The massive demonstrations on January 21st Women\u2019s March- which put more than 3 million in the streets- revealed a huge contradiction. On the one hand, the unforeseen overflowing of the streets showed for the first time in decades that there is the possibility of a massive fight-back against one of the most reactionary governments we\u2019ve had.<\/i>
\nBy Florence Oppen.<\/b>
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\nOn the other hand, the absence of a clear independent leadership to do so is an obstacle to stop the government\u2019s attacks. On J21, the main organizers of the march that were linked to the Democratic Party tried very hard to depoliticize the protest. They did so by not wanting to allow anti-Trump slogans, imposing an empty rhetoric of \u201chuman rights\u201d and the false divide between \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d corporations, and the neoliberal framework of \u201cempowerment\u201d. Fortunately, the vast majority of participants did not follow that leadership, but that is not enough for our movement to advance.
\nIn the weeks following his inauguration, Trump launched a large number of attacks on the different oppressed communities, in particular Muslims, immigrants, women and LGBTQI folks. In response, we have seen a wave of popular mobilizations of resistance: from the flooding of the airports, to numerous protests in the streets, and the Day Without Immigrants on February 17th. This continuous mobilization and action have posed the need of uniting our struggles, and building an independent and democratic movement to stand up against Trump\u2019s attack to working people.
\nThis year\u2019s March 8th International Working Women\u2019s Day is an important step forward in that direction: we need to regroup all of our political forces, including committed socialist and radical activists, union organizers and student leaders, in order to build a unified movement that targets the core of the problem which goes beyond Trump: the neoliberal and corporate essence of our society. We need to organize to build for a real general strike to kick Trump out of office through working class means. This is why we need to intervene to point out a way forward for all working women (and men, and non-gender conforming workers) that will take action on March 8th: it is necessary to build a general strike, a strike organized democratically by the rank-and-file, union and nonunion workers, to build power and show who makes this country work.
\nThe Strike We Need: March 8th and Beyond<\/b>
\nThe call for a women\u2019s strike has been attacked in the mainstream media with vicious arguments. As socialists, we defend this call for action and recognize that much more is needed to have a real strike of all working women, but the limitations of our present capacities are by no means ground to dismiss our end goals.
\nThe patronizing attitude of the Elle<\/i> magazine or the more recent Los Angeles Times<\/i> deserves a response, as it is quite ironical for middle class elements writing in the corporate press to be calling out the \u201cprivilege\u201d of those who call for action. The Elle magazine argued that \u201cWithout a specific, labor-related point, after all, a “strike” is just a particularly righteous personal day\u201d<\/i> and added \u201cA woman with a comfortable office job may be able to “strike” simply by taking paid time off and feel confident that her job will be there when the strike is over. But for women in lower-wage positions with few or no protections, leaving for even a day might mean going without necessary wages, or incurring the wrath of an abusive boss, or even losing her job entirely…True, part of the point of a strike is for middle- and upper-class women to stand in solidarity with working-class and poor ones, protecting them from reprisal by joining in the action\u2014but it’s still worth noting that protest itself can be a luxury<\/i>.\u201d
\nMeghan Daum from the Los Angeles Times made a similar argument: \u201cMake no mistake, March 8 will mostly be a day without women who can afford to skip work and shuffle childcare and household duties to someone else,<\/i>\u201d \u201cit\u2019s really going to be A Day Without a Privileged Woman<\/i>.\u201d
\nWhat is appalling is that an editorialist of the corporate press wants to preach the \u201cprivilege\u201d and \u201cworking class\u201d line to its readers. Their end goal is to discourage women who were thinking of taking action by guilt-tricking them and demoralize the majority of working class women that indeed will not be able to go on strike. And for that reason alone, this reactionary line of argument needs to be called out.
\nIt may be a fact that most women will not be able to strike. However, it is also a fact that in order to organize a real strike of all working class women, we need to develop \u00a0a strategy to appeal to local unions, and put national pressure on the AFL-CIO leadership to step-up its game and organize the 10.7% of the workforce that it represents. There is no doubt about that. Yet, all general strikes are the result of an accumulation of small strikes from the most militant and organized sectors (not necessarily the most privileged) that give increasing confidence to the rest of the class that it is possible and necessary to fight back. A general strike, that is to say a strike of a significant sector of the working class that stops the whole country, has never occurred out of a first call, but is actually \u00a0the result of a series of mobilizations (including small strikes) that build for it. The deep ignorance of the meaning of a strike in the first place, and labor history in the second, should be truly embarrassing for those righteous Democratic Party columnists. Daum, for example, argues that \u201cthe idea that women should take a day off en masse to make a political point is both self-defeating and vaguely insulting. It\u2019s meant to highlight how crucial we are, but its very premise also suggest the opposite: Women are expendable.<\/i>\u201d Obviously, the journalist herself never participated in a strike! The strike action is the most effective way to show the role workers play in production, for it disrupts the regular functioning of the profit making machine. The idea that all women going on strike will show that their work is expendable is delirious: this country cannot function without the massive participation of women in the wage workforce. If a general strike of all working women were to occur, many sectors of the economy would be totally paralyzed (in particular key sectors of the service industry), and others will be partially affected and disrupted.
\nOf course, it is very likely that all of these news commentators invisibilized the key role women play in the productive sectors of our economy, and instead of reasoning on the effect of a strike based on the reality of women\u2019s labor (which is so puzzling for them), they simply generalize their individual subjective existence of being opinion editorial writers to entertain the mass media machine. And yes, this country could survive without their silly editorials, not doubt about it. If they were to go on strike, their labor will be felt as completely \u201cexpendable\u201d. What is clear for us who make this country work and are aware of our class position, is that their opinions are expendable to us.
\nWe argue that the March 8th call for a strike is a step in the right direction. It is a step that needs to be amplified and strategically oriented to the most exploited and oppressed sectors of our class. It is a step in the direction to a stronger work action or strike on May 1st and beyond. Let\u2019s not be discouraged- let\u2019s organize the rank and file to fight back!
\nThe Strike Call for March 8<\/b>
\nIn early February, a new platform began to emerge to the left of the liberal and corporate feminism put forward by the Washington D.C. \u201cWomen\u2019s March\u201d: WomenStrikeUS.org. Issued by radical intellectuals of the U.S. academy like Angela Davis and Nancy Fraser, this call for a strike has taken a progressive stance: it splits from and calls-out corporate feminism, it integrates the different struggles that working women face (from labor, immigrant rights, all forms of violence and harassment including police brutality, abortion and reproductive rights, and environmental justice), but most important, it calls for a multi-faceted strike. For us, the call for mass action is fundamental. The Democratic and Republican Party are afraid of strikes and working class militancy in the streets, and were hoping to keep the J21 mass protests as a one-time thing. The escalation from demonstration to strike, that is to say of withholding of labor, is a correct one. Only such an action could stop the current attacks.
\nIn a first statement published in The Guardian <\/i>on February 6th 2017, the new platform argued for \u201ca feminism for the 99%\u201d. It was inspired by the \u201cNi Una Menos\u201d movement in Argentina, & argues for \u201ca grassroots, anti-capitalist feminism \u2013 a feminism in solidarity with working women, their families and their allies throughout the world.<\/i>\u201d It aims at combating \u201cViolence against women\u201d <\/i>in all its material dimensions: \u201cit is domestic violence, but also the violence of the market, of debt, of capitalist property relations, and of the state; the violence of discriminatory policies against lesbian, trans and queer women; the violence of state criminalization of migratory movements; the violence of mass incarceration; and the institutional violence against women\u2019s bodies through abortion bans and lack of access to free healthcare and free abortion.<\/i>\u201d
\nThe most progressive element of this call is the action it proposes to do independently from the leadership of the Democratic Party: a call for a women\u2019s strike to connect with an international call now involving more than 30 countries. Doing so, it is reclaiming the most militant mobilizations of women, especially labor actions, like the one in Poland in October 2016 to stop the ban on abortion or the massive protests in South Korea and Ireland for reproductive rights.
\nThe Working Class and Socialist Origins of March 8th<\/b>
\nSome of the signatories of the call who are closer to the socialist tradition, like Cinzia Arruza and Tithi Bhattacharya, later published an article in The Guardian<\/i> reclaiming the socialist and working class origins of March 8th: \u201cBy striking together, we will be returning to the historical roots of this holiday \u2013 a history that we should familiarize ourselves with once again.<\/i>
\nOn this day in 1908, 15,000 women garment workers, the majority of them immigrants, marched through the heart of Manhattan to demand better pay, shorter work hours and suffrage. A year later women immigrant textile workers were on strike against the terrible sweatshops where they were forced to work, facing down police violence and repression by the owners.<\/i>
\nInspired by the struggle of the women workers, German socialist, Clara Zetkin, called on attendees at the International Conference of Working Women in 1910 to organize an International Working Women\u2019s Day. Women delegates from over 17 countries voted unanimously to pass the motion.<\/i>
\nA few years later, in 1917, thousands of Russian women, workers and wives of soldiers, took to the streets on 8 March to demand peace and bread and started the uprising that would overturn the Tsarist regime: this year\u2019s International Women\u2019s Day will also be the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the February Revolution<\/i>.\u201d
\nIt is really stunning that for the first time in decades in the U.S., the word strike and the working class and socialist tradition of struggle for women\u2019s liberation is debated in the mass media. In fact, March 8th saw a similar fate to May 1st in the U.S. Both holidays emerged in the U.S. labor movement and became an example for the rest of the world working class, but they got quickly erased from history in our country. In the case of March 8th, it has been expropriated from working women by the liberal elites and transformed into a commercial holiday. We can only celebrate a return to an International Working<\/i> Women\u2019s Day as a day of struggle.
\nIn fact, in a very important text from 1920, Alexandra Kollontai, a revolutionary socialist militant and member of the Bolshevik party recalled these very proletarian origins of March 8th and showed that the emergence of such a day of action was a step forward in the class struggle and class consciousness of working women: \u201cThe working women understood that it wasn\u2019t enough to break up the stalls at the market or threaten the odd merchant: They understood that such action doesn\u2019t bring down the cost of living. You have to change the politics of the government. And to achieve this, the working class has to see that the franchise is widened. It was decided to have a Woman\u2019s Day in every country as a form of struggle in getting working women to vote. This day was to be a day of international solidarity in the fight for common objectives and a day for reviewing the organized strength of working women under the banner of socialism.<\/i>\u201d
\nWe believe that in the United States we are living a similar moment of political awakening. Many working class women are starting to realise that corporate feminism and the liberal elites have failed them: job and pay inequalities persist, and the fundamental rights that they fought for and thought they won forever (like abortion and reproductive rights) are now on the verge of disappearance after more than a decade of silent erosion.
\nFor Zetkin and Kollontai, women\u2019s liberation went beyond the rights to vote and other democratic rights. It had to do with achieving the total liberation and emancipation of all working class women from all forms of oppression and exploitation- it was linked to the fight for socialism: \u201cOnly the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of soviet power will save them from the world of suffering, humiliations and inequality that makes the life of the working woman in the capitalist countries so hard. The \u201cWorking Woman’s Day\u201d turns from a day of struggle for the franchise into an international day of struggle for the full and absolute liberation of women, which means a struggle for the victory of the soviets and for communism!<\/i>\u201d
\nThe Socialist Strategy For Women\u2019s Liberation<\/b>
\nOur support for the March 8th strike call is rooted in this working class and socialist tradition of fighting for women\u2019s liberation as a fundamental part of our program. Furthermore, it is a core political principle and it is the belief in the importance of collective independent mobilization and action to accomplish these goals.
\nMarxism understands the relations of oppression (of women, of LGBTQI folks and other sectors) as linked to exploitation. In a recent article, our comrades from Costa Rica argued: \u201cHow do capitalism and patriarchy relate to each other? To us, the answer is as complex as simple; it is not about reducing women\u2019s oppression to economic exploitation or vice-versa, but about understanding a living dynamic: under capitalism, relations of oppression have a dynamic and effect on their own and act over social beings shaping them, but ultimately they are put at the service of exploitation and the extraction of surplus value.\u201d<\/i> What today many call \u201cintersectionality\u201d in academic circles is a revisiting of the complicated dynamic of superposition and contradiction between different relations of oppression and exploitation. For Marxists, it is not enough to say that these relations \u201cintersect\u201d, it is important to explain how they are connected beyond their empirical manifestation. This is why we argue that they are connected to each other in a dialectical way: the positionality of class modifies the living experience of gender (it is not the same to be Hillary Clinton or a McDonald’s employee), and the positionality of gender modifies the experience of class (clearly Bill Clinton did not face the same obstacles in his professional career as Hillary Clinton did). But these relations not only alter each other, for as in every dialectical dynamic, there is a dominant one. Under capitalism, all pre-existing relations of oppression are kept and reinforced to increase the exploitation of labor; and they are eliminated and shifted around if they become an obstacle to the production of profits. This is why Marxists argue that relations of oppression have an inherent class nature. It is enough to take a look at the current situation of immigrants, Black people, etc., besides working class women, to understand in fact how precise this affirmation is.
\nThe importance of such an analysis is key for women\u2019s liberation. To understand the class nature of women\u2019s oppression is not to minimize the reality of sexual\/gender oppression and domination but, on the contrary, it is to better explain how it functions socially. It has roots in class society and in the State. And in regard to women\u2019s issues, it relies on the imposition of reproductive unpaid work on working class women, which is an imposed surplus-work indirectly appropriated by capitalism.
\nThe capitalist system was born through the imposition upon women of a form of exploitation: unpaid domestic\/reproductive labor. This material base of women\u2019s oppression, which translates today in the double-shift, cannot be properly and globally resolved by capitalism. The best a most \u201cprogressive\u201d government can do is to socialize it partially through exploited wage labor imposed upon an even more oppressed and exploited sector: immigrant and indigenous women. This is what the women of the ruling class have managed to do everywhere in the world to \u201cfree\u201d themselves of that chore. It is also what the middle layers of professionals do in imperialist countries (and also developing countries). They pay immigrant and indigenous women to take on those roles, and they can do it because domestic work is paid at extremely lower wages. The only solution offered by capitalism to this problem is increased exploitation. Therefore, it cannot eliminate the material base of oppression, it can only shift the problem around, or hide it further.
\nOnly a socialist revolution that will expropriate the bourgeoisie and nationalize the economy under workers control can socialize domestic labor through the elimination (and not the reinforcement) of exploitation. This is actually what the 1917 Russian Revolution began to achieve. They did so with the creation of public restaurants, public laundry rooms, public and universal childcare and education, and a real socialized healthcare system.
\nIf we agree that we need to get rid of capitalism to ensure our ultimate liberation, then we need to discuss our strategy to do so. For a working class women\u2019s movement to turn \u201canti-capitalist\u201d and have a chance at toppling this government (among other things), we need more than a radical program of demands as the most left-leaning proponents of the \u201cfeminism of the 99%\u201d are arguing for. As we recently argued, \u201ca women\u2019s movement will not be \u201cobjectively anti-capitalist\u201d; it will not make the bourgeoisie tremble just because its program says so. It can even achieve some memorable conquests and victories, but it does not mean it can lead to socialism.\u201d<\/i> Beyond the program put forward, it is key to analyze the underlying dynamic of the class struggle: who is fighting to push forward this program and how. For us, the social subject that can implement it and build the necessary social power to defeat the bourgeoisie is the working class.
\nAs we argued: \u201cThe determinant element for a struggle\u2019s movement to actually become anti-capitalist is that it poses the seize of power by the working class organized in dual-power organisms with a revolutionary leadership. We will not achieve this spontaneously; it does not happen naturally just because many people go out to the streets with a very radical program. Millions went out on the streets against the Vietnam War, and for women\u2019s and Black\u2019s rights in the U.S., and those movements were not able to overthrow the government and make the bourgeoisie tremble. Why? Because they did not have the strategy of developing the independent mobilization of the working class, and they did not pose the seizing of power through class\u2019 dual-power organisms.<\/i>\u201d
\nThis is why we believe that the Marxist understanding of women\u2019s liberation has important strategic consequences: the social subject of women\u2019s liberation cannot be working class women alone, but the working class as a whole, with women, men, and gender nonconforming people organized as a social class, independently from bourgeois or liberal leadership. All working class organizations and movements need to have special bodies (committees, caucuses, etc.) of the oppressed sectors to organize and push for their demands and educate their classmates, with the goal of mobilizing them for joint action. The mobilization of working class women is a fundamental and very necessary step, but it is not enough to achieve our end goal: \u201cThe problem we face is much bigger and goes beyond the right of abortion or the end of domestic violence: it has to do with the socialization of domestic work under a planned economy, whose condition is the abolition of private property of the means of production, the material base of exploitation, all oppressions and social inequality. Because until we destroy the source that feeds material inequality, we will not eliminate once for all the other forms of inequality (judicial, political, reproductive, etc.) that come from it. This giant task can only be achieved by the working class as a whole, obviously with women in the front line but always educating, appealing to the solidarity and common interests of their class partners, and aiming to mobilize independently from, and against, men and women of the bourgeoisie.<\/i>\u201d
\nAgainst \u201cLean-In\u201d Feminism<\/b>
\n\u201cLean-In\u201d or \u201cempowerment\u201d feminism is the result of the appropriation of the mass women\u2019s movement in the 1970 by the leading liberal corporate powers (the United Nations, the World Bank, the Democratic Party and lately the Clinton Foundation) to co-opt women’s struggles. According to the U.N. \u201cEmpowering women to participate fully in economic life across all sectors is essential to build stronger economies, achieve internationally agreed goals for development and sustainability, and improve the quality of life for women, men, families and communities<\/i>\u201d. The ideology of empowerment or \u201cthird wave feminism\u201d, a neo-liberal one, is based on individual self-promotion and advancement only available to petty-bourgeois sectors (small business owners and small investors) and professionals (upper middle class layers).
\nThis ideology calls for more female presidents, CEO company leaders, actresses and scientists, arguing that training and promoting women to the top positions of the existing power structure will \u00a0\u201cbuild stronger economies\u201d. The most clear proof of that is that the last New York Summit, organized by the UN and big multinationals, on March 2016 titled \u201cEquality means business.<\/i>\u201d So where are working class women\u2019s interests in all of this\u2026? It seems pretty obvious the \u201cempowering women\u201d speech emerged to stall, captivate and deviate the collective struggles of women and trade-union organizations, in the upsurge during the 70\u2019s, to improve female workers\u2019 rights.
\nThe problem of that ideology of corporate feminism is not only that it is \u201creformist,\u201d meaning that it won\u2019t completely or partially solve the oppression of women and other sectors. It actually instrumentalizes women\u2019s oppression to gather support for neo-liberal corporate candidates and governments, as it happened with Merkel in Germany, Bachelet in Chile or Clinton in the last election campaign. It has allowed to attack all workers with the fake pretense of advancing women\u2019s interests – while no concrete steps are achieved in that direction either.
\nThe March 8th mobilization called by the Washington D.C. J21 march reproduces this movement of co-optation. It initially called for a boycott of the \u201cbad corporations\u201d on March 8th and the support of local business: “At a time when our foundational principles of freedom and equality are under threat, The Women’s March is committed to engaging in actions that affirmatively build community, strengthen relationships and support local, women- and minority-owned businesses.<\/i>” The liberal rhetoric was asking us again to think of ourselves and act as consumers, instead of doing so as workers, as the producers of all value and wealth.
\nThen later, the Democratic Party-led platform issued a \u201cDay Without a Woman\u201d call as a reaction to the more radical and militant call issued by the International Women Strike Call and the WomenStrikeUS.org platform, which has been gathering enormous popularity, and became the most prefered framework for organizing for March 8th. The statement calls for the recognition \u201cthe enormous value that women of all backgrounds add to our socio-economic system<\/i>\u201d – a system that is geared towards the production of profit, not the securing of people\u2019s needs. It demands an end to \u201cinequities\u201d, \u201cdiscrimination\u201d and \u00a0the promise of \u201cgender justice\u201d. The ultimate goal of the Women\u2019s March platform is to \u201ccreate a society in which women…are free and able to care for and nurture their families, however they are formed, in safe and healthy environments free from structural impediments<\/i>.\u201d It never questions the material base of oppression, it never brings up class, it never mentions exploitation, and even less dares to question capitalism, the system that has failed the vast majority of women, working class women. Furthermore, the statement calls for women to \u201ctake the day off, from paid and unpaid labor<\/i>\u201d and to \u201cavoid shopping for one day (with exceptions for small, women- and minority-owned businesses)<\/i>\u201d. \u00a0To \u201ctake a day off\u201d is an individual action only some privileged sectors can afford. To organize a real strike for all workers, is a collective action that would allow all workers (regardless of union status and material privileges) to exercise their most powerful tactic: that of consciously withholding their labor and stopping the machine from working.
\nThe new Women\u2019s March call continues to pretend all women could benefit from the existing capitalist economy, it continues to erase the working class, labor and socialist origin of the March 8th day, as a day of struggle for working class women. Instead, it attempts to re-appropriate March 8th with a toothless platform that does not call for an independent movement of working class with the orientation to unite all struggles of working people against the government. We cannot afford to repeat the history of cooptation and regression that we already saw in the past decades in terms of women\u2019s rights. This is why it is key that any mobilization of working women establishes its clear independence and even opposition to the leadership of corporate feminism and the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The massive demonstrations on January 21st Women\u2019s March- which put more than 3 million in the streets- revealed a huge contradiction. On the one hand, the unforeseen overflowing of the streets showed for the first time in decades that there is the possibility of a massive fight-back against one of the most reactionary governments we\u2019ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7323,"menu_order":1469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"litci_post_political_author":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3498,3586],"tags":[3583,4762,4763,4746,1145,4082,4052,2916],"class_list":["post-7319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa","category-women","tag-m8","tag-florence-oppen","tag-international-women-strike","tag-international-working-women-day","tag-la-voz-de-los-trabajadores","tag-march-8","tag-womens-liberation","tag-workers-voice"],"yoast_head":"\n