equality.

So we don’t advocate women’s equality under capitalism because we don’t advocate reforms of any kind. And we don’t advocate reforms because we don’t want to attract the support of people who merely want to reform some aspect or other of capitalism. History has shown that parties which try to combine advocating reforms with advocating socialism end up by becoming reformist organisations which forget altogether about socialism.

If we were to advocate equality for women under capitalism we would run the risk of attracting the support of those who wanted this change without wanting socialism. That this would be a real danger can be seen from our demonstration above that not one of the demands of the women’s movement is incompatible with capitalism. To the extent of course that we succeed in propagating socialist ideas we combat prejudice and discrimination against women under capitalism, since becoming a socialist involves among other things discarding such prejudices and practices. The spread of socialist ideas under capitalism will thus help breakdown prejudice and discrimination against women. But it will also pave the way towards the establishment of socialism which will, in the words of Clause Four of our Declaration of Principles, mean the “emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex”.

Adam Buick

Letter: Women's Lib (1974)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Women's Lib

At your 70th Annual Conference a resolution was passed that membership of the Women’s Liberation movement is incompatible with membership of the Socialist Party. Is this due to the fact that Women’s Lib. strives for equality within the capitalist society, or is there more?

Catherine Spence, 

Cramlington, Northumberland.

Reply:

The SPGB has as its sole objective the establishment of Socialism.

Membership of the SPGB is dependent on the acceptance of and compliance with our Declaration of Principles which declares:

That as all political parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interests of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the master class the party seeking working class emancipation must be hostile to every other party.

In pursuit of their objectives Women’s Liberation must put pressure on or come to some agreement with capitalist political parties. Reforms of capitalism rarely if ever benefit the working class and the outcome of workers struggles in this direction are not worth the time and effort spent on them. They leave the workers in precisely the same position as before — the dispossessed class in society.

The Socialist Party must therefore be hostile to all reformist political parties and pressure groups and membership of any of them (e.g. Women’s Liberation movement) must be incompatible with membership of the Socialist Party.

If all the reforms demanded by Women’s Liberation were implemented the vast majority of women would still be members of the propertyless class having to sell their ability to work to the capitalist class for a wage or a salary.

The political history of capitalism is littered with the remains of those reform movements which attempted the impossible task of establishing “equality within the capitalist society.” Having failed many reformists dropped their illusions and went on to administer capitalism in the only way it can be administered — in the interest of the capitalists.

Social equality is only possible in a classless society. Women’s Liberation by accepting the class basis of society. (whatever some of them may claim) help to confuse workers and thereby help to perpetuate capitalism with its mass of economic and social discriminations. Have you read Women’s Lib has got it Wrong in the July Socialist Standard ?

Women’s Liberation (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

A long time ago — back in 1904 — our Companion Party In Great Britain was organized and drew a Declaration of Principles made up of eight clauses. The fourth Principle states:

“That as in the order of social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex.”

Of course a lot of water has flowed over the dam since 1904. And yet, despite all the struggles in the last six or seven decades in the area of equality for the different ethnic groups and for women, inequality for the so-called colored peoples within society and for women throughout the world has not appreciably lessened. Nor can so-called equality for most non-whites wherever whites are dominant, or most women, anywhere in the world today mean very much since most of the population regardless of so-called race, or sex — is compelled to live out a lifetime in a condition of wage servitude. Equality under capitalism can be nothing more for most of us than “equality” within slavery.

Look at the question of wages, for example — equal pay for equal work — for women. Certainly it is true that women have always been paid less than men wherever that was possible. And certainly it makes sense to rebel against this discrimination. And yet there is something radically wrong with the attitude expressed by militants of the Women's Liberation Movement on this question. Women, as a group, have been used in the same sense as all workers from industrially-backward nations who become immigrants in industrial countries. Because it is the nature of capitalist economics that capitalists should be able to purchase labor-power at the cheapest possible price, women are taken advantage of to the fullest extent this is possible. Certainly women should rebel and certainly, too, the labor unions should take a strong stand against such practices, even among the unorganized. For the purpose of labor unions is, primarily, to keep wage rates from becoming further depressed, to fight for better wages and conditions. Most women are part of the working class as a whole. It would be more apropos, then, for militant Women Liberationists to work for equality in wages from a class angle rather than to segregate themselves into separate units based upon sex.

And yet, even this would not solve the problem of slavery and discrimination against most women. In the final analysis, labor power is a commodity and, as such, sells for what it takes to produce and reproduce the worker and his family. Total commodity production is not determined by the gross total of workers — male and female — but on the conditions of the market. The needs of the population, as a whole, have little to do with the matter.

Certainly the whole history of women in class society has been and continues to be a history of special discrimination, of attitudes based upon male superiority. But these attitudes are a product of class society and are not due to something in the male character. They did not exist among primitives in tribal communist society and they cannot possibly exist under world socialism. Why spend your lives fighting against this effect of capitalism? Women can't be free until men are free — just as black workers can't be free until white workers are.

Why not join with us in working toward a goal of world socialism which will make all mankind free — with no discrimination against race, or sex?

Where Women's Liberation fails (1973)

From the May 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the beginning of this century women had a life expectation of only about 45 years; women passed their prime in reproduction and the main cause of death in the 25-to-35 age group was childbirth. Now marriages tend to start at a younger age and women are able to exercise some choice over the size of their families. The Pill has not led to a postponement of maternity; in fact the tendency is for babies to be born at the beginning of marriage. This means that a mother may now have some forty years in front of her when the youngest child starts school.

Still, for most girls, getting married and having a family is considered sufficient ambition and this is reflected in their education. Three times more girls than boys leave school at the age of 15, and 75 per cent. of all 18-year-old girls do not receive any higher education or training. Household chores are easier now than they were even twenty years ago, even if we do not have all of the latest labour saving gadgets. Whether housework is menial or not may be open to argument but it is certainly not a lifetime's vocation.

Work and Wages

Unfortunately, most wives cannot take advantage of easier housework and less time involved with infants. Those in the Women’s Liberation movement may decide whether or not married women gain some advantage from taking part in socially productive work, but for most of us the discussion is hardly relevant. For despite the myth that women work outside the home in order just to find companionship, or escape from the boredom of housework, in this consumer-orientated society there is no real choice. How else can the family take a holiday, buy that modern home equipment or simply make ends meet? One might also ask just what the "starlight” shift, popular with mothers of young children, does for companionship in the home.

Selma James is among those who have seen through the notion that women gain some kind of liberation by working outside the home as well as in it. However her suggested demand in her pamphlet Women, the Unions and Work for "wages for housework” seems a little naive. Wages are the price for which workers sell their labour power. That price will be generally sufficient to keep a worker, and his family, at a socially accepted standard. Payment made for housework, like family allowances or free transport, would act as a brake on wages. When a wife first takes a job there may be an improvement in the family living standard but her income soon becomes an integral part of the family budget.

Question of Cash

But when it is only the husband’s income which endeavours to meet the family expenses it is hardly surprising that conflicts arise about just how, or by whom, the money should be spent.

"It is a class thing, really, money is power in a husband-wife relationship where there is only one weekly wage packet”: according to Mr. Nicholas Tindall, of the National Marriage Guidance Council. (The Sun, 16.10.72)

In her pamphlet, Selma James makes a comment about a woman earning enough money "to avoid having to degrade herself by asking her husband for money for tights”, which speaks volumes on the blighting effect that money can have on personal relationships. The decision to supplement the family income, or achieve a degree of financial independence, means joining the majority of working women who are used as "little better than cheap labour, doing low-grade repetitive jobs, with rates of pay to match.” (TV Times)

Women are conditioned and, for the most part, educated for stop-gap jobs —to fill in time until getting married — and yet they form 38 per cent. of the work force. More than half of the women who go out to work are married. Many women accept the idea of getting lower pay than men and in the past few of them have joined unions. Out of 9 million working women only two million are union members.

Complaints about the type of work available to women give the impression that all male work is skilled, creative and interesting; that men do not get involved with their children or ever give help (unpaid) in the home. Of course the constant round of childcare and housework can be frustrating but what do most men, and women, get out of their employment? Only the pay packet (or salary cheque)!

Dissatisfaction with women’s rôle in society has led to some discussion of the shortcomings of the social system itself, but what a pity most members of the Women’s Liberation movement seem prepared to settle for so little. The movement, which began in this country in the late sixties, is broadly based and lacks a coherent policy. Emphasis is placed on the continuous development of ideas supposedly by learning through struggle.

Struggle for what? Despite the use of much revolutionary-styled rhetoric, members of the movement essentially seek equality with men in capitalism. When men and women compete for jobs on equal terms and the Equal Pay Act (1970) is fully implemented, plus, of course, the provision of more nursery education and free contraception, their aims will be achieved.

For women to join in one organisation because they are women is about as logical as the idea that all black people have common cause because they are black. The oppression of different groupings within the working class varies in intensity and in form. It is this variation which tends to mask the common factor which applies to all of the groups: women bringing up children alone, immigrants, the homeless, pensioners, etc., etc.

The Working Class

The common denominator which applies to about 90 per cent. of the population is their alienation from the means of production. The only viable definition of the term “working class” includes all those who, because they possess only their ability to work, must sell their mental and physical energies to an employer in return for money (wages or salary). It makes no difference whether the price for their labour and job-status is high or low. The class which owns the factories, land etc. is at an opposite pole. Its members do not need to compete for jobs. Not even for better-paid jobs in management, administration and the professions. Neither will old age or lack of employment throw them on the Social Security scrapheap.

Justification for an autonomous women’s movement is largely based on giving women’s claims priority over the achievement of Socialism, even where it is the alleged aim.

Marx and Engels both saw that when women took a decisive part in large-scale production, and were only occupied by domestic chores to a minor degree, their emancipation became feasible and that furthermore the foundation was laid for “a higher form of the family and of the relations between the sexes”. They plainly knew that, though the pre-conditions for the emancipation of working-class men and women have been met within capitalism, we cannot in fact be set free without a revolutionary change to Socialism. This revolution the world has yet to see.

True Liberation

What will the position of women be in Socialist society?

When the means for production are the common property of the worldwide community, production for use will have replaced the outmoded system of market production. We will contribute to the well-being of society as free individuals and will, without exception, have free access to those goods and services required to fulfil our own needs. (Wages for housework! Who wants wages?)

Though we cannot know exactly what form the family will take, we can say that the “nuclear” family will no longer be the economic unit of society. Men and women will live together because they mutually wish to do so, the bonds between them and their children being neither legal nor financial. Children will be a social responsibility and even a chance pregnancy will not be cause for alarm.

The working class is already armed I with the only weapon a politically- aware majority will need to abolish capitalism and replace it with Socialism. Whether or not we are in unions, or in employment, we have the vote!

A Single Aim

Women’s Liberation is yet another movement dividing the working class. This time with the absurd notion that female oppression is caused by male domination, while in fact but a special aspect of human oppression under capitalism. Even when the end of capitalism is recognised as the only demand “not co-optable” it is dismissed in favour of a reformist struggle.

The movement is largely anti-capitalist and as such assumes the distortion of everybody’s life and potential today. But such generalities are moral, not political, and though everyone wants liberation for all (men and women) this cannot but be Utopianism unless at this stage, we organise around specific oppressions. (Women’s Estate, by Juliet Mitchell, p. 58)

We in the Socialist Party of Great Britain have but one object because the demand for Socialism is of itself a call to end specific oppressions. The demand for Socialism is of itself a protest against war, against poverty and against the frustration of millions of lives only half lived. But more than that, the demand for Socialism recognizes that we can only solve these problems by ending the social system which causes them.

We will not settle for less.

Pat Deutz

How RTS neglects need for democratic control (2000)

Reclaim the Streets’ spoof paper Maybe.
Who made the decisions?

From the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reclaim the Streets’ neglect of the need for democratic accountability just leads to the tyranny of structurelessness.

For the Mayday event in London, Reclaim the Streets, the shadowy group which organised it—shadowy because it doesn’t appear to be an open organisation with democratic structures—produced a spoof edition of the free daily paper Metro which they called Maybe. In it they set out their ideas. Some are not bad, others are mistaken and yet others are, frankly, pathetic (such as the ostensibly serious idea that “guerrilla gardening”, or clandestinely growing food in public parks and railway embankments, is somehow subversive of capitalism).

The front page article “KEN PULLS OUT” (reproduced here) is very clever. We’d have liked someone to have written it for us. There would not be too much we would disagree with in another article “Ecology and the Social City” which contrasts life in cities today under capitalism with what life in a “free city” could be like once the global market system and nation-states have been ended.

And we can go along with the following criticism of the passivity that capitalism encourages:

“We are forced to spectate by capitalism. We watch TV, movies, news, celebrities—the ‘other’ in the ‘other’s world’ in which we do not feel threatened or truly involved. We are encouraged to vote, be it for governments, councils or mayors, to ask them to represent us, to decide for us. We have no connection with the production of our daily needs, of our food, clothes. We have become so accustomed to assuming the position of spectator in our own lives, that active participation in events has become like a muscle atrophied through lack of use.”

And with the following assessment of the wasted 20th century:

“20th century history is a tragic lesson in the dangers of trusting ‘anti-capitalist’ politicians or of just being against one aspect of capitalism, like ‘globalisation’, rather than for a complete transformation of society.”

Obviously, we can’t be anything but pleased if such ideas are growing. But how does RTS see capitalism being ended? By what they call “direct action”. This is an anarchist catch-phrase but it means different things to different anarchists. To those anarchists who believe in organisation (and, contradictory as it may seem, some do, the anarcho-syndicalists for instance) it is meant to convey the idea that any action that any group of people take to try to improve their lot should be under their direct control. We don’t have any objection to this idea—in fact, it’s the form of organisation we have always urged workers to adopt for waging the struggle against employers for better wages and working conditions—only we call it “democratic self-organisation” (and, contrary to all anarchists, don’t see why it can’t, and shouldn’t, be extended to embrace organisation on the political field to win control of the state with a view to dismantling it).

RTS, however, are not in the tradition of anarchists who believe in organisation. They openly describe themselves as a “dis-organisation”:

“Reclaim the Streets is non-hierarchical, spontaneous and self-organised. We have no leaders, no committee, no board of directors, no spokespeople. There is no centralised unit for decision-making, strategic planning and production of ideology. There is no membership and no formalised commitment. There is no master-plan, and no predefined agenda.

The direct action movement is an organic network of people taking responsibility for their own lives, expressed through local interventions, chaotic global connections and friendships. Reclaim the Streets spontaneously and temporarily emerges from a shared dissatisfaction with the way our lives are run for us, with the rat-race and a society based on exclusion and enclosure, profit and control. As a dis-organisation, RTS is mobile and furtive. It is there when people decide to intervene in public spaces, evoking the utopia of a better society.”

For such anti-organisation anarchists, “direct action” means the supposedly spontaneous action of small groups acting on their own initiative without being answerable to anybody. Thus, when they use the word “self-organisation” they don’t mean the same thing as people like us, namely, structured, democratic organisation, certainly without leaders, but not without some central decision-making unit such as a conference of mandated delegates nor without elected committees to plan and co-ordinate particular spheres of activity. Nowhere in Maybe does the word “democratic” occur, neither in relation to how capitalism is to be ended, nor as to how anti-capitalists should organise today, nor even when describing the sort of society to replace capitalism. This is clearly deliberate and will reflect the fact that RTS rejects the idea of democratic control because this involves formal rules and permanent structures which they will see as bureaucratic restraints on the freedom of autonomous activists to act as they please.

Informal elites

This is the “ideology of structurelessness” so brilliantly dissected by the American feminist, Jo Freeman, in 1970 in her essay on The Tyranny of Structurelessness. In the Women’s Liberation movement of that time the same emphasis was placed “on what are called leaderless, structureless groups as the main focus of the movement” as RTS does today. Freeman showed that there was in fact no such thing as a structureless group, only formally and informally structured groups:

“Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature coming together for any length of time, for any purpose, will inevitably structure itself in some fashion . . . This means that to strive for a structureless group is as useful and as deceptive, as to aim at an ‘objective’ news story, ‘value-free’ social science or a ‘free’ economy. A ‘laissez faire’ group is about as realistic as a ‘laissez faire’ society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can easily be established because the idea of structurelessness does not prevent the formation of informal structures, but only formal ones . . . Thus structurelessness becomes a way of masking power . . .

For everyone to have the opportunity to be involved in a given group and to participate in its activities the structure must be explicit, not implicit. The rules of decision making must be open and available to everyone and this can only happen if they are formalized . . . A structured group always has a formal structure, and may also have an informal one. An unstructured group always has an informal, or covert, structure. It is this informal structure, particularly in unstructured groups, which forms the basis for elites . . . When informal elites are combined with a myth of structurelessness, there can be no attempt to put limits on the use of power. It becomes capricious . . . [I]nformal structures have no obligation to be responsible to the group at large. Their power was not given to them; it cannot be taken away. Their influence is not based on what they do for the group; therefore they cannot be directly influenced by the group.”

This suggests some embarrassing questions for RTS. OK, perhaps it has “no committee”, “no centralised unit for decision-making”, but there must be some process by which decisions are made. Who decided that the theme of the Mayday event in London should be the joke idea of “guerrilla gardening”? Who decided to publish Maybe? Who organised its production? Who collected the money to pay for it? Who authorised its expenditure? Clearly, there must be individuals or a group of individuals who did make these decisions, but as there is no formal structure they are in practice answerable to no one. They will be an unaccountable, self-appointed group of activists. Whoever they are, they will be, as Freeman pointed out, an informal élite, de facto leaders making decisions, in RTS’s own word, in a “furtive” way.

In preaching that we don’t need formal decision-making rules and structures RTS are propagating a dangerous illusion, dangerous because it opens the door to groups of discontented people being manipulated by some self-appointed and non-accountable elite or vanguard. We insist that, on the contrary, “self-organisation” is only possible as democratic self-organisation, involving formal rules and structures, precisely to prevent the emergence of unaccountable elites.

We’re not talking about the sort of structures advocated and practised by Leninist organisations such as the SWP, where the rules and structures are designed to enshrine control by a self-perpetuating elite (in the SWP, as in other Leninist organisations, supreme decision-making power rests in the hands of a central committee which is self-perpetuating in that it is elected as a slate—whose composition is chosen by the outgoing committee).

We are talking about structures that place decision-making power in the hands of the group as a whole, along the lines of the seven “principles of democratic structuring” listed by Freeman: 

• Delegation of specific authority to specific individuals for specific tasks by democratic procedures.
• Requiring all those to whom authority has been delegated to be responsible to all those who selected them.
• Distribution of authority among as many people as reasonably possible.
• Rotation of tasks among individuals.
• Allocation of tasks along rational criteria.
• Diffusion of information to everyone as frequently as possible.
• Equal access to resources needed by the group.

This in fact is more or less the basis on which we, as a smallish revolutionary organisation, have always organised ourselves. It is also the basis on which we have always advocated that the mass movement to replace capitalism by (as the front page article in Maybe describes it) “a stateless, moneyless society where goods [are] produced not to make profits but simply because people needed them” should organise itself—a democratic self-organised mass movement of people who want and understand such a society (we call it socialism, but which people can call what they like). An anti-capitalist movement organised and co-ordinating its activities on this basis need have no fear, contrary to what all varieties of anarchist claim, of contesting elections to win control of political power from the supporters of capitalism who currently control it and who use it to maintain the economic power and privileges of the capitalist class.

In fact, the anarchists’ advocacy of either taking on the State head-on by “direct action” against it or by trying to ignore it and proceed as if it didn’t exist is foolish in the extreme. It increases the chances of violence. This is even more so when the anarchists concerned also reject, as RTS does, the idea even of organising on a permanent basis with decision-making conferences, accountable delegates, voting, reporting back and, yes, binding decisions.

A supposedly spontaneous, unorganised anti-capitalist revolution such as advocated by RTS would only end in disaster out of which either the present rulers would succeed in reasserting their control or a new set of rulers would profit from the chaos to seize power. If we are going to get rid of capitalism the majority is going to have to organise itself to do so—in a permanent organisation with a democratic structure.

Adam Buick