First Published: The Organizer, Vol. 6, No. 9, September 1980.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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To the Organizer:
Florence Buckley’s speech, “Racism, Feminism, and Rape” in the July Organizer is worth some extended comment. Buckley’s speech should open up a necessary discussion about the relationship of Marxist-Leninists to the women’s movement, and the ideological questions that are part of that discussion.
In laying out part of PWOC’s position on racism and its analysis of feminism, Florence Buckley makes evident some of the strengths of the former and weaknesses of the latter. PWOC commendably seeks to move beyond the grave analytical and practical mistakes that have characterized American Marxists in the past on the issue of racism. Lack of understanding of racism’s depth and pervasiveness in the culture and its inter-relationship to the class question have been major failings of the American left. PWOC has studied this history and made the struggle against racism a basic part of their work. So far, so good.
But the PWOC analysis stumbles badly, I think, in its understanding of the relationship of both racism and sexism to the foundations of our culture. PWOC acknowledges in practice, though its theory is weak on this aspect, the extent 1 to which racism exists beyond material self-interest and the corporate quest for super-profits. As an ideology, racism predates capitalism in this country and will post-date the introduction of socialism. Racism was built into the formation of this country and its strength, obviously, interacts with and is reinforced by class exploitation. Also obviously, it exists autonomously of class exploitation to a significant degree. If this latter point were not so, there would be no need for struggling ideologically against racism. We would instead, as American Marxists generally have for too long, subsume the struggle against racism under the class struggle and assume that somehow the struggle for socialism alone will end racism. This view, fortunately, is no longer acceptable, and has proven bankrupt in practice.
Having made this practical advance, PWOC makes some major mistakes in its analysis of feminism. Speaking of the women’s movement Buckley notes that it ...“cannot succeed if it keeps missing the fact that sexism is rooted in class society.” This is true enough but not complete. Sexism, like racism, predates capitalism and exists, in significant degree, autonomously from class exploitation. Here again as with racism, this point doesn’t subordinate the class struggle but confirms the need for a deeper understanding of sexism’s roots in our culture; sexism’s relationship to the struggle for socialism; and the need for ideological struggle against sexism.
Florence Buckley’s speech apparently continues the mistaken notion that there is no ideological struggle needed against sexism since she makes little acknowledgement of its ideological form. Instead she sets up her one-dimensional definition of feminism, and after investing it with racist properties, knocks it down with appropriate ease. The reality, I submit, is a little more complex. Battling racism has been correctly identified as a fundamental struggle for feminists. But this is not news to a good number of feminists. Nor is the relationship and interaction between the sex and class questions a revelation to many feminists. Buckley conveniently ignores the fact that feminism has varying tendencies engaged in struggles over the specific manifestations of these questions. She has substituted caricature for a substantive analysis of feminism. If this type of analysis were extended to, say, the Black movement, that movement could well be denounced as “bourgeois” after citing the ideas of Vernon Jordan and Benjamin Hooks, and no one else’s.
There are sharply differing political positions within feminism. A shared perspective within it is the impatience about the incompleteness and inadequacy of past Left analysis and practice about sexism. Buckley’s speech, while containing a useful analysis of rape, continues in that long tradition of Left obtuseness about sexism.
And finally, it should be stated that the energy, consciousness and skills of PWOC would be better served by some engagement in the struggle they criticize. The self-righteous, lecturing tone of Buckley’s speech surely operates against what she wants to convey and do. From the reports received, the struggle against racism took practical form in the planning of Take Back the Night. But PWOC was nowhere to be found when that struggle was taking place and when their criticism could have had maximum impact. The content of leaflets, the choice of slogans and speakers, the outreach and the structure of decision making were all extensions of the struggle against racism within the planning of the action. PWOC should have been there, not outside scoring points with cadre and reducing its relationship to the women’s movement to irrelevance.
PWOC has earned respect for its past work. It has an important place in the political life of this city, particularly in the workers movement and the struggle against racism. But the PWOC analysis of sexism and feminism is simply inadequate, both in understanding the two phenomena and in providing a non-sectarian guide to action.
In struggle,
Ed Nakawatase
Ed Nakawatase makes three points in his letter. One, that we fail to understand the need for an ideological struggle against sexism, two that our analysis of feminism is a “caricature” in that we fail to take into account the more advanced expressions of feminism and three that our practice in relation to the women’s movement is characterized by sectarianism.
These are all significant criticisms demanding of response. But we are struck that Nakawatase avoids taking any position on what was the central point of Buckley’s speech, namely that the women’s movement’s failure to recognize the strategic primacy of the struggle against racism is its more serious weakness and that this weakness is rooted in white chauvinism and the ideological premises of feminism. This is the question that, in our view, should be the focal point for discussion and struggle.
On Nakawatase’s first point, only the most, vulgar “Marxist” would deny that ideological struggle against sexism is necessary and that sexist ideology has an existence independent of class exploitation. This is not the source of the difference between Marxism and feminism. The real difference centers on two distinct views of the material foundation of male supremacy and thus two divergent views of how to eradicate it.
Feminists, including prominent socialist feminists like Sheila Rowbotham locate male supremacy in the institution of patriarchy. While acknowledging that patriarchy is a necessary feature of capitalist and earlier class society, socialist-feminists also argue that patriarchy can co-exist along side socialism. They deny that the eradication of male supremacy is one of the imperatives of the class struggle. This is because they view male workers as beneficiaries of privileges and power bestowed by patriarchy. A revolution based on the class interests of the workers, according to the socialist-feminist view, leaves this power and privilege untouched. Rather there must be a revolution that targets capitalism and patriarchy co-equally. During the building of socialism, class struggle is insufficient to move forward in the eradication of sexism. Only an autonomous women’s movement can address this task. This, we think, is a fair summary of the socialist-feminist view.
The conception of capitalism and patriarchy as distinct, co-equal phenomena is the reason for the designation, socialist-feminist. To be just one or the other misrepresents the character of the revolution these forces see as necessary.
Marxism takes issue with this view at a number of points. While acknowledging that sexist ideas and practices do not spontaneously disappear after a proletarian revolution, Marxists hold that the working class, including male workers, has no interest in preserving this legacy of class society. On the contrary its interests as a class demand sexual equality. To the degree the class struggle goes forward under socialism male supremacy will wane. Socialist-feminism negates the revolutionary potential and leading role of the working class. It denies that class struggle is the motive force of history. This stand reflects the class essence of socialist-feminism as a petty bourgeois system of politics.
The subjective origins of these politics should be apparent. Middle class women experience their oppression primarily as women. They readily generalize that the sexual contradiction is, if not primary, at least co-equal with class exploitation in explaining the oppressive features of society that they perceive. Like middle class men, they are saturated with prejudices toward the working class. The notion that the working class will be the principle force that emancipates them does not easily square with these prejudices. The “autonomous women’s movement” existing along side the working class movement as a co-equal partner in building a revolutionary society provides a conceptual means to preserve the privileged position of the petty bourgeois vis-a-vis the working class.
Significantly, socialist-feminists have not extended their analysis to the question of racism and national oppression. To be consistent they would have to argue that class struggle is insufficient to eradicate racism because whites have a vested interest in the structure of privileges associated with white supremacy. Thus the revolution must target this institution as a co-equal enemy with capitalism and patriarchy. The term socialist-feminist thus falls short and should be extended to read socialist, anti-racist, feminist. What is it, other than white chauvinism, that explains the selectivity of the socialist-feminists when it comes to the “autonomy” of different forms of oppression?
Nakawatase argues that we fail to take into account the diversity of feminist views and more specifically that some feminists are cognizant of questions of race and class. We disagree that we are caricaturing feminism by focusing on its most backward expressions. As the above discussion of socialist-feminism seeks to argue, the manifestations of white chauvinism and anti-working class bias are not limited to the most backward forces.
Feminism as a whole rejects the leading role of the working class and the strategic primacy of the struggle against racism. This is part of what gives it its unity and coherence as a distinct ideological trend, regardless of any number of differences that obviously exist within the feminist spectrum.
If feminism means anything at all there must be a common politic and certain shared theoretical premises that distinguish it from other trends. We think that there is a common view of the sexual contradiction and its relationship to the class struggle. Like all ideas this view has a definite class character. This is what we are trying to draw out. In this context a discussion of the range of views in the feminist movement would have been wholly inappropriate in Buckley’s speech.
Nakawatase goes on to say the PWOC “would be better served by some engagement in the struggle they criticize.” It is not the struggle against sexism which we are criticizing but rather the approach to that struggle by conscious feminist forces. In relation to our role in advancing the struggle against sexism we are self-critical (and have been so in the pages of the Organizer) for failing to play a consistent role within the women’s movement generally and in relation to Take Back the Night in particular. We think, however, our decision to distribute a broadside critical of slogan and politics of the TBN action in conjunction with mobilizing for it was a break with our history of sectarianism and not a continuation of it.
Nakawatase correctly says we should have been there when the slogans, speakers and other matters basic to the politics of the event were being determined. But by the same token we must ask where were the advanced feminist forces Nakawatase alludes to when it came to developing anti-racist propaganda and agitation that could compensate for the weaknesses of the activity and educate the thousands of women there around the vital question of racism and rape? As far as we can determine, these forces believe it was a sectarian error to put out such material. Certainly they did not do so and certainly there was nearly universal criticism of the PWOC from these quarters for distributing its broadside.
Perhaps these forces did argue for a more advanced perspective within the planning committee, but when push came to shove their problems with the politics that eventually emerged were not of the magnitude to warrant any public criticism of the event. Judged by their practice we can only conclude that concern with “alienating” other white women was of considerably more importance than developing the anti-racist content of the action. The struggle against racism is fine and good but (white) sisterhood is powerful.