https://socialistaction.org/2019/01/13/join-the-womens-marches-on-jan-19-for-a-feminism-of-the-99/
Join the Women’s Marches on Jan. 19: For a feminism of the 99 percent!
/ 20 hours ago
jan. 2019 wom march 2018 (carolyn cole-la times)
The 2018 Women’s Marches brought hundreds of thousands into the streets.
(Photo: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
By KAREN SCHRAUFNAGEL
Donald Trump, the misogynist-in-chief, daily tweets out his hate-filled
rhetoric, serving up women, immigrants, and people of color as red meat
to his hungry base, always ready to blame the least powerful for
capitalism’s crimes.
In the meantime, Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s entitled, over-privileged
Supreme Court nominee, likes beer and torture and “deserves” a life-time
seat on the highest court in the land. Never mind his clear lack of
judicial temperament, or the sexual assault allegations against him,
because he got into Yale and studied hard!
People around the United States were captivated by the testimony of Dr.
Christine Blasey Ford, as those old enough to remember were by that of
Anita Hill 27 years earlier. But Hill’s testimony didn’t stop the
selection of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court, and Blasey Ford’s
testimony didn’t keep the Senate Judiciary Committee, and later the full
Senate, from confirming Brett Kavanaugh.
Many people, and especially women, are justifiably angry. At first, that
anger propelled us into the streets. But it was quickly channeled to the
voting booth, where it fueled a historic level of voter participation in
mid-term elections this past November.
The “wave” crashing into Washington this month is full of firsts. Yes,
it is “blue” (meaning Democrat), but it also female; 102 women now serve
in the House and 27 in the Senate. The most diverse Congress in history
is now in place.
We voted. Do we still need to march?
Many liberals, “progressives,” and even radical feminists have expressed
pride in the new politicians they helped elect. However, Marxist
feminists are less inclined to be fooled by this rainbow-colored paint
job on the same old institutions of the capitalist class. What accounts
for the difference? It stems from differing perspectives about the roots
of oppression and how we make change.
Liberal feminists generally fail to see the structural obstacles. They
tend to accept the adage that hard work, dedication, and single-minded
focus on the goal pays off.
They believe that the 2018 election was a validation for them because
numbers don’t lie—there are more women in positions of political power
than ever before, including a return engagement for the only woman ever
to serve as speaker of the House of Representatives.
“Progressive” feminists tout what they consider to be “feminine” values
like caring and compassion, relationship building, and cooperation. They
don’t believe you have to be female to share these values, but they
certainly see the 2018 election as empowering this value system to stand
up to Trump’s agenda of greed, hatred, and bigotry. Impeachment here we
come!
Many radical feminists, on the other hand, see patriarchy as the root
evil from which all that is rotten grows, and their solution often
revolves around intersectional feminist identity politics. For radical
feminists the new Congress, so full of hyphenated-identities, will see
more clearly through the institutionalized chauvinism and legislate
differently. There may still be plenty of old, rich, white, Protestant,
straight men in positions of power, but new identities at the table mean
new ideas can enter the conversation.
Accordingly, liberals, “progressives,” and even radical feminists tend
to be optimistic about the new Congress. They are marching in this
year’s Women’s Marches to demonstrate their support for the newly
elected women and to urge and empower them to enact sweeping policy changes.
In contrast, Marxist feminists recognize that politicians of the two
capitalist parties serve as spokespeople for the ruling class. The
politicians may look more like “us,” but that should not fool us.
Capitalist politicians represent the interests of the capitalist class.
A capitalist politician in a dress, or even a hijab, is still a
capitalist politician. It is the role they play and not the costume they
wear that matters. So, Marxist feminists march not to support those in
power but to demand a feminism of the 99%.
The objectives of Marxist feminism were explained in a recent interview
in International Viewpoint with Cinzia Arruzza, an associated professor
at the New School of Social Research in New York. Arruzza stated:
“Feminism for the 99% is the anti-capitalist alternative to the liberal
feminism that has become hegemonic in recent decades, due to the low
level of struggles and mobilizations around the world. What we
understand as liberal feminism is a feminism centred on liberties and
formal equality, which seeks the elimination of gender inequality, but
through means that are only accessible to elite women. We think, for
example, of the type of feminism embodied by women like Hillary Clinton.
Or, also, the kind of feminism that in Europe is becoming an ally of the
states in supporting Islamophobic policies …
“To be clear, it is a type of feminism that pursues gender equality
within a specific class, the privileged one, leaving behind the vast
majority of women. Feminism for the 99% is an alternative to liberal
feminism, since it is openly anti-capitalist and anti-racist: it does
not separate formal equality and emancipation from the need to transform
society and social relations in their totality, from the need to
overcome the exploitation of labour, the plundering of nature, racism,
war and imperialism.”
Mired in controversy
This year’s Women’s March has been embroiled in controversy. The 2017
March, coming the day after Donald Trump’s inaugural and framed as a
direct challenge to his explicit misogyny, was huge. Millions of women
and their allies took to the streets of Washington, D.C., and in
hundreds of other cities and towns across the country and around the
world. It was a massive success, but very white and subject to criticism
by women of color for its lack of inclusiveness.
In 2018, the message, “Women March to the Polls” signaled the clear
intent by the behind-the-scenes, Democratic Party machine leadership to
capture women’s anger and channel it towards electoral ends. Marches
were fewer and smaller, and still subject to criticism as “white,
liberal feminist” dominated.
This year, having successfully channeled all that anger into getting
more women (including many hyphenated-identity women) elected to office,
the Women’s March made a determined effort to look more like the women
they claim to represent. But charges soon started to fly, centering on
the issue of anti-Semitism, which came to the center of national
discussion following the gun attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue last October.
Tamika Mallory, a Black woman activist for gun control and one face of
the national Women’s March leadership, has made no secret of the fact
that the Nation of Islam stood beside her and supported her when no one
else would, after the brutal murder of her son’s father 17 years ago
left her a Black, single, teen mother alone in the world. It should
therefore be no surprise that Mallory was among the 15,000 who attended
the Nation of Islam’s annual “Saviour’s Day” event last year.
According to some in the women’s movement, Mallory’s subsequent refusal
to denounce Louis Farrakhan, the controversial leader of the Nation of
Islam who has made poisonous statements against Jews, makes her guilty
of anti-Semitism by association.
Likewise, Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian Muslim leader of the March and
executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, is
presumed guilty because she won’t denounce Mallory. Sarsour is also
under attack as an “anti-Semite” and a “jihadi terrorist” because of her
active support for the rights of the Palestinian people against racist
Zionism. A grouping of right-wingers, Zionists, and other commentators
from Fox News to pop singer Courtney Love have joined the chorus against
Sarsour, though a large number of prominent political activists who are
Jewish have spoken out in her defense.
Of all the problems that plague the Women’s March, however, the most
debilitating by far is the orientation of central organizers to
electoral politics and the Democratic Party. Clearly, a new sustained
mass-action orientation is necessary. The fact that hundreds of
thousands of people, from all walks of life, have joined the Women’s
marches the last two years shows the possibilities of building such a
movement.
This year, Socialist Action urges participants in the Jan. 19 marches to
join the contingents of supporters of International Women’s Strike
(IWS), which champions a program of working-class and internationalist
demands as an integral part of the struggle for women’s liberation. See
their call for a feminism of the 99%, which a number of groups and
individuals have signed, on the next page.
A theory that can help guide us
Fortunately, the women’s movement has theoretical tools that can guide
our participation in struggles for political power and help us see past
the myriad distractions. Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) is such a
tool. While many radical feminists tend to believe that the root of
women’s oppression lies in biology, SRT uses historical materialist
analysis to argue that this cannot be true.
In pre-class society, when social production was organized communally
and products shared equally, the social status of women and men
reflected the indispensable roles each played in the subsistence
productive process, and there was no material basis for the exploitation
of one group over another.
Child-bearing cannot be the root of women’s oppression because although
women have always been the ones to bear children, they have not always
been oppressed. The origin of women’s oppression is intertwined with the
transition from pre-class to class society. In these specific
socioeconomic conditions, as the exploitation of human beings became
profitable for a privileged few, women, because of their biological role
in production, became valuable property.
SRT fills the gaps left in Marx’s analysis (labor power creates all
wealth, but the continuous re-creating of labor power is exogenous to
the model of capital accumulation), creating a fuller, unified theory in
the process, which explains women’s oppression and provides guidance in
the ongoing struggle for women’s liberation. We oversimplify and
summarize here by stating that the patriarchal family system operates in
the service of the capitalist system—allowing the individual capitalist,
the capitalist class as a whole, and the capitalist system itself to
evade responsibility for, and the associated costs of, reproducing the
labor power on which the capitalist system depends.
Into action
Our task is to make visible all of the “work” that capitalism has
assigned to the family, in which it is expected to perform invisibly, at
little or no cost to the capitalists, extracting ever greater profits
for the capitalist class at the expense of the rest of us. Accomplishing
this provides numerous benefits for the ruling class:
First, the “family” that performs all this reproductive labor for free
is an idealized notion of the capitalist imagination (think “Leave it to
Beaver”). In this scenario, only wealthy, white, heterosexual,
cis-gendered women really have the option to stay home and care for
children, elders, and household, without compensation, and they mostly
choose not to—opting instead to hire women of color or immigrant women
to do such work for very poor compensation (and leaving their own
families to do so).
But this mythical, idealized family also creates a normative standard,
and the punishment for falling outside these norms is oppression. Women
are caught in a double bind where their assigned role inside the
patriarchal family is oppressive, while any attempt to break free of the
assigned role targets them for oppression.
Second, as we see clearly in times of economic boom, when the state
chooses to buttress the family in order to facilitate the availability
of women outside the home in the “productive” economy, there is no
innate logic to assigning families, instead of society as a whole,
responsibility for the care of “unproductive” members of society.
Third, in times of economic crisis, when the ruling class needs to
simultaneously drive women from the work force to reestablish the
reserve labor pool, lowering wage levels and cut the growing costs of
social services provided by the state transferring the economic burden
and responsibility for these services back onto the individual family of
the worker, they do so by launching an ideological offensive against the
very concept of women’s equality and independence.
The real world consequences include more sexual harassment and violence,
less access to reproductive health services and choices, demonization of
immigrants (a separate but connected reserve labor pool), fewer
“support” services in schools (higher student to teacher ratios and the
virtual disappearance of nurses and social workers), and larger work
loads and lower pay for those who do “women’s work”
professionally—teachers, social workers, domestic workers, and
health-care providers.
And finally, a SRT feminist, Marxist understanding of the nature of
women’s oppression helps us formulate transitional demands and choose
our battles for maximum impact. We stand with the women of Ireland,
Poland, and Argentina (and here at home), fighting for access to
abortion and other reproductive health services and choices. We stand
with the women of Puerto Rico, who are facing an increasing wave of
gender violence, exacerbated by the ruthless Fiscal Control Board’s
bankrupting of their country.
We stand with the women of the caravans, desperate to escape the
violence and starvation U.S. policies sow in their home lands. We demand
“Let them in!” We stand with the nurses. We stand with the teachers. We
stand with hotel workers. We stand for a feminism of the 99%.
Share this:
Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
5Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)5
Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
January 13, 2019 in Women's Liberation.
Related posts
Nationwide protests demand: Stop Kavanaugh!
Mumia Abu-Jamal wins major court victory
Defend reproductive justice for women!
Post navigation
← Ottawa caters to Trump’s campaign against China
Get Involved!
Donate to help support our work
Get email updates
Join Socialist Action
Newspaper Archives
Newspaper Archives Select Month January 2019 (7) December 2018 (12)
November 2018 (15) October 2018 (10) September 2018 (8) August 2018
(12) July 2018 (13) June 2018 (11) May 2018 (19) April 2018 (15)
March 2018 (17) February 2018 (14) January 2018 (13) December 2017
(13) November 2017 (13) October 2017 (16) September 2017 (15) August
2017 (16) July 2017 (17) June 2017 (16) May 2017 (17) April 2017
(14) March 2017 (13) February 2017 (19) January 2017 (13) December
2016 (12) November 2016 (19) October 2016 (12) September 2016 (10)
August 2016 (10) July 2016 (14) June 2016 (14) May 2016 (9) April
2016 (12) March 2016 (14) February 2016 (8) January 2016 (11)
December 2015 (11) November 2015 (9) October 2015 (8) September 2015
(10) August 2015 (7) July 2015 (13) June 2015 (9) May 2015 (10)
April 2015 (12) March 2015 (9) February 2015 (11) January 2015 (10)
December 2014 (12) November 2014 (11) October 2014 (9) September
2014 (6) August 2014 (10) July 2014 (11) June 2014 (10) May 2014
(11) April 2014 (10) March 2014 (9) February 2014 (11) January 2014
(11) December 2013 (10) November 2013 (11) October 2013 (17)
September 2013 (13) August 2013 (10) July 2013 (11) June 2013 (15)
May 2013 (14) April 2013 (14) March 2013 (12) February 2013 (10)
January 2013 (17) December 2012 (7) November 2012 (8) October 2012
(19) September 2012 (2) August 2012 (27) July 2012 (18) June 2012
(3) May 2012 (19) April 2012 (14) March 2012 (17) February 2012 (19)
January 2012 (17) December 2011 (3) November 2011 (33) October 2011
(14) September 2011 (13) August 2011 (34) July 2011 (24) June 2011
(19) May 2011 (19) April 2011 (15) March 2011 (15) February 2011
(15) January 2011 (15) December 2010 (17) November 2010 (1) October
2010 (6) September 2010 (3) August 2010 (8) July 2010 (7) June 2010
(2) May 2010 (10) April 2010 (3) March 2010 (8) February 2010 (3)
January 2010 (9) December 2009 (6) November 2009 (5) October 2009
(16) September 2009 (3) August 2009 (2) July 2009 (5) June 2009 (2)
May 2009 (7) April 2009 (6) March 2009 (16) February 2009 (9)
January 2009 (10) December 2008 (11) November 2008 (8) October 2008
(16) September 2008 (14) August 2008 (18) July 2008 (12) June 2008
(3) May 2008 (2) April 2008 (3) March 2008 (14) February 2008 (11)
January 2008 (11) December 2007 (8) November 2007 (1) July 2007 (1)
June 2007 (1) April 2007 (1) March 2007 (1) February 2007 (3)
December 2006 (11) November 2006 (11) October 2006 (13) September
2006 (15) August 2006 (11) July 2006 (18) June 2006 (7) May 2006
(14) April 2006 (6) March 2006 (14) February 2006 (5) January 2006
(2) December 2005 (9) November 2005 (8) October 2005 (13) September
2005 (12) August 2005 (9) July 2005 (16) June 2005 (16) May 2005
(16) April 2005 (12) March 2005 (14) February 2005 (19) January 2005
(15) December 2004 (14) November 2002 (17) October 2002 (19) September
2002 (22) August 2002 (21) July 2002 (15) May 2002 (21) April 2002
(21) February 2002 (15) January 2002 (15) December 2001 (17) October
2001 (24) September 2001 (18) July 2001 (19) June 2001 (18) October
2000 (17) September 2000 (21) August 2000 (19) July 2000 (16) June
2000 (26) May 2000 (21) April 2000 (22) March 2000 (28) February
2000 (18) January 2000 (20) December 1999 (20) November 1999 (26)
October 1999 (25) September 1999 (18) August 1999 (40) July 1999
(38) June 1999 (24) May 1999 (27) April 1999 (25) March 1999 (26)
February 1999 (29) January 1999 (24) July 1998 (12)
Search
View socialistactionusa’s profile on Facebook
View SocialistActUS’s profile on Twitter
View SocialistActionCT’s profile on YouTube
Subscribe to Our Newspaper
Upcoming Events
No upcoming events
Category Cloud
Actions & Protest Africa Anti-War Arts & Culture Black Liberation Canada
Caribbean Civil Liberties Cuba East Asia Economy Education & Schools
Elections Environment Europe Immigration Indigenous Rights International
Labor Latin America Latino Civil Liberties Marxist Theory & History
Middle East Palestine Police & FBI Prisons South Asia Trump / U.S.
Government Uncategorized Women's Liberation
View Calendar
Blog at WordPress.com.
Follow
--
________________________________________________
Jules Verne
“ Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add
nothing to them. ”
― Jules Verne
