Youth, Class & Party

Section VII. Women’s Liberation and the Bourgeois Social Order

The recent development of independent radical women’s groups on the one hand represents increased sensitivity to the profoundly oppressive and unjust nature of bourgeois society. On the other hand, it reflects the New Left concept that radical politics means the creation of exclusionist organizations to “free” various oppressed social groups.

In good part, the motivation for separate women’s groups was the experience of many women in the radical movement where they were expected to do the clerical work while the males constituted the active political leadership. The New Left, lacking familiarity with Leninist tradition, passively adapted to a male chauvinist society by accepting as natural that men do the creative and authoritative political work. The way to combat male dominance in the radical movement is not separate women’s groups or caucuses defending the particular interests of women revolutionaries against men. Utilizing and developing the full potential of women comrades is the task of the entire revolutionary organization. We give female comrades particular encouragement to undertake authoritative and leading activities as writers, organizers and public spokesmen.

Women’s liberation groups, like black revolutionary organizations, cannot substitute for the vanguard party as the primary revolutionary instrument. Instead, we support the creation of a nationwide socialist women’s organization (not automatically excluding men) based on those aspects of the revolutionary Marxist program dealing with the oppression of women. Such an organization would link the struggle against the oppression of women to the revolutionary movement as a whole and to the vanguard party.

The most fundamental institution responsible for the universal degradation of women is the nuclear family which subjects women to the authority of fathers or husbands and imposes a division of labor which prevents them from leading full social lives. Furthermore, the nuclear family, isolating itself from the rest of society, militates against socialist consciousness. We seek to undermine the economic and legal basis of the nuclear family.

To free women from the drudgery of the household we demand free legal abortions and birth control facilities and no forced sterilization, free child care centers and the socialization of household work like laundry and cooking. Marriage should have no legal status and partners no legally enforced economic responsibility for each other. Alimony should be abolished and child support borne by the state. The nuclear family is also extremely oppressive for children. We demand a radical lowering of the legal age of adulthood and free housing, food and a stipend provided for young people who do not wish to remain at, home.

In addition to the oppression of family life, women suffer super-exploitation as workers, receiving less pay than men for doing the same work. Further, women are excluded from many better-paying and skilled jobs. We demand equal pay for equal work and no restrictions on job categories because of sex. Protective legislation has often been used as a pretext to keep women out of higher-paying jobs. Restrictions on maximum hours, weight-lifting, minimum rest breaks, etc. should be extended to men as well as women workers.

The family system is strengthened through laws enforcing bourgeois sexual mores, notably laws against homosexuality. Consenting adults should be free to use their bodies in any way they choose. Along these lines we call for an end to all laws against what are known as “crimes without victims” (e.g., prostitution, pornography, gambling, drug addiction, anti-liquor laws). In calling for an end to laws against “crimes without victims” we do not believe that these practices should be a matter of indifference to the socialist movement. Rather we maintain that such practices should not be subject to the repressive arm of the bourgeois state, where they often serve as a source of police corruption and individual victimization. Widespread drug addiction and alcoholism sap the revolutionary energy of the working class and other sections of the oppressed. However, the social milieu producing widespread alcoholism and drug addiction should be fought through the moral authority of the proletarian socialist movement, and not through state coercion. Further, prostitution and drugs spawn a group of social parasites (pimps, pushers, etc.) who generally act as the shock troops of reaction in periods of intense social struggle. On the other hand, laws against gambling and various sexual practices reflect official puritanism allied to organized religion, which acts as an important ideological pillar of capitalism, convincing the masses there can be no happiness this side of the grave.

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