Marxism, Feminism and #MeToo
The following is an edited version of a talk given by
BT supporter Roxanne Baker at Goldsmiths, Univer-
sity of London, 17 February 2018.
There has always been a separation between femi-
nism and Marxism. The fault lines don’t change as
much as each new generation of activists tends to
assume. The form differs, but the same fundamental
patterns reassert themselves because we are still
operating within class society – more specifically,
within capitalist society.
A hundred years after the 1918 Representation of
the People Act, it is worth examining the coura-
geous, ground-breaking feminism of Emmeline
Pankhurst (which was also separatist and elitist). It
is also worth comparing it to the activity of her com-
munist daughter Sylvia who focused on working
class women in the East End. The distance between
these two counterposed approaches has varied dur-
ing the last century, yet the fundamental ideological
divergence has remained. The fight for women's
emancipation is inextricably tied up with the fight for
human emancipation – that is, the struggle to end
class society and all the forms of social oppression it
generates. Concrete struggles to address particular
aspects of women’s oppression today must be taken
up, but the victories won can only be partial and
transitory as long as capital rules. The material basis
for completely uprooting the cause of women’s suf-
fering requires a revolutionary social transformation.
This can only be accomplished by the creation of a
mass revolutionary party, based on a Marxist pro-
gramme and composed of revolutionary women and
men together in the same organisation committed to
fight for the interests of all the exploited and op-
pressed.
It is important to try to clarify what the real, as op-
posed to imagined, differences are between Marx-
ists and feminists. Many feminists believe that so-
cialists tend to see women’s rights as something
that can all just wait until after the revolution. But the
genuinely revolutionary left has always considered
the fight for women’s freedom as fundamental to the
struggle for a socialist future. The fight against the
“special oppression” of women and other oppressed
groups (racial, ethnic and sexual minorities) will be
crucial to assembling the social forces necessary to
effectively challenge the control of a powerfully en-
trenched ruling class. This is inconceivable without
the active participation of the female half of the pop-
ulation. But the converse is also true. To try to end
women’s oppression without a class perspective,
without a perspective of overturning capitalist tyran-
ny, is not only counterproductive but has also been
shown to result in the betrayal of those who most
need to be unshackled – the poorest and most op-
pressed women around the world.
Feminism, even in its “socialist-feminist” manifesta-
tion, tends to prioritise female emancipation over all
other questions, or at least to approach the problem
of class divisions alongside gender divisions – to
equate class oppression with “patriarchy”. The ad-
vocates of intersectionality do this with so-called
“classism” – which they put on a par with other
“isms”.
This leads feminists to emphasise the autonomy of
women’s organisations. Our organisation, which
identifies with the tradition of the Russian Revolu-
tion, advocates the creation of a mass communist
women’s movement (and organisations of other op-
pressed layers) as transitional organisations focused
on the revolutionary mobilisation of women by act-
ively addressing their particular concerns. To be ef-
fective, such organisations must exercise consider-
able autonomy in the sense of being able to decide
how to allocate their forces and what priorities to
pursue at a particular moment. But they exercise
this autonomy as part of a division of labour in a uni-
fied movement adhering to a common revolutionary
programme, embodied in a revolutionary party.
Marxists take women’s rights seriously now, not just
in a future communist society. IBT comrades – male
and female – in Britain, Ireland, New Zealand and
elsewhere have a record of active participation in
united fronts around specific issues, such as de-
fence of abortion rights, decriminalizing homosexu-
ality and legalizing marriage for same-sex couples.
Issues such as reproductive rights, childcare,
healthcare and housing disproportionately affect
women but struggles around them are obviously
crucial to the interests of the whole working class.
The current #MeToo campaign that began with ac-
cusations against Hollywood heavyweight Harvey
Weinstein, who seems pretty clearly to have been a
serial abuser, is a good example of where Marxists
and feminists both overlap and diverge. The un-
wanted sexual advances, sexual comments, judge-
ment on our “morality”, sexual attractiveness, etc,
that all women experience have a cumulative effect
and comprise a large component of women's op-
pression under capitalism. The #MeToo campaign
on social media has exposed how widespread this
is, how “normal” and how ingrained in our culture.
Obviously this needs to change.
Where Marxists diverge from feminists is on how
this can be done. The deep structure of social rela-
tions that condition all aspects of life – including re-
lations between men and women – cannot be fixed
on an individual level, nor by any process that pits
women against men. Sexual harassment, sexual
assault and inequalities between individual men and
women reflect the economic and social oppression
generated by the profound inequality of power, sta-
tus and economic resources. Individual behaviour
can be modified, and social pressure can be brought
to bear, and is being brought to bear, to reduce the
incidence of these abuses. But the root of the prob-
lem cannot be addressed simply by re-educating
men – only through undoing the power disparities
that come with capitalism.
The #MeToo campaign, which aims to empower
women, focuses on the sexual indignities and crimi-
nal assaults we have suffered. But this can play eas-
ily into the hands of those who want to deny us sex-
ual agency and who would present sexual activity as
a danger to women. Marxists, and I think most femi-
nists, reject this and instead want to fight for a soci-
ety where everyone is free to express their own
sexuality free of any sort of legal or economic com-
pulsion on a fully consensual basis.
It is important to distinguish sufficiently between a
vast spectrum of incidents, ranging from rape to un-
wanted comments on the street. Neither is accept-
able, but these are actions of very different mag-
nitudes which deserve very different responses and
consequences for the perpetrator. The bourgeois
justice system is notoriously bad at dealing with
rape. But to respond to this by asserting that all ac-
cusations should be believed and made public
fosters a climate of “trial by media” that will not
guarantee justice for the victims and can end up
destroying the lives and careers of the innocent. Dis-
regarding the principles of “due process” and the
presumption of innocence creates dangerous pre-
cedents for working women and men – particularly
for those who dare challenge the ruling class. For
example, employers otherwise uninterested in the
well-being of their female employees might be very
happy to use unsubstantiated charges against trade
union militants as a pretext for firing.
Similar sorts of accusations have historically been
used to target leftists and others considered dan-
gerous or inconvenient. In the U.S., lynchings of
black men were traditionally motivated by claims
that they had somehow encroached on the sexual
purity of white women. Men who assault or rape
women should of course suffer severe conse-
quences, but the limited safeguards won in the past
to protect the innocent against arbitrary and capri-
cious persecution by the state or employers should
be vigorously protected.
It is noticeable that the mainstream media only be-
gan to take serious notice of sexual harassment in
the workplace when it involved high-profile Holly-
wood celebrities and the like. The constant unrelent-
ing sexual harassment of low paid women in the
service industries is of no great interest – presum-
ably because it is not glamorous. Women are at
greater risk of sexual harassment and assault when
other inequalities are present.
Successful bourgeois politicians such as Hillary Clin-
ton, Theresa May and Angela Merkel have shown
how gender is less relevant than political pro-
gramme – under their watch nothing much changes
for ordinary working women. They talk about
women’s equality, but their actions are determined
by serving and protecting the status quo. Any at-
tempt to build female unity across class lines can
only amount to subordinating the interests of poor,
black and working-class women to those of the rich,
ruling class women who derive substantial benefit
from the existing social order, despite whatever
prejudices they also experience as women.
The Marxist strategy of uniting all those exploited
and oppressed by capitalism is the only way to lay
the basis for a world free of social inequality and
material want, and thus the possibility for each
woman or man to pursue their own path and enjoy
fulfilling personal lives. The pathology of sexual vio-
lence is, at bottom, a social problem which derives
from a society which celebrates and rewards self-
ishness, possessiveness and the ability to wield
power over others. The only way that full human po-
tential can be realised is through the creation of a
rationally-planned socialist economy that can pro-
vide secure access to the essentials of existence for
all. Once the material basis for social egalitarianism
is achieved the daily brutalities experienced by
women at every social level, but particularly by
those on the lower rungs of the social ladder, will
gradually become a thing of the past. Until then the
best we can do is to struggle against the inequities –
both great and small – imposed by capitalism while
actively seeking to construct a viable revolutionary
movement capable of ending the horrors of class
society once and for all.
Bolshevik Tendency
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