Among the communist and revolutionary forces, the CP-ML (the old OL) represents a dangerous threat to correctly developing line and practice on the woman question. As the main proponents of right opportunism in the U.S. M-L movement, they are the main obstacle to building a genuine communist party that can lead the proletariat and its allies to socialism and to the complete emancipation of women. Many of the deviations which genuine forces may follow can be traced to the influence of the CP-OL.
What is this line and what are its manifestations? We see that all revolutionaries must get a deeper grasp of the line because a correct line must also be developed in the course of struggling against opportunist lines. Overall the CP-OL line is characterized by a liquidation of the importance of the woman question, a reformist approach to solving the oppression of women, a class collaborationist policy of leading the women’s movement, and a general theoretical, political and practical lack of understanding of how the woman question should be viewed.
We can see the theoretical confusion of the CP-OL on this question in the Call article of March 7, 1977. They quote Engels to emphasize how “new roles were created for men and women”: “from the first, great social division of labor arose the first great cleavage of society into two classes: masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited.”
If we refer to Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Chapter IX, where this quote was taken from, we can see that Engels was not describing the new roles for men and women but rather the roles of the slaves and their owners. The overthrow of mother right and the introduction of slavery occurred simultaneously but these two developments are not exactly the same, notwithstanding the CP-OL’s understanding.
But in the next paragraph of the article, they show that, even though they read Origin, they completely failed to grasp its essence and thus cannot grasp the essence of the woman question: “Engels showed how the ’mother-right’...had existed in the earliest societies, because of the important role women played in rearing the future generations.”
They have failed to understand how the family developed historically out of the stage of barbarism. If mother-right existed because of the important role women played in childrearing, then mother-right would still exist since women today under capitalism play the important role in childrearing. Thus according to them, there should be no secondary status for women. But this was not why mother-right existed nor how it arose.
What in fact did Engels prove?: “In all forms of the group family it is uncertain who the father of a child is, but it is certain who the mother is. It is thus clear that, wherever group marriage exists, descent is traceable only on the maternal side, and thus the female line alone is recognized. This exclusive recognition of lineage through the mother, and the inheritance relations that arose out of it in the course of tine (is) mother right.” (Chapter II)
He goes on in Chapter IX: “The herds and the other new objects of wealth brought about a revolution in the family...The herds were the new means of gaining a livelihood, and their original domestication and subsequent tending was his work. Hence, he owned the cattle, and the commodities and slaves obtained in exchange for them. All the surplus now resulting from production fell to the man; the woman shared in consuming it, but she had no share in owning it....The very cause that formerly made the woman supreme in the house, namely, her being confined to domestic work, now assured supremacy in the house for the man.”
Thus Engels is saying that out of the group family arose the inheritance relations along the female line or mother-right. And that the woman’s supremacy in the house was based in all domestic work and not simply in childrearing. Thus the CP-OL liquidated the true roots of mother-right and the historical development of the family.
As with many other questions, the CP-OL has its “shopping list” of reformist demands that accompany their line on the woman question. The correct communist approach to the woman question is that in the context of a strategy of revolution, we fight for everything that will put women in a better position to wage the class struggle for socialism and also that improves women’s living status. We support only certain reforms or demands of the masses of women.
The CP-OL has reversed this relationship, between strategy and the immediate issues. Their idea is to make a communist position out of the legitimate demands of the masses of women. As part of the tasks of leadership, we must point the way to the immediate and strategic demands that will lead to socialism and the eventual complete emancipation of women. We cannot tail the immediate issues much less develop a strategic program for revolution out of such a shopping list.
Their reformist stand becomes clearer in their support for the passage of the ERA. As communists the CP-OL has totally failed to present an analysis of the ERA to the communist movement to show why it must be supported. Mainly they have said that since the ERA will bring “formal” equality it must be supported. However, they have not even shown how that is what communists should be supporting at this stage in U, S. history on this question. Thus they tail the bourgeois feminists and lead the masses of women into believing that equality is possible under capitalism.
But they go even further. They also tail the petty-bourgeois feminists by advancing and supporting superseniority for women. Superseniority is a liberal concept that women should be given extra seniority above what they have earned at a job in order to avoid being the first fired during layoffs and in order to compensate for capitalism’s past discrimination against women.
In their “Women’s Liberation” pamphlet the CP-OL says: “Where applicable, we must fight for compensative seniority measures for women and minority workers that would be a step toward correcting their ’last hired, first fired’ status....We must demand that the government and bosses pay for past discrimination and inequality, not men workers and we should oppose the imperialists’ current efforts to drive women back out of industry and into their homes. This must be done in the interests of women’s equality and building the united fight back of the working class.”
We have to admit that compensative or super-seniority would affect women’s status of being ’first fired’ but it would be at the expense of the men. This pits the women against the male workers. All that comes of superseniority is that women recently hired are given more seniority than men who have been there for some time. The seniority it not “earned”. The male workers thus “lose” some of their seniority in the process and thus could be fired first before the women. Will this unite the class? We say no and that the only ones who are being made to pay for the capitalists’ policies are the male workers. The government and bosses would have paid nothing and this overall is not in the interests of women’s equality. All that the CP-OL’s reformism is doing is attempting to make capitalism more “humane” for woman at the expense of the entire class.
The CP-OL has stopped putting out this demand for some time now but we must assume they will still uphold this until and if we see a public repudiation of this position. A self-criticism which the CP-OL is not famous for, is also due the masses of workers and the communist movement.
The comrades from LPR (ML) pointed out to us one more example of the CP-OL’s reformism that we want to share with you. In the Call issue of February 20, 1978 the CP-OL has an editorial calling for the celebration of IWD. First of all they call for the full equality of women without making it clear that women cannot be equal to men under capitalism but only under socialism and communism. This is reformism.
They fail to put forward socialism as the only solution to the women question. Thus they fail to demarcate themselves from bourgeois feminism and objectively align with it. They fail to mention the leading role of the working class and their slogans have no class content which means that they are collaborating with the bourgeoisie. Overall, this is typical of the CP-OL’s program which is not one of revolutionaries but one of reformists.
Since its unity statement in 1973, the OL has paid lip service to the woman question in its pamphlets, newspaper, etc. But this is socialism in words only. Its practice has been to belittle the development of women in its own ranks and among the masses. It is the CP-OL line to put women, especially minority women, who are untrained, unguided and theoretically underdeveloped, into the front ranks of its rallies and activities. This lack of leadership is only a belittlement of women. We have this experience from ex-OL people. Another example is what happened at the OL Chicano Forum in August, 1976.
Women presented speeches in that forum, but once the struggle started were put into the background by the male, particularly the white male, leadership. Using women as tokens to prove that they uphold the equality of women, such is the line of the OL and now the so-called CP-ML.
The draft program of the OL’s organizing committee which formed the CP-ML is another example. Point number seven on women’s liberation was nearly the least developed position in a program that was totally underdeveloped.
The Call article of March 7, 1977 and the CP-OL pamphlet “Women’s Liberation” are but two of many examples of how they have never been willing to admit the existence of male chauvinism much less the need to struggle against it in the ranks of the working class or the communist movement. In the article they say male chauvinism exists but put forward no slogan or ideas on combatting it except to quote Lenin on how even after the revolution such chauvinism must be combatted. Ii the pamphlet, the most they have to say is that: “The majority of men are victimized by women’s oppression rather than (being) the beneficiaries of it. . . Unity of men and women in the struggle against women’s oppression and imperialism as a whole does not mean that backward ideas and practices based on the ruling class view that women are inferior must not be criticized.”
They are so sensitive about this subject that they can’t even come out and say that such backward ideas and practices must be struggled against wherever they appear. How can they expect to help liberate the masses of women if they cannot even deal openly with male chauvinism among the working class. This can only liquidate the struggle in the CP-OL ranks and in any movement they may ever lead.
The editorial this year equally ignores male chauvinism. In their party program the CP-OL made what was for them a qualitative leap. In the chapter on the woman question, they added the sentence: “Our Party wages a consistent struggle for women’s equality in all spheres, including the working class family.” The question we would ask is Where could they possibly be doing this struggle if they don’t even understand that the problem exists and must be dealt with?
The CP-OL’s subjectivist idealism leads them to view the class and communist forces as pure proletarians who have no bad tendencies. In Class Struggle #1, 1975 as in many other places, they state: “This (male) chauvinism represents the ideology of the capitalist class and must find no fertile soil to grow in within our ranks.” In other words, there is no chauvinism today in their ranks and all they must do is insure that no chauvinism starts to grow in their ranks. The Marxist teachers have clearly taught that bourgeois ideology always finds its way into the ranks of the working class. Any organization that thinks it has no male chauvinism can only be one whose members have been living in caves all their lives and even then they may be wrong.
The OL and the CP-ML now have never recognized the danger of conciliation to male chauvinism. They have always summed up the deviations on the woman question as being male chauvinism primarily and bourgeois feminism secondarily. It is true that bourgeois feminism is the leading bourgeois ideology in the women’s movement. But to transfer that dogmatically into the ranks of the communist and worker’s movements and into their organizations is to fail to make an objective analysis of the history of the woman question (movement).
In nearly all trade unions, in nearly all revolutionary student organizations, in nearly all other organizations, the secondary danger is not bourgeois feminism but conciliation to male chauvinism. It is male chauvinism primarily and conciliating to that chauvinism that prevents women from developing as leaders, from participating nearly at all.
By failing to recognize that and by raising that feminism is the secondary danger in all contexts, the CP-OL has laid the groundwork for maintaining the oppression of women in the communist ranks. Women as a whole would thus be burdened by the analysis that the main danger is for them to go “too far” in demanding their share in the responsibilities and leadership of organizations and their struggles. Actually, the main danger for them is that they will not be allowed to go far enough, they will not be trained to go far enough, they will not try hard enough to blaze new trails and undertake greater responsibilities.
Those of us who follow such a line will inevitably wind up in the same swamp with the CP-OL if we do not repudiate such a line.
The CP-OL cadre are continually forced into collaborating with the bourgeoisie, the State and the social props by their thoroughly right opportunist line. By supporting the ERA for example, the CP-OL is objectively collaborating with the bourgeoisie to mislead the masses into relying on and having faith in capitalism.
In the IWD march in Denver in 1975, the OL committed the widely known act of collaborating with the State by relying on the police to quell and settle disturbance between the bourgeois feminist contingent and the OL march. This is the same thing they did in the Boston busing struggle where they called for the Nationa1 Guard to defend the Black masses. This is not how communists handle contradictions among the people not even with the enemy. To call into use and rely on the police is class collaboration of the worse kind. It is indicative of how the CP-OL would act in a revolutionary situation or a crisis and lead the masses to slaughter.
One last example. The CP-OL has made famous their work around an immigration raid at Gerry’s, a Denver plant. They have used it to show how they are upholding the rights of undocumented workers and fighting for the rights of women in the plants. But it is really an example of how far the CP-OL will go to collaborate with the bourgeoisie. The women who were picked up by the Migra could have immediately gotten their jobs back at Gerry’s. This has always been the exploitative policy of the company. But the CP-OL directly told the women not to go back to work until they had their rally at the plant. They wanted to be able to claim that it was their actions that had gotten the women their jobs back.
So what we have here besides a good example of opportunism, is a four-step attempt to keep the Mexicana women from their jobs. First the company lets in the Migra, secondly the Migra pulls them out of work, thirdly the union bureaucrats fail to defend the women and to put that communist touch to it, the CP-OL then tells the Mexicanas not to go back to work. This is a good example also of how the four can work together to keep themselves or try to put themselves in power at the expense of the living standards of the oppressed women.
We hope that we have made our points clear and that it has helped to better understand the line of the CP-OL and its implications. This right opportunism is part of the main danger in the U.S. communist-movement. We hope that the line and practice of all individuals and organizations can be soon rid of any such influences. This will help move us forward to the day that this line and its adherents and proponents are completely defeated. It will move forward the struggle for women’s emancipation and socialism.
One participant raised molarities about the difference between affirmative action and the issue of superseniority. It was pointed out that most affirmative action programs are genuine gains that were forced on the capitalists through mass struggles. These struggles can and have been used to target those who are denying the jobs to women and oppressed nationalities, the ruling class. Affirmative action enables a few women to enter into social production and take part directly in class struggle.
Superseniority, on the other hand was not “won” through any struggle, but rather in most cases was devised by the capitalists and union bureaucrats to divide the workers. Superseniority does not go against discrimination, it goes beyond it and bestows artificial benefits that were not earned. Superseniority also goes against another genuine gain won through struggle, seniority, which protects workers against the arbitrary attacks of the bosses. Superseniority allows the ruling class to artificially jockey around seniority rights, violating job security for older workers.
The struggle for affirmative action, moreover, demands that the ruling class recognize the equal skills and qualifications of women and oppressed nationalities. The demand is for access to the work place going against many years of savage oppression and discrimination. In their propaganda, the ruling class tries to make these real gains appear as “artificial benefits”. So it is also in this sense that capitalists use superseniority which is_ an artificial benefit in order to discredit affirmative action (“these women are taking your job away” etc.) by not making any distinction between the two.
Most fundamentally capitalists use this superseniority to try to divide the working class, by making male workers pay for the effects of capitalist oppression – its lay-offs and resulting speed-ups and so on. Superseniority targets the men instead of the capitalists who are doing the lay-offs that are required to maintain their profits especially in periods of economic crisis. The system of monopoly capitalism with its necessary and severe crises gets off the hook while the workers fight amongst themselves. Instead all the workers, all nationalities, men and women should be mobilized against the lay-offs, against the attempts to place the general crises of capitalism on the shoulders of the workers, against the capitalists themselves.