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| WHAT DISTINGUISHES OUR PARTY – The line running from Marx to Lenin to the foundation of the Third International and the birth of the Communist Party of Italy in Leghorn (Livorno) 1921, and from there to the struggle of the Italian Communist Left against the degeneration in Moscow and to the rejection of popular fronts and coalition of resistance groups – The tough work of restoring the revolutionary doctrine and the party organ, in contact with the working class, outside the realm of personal politics and electoralist manoevrings | ||||||
Contents
For the Class Union
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Following the retaking of a large part of national territory by the Damascus regime, the phase of relative stabilization of Syria has led to a temporary shift of the fault line separating the spheres of influence in the Middle East region. Outside the control of the Syrian Government only the north-western province of Idlib and the Kurdish region of Rojava remain. In this latter region there have been clashes with the Turkish armed forces. At the end of this phase, during which the support of Russian forces and Shiite militias linked to Iran has been essential, it is in Yemen where the maximum energy of inter-imperialist frictions is discharged.
Epicentre of a furious battle (which at the time of writing has not yet ended) is the strategic city of Hodeida on the Red Sea. This is situated 200 miles from the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb through which 5 million barrels of oil pass daily. The fierce battle sees the Huthi Shiite militias, supported by Iran, who control the western part of the country, clash with the Yemeni forces allied to Saudi Arabia, which receives military support from Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.
It is a collision between Saudi Arabia and Iran for the control of access to the Red Sea, and is of vital importance. As always, the Yemeni forces in the field are forced into partisanship, subordinate to the major powers. To dispel the journalistic legend which represents the Yemeni conflict as a war of religion that would oppose Shiites and Sunnis, supported by the Saudi orthodox champions, it is worth remembering that the leader of the land offensive against the Houthi is the Shiite Tareq Saleh. This is the grandson of the deceased Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, killed by the Houthi themselves after breaking their alliance and changing sides. Quite a clear sign that the interests at stake are very different from what simple ethnic and religious divisions would suggest. Meanwhile the clan of the Saleh, of Zaidite Shiite religion and at the centre of Yemen’s political life for 40 years, wavers between the two camps fighting for hegemony in the region.
Saudi Arabia’s commitment to the fight against the Huthi does not seem to have strong support from the United States. Riyadh’s claim to play a leading role in the determination of the price of crude oil has probably cooled down American enthusiasm for the military successes of her traditional Saudi allies, who have now penetrated deep into the urban center of Hodeida. The dispute over seizing portions of the oil revenue, always the subject of imperialistic appetites, takes on a central role at a time when the worsening crisis of overproduction is dissuading large groups of capital from investing in manufacturing.
This is how the US decision to cancel the international agreement on Iranian nuclear power, in order to reduce Tehran’s share of the oil revenue, should be regarded. Also in this light should be seen the decision of Saudi Arabia to cut oil production by 500,000 barrels a day to avoid a drop in the price of crude oil. But Trump reacted to this on 12 November by effectively ordering Riyadh to refrain from any attempt to pursue a policy of pushing up the price of the barrel, which would have the effect of stopping or slowing down economic growth which is already very sluggish.
The reintroduction of sanctions against Iran by the United States becomes a way of promoting US trade through other channels. Italy is exempted from the sanctions imposed on those who buy Iranian oil for a period of six months: is this in exchange for the multi-billion dollar purchase of the large F-35 patrol recently ordered? Moreover, the US administration is pressing for Italy to complete the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline ("TAP"), falsely opposed in the electoral program of the 5 Star Movement. The TAP would allow the supply of Middle Eastern gas, reducing Italy’s dependence on Russia.The same applies to the development of Muos, the advanced satellite system for military communications in the Mediterranean installed in Sicily. The exemption from sanctions against Iran also concerns seven other countries: China, India, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Greece and Turkey; certainly in exchange there are equivalent counterparts in the American trade war on world markets.
The story of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist savagely killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, has provided a pretext for Turkey and other ancient and stable allies of Saudi Arabia to express their disagreements and distrust towards the young and megalomaniac crown prince Muhammad Bin Salman. MBS is the expression of a particularly dynamic and fierce bourgeois faction, whose politics could harm the interests of the United States in the region. In particular, Washington won’t like Riyadh’s desire to isolate Qatar and even, as a threat to MBS, transform it into an island by digging a 60km long and 200m wide canal in Saudi territory. In fact, it should be remembered that the USA has the important military base of Al Udeid in Qatar, near the capital Dohha.
Another conflict occurred at the beginning of the second
decade of November between Gaza and Israel. An Israeli operation in the
Strip with the achieved objective of killing a military leader of Hamas, has
also caused the death of six other Palestinians and of an officer of the
Israeli army. This was followed by missile launches in the Negev and the
Israeli retaliation with air raids that hit 150 targets in the Strip. A
truce, which has put an end to the umpteenth skirmish, will allow aid from
Qatar to arrive in Gaza. This concession of the Netanyahu government has
resulted in the resignation of the Minister of Defense, Avigdor Liberman. He
would have liked a "stronger" military reaction, a sign of frictions within
the Israeli ruling class on the manner and timing of the inevitable war for
capitalist economic ends and social conservation in the region.
The National Assembly of Cuba received in July 2018 the draft of the new constitution in which emphasizes the establishment the respect of private property, maintaining the right of inheritance of land and recognizing foreign investment. As well as emphasizing in the text of the constitution that the word “communism” will no longer appear.
The Communist Party of Cuba is coming out of the closet.
The constitutional referendum was held on February 24, 2019. Voters were asked whether they approved of a new constitution. The reforms were approved, with 91% of valid votes cast in favor.
Of course, this reform is only in the constitutional wording, because the Cuban revolution was never socialist and Cuba has never been a location for transnational investment. That isolation has been amplified as a geopolitical strategy for the economic bloc maintained by the USA.
The exporting of health services and literacy have been affected recently for the crisis of one of its main customers: the Venezuelan government. Like with the crisis of the USSR in the 80s, the economic crisis of Venezuela has a deceitful negative on the Cuban economy. The Cuban Government tries to rearrange itself to the new situation.
This reform of the constitution of Cuba will bring nothing new. Only adjusting the process or adjustments to the search of collecting of investors of capital and of access to the international market. As is proper of the opportunists, of these false socialists, we observe confirmations “we are facing a total reform in the framework of the principles that establish socialism” said Homero Acosta, secretary of the state council, to show before the members of parliament the changes that are expected to carry forward in the constitution and for whom Cuba is expected to be “a socialist state of rights”. But so sorry are they to recognize the “objective existence of the law of the market”.
The State Capitalism in Cuba is necessary to grow fiscal income for taxes on private entrepreneurs; necessary to vitalize the demand for goods of investment by private companies (national or transnational) and increase the penetration of foreign investment. This explains the path being taken towards the elimination of subsidies on the prices of products and services and the elimination of the Ration Card, towards monetary reunification and currency devaluation. Private mercantile activities that have remained hidden or buried in the Cuban economy are flourishing with increasing force. This is what some Cuban opportunists have called "the passage to a new, more functional type of socialism”. It is pending the detachment that the State will have to make of broken and unviable companies that have been for decades "white elephants", technologically backward and with products out of all competitiveness in the international markets.
Some opportunists of the so-called "left" will begin to see in these changes as the "return of capitalism to Cuba"; but the truth is that capitalism never left Cuba; the accumulation of capital was centralized by the State and nothing more than that; however, it has nothing to do with the socialism which Cuba has been propagandized so much in the international arena.
Today the Cuban bourgeois government only reforms its
State Capitalism and its economic policies try to adjust to the effects of
the world crisis of capitalism. Faced with a salary equivalent to 20 dollars
a month and pensions of 10 dollars a month, the demands of the salaried
workers will have to take shape and, sooner rather than later, be
transformed into a political struggle. In Cuba, as in the rest of the world,
the proletariat will have to rediscover its historical revolutionary
objectives and resume the class struggle.
The regional meeting of the ICP in Venezuela was held with revolutionary enthusiasm. We discussed the following topics.
Most importantly: the serious situation of workers and trade unions.
In August, the government announced a change of the currency (the "sovereign bolivar"), which corresponded to a minimum wage of 1,800 bolivars, about 16 dollars a month! At the same time it removed many items from the “Carnet de la patria” (a combined national ID and rations card). In November, the minimum wage was raised to 4,500 bolivars, but now, due to the devaluation of the currency, it is equivalent to only 12 dollars. At the same time, food prices have risen and inflation has accelerated.
In the first half of 2018 there were wage conflicts in the health sector and among electrical power workers. The workers’ wages are now made up of 40% wages and 60% state bonuses: the nurses have rejected the bonuses method and asked that the wages cover the cost of food.
In the second half of the year, discontent increased due to low wages and in November a so-called "Intersectorial de Trabajadores" was formed, which does not seem to be controlled by pro-government or opposition movements, but to be a movement of unions and grassroots trade unionists, focused on the demand for better wages and working conditions.
This movement had called for a demonstration in Caracas on November 28th, but the government prevented it by blocking the roads. On the same day, the Secretary General of the Orinoco Iron Miners’ union was arrested and brought before a military court, which ordered his detention in Pica prison. The day before, nine Iron Miners were arrested and imprisoned in El Dorado Prison, in the State of Bolivar. This stopped the protests and the government was not forced to resort to more widespread repression.
We have decided that our section will distribute a leaflet at the next meeting of the "Intersectorial de Trabajadores". We will also promote class positions through constituent unions that we have contacts and influence in. We will also work on a report for the party on the situation of Venezuelan workers, their survival mechanisms and the factors which explain why they cannot mobilize against the government’s anti-labor policies.
Our other activities include translations, in particular of the reports presented at previous general meetings, which will be published in our periodical El Partido Comunista n.14, which is expected to be completed by January 15.
It was then decided to devote part of the funds available for the reproduction of some additional copies of El Partido Comunista n.13 and a leaflet.
Finally, the calendar of regional meetings of the party was established and established how to participate in general meetings and how to maintain a close and regular link with European comrades.
Two fundamental principles of the revolutionary organization have always been centralism and strict discipline.
In our party, centralism - as a unity of structure and movement - is best described as "organic". Organic centralism is a way of life that the political formation of the proletariat has managed to select after passing through a historical course and different stages of its struggle against the bourgeoisie.
At the beginning of the proletarian movement, different political trends appeared within it. In addition to the Marxist movement, there were tendencies which, although not communist, had their own traditions which were recognized within the workers’ movement. And the experiences of the class struggle had not yet overcome them. In the First International there were anarchists and initially also the followers of Mazzini. In the Second International, reformist Marxism coexisted with revolutionary Marxism. This was until, inside all national parties of the time, opposition grew between the two very different parties, tending towards splitting, prepared in years of hard and bitter opposition of programs and tactics. However, the left-wing tendencies, until the time of consummate splitting, never failed to centralism and discipline, neither in theory nor in practice.
In this situation of relative immaturity and tactical inexperience, the revolutionary movement adopted democratic centralism, not as a principle but as a "congress mechanism". This was considered as a modest instrument for taking practical decisions, while waiting for the lessons of history to show the best way and the refinement of the correct doctrine.
The First World War and the October Revolution definitively marked the failure of reformist socialism, and, since then, we can say that there is no longer a "class reformism", that is proletarian, but all reformism belongs to the ruling class, and it is its exclusive expression. The birth of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party takes place before this historical passage and it endures all its difficulties.
Despite the need to use the democratic mechanism, the organizations of the working class have always tended towards a superior way of functioning. The modus operandi used by the First International in its best years, as shown by the minutes, the correspondence, the relationship between comrades and between centre and periphery, correspond to the superior form of centralism that our tendency will call organic. Even the Third International was on the way - albeit not entirely consciously - to an organic functioning, with its healthy purpose of overcoming within itself both the fractions and the democratic form, always hoping for unanimous votes. These results could certainly not be obtained by statute, but only be the product of a theoretical, programmatic and tactical homogeneity. Also in this regard the Italian Communist Left requested in 1920 the conditions for admission to the International be tightened up.
In Italy in 1921 the revolutionary tendency separated from the reformist one of the PSI and the Communist Party of Italy was born. This, like the Russian Party, was still resorting to democratic centralism, but the comrades had already well understood that the degree of programmatic homogeneity, reached after 70 years of proletarian struggle since 1848, was now such that the organization could do better without that mechanism.
In 1922 we wrote in "The Democratic Principle": "It is not appropriate to elevate this use of the democratic mechanism to a principle. Alongside a task of consultation analogous to the legislative task of the State apparatus, the party has an executive task which corresponds in extreme moments of struggle, even to that of an army, which demands the maximum of hierarchical discipline (...) We cannot conceive of a majority decision of the party as being aprioristically happy in its choices as that of an infallible judge (...).Even in an organism in which, like the party, the composition of the mass is the result of a selection, through spontaneous voluntary adhesion and the control of recruitment, the pronouncement of the majority is not, for itself, the best (...) The democratic criterion is for us, so far, an accidental material for the construction of our internal organization and the formulation of the party statutes: it is not the indispensable platform. That is why we will not make the well-known organisational formula of "democratic centralism" one of our principle. Democracy cannot be a principle for us".
Organic centralism is neither a formula nor an organisational form. There are no articles of an internal "organic regulation" of the party, as an absolute guarantee against crises, against its degeneration. Organic centralism is nothing more than the dialectical overcoming of the democratic mechanism within the party, from which it has come to free itself spontaneously in its historical journey.
By taking away democracy, it is objected that all the "power" will be concentrated in the centre of the party, who will be the only one deciding its "political line".
It is easy to answer that the "political line" is already established by our program, by our theses, to which all the militia, centre and periphery, voluntarily submit. In the Party no one commands and all are commanded. No one commands because, impersonally and objectively, there is nothing to decide at this point in time. All are commanded because the "orders" are already written in the uninterrupted line of our program, stamped in the lessons of the counterrevolutions taken by the "historical party".
Therefore, the tactical lines of action are the result of a study, which the party tends to do collectively, picking up the thread of what was done before, from Marx to date. It is no coincidence that it is good practice and method for us to reread and study well what the party has written in the past before risking a new evaluation.
We believe that tomorrow the party will be able to carry out its function as the governing body of the Revolution if the human ensemble that forms it succeeds in transmitting not only the correct doctrine but also its correct way of being and relationship within it. Form and content are linked in a team of fighters for a historical cause that goes beyond the individual and all personal and group interests.
For two-thirds of a century now, it is in this environment that our intensive section, regional and general meetings have been held.
Is there no debate in our Party? We proudly answer that in the party, no, there is no debate. There is a continuous scientific study that leads comrades to work together to better address the issues to be resolved, which certainly come to be raised. But no debate, no congresses, with a final vote. A disagreement on tactics is the result of an incomplete knowledge of the issue in the party as a whole. As long as there is no clarity, this is not achieved either by any count of the votes at the base or by an order from above, but only by further investigation of the issue and its empirical verification, through the results obtained in the action.
It is possible that the party makes mistakes, of course, but it will not be certain of not making them and learning their lessons through the method, now only gossipy and personalist, of counting votes. The party does not protect itself with an organizational form, not with formal rules of representation and decision, but only through the correct revolutionary work and the direct and continuous commitment of all its militants.
The Communist Party, as written in the Thesis, is a prefiguration of the natural and spontaneous way of associating of the future humanity.
In our "From the dream and need of communism to the
scientific Marxist revolutionary program" we write:
"Our organizational model also postulates and practices organic centralism,
not so much and only to benefit from the "scientific" method, but to enjoy a
"society" that prefigures communism, in which it is not debated, but
sculpted, in research and struggle, what the revolutionary tradition has
accumulated in terms of experiences and life of species, with enthusiasm, in
a vision of time that combines the perspective and sense of differences with
the unique vision that binds together the pitecanthropus armed with club (by
the way: it seems that it was mild, but not stupid and helpless, symbol of
tribal unity that recalls the beast from which perhaps we descend....) with
the communist man, in a single Time that is not in contrast with the only
Space, according to the close and dialectic relationship that Einstein has
indicated, and image of a Cosmos (order) that only the communist society
will be able to reach".
The party is at the same time the guardian of the doctrine and the organ that by holding it as a weapon will be able to guide the class in the revolution, abandoning forever within it the individualism of the rotten bourgeois society.
Workers in 48 factories in the Mexican city of Matamoros walked out over the past month. Numbering between 25,000 and 40,000, they demanded, and won, a twenty-percent raise plus a lump sum of 32,000 pesos ($1,650 dollars). Their example inspired other workers in the city to stage wildcat strikes for similar benefits, which are ongoing.
The strike hits at the center of the Mexican export manufacturing sector. In cities like Matamoros (across the border from Brownsville, Texas), Ciudad Juarez (across from El Paso, Texas), and Mexicali (across from Calexico, California), factories known as maquiladoras churn out parts and products for export to the United States. They are owned by firms in the United States, which take advantage of low wages while keeping production close to the market. Matamoros is known for manufacturing car components, which are sent across the border for final assembly in the United States.
The maquiladoras are the largest section of Mexico’s manufacturing. There are 6,200 maquiladoras plants employing 3 million workers. In Tamaulipas, there are 411 registered maquiladoras.
The collapse and replacement of the NAFTA (now USMCA) free trade agreements between Canada, Mexico and the USA has increased the pressure on Mexican working class. Mexico has accepted liberalizing its labor laws allowing for its current labor union structure, which has been tied to the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), to weaken the old union structures in unforeseen ways.
The conditions in these maquiladoras and the surrounding communities are infamous, particularly for women. Employment is almost universally precarious, much of it informal. Workers are prevented from organizing by the presence of “ghost unions”, fake labor organizations established by the very foreign firms that own the factories. Workers are forced to join these non-unions, which then use their fraudulent numbers to present themselves as the main representative of factory workers. As many as 90 percent of union contracts in maquiladoras are this sort of “protection contracts”.
This is the sort of corporatism and free-trade imperialism that maquiladora workers in Matamoros fought against in the past month. Their success, and the wildcat strikes they inspired in other industries, shocked employers’ associations and free trade advocates. The strikes came as the right in the United States, led by Donald Trump, is engaging in its own corporatist campaign against NAFTA, supposedly for the protection of American workers. The Mexican example demonstrates that these promises of protection are hollow, whether coming from pro- or anti-free trade factions.
As of mid-February the strike wave
is spreading throughout the country.
• Workers in 45 factories in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, have threatening strike action if not given parity with Matamoros workers.
• 680 workers in the General-Mills plant in the city of Irapuato, Guanajuato went on a four-day wildcat strike.
• Teachers in Michoacán state have struck and have blockaded railways, which stopped shippments of auto parts exports to Asia.
• Monday, February 11, 2019 CNTE-affiliated teachers in Oaxaca struck closing 800 schools.
• The 5 campuses of the Autonomous University of Mexico (UAM) have been on strike for a 20 percent wage increase.
Using social media, workers organized and started public meetings outside their union offices to discuss the offers the various companies were making. Out of these meetings a unified demand of “20/32” was created, 20% wage increase and a 32,000 Peso (€1472 / $1672/ £1279) yearly bonus. The average manufacturing wage is Peso 5390/month. The strike movement has become known as the “Movimiento 20/32”.
Dissatisfied with the union “representing” them, the workers called for union officials to come out of their offices in Matamoros. “Amid booing, whistles, and cries of “Villafuerte (a union leader) out!, Sell-out! and Cacique! The leader opened the doors of the building and asked the workers to come in, but (the strikers) refused and told (the leaders) to come out onto the street to face them all directly”.
Stepping into this dissatisfaction are the Miners and Electrician’s unions, who have united 150 existing unions into a new labor confederation, the International Labor Confederation. At this point, the confederation seems to be allied with Mexico’s current social democratic ruling party, Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (MORENA). This union is being heavily supported by the AFL-CIO US labor Federation, which should give us an understanding of the new confederations perspectives.
Port workers in Venezuela suffer from harsh capitalist exploitation by the government, its companies, as well as private capital. Their low wages aren’t enough for food and endure unsafe working conditions and environment.
It makes no difference if the "wincheros" (crane operators who do the loading and unloading of ship containers), whether they work on payroll or as "temporaries", or if they work for state companies or private companies that operate in the different ports of the country. Wincheros are not given lunch, they have to bring it from home. A good part of their scarce wages goes to pay for transportation. They do not receive uniforms, footwear, equipment and safety gear. They must work long days without breaks. They are not allowed to organize themselves and make demands and if they do, they are classified as terrorists. To give you an idea, in January 2019 a wincheros received a wage of less than 100 Bolivars (11 cents according to the official exchange rate and 3 cents according to the parallel market) for a 12-hour day.
The employer-government alliance in Venezuela has opposed the demands for increased wages for workers. But the wincheros in Puerto Cabello, decided to take action, demanding wage increases.
Their employers do not want to accept their organizing an union. The bosses have proposed that they organise a cooperative or civil association. This trick is so that they don’t have to deal with the workers as wage earners, but rather with a contracting company, in order to get rid of everything related to collective contracts, social benefits and other wage complements.
The "Bolivariana de Puertos" (BOLIPUERTOS) Port Workers union has turned its back on the struggle of the wincheros.
The wincheros have begun to organize and had the courage to stop the unloading of ships, even without the support of the union. The employer began to pressure some workers to restart the operations and break the strike.
In this struggle our party’s message to the Winceros
was:
1. Understand that the struggle for wages is a permanent struggle and that the main victory will be the rank and file organization of the workers.
2. Turn the wincheros’ struggle into a struggle of all port workers and all workers in general, in Puerto Cabello, in Carabobo, in Venezuela and throughout Latin America.
3. We need to organize of the struggle of the working class on the rank and file, both inside and outside the workplaces. Build Rank and File Workers Committees to pressure unions to convene assemblies and to aid the struggle. These Committees should integrate active workers, pensioners and retirees, permanent and contract or temporary workers and meet outside the work centers, grouped by neighborhood or town. The wincheros must pressure the union to take up the struggle. To accomplish this it is necessary that they extend their rank and file organization to all dock workers.
4. In the docks the workers must build unity and the
struggle for the following demands:
(a) Raising wages, starting with 15.000 Bs per 6 hour day, adjusting the
salary monthly, adjusted for inflation.
(b) A 6 hour work day (meaning 3 to 4 work shifts per day) and a 30 hour
work week.
(c) Establishment of cafeteria services
(d) Provision of appropriate work clothing, footwear and personal safety
equipment.
(e) No repression of workers’ struggles or persecution of
worker-leaders.
5. Strikes and mobilizations are the main weapons of working class struggle and need to be resurrected. Use agitational and informational pickets to make workers’ issues and demands known. Seek to incorporate the rest of the class into rank and file workers’ struggles.
The winceros’ strike lasted 4 days. On the fourth day, 5 wincheros returned to work. On the fifth day all the strikers returned to work empty-handed, at the same starvation wage. Without organizational preparation, without a pro-strike fund, without union backing, the winceros strike movement was defeated.
Port workers should continue to learn from each of
these experiences of confrontations with the bosses and thus assume the
struggles with a proletarian class approach, combative against the bosses
and their governments encouraging a greater participation by all workers.
For many years now, the
celebration of International Women’s Day has been emptied of its original
purpose as a day of struggle to reaffirm the rights and needs of working
women. It has been transformed into a nauseating, conformist ritual devoid
of any authentic link to the cause of women’s emancipation.
For many years, the bourgeoisie and the miserable middle classes have pleasured themselves with bouquets of flowers, and they shed only hypocritical tears on the harshness of the female condition. International Women’s Day was thus bent to the ideological demands of the domination of the bourgeois class.
But the time has come for the women of the working class to reappropriate the meaning of this day and to resume the struggle for an effective improvement of their living and working conditions.
The now-chronic crisis of the capitalist economy makes the whole working class pay an ever-higher price.
But it is women who bear the brunt of the burden: wages are not growing, work rhythms are intensifying, while insecurity is increasing, ruining our dreams for the future.
Proletarian woman face a double oppression in the continuous abuses to which she is subjected, inside and outside the workplace, in the continuous blackmail of the bosses, who fire her when she is pregnant, or do not hire her if she is a mother and has to take care of her children.
In every corner of the world, proletarian women have to deal with the difficulty of earning a wage to live and at the same time face the problems related to reproduction, bringing up children and housework, which all too often fall mainly upon them.
But to the economic causes of our suffering are added the legacies of the historic patriarchy, which is alive and well even in the most modern capitalism. This imposes on women a condition of subordination and disheartening harassment, even up to legal inferiority and segregation. And in all cases this severely restricts our freedom of action and movement.
If this is still possible, it is because capitalism. The frustrating the expectations of general improvement in the condition of women beyond the narrow upper-middle-class elites, capitalism cannot solve the problem of their condition of dependence.
On the contrary, it must perpetuate it in order to preserve the anachronistic institution of the family, the consumer unit of bourgeois society and the privileged place of the most obtuse and anti-social individualism. Capitalism’s hidden patriarchy continues to prosper because it is indispensable to the capitalist economy.
The cruel aspects of patriarchy are not unknown even in economically advanced countries, even if the access of many women to paid work has allowed them to come out from behind closed doors.
But this advancement hasn’t meant much better conditions in our lives, with regards to what would be possible thanks to the current development of productive forces. Especially considering that such development could potentially offer opportunities that were once unknowledgeable.
In order to ease the chains of class and gender oppression of women, we need to return to the struggle of the entire working class, for common economic objectives, which are, provisions to defend motherhoods/parents/children, an increase in wages, equal wages and treatment between workingclass women and men, as well as a reduction of working hours and full pay for the unemployed.
At the same time, women workers must reject the misleading idea of a women’s struggle that unites women of all classes. The interests of a bourgeois woman and those of a low-wage, temp worker or, for example, of a immigrant domestic worker who will spend years away from her children’s childhood and adolescence, are not the same at all.
Even the most advanced capitalism cannot heal the various plagues which characterize the condition of women. Capitalist mercantilism can only condemn millions of women to the commodification of their bodies. This condition being a necessary complement to the preservation of the reactionary institution of the bourgeois family and marriage, a bastion of private property and an instrument for the hereditary transmission of property.
The causes of the miseries and distortions in the sexual and reproductive life of the present society are economic. For this reason, the bourgeoisie will never stop in its abominating legislative and judicial interference in women’s reproductive interests. The dying bourgeois society is helpless to generate newborns as it is to allow spontaneous and unconstrained reproduction.
The emancipation of women from the oppression of patriarchy can only be won if it converges with the struggle for the overthrow of the rule of capital.
Historical experience has taught us that in many cases it was women who started a revolutionary class struggle. And it was often working class women who terrorised the ruling classes most. Proletarian women have always been a subversive force equal or greater to that of their male comrades. Let’s remember the Russian revolution of February 1917, which broke out on International Women’s Day
But even in today’s times women have been at the head of many struggles of the working class. Last January the textile workers of Bangladesh, in one of their general strikes, took to the streets facing the harsh police reaction. In the United States hundred of thousands of teachers went on strike for better wages. In Italy we saw the workers in the agri-food sector, organized in rank and file unions, openly fighting and winning.
By fighting for our common interests, by organizing strong and combative unions, by uniting the working class, and led by the Communist Party, that we will finally be freed from the horrors of capitalism.
A society without classes and without the oppression of women is within reach!