First Published: The Call, Vol. 6, No. 3, January 24, 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
The October League has issued a call for mass demonstrations to take place on Saturday, March 5 commemorating International Women’s Day (IWD). The actions, scheduled to take place in New York, Chicago, Atlanta and San Francisco, will demonstrate militant opposition to imperialism and its attacks on women.
A broad united front of women and men workers, minorities, students, third world people and others will be mobilized under the slogans: FULL EQUALITY FOR WOMEN! SUPPORT THE STRUGGLES OF THE THIRD WORLD PEOPLES! and END SUPERPOWER WAR PREPARATIONS!
This year’s celebrations of IWD come at a time when women face unprecedented attacks by capitalism. The continuing economic crisis has thrown millions of women out of work and forced them to suffer an unemployment rate considerably higher than men. Cutbacks in welfare, day-care, food stamps and other social service programs have brought starvation conditions to households headed by women. Forced sterilizations of poor and minority women have become widespread as part of capitalism’s “solution” to its crisis.
Many of the gains which were won through intense class Struggle over the last few years have been wiped out. Women have been pushed out of some of the better-paid industrial jobs which they were allowed to enter for the first time only recently. The Supreme Court has passed numerous decisions in the last year attacking women’s rights, such as the recent ruling that employers do not have to provide maternity benefits for women. Similarly, the capitalists have refused to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. In several states, earlier passage of the ERA was overturned.
These are some of the conditions which give great urgency to the IWD slogan bf “Full Equality for Women.”
IWD itself has a long and militant history as a working-class holiday. For over half a century, it has been a time to unite men and women in the fight against capitalism.
IWD was initiated by the German communist Clara Zetkin in 1910 as a holiday to commemorate the March 8, 1908, strike of women garment workers in New York City. The militant battle against sweatshop conditions waged by those women, many of them immigrants or very young workers, inspired workers in every country and led to the declaration of March 8 as IWD.
Today, this history of internationalism is a very important aspect of the women’s struggle. The same imperialists who exploit women and other workers here in the U.S. also exploit and oppress the people of the whole world, especially the third world. Along with the U.S. imperialists, the Soviet social-imperialists are today the main exploiters, oppressors and aggressors against women and men all over the world.
The countries and peoples of the third world have become the main force fighting imperialism, the rule of the superpowers and their frantic war preparations. From the battlefields of Indochina to the Palestinian guerrilla camps to the streets of Soweto, South Africa, women are a vital part of every struggle against imperialism, colonialism and racial discrimination.
Behind the slogans “Support the Struggles of the Third World Peoples!” and “End Superpower War Preparations!” lies the understanding that the struggle of women here in the U.S. is a component part of this vast international struggle against imperialism.
Targeting the Soviet social-imperialists is especially important since they pretend to be a “great friend” of the women’s liberation movement. In fact, the USSR and its mouthpiece here in the U.S., the revisionist Communist Party, are trying to sabotage the growing revolutionary movement of women. They want to turn it into a support-group for the Soviet version of “detente,” which means growing superpower rivalry and increasing Soviet aggression.
Celebrations of IWD over the last few years have grown and expanded through the fight against revisionism and reformism. Struggles around the celebration of IWD over the last two years have won a victory in building a revolutionary movement which opposes “united action” with the revisionists and targets them as an enemy of the struggle.
This year, in addition to exposing the treachery of the revisionists, IWD actions will hit hard at the reformist labor bureaucrats, who collaborate with the bosses to keep women out of the unions and to promote divisions between men and women.
IWD events this year come in the midst of preparations for the founding of a new communist party in the U.S. Armed with the science of Marxism-Leninism, the new communist party will educate millions of people in the understanding that the oppression of women, along with all other injustices of, society, has its basis in the dictatorship wielded by the capitalists over the masses of people. Where the working class has seized power, as in China an d Albania, women have been liberated and centuries of oppression overthrown.
The planning for the IWD actions will draw many more women into activity in the fight against capitalism. The last year’s struggles have demonstrated the great fighting capacity of women. From the Chicago nurses’ strike to the organizing drives in southern textile mills, to the movement to free Gary Tyler, women have played an active and leading role.
IWD is the time to bring these strong class fighters together and unite men and women in the common fight for women’s equality and against the imperialist system.