The meta-class narrative of the women’s movement has wrapped itself up into a sacred halo. This sacred halo does not bring any level of help, support, and strength to the women’s struggle against a base of exploitation, disenfranchisement, and all crimes that have been imposed on women - rather on a different scale it has perpetuated it. This halo has been created not only to hide the actual root of this inequality and oppression on women but also to separate a huge part of the working class masses from their own class.
Also this halo prevents a conscious struggle across the world against the base and foundation of real exploitation and disenfranchisement. Some of them claim, ‘being a woman means double exploitation and discrimination, therefore, being a woman is being part of a unique movement’. This is ambiguous and misleading. Margaret Thatcher was one of the theoreticians of Neo-Liberalism or Condoleeza Rice is one of the main White House figures as well as others like them around the world - they are women in the capitalist power system. Millions of women around the world which have no choices other than selling their bodies in order to put food on the table for their kids are women as well. Merely being a woman does not create any connection between them. Forced class-belonging does not recognize ‘man’ or ‘woman’, plus women around the world do not make the linkage outside of the realm of class struggle under the name of ‘a disenfranchised creature’.
Some of the lefty groups or theoreticians assert that non-worker women are suffering from sexual discrimination including some from the bourgeois class. However what they call a non-worker, in fact, is part of the international working class such as; teachers, nurses, editors, translators, and all those workers that work in the non-productive sector – that they are not workers. Yet what makes these groups and theoreticians worry is that there is inequality between man and woman of the bourgeois class or the elimination of sexual discrimination between Bush and Rice. It is more important for them to forget the root of the real inequality - the relation of buying and selling of labour power. The discussion regarding the women’s movement as a separate movement from the working class anti-capitalist movement across the world is part of the policies and directions of one part of the international bourgeois class. These directions and policies emerged from the social democrat in the working class of Europe. This developed out of the Russian bloc and later out of the left national ‘anti-imperialism’ movement. From the point of view of the social democrat theoreticians there is only one way to overcome any discrimination or disenfranchisement in the context of the capitalist system - women need to have their own movement without any conception of class and to remain within the realm of this existing oppressive system to realize any goals.
The previous Soviet bloc and all the left national and populist movements’ aims were to separate the sexual discrimination and miseries that had been imposed on women from the working class anti-capitalist movement. Either the former Russian bloc or the social democrat had something in common; the dismissal of the workers movement into a swamp of national interest in favor of their own bourgeois class. The sexual equality movement was not the only movement to be sacrificed but also the working movement itself must sacrifice its goal and its direction in favour of the Russian bloc and national populism against Imperialism.
Contrary to the bourgeoisie’s point of view, there is no separation within this struggle. Any inequality, disenfranchisement and patriarchy, all in all, have been tied to the existence of the capitalist system. Patriarchy, being a second citizen, housework and all its miseries are all phenomenons that are inherited from the past, but this is a half-truth. But ‘this half-truth is the biggest lie’. There were patriarchy and inequality for women in past centuries but the capitalist system not only advanced these inequalities more deeply but also perpetuated and mystified them. Here, any struggle against sexual discrimination between men and women indeed, has been tied to the conscious, organized struggle against capitalism. The exploitation of labour power for a few pennies in Asia or elsewhere was not inherited from feudalism rather was a gift from the most advanced capitalism.
Millions of sex workers work for crumbs and this is deeply rooted in the capitalist system. The compulsory hijab or the stoning of women, are policies and directions of the bourgeoisie. The abolition of sexual discrimination for anti-wage-labour activists has a very radical and class significance. The abolition of sexual discrimination is only the potential of the anti-capitalist working class. The masses selling their labour power of women around the world, employee or non-employee, productive or non-productive, from Africa to Asia and Europe and elsewhere will abolish all this discrimination when it is tied to the anti-capitalist working class struggle. This is true for all issue-specific local struggles. The force of oppression on all exploited minorities, genders and all self-identifying groups, is one and the same – the capitalist system. Therefore the fragmentation of the working class into smaller non-unified groups fighting for small false gains, if any, only serves the bourgeois class because the basis of the struggle must be a unified front – the working class against bourgeois capitalism.
Anti-Wage-Labour Collective Activists
