Zachary George Najarian-Naja Follow

Independent revolutionary socialist. Also cinephile, cat lover, and librarian. Blog:
https://longestmarch.blogspot.com/
Jul 6, 2017 · 9 min read

Misogyny is Revisionism Part 3: In Defense

of Feminism

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 Feminism has become the staple bête noire for many on the left today. It has
become fashionable for many self-proclaimed communists to denounce
feminism as either bourgeois, a form of identity politics, or both. Many of
these assertions rest on deliberate misreadings of the giants of Marxist
feminism, as well as more super cial semantic arguments. And no more strain
of feminism is more thoroughly thrashed and maligned by the so-called
“woke” left than radical feminism, which is denounced on the above
assertions to an even more vicious and ridiculous degree. The reality is that
feminism is not only compatible with Marxism, but is indispensable to
Marxism. Without the liberation of women, there can be no successful
socialist revolution. Lenin famously stated that “There cannot be, nor is there
nor will there ever be real ‘freedom’ as long as there is no freedom for women
from the privileges which the law grants to men, as long as there is no
freedom for the workers from the yoke of capital, and no freedom for the
toiling peasants from the yoke of the capitalists, landlords and merchants.”[1]
But for the crude class reductionists who worship at the altar of workerism
this point falls on intentionally deaf ears. While the rst two parts in this
series were more theory-focused, this nal chapter is more polemical than
theoretical, aiming to re-a rm the indispensability of feminism to the
revolutionary socialist project.

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 The claim that feminism is bourgeois was rst popularized by the
International Communist League, more popularly known as the Spartacist
League, famous for their “revolutionary” defense of rapist lmmaker Roman
Polanski, and the sex club NAMBLA.[2] The equally noxious Socialist Equality
Party, also famous for its defense of rapists, as well as snitch-jacketing against
“Stalinist spies”, similarly denounce feminism as bourgeois. Both
organizations claim they support not feminism, but “women’s liberation”.
While these two sects are not very in uential in of themselves on the left as a
whole, their anti-feminist, pro-“women’s liberation” line has been picked up
by many so-called leftists, mostly men. To justify these positions, Alexandra
Kollontai’s The Social Basis of the Woman Question is cited, but what these
arguments miss is that Kollontai was not denouncing feminism as a whole,
but bourgeois feminism. Kollontai, along with her contemporaries Rosa
Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin, pushed for the radicalization and evolution of
feminism; just as communism represented the culmination of Enlightenment
radicalism, they sought to create a feminism that would represent the
ideological pinnacle of the struggle for women’s liberation, as well as a guide
to action for working class women. What these revolutionary women made
recognized was that while there are issues that unite all women, cross-class
collaborationism will ultimately hurt the feminist cause, not advance it,

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 because the bourgeois feminists will ultimately side with their economic class.
This is very di erent from a totalistic denunciation of feminism as an
ideology. All this talk of “women’s liberation not feminism” is just semantic
obfuscation; what it really does is disguise the discomfort many leftist men
feel surrounding a revolutionary movement exclusively for women. These
revolutionary women did not theorize, organize, and agitate to make men feel
more comfortable, but liberate international proletariat, especially the
working women of the world.

The other charge that feminism is a form of identity politics is another

example of this kind of disingenuous semantic and ideological obfuscation. As
discussed in the rst part of this series, woman is not an identity, but a
material state of being. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the
State, Engels explained how the advent of private property and its
concentration in male hands, led to the domination of women by men for the
purpose of exploiting their reproductive labor so that property could be
passed down from the father to the son. Patriarchy and class exist in a
symbiosis with one another, the one impossible without the other. And
capitalism, despite allowing women to make some gains, still needs to
maintain control of women’s reproductive labor to ensure the continuation of

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 the proletarian class. Patriarchy also serves the function of giving working
class men an “outlet” for their aggression; rather than directing their rage at
the system that exploits them, they are encouraged to direct their rage at
women. But again, this is not because woman is an “identity”. A large part of
this rage men direct at women is sexual exploitation; prostitution,
pornography, sexual slavery. (See Part 2 for a more detailed exploration of the
sexual exploitation of women by patriarchy and capitalism.) Female biology,
the state of being female, and of having a female body is inseparable from this
oppression and exploitation. Thomas Sankara said of this double oppression
of women:

“Women’s fate is bound up with that of an exploited male. However, this

solidarity must not blind us in looking at the speci c situation faced by
womenfolk in our society. It is true that the woman worker and simple man
are exploited economically, but the worker wife is also condemned further to
silence by her worker husband. This is the same method used by men to
dominate other men! The idea was crafted that certain men, by virtue of their
family origin and birth, or by ‘divine rights’, were superior to others.”[3]

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 Being born female is a life sentence to, at “best”, second class citizenship, and,
at worst, a life full of the worst kind of slavery and exploitation. Women make
up not a class, but a caste; it is possible to move out of the class one belongs to,
but caste is something one is born into and can never escape. Feminism aims
at the emancipation of the female caste; it is not some kind of abstract
identitarian movement. We must ask, would those who denounce feminism as
identity politics also say the same thing about black liberation, or national
liberation movements? Certainly some will, but one has to suspect these
would be a minority. If anything, the cult of the ideal “worker” worshipped by
the class reductionist left is an example of actual identity politics, the way it
fetishizes and elevates a kind of archetypal industrial worker as being the
symbol of the working class. This kind of crude class reductionism poses a far
greater danger to the left than feminism ever can, even if feminism were an
example of “identity politics”. Again, these denunciations serve more to
conceal the discomfort of leftist men than anything else. Working class men,
and leftist men are still men, and unless they actively combat patriarchal-
capitalist socialization, they are going to be doing more to support the status
quo than the revolution. If solidarity with working class women cannot
persuade them to support the feminist movement, then perhaps they ought to
support it as it is ultimately in their interest to do so. Like the racist white

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 worker who thinks himself superior to his black comrade, capitalism will not
hesitate to sacri ce the chauvinist male worker on the pyre of pro t and
accumulation.

Leftist anti-feminism has really reached its peak in recent years with the rabid
attacks on radical feminism and radical feminists. All the crass arguments
hurled against feminism are also hurled against radical feminism, but the
vitriol is taken to a whole higher level of viciousness. There are also other
accusations reserved just for attacking radical feminism besides the usual
ones; that radical feminism is elitist, white supremacist, “transphobic”,
moralist, “whorephobic”, and even fascist! Again, these arguments show a
shocking level of ignorance when it comes to history and theory. Like the
Marxist feminists of the earlier twentieth century, radical feminism emerged
not as an anti-leftist movement, but as a movement to push the left to its
highest level of theoretical and revolutionary potential. Carol Hanisch, the
radical feminist who, among other things, coined the phrase “the personal is
political”, and organized the 1968 Miss America protests, said in a speech that
the radical feminist movement she helped to found and develop was inspired
by Mao and the Cultural Revolution. In the same speech, she said:

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 “To me the Cultural Revolution seems a continuation of the Revolution: a
means to make it go deeper so that it didn’t get caught in the bureaucracy and
complacency that sets in once power is won militarily and a new group of
people — including opportunists in the revolutionary movement itself — have
a stake in creating the new status quo. It’s a continuation of the process by
which the masses of working people, including women and minorities, take
total political, economic and social power. It’s the next step to achieving real
communism; that is, a society completely devoid of class, including that of sex
and race. We considered sexism and racism more than just a tradition of
behavior or a bad or ignorant habit. Being materialists (in the Marxist sense),
we asked, ‘Who bene ts?’”[4]

Other radical feminists like Shulamith Firestone and Andrea Dworkin sought
to apply dialectical materialism exclusively to understanding the oppression
and exploitation faced by women. Rather than giving into “biological
determinism”, or “sexual fascism”, as their critics claimed, and still claim, they
built upon the work of Engels, Kollontai, and others and deepened it; their
analyses did for patriarchy what Marx did for capitalism. We owe much of the
newfound understanding of pre-patriarchal human society, and “lost”
women’s history to their diligent analysis and research. The radical feminist

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 frustration with much of the left was not, and should not be considered an
expression of anti-leftist sentiment, but understood for what it really was, a
deep-seated frustration with the chauvinism and entitlement exhibited by
many male leftists, as well as the domination of leftist groups by these men,
and the way women in these groups were very often silenced and abused
(something that still happens today, as shown by the rape “scandals” in the UK
Socialist Workers Party, and in the Australian section of the Committee for a
Workers’ International). And just like Marx is constantly subjected to
ridiculous attacks by people who have never read him, so are the radical
feminists (the erroneous claim that Dworkin said “all sex is rape” is one of the
most popular of these distortions). Except radical feminists are not just being
attacked by the right, the way Marx is, but also by the left. What it really
shows is that the more direct an attack on existing power structures is, the
more wildly insane and savage the counter-attack.

At the end of the day, anti-feminist “leftists” simply betray an utter lack of
understanding of both revolutionary socialist theory and practice. Every
revolutionary socialist has recognized that for the revolution to succeed,
women need to be mass mobilized; even after the socialist republic has been
established, this mobilization must continue and deepen for socialism to take

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 root and ourish. Women are more than decoration for the socialist
revolution, they must be active participants in every aspect of building the
socialist society. Mao and Castro were especially astute at recognizing this;
both China (at least until the Dengist era) and Cuba have been active
proponents of women’s liberation in all spheres of society. Marx himself said,
“Anybody who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are
impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress can be measured
exactly by the social position of the fair sex…”[5] This statement can and
should also be applied to socialist organizations; the most e ective socialist
groups are the ones in which women are not just active at every level, but
equal and valued contributors to the organization’s development and
practice. Those “socialists” who disregard, undervalue, or outright reject
feminism do so at their own peril.

. . .

[1] Lenin, VI. “Soviet Power and the Status of Women.” Marxist Internet
Archive. Marxist Internet Archive, 2002. Web. 06 July 2017.

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 [2] “Feminism vs. Marxism: Origins of the Con ict.” International Communist
League (Fourth International). Women and Revolution, 10 June 2011. Web.
06 July 2017. The “Spart’s” key anti-feminist manifesto.

[3] Sankara, Thomas. “7 Thomas Sankara Quotes about Women.”

MsAfropolitan. N.p., 25 Nov. 2011. Web. 06 July 2017.

[4] Hanisch, Carol. “Impact of the Chinese Cultural Revolution on the

Women’s Liberation Movement.” Carolhanisch.org. Carol Hanisch, 1996. Web.
06 July 2017.

[5] Marx: Letters to Dr Kugelmann, Marxist Lib. 17 (NY, International Pub.,

1934), letter of December 12, 1868, p.83.

. . .

Originally published at longestmarch.blogspot.com on July 7, 2017.

Feminism Socialism Misogyny Marxism Women

441 5

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 Zachary George Najarian-Naja Follow
Independent revolutionary socialist. Also cinephile, cat lover, and librarian. Blog:
https://longestmarch.blogspot.com/

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