Women Workers Must Lead Fight for Communism
Petrograd, Russia, 1917
Three thousand Egyptian garment workers, mainly women, went on strike on February 7 at two factories owned by the giant company El-Kubra. They suspended their strike – the second in four months – after authorities threatened five women leaders with jail or firing.
This strike for a wage “bonus” was part of a wave of protests against steep inflation imposed by the International Monetary Fund. Sugar workers walked out in December. In January, workers shut down the Covertina Sweet Factory and workers at the IFFCO oils and soap factory in Suez held a sit-in.
The garment workers have also been in the forefront of political struggles, including the protests that toppled the Mubarak regime. One day they will join the fight to end the wage system with communist revolution. So will women in the maquilas of El Salvador, the garment factories of Los Angeles (USA) and the sweatshops of Bangladesh. Our job is to hasten that day by spreading Red Flag far and wide.
Women Workers and Revolution
On International Working Women’s Day a century ago, thousands of female factory workers led bread riots in Petrograd. This sparked a massive days-long citywide demonstration. Over 100,000 workers demanded food. They wanted Russia to get out of World War I.
The Czar ordered troops to fire on unarmed crowds. That backfired. Sixty thousand troops from the Petrograd garrison joined the strikers. They forced the Czar to abdicate.
This “February Revolution” installed the liberal capitalist Kerensky government. More troops were sent to kill and die. Masses still went hungry.
The communists (Bolsheviks) had to go underground. They mobilized their massive base in factories and the military. Communist women (the Zhenotdel) mobilized women workers. Eight months later the Bolsheviks led these masses to seize power in the “October Revolution.”
The Bolsheviks organized for “peace, land, bread,” not for communism. Their “New Economic Policy” (NEP) tried to manage capitalist development. Then they built socialism. That maintained core elements of capitalism, including wage labor, markets, money. They elevated nationalism over working-class internationalism.
The young Soviet state took steps to relieve the sexist oppression of women. It undercut the backward influence of the Russian Orthodox Church. It legalized divorce, birth control and abortion. Soviet women organized collective childcare.
But prostitution flourished under the NEP. Socialism left many women workers in dire poverty. The nationalist surge in the 1930s depicted women mainly as child-bearers for “the motherland.”
The Bolsheviks expected socialism to advance toward communism. Instead, because socialism kept the wage system, it evolved into full-blown market capitalism. Today, Russian workers need communist revolution as badly as they did a century ago.
Communism versus Feminism
Masses are outraged at the Trump administration. Calls for a general strike circulate on social media although no major organizations are organizing one. Young adults, especially, are seeking alternatives to capitalism. The International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) must inspire them with our vision of communism.
Liberal activists are scrambling to keep up with the masses. Their “pro-democracy” politics actually support capitalism. “Women’s March” organizers have called for a “global women’s strike” on International Women’s Day. Feminists in thirty countries are organizing mass actions, boycotts and “abstaining from domestic, care and sex work.”
What a difference a century makes! Liberal feminists tell us to skip work only if we won’t get in trouble! The official themes (“love and liberation”) and issues (“male violence” and “reproductive rights”) avoid any hint of class struggle.
In 1917, women workers fought for “bread and peace” while middle-class women raised liberal political reform demands. Similarly, Red Flag readers must fight for revolutionary communism in the “Women’s Strike” and other mass activities, whether spontaneous or under liberal leadership.
Let’s organize political strikes that target capitalism! Let’s mobilize masses directly for communism! Soldiers and industrial workers, women and men, are key. When they organize collectively to shut down production for profit, they glimpse the possibility of seizing power. They can lead the fight for communist production that meets the masses’ needs.
Imagine a future where workers don’t have to strike for a “wage bonus” because there are no wages. Where nobody has to demand bread because we who grow the grain and bake the loaves will share them freely. Where the only war we fight is the revolution to end class society. And where the end of class society allows us to win the struggle against sexism, racism and nationalism.
Do you share this communist vision? Then celebrate International Women’s Day 2017 by distributing Red Flag on the job and at mass events. And by joining the ICWP!
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