FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
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FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! |
International Communist Workers Party | |
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EL SALVADOR—The International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) is developing communist leadership of women from the maquilas to the teachers’ sectors. It struggles hard to do away with sexist behavior that discriminates against men and especially women, who today bear the brunt of sexism. The ICWP is a mass party in which women and men workers organize the struggle to smash capitalism and build communism.
In this country as in the entire world, sexism has become a powerful weapon of capitalism to divide and exploit the working class. It is the product of an ancient class-based culture with an ideology that discriminates against women, including the patriarchal cultural component.
Sexism is shown in the attitudes and behaviors that introduce unequal treatment between men and women on the basis of sexual differences. We must unravel these attitudes and behaviors from their roots, which are found in capitalism and all class society.
Sexism is a problem that is rarely discussed and has passed unnoticed, to the point that it even seems “normal.” This is inculcated every day, in many social institutions like the schools and the churches, where gender norms are dictated through study programs that are designed for this goal and which they want the children to learn.
The media use women as objects to sell goods and reinforce the domination of some and the subordination of others, thus achieving their objective of making sexism seem natural. Also, women get lower wages, are assigned tasks based on their gender, and have fewer job opportunities.
Thousands of women around the world have been involved in the revolutionary struggle. Nevertheless, in daily life these contributions have not been translated into a better life for women. This shows that the struggle for reforms makes the road longer and more winding and that women must fight directly for a communist system.
In the ICWP the participation of women has been significant. We must develop a conscious and constant ideological struggle so that women and men workers give leadership to mobilize the masses for communism.
In 1939 in El Salvador, a woman named Prudencia Ayala ran as a candidate for president. She knew it was impossible, since the law at the time did not recognize women as citizens and therefore they couldn’t even vote. Instead she ran to make the issue visible. It wasn’t until 1950 that women could vote.
Today women can participate in elections, but the real causes of discrimination continue intact. It’s not about electing people to public offices. If the system is the same, nothing substantial will happen.
Communism Will Eliminate Sexism
We will not have an education based on domination, but instead a communist education. Girls and boys will be educated as people, not limited by their condition of being a man or woman. In communism any person will carry out tasks like taking care of children, taking care of the sick, growing crops, working in a factory, hospital, carrying out research work, among others. These tasks will be done collectively regardless of the gender of those doing the work.
Women are and will be an essential part of participating in meetings to make decisions and resolve the problems of the community. Housework will be carried out by all the members of the family. There will not be feminized professions like nursing or teaching since both men and women could develop this work.
The media will use nonsexist language which is respectful towards people.
That is why it is important to organize tirelessly to mobilize the masses for communism. The work will be done according to society’s needs. An important aspect to fighting sexism is the disappearance of money, the material base which maintains sexism.
Women organized in ICWP do not fight for “rights.” We fight to liberate the masses from capitalist misery. We fight for communism. Red Flag is our newspaper. Let’s read it, organize, and distribute it. The working class deserves communism.
Sexism, Capitalism and the Zika Virus
Zika, sexism and capitalism will kill hundreds of women of childbearing age before the current epidemic is brought under control.
How can we make this claim? Nobody dies from the Zika virus. It’s a relatively mild illness, often with no symptoms at all.
But the consequences of getting Zika when you’re pregnant, and then giving birth to a child with microcephaly, can be devastating.
Government spokespersons in El Salvador, Ecuador and Brazil have told women to avoid having babies until 2018. But abortion is illegal and basic contraception is hard to come by in the countries where Zika is spreading. So this comes down to the ludicrous advice to postpone sexual intercourse for two years.
Sexism means that women are not always able, in practice, to give or withhold consent. Women workers will get pregnant during this epidemic, whether they want to or not. And they will see terrifying photos of babies with microcephaly.
Most of these women will lack basic medical services that would tell them if their fetuses are developing normally. They know there aren’t good services for developmentally disabled children. They know they have to hold a job for their families’ basic survival. And many women workers who become pregnant during this epidemic will seek out illegal abortions.
Britain’s public health services provide abortions for women who live in countries where abortion is illegal. If a wealthy woman (whose house definitely has screens and no standing water) happens to get Zika and wants an abortion, all she has to do is get a visa, fly to Britain, rent a hotel, and get a perfectly legal abortion.
This solution is not available to our sisters in the favelas. Many of them will seek back-street abortions. Many of them will die from infection and/or hemorrhage. It’s estimated that even before the Zika epidemic, every two days a Brazilian woman dies while trying to end a pregnancy.
In their names, and in the names of all those murdered by capitalism, women and men workers must fight for a communist world where women’s voices are heard and respected alongside men’s voices. Where the health and wellbeing of every man, woman and child is protected. And where poverty and exploitation are abolished—not abortion.