So struggle is central to building a movement that can unite women and men in the fight against sexism. But socialists do not assume this is automatic. Sexist ideas are strong and many varied. So being organised as socialists, developing an understanding of sexism, where it stems from, how to fight it is part and parcel of building on the opportunities that emerge when struggles break out. The intervention of activists to explicitly argue against sexism is still often needed. The difference is, we can get a hearing that in «normal» times might seem impossible. Because the need for solidarity can be stronger than the commitment to the horrible ideas of capitalism.
There are those who argue that women need to be organised «autonomously», otherwise their «issues» won’t be taken seriously, or they won’t be able to participate as equals in the struggles. But this ignores the very real class and therefore political divisions which necessarily divide women. Unlike the divisions among workers caused by sexism, these divisions cannot be overcome in any permanent way. Take past women’s struggles. In the campaigns for women’s suffrage it was common for middle and upper class women to only support property based voting rights (which denied the vote to working class women and men) to give them equal rights with men of their own class. It was only ever the working class movement that consistently supported universal suffrage. It might seem that all women can unite for abortion rights. However, leaving aside the religious views of many women who will never support that right, even women who want abortion rights don’t have the same needs. So abortion campaigns have always been divided between more middle class women who simply want legalised abortion and working class women who need free, safe abortions on demand. And when it comes down to it, ruling class women don’t need the right to work or equal pay, as they live off profits as do the men of their class. So inevitably, all women’s movements, including the Women’s Liberation Movement, while it could raise slogans such as «women united will never be defeated» in its first flush, were in the end torn apart by class differences which were reflected in different political trends from the commitment to working class struggle and unity of socialism to radical feminism which argued that all men oppress all women, and therefore all women could unite, but could not expect solidarity from men. The first signs of the shifts occurring was the disappearance of «Liberation» from the name of the movement. Janey Stone, a revolutionary socialist at the time and an activist in the Women’s Liberation Movement, predicted where things were heading.
Just as the radicalism of the early movement had been related to the rising tide of radicalism and industrial action, so the increasing dominance of the more right wing ideas of feminism accompanied the retreats of the working class and other movements. These questions matter, not because of some abstract shibboleth devised by socialists. When activists embark on a program of struggle based on unachievable goals – in this case, the hope that all women could unite – the ultimate, predictable failure, leads many activists to demoralisation. The disillusionment of many women committed to women’s rights is palpable in student publications. In the Melbourne University women’s student magazine, Judy’s Punch in 1995, one woman wrote that a march against fees, organised from NOWSA (the national conference of women students) was great until the cops attacked it. Then solidarity collapsed. She expressed her disillusionment thus:
Yet we are expected to take the ideas of feminism seriously! Another woman wrote that she had hoped that NOWSA would «pull feminism apart», analysing why the movement was in disarray. But she was disappointed that it didn’t. It is important we learn the lessons from the last Women’s Liberation Movement and the developments over the last decade and a half, so that if the possibility of mass struggles for women’s rights accompany the new anti-capitalist movement we may avoid some of the pitfalls.
Out of the turmoil of debates in the last decade there are those who agree that all women (ruling class and working class) cannot unite. However, they argue that all left wing women should organise «autonomously». However women with fundamental political differences will come up against the same differences of principle that keep them in different organisations. And they will find more in common on these matters of principle with men with whom they agree. This argument, while acknowledging class differences is still aconcession to the ideathat our identity forms our politics, rather than experience and theory. If any group of women has fundamental political agreement, they will be most effective if they are organised together with men with the same politics. The ideathat women need aseparate organisation is aconcession to the ideathat men naturallyand always will dominate, and that women are incapable of playing aleading role in their own right in organisations. Take for example the disagreements that have come up over whether to oppose Right to Life Clubs on campus. Not all left wing women agree on the tactics of demonstrating at their stalls and meetings. So those who do, have amuch stronger presence and ability to defeat the pro-life clubs if they entail the solidarity of men who agree.
The socialist answer to the question «how can we win women’s liberation» is to look to the traditions of collective struggle of the working class. Not that other groups in society do not take up their own demands and lead campaigns. The point is to see that linking these to those of the working class is the way to build amovement capable of uniting millions, and of forcing change. Marxists do not put this emphasis on the working class because we think workers are somehow more virtuous, good, or more deserving than others. It is because as aclass united in struggle, they have the power to defeat those in power, and ultimately, to bring capitalism crashing down and to build anew society based on collectivity out of the ruins. The dynamic in the workers’ movement is in the opposite direction to what we have seen in the women’s movement. At first, the old divisions can seem insuperable at times. But if workers’ confidence continues and they continue to want to fight their rulers, they have to begin to overcome ideas such as sexism, bringing the oppressed into the struggle by raising their demands. In any case, women are half the working class, whether they’re in paid work or not. It is necessary to remind us of that because there is, even after the unprecedented entry of women into the paid workforce, astereotype of the «worker» as male and blue collar. This caricature of the working class lies behind the fear that the «working class» won’t fight for «women’s issues». The working class today includes increasing numbers of white collar workers, often university educated, who might think of themselves as middle class, but nevertheless find themselves organising unions like any other workers. Bank and finance workers are agood example, leading militant struggles in countries such as South Koreain the last decade.
There is nothing inevitable about the specific demands of women being part of working class struggle, especially if it involves at first mostly male workers. However, the need for unity, for involving as wide alayer of workers as possible to gain the strength to defeat governments and employers opens the way for old prejudices to be smashed. That is one important reason for socialists to be organised, and to have ideas about how to win the necessary arguments. Because it is often the intervention of socialists into spontaneous struggles that encourages these steps to be taken. If they are not taken, nine times out of ten the struggle will fail because of its own divisions.
It is not accidental that surveys have shown that skilled male workers often have the most progressive ideas about women’s rights – even than most women. Because they are the section of the working class often with the highest levels of unionisation, they learn the lessons of unity.
So the socialist answer to sexism is struggle. And fundamentally, to end capitalism, struggle led by the working class who have the power to stop production and therefore the capitalist system. In the first two years of the twenty first century, the anti-capitalist movement has taken off around the world marked by mass mobilisations against bodies such as the World Trade Organisation, the IMF and the World Bank, or gatherings of heads of governments. This movement has its own features and dynamic. The tens of thousands who turn out to the mass mobilisations obviously take heart from the fact that lots of different struggles come together at them, that all kinds of issues can be raised, discussed and protested about. Anger over sweatshop conditions has raised apertinent women’s issue. In this climate, the defensiveness of «autonomous» women’s organisations is completely out of step with events. The mass protests should be the focus of everyone who wants to fight sexism, and for women’s liberation. In Porto Alegre at amass mobilisation against the World Economic Forum, unity between the 15–20,000 who protested on the streets illustrated the potential for this new movement. The issues raised included (apart from economic demands to deal with poverty) opposition to US backing for corrupt military dictators in Latin America, support for abortion rights, and adrag queen led acontingent calling for Lesbian and Gay rights. At the May 1 protest in Melbourne in 2001, socialists were able to involve marchers in chanting slogans about issues from Third World debt, to union rights, to Queer liberation. Tens of thousands of women join with equal numbers of men at each and every one of these mass protests, laying the basis for amovement which can fundamentally challenge the very basis of women’s oppression. And that is the existence of class society itself. For that, we need amovement centred on the working class.
For only with the end to the underlying class divisions which make sexism necessary and useful to the system will women’s liberation be possible.