'Family life' no answer to

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Mary Anne Todd examines the reactionary positions put forward in the Anti Nazi League's Women Against the Nazis' leaflet, and points to the essential link that unites capitalism, fascism, and women's oppression.

Nation into relations and for disciplinre forced ing the youth by means of subjected 40,000,000 points of prejudices, support for authority and nts. (Revolution Betrayed): wever, the socialist planned economy ally seeks that can offer an alternative ring that to the claustrophobic and Can fascism be fought by appeals to preserve "famliy life" and favourably recalling memories of the Second Imperialist War?

For those who think the answer is 'yes', , the Anti Nazi League's latest offshoot- Women Against the Nazis'-have produced the ideal leaflet.

As such, it serves as a serious blow against efforts to mobilise working class women in a clear-cut struggle against fascism.

Such a fight requires an understanding that fascism: is a last, desperate line of defence utilised by the crisis-ridden capitalist system.

The individual family unit is the economic unit of capitalist society; one which reflects all of the pressures of the crisis, and through which reactionary leaderswhether Tory, Labour or National Front-seek to preserve society, and prevent the overthrow of capitalism.

But the Women Against the Nazis (WAN) leaflet offers women no way of fighting fascism other than through their traditional role of wives and mothers.

It summons women to the defence of "family life as we know it" , and recoils in horror not at the Hitler Youth's violent opposition to, the German labour and trade union movement in Germany but at the fact that their first loyalty was to Hitler "and not to their parents"!

Of course, even without WAN's leaflet, many women, responding to conscious capitalist propaganda, believe that what is wrong in society is the loss of gooa, old-fashioned values", , and "moral fibre"

Failing to see that it is the crisis of capitalism which overburdens working class families with falling living standards, inadequate care for children and the elderly, and the plague of unemployment, such women tend to look for individual rather than class solutions.

challenge The WAN leaflet offers no challenge to such a position.

It makes no attempt to point out the grotesque exploitation and oppression of women and youth in the bourgeois family unit, or to Rot PHOTO: Mark show how this plight would be drastically worsened by fascism in power.

In fact Hitler's Third Reich insisted that the role of women should be no more than Kinder, Kirche, Kuche' (children, church and kitchen).

And those who dared to deviate from this rigid pattern-such as gays and single parents-were violently repressed.

This is because the family unit is a cornerstone of capitalism. Through the family, labour power is maintained, serviced and reproduced at minimum cost to the capitalist class.

And the family is also the unit of consumption tor the products of capitalist industry-with HP payments and mortgages arranged to ensure that as many families as possible live their lives in permanent debt, as an incentive to work each week.

The family is the WAN placari compulsory institt which children a by capitalism, and to the problems, I moods frustrati vices of their parer Far from opp state of affairs, ho WAN leaflet actu to prolong it, wa under fascism:

"We would lo: over our kids an able to bring then way that we wish.

Setting aside tl point that unde conditions of m ployment and living standards fe an actually affo ao children in th wish, the sentir directly oppo Trotsky's Marxis of the reactiona the family unit:

"The most motive of the pr of the family [in 1 is undoubtedly t the [Stalinist? b for a stable hir ons and power."

osing this repressive bourgeois family se control unit. id not be g up in the labour cease to be an he obvious individual, petty chore and er today's ass unemplunging socialism can the legal •w workers rd to bring. → way they brought to an end. nent runs Isite to it analysis ry role of compelling resent cult emancipation of women. the USSR ] he need of ureaucracy erarchy of Alles each family.

And by ending abortion rights it would forcibly compel countless women to undertake family responsibilities.

In order to fight against such attacks it is necessary to mobilise women not as individuals but as part of the organised working class movement.

But the opposite position is contained in the WAN leaflet. It restricts its suggested courses of action to the narrow confines it imagines are already accepted by wives and mothers.

Angry letters Women are urged to "complain" if their child is taught by a racist; to get WAN posters put up in schools by teachers; to write angry letters, and to give out leaflets.

But among all this nice, middle class Parent-Teacher Association stuff there is no call whatever on women to mobilise at their places of work or through their unions (do WAN members work?).

There is, (perhaps predictably in view of WAN's links with the pacifist Anti Nazi League), no call on women to join the fight for workers' defence squads against racist attack.

And, above all, there is no programme for the daily struggle against the main foundation of fascismcapitalism in crisis.

There is no mention of the fight against wage controls, nor of the public spending cuts, or unemIndeed it is only a ployment, through which increasing numbers of women workers are being driven back into the isolation of the homewhich Trotsky aptly desOnly under socialism can cribed as: child-minding and domestic "That archaic, stuffy and stagnant institution in which the woman of the be managed scientifically toiling classes performs and collectively; only under galley labour from childhood to death". economic and political Cut off oppression of women be Cut off from the This is why, as socialists, organised strength of the we insist that the ending of working class and subjected "family life as we know it" to huge economic pressures would be no loss whatever and a continual barrage of to the working class, and is capitalist propaganda, in fact essential for the women are prone to fall victim to various types of But it will never be reactionary ideology, and ended by fascism, which their backwardness can even would simply tighten the become a lever used by shackles on the members of employers in their efforts don't notice any difference in skin colour. It'e onty break strikes.

The only answer if women are not also to fall increasingly prey to fascist arguments is to combat this isolation and the conservatism that flows from it, combat every aspect of individualism, nationalism, hostility to the labour movement and political backwardness amongst working class women.

Capitulates

But instead of attempting this task WAN capitulates to these prejudices, and even goes to the lengths of favourably recalling the Second World War, asking:

"Do you want to live in the same sort of society that our parents, brothers, husbands and sons gave up their lives to prevent?"

Of course millions of women also died in the war. But more importantly, the war was an inter-imperialist war in which the British bourgeoisie cynically used working class soldiers and sailors in its rivaly with German imperialism over world markets.

The cover used by the British capitalists for engaging in this war was of course that it was a war against fascism'.

But Churchill and many other spokesmen of British imperialism had made it plain from the start that they would prefer Hitler to prove victorious than see a unleashed in Britain.

Throughout the war, the British working class was subjected to mounting exploitation by profiteering capitalists and betrayed at each point by Labour and Stalinist: leaders who proclaimed that the war was for «democracy» against Treacherous bloc Is the WAN attempting to reinstate this rotten, treacherous bloc?. Where does the "revolutionary"

Socialist Workers Party, opportunist mentor of the Anti Nazi League, stand on these reactionary pronouncements?

Our stand is clear and consistent. Only "the independent mobilisation of the working class as a class through its mass organisations can bring an end to the decaying, vicious, capitalist system and thus eliminate the threat of fascism once and for all.

Women who join in such fight will increasingly begin to understand the necessity for socialism to end "family life as we know it" and open up a new era of unfettered development for the men, women and youth of the future.

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