New pamphlet: Women and Socialism (1986)

Party News from the September 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Available from Literature Dept, SPGB, 52 Clapham High Street, SW4 7UN. Price (inc. postage) 55p.

Blogger's Note:

The text of this pamphlet is available at the following link.

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 Equal opportunities and pay can be, and have been, granted and then withdrawn in accordance with what employees think they can afford and what they think they can get away with.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

Letter: A Campaign with Revolutionary Implications? (1995)

From the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

ALB’s review of Selma James's Marx and Feminism (Socialist Standard, December 1994) not only gives a misleading portrayal of a tradition which has made a valuable contribution to libertarian communist thought, but also displays the usual blind-spots present in much orthodox Marxist theorising (or lack of it) on the position of women under capitalism.

The Socialist Party may dismiss Wages for Housework as "conservative" and reformist.but I believe that they, together with the Autonomist Marxist tradition with which they are connected. have made the following critical interventions which have revolutionary implications:

(a) Selma James, together with Mariarosa Dalla Costa, was among the first to show how capitalism is founded not only on the capital/wage labour relationship but also on a hierarchy between waged and unwaged within the working-class. Thus capital “hides behind" the unpaid labour of those, usually women and people of colour, who carry out activities such as care-giving, cooking, cleaning, and basic food production, upon which "free" wage labour depends. Where these activities are provided in return for a wage, this usually involves the "super-exploitation" of labour-power as in the case of the so-called Third World where many women and men are paid far less than the average cost of meeting their subsistence needs. The production and reproduction of the commodity "labour power" is central, therefore, to the ongoing process of capital accumulation.

(b) Present day capitalism can usefully be seen as a "social factory" in which class struggle has spread to virtually all areas of everyday life, even as. numerically speaking, "wage labourers" have come to constitute a small minority of the world’s working-class. (The German sociologist Claudia von Werlhof has estimated that only 10-20 percent of the world’s working class are wage labourers "free" to sell their labour-power in return for a wage or salary. The rest, made up of women, subsistence producers. peasants and other "marginalised" labourers appear to be the "norm" despite what Eurocentric forms of Marxism would have us believe.) Resistance to capitalist domination, therefore, occurs in sites far removed from factory-based industrial production and trade unions: from women fighting against the introduction of reproductive technologies to the resistance of indigenous peoples to the forced enclosure of common land. In this respect. James and Dalla Costa have stressed the importance of recognising the diversity of working-class experience as well as the commonalities. They and other feminists have exploded the myth of the white, male, unionised wage labourer as the subject of Marxist analysis and agent of revolutionary change.

(c) Wages for Housework and the Autonomist Marxist tradition has consistently stressed the futility of reformism, particularly as it is embodied in unionism, labour parties. Leninism, and the “left” in general. They have been critical of those leftists who see the way forward as more jobs/full employment, more rational control of capitalist production disguised as "workers control", a social democratic government, or a vanguard party leading the masses to revolution. Selma James castigates feminists who "don't aim to destroy the capitalist social relation but only to organize it more rationally" while Mariarosa Dalla Costa has argued that those "who advocate that the liberation of the working-class woman lies in her getting a job outside the home are part of the problem, not the solution. Slavery to an assembly line is not a liberation from slavery to a kitchen sink" (Dalla Costa & James The Power of Women and the Subversion of Community. Bristol: Falling Wall Press. 1972. pp 2 and 33 respectively). The alternative this tradition poses is concurrent with other non-market communist traditions; the abolition of capitalist work (both waged and unwaged labour) and of the state, common ownership and production for human needs, and the encouragement of the fullest possible range of human creative activity unmediated by the capital class relationship.

(d) In arguing for the importance of the self-activity of the working-class. Wages for Housework argues against vanguardism and the centralised Party (with a capital "P") and for the development of autonomous organisations within the working-class. These have enabled women, for example, to challenge the sexism of male-dominated socialist organisations which have colluded, perhaps unintentionally, with capital and the state in rendering women's work socially invisible, "natural" and unproductive, and relegating to "side issues” any attempts by women to organise independently to challenge their exploitation. It is only by supporting the autonomy of various organisations throughout the circulation of struggles within the working class, that divisions can be overcome as a prerequisite for class unity and fundamental social change.

It is in the above respect that the campaign for Wages for Housework should be understood. not as just another single-issue reformist group. Rather than an end in itself, the campaign for a guaranteed income for women and men homeworkers is best looked at as a strategic intervention designed to expose patriarchal capitalism's dependence on the unpaid labour of women, and bring to the forefront some of the unique experiences and struggles faced by women as members of a divided working-class.

With their fixation on wage/salaried labour as the source of surplus value for the capitalist class, socialists (following Marx) have generally ignored the production and reproduction of labour-power and have historically accepted the false division between "private"/reproductive/unwaged work and "public"/productive/waged work imposed by capital on the working class. Furthermore the Socialist Party has always maintained that the only worthwhile vehicles for defending the living standards, wages, working conditions etc of the working class under capitalism are trade unions. The Socialist Standard continues to pay scant attention to forms of working-class struggle outside of unions, such as that waged by women in Wages for Housework. Such a monolithic class analysis does little to overcome the many divisions within the working class at the same time as it provides cannon fodder for those who feel that Marxism is now outmoded.

Feminists argue that the liberation of women entails more than simply the abolition of wage labour and the establishment of "free access" to wealth produced. It is quite possible, they argue, to conceive of a socialist society (as defined by the Socialist Party) where the wages system has been abolished yet an exploitative sexual division of labour continues to exist, where women continue to lack control over their bodies, sexuality, or reproductive rights, or where male violence continues on a substantial scale. We might, then, question ALB's assertion that "the energies of those who are. quite rightly, concerned about the economic dependence of women on men would be much better directed to campaigning for socialism”, and ask instead whether at least some of the energies of those socialists who are concerned about the liberation of women might be better employed listening to feminists. 

Julian Prior

Burnaby, Canada.

Reply:

The claim that the Wages for Housework Campaign is now a single-issue campaign for a reform within capitalism was based on the contents of the pamphlet Marx and Feminism itself and of the accompanying publicity material sent us by the publishers.

In the 1970s Selma James did talk about "class struggle”, "revolutionary action", “abolishing capitalism", etc (though not so much about abolishing wages, money and markets and instituting common ownership and production solely and directly to satisfy people’s needs) and she saw the launching of a campaign for "wages for housework" in this context.

We wouldn't deny — and weren’t concerned to deny — that James and others made some valid criticisms of the narrow definition of the working class (and so also of the agent of revolutionary change) held by Trotskyists, Leninists, Stalinists and other leftists. In defining the working class only as miners, dockers, factory workers, etc these excluded whole sections of the working class from being able to play a full role in the transformation of society and downgraded their problems and struggles to being marginal or secondary.

But this criticism didn't apply to us since we have always had a broad definition of the working class as all those excluded from the ownership and control of the means of production irrespective of the job they do (or don't do). OK. perhaps not so broad as to include "subsistence producers, peasants and indigenous peoples” but this issue has been discussed amongst our members.

Nor is it accurate to say that we have "always maintained that the only worthwhile vehicles for defending the living standards. wages. working conditions, etc of the working class under capitalism are trade unions". We may see trade unions as the main vehicles for doing this, but we don't exclude other organisations like tenants associations, claimants unions, student unions — or some women’s organisations such as those advising women of their legal rights or refuges for battered women. The Wages for Housework Campaign. however, does not enter into this category. It is a politically-motivated reformist group.

James came from an ex-Trotskyist tradition, but one which had not got rid of all the assumptions and methods of Trotskyism, in particular the so-called "transitional demand". This is a demand put forward by militants for discontented workers to struggle for but which the militants know full well is not achievable under capitalism: their hope is that when, as a result of their unsuccessful struggle, the discontented workers realise this they will turn against capitalism and become revolutionaries.

James's disagreement with the Trotskyists was not over whether or not to put forward "transitional demands" but over what these demands should be and at who they should be aimed. They favoured demands of a trade union-type like “indexisation of wages to prices". “35-hour week", "workers' control". She rejected this on the grounds that these demands could only be attractive to unionised, mainly male, factory workers and left out unwaged women doing housework as “the slave of a wage slave". The alternative she proposed was "wages for housework" as a transitional demand to mobilise women as an autonomous movement. independent of (and even opposed to) the Trade Union and Labour Movement.

We always rejected "transitional demands". As far as we are concerned they were just reforms. while the Socialist Party had been founded on the principle that a socialist organisation should not advocate reforms; this was not because we were against all reforms but because we recognise that reformism cannot solve the problems of the working class within capitalism and because of the effect we felt that campaigning for reforms would have on the socialist nature of the organisation. We argued that for it to campaign for reforms would attract the support of people who wanted reforms not socialism and that this would eventually lead to it becoming a reformist organisation.

The fate of the Wages for Housework Campaign which James helped set up over twenty years ago illustrates this perfectly.

Whatever might have been her original intention (and there is no reason to doubt that she then wanted to get rid of capitalism with its privileges for the few and exploitation and oppression for the many), the WFH Campaign has become a single-issue reformist pressure group.

The publicity material accompanying the review consisted of an interview of Selma James and Margaret Prescod in the Los Angeles Times of 7 May 1987, a news item from the same paper headlined “Bill Would Make Housework Count in Calculation of GNP" (12 December 1991), and an article on Selma James from the London Times of 19 February 1992.

All these articles have a common theme: that the payment by the state of money to women for doing housework is a demand that should, and can, be achieved within capitalism, and is in fact on the way to being realised thanks to successful lobbying by James and others of the United Nations, the European Parliament and the US House of Representatives. James is quoted as follows:

"There are. she says, two questions. women always ask when confronted by the concept of wages for housework. "Who will pay for it?" and "Will we ever get it?' Her answers are "Trident" — she would siphon off the entire military budget to pay for unremunerated labour — and "Yes'. 

Her optimism springs from existing welfare provisions. "Child benefit and income support are forms of recognition that women working in the home have an entitlement to wages, even though it is not enough. Those benefits are creeping wages for housework and after you creep you walk, after you walk you run." (Times, 19 February 1992)

.

A far cry from what she was saying in the 1970s. Now it’s the inevitability of gradualism. We once heard somebody (not a member of the Socialist Party) describe "wages for housework" as a “crap demand". His point was that if you were going to make such a demand on the state you might as well demand a basic state income for everybody. We said you might as well establish socialism, at least that was achievable.

There are feminists and feminists. Some (most, these days?) feminists wouldn’t know what you were talking about if you mentioned "the abolition of the wages system" and "free access": they are concerned with getting women an equal chance to compete in the rat-race that capitalism is and to scramble to the top of the heap if they can. Or, in a language they wouldn't understand. to turn women from unequal wage slaves and from “slaves to wage slaves" into "equal wage slaves” with men.

Other feminists may well be able to conceive of a socialist society in which discrimination and oppression of women continued. Well, we can't and we're socialists and they're not. Socialism involves people voluntarily co-operating to produce and distribute wealth and to run their common affairs on a democratic basis, with free access for all to the things they need to live and enjoy life. Under these circumstances there would be no economic pressures on women to put up with discriminatory or oppressive practices: women could simply walk away from them and still have free access to what they needed. So there’d be no basis for their continued existence. In fact the feminist — and indeed socialist aim — of women’s equality is only going to be fully realised in a socialist society.

Editors.

Alison Assiter's Revisiting Universalism (2003)

Book Review from the December 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Revisiting Universalism. By Alison Assiter. Palgrave Macmillan. 2003.

This is a book that re-asserts that there are universal values applicable to all human beings. It is directed against the “post-modernists”, “multi-culturalists” and some feminists, who assert that, on the contrary, there are no universally shared values by which to judge conduct, that any group’s view is as good as any other’s and ought to be respected as such (i.e. not criticised), or, as one wit has put it, “cannibalism is a matter of taste”.

Assiter starts from a materialist position. What all humans share in common, she says, is the basic need for a minimum level of food, clothes and shelter as essential to their physical health:

“(i) All human beings have needs which must be satisfied, if they are to act in any way at all;

(ii) These needs therefore ought to be satisfied, and this is a universally valid ‘ought’”.

Therefore “each one of us has an equal right to have our basic needs satisfied”. At the abstract level at which the argument is being conducted, Socialists can go along with this. But then Assiter extends this by adding that it means that every human being therefore has a “moral obligation” to do what they can to ensure that every other human being has their basic needs met.

This would make the case for socialism (as one among possible actions to try to ensure that every human has their needs met, the only effective one in fact) a moral case whereas we have always argued that socialism is based on interest, class interest to be more precise. It is in the material interest of the working class to have their needs met; these cannot be properly met under capitalism; therefore it is in the interest of the workers to abolish capitalism. So, when we approach our fellow workers, we don’t say “You should be a socialist because you have a moral duty to ensure that the basic needs of all your fellow humans are met”. What we say is: “You should be a socialist because only socialism can assure that your basic needs are met”.

In any event, to say that every human has this moral duty towards all other humans is pointless since ineffective. It would mean that the capitalist class has some moral obligation towards the working class. Tell them that and they’ll laugh in your face. And why should we assume any moral duty to the capitalist class, who exploit us? Not that workers are likely to respond to appeals to a supposed “moral duty”; they will establish socialism out of material self-interest, individual and collective. Socialism is a class issue not a moral issue.

To tell the truth, this book will have little relevance outside the academic world, indeed outside university philosophy departments. Academics are wage-slaves like the rest of us and one of their conditions of employment is “publish or perish”. As a result publishers’ lists are clogged up with books written just for this purpose. Something marginally different about this book is that we get a mention (even if our address is wrongly given).

Assiter, a leading feminist intellectual who was once a Socialist Party member, quotes Slavoj Zizek as writing that

“when the ‘left’ makes its demands ‘for full employment’ ‘retain the welfare state’ ‘full rights for immigrants’ . . . it is bombarding the capitalist state with demands it cannot fulfil. The left, he writes, is ‘playing a game of hysterical provocation, of addressing the Master with a demand it will be impossible for him to meet’”.

And contrasts this with the approach of

“the British SPGB, a political party that has operated in the UK, and elsewhere, since 1904. Members of the SPGB reject Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky as ‘impure’ versions of Marx, and believe that they must argue the socialist case in as many venues as possible, in order to convince a majority of the working class of the veracity of their case. They adopt the strategy of believing that rationality will prevail and that once people see and understand the logic of their case, just like the believer in decision procedure, then those people will convert to their cause and there will be no more capitalism, no more wars and no more wage slavery”.

A bit over-simplified in that we are not trying to “convert” people to our “case” as such, but to convince our fellow workers that it is in their material interest to establish socialism. But perhaps we shouldn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth.

Adam Buick

Socialist? Feminist? (2001)

Pamphlet Review from the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the Ashes of the Old Century, A Better World’s in Birth . By Andrea Bauer. (64 pp. $4.50 from Red Letter Press, 409 Maynard Ave. S., Suite 201, Seattle, WA 98104, USA.)

This is the Political Resolution adopted by the 1999 convention of a US trotskyist organisation called the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP).

I’m not sure which “better world” the title of this pamphlet is referring to, but it is certainly not planet Earth. This is a world where the state capitalist dictatorships of the Soviet bloc were “workers states” and “. . . societies in which the profit system had been overthrown and production and distribution were organized essentially in the interest of working people”. A world where “nationalization of the credit system” is a socialist demand. A world where the working class must be led and directed by “trained, dedicated revolutionaries” rather than rely on our own conscious actions. Most unbelievably of all, a world where workers “. . . respond with anger and pressure, not cynicism and apathy, when the Second Internationalists (Labour and Social Democratic parties) fail to act as their representatives”.

Its somewhat upsetting that the FSP styles itself as a “socialist, feminist” organisation. An organisation which regards itself as feminist while defending state capitalist regimes as “workers states” should ask itself some questions. As a system of society in which the FSP claim the profit system had been overthrown we should expect women to have liberated themselves from the shit capitalism throws (disproportionately) on them. Was this really the case though? Not quite:

“. . . women in Eastern Europe lived under a system of formal, legislated equality. Women had the legal right to work, and most barriers to women’s employment were lifted. Mandated equality, however, is not the same as freedom. Women were not given a choice of lifestyle, but were obligated to work. Since “equality” was imposed by the state, there was no public dialogue about the changes in women’s roles, and sexism and discrimination persisted, both in the public and domestic spheres. Women were still expected to do all of the child rearing and housework, for example, while working the same hours as men.”

In Romania, women were required to bear four, and then later five, children; many died from illegal abortions, or were allowed to bleed to death if they refused to reveal the names of illegal abortionists. (http://civnet.org/journal/issue3/cfbeco.htm)

Life for working class women in the state capitalist/”communist” states was a life not a million miles away from that of a working class woman in the openly capitalist “west”. What sort of liberation is offered by the “workers states” which the FSP see as a model for socialism if we are just going to continue being wage slaves and women are going to continue to be crushed by the burdens of a patriarchal class society?

Even the high percentage of women in national legislatures and public office in eastern bloc countries relative to the west is deceptive when comparison is made with percentages of women in the Party bureaucracy:

“In the bodies which did have real power—the communist parties’ central committees, for instance—there were almost no women” (http://www.oska.org.pl/english/womeninpoland/perpectives/2.html).

Just like the western states these “workers’ states” were systems of minority-class economic, political and social domination, with male authority figures at the top. That women are suffering disproportionately in the changeover period following the collapse of the eastern state capitalist bloc and losing many of what gains were won under state capitalism is an argument for abolishing the capitalist system altogether, not going “back to the future” to a “workers’ paradise” that never existed.

Ben Malcolm

Women’s Lib has got it Wrong (1974)

From the July 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lord Baden-Powell wrote a book for young men called Rovering to Success in which the Rocks to beware in the Voyage of Life were drink, horses, irreligion, cuckoos — and women. “Cuckoos” meant holders of all political views other than raw patriotism, and of women Baden-Powell wrote:

This means on the part of the man a deep respect and tender sympathy for them, coupled with a manly strength of mind and strength of body with which to stand up for them . . . and even, on occasion, to help them against their own failings.

A main step to happiness in this direction is to select the right kind of girl. There are woman and there are dolls . . . You have got to catch yourself up in little bits of selfishness on your part, such, for instance, as grousing at the food because it isn’t exactly to your liking, and that sort of thing. Look at things from her point of view.

That was written in 1922. As an illustration that attitudes have not altered very much, a 1972 book on professional footballers called The Glory Game listed their answers to “Do you help in the house?”:

Jennings : I never help in the house. I couldn’t change a nappy. I’ve never washed a dish. She’s never asked me to. I wouldn’t expect her to, neither would she. 

Kinnear : I just want my wife to be a woman, you know, bring up the kids. I’d be the boss, but I'd ask her opinions. 

Pearce : The bloke has to be in charge. A wife shouldn’t be equal. I do the decorating but the baby’s hers. She looks after it.

This is part of one half of the population talking normally about the other half, and it would be surprising if the victims did not cut up rough and talk of “liberation”. The titles of Women’s Lib books are accurate reflections of Baden-Powell and the footballers: Woman's Estate, The Female Eunuch, The Captive Wife. Add to domestic servitude the fact that women are disabled throughout society — excluded, regarded as cheap labour, required to fall in with sexual expectations or be ridiculed. The case for ending such a gross inequality is self-evident to Socialists. The question is whether the Women’s Liberation movement has an analysis and policies which will end it.

Groups and Demands

Women’s Lib came into existence in the late nineteen-sixties. Of course “feminist” organizations were in being long before, for particular purposes like that of the National Union of Women Teachers which ceased to exist when equal pay was granted. Juliet Mitchell, in Woman's Estate, says of the suffragettes:

And indeed when in 1918 in England it [the vote] was given to women over thirty who owned property, the most powerful wing of the movement was satisfied and the force of the struggle evaporated.

The aim of the modern movement is to go to the fundamentals of women’s position in society. Many of those who started it had been in left-wing and protest groups where, finding themselves required to make the tea while the men talked about justice and equality, they concluded that women needed a separate movement of revolt against “patriarchy’’ and “sexism”.

However, Women’s Lib is not a single unified movement. It consists of small autonomous groups under, roughly, four headings:— (a) political, incorporating or accommodating left-wing aims; (b) reformist, seeking particular improvements; (c) feminist, endeavouring to promote “female consciousness”; and (d) radical feminist, rejecting women’s biological rôle. The last is expounded most fully in Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex. Its argument is that women’s basic oppression is child-bearing, and that technology — test- tube babies, baby farms, etc. — must be made to bring about an “androgynous culture” which will solve all the problems of mankind.

There is general acceptance of the four demands laid down by the first national women’s conference held at Oxford in 1970: equal pay, equal education and opportunity, 24-hour nurseries, and free contraception and abortion on demand. In fact the Equal Pay Act was passed also in 1970, after being on the trade unions’ agenda and receiving only desultory attention since 1888; it remains to be seen how the employers find ways round it, and the extent to which it will affect women’s positions in the jobs they now hold.

Teaching Division

For — and this is the dilemma for these Liberationists as for all others — they are working within capitalism. Some are at least partly aware of it. For instance, an article “Towards a Statement on Women’s Liberation” by JL and RN in ORA Newsletter No. 4 in 1972 says:

Thus we should be able to explain how the "woman’s rôle” has developed under capitalism; where the origins of that rôle existed before the Industrial Revolution; and why it is that women as a group cannot be liberated under capitalism now.

The statement points out that in the present system “it is not only the woman who is restricted” but children and men are restricted too. It then lists a series of demands for women, beginning with the 1970 four and including campaigns against female fashions and women’s magazines.

But if the article’s own premises are correct, what would be achieved by the measures proposed ? The achievement could only be an exchange of female bondage for male: out of one cage, into another. Perhaps a radical feminist would argue that it is a less uncomfortable cage, but let nobody pretend it is liberation. However, it is not even a matter of different cages. The subjugation of groups by other groups — black by white, have-not by have, female by male — is only a collection of aspects of the single over-riding division on which capitalist society is founded.

Juliet Mitchell in her book gives an ingenuous example of this by speaking of the “anxiety” in Women’s Lib in the US over the “absence of black women in the movement”. Once the claims of groups and sections are acknowledged, it is anyone’s choice which has priority. We are often told of the “divisiveness” of sexism and racism. But the dividing is effective only when the subjects accept it and believe their interests are concerned predominantly with being female, black, or whatever. If it is rejected and the basic working-class identity of interests recognized, there is no obscurity over either the problem or its solution.

Women’s Lib responds to this by saying that the subjugation of women exists, due to men, independently of society and its classes (Millet and the other radical feminists); or that women’s struggles are a special way of attacking capitalism (e.g. Sheila Rowbotham, Woman’s Consciousness, Man's World)’, or that they are a precondition for achieving Socialism (variously understood). A Northern Region conference in June 1972 agreed that its statement of aims should begin with the words:

No women’s liberation without socialist revolution. No socialist revolution without women’s liberation. We aim to change the social relations of reproduction as well as to change the social relations of production.

It was honest, at any rate, for the report of the conference to add: “There was some discussion about whom this was intended for — it was pointed out that ordinary women would not find it very clear.”

Where Reforms Lead

But however the theorizing goes, in practice Women’s Lib lives to make immediate demands for reforms. In many ways it is itself a reflection of changes already taking place. The presumption, as always, is that society can be made to give way to their augmentation, and that if this happens it will end inequalities and confer benefits.

What should be pointed out at once is that the Socialist movement exists precisely because that was found not to be so. Reforms not only do not work like that, but all too frequently recoil. There are two outstanding modern examples of governments “liberating” women and thus obtaining an extra instrument for economic and social manipulation. One is in China, where women have been promoted impressively for the purposes of production, to the accompaniment of rigorous sexual repression. The opposite of the nineteen-thirties’ and -forties’ Russian cult of maternity is pursued, but likewise for demographic reasons: China, it is said, may be a pioneer country in State-authorized free contraception for all.

The other, still more relevant, example is Sweden. There women are little short of what is demanded by Women’s Lib in Europe and USA: wages near men’s, no discrimination in jobs or education, contraception and abortion and divorce all easily obtainable. Sweden should be acclaimed by the Liberationists, but is not. Mitchell affirms that concern with the position of women arises in all countries when their economies demand it:

But in Sweden this alteration is accompanied by a resurgence of explicit discussions (claiming to be disinterested) in women’s rôles. This overt debate can, in fact, obscure the issue; the economic expediency becomes invisible behind the social concern . . . The very stress that Swedish society puts on sexual equality makes it hard to see the oppression of women.

What makes them believe that the same reforms in other countries would not be taken as grist for capitalism’s mill? Indeed the same writer tells us that wages for housework (demanded by Selma James in Women, the Unions and Work) “was supported by conservatives (after all, it is a way of keeping women at home)” in Sweden.

Find the Right Answer

The Women’s Liberation movement is not different from other reformist organizations which choose to put immediate aims before a revolutionary change in society. Engels traced the origin of the suppression of women to that of private property, and he and Marx showed how it was maintained throughout historical transformations up to modern times. Private ownership turns liberation movements into the agents of ruling classes; common ownership alone can give the facility for new kinds of relationships.

The alternative case of the radical feminists, that women’s suppression is not societal but is the male at work, is no case at all. Their belief in this “human nature” argument is the antithesis of radicalism — what it supports is the ruling-class yarn that lords and masters are not made but born. On the other hand, some research done in the Women’s Lib cause provides fresh insights into capitalism and how things can be under Socialism: about parent-child relationships, or the studies of conditioning made in books like Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.

It is a fact that some Women’s Lib has become (no doubt against others’ wish) a partial front organization for Communists, IS, anarchists and other left-wing groups with other aims. It is likewise a fact that, even were Socialists favourably disposed to it, male ones would be barred from most of its meetings; and we do not distinguish between male and female chauvinists. Socialists are opposed to Women’s Lib. We are for liberation, indeed — of the whole of mankind, and whoever wants the liberation of any part of it must join with us. And if from woman’s estate, she will find that in the Socialist movement the distinction is not made. We exist as comrades with one object in common.

Robert Barltrop

The Oppressed Sex (1972)

Book Review from the April 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Woman’s Estate, by Juliet Mitchell. Penguin Books 25p.

Woman’s Estate is an absorbing and. by turns, irritating and perceptive analysis of the nature of women’s oppression, and the rise and contemporary position of Women’s Lib.

The kernel of Mitchell’s book is the comparison she makes between the two implicit wings of the Women's Lib Movement, which she labels “Radical Feminist” and "Abstract Socialist”. The polemic is well argued and substantially documented and concludes with an effective rejection of the intellectual position of the "radical feminist”:

  To say that sex dualism was the first oppression and that it underlies all oppression may be true, but it is a general, non-specific truth, it is simplistic materialism, no more . . . There have always been classes, as there have always been sexes, but how do these operate within any given specific society? Without such knowledge (historical materialism) we have not the means of overcoming them. Nothing but this knowledge and the revolutionary action based upon it, determines the fate of technology — towards freedom or towards 1984.

But Mitchell also partially rejects "classical socialist theory” because of its "inadequacies”. The conceived "inadequacies” are two-fold. “The position of women in the work of Marx and Engels remains dissociated from, or subsidiary to, a discussion of the family, which is in its turn subordinated as merely a pre-condition of private property.” Yet no substantive reasons are given as to why this view is inadequate. We are told that “the framework of discussion fails noticeably to project a convincing image of the future, beyond asserting that socialism will involve the liberation of women as one of its ‘constituent movements’.” In this connection Engels’ projection that the emancipation of women becomes possible only when women are enabled to take part in production on a large, social scale, is implicitly rejected. Later, however, it is argued that although 42 per cent of the United States labour force are women, the exclusion of these women from the work-force “at the most formative period of their lives from the point of view of the development of class-consciousness” accounts for the lack of political insight shown by women.

The resolution of this paradox requires that we take note of Mitchell’s second major perceived inadequacy associated with “classical socialist theory”, in that it ignores the findings of psychoanalysis: "To ignore Freud is like ignoring Marx.” Thus women’s lack of awareness is intimately associated with her function in the family, which in turn is "the source of the psychic creation of individuals.”

In order that we might be prepared to accept the relevance of Freud to an understanding of how women become women, Mitchell turns science on its head. The empirical validation of hypotheses is unnecessary—evidence is seemingly secondary to unsubstantiated intuition. Yet even accepting that Freud’s insights have apparent explanatory (if not scientific) power in that they suggest how a woman “comes into being”, their power is related specifically to the social situation of mankind. As Mitchell herself implies, the "bio-sexual interpretation of the anatomical-biological” is made in a social context. Freud’s ideas may account for contemporary notions as to the nature of "woman”, but these notions are related to social situations through time and space; they do not tell us what "woman” is but only what a particular woman thinks she is, or is thought to be. It is as though the argument went that to understand the behaviour of a footballer relative to a member of the opposing side, reference should be made to the nature of the opponent rather than to the game as a whole, and the context in which it is played.

To suggest that "classical socialist theory” fails to project a convincing image of the future is to require that it formulates solutions to a problem which it considers largely irrelevant. It is not the specific nature of the image which is important or the particular manifestation of oppression. What is central is the idea that the image and the oppression are characteristic of a class society: the former will be redefined, the latter eliminated, in a classless society.

Nevertheless this book deserves attention. There are some interesting comparisons with other protest movements —black power, students, hippies, etc.,— and the book is packed with specific examples of contemporary discrimination directed against women, and with rewarding clues as to its essential precondition. In documenting the pervasive power of oppression at every level the author has remedied an obvious informational deficiency.

M. D. G.

Turgid Philosopher (1990)

Book Review from the December 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Althusser and Feminism by Alison Assiter. (Pluto Press. £17.50.)

Who cares what Althusser has to say about feminism or, for that matter, what feminists have to say about Althusser? Had the French philosopher, Louis Althusser, never written a word, socialist thought would be none the poorer.

Like many books which claim to illuminate the hidden meanings of Marxist thinking. the pages are filled with references to the “esteemed" theoretical interpreters of Marx. Do these academic Marxologists not care that Marx urged philosophers to become actively involved to change the world rather than merely interpret the word? The turgid volumes of these Althusserian and anti-Althusserian commentators, whose outpourings are referred to by Assiter as "the literature", have played no role in stimulating working-class understanding of the need for socialism. They have played with Marx's ideas.

It is a pity that philosophers who want to offer abstruse language and cleverly-formulated abstract propositions as signs of their own brightness do not stick to writing about Aristotle or Descartes: at least that would keep them out of the way of the real struggle. Professional academics tend to prove themselves by taking relatively difficult ideas and making them appear incomprehensible. For example, take Marx's view that the forces of production tend to determine the relations of production. Here is Assiter explaining Althusser's description of "the relation between the various levels in the structure":

How are we to understand these relations? The answer, surely, is by referring to the Spinozist conception of causality. Economic and non-economic practices will be related, not by means of Humean or Liebnizean causality, but by Spinozist "metonymic" causality, (p.26).

Bet you'd never looked at it that way before! This book is full of such tortuously expressed utterances.

As for the analysis—insofar as it begins to emerge after two or three readings of what is a sadly disorganised book—there are some good bits (such as Chapter Three on 'Needs and Production' which lays the foundation for a worthwhile study of how needs are determined) and some others which reflect poor thinking. Why is the working class referred to as "the working classes"? (p.35). There is only one. Why does the back cover say that the book deals, amongst others, with Foucault— who did have something stimulating to say for himself—but there is no mention of him in the text or even the index? Why does Assiter state that “since the forces of production were insufficiently developed, socialism could not have come about in Russia in 1917"? (pp.43-4). Surely Assiter knows that even had they been so developed. socialism in one country was out of the question. Anyway, the overwhelming majority of Russians lacked any socialist consciousness. To the book's credit, it includes a satisfactory definition of socialism as a social system in which "people will have free access to all that is produced: they will be able to take what they want or need from the available wealth" (p.52). The writer does not say whether she favours this objective and is prepared to do anything practical to bring it about.

Steve Coleman

Women's Estate (1983)

From the February 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Women's Liberation Movement could be said to be divided into two groups: Socialist Feminists and Revolutionary Feminists. In one editorial of Scarlet Women the Socialist Feminists say " . . . we have to examine Socialist Feminist thought and seek to redevelop it. What we are looking for is nothing less than a total redefinition of Socialist thought and practice. We are looking towards a Socialism that abolishes patriarchy”. The Revolutionary Feminists stress the primacy of the sex struggle for women, in contrast to the Marxist emphasis on the class struggle. Their focus is on issues which directly concern the sexual subordination of women to men — rape, prostitution, control of reproduction and pornography. They claim that Marxist analyses which are based on the primacy of the class struggle are incapable of adequately dealing with these issues or any others which they say cut across class boundaries. They see women as a sex class. So there is a tendency in the women's movement to be critical of Marxist theory as neglecting the sexual division.

Simone de Beauvoir, in her book Second Sex, says men are encouraged to play out their lives in the realm of transcendence, whereas women are confined to immanence. In other words, men work, create, do things, are in positions of authority and make their own histories, whereas women are confined to the home where their function is not to create but to maintain. Women keep house and raise children. Of course, reality is not quite like this, since work in a capitalist society is often stifling and stunting and men engaging in it could hardly be described as creating their own histories by transcending themselves. Within the present social context, however, it is still true that men are trained to go out, work and, within limits, shape their own lives and that, even bearing in mind the alienating nature of work, they have more opportunities to satisfy their need for creativity than women. The myth that woman's natural place is in the home and that naturally she will find the fulfilment of her creativity in bearing and raising children is terribly destructive.

A woman may, and does, work while living with a man, although many a wife maintains a home for her husband and lives for him and through him rather than for and through herself. A mother’s job outside the home may offer the family more than week-to-week subsistence. It is her wage that enables the family to eat better food, have a holiday or new clothes. It does not follow that the job will be satisfying; many jobs open to women are unpleasant — waitresses, clerks, salesgirls, typists and factory hands. Usually the nature of these jobs makes marriage seem more attractive, and often girls hope to find the best available man for financial security or to escape from the crowded and repressive home.

The pattern of wifely subservience is changing, however, and the myth that child bearing and rearing is the fulfilment of a woman’s destiny is being questioned. Having children is no substitute for creating one's own life, but many women are conditioned to devote themselves to nothing else and so end up as intolerable burdens on their children.

Much of the resentment in Women’s Liberation movements against men is sexual — they feel they are being treated as objects (as. in fact, many are). Fashions, advertising, films and magazines all betray the fact that women are culturally conceived of as objects and, worse still, often accept this definition and try to make themselves into a more desirable commodity on the sexual market. We must recognise that this self-definition and conscious acceptance is related to economic and social structures. Men and women are oppressed together and must be liberated together. Women will not achieve anything by venting their hostility on men. They must recognise that capitalist society inculcates destructive beliefs about themselves and must understand the extent to which they have been conditioned since childhood.

If we recognise that the problems facing women are related to the structure of the whole society, then we see that the only solution is to change society fundamentally. We live in a capitalist society where goods are produced for sale with a view to profit. Simple manufacture has evolved into a gigantic electronic technology. The world retains the same basic social relations, in both public and private sectors, of capital and wage labour. All over the world there is poverty, famine, insecurity, inequality and war. The basic reason is the commodity nature of wealth under capitalism — the fact that wealth is socially produced and privately owned. Every social system has its basis through which almost every feature of it can be traced and explained. The morals, attitudes and institutions of capitalism are explained through the class ownership of the means of producing and distributing the world’s wealth.

A section of the population, as direct proprietors or company shareholders, own the land, factories, mines, workshops, ships, banks and any other trading concern, or invest their money in government or municipal securities. This is the basic social condition which forms social relationships like buying and selling, employing and being employed. It is also responsible for social institutions like shops and markets, which are needed for the relationships to operate. On one side is the capitalist class and on the other the working class.

A class is a group of people who, although they may differ in their nationality or background or their so-called race, have economic interests in common. A class, with its common economic interests, exists whether or not its members realise it. A capitalist is someone who has enough ownership to be able to live without going to work for a wage or salary. Because of this ownership the capitalist's interests are opposed to those of the working class — those people who do not own enough to give them a living but who rely for their livelihood on selling their labour power to the employer for wages.

Whenever a commodity is bought or sold there immediately occurs a clash of interests, for it is to the advantage of the seller to sell for the highest possible price and of the buyer to buy at the lowest price possible. Therefore it is in the interest of the working class to get the highest wages and best working conditions they can, and in the interest of the employers to exploit workers as intensely as they can for as little as possible. This dooms the majority of capitalism’s people to poverty. Capitalism produces for profit — when profit is not available production ceases or wealth is destroyed. Because of its basic characteristics, capitalism is unable to satisfy the needs and desires of the world’s people. It must always deprive, undermine and suppress them.

If the Women's Liberation Movement achieves all its immediate demands, such as equal pay, educational opportunities, 24 hour nurseries, free contraception and abortion on demand, there will remain the need for a revolutionary change in society.

Although Women’s Liberation came into existence in the late nineteen-sixties, feminist organisations were in being long before. Juliet Mitchell in Women’s Estate says of the Suffragettes " . . and indeed when in 1918 in England it (the vote) was given to women over thirty who owned property the most powerful wing of the movement was satisfied and the struggle evaporated”. The Women’s Liberation movement is not different from other reformist organisations which choose to put immediate aims before a revolutionary change in society.

Doreen Davies

New Pamphlet: Women and Socialism (1986)

Party News from the August 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

For thousands of years and in most societies in the world, women have had a worse deal than men. Even today, in the "advanced industrial nations", where physical strength has ceased to have any real value on the labour market, men still get the jobs with more pay. more prestige and more power. Feminists have pressed for, and won, the vote and various pieces of legislation designed to give women equality in education, property rights and employment, but the basic inequalities remain.

Why has feminism failed to bring about women's liberation? A condition which affects half of the working class like this is of major importance to socialists. The new pamphlet produced by The Socialist Party and issued this month re-examines the whole question, looking afresh at the origins of sexual inequality, and then at all the disappointing attempts to rectify it The Russian revolution, which was supposed to be ushering in sexual equality with socialism, did neither; and the pamphlet draws out the inescapable conclusions about Russian society which follow from the present condition of women there.

Particularly valuable to socialist speakers and writers is Chapter Two. which analyses the three main strands of feminist theory and endeavour. Full credit is given to those elements of social analysis which are accurate and unique to feminist thinking And one cannot help but admire the dedication and self-sacrifice of so many of the campaigners for "women s rights" But the fact that so little real advantage has been gained after all this time and effort is, in the end, clearly the result of a fundamental fault in the feminist theory of sexual inequality and discrimination.

Socialists, male and female, are striving for the real emancipation of women. Our analysis shows, however, that this is not an aspect of society that exists in isolation and can be dealt with separately. The last chapter of this new pamphlet demonstrates in detail that the oppression of women can only be effectively ended by eradicating the underlying conditions which cause and perpetuate it. It is a pamphlet which fills a long-standing gap in socialist exposition.

RC

Abolition of the Wages . . . for Housework Campaign (1994)

Book Review from the December 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx and Feminism. By Selma James. Centrepiece. £1.50.

Marx, according to Selma James in this reprint with an update of a talk originally given in 1983, has been useful to the Wages for Housework Campaign. It is difficult to see how though, since Marx campaigned for the abolition not the extension of the wages system.

Actually, what theWages for Housework Campaign is demanding is not that women should be paid a wage for housework, but that all women should be paid a specific Woman’s Benefit by the State. Turning into a single issue reformist group may not have been how James (who had previously been in various radical groups that regarded themselves as Marxist) saw the Campaign developing when she helped set it up in 1972. But this is what has happened, with her and the others rushing around lobbying the UN and governments to bring in this reform.

Not that it will ever be enacted. The State is not going to pay out money to people who, by its criteria, don’t need it even if it did have the enormous sum that would be involved, which it doesn’t and couldn’t get without over-taxing profits. Capitalism doesn’t work like that. It can’t be reformed so as to work in people's interests. Profits always come first and people second.

This being so, the energies of those who are, quite rightly, concerned about the economic dependence of women on men would be much better directed to campaigning for Socialism, where the principle of “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" will apply. This will end once and for all women’s economic dependence on men since everyone would have free access, as a matter of individual right and without needing to pay money, to what they required to satisfy their needs.

As Marx might have put it, instead of raising the conservative slogan "Wages for Housework” they should raise the revolutionary one of "Abolition of the Wages Systen".

Adam Buick

Votes for some women (2016)

Book Review from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Women and Socialism: Class, Race, and Capital'. By Sharon Smith. Haymarket Books. 2016

This is a ‘fully revised’ re-edition, with a new subtitle, of a book with the same title that came out in 2004 by an American Trotskyist. In the meantime Smith had revised her previous derogatory attitude towards ‘middle class feminists’ (who merely want equality under capitalism). She also wanted to emphasise more her view that there is a need to unify feminist and black struggles.

One interesting fact that emerges from a couple of passages is that we were not alone in opposing the suffragettes, who were demanding votes for women on the same terms as men then had, for wanting 'Votes for Rich Women'. Some in the German Social Democratic movement took the same position in regard to the same demand in Germany (where universal male suffrage did not exist either). Smith tells us:

'… the early-twentieth-century German women's suffrage movement did not challenge the property requirements that denied working-class men the right to vote – knowing that such requirements would also deny voting rights to working-class women. Maintaining such property requirements could only strengthen the political weight of the middle and upper classes, while the working class would remain politically voiceless.'

and

'Some women's suffrage organizations demanded (and in some European countries, won) partial suffrage for women – with voting rights based upon property holding and the payment of taxes (that is, restricting voting rights to those women of financial means). But in many of these same societies, male suffrage was also partial, denying working-class men the right to vote. Thus, partial suffrage merely increased the voting power of the upper classes.'

In the USA universal male and female suffrage was instituted in 1920 but only on paper in the ex-Confederate States where black men let alone black women were excluded under various pretexts, an anomaly not put right until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Smith sees not insisting on this at the time as a failure on the part of earlier feminists which, she argues, should now be rectified by seeing the black and women's equality movements as part of the same struggle. Multi-identity – gays and lesbians are invited to join too – politics, if you like, instead of class politics.

She argues that the basis for women's equality has to be pay for housework. But this is not going to happen under capitalism and won't be necessary in socialism where people won't have to have a money income to access the goods and services they need. Instead, the principle 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs' will apply, a much better and more rational way of putting women and men in a position of equality in that respect.

Adam Buick

Without distinction of sex (1979)

From the December 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

If women's bodies are used to sell everything from mustard to motor cars, this is an expression of their peculiar oppression under capitalism. Whether we examine the family, women's sexuality or women's employment opportunities, we find the same kind of story.

Young girls are systematically trained for the role of wife and mother, with dolls and toy Hoovers as playthings. Throughout their school years too they are conditioned to accept that the highest - indeed only - calling for a woman is the servicing of a man's needs and the bearing of "his" children. By the time such girls enter the employment market as young women, they are less qualified than their male peers and are taken less seriously by their employers, who see them as a pool of cheap and docile labour. Their comparatively low wages and even lower prospects at work then serve as yet another inducement to leave the labour force and take up the role they have in fact been prepared for from birth.

And so, under capitalism, a woman has become the biggest-bargain-ever package-deal to hit the market. With an attractive wrapper to please its owner, this package-deal includes sexual services, baby production line, household servant and general comforter-cum-ego-booster for a bargain price of board and lodging only, with the occasional lipstick thrown in to smarten up the weary wrapping paper.

But it is not only capitalism that has oppressed women; the history of women's oppression is also the history of property society in all its forms. In property society a woman's sexuality and child-bearing are not under her control or subject to the widest interests of the community, but must be subordinated to the needs of the patriarchal family and ensure "legitimate" heirs. The nature and extent of women's oppression in different phases of property society can vary a great deal, but can be understood only when seen as part of the development of the system of social relations of production, together with the ideological forms of that society, such as religion. So, for example, to understand the position of women in Iran today, we have to look both at the development of the social relations of production of that country and the religious teachings of the established Muslim church.

In linking women's oppression to property society, we differ from those who argue that women's enemies are men. This view has led some sections within the Women's Liberation Movement to dissociate themselves from men both in personal life style (for example women's communes and political lesbianism) and, in political activities (women-only demonstrations and "consciousness-raising" meetings.)

But the force behind women's oppression is given ultimately by the property basis of society. Under capitalism, women's oppression can be understood in terms in the needs of capital and the amassing of profits. And where profits are made by selling commodities on the market, there will be a tendency to also put a price on all those goods and services traditionally located outside the market. Consequently, sex itself has become a marketable commodity on an enormous scale.

Sometimes it is in capitalism's interest to bring about reforms which are also in women's short-term interests. In periods of labour shortage, for example in times of war, positive steps are taken to encourage women to enter the labour force through provision of child care facilities. When capitalist planners feel that the population is growing too swiftly, contraception is more readily available and may even be provided free of charge. As industry requires a more skilled workforce, so women too may have greater access to increased educational facilities. However, there are other ways in which the interests of capital run counter to women's interests. Commercial exploitation of women's sexuality has been increasing over a number of years and it is difficult to conceive of personal relations not being exploited in some way as a result. Access to the employment market and the economic need for married women to take a job outside the home has resulted in double shift working for many, who effectively have two jobs to run.

Hence we come to the question of whether it is possible to put an end to women's oppression within the framework of property society and whether the aims of the WLM can be achieved within a capitalist framework. On the one hand, women are being drawn increasingly into the labour force and some women (and some men) are questioning the validity of gender-based roles. But on the other hand, more subtle forces of sexual exploitation are resulting from the increased commercialisation of all aspects of our lives.

But there is one aspect of women's position under capitalism that we have not yet considered. So far, only women's oppression as women has been discussed; but the majority of women are also members of the working class and are therefore dependent on the sale of labour-power, their own and their husband's, in order to buy food, clothing, housing - the things they need to live. And, as workers under capitalism, there is no way that women's (or men's) problems can be solved within a capitalist framework. Even with adequate childcare facilities (are any facilities adequate under capitalism?) and abortion on demand (what standard of care under a creaking National Health Service even without harsh Tory cuts?), women would still be subject to all the pressures and material deprivations of working or housekeeping under capitalism. This is the reason why it is in all our interests—as women and as men and as workers—to struggle for socialism where human needs will be put first.

This may seem an attitude similar to the "socialist feminist" within the Women's Liberation Movement. However, the "socialist feminists", in spite of their recognition of the role of capitalist and property society in the oppression of women, focus their energies on trying to secure improvements for women within capitalism, rather than struggling to achieve a socialist consciousness among the entire working class in order to overthrow capitalism now. In this they are representative of the left-wing generally who, in spite of their revolutionary rhetoric, dissipate their energies in pursuing ameliorative measures within capitalism, and, in so doing, reinforce both capitalist ideology and capitalism itself.

Instead of equal or "fair" pay, socialists emphasise the necessity to abolish exchange relations altogether. Socialism will institute free access to the goods we need, in the complete absence of commodity or property relations. This is the only guarantee that every individual, as part of a caring community and irrespective of gender, age or colour, will have the  means to live freely and fully. Thus the answer to the charge that women are still oppressed in countries such as Russia and China is that, yes, women are oppressed there, but this is because these countries are state capitalist.

Socialists share the WLM's distrust of leaders and rejection of hierarchical political structures, but for quite different reasons. While their objection to hierarchical structures is based on their perception of them as patriarchal forms of oppression, we argue that they are the result of the power relations deriving from the property basis of society, and as such are antithetical to a socialist organisation and a socialist society.

But if capitalism is to be overthrown then the working class must be united. Women and men, whatever their age or colour, have to work together in the fight for socialism. This is where we cannot agree with the Women's Liberation Movement; they are struggling for the liberation of women only, whereas the socialist struggle is aiming at the liberation of all, regardless of gender , age or colour.

Viv Brown