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Sexism is a Class Issue:

Communism Will Create Material Basis for Ending Sexism

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Donald Trump’s disgusting attacks on women have highlighted the dangers of sexism.  His “grab what you can” attitude perfectly expresses capitalist ideology.  But it’s not just about him. 
The super-oppression and super-exploitation of women is rooted in class society and private property.  Its material basis today is capitalist wage slavery.  To end sexism, we must mobilize masses for a classless society:  communism.  And to do that we must all fight hard against sexism, racism and xenophobia today.
In early communist societies, women and men often had different roles.  But everyone’s work and knowledge was valued.  All contributed to the collective good.  Everyone helped to make important decisions.  Nobody “owned” or controlled anyone else.
Then private property arose.  Men dominated the priestly and warrior roles that defined an emerging ruling class.  They gradually claimed women as their possessions, hoping to pass their wealth to their biological sons.  They imposed their sexist ideology – often framed as religion – on the masses of propertyless men and women.

Rising capitalism made things worse.  Enslaved men and women saw their common interests. Agricultural societies distinguished “women’s” from “men’s” work but respected both.  But capitalism elevated monetary “exchange value” above “use value.”  So wage-labor (for money) devalued women’s unpaid (although necessary) housework.  
Twentieth-century bosses converted many tasks historically done by women at home into wage-labor.  Examples include making clothes, caring for children and the sick, preparing food.  This allowed capitalists to amass super-profits by paying lower wages to women workers and driving down men’s wages too.   In the US these were often black or immigrant women. 

Today women workers are super-exploited from maquilas in El Salvador to garment sweatshops in south Asia.  Their low wages are “justified” by an ideology that promotes men as “breadwinners” and women as “homemakers.”  Women’s wages, though critical to most households, are labeled as “only supplemental.”
A comrade in South Africa tells of working the hard and dirty job of road construction with her baby on her back.   Today many working-class women everywhere shoulder a double burden:  super-exploited wage labor and primary responsibility for housework and child-rearing. 
Consider the New York Times’ praise for recruiting teenagers for Bangalore sweatshops.  Their “independence” supposedly lay in the cellphones they could use to marry for love.  Their real destiny is supposed to be marriage and family.  That’s why they (and we) are supposed to accept their pitifully low wages and backbreaking work. 
This is straight-up sexist ideology.  It comes from the same liberal rulers who hypocritically bewail Trump’s crude remarks about women.
Bosses use sexism hand-in-hand with racism to divide the working class.  Trump tries to rally white male workers by scapegoating Muslims and immigrants, demeaning women and insulting black workers.  Liberal capitalist media try to turn women, immigrant and black workers against “uneducated white males.”
“My passengers [mostly latino/a] won’t talk to me anymore,” complained a white male bus operator who reads Red Flag.

Communism unifies the working masses.  We will organize production to build cooperation and solidarity among men and women of all “races,” “ethnicities” and abilities.  We will mobilize masses to create arts and culture that promote respect for all.
Communism will abolish money and markets, including wage labor.  When all work is to meet the needs of the masses, the material basis of sexism will disappear.
Communism will abolish private property.  No longer will social relationships be distorted by thinking of each other as commodities, as things to be used.  Children will be cherished by everyone, not regarded as their parents’ property.  We will enter or dissolve long-term relationships without regard for the property relations that define marriages today. 

Communism will create collective ways of living that end the isolated drudgery of housework.  Bolshevik women created “creches” (day care) in early Soviet Russia.   Later there were “children’s palaces” and factory-based cafeterias.  Still, the capitalist social relations that defined socialism undermined their best efforts to end sexism.
In China, the People’s Commune movement of the 1950s introduced free cafeterias, laundry, childcare and more.  The Chinese Communist Party declared that “women hold up half the sky.” Their socialist goal was for women to boost social production.  Our communist goal is for women and men to transform the social relations of production and develop everyone to their full potential. 

But ending the material basis of sexism will not be enough. Growing communist party collectives will mobilize mass struggle against sexist ideas and habits left over from capitalism.  This struggle starts today, as men and women communists confront racist or sexist language or abuse. 
To mobilize the masses for communism we must explain and act on our political line in workplaces, barracks, classrooms, locker rooms, at the dinner table and at Party events. When we make mistakes, we are open to criticism and try to learn. 
Female politicians and capitalists like Hillary Clinton are part of the problem (see box).  The masses of women and men will create the solution:  a communist world. 

Bourgeois feminism only helps the bourgeoisie

Bourgeois (pro-capitalist) feminists have seized on US presidential candidate Trump’s sexist attack on Hillary Clinton as a “nasty woman” as a chance to unite all US women behind Clinton.  Videos promoting assertive women from veterans of the US war in Iraq to Queen Victoria have popped up all over social media.  
The rulers, in this case the Democrats who represent the dominant wing of the US ruling class, want working class women to believe that they have more in common with their oppressors than they do with their class brothers. 
As we asked in our article for International Working Women’s Day this year: How can class enemies be “sisters”? 
Any worker who has lived in Angela Merkel’s Germany, Maggie Thatcher’s Britain, Winnie Mandela’s South Africa, Golda Meir’s Israel, Indira Gandhi’s India, or Dilma Rousseff’s Brazil, to name a few, should know that electing a woman doesn’t change the nature of class rule.

 

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