Communism Fights for the Lives of All Workers and Our Children
USA — “The egg in the lab doesn’t apply,” said a sponsor of the new Alabama anti-abortion law. “It’s not in a woman. She’s not pregnant.”
Obviously, the recent anti-abortion laws aren’t about “protecting unborn life.” Nobody should be fooled by them.
They won’t even reduce abortions. The best ways to do that are (1) freely available birth-control and (2) material support for new mothers and babies. The “anti-abortion” forces oppose both.
Communism will do these things and much more. Collective responsibility for child care. Shelter, food, health care according to need. Collective decision-making about how each person can best contribute to production. That includes helping women make choices about childbearing.
We have published other articles about the fight against sexism that are available here: icwpredflag.org/sexe/
Why these anti-abortion laws now?
Some US rulers want more government control over women, especially over their reproduction. This is part of a fascist trend: more intensive surveillance and repression of the masses.
Anti-abortion politicians promote misogyny (hatred of women), religion, and anti-science. This sexist, fascist ideology divides the working class. It makes it harder for us to see the need to destroy capitalism – and all class society.
This is the flip side of racist “replacement theory.” Anti-abortion politicians want to force white women to have more white babies to “make America white again.”
The most extreme “American Taliban” politicians call openly for the US to become a Christian theocracy.
Meanwhile, another US ruling faction eagerly channels mass anti-sexist, anti-fascist anger into Democratic Party dead-end politics. Their liberal feminist ideology also obscures our need to destroy capitalism – and all class society.
A mass communist understanding of sexism and how to end it is more important than ever.
Sexism and religion developed with private property and class society.
Early hunter-gatherers didn’t have religion as it exists today. We infer this from hunter-gatherer societies that existed well into the 20th century.
Pre-class communist people were “animists.” They thought everything – not just people – had a spirit.
Most pre-class societies had shamans. These men and women were socially recognized as healers, problem-solvers and leaders of rituals that promoted social cohesion.
People steeped in religion describe animism and shamans as “religion” and “priests” but this is wrong. Religion is not part of “human nature.”
Pre-class communism had some division of labor between people who bore and nursed children and people who didn’t. Women gathered most of the food everyone needed. Men were most often hunters.
But nobody’s work was valued more or less than someone else’s. All adults generally participated in community decision-making, problem-solving and rituals.
Religious beliefs in the existence of high gods (creators, judges) did not arise everywhere. When it did, it reflected the social and political structures of class society.
We don’t know exactly how class society emerged when and where it did. Evidence from the Kung San people, among others, contradicts the usual explanation. They were able to collect more than they needed for bare subsistence but remained a classless society. Also, we don’t know why mainly men became property-owners.
But sexism surely arose hand-in-hand with private property, the family and the state. Patriarchal monotheism (“God the father”) reflected these institutions.
Male property-owners wanted to pass their possessions to their sons. For this, they had to control women and their sexuality. Eventually Christianity – the ideological underpinning of European feudal society – provided the most fully-developed excuse.
The material basis of feudalism was private property in land and control over the serfs whom they forced to labor on it. But this system of brutal exploitation contained the seeds of capitalism.
Rising capitalists in Europe overthrew feudal institutions and coopted feudal lords. They created their own system of brutal – and racist – exploitation based mainly on private property in money.
As with any qualitative transformation, however, the new system preserved many aspects of the old. For example, it maintained an earlier form of exploitation, slavery, in a new form.
Capitalism’s racist slave-owners put a vicious new twist on control of women’s sexuality. They routinely raped enslaved women and sold their children for cold cash.
In some places, feudal social relations persist into the 21st century. Even slavery still exists.
Capitalism created its own ideology but it still preserves aspects of feudal thinking, especially religion. When European imperialism conquered semi-feudal lands such as India and the Persian Gulf region, they repurposed other sexist religions like Hinduism and Islam alongside their own Christianity.
Communism will end capitalism and, with it, all forms of private property. It will “negate” (abolish) class society, which itself “negated” early communism. But this “negation of the negation” will create a new, highly conscious form of communism instead of simply resurrecting the old one.
The communism we’ll build will destroy the material basis of sexism and religion. We will cherish everyone’s lives and work in the here and now.
But our new system, too, will preserve aspects of the old. We will have to struggle fiercely to eradicate them.
Mobilizing masses for communism means more than preparing for armed insurrection against the capitalists. It also means fighting for communist ways of thinking and communist social relations now.
It’s a big mistake to respond to Christian theocrats and their anti-abortion laws with liberal reformism. Their fascist initiatives reflect the deeper reality of US imperialism in decline and world capitalism in crisis.
And that’s why a mass communist fight against sexism is more important than ever.
Read our pamphlet: THE COMMUNIST FIGHT AGAINST SEXISM available at icwpredflag.org/sxse.pdf
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