A Contribution to the Dischssion Hid Woman

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the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannons, all of which are highly authoritarian means. And the victorious party must maintain its rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries."

Here indeed is the 'progressive' liberal's nightmare - the actual seizure of power by the working class which must be followed by its dictatorship, and which will in some of its forms appear similar to earlier repressive regimes. This is a necessity if power is to be held by the proletariat, the first propertyless class in history to make a revolution.

But at the same time the proletarian state is qualitatively different from the state in previous forms of society. Because by expropriating the capitalist class, and ending its exploiting role, the working class takes the first vital steps to end its own role under capitalism - its own position as an oppressed and exploited class. Lenin puts it clearly: "The exploiting classes need political rule to maintain exploitation 1.e., in the selfish interests of an insignificant minority against the vast majority of the people. The exploited classes need political rule in order to completely abolish all exploitation, i.e., in the interests of the vast majority of the people, and against the insignificant minority consisting of the modern slave-owners and capitalists"

Yet as exploitation and class divisions are abolished under the dictatorship of the proletariat, so the need for repression and a specific state form is diminished. The proletarian dictatorship is not the end but a part of the transformation of society from capitalism to communism. Marx himself drew attention to this aspect of his theoretical contribution: "And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove (1) That the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society".

Classes Abolished The proletarian dictatorship therefore is the stage of society that prepares the classless society.

It is a state form which prepares its own dissolution by introducing democratic election and recall which abolish the distinction between officials and workers, and by arming the majority to repress the minority in distinction to the special bodies of armed men, and most important by socialising the planning and development of the means of produci ion. In this way once material inequality has been abolished the need for the state, and with it the state itself gradually withers away.

Yet not a step along this road is possible without the preparation of organs of dual power, the revolutionary confrontation with the armed force of the capitalist state. This has to be followed by the smashing of that state, suppression of the standing army, and the establishment of a workers state. A revolutionary party has to work on this strategic line in direct opposition to Stalinist "peaceful co-existence" and "parliamentary roads to socialism"

A study of these basic lessons is important for workers moving into struggle today. All of the quotations from Marx, Engels and Lenin in this article are taken from Lenin's State and Revolution, which we urge all readers to study at first hand.

A debate within the Trotskyist movement in Britain on the 'woman question' is long ignored the neither totally ignored the need working class women to a revolutionary programme, or, when it has taken up work in this field, it has resulted in a failure to advance the independent interests of working class women.

The practice, of these organisations has meant that the inaependent class nterests of workins women have been subordinated in the wren' m end womens soperession by a struggle against 'male prejudices' and by concentrating on winning legal reforms. This approact has diverted the attention of women away from the material foundations of their oppression. The article in Socialist Press no. 7 initiates an important discussion, and as a reader of the paper, I should like to participate in the development of perspectives on this question.

The article demonstrates that gaining formal equality - ending legal restrictions on women's rights - does not end women's socially subordinate position since the roots of women's oppression lie in capitalist society. Whilst capitalism cannot increase social production sufficiently to replace the drudgery of housework with public canteens nurseries, launderies etc., it must confine women to narrow household tasks.

CONDITIONS

This inferior position of women in the family can only be abolished when the material conditions exist to replace the family as an economic unit. The article also argues for support for demands for legal reforms which benefit all women - free abortion, the demands of the Working Women's Charter but argues that these demands must be taken into the trade unions where the reformist leadership will have to be challenged.

To develop these points a clearer understanding of the relation between women's oppression and the class struggle is needed. Iwo questions were left unanswered by the article: why the women's question is important to the training of a vanguard, a revolutionary leadership in the class; and whether women's consciousness can be raised by 'approaching her solely on her oppression as a woman.

CR The social crisis which drives the mass of the class into conflict with their reformist leaders, will also arouse the mass of women and draw them from the confines of the family. The family which is deeply rooted in popular consciousness and defended with all the means at the disposal of the bourgeois state is too strong, in other conditions, to allow women to be drawn into politics. This is why in the imperialist epoch the party must grasp the necessity to "open the road to 'the woman worker" who in 'normal periods of capitalist development ¡ is excluded from political life.

The working class must respond to the eeds of all the oppressed if it is to advance its own independent class interests. It must fight against privileges in any form, not just those at the expense of its own class, because whilst it tolerates the existence of any privileges - whether those of nation, sex or race - it acquiesces in the privileges of its own ruling class. The political incorporation of the needs of the oppressed into the revolutionary programme and their active participation in the struggle for state power, is necessary if the proletariat is to emancipate itself.

This is why the woman question has to be taken up today - because a politically independent leadership cannot advance the interests of the entire class while it ignores the needs of any one section. Revolutionaries must not only support the struggles of the oppressed, as Lenin explains, they have to know how to lead them in a revolutionary way: "Working class consciousness canno1 be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases without exception of tyranny, oppression, violence ars abuse, no matter what class is affected. Moreover to respond from a social-democratic and not from any other point of view." [Collected Works Vol 5 p412] When revolutionaries fight for the extension of democracy and the abolition of all forms of privilege within a bourgeois state it is to ensure the free development of the class struggle. But democracy has a class content. It is a form of state that ensures the conditions for the domination of one class over another. Revolutionaries, therefore extend the fight for democracy to the question of what form of state can implement the fullest democrac for the exploited and oppressed.

EQUAL RIGHTS

bourgeois society lies the real social inequality between the owners of property and the propertyless. In the market, both pitalist and worker have equal 1e- is to buy and sell their property freely. The capitalist state defends this right. But though both have formal equal rights they have in fact unequal social powers. The capitalist who has behind him all the power of his capital accumulated from the labour of the worker, stands in relation to the worker who has only his labour power to sell. The result of this 'free exchange' is that the worker is forced to sell his labour power to the capitalist and reproduce this social inequality. It is not lack of equal rights which prevents the worker from freeing himself from the domination of capital. The bourgeois state defends 'rights', lit also private property -the power of one class over another.

Women's social equality too will not be realised through a struggle restricted to legal reforms. Not legal privilege, but woman's social position in the family, where she is socially dependent and excluded from public life, establishes the domination of man over woman.

Capitalist society has drawn women outside the home to work for the capitalists and has been forced to socialise aspects of women's domestic labour. But this restricted socialising of domestic functions will only proceed whilst capital is expanding and needs fresh sources of labour power. The cuts in public spending - especially in education and the social services - indicate the limits of this process. Capital cannot replace the family as an economic unit and consequently no legat reforms will end women's socially inferior position.

The family is not merely an economic, but also a social unit. The inability of bourgeois society to overcome class conflicts within it means that the state must be developed as a special power over and above civil society, as a result the mass of people are excluded from public life. In this way the masses are forced back on the family as a social unit, and women in particular are tied to the home. The family and the state are therefore closely connected.

Bourgeois democracy can only proclaim tormal or legal equality between capital and labour, oi between the sexes. It transforms the idea of equality, itself a reflection of the relations of commodity production, into a weapon against the proletariat by suggesting that the needs ofall classes can be met via the institutions of the 'democrat ic' state. To limit the struggle of the oppressed to the proclamation of democratic rights, would restrict the struggle to one of reform within capitalism.

To respond in a consistently revolutionary way to the humiliations suffered by working class women would mean that we actively support demands relating to all women. But revolutionaries, recognising the insufficiency of even the fullest democracy in bourgeois society, must place these democratic demands in the context of a struggle for a programme which leads to the destruction of the bourgeois state.

A Marxist understanding of the material basis of women's oppression brings the social - the class questions to the forefront. A struggle for democratic demands, for legal reforms, alone, separate from the programme, dissolves the ind ependent interests of working class women into an all-class alliance.

Such an alliance fails to indicate which class can consistently lead this struggle. In today's conditions only the proletarian vanguard, adhering to an independent working class programme, can complete this struggle because only the proletarian:

state can ensure the fullest democracy to the oppressed.

The response of working women to the crisis may be to seek an individual solution in the family by trying to 'make-do' on a reduced income in the home. They will only resist the coming attacks with a commitment to their class interests, if they are lead by revolutionaries on a clear programme. It will be the class interests which will force working class women to confront their specific oppression as women, as an obstacle to their involvement in the class struggle. For revolution* aries, then, there: is no 'woman's question' above class conflict or apart from the struggle for a programme.

Revolutionaries, however, canno afford to view the struggle against women's oppression as a 'side issue' or a diversion from the class struggle. The class struggle by itself does not automatically overcome the chauvinism and indifference to women's needs in sections of the trade unions. A revolutionary leadership will have to fight for the social representation of women's needs in the trade unions and other working class organisations. We will only win the confidence of working class women by demonstrating that we recognise and will fight for their specific needs as women. Revolution aries must approach women not solely on the woman question but on class issues if it is to raise their consciousness.

ABDICATES

The majority of the Left, in approaching women exclusively on women's demands, abdicates its own responsibility to win women to a revolutionary programme. This sectional approach advancing one policy for women and another for the working class separates the woman question from the progra amme. Although the consciousness of working class woman conditioned by her position in the family means that special means must be found to raise woman's consciousness, it is not necessary to evolve new demands for women alone.

Organisations like the Women's Liberation Movement and the Working Women's Charter cannot advance the interests of working class women, not because of their social composition, but because the former places the woman question above the class struggle; and the latter advances a series of reforms which do not correspond to the overall needs of owiking class women, which can only be met through the struggle for a revolutionary programme. Revolutionaries would support these reforms - nurseries, equal pay, training facilities for women, etc. - but would incorporate these into a revolutionary strategy.

As the economic crisis deepens women will bear the brunt of the capitalist offensive: women will be singled out for the first redundancies and equal pay will be ditched by the trade union bureauctacy. The organisations necessary for the defence of the interests of the whole class - price committees, factory committees to open the books of the capitalists and control production and distribution, must take up That sons a driefs control, the embryo of the proletarian dictatorship, are alone capable both of politically representing the social needs of women and of fully drawing women into the class struggle. Only these organisations and this strategy provide a means to emancipate working class women as they can tackle both her legal and social inequality.

Separate organisations of working class women may be necessary.

The article in Socialist Press 7, in arguing that there can be no separate organisations of women, confuses a politically autonomous movement around women's demamongst working class women, which may be necessary to win them to the revolutionary programme. Any work undertalen by revolutionaries in organising working class women would be under the direction of the party where comrades would argue for the proramme and for these organisations to ally themselves to the party.

by JULIA KELLETT

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Page Q PRESS, Thursday, 29th May, 1975 of unemployment and the recent wave of strikes, "unprepared, un-

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ands, which Lenin quite rightly opposed, with separate agitation