1. RAT was set up by the pseudo-left through the pig Guardian early in 1958. In this city the counterfeit left means C.P., S.W.P./Y.S.A., Workers World/Y.A.W.F,, G.L.F., P.L.Pig. We regard these groups as arms of the ruling class and we know they are all ridden with police agents. The influences we see in the RAT are those of the YAWF, CP., G.L.F. and we are sure that there are no weatherwomen, nor have there ever been, involved in the RAT or its so-called “takeover.” Indeed the RAT has continually tried to implicate and provoke the weather underground into exposure. The real revolution women are extremely distrustful of RAT and will have nothing to do with it.
2. You say “...how important it is to see clearly all the distinctions among men. The feminist Revolution is going to require among other things, one of the most delicate Juggling acts in history and greater disunity among the various classes of men...”
In order to carry the revolution victorious through to the total emancipation or liberation of women it is essential to grasp the primary contradiction at the weakest link in the chain of contradictions. The oppression of women as a sex and the exploitation and oppression, of the workingclass (at least 60% female) and the exploitation of the proletariat (overwhelmingly female) are two separate contradictions in society, which in different historical periods give rise to antagonism (violent struggle). Both contradictions are struggles of the oppressed and exploited against the oppressor and exploiter. Both are inseparably interconnected and interdependent and interact upon each other. They are different yet the same and cannot exist without each other. However, you pose this as if the contradictions were diametrical opposites in no way interacting and related to each other. In fact, one gave rise to the other. Classes are founded upon private property and we recognize that monogamy (defeat of mother-right–inheritance in the male line) was the first form of class struggle. The oppression of children led to the enslavement of mothers. Who was responsible? Fathers? But not by virtue of superiority and “natural authority” or even calculated desire for supremacy. (Don’t give men that much credit.) Society is subject to irresistable social laws, powerful material reproductive and productive forces, which, if we grasp them in their dialectic, can serve the cause of oppressed workingwomen. To place women outside the class struggle is to place women outside society, the great social battlefield of class war upon which we must launch our victorious revolution. If the bourgeoisie has written women out of history, the feminist revolutionaries must arm with dialectical and historical materialism. It is class that divides women and it is the same class system that divides men. (If then you regard men to be the enemy, then you should want to play on and heighten the contradictions within the enemies ranks.)
Civilization appears with the subjugation of the female to the male: didn’t the wife create the prostitute?? No, the husband did. Because all the males conspired? No, production gave rise to property and private ownership of first cattle and weapons as possessions of the males. Group “marriage” with matrilineal descent gave way in the face of the emerging productive forces, to monogamy with descent and inheritance in the male line. The new question of who was to inherit property was solved – it was to be the son of the father. It was a short step from cattle to chattel (the first form of slavery). The oppression and ultimately proletarianization of women is all bound up with property. It is private property in the means of production and the class relations that rose from it that dominates our society (bourgeois society). It is clear that the son is not responsible for the oppression of his mother, just as it is not the mother who is responsible for the oppression of her daughter. If we isolate the family from society it is the father who is the oppressor but we must place the family in the context of society because society is made up of families.
3. The Panther Convention: The second Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention, starring Huey P. Newton, which shuttled through the “new constitution” with no democratic consultation was two steps backward for the Black Panther Party. They totally abandoned the question of the black nation, and with it they chucked internationalism. This new line of “intercommunalism” (Every nation is a community i.e. ghetto, every ghetto is a nation) is the worst porkchop nationalism deriving from Leroi Jones so-called “African communalism” with its glorification of Black Manhood and supremacy in tribal societies. This is reflected in the Panther position on the women’s movement. Contrast the Young Lords Party which correctly relates to the national liberation struggle of Puerto Rico. There has been a concrete struggle against machismo which has led to demotion of Chairman Felipe Luciano to rank-and-file and affirmation of collective leadership, hence the leadership of the women. So new Chair“man” has appeared, The YLP “position paper on women” does not favor “homosexual liberation”, so-called “gay”, i.e., faggot males over the liberation of women like Huey P. Newtonism. The struggle of nations against imperialism (primarily U.S. Imperialism) is the main contradiction in the world today and that means inside the “U.S.A” too. The oppression of nations did not rise directly (immediately) from monogamy but it is certainly related and interdependent. National-minority sisters are certainly the most oppressed of the oppressed. Most national-minority women in pignation are also exploited as proletarians (i.e. industrial workers) as well as being oppressed and exploited as women (mothers, wives, prostitutes). Once the Panthers, downgraded the women’s movement it was not long before they threw the national question out the window. If people could swallow that shit about “gay liberation” they could swallow anything.
4. “Women-Identified-Women” rather concluded that more of a power base was necessary before the Panthers would take the demands of feminists seriously. Only this would change the Panthers “low consciousness about women.”
Only the Panther women can change the Black Panther Party. The panther is a “cat” remember and not a “chick”. Women in the Young Lords Party are neither Ladies nor Lords, Revolutionary women must criticise these groups as a whole in a comradely manner, as the Communists say, because these are genuinely revolutionary mass organizations even though the leadership may be bad. Thus, we can heighten this contradiction of male-chauvinism within the group. However, the basis for change internal and it is the Panther and YLP sisters who have the power. (By the way, the line from the RAT on the Panther Convention corresponds with Y.A.W.F.’s.)
5. “...black women might have their own reasons for fighting for a family and sound feminist reasons at that.”
We do not think that it is ever in the interest of women to fight for the family because the family is the instrument through which male supremacy is perpetrated. The family is the vehicle of women’s oppression. The family will not be “abolished” overnight, but we know that prostitution, the spectre that haunts the family, can be eliminated within a relatively short period once the most oppressed and exploited women are armed and organised with political power in their hands and bourgeois marriage laws are abolished. Monogamy may literally mean “one wife” but in practice it means “one husband” for women with adulterous sexual exploitation of women other than the wife the privilege of the male. In fact “heterosexual” means exactly that, sex between a married man and an unmarried woman or prostitute (hetaire). Marriage is prostitution, its form is the family. Prostitution is the negation of marriage by the male. We must smash the family and negate the negation.
6. You speak of “...What we call the nuclear or heterosexual family.”
We think that the term “nuclear” is a bourgeois sociological term. Correctly, the form of the family that exists in pignation is the “monogamous family.” Marriage institutionalizes the family. The family can never be revolutionary for women but we are going to make sure that women will never be prostituted through marriage again.
7. “If we stop fighting for our own liberation to help groups even worse off than ourselves, we will never get around to our own liberation.”
Right on. Among all the oppressed classes there are none more oppressed than the women of those classes. Women are the most oppressed and exploited of all the oppressed and exploited. That is why they are potentially the most revolutionary and are proving it every day, especially now in the oppressed nations. If something isn’t in the interest of the proletarian women it isn’t in the interest of the proletariat. The national-minority proletarian women are the most advanced, highly conscious women in history and it will be they who lead the coming proletarian revolution in pignation.
These reformist demands (i.e. August 26 Strike Coalition) are decidedly not in the revolutionary interest of women. Nothing is in the interest of women but revolution. In this historical epoch, REVOLUTION means the proletariat overthrowing the bourgeoisie. (The word “proletariat” (from the French) means “those who breed”) In fact, proletarian women are the proletariat in the proletariat.
In the context of the family, the husband is the bourgeoisie, hence we can speak of proletarian men as the “bourgeoisie” in the proletariat. The male reaps certain privileges, on different levels for different sectors of the workingclass, and benefits in varying degrees from the oppression of the females. In the long range too however it is in the interest of the proletarian and all workingclass males to help overthrow the systematic oppression of women. No male chauvinist can be a Communist.
8. “The problem with the labor movement was not that it fought for its own interests. The problem was that the workers failed to fight all the way to seize power and win real liberation.”
Only proletarian revolution is in the interest of the workingclass. The proletariat does not replace one form of slavery with another. We do not forget that in the the workingclass there are contradictions that are expressed in three different sectors of the class at present in pignation. These are the aristocracy of labor, the proletariat, and the lumpen-proletariat. The interests of the proletariat and the lumpen-proletariat are not opposed to each other. The overwhemlming number of working women fall into the proletariat or the lumpen-proletarlat. Unemployed and welfare women are lumpen-proletarians. Proletarian women are those employed in heavy industries and concentrated by corporations (i.e. telephone company) into secretarial pools. The aristocracy of labor is the most highly bribed, privileged sector of the class. At this stage the interests of the aristocracy of labor sector is opposed to the interest of the class as a whole. The aristocracy of labor is just about totally male, white-skinned, skilled “craftsmen”, organized in scab unions. It is in their interest now to maintain U.S. Imperialism and their bloodsucking standard of living. It doesn’t matter that they are actually part of the workingclass (they work for wages); we are going to fight them too if they stand in the way of the most oppressed and exploited workers. The “hardhats” are good example of the aristocracy of labor, easily bought out by the police or fascist unions. Proletarian revolution means eliminating this sector of the class, along with the bourgeoisie. However, the “wives” or “housewives” of aristocracy of labor men will inevitably be more progressive than their husbands; majority of these women will not oppose the women’s movement and will probably join it under the leadership of the national-minority proletarian women. This will greatly heighten the contradictions within the aristocracy of labor.
9. “Women have also scabbed” on the strikes of all-male unions...”
It should also be noted that women have also built unions and lead many labor struggles, including the first strikes in the U.S. Unless they did build them themselves, women were always excluded from membership in “trade unions.” The unions are not revolutionary organizations and at this time in pignation; they are tools for keeping the aristocracy of labor bribed and bought out. In fact, unions are organized scabbery.
National-minority proletarian men have the least interest in maintaining imperialism, capitalism, and the subjugation of women. This does not mean that machismo or male-chauvinism is not still a rampant disease afflicting the class, the family itself carries the infection. Cure the sickness to save the patient.
10. “A woman like myself is more nearly a threat to you since I am still in the market for a man.” Marriage has been called a market in which men and women are mutually sold to each other. However, what can’t be sold can’t be bought. Communists and feminists must, unite to put an end to the trade in women. We are here to destroy the marketplace.