05.12.1996

Revolutionary solution to domestic violence

Anne Murphy replies to two recent articles

Both Nick Clarke and Roger Dickson (Weekly Worker November 14 and 21) make important political mistakes on the question of domestic violence and how to fight it.

While Clarke lays the ultimate blame on capitalism he advocates counselling and rehabilitation programmes as part of the answer in the here and now. But it is a profound contradiction to invite in agents of the capitalist state in the form of social workers and others to solve the problem. To give the impression that even the ‘soft policemen’ of the state can play a progressive role is to place illusions in reformism.

Furthermore the idea that there is some possibility of women receiving justice at the hands of the bourgeois courts is equally outrageous. A few factual corrections have to be made here.

The Militant Labour-backed CADV, and now Clarke, peddles the idea that Sara Thornton and Kiranjit Ahluwalia have been freed by arguing that they were acting in self-defence.

Nothing could be further from the truth. They both pleaded ‘diminished responsibility’, which is a defence of mental illness - ‘battered wife’s syndrome’. This says that she killed him because she was mentally ill, not because she was provoked or acting in self-defence, although it is acknowledged that the abuse may possibly have made her mad. Clearly a long way off from the courts accepting a rational plea of self-defence.

There is also no evidence for his statement that “Self-defence or ‘provocation’ is slowly becoming an acceptable defence in the courts.” Beyond a few words said ‘by the way’, there have not been any breakthroughs in convincing the judiciary of the plight of victims of domestic violence, nor are there likely to be. So when he says, “There is still a long way to go”, what does Clarke mean exactly?

But equally absurdly, while denying quite rightly the possibility of any progressive role for the state, Roger Dickson actually goes so far as to deny the existence of domestic violence as a social problem. Citing some spurious Mori poll, he says that men suffer actually more domestic violence from women than the other way around and that CADV is in fact a misnomer. Knowing that he is actually not from another planet makes this a rather worrying assertion.

Roger wants to disprove a serious social issue with some very dodgy facts because he fears falling into the trap of reformism. He wants to wish away the woman’s question and go back to the pure “ideology of the working class”. Women are actually funny shaped workers with exactly the same problems as the poor alienated sods who beat them.

But such fake leftism does not convince anybody with eyes to see the real world. The fact is that violence against women is a qualitatively different matter to any inflicted the other way around. It is a social problem. Why else do we have women’s refuges, and organisations to support female victims of domestic violence? Or are these simply a feminist conspiracy? Women are oppressed in today’s society and part of that oppression takes the form of the threat or actuality of violence within the home. How to fight that oppression is the key question.

The first point to be made on this is that women’s oppression is a product of class society, not simply capitalism. As Engels argued in Origins of the family, private property and the state, the advent of class society meant the historical defeat of the female sex. The abolition of capitalist exploitation marks only the beginning of the emancipation of women, not its conclusion, as Clarke seems to suggest. Therefore his immediate programme of “more refuges, quality alternative housing, decent levels of benefit and rehabilitation programmes for male abusers” completely misses the point. More than that, it does not put forward what is necessary to link the fight against women’s oppression with the fight for revolution.

Our demands as communists must not have the aim of ameliorating capitalism’s ills. No matter how ‘extreme’ it may seem, the logic of fighting for what is necessary is the only way.

The question of the family and its particular role in oppressing women is fundamental to any discussion on domestic violence. Women carry out free labour for capitalism within the home. We are the at the bottom rung of the wage-slavery system: the proletariat within the home, as Engels put it. Our social position within society makes us the victims of all kinds of sexual discrimination and violence. Women are made to appear as ‘things’, to fulfil the needs of men, domestically or sexually. It is in this context that domestic violence takes place.

As capitalism has been progressive in integrating us into the workforce, it also means we now carry the double burden of exploitation, both as cheap wage workers and domestic slaves. However, it has also unwittingly created the material prerequisites to begin the abolition of our exploitation.

In this context our demands should be for the full and free integration of women into society on an equal par with men. Therefore 24-hour, free nursery facilities, the socialisation of domestic labour, free abortion and contraception are just some of the immediate demands which we communists should put forward. The complex social questions that are raised by domestic violence are fundamentally linked with these demands and any campaign that does not have this perspective will inevitably turn to reformism for its answers.

It is true that domestic violence should not be a private matter between a ‘man and his wife’. But neither is it something for the state to play a role in. We should actively fight any state controls, “rehabilitation programmes”, or imprisonment policies. Domestic violence is something we are against. But it is a debate that we need to take up throughout the workers’ movement on the basis of solving it ourselves.

We need to fight to integrate women equally into society, and crucially into the revolutionary overthrow of society. Anything less is a sop.