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 ?