WeeklyWorker

18.11.2004

Autonomy, separatism and women's liberation

Louise Whittle has featured several times in the letters page of the Weekly Worker criticising our organisation for its approach to the question of women’s liberation - specifically our rejection of the notion that Marxists must “recognise the leadership of women in the struggle for women’s liberation” and that women should have the exclusive right to the “decision-making and control” (Letters, October 14 and September 30 respectively). Indeed she has another letter is this edition of the paper.

She is also to be found fleshing out her position in the October-November issue of Workers Action, where argument is put against what she - correctly - sees as a tendency in the workers’ movement to pay lip service to this key question and why “women’s liberation is integral to the class struggle” (p38). The problem is that in her rejection of the economistic philistinism of organisations such as the Socialist Workers Party, she falls into the trap of repudiating genuine socialism, the healthy trends in the history of the revolutionary movement and a strategy that can actually deliver real liberation for women.

Left failings

There seem to be two fundamental reasons for her stance, reasons that undoubtedly have resonance with many other comrades in the movement.

First, there is a justified revulsion against the sorry picture that much of our left presents, dominated as it is by bureaucratically cohered sects. However, Louise believes that this is explained by the fact that such groups “operate with a Leninist framework with an emphasis on democratic centralism … [which] stifles debate and [denies] a free flow of debate …” (Workers Action October-November, p39). Thus, “any new campaign to defend and extend a women’s right to an abortion” would become simply a battleground for each “individual ‘democratic centralist’ group … to outmanoeuvre all the other democratic centralist groups. This is what will happen if men are around to control it” (Weekly Worker Letters, October 14).

Second, the comrade rejects the narrow economism of the left. In this, however, she tends to caricature the approach of groups that have this unMarxist approach as a tendency to “restrict … arguments to basic economics” - an approach that “is futile and crude”. Instead, we should recognise that “power relationships within society are complex and cannot be reduced just to the means of production. What about the sexual division of labour and unequal relationships between men and women in society?” (WA p39). This has been a common feminist complaint against Marxists - that we concentrate on “one relatively limited area of life: production”, opposing, in the words of Anna Coote and Beatrix Campbell, “relations between labour and capital” to “reproduction and production … relations within the family and community as well” (A Coote, B Campbell Women’s freedom and sweet revolution London 1982, p242).

Of course, there is a history of Marxist analysis of the women’s question - not least the seminal work of Fredrick Engels, The origin of the family, private property and the state - which recognised that “the first class antagonism that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between men and women in the monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male.”

However, comrade Whittle does make some empirically correct observations about the bulk of the revolutionary left in this country. It is characterised by economism (although not simply in the narrow form that the comrade criticises). It is mostly composed bureaucratic sects. It does not have a consistent record of struggle in the fight for women’s liberation (or on any democratic question, come to that).

Yet the comrade’s conclusion from this is profoundly wrong and can have unintended consequences that are profoundly reactionary - not simply for the struggle for socialism, but for the fight for women’s liberation itself.

She tells us that “the autonomous organisation of specifically oppressed people - in this case women - should not be confused with separatism” (Letters, October 14). Then, however, Louise advocates that Marxists should “go further and … recognise the leadership of autonomously organised women in the struggle for women’s liberation” - that is, she clumsily mixes up the concepts of autonomy and separatism.

To facilitate a useful debate, it is important we clarify terms. I will show why communists support autonomy in the movement, but oppose separatism. We also need to be clear that the category of ‘socialist feminist’ - a self-designation that comrade Whittle and others (male as well as female) ascribe to themselves - should be rejected by working class socialists.

Autonomy

In our lexicon, the term ‘autonomy’ signifies a degree of self-government within a unitary overall framework. Structures and these sorts of interrelationships between the part and the whole are obviously political questions, not technical ones. We only have to remember the huge amount of energy expended in controversies over the constitutions of left organisations in the past. Our understanding of a particular struggle and how it relates to our overall aim of communism and general human liberation - and how this finds reflection in the organisational ‘architecture’ of the party - informs the content of our political programme.

Thus, we in the Communist Party are for autonomy. Firstly, and on the specific issue of women’s liberation, this is because we recognise that the specific oppression that women suffer under contemporary capitalism calls for special measures of mobilisation, organisation and propaganda.
Those parts of our organisation charged with this work need a wide degree of latitude and space for initiative in order to make this more than just a good intention.

However, this bespoke area of party work must be subordinated to the general programmatic approach of the organisation - an orientation that is decided on and implemented by the party as a whole, regardless of gender. And this programmatic stance is not - as comrade Whittle rather crudely suggests - a rejection of the idea that “we need to challenge and fight oppression now and not wait for the revolution” (WA p39). Unfortunately, this is what such comrades actually compute when they hear phrases such as ‘revolutionary politics’ or ‘working class hegemony’ in relation to the women’s question. Thus, they actually confirm the cramped approach to politics of economism (ie, the downplaying of democratic struggles in the here and now) instead of challenging it.

Rather our stance is a recognition of what comrade Elaine Harrison wrote: “… why the working class? For the same reason that Marx spoke of the modern proletariat as having ‘radical chains’ - it is the universal class, in other words. By dint of its unique position in contemporary society, its organisational strength, its numbers and political programme, it has the potential through its struggle to free humanity as a whole. It is the only consistently democratic class. This is why we call ourselves working class partisans and attempt to organically link every democratic struggle without exception with this class” (Weekly Worker October 7).

The approach of comrade Whittle implicitly rejects this. Fundamentally, hers is a struggle for women’s rights against men. Thus, in the same way as we would reject the right of the class enemy to have a vote in determining the policy of the workers’ movement, Louise raises as a principle the notion that men must have no influence over the “decision-making and control” of the political direction of the struggle for women’s liberation.

Despite the comrade’s best intentions, this approach speaks of a different - non-socialist - programme.
In different forms, these types of arguments have been repeated over and over again in our movement. It is instructive here to look at the discussions over another doubly-oppressed social group and its relationship to revolutionary workers’ movement in Russia in the early part of the last century.

The Bund

Formed in 1897, the Bund (the General Jewish Workers Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia) was a serious working class organisation. It sought to organise a Jewish section of the proletariat which was - in percentage terms - a significant slice of the working class in Russia and of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party itself (and later, of the Bolsheviks of course). For instance, Lenin’s notes on the second party congress estimated that a third of the delegates were Jewish (quoted in L Haimeson The Russian Marxists and the origins of Bolshevism Massachusetts 1967, p60).

The Bund was a genuine mass organisation - a fact that gave it considerable leverage in the early years of the party in comparison to the loose, normally short-lived study circles that were more typical of the movement (Vladimir Akamov cites rallies of 70,000 organised in Russia in 1904 - J Frankel [ed] V Akamov on the dilemmas of Russian Marxism 1895-1903 Cambridge 1969, p222).

However, the centralising project of Lenin and the Iskra editorial board going in to the second RSDLP congress obviously put them on a collision course with the nationalistically-inclined Bund, with its claim to the exclusive right to represent Jewish workers. Anticipating this, the Bund had established itself as an independent party in early 1903 and went into this seminal congress with proposals for new federal clauses for inclusion in the rules of the party. However, it found itself in a minority and the (initially united) Iskraists carried the day. The Bund stormed out when the delegates refused to recognise it as the “sole representative of the Jewish proletariat” - its central demand. (The organisation subsequently went on to further degenerate politically. It briefly rejoined the RSDLP at the 1906 unity congress - but then supported nationalists against the communists in the 1912 duma elections and its leadership actually mobilised for the counterrevolution post-1917. It ceased to exist in 1921).

Clearly, these arguments over forms of working class organisation were intrinsic to the nature of the revolutionary project itself. Characteristic of the approach of Lenin and Marx - and one we attempt to learn from - is the idea that the fight for revolution is inseparable from the struggle for working class political hegemony over every democratic question in contemporary society. And from this flows an intransigent fight for organisational and programmatic unity.

For example, in his Thesis on the national question, Lenin identifies the estrangement caused by national oppression as “a very great obstacle in the struggle against the autocracy, and we must not legitimise this evil or sanctify this outrageous state of affairs by establishing such ‘principles’ as separate parties or a ‘federation’ of parties” (VI Lenin CW Vol 6, Moscow 1977 p460).

However, this problem of separatism, of fragmentation, is spontaneously generated and regenerated by the social realities of capitalist society itself. Apart from the feminist separatism Louise Whittle and other comrades support, we have the obviously example of the left-nationalist Scottish Socialist Party, of course. The notion that the part - whether it consists of a workplace, a nationality or a sex - must be fused with and subordinate to the working class’s universalist struggle for communism is not one that arises spontaneously. Yet, without it, our chances of winning communism and general human liberation are nil. Thus, Lenin’s opposition to sectionalism is not some personal centralising quirk of his own. It is a recognition of the need to gather “all the revolutionary forces for a general attack upon the autocracy and for the leadership of a united struggle” (VI Lenin CW Vol 5, Moscow 1977, p499).

However, none of this contradicts the need for autonomy for different sections of the movement, any more than democracy and centralism are in conflict in the party itself. Thus, Lenin comments: “Autonomy in questions specifically concerning the proletariat of a given race, nation or district implies that it is left to the discretion of the organisation concerned to determine the specific demands to be advanced in pursuance of the common programme, and the methods of agitation to be employed. The party as a whole, its central institutions, lay down the common fundamental principles of programme and tactics; as to the different methods of carrying out these principles in practice and agitating for them, they are laid down by the various party organisations subordinate to the centre” (VI Lenin CW Vol 7, Moscow 1977, p95).

This autonomy allows the various committees of the party to apply general principles in different ways. However, “in matters pertaining to the struggle against the autocracy, the struggle against the bourgeoisie of Russia as a whole, we must act as a single and centralised militant organisation, have behind us the whole of the proletariat, without distinction of language or nationality [or gender! - MF], a proletariat whose unity is cemented by the continual joint solution of problems of theory and practice, of tactics and organisation; and we must not set up organisations that march separately, each along its own track; we must not weaken the force of our offensive by breaking up into numerous independent political parties; we must not introduce estrangement and isolation and then have to heal an artificially implanted disease with the aid of these notorious federation plasters” (VI Lenin CW Vol 6, Moscow 1977, p333).

Precisely because of the sectional infection of nationalism, the Bund actually claimed that federation meant unity, while autonomy meant disunity. Autonomy was an anathema to it because it meant accepting the leadership of a single centre. As the “sole representative” of the Jewish proletariat it claimed reserved representation on the RSDLP’s central committee and stated that it would ‘permit’ the party leadership to address the Jewish proletariat and to communicate with individual sections of the Bund “only with the consent of the central committee of the Bund” (VI Lenin CW Vol 6, Moscow 1964, p518).

Thus, I hope readers will see - with all the necessary historical qualifications, of course - the parallels between the sectionalist approach of the Bund and that of socialist feminists. I have shown that there is a profound difference in our understanding between autonomy and separatism and that one does not logically flow from the other. Indeed, while Marxists should support necessary degrees of autonomy in the movement, it is incumbent on us - if we want to remain Marxists in any meaningful sense - to oppose disunity and sectional fragmentation.

We must fight for the hegemony of the communist programme over the struggles of oppressed groups - a process of differentiation and open struggle that comrade Whittle describes in her world-weary manner as “individual ‘democratic centralist’ groups treating a campaigning organisation as a battleground in which to outmanoeuvre all the other democratic centralist groups” (Letters, October 14).
Non-specific though it is, this comment gets us closer to the heart of the problem, in my view. For many transparently sincere comrades such as Louise, the profoundly alienating 20th century experience of left sectarianism, economistic narrowness and contempt for democracy has thoroughly soured and distorted their view not simply of working class sects, but of working class politics itself. This is something the comrade seems to imply when she bemoans “the political effect of imposing ‘class’ as an abstract concept” (ibid).

Feminism

This rejection of the need for the hegemony of working class politics in the fight for women’s liberation lies at the heart of the category of ‘socialist feminism’ - a contradiction in terms, in truth. Comrades who define themselves as ‘socialist feminists’ seem to feel the need for the feminist appendage because their view of socialism is coloured by the cramped, economistic version of it that passed for Marxism in much of the last century. Thus, an editorial in the influential Feminist Review attempted to reply to opponents in the women’s movement who have created “stereotypes of what socialist feminism involves” (summer 1986).

We are told that it “does not involve, as has sometimes been asserted by our critics, the idea that class explains everything. By itself, class is neither an adequate analytical tool nor an appropriate political framework for the analysis of either sexual politics or the position of women in capitalist society. Class reductionist arguments will not do to explain the oppression of women … At the same time it is a mark of socialist, as compared to some other kinds of feminist theory, to argue that class has an important bearing on the form of gender relations, just as it has on many social relations within capitalism.”
In practice, this “bearing” amounts to little more than factoring in ‘class’ as one of a number of sociological determinants into an analysis on the position of women. Thus, this editorial asserts that socialist feminists seek to end “all three ‘systems’ of domination, through anti-racist, feminist and class struggle” - and “socialist feminists” do not “prioritise the fight against one system over another. We believe in the autonomy of political struggles”, although - like comrade Whittle, apparently - “we do not accept that this principle entails complete political separatism”.

Despite itself, the editorial describes a template of socialist politics framed primarily by ‘working class issues’ such as wages and conditions. It is “very important”, we are told, “to assert that socialist feminism does not involve some necessary emphasis on work, or production, at the expense of … issues of sexuality, reproduction, ideology and culture. We do not believe that women getting better jobs (or jobs at all) is the golden road that will inevitably lead to the emancipation or liberation of women.”
The editorial unconsciously confirms the crude distortion of working class politics as being primarily concerned with economic questions facing the working class under capitalism. More ‘ideological’ questions of sexuality and culture are covered by feminist theory. Thus Louise, in an earlier letter, suggests that CPGB comrades somehow vulgarise these questions when we see “everything as divided along class lines” (September 30).

Universal

This is to fundamentally misunderstand Marxism, the politics of universal human freedom. As Elaine Harrison writes, “our insistence on the need to make women’s rights a key question for the working class to champion and gain political hegemony over … is not an attempt to reduce the question to a dull defence of the rights of women as proletarian wage slaves … Ours is a programmatic method designed to train our class in democracy in anticipation of its role as the ruling class under socialism …” (Weekly Worker October 7).

So, yes, the world of women - like that of men - is divided into classes. But our insistence on the need organically to link every democratic struggle without exception to the working class is not an attempt to narrow the fight for women’s liberation to embrace only proletarian women, crudely defined in economic terms.

We are for the liberation of women as a sex - all of them, no matter what class they come from. Linking this struggle to the fight for working class power is in fact an active process of raising it from the sectional to the universal.