Lenin & Women's Organisations Organisations

Scan page 5

and army intact.

The People's Front, once in power, moved sharply to the right even of its programme as the working class continued to move leftwards.. The new President, Azana, prolonged press censorship and postponed municipal elections in order to appease the reactionaries. The fascists and the landowners egged him on and gave full On April 17th 1936, however, a general strike, called by the anarchist CNT to protest against fascist attacks on workers,_ and winning the support of UGT workers, crippled Madrid. Doubtful it even • the military could prevent such strikes, Azana sought the aid of the right-wing reformist Prieto to end the working class militancy.

Yet the reformist Socialist Party was itself splitting down the middle. The Madrid organisation for instance declared in April that the bourgeoisie could not carry out the democratic tasks of the revolution, and that proletarian revolution was the order of the day. Though the 'left' leader Caballero would not break formally with Popular Front policy, he could not break at this point either with the revolutionary masses who reelected him overwhelmingly to leadership of the UGT, and he opposed Prieto publicly.

While the Stalinists thundered support for the Popular Front, the centrists of the POUM, refusing to enter the struggle in the Socialist Party and lead its revolutionary wing, joined the Popular Front for the municipal elections.

STRIKES

All the while, despite the bankruptcy of leadership, the working class gained in strength. Port and ship workers won nationwide strikes, and railway workers had just voted a national strike when Franco declared his revolt. Peasants began seizing land. The Asturian miners, former Prieto supporters, carried • out a series of political strikes. Mass strikes and general strikes continued throughout June and July 1936. The Popular Front was clearly incapable of holding back the masses.

The immediate response of the People's Front government to the fascist uprising was to hold back the news from the working class and attempt to come to terms with Franco. The four bourgeois parties in the People's Front government were more frightened of the masses than they were of Franco. The masses threatened social revolution whereas Franco had no intention of overthrowing capitalism and was in fact defending , it from the working class.

The fascists refused to compromise with the republican government and as news of the uprising spread the workers did not wait for the government to organise against the rebels. On July 19th the workers began storming army barracks in the main towns and cities of Spain.

In this industrial Catalonia led the way. Half the Spanish proletariat were concentrated in this province and the parliamentary reformism of the socialist-led UGT I--18-1. members on July 19th than did the centrist POUM: The workers were almost wholly organised in the anarchist union, the CNT.

ARMS REFUSED

The government refused to arm the workers, but nevertheless within 24 hours the army barracks in Barcelona was in the hands of the workers. This story was repeated throughout Spain.

Without waiting for the republican government, the working class had acted to prevent the army from carrying through the rebellion on the mainland.

The crucial question now was to organise the fight against Franco.

In Catalonia the working class set up their own organisations to prosecute the war.The "Central Committee of Anti-fascist Militias of Catalonia" brought together all the workers organisations in the province.

Peasants seized the land, militias were set up, transportation was organised by workers' committees and the factories, though still owned by the capitalists, were brought under workers control. The Catalonian militias then marched into Aragon, conquering it as an army of social liberation.

By creating local militia, giving the land to the peasants, placing captured reactionaries on trial before the village assembly and thus transforming the village, the Catalan columns could march on knowing that they were creating fortresses for the revolution.

In civil war politics is the determining weapon. Peasants formed the bulk of the fascist army for the simple reason that the republic had given them nothing If the working class could establish dual power along side the People's Front government and help the peasants seize the land, organise agricultural production and cooperate in the task of transportation and trade, then the peasant armies of Franco would melt away.

In other words, the only way fascism could be defeated was by going beyond dual power to the social revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat supported by the peasantry.

Thus, as we shall show further when we examine the way the struggle proceeded, the central question in Spain in 1936 was one of revolutionary leadership with a programme to unite the working class and peasantry, standing indep endent of the bourgeois Popular CENTRISM Unly with the sharpest struggle for clarity and principle against the centrist movements could such a leadership be built. Thus in April 1936 Trotsky wrote that "the situation in Spain has again become revolutionary' and stated clearly that "Marxist action in Spain can begin only by means of irreconcilable condemnation of the whole policy of Andres Nin and Andrade (POUM centrist leaders who had joined with the Popular Front) which was and remains not only false but criminal."

Thus in fighting to unite workers and peasants against the -ranco danger of fascist annihilation of their basic organisations, Marxists should in no way abandon principle. Only through defending the complete political independence of the class from the bourgeoisie can the massive strength it displays be mobilised successfully in the struggle for power. from P.C., London As your article in Socialist Press makes clear, when Lenin says 'No organisations for women' ? he is re ferring specifically to special organisations within the party. Otherwise in fact Lenin emphatically was in favour of special forms of organisations among women.

'Nevertheless we must not close our eyes. to the fact that the Party must have bodies, working groups, commissions, committees, bureaus or whatever you like, whose particular duty it is to arouse the masses or women workers ... We need appropriate bodies to carry on work amongst them, special methods of agitation and forms of organisations' | Women, Marriage and Sex' in Reminiscences of Lenin by Zetkin] Lenin was enthusiastically in favour of Zetkin's proposal for a non-party International Women's Congress in the early 1920s. It was to include women in trade unions, in working class political organisations, in bourgeois women's organisations of every sort including women doctors, teachers, journalists, etc. It was to deal with the questions of unemployment, equal pay for equal work, protective legislation for women, trade union and professionsal organisation, social provision for mother and child, social institutions to help the housewife and mother, the position of women in marriage and family law and in public-political law. The purpose of the congress was to induce the largest possible nass of women, peasant and i tty bourgeois women as well as proletarian women to deal seriously with all these questions and to direct their attention to Communism OPPOSITION In fact, as Zetkin had feared, the congress ran into opposition from Communist women comrades, particularly in Germany and Bulgaria Like the writer of the article in Socialist Press, these women were opposed to special forms of organisation for women. Lenin's response was, 'A pity, a great pity!' The comrades have let slip a brilliant opportunity to open a way of hope to masses of women workers, and so to bring them into the revolutionary struggles of the working class ... You must find a way of reaching the women who have been thrust by capitalism into frightful misery. You must, must find it. The necessity cannot be evaded. Without organised mass activity under Communist leadership there can be no victory over capitalism...

Lenin said "It is right for us to put forward demands favourable to women." The demands would show "That we hate, yes hate everything and will abolish everything which tortures and oppresses the woman worker, the bousewife, the peasant women, the wife of the petty trader, yes, and in many cases the woman of the possessing classes'. The demand would also show that the proletarian dictatorship would have consideration for the interests of women.

These demands, which would change according to prevailing circumstances, but which would always be connected with the general interests of the proletariat, would not lull women into inactivity like reformist demands, but call upon women as equals to take action in transforming society. Of course, the struggles for our demands for women must be bound up with the object of seizing power, of establishing the proletarian dictatorship.' Lenin also criticised the attitude of male party members to work among women. There was a tendency to treat it as an occasional issue and as an affair only concerning women comrades. Instead recognition of the necessity and value of a powerful, clearheaded Communist women's movement should be the constant care and obligation of the Party. He said, 'Unfortunately it is still true to say of many of our comrades, "scratch a Communist and vou find worn out in the petty monotonous household work, their strength and time dissipated and wasted, their minds growing narrow and stale, their hearts beating slowly, their will weakened? ... We must root out the 'old master' idea to its last and smallest root, in the party and among the masses. This is one of our political tasks...

All these points have important implications for the Trotskyist movement. WRP has consistently opposed the setting up of special women's action. committees in trade unions at branch, regional or national level and has opposed the call for special investigations by union research sections into dis crimination against women. Similarly it has opposed the Working Women's Charter, which is the very kind of instrument Zetkin and Lenin considered necessary, if correctly used, for mobilising the mass of women, in order to direct them towards revolutionary struggle and Communism. All the questions planned for discussion at the International Women's Congress are included in the ten points of the Charter, together with demands for equal educational and training opportunities and freely available contraception and abortion.

The problem, as Socialist Press has pointed out, is to use such instruments as the Working Women': Charter in order to convince women of the need for the building of a revolutionary party. How this should be done was dealt with only abstractly in Socialist Press No. 9. The crisis will not magically 'arouse the mass of women and women's oppression and exploi tion. It has stressed the effr of women's role in reproducti in the home on the contin sexual division of labour in p duction and in the subordina position of women in the labo movement. One in three marri women now work, compared wi one in eight in the 1930s, a virtually all women work for st stantial periods of their marri life. But their jobs tend to in 'women's work, in those jo that are an extension of their ri in the reproduction of labour pow in the home, in food and clothi manufacture, in cleaning, hea education, welfare as well as commercial services. This divisi of labour will not necessarily changed by the socialisation domestic labour.

BENEFITS

Moreover the personal benef derived by male workers from ti from the traditional role cast f women in marriage, results in dire opposition within unions to wome struggles for greater independens Zetkin's view was the 'proletari anti-feminism' must be confronte Our task as revolutionaries is show how sexism which helps maintain women as a cheap labo force and makes it doubly diffic for women to become fully involv in struggle, not the least task this is the understanding and cor batting of sexism in ourselves. I must also convince the worki class that the functions of t family can be replaced much le oppressively and more efficient by other forms of social orgal sation. Necessary demands here a full day care provision for i insiditutionalised, canteens, and designed housing. • The worke in these services should of com be men as well as women, be pa average industrial earnings al accorded as high status as oth workers.