[LAF] Fwd: Ireland, Anarcho-Feminist journal RAG #2 Feminism, Class and Anarchism by Deirdre Hogan

[Volodya]

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I am forwarding this article from A-Infos together with my comments (in square
brackets). Feel free to forward wherever.

Note: This is not a 'criticism' of the article, but rather an attempt to start a
discussion.

                   - Volodya






It is quite common these days to hear criticisms of “mainstream” or
“middle-class” feminism from anarchists or others on the revolutionary, and even
the not-so-revolutionary, left. In particular, anarchists are often quick to
criticise any feminist analysis that lacks a class analysis. This article argues
that feminism in its own right is worth fighting for and that when it comes to
ending sexism an insistence on always emphasising class can end up merely
distracting from the fact that as anarchists we need to be unambiguous when it
comes to supporting feminism. Rather than distancing ourselves from other
feminists or seeking always to qualify our support, our emphasis should shift to
developing and promoting our own brand of anarchist feminism.

The relationship between class society and capitalism

The defining feature of capitalist society is that it is broadly divided into
two fundamental classes: the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie), made up of
large business owners, and the working class (the proletariat), consisting more
or less of everyone else - the vast majority of people who work for a wage.
There are, of course, plenty of grey areas within this definition of class
society, and the working class itself is not made up of one homogeneous group of
people, but includes, for example, unskilled labourers as well as most of what
is commonly termed the middle-class and there can, therefore, be very real
differences in income and opportunity for different sectors of this broadly
defined working class

[This is a very Marxist way of looking at capitalist society, and as i see it,
this model has proven itself to be largely wrong. One of the falsehoods is that
working class is actually an international class. Karl Marx has envisioned an
inevitable communist revolution, precisely because of this assumption; what he
failed to realise was that world was moving towards (and now is actually beyond)
a state of Imperialism. In an imperialist world a worker in the "first world"
actually lives off the exploitation of the worker in the "third world", and
therefore can have no true connection to the conditions of labour in other those
countries. In addition to this the two class (or even three class) model does
not provide a correct classification for those who labour in an environment
where they own the means of production, but have more in common with the average
working class person than with the 'boss'. One has to look at the farmer
(usually small farmer) or a cooperative worker, to realise that this model does
not represent large strata (sp?) of our society. - Volodya]

“Middle class” is a problematic term as, although frequently used, who exactly
it refers to is rarely very clear. Usually “middle class” refers to workers such
as independent professionals, small business owners and lower and middle
management. However, these middle layers are not really an independent class, in
that they are not independent of the process of exploitation and capital
accumulation which is capitalism. They are generally at the fringes of one of
the two main classes, capitalist and working class.[1]

The important point about looking at society as consisting of two fundamental
classes is the understanding that the economic relationship between these two
classes, the big business owners and the people who work for them, is based on
exploitation and therefore these two classes have fundamentally opposing
material interests.

Capitalism and business are, by nature, profit driven. The work an employee does
in the course of their job creates wealth. Some of this wealth is given to the
employee in their wage-packet, the rest is kept by the boss, adding to his or
her profits (if an employee were not profitable, they would not be employed). In
this way, the business owner exploits the employee and accumulates capital. It
is in the interests of the business owner to maximise profits and to keep the
cost of wages down; it is in the interests of the employee to maximise their pay
and conditions. This conflict of interest and the exploitation of one class of
people by another minority class, is inherent to capitalist society. Anarchists
aim ultimately to abolish the capitalist class system and to create a classless
society.
The relationship between sexism and capitalism
Sexism is a source of injustice which differs from the type of class
exploitation mentioned above in a few different ways. Most women live and work
with men for at least some of their lives; they have close relationships with
men such as their father, son, brother, lover, partner, husband or friend. Women
and men do not have inherently opposing interests; we do not want to abolish the
sexes but instead to abolish the hierarchy of power that exists between the
sexes and to create a society where women and men can live freely and equally
together.

[This is exactly the reason why i have refused to call myself a feminist (or
even a 'pro-feminist' which seems to be a new trend). Without abolishing the
'sex', an idea that somebody can be placed in the group or the social class by
one's physiological characteristic, all the attempts at eliminating sexism
(which is placing a person into a category determined by one's physiological
characteristic of sex, and treating that person by the characteristics
attributed to that group as the whole) end up being cosmetic in nature. Some
feminists seem to differentiate between sex (physiology) and gender (identity),
if i were to accept these definitions i would say that i would strive to
eliminate the gender as well as sex, but that is a plane of spirituality rather
than politics, and probably should not be discussed right now. - Volodya]

Capitalist society depends on class exploitation. It does not though depend on
sexism and could in theory accommodate to a large extent a similar treatment of
women and men. This is obvious if we look at what the fight for women’s
liberation has achieved in many societies around the world over the last, say,
100 years, where there has been radical improvements in the situation of women
and the underlying assumptions of what roles are natural and right for women.
Capitalism, in the mean time, has adapted to women’s changing role and status in
society.

An end to sexism therefore won’t necessarily lead to an end to capitalism.
Likewise, sexism can continue even after capitalism and class society have been
abolished. Sexism is possibly the earliest form of oppression ever to exist, it
not only pre-dates capitalism; there is evidence that sexism also pre-dates
earlier forms of class society [2]. As societies have developed the exact nature
of women’s oppression, the particular form it takes, has changed. Under
capitalism the oppression of women has its own particular character where
capitalism has taken advantage of the historical oppression of women to maximise
profits.

[Earlier than speciesism? -Volodya]

But how realistic is the end of women’s oppression under capitalism? There are
many ways in which women are oppressed as a sex in today’s society –
economically, ideologically, physically, and so on - and it is likely that
continuing the feminist struggle will lead to further improvements in the
condition of women. However, though it is possible to envisage many aspects of
sexism eroded away in time with struggle, there are features of capitalism that
make the full economic equality of women and men under capitalism highly
unlikely. This is because capitalism is based on the need to maximise profits
and in such a system women are at a natural disadvantage.

In capitalist society, the ability to give birth is a liability. Women’s
biological role means that (if they have children) they will have to take at
least some time off paid employment. Their biological role also makes them
ultimately responsible for any child they bear. In consequence, paid maternity
leave, single parent allowance, parental leave, leave to care for sick children,
free crèche and childcare facilities etc. will always be especially relevant to
women. For this reason women are economically more vulnerable than men under
capitalism: attacks on gains such as crèche facilities, single-parent allowance
and so on will always affect women disproportionately more than men. And yet
without full economic equality it is hard to see an end to the unequal power
relations between women and men and the associated ideology of sexism. Thus,
although we can say that capitalism could accommodate women’s equality with men,
the reality is that the full realisation of this equality is very unlikely to be
achieved under capitalism. This is simply because there is an economic penalty
linked to women’s biology which makes profit-driven capitalist society
inherently biased against women.
The struggle for women’s emancipation in working class movements
One of the best examples of how struggle for change can bring about real and
lasting changes in society is the great improvements in women’s status, rights
and quality of life that the struggle for women’s liberation has achieved in
many countries around the globe. Without this struggle (which I’ll call feminism
though not all those fighting against women’s subordination would have
identified as feminist), women clearly would not have made the huge gains we
have made.

[While it is great that there is realisation that not only feminists engage in
the struggle described, it would be very nice to see the acknowledgement of the
fact that there are *other* anti-sexist struggles out there. -Volodya]

Historically, the struggle for women’s emancipation was evident within anarchist
and other socialist movements. However, as a whole these movements have tended
to have a somewhat ambiguous relationship with women’s liberation and the
broader feminist struggle.

[This is actually an unfair criticism of anarchist movement (while it is
absolutely correct). For example, almost every anarchist acknowledges the need
to struggle against ecological problems, various forms of LGBT oppression,
censorship, prison system, militarisation, etc, but nobody can engage in every
struggle they agree with. So what anarchists do is pick their fights "according
to their abilities", which makes complete sense; and due to the enormous variety
of trends within anarchist movement it appears to *everyone* that their
particular cause is being neglected. -Volodya]

Although central to anarchism has always been an emphasis on the abolition of
all hierarchies of power, anarchism has its roots in class struggle, in the
struggle to overthrow capitalism, with its defining aim being the creation of a
classless society. Because women’s oppression is not so intimately tied to
capitalism as class struggle, women’s liberation has historically been seen, and
to a large extent continues to be seen, as a secondary goal to the creation of a
classless society, not as important nor as fundamental as class struggle.

[Which is why it is important to fight against homogeneity in the broad
revolutionary movements in general, and anarchism specifically. Our unity must
come from our diversity, not from our "sameness". Unfortunately historically
anarchism has made it seem that "class struggle" is the only "true revolutionary
struggle", and some contemporary anarchists seem to perpetuate this idea.
However, majority of anarchist movement is pro-diversity in struggle, and even
if it is less vocal, it probably achieves much more. -Volodya]

But to whom is feminism unimportant? Certainly for most women in socialist
movements the assumption that a profound transformation in the power relations
between women and men was part of socialism was vital. However, there tended to
be more men than women active in socialist circles and the men played a dominant
role. Women’s demands were marginalised because of the primacy of class and also
because while the issues that affected working men also affected working women
in a similar way, the same was not true for the issues particular to the
oppression of women as a sex. Women’s social and economic equality was sometimes
seen to conflict with the material interests and comforts of men. Women’s
equality required profound changes in the division of labour both in the home
and at work as well as changes in the whole social system of male authority. To
achieve women’s equality a re-evaluation of self-identity would also have to
take place where "men's identity" could no longer depend on being seen as
stronger or more capable than women.

Women tended to make the connection between personal and political emancipation,
hoping that socialism would make new women and new men by democratising all
aspects of human relations. However they found it very hard, for example, to
convince their comrades that the unequal division of labour within the home was
an important political issue. In the words of Hannah Mitchell, active as a
socialist and feminist around the early 20th century in England, on her double
shift working both outside and inside the home:

[Which is the reason for "revolution within revolution". Anarchist revolutionary
movement does have the ability to continue being relevant to today's society,
but for that it is necessary to allow "internal revolutions" to take place. The
feminist revolution within anarchist movement should not be the only one, in my
opinion. -Volodya]

“Even my Sunday leisure was gone for I soon found a lot of the socialist talk
about freedom was only talk and these socialist young men expected Sunday
dinners and huge teas with home-made cakes, potted meats and pies exactly like
their reactionary fellows.”[3]

Anarchist women in Spain at the time of the social revolution in 1936 had
similar complaints finding that female-male equality did not carry over well to
intimate personal relationships. Martha Ackelsberg notes in her book Free Women
of Spain that although equality for women and men was adopted officially by the
Spanish anarchist movement as early as 1872:

“Virtually all of my informants lamented that no matter how militant even the
most committed anarchists were in the streets, they expected to be ‘masters’ in
their homes – a complaint echoed in many articles written in movement newspapers
and magazines during this period.”

Sexism also occurred in the public sphere, where, for example, women militants
sometimes found they were not treated seriously nor with respect by their male
comrades. Women also faced problems in their struggle for equality within the
trade union movement in the 19th and 20th centuries where the unequal situation
of men and women in paid employment was an awkward issue. Men in the trade
unions argued that women lowered the wages of organised workers and some
believed the solution was to exclude women entirely from the trade and to raise
the male wage so that the men could support their families. In the mid-19th
century in Britain a tailor summarised the effect of female labour as follows:

“When I first began working at this branch [waistcoat-making], there were but
very few females employed in it. A few white waist-coats were given to them
under the idea that women would make them cleaner than men …But since the
increase of the puffing and sweating system, masters and sweaters have sought
everywhere for such hands as would do the work below the regular ones. Hence the
wife has been made to compete with the husband, and the daughter with the
wife…If the man will not reduce the price of his labour to that of the female,
why he must remain unemployed”.[4]

The policy of excluding women from certain trade unions was often determined by
competition depressing wages rather than sexist ideology although ideology had
also a role to play. In the tobacco industry in the early 20th century in Tampa
in the States, for example, an anarcho-syndicalist union, La Resistencia, made
up mostly of Cuban émigrés, sought to organise all workers throughout the city.
Over a quarter of their membership was made up of women tobacco strippers. This
syndicalist union was denounced both as unmanly and un-American by another trade
union, the Cigar Makers’ Industrial Union which pursued exclusionary strategies
and “very reluctantly organised women workers into a separate and secondary
section of the union”.[5]
Driving force of women’s liberation has been feminism
It is generally well documented that the struggle for women’s emancipation has
not always been supported and that historically women have faced sexism within
class struggle organisations. The unquestionable gains in women’s freedom that
have taken place are thanks to those women and men, within class struggle
organisations as well as without, who challenged sexism and fought for
improvements in women’s condition. It is the feminist movement in all its
variety (middle-class, working-class, socialist, anarchist…) that has lead the
way in women’s liberation and not movements focused on class struggle. I
emphasise the point because though today the anarchist movement as a whole does
support an end to the oppression of women, there remains a mistrust of feminism,
with anarchists and other socialists sometimes distancing themselves from
feminism because it often lacks a class analysis. Yet it is this very feminism
that we have to thank for the very real gains women have made.
How relevant is class when it comes to sexism?
What are the common approaches to feminism by class-struggle anarchists today?
On the extreme end of reaction against feminism is the complete
class-reductionist point of view: Only class matters. This dogmatic viewpoint
tends to see feminism as divisive [surely sexism is more divisive than
feminism?] and a distraction from class struggle and holds that any sexism that
does exist will disappear automatically with the end of capitalism and class
society.

However, a more common anarchist approach to feminism is the acceptance that
sexism does exist, will not automatically fade away with the end of capitalism
and needs to be fought against in the here and now. Nevertheless, as previously
mentioned, anarchists are often at pains to distance themselves from
“mainstream” feminism because of its lack of class analysis. Instead, it is
stressed that the experience of sexism is differentiated by class and that
therefore women’s oppression is a class issue. It is certainly true that wealth
mitigates to some extent the effect of sexism: It is less difficult, for
example, to obtain an abortion if you do not have to worry about raising the
money for the trip abroad; issues of who does the bulk of the housework and
childcare become less important if you can afford to pay someone else to help.
Also, depending on your socio-economic background you will have different
priorities.

However, in constantly stressing that experience of sexism is differentiated by
class, anarchists can seem to gloss over or ignore that which is also true: that
experience of class is differentiated by sex. The problem, the injustice, of
sexism is that there are unequal relations between women and men within the
working class and indeed in the whole of society. Women are always at a
disadvantage to men of their respective class.

To a greater or lesser extent sexism affects women of all classes; yet a
feminist analysis that does not emphasise class is the often target of
criticism. But is class relevant to all aspects of sexism? How is class relevant
to sexual violence, for example? Class is certainly not always the most
important point in any case. Sometimes there is an insistence on tacking on a
class analysis to every feminist position as if this is needed to give feminism
credibility, to validate it as a worthy struggle for class-struggle anarchists.
But this stance misses the main point which is, surely, that we are against
sexism, whatever its guise, whosoever it is affecting?

[Honesty is surely more important that satisfying same sexist 'anarchists' who
want an excuse to think themselves smarter than women. Piggy backing on the
class-struggle-only anarchism will not get anybody (with the exception of
perhaps Class War federation, bookchinites, and a few others) very far. Those
who are interested in anti-sexism will be disillusioned from the start, and
those who are interested in class struggle only and have at least ½ of the brain
will be disillusioned eventually. So after a while the only people who'll be
left around you will be those who are too stupid to understand what you are
really saying, if you chose to "play it smart". -Volodya]

If a person is beaten to death in a racist attack, do we need to know the class
of the victim before expressing outrage? Are we unconcerned about racism if it
turns out the victim is a paid-up member of the ruling class? Similarly, if
someone is discriminated against in work on the grounds of race, sex or
sexuality, whether that person is a cleaner or a university professor, surely in
both cases it is wrong and it is wrong for the same reasons? Clearly, women’s
liberation in its own right is worth fighting for as, in general, oppression and
injustice are worth fighting against, regardless of the class of the oppressed.
Women and men of the world unite against sexism?
Given that one thing women have in common across classes and cultures is their
oppression, to some degree, as a sex can we then call for women (and men) of the
world to unite against sexism? Or are there opposing class interests that would
make such a strategy futile?

Conflicts of interest can certainly arise between working-class and wealthy
middle-class or ruling-class women. For example, in France at a feminist
conference in 1900 the delegates split on the issue of a minimum wage for
domestic servants, which would have hurt the pockets of those who could afford
servants. Today, calls for paid paternity leave or free crèche facilities will
face opposition from business owners who do not want to see profits cut.
Feminism is not always good for short-term profit-making. Struggles for economic
equality with men in capitalist society will necessarily involve ongoing and
continuous struggle for concessions – essentially a class struggle.

Thus, differing class interests can sometimes pose obstacles to feminist unity
at a practical level. It is however much more important for anarchists to stress
links with the broader feminist movement than to emphasise differences. After
all, the ruling class are in a minority and the vast majority of women in
society share a common interest in gaining economic equality with men. In
addition, many feminist issues are not affected by such class-based conflicts of
interest but concern all women to varying degrees. When it comes to reproductive
rights, for example, anarchists in Ireland have been and continue to be involved
in pro-choice groups alongside capitalist parties without compromising our
politics because, when it comes to fighting the sexism that denies women control
over their own bodies, this is the best tactic. Finally, it is also worth noting
that often the dismissal of “middle-class feminism” comes from the same
anarchists/socialists who embrace the Marxist definition of class (given at the
start of this article) which would put most middle-class people firmly with the
ranks of the broad working class.
Reforms, not reformism
There are two approaches we can take to feminism: we can distance ourselves from
other feminists by focusing on criticising reformist feminism or we can fully
support the struggle for feminist reforms while all the while saying we want
more!! This is important especially if we want to make anarchism more attractive
to women (a recent Irish Times poll showed that feminism is important to over
50% of Irish women). In the anarchist-communist vision of future society with
its guiding principle, to each according to need, from each according to
ability, there is no institutional bias against women as there is in capitalism.
As well as the benefits for both women and men anarchism has a lot to offer
women in particular, in terms of sexual, economic and personal freedom that goes
deeper and offers more than any precarious equality that can be achieved under
capitalism.

[Yep. There's noting wrong with tactical reform. q;-) -Volodya]

Deirdre Hogan (originally published in RAG no.2, Autumn 2007)


ps. Special thanks to Tamarack and José Antonio Gutiérrez for their feedback and
suggestions.

* For information on murals by UMLEM see:
http://www.umlemchile.tk/

Notes


1. This description of the middle class is borrowed from Wayne Price. See Why
the working class? on anarkismo.net
http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=6488
2. See for example the articles in Toward an Anthropology of Women, edited by
Rayna R. Reiter.
3. Hannah Mitchell quote taken from Women in Movement (page 135) by Sheila
Rowbotham.
4. quote taken from Women and the Politics of Class (page 24) by Johanna Brenner.
5. ibid, page 93

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