Class struggle is women’s struggle! Women's struggle is class struggle!
That was the slogan in the 1970s and it’s still right today. Now 100 years after the adoption of 8th March as International Women's Day, it is appropriate to take the question of women's liberation up for detailed discussion in the entire labour movement and among all young people and workers who want a just society. As Marxists we believe that oppression of women is inextricably linked to class society. The fight against women's oppression is a struggle for the entire working class, regardless of gender; the only strength of the working class is unity and cohesion.

International Women's Day

In August 1910 the socialist women's conference adopted a proposal to hold a campaigning day for working women annually.

One of the conference's main issues was the struggle for votes for women, as at the time only in a very few countries such as Finland did women have the right to vote.

The Conference decided that the demands for the day of struggle should be: the struggle for women's suffrage; the fight against the threat of war; the fight for care for mother and child; and the fight against price rises.

Until then there had been a relatively free flow between the labour movement and the women's movement, which considered itself to be non party political, but was mainly filled with middle class women. But in 1907 the labour movement decided to put the issue of women’s suffrage at the top of the agenda and also to stop cooperation with the "bourgeois" women's organizations and instead conduct its own campaign. Now it was demonstrated that the socialists fought for working class women and that the women's issue could not be separated from the class issue and the fight against all oppression and for a socialist society.

Middle class women did not see the women’s question as a class issue, but believed that all women had the same interests across classes. For them it was about the right to vote, for education and, for example, the possibility of becoming lawyers and doctors. Marxists also struggle for full equality within the law and in education, etc., but we also explain that even when there is equality before the law this does not mean that women’s oppression will disappear, as we have also seen more recently. For middle class women, emancipation means they can get an education, become doctors, etc., but it does not solve the problems of the vast majority of women. Marxists are fighting, therefore, against this kind of bourgeois feminism, which does not see class antagonisms and capital as the enemy, but instead sees the struggle as a common one for all women against male-dominated society. At the same time, we recognize that many good socialists consider themselves to be feminists, and we want to struggle together with anyone who will fight for women's emancipation through socialism.

In 1914 the First World War broke out, and it fractured the international socialist movement into two wings, the reformists and the revolutionaries, a split that was further widened by the Russian revolution. It was primarily the revolutionary wing, which after the Russian Revolution was the Communist International, that maintained the celebration of the 8th March as International Women's Day.

Women's oppression

Seventy percent of the world's 1.3 billion poorest are women and girls. Approximately 25 percent of men in developing countries suffer from anemia due to iron deficiency, while this is true for some 45 percent of women. Iron deficiency means that 300 women die during childbirth every day. Especially in developing countries barbaric conditions exist for women in many places. Women are being sold as wives while they are only children. In Pakistan there are many examples of women being disfigured by gas or even killed if they have violated the man's and family's honor, and it takes 5 female witnesses in a trial to cancel out 1 man's testimony.

The philosopher Fourier said that "human progress can be measured by women's progress towards freedom". The conditions for women have fortunately become much better in the western world. It is not least due to the fact that economic development has gone much further here, thus conditions have improved and the cultural level has been raised. But even though conditions have improved and although there is equality before the law, there is still oppression of women and gender inequality.

We would think that society is moving forward and that the development of technology would mean more free time. In fact working hours at home and at work have increased for both men and women. Legally women are no longer dependent on men, but everyone knows that being a single mother is very difficult, both financially and not least in everyday life with work, the bringing up of children and all the other practical tasks. So while legal dependence is abolished, there are still a thousand ties that bind the woman to the man and the home.

The women's question is more than the measurable difference in salary, and who does what at home. It is the condition of women generally, and it is also an ideological and cultural question. There still exist a myriad of prejudices and bigotry against women. Oppression of women takes many forms around the world, because of the different economic levels and different cultural developments in different countries. But women's oppression, whatever its form has the same origin and hence the same solution.

Engels explains in "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State” how women's oppression is inextricably linked to class society. In tribal society women had an equal and respected status.

The origins of inequality

Oppression of women arose with the emergence of class society and the need to pass on unequal private property through the male line. This led to the establishment of the family as we know it. The struggle for women's emancipation is inseparable from a struggle against class society.

In the advanced capitalist countries, women's share of the workforce has increased from the late 1960s until today. After WWII there was a long boom in capitalism, with an enormous development of production, expanding world market, etc., which allowed an expansion of welfare. The general alleviation of housework and the improved opportunities for childcare, care of older people, etc. made it possible for women to work. At the same time it created a large public sector where many women were employed. It has laid the foundation for women's emancipation, but only the foundation.

The long postwar recovery was historically unique for capitalism, and the crisis hit in the early 1970s. As the expansion of welfare more or less stagnated, the situation of public employees is attacked year after year. Conditions deteriorate for children, the sick and old, which puts enormous pressure on women in particular.
Under capitalism the potential for eliminating female oppression is created and likewise the foundation for the abolition of all oppression is laid.

Capitalism was initially a progressive system, which developed the means of production to unprecedented heights. We can now produce enough so no one need to suffer hardship, and inequality can be eliminated by raising living standards for the vast majority considerably. With a planned economy, we would immediately be able to increase production, and use technology for the benefit of the majority. Working hours could immediately be lowered, which is a crucial step towards female emancipation. At the same time we would be able to introduce a host of other things that could take us closer to the emancipation of women.

Firstly, we would use resources to enhance public welfare, so staff and children, the elderly and the sick get treated properly. Additionally, we could use technology to remove most of the housework. Robotic vacuum cleaners, washing machines for everyone, public laundries, civic restaurants, good, healthy and affordable food for all, meals in all kindergartens, schools, etc. and in all workplaces, improved housing, public window cleaning, cleaning help, etc. would just be beginning to liberate humanity. Our imagination is limited by our current situation; it will be up to our children and grandchildren to come up with all those things that are useful for human emancipation.

After the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks took the question of women's issues very seriously. The October Revolution for the first time gave the opportunity for the broad masses to participate in politics. The first thing the Bolsheviks did when they came to power was to establish full gender equality under the law. They introduced the right to divorce and abortion and civil marriages outside the church among other things. But, as Lenin explained, gender equality in regard to the law is far from enough.

The Bolsheviks realised that the development of production must then be used to create kindergartens, schools, public kitchens, and invent machines to facilitate housework. Many of these things exist today, but they are firstly not available for everyone and there are relentless attacks on the quality of the service. Our vision is not a sharing of domestic work and wage labor but an elimination of all unnecessary toil.
It would of course be wrong to suggest that one has to eat in a civic restaurant, and that you are never allowed to cook, and public children's upbringing does not mean that children are not going to brought up by their families. What it means is that all coercion is removed. You don’t have to shop for food, cook, wash up, clean and prepare a packed lunch each day, only if you want to. There will be nurseries, kindergartens, schools and leisure centers, hospitals, elderly care, etc., with trained staff who have time to do their work properly and continuously develop themselves professionally meanwhile. Working hours will immediately be reduced. We have obviously come further today with technological developments, for instance, with washing machines, dishwashers, microwave ovens, etc. The Bolsheviks’ targets were incredibly visionary for their time. Just imagine what you could achieve today, given the current level of technology.

But the Soviet economy was not developed enough to eliminate domestic work and the family. The family cannot be eliminated but must be replaced by something else. It was the backwardness and isolation of Soviet Russia, which created the basis for the bureaucracy with Stalin at its head. It took power in Soviet Union, and it was on this basis that the Soviet Union failed to develop a new family type, and instead went back to the norms of bourgeois society.

With the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union under Stalin there was a dramatic reduction in the freedom for Soviet citizens in general, but particularly for women. The right to abortion and free divorce was abolished; working and peasant women remained chained to housework.

A planned economy is not viable without workers’ democracy, and the Soviet Union eventually collapsed, as Trotsky had predicted. But the first years of the revolution showed that the revolution is an imperative first step that creates the whole basis of the emancipation of woman and mankind. But how do we then fight for women's emancipation? In order to answer that, we have to go deeper into the discussion on how inequality between men and women arose.

Biology and female nature

Some argue that the basis of inequality between men and women is biological. This argument about biology can take several forms. Many feminists argue that women's oppression is due to patriarchy, that is is embedded in men's nature to oppress women. But, as Engels explained, the early history of mankind shows that women have not always been oppressed and regarded as inferior to men. Hence there is no evidence that men are biologically programmed to oppress women.

Others refer to the "female nature". Just look at the difference between Paris Hilton and a girl raised in Harlem. The difference is immense. Well, some will object, girls and boys do behave differently. Boys would rather play with weapons and cars and girls prefer dolls. The view can then be developed that girls have a built-in maternal instinct, and therefore should be those who care for the children so that their place is in the home.

How do you separate biology and culture? For several millennia there has been a different upbringing for girls and boys. Studies show that boys and girls are treated differently from the day they are born. Just look at the nearest toy catalog and see that the pages have become increasingly divided into pink and blue: pink children's bicycle with handlebar basket and child seat for girls and blue racing bicycles with flames down the sides for the boys; dolls for girls and technical Lego for the boys.

Women and class struggle

The difference between bourgeois feminists and Marxists is that feminists put women's issues alongside the class issue. Oppression of women is one form of oppression along with class oppression, racial oppression, etc. (for those of them who recognize the existence of class oppression, which many reject). Marxists, however, explain that class oppression is fundamental. That does not mean that it may not be a harsher life to be a poor black woman than a white male worker. It means that class division is the fundamental contradiction that all oppression revolves around. As we explained, the oppression of women originated with class society.

The women's question cannot be separated from the class question. Working women were allowed to share the toil of working life with their husbands, share the work in the home with their men, experiencing the attacks from capitalism on an equal footing with their men. Of course we fight for all claims of legal equality between men and women, but we also maintain a class line and explain that any democratic progress cannot be other than a springboard to the fight against capitalism.

On the other hand, it is also clear that women's struggle is an inseparable part of the class struggle. Capitalists do whatever they can to divide the working class. If they can they get a group to accept lower wages, it puts pressure on wages for the entire working class. If they can they get a group of workers to look down on another group, it divides the common struggle against the capitalists.

The only strength of the working class is unity across gender, race, sexuality, etc. It is therefore in the interests of the whole working class, including men, to fight the oppression of women. There was and still is prejudice in the labour movement, and the labour movement in many areas had and still has a reactionary approach to women's issues. There is much to be done.

But unfortunately, bourgeois feminism has also crept into some parts of the labor movement, and despite good intentions, it has harmful effects. Many on the Danish left wing have put forward a demand for more women managers in Danish companies. But what does it mean? It changes absolutely nothing for the vast majority of women who are not going to become bosses. It makes no difference whether they should receive a 15% lower salary from a female or male boss, or whether a woman or a man fires them. It does not change their situation. One argument in favor of more female managers is that it has been shown to produce positive numbers on the bottom line with women on the boards - it means in fact that they are drawing even more surplus value out of the workers. While female executives, professors, politicians get their homes cared for by an underpaid au pair girl, working women are pressured to the utmost by working long hours, shorter opening hours in day care, etc. etc. These feminist demands help to blur the class antagonisms.

Throughout history, the bourgeoisie has tried in many different ways to create a sense of "we are all in this together" and that they are doing something to solve the problems. The most privileged blacks in the U.S. get good positions to give the impression that the problems have been solved, while the rest are held down. The election of Obama in the U.S. gave immense hope for change but it  has not meant a change in circumstances for the vast majority of black Americans. In the same way Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State has made no difference to the majority of American women. Thatcher in England in the eighties and Angela Merkel in Germany today cannot be said to represent a step closer to women's emancipation - quite the contrary.

Women at the top of the labor movement can move away from the ordinary members and betray their interests and requirements just as well as men.

It is not gender that determines whether a person can best lead the fight for women's emancipation, but the person's political stance. Therefore, Marxists also reject any positive gender discrimination. These things are often used by the right wing to put in their people against the genuine class fighters. Also we reject all proposals like gender segregation of list of speakers for conferences in the movement. It is ideas, not gender, which are crucial.

Apart from the fact that these initiatives do not work and do not get more women on the platform, for example, they are also degrading towards women who actually are active, because they implicitly say that they are unable to express their own views, to fight for their own ideas and win positions on the basis of their ideas and skills.

We oppose all these proposals because they split up the working class in to men and women. But we are fighting in the entire labor movement for women's issues to be taken seriously and discussed among all, both men and women.

Emancipation of women