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?
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