Women's Revolution
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The Patriarchal Order of Capital

 

We will not go into the historical background of this topic. The story is already known. Through the emergence of private property, women's slavery has begun, and in every form of class society, it has merged with the respective social form, materializing itself in the institutions of the respective ruling class and thus continued …

In capitalism, unlike the previous class societies, the following conditions finally arose in connection with social gender, patriarchy and women's liberation:

1) In capitalism, production has become socialized, and without exception, all social relations between the various classes and strata have been built up according to a socialized scale. This also means that the male power of disposition in the capitalist order socializes over the work and body of the woman, no matter what class and social strata she belongs to.

Besides the rule of man, which is institutionalized on the basis of the bourgeois family, in capitalism women are both a 'worker' commodity, as well as sexual object. Just as the woman is suppressed as a laboring housewife, the woman's body became a commodity and a general capital investment area. Not only the body of this particular woman of that particular class is commercialized, the female body became a common capital investment area.

The male sex suppresses the female sex on a social scale. In other words, all men oppress all women. That this ratio of oppression and being oppressed between the sexes is fully realized in a socialized way does not mean that the oppressed men, who are exploited by the capitalist order, are not or can not be part of the patriarchal order, and that women who belong to the ruling class in the capitalist order, are not sexually repressed.

2) Just as in the previous class societies, patriarchy in capitalism was taken over by the previous social order and merged with the capitalist order and its institutions. But unlike the previous forms, this unity is contradictory from the beginning.

Like the previous class societies, the economic, political and military institutions (family, school, judiciary, bureaucracy, military, monopoly, corporation, etc.) are at the same time the institutions of patriarchy. Patriarchy is maintained with the help of these institutions. On the other hand, the fundamental contradiction of capitalism also continues with the social gender division.

This fundamental contradiction is the contradiction between the social character of production and the private character of property, and while the one end of this contradiction constantly pushes the woman as producer, consumer, and commodity into social life, the other end pulls her constantly out of the social Life, into the house. While bourgeoisie, on the one hand, maintains domestic dependence and even refrains from strengthening it, on the other hand, it pulls the woman out of the house as a worker or as a result of physical exploitation. Overall, this situation leads to strengthening the objective and subjective conditions for the abolition of patriarchy.

3) In contrast to the previous class societies, it happened that women, not all at once, but in the course of capitalism and because of the great pressure of women's struggle for freedom, no longer "belong" to a class, they became "members" of it. Even the wives of kings and sultans in slavery and feudal society, like the women of the ruling class as a whole, were not class members; they belonged to the class. They did not enjoy the privileges of the ruling class as part of the ruling class, but as the goods belonging to them.

So they could not lead independent existence for themselves. The participation in the production of the proletarian woman, who sells her labor as an individual, the changes in hereditary and property laws for the bourgeois woman and the totality of the conditions for all women have meant that they no longer belong to a class but became members of a class. This basis has turned women into female individuals and created the conditions for gaining a collective existence based on gender consciousness.

4) This direct form of class differences within the female gender leads to the emergence of new alliances and  alliance possibilities, new antagonisms and non-antagonistic contradictions between the oppressive and oppressed sex, as well as the exploitative and exploited class.

This special form of class division in the oppressed gender and gender division in the class on the one hand divides the female and male gender like the bourgeoisie and proletariat politically, but on another hand it forces them to political unification.

The parts of the women's gender who acquire private property and become part of the bourgeois class behave no differently than the bourgeois man. The woman has no "natural spirit," no barrier, or anything else that could stop her from that. Finally, the woman who owns private property  alienates from her own gender and becomes part of the patriarchal, capitalist order.

Also the male gender is not homogeneous. The fate of a part of men unites with the freedom struggle of the women, who are sexually suppressed by him, on the basis of class brotherliness or as an alliance force (and because the oppressed man alienates and antagonizes on a class basis to the rulers with his same sex).

 

Patriarchy As the Material Power of Men

 

The patriarchy is not only a mentality that opposes the political struggles of women and the individual liberation actions of women. It opposes them as a concrete material power. It is not devoid of a body, a form, an institution, an organization or any material existence. It is material, it has a form, like in any system of rule, the first thing to destroy is that element.

Bourgeois rule is a patriarchal rule and today's patriarchal rule is a bourgeois rule. Since the freedom of women is not a formless substance in the universe, it will destroy patriarchy in its present form and that will inevitably lead to the destruction of bourgeois rule. All forms of sexual oppression and exploitation of women in capitalist society are embodied in the following material social existence: in the waged slavery of the woman outside and inside the house, in unpaid slavery inside and outside of the house, or in the fact that she becomes property and is turned into a commodity.

Both her work and all other forms of man's power over her body, all her manifestations, are embodied in the material existence of patriarchy, the men's economy, political rule, and bourgeois institutions, which are realized with the help of them. These appearances also include the exploitation of the housework of women by patriarchy, whether by the man or the bourgeoisie, as well as the appropriation of the female body by individual men or capital, or the exploitation of women as cheap labor in social production and the force which is used (violence, enslavement through sexual and physical attacks, the suppression of individual and organized/social liberation struggles).

Of course, the individual reactionary actions of the men and the oppression and domination over the woman belong to the material existence of the patriarchy. Also the relations of domination which the men of the oppressed class build with the woman, the violence and the reactionary compulsion they inflict on them as soon as this rule is threatened, belong to the patriarchal order and are just as material. To put it briefly, the bourgeois family, the husband and father's institutions are among the institutional structures of patriarchy. If the individual actions of men were not part of the total rule of man and also not supported by their power institutions; if the state apparatus were not institutionalized as police, army, justice system and even ideological apparatus; if military apparatuses and justice system as protector of reactionary male violence were not stood up against all the individual or organized resistances of women, then the material basis of individual men's actions to maintain this rule would be absent, and we would only need to fight for the mentality. As long as these institutional foundations are in place, they support the individual male actions and male domination with marriage, divorce, violence and sexual assault.

As long as the material foundations of patriarchy have not been abolished, no sexless society can arise (let us speak of sexless in a biological or political sense).

For this reason, the women's struggle for freedom must plunge itself onto the social material foundations of patriarchy. The struggle for the destruction of a material power has to be also equally material with its organization, its politics, the mass force and the mass line. The weakening of the patriarchal mentality, the change of social norms and similar goals can only be realized with such a material struggle. Unless it is combined with such a material struggle, nothing is achieved but empty phrases.

Now that the material rule of patriarchy has merged with bourgeois rule, even the struggle, which itself is only in search for a genderless society without gender discrimination and only in search of women's liberation (and LGBTI liberation), overlaps with the revolutionary path of the proletariat.

 

The Extent of Social Gender Politics

 

The extent of a policy of social gender contradiction thematically influences (by altering, deepening or weakening, reversing it, etc.) on the relationship between the oppressed-directed woman and the oppressor-director man.

The program of patriarchy searches naturally a most profitable and painless way to maintain this relationship between oppressing and being oppressed. In the various nuanced programs of patriarchy (imperialist globalization, various nationalist-anti-globalist programs, political-Islamic or fascist programs, etc.), its relation to social gender contradiction comes up with this content. The place the woman takes in the laws, marriage, divorce and population policy, housework, exploitation of women in various fields, the power of disposition over the woman's body, and other issues are based on this foundation.

The women's liberation programs can basically be divided into two.

Evolutionary programs seek to facilitate this relationship, to gain positions for women, to create various living spaces and political spaces for women. With these acquired positions they try to dampen the patriarchy in different variations strike by strike. The main representatives of this policy, with all their currents are the feminists.

A revolutionary program pursues to abolish the relation of repressing and being suppressed, ruling and being ruled between women and men, on the shortest path. The representatives of this program are the communists.

The gender struggles are conducted individually, locally, generally, consciously, spontaneously etc. in countless forms and locations around these programs.

 

The Patriarchal Critique of Feminism

 

A lot has been said about the differences in women's liberation of feminists and communists, from both sides and also from uninvolved third parties.

For dozens of years the working left parties worldwide, especially those who have a Marxist claim, have said on average, or rather memorized the following about the fundamental differences between feminists and communists: "Feminists do not see the problem in the classes, they see the problem in the man".

So if the feminists already see the problem in the man, then you have to accept that they have recognized the problem correctly. If the feminists see the problem in the man, but the communists can not recognize this, that means that the communists do not see the problem.

There is an exploitative and repressive mechanism you call patriarchy, but the problem shall not be the man!? This theory is like a dry film that just stops at the most exciting point, without clearing up the matter! According to this thesis, the problem in theory is the man, but in practice it should be a "out-of-genders" "capital order", which is not embodied in the sexes. So, according to your idea, there should be a social order in which men are not men, but the capital order is. But the women should remain women, moreover they are obliged to organize their gender to fight. The concrete women are, according to this definition, women and are problems, but concrete men are neither men nor problems!

This idealistic definition of maleness, according to which the man is "another spirit than his matter," is still sold as the most materialistic of all theories.

It is just as if you tell the proletariat that "the problem is not the bourgeoisie, the bosses in particular, the problem is class society and private property." It is also like preventing the proletariat from fighting against individual bosses, against the economic and political institutional structures of the bourgeoisie and thereby separating them from daily political and economic struggles, leaving them without tactics and politics, without action, and like to mobilize for a revolution, which should be realized sometime unclear in any form.

Here the "social" definition of the problem, instead of the biological, is not given the women as a weapon but the man as a defense shield. As a result, the woman faces the patriarchy in a hostile and unarmed manner. Instead she is de-facto invited to fight the enemy of men with the weapons of men.

What convinced the communist women about that? What has brought the communists as a whole, dozens of years, to repeat this empty phrase by heart? Of course, this is a patriarchal definition of feminism and the revelation of a patriarchal understanding in the communist ranks. But in addition to the male communists who claim this, one must also target the communist women who "manage" to be convinced and reproduce it. The subjects should understand their subjectivity. In short, the communists have to make a revolutionary criticism of the theory and practice of their own attitude.

Of course the man is the problem! The problem of patriarchal order is manhood. When the abolition of social gender equality was formulated as a "women's issue" at that time, it has been a progressive policy and has served to see the unseen. To apply this formulation today and to stick it for 150 years after it has already fulfilled its revolutionary function is torture! After 150 years, still not reaching the point of "the problem of patriarchy is manhood" is nothing more than the courageous resistance (!) of the men in the revolutionary ranks for every patch of ground under their feet, or not? Is it anything else than the consequence of women's indecision to go their own way?

There can not be a women's liberation program without  problematizing men. This eclectic approach makes communist women embarrassed and uncertain about feminism and communism.

Yes, it is nothing but an eclectic approach and empty chatter. Politically, it leads to nothing other than that the communist women remain disorganized and that women's liberation program remains without politics.

The communist women's freedom program and its perspective problematizes individual men, group by group, strata by strata, class by class, including the male gender, as well as manhood, and the material social existence of patriarchy, as well as its institutional structure (on what basis with which of these problematized material forces to relate is discussed below). In theory and in the accumulated practical experiences, there is countless evidence, presuppositions of this very reality of communism, but this heritage was not valued productively. These were not used but instead framed and hung on the wall. Therefore, the communists couldn’t deepen and evaluate their own revolutionary potential.

The fact that feminists do not look at the problem from the class perspective is equally empty chatter. Many feminist currents that look at the problem from the class perspective have not gone beyond the practice of those parts that are not class based, and that's not really what matters. What matters is what expectation in the name of the class on what basis is imposed on the feminists. Feminists see their own reason of existence in women's liberation and accusing them that they are not going beyond it, is to fool around. Just as one can not base revolutionary criticism on national liberation organizations on whether they are Marxists or not. As well as the futile efforts to claim to have a more advanced program for the class without developing an even more advanced practice and an even more advanced revolutionary program for the nation. Especially because the gender issue is much older than the national question. On top of that, since the gender issue is both older and longer living, it is more comparable to the class struggle rather than the national struggle. From that perspective, using this method is all the more ridiculous and meaningless for the gender issue.

If we compare these two women's liberation programs and from this comparison hope for meaningful political outcomes, the question is which of these two programs is capable and appropriate for the goal of women's liberation. It is pointless to condemn the women's liberation program of feminists for its ability of class liberation. Putting the communist women's liberation program ahead of it regarding their class struggle abilities is equally pointless.

Otherwise, the consciousness of the communist women and all communists, just like the content of what the communists tell the masses, turns in practice to this absurd crooked result (or the perspective summarized above would leave the following traces in the consciousness of the vanguard and the masses):

Actually, feminism is capable of women's liberation. But for the class, for the liberation of the class, we will renounce the benefits of feminism.

Communism would be a minus quality from the point of view of the women's liberation struggle with this equation. But that's not right. A woman who is not at least as angry with the innumerable manifestations of patriarchy as feminists must question her gender consciousness as well as her communism.

The criticism of communism in feminism must not focus on the fact that it brings no liberation of the class, but not achieve the liberation of women and in the alliance policy with feminist currents, the ideological struggle must be based on this.

If feminism problematizes men, but communism does not, if gender in feminism were the two poles that the class represents in communism, then to be honest, one would have to ask communist women what exactly they are looking for in the ranks of communists. If you're already suppressed with your two identities, why are you preferring one of the others!? If communism is not a more advanced (and realistic!) women's liberation program than feminism and can not present it, and, moreover, if communism were not the only revolutionary program for the liberation of women, why should women join the ranks of communism? Why should she prefer oppression as a class of sexual oppression? And why should daily rape be less important than daily poverty?

Such a comparison between communism and feminism does not go beyond the horizon of the "sad marriage between Marxism and feminism" appropriately described by Hartmann. This wrong and eclectic definition of patriarchy, in which communist women fall between two stools, will not clear the way for communist women but will blur it. In the first place, it will not even produce a continuous, political struggle, or political tactics to a minimum. Because of this expression of the bourgeois understanding that tears women apart between social production and domestic slavery, women are forced to an artificial choice in the conflict between class and gender, that is to say, the pressure of representing a schizophrenic ideological position and damages political productivity as well as the legitimacy consciousness.

The obvious reason why the arguments of women's liberation in theory, in which men and patriarchal understanding dominate, remain so withered and limited to feminism, is the right and revolutionary effort to convince women, rather than feminism, of communism, but to call them at the same time under the guidance of the men, which thereby becomes blurry and out of focus. If you can not build up the resources of women's leaderization, this meeting will be realized in practiced, with all its retrogressive manifestations, understanding problems, and weaknesses in action under the leadership of men.

 

Revolutionary critique of feminism(s)

 

Innumerable currents of feminism have various social analyzes and statements regarding the "root cause of the problem". Of course, these analyzes produce various political programs, current struggles, tactics, and forms of organization. To take each one individually would not fulfill the purpose of this text. That is why we will be content with a rough summary.

We can divide feminist programs into three groups: reformist programs, utopian programs, and program criticism / programlessness.

Feminism, which has developed as a political women's mass movement (in the first wave predominantly demands in the fight for the right to vote, in the second wave to the policy of abortion and the body) has fulfilled part of these reform struggles. The women of the propertyless class were not able to benefit from one part of this successes, but some part of it were. But the totality of these struggles meant important political and ideological positions for the female sex and for all women.

The problem is that feminism couldn’t connect all these successful or unsuccessful reform battles to a revolutionary program that ends patriarchy. In times in which it develops as a political mass movement, it can not build any relationship to simultaneously occurring revolutionary struggles. As a result, feminism has become more and more detached from politics and developed from reformist programs (and non-revolutionary politics) to utopian programs (and non-political revolutions).

This slippage and utopia was inevitable, because with the new gains in the bourgeois order,  liberation of the women within the bourgeois order comes to its limits and the bourgeois program for the liberation of women ended, so did the women's policy that did not want to destroy the bourgeois order. Utopias have taken the place of current politics.

The utopian feminism has emerged with some tendencies (in many situations it has included them all). The anarchist versions of feminism (or the feminist versions of anarchy) have the perspective of communities without society in form of ideological-intellectual working groups that have broken away from the political mass movement of women. Within utopian orientations, the most likely program to consider are programs that seek to neutralize or annihilate the biological sex. This program was the logical conclusion of feminism and the closest to a revolutionary feminist program, as well as to a realistic feminist program. But this perspective does not manage to clarify how the rule of science and technology can be taken away from men or socialized in such a way that not only a privileged section of women, but all women can benefit from it. It does not find no echo in the form of a current political movement. Not even intellectually could it free itself from being evolutionary.

While utopian programs correspond to being without politics all by itself, postmodern feminists have emerged in many forms that have fallen even deeper than the utopia of the program, standing for complete programlessness, denying the need for the program, and praising programlessness in overwhelming numbers. These currents do not have the claim of a material revolution anyway, but they have found a basis of politicization as a new intellectual and activist dynamic of gender struggle, with the LGBTI movement as their means, which emerged as a fresh social force. With this it can play a concrete practical, progressive role.

The most progressive programmatic formulation of feminism is the women's revolution that emerged in the period when feminism was the most politicized and reached its own masses the most. But the material way, against whom, with whom and with what means this women's revolution can be realized, was not cleared up and that was not seen as a problem either. For this reason, both women's revolution and patriarchy were again used only in an idealistic way and in abstract expressions as a "spirit out of matter".

Just as the patriarchal line of criticism described above separates patriarchy from men and "men's matter", feminism equally separates patriarchy from its structural-institutional existence, its "ruling-matter",  abstracts and spiritualizes it. The lack of politics in the women's question of freedom  becomes the common base that brings the two opposing approaches together in the final analysis.

Even the most destructive criticisms of manhood and patriarchy will lose its ability to bleed the patriarchy's nose, if it does not merge with the “criticism of weapons”, if one loses the will to join the masses of women which are the social basis of the patriarchal attacks, if an abstract "opposition of power" is developed instead of a power-destroying struggle, if one falls in the state of becoming reserve for the continuation of the men's rule through identifying power with "manhood" and theorizing powerlessness of the woman; in short, if the women liberation is getting detached from its own mass basis which has a concrete existence, from the goal of destroying the material existence of male rule, and from their alliance potentials which are also material existences, if it is degraded to a war of mentality without having neither determined forces nor determined goals, it will lose even its ability to bleed the patriarchy's nose. The entire destructive accumulation of feminist criticism of men can only become a weapon without blanks in the hands of the communists.

For this reason, communists have some differences in the definition of the "problem" with each of these feminist currents. With some, on the other hand, there is no very essential distinction from this point of view. The most fundamental difference between communists and feminists does not lay in the definition of the "problem" but in the definition of the "solution".

The essential difference between the communist and feminist programs lies not in the problematization of the man, not even in the struggle against men and patriarchy, but in the quality of the struggle against men and patriarchy.

The women's freedom program of the feminists is evolutionary with all its currents (from socialist feminists to political lesbians) and with all its political orientations. It does not seek a struggle that attacks the material rule of patriarchy. Any fight experience of the feminists, including the struggles in which individual men were targeted, can be appropriated  and practiced by the communists. Almost every attack against this or that institution of patriarchy can be appropriated. Any change they demand in the patriarchal laws can play a progressive role. The main frame of what they have stated in the critique of manhood, the ideological arguments they are leading in the struggle against manhood and men, can be shared by the communists. But none of the feminist currents and feminism as a whole will lead all these actions to the goal of a social revolution that overrides the material rule of patriarchy.

Feminism does not take women as social revolutionary dynamics, not as a social subject, but ultimately as an object of society. The woman is not the subject of active action, struggle and destruction (since it does not destroy, it does not build), but the opposition (in return for the action of the active subject of domination) and the protection.

 

Women's Revolution

 

The women's revolution as half of the social revolution, is the revolutionary program of liberation of women.

As we have already explained, the abolition of patriarchy means, first of all includes the destruction, dismemberment, and abolition of their fundamental material, social supports. These are the private ownership of the means of production and the political-economic structure that is based on it.

For this reason, the liquidation of the material foundation of patriarchy and the abolition of its institutional structure inevitably means the dismemberment of the bourgeois state and the liquidation of private ownership over the means of production. The women's revolution inevitably overlaps with a social revolution for the construction of socialism and socialism itself. This adventure ends only in communism. It forms itself as its fundamental element.

In other words, even if we have only the perspective of the liberation of the female sex in mind, even if all our happiness depends on the liberation of the female sex, this path leads to a social revolution, which will destroy the capitalist order and all societies with private property.

The oppressed women gender prepares and realizes its own revolution within the social revolution of the oppressed class. In that case, this means for the social revolution of the oppressed class, that it must deliberately contain the women's revolution in order to gain power and dynamics in the fight against all remnants of private property.

But such a social revolution and the accompanying socialism do not remove the objective basis for gender differences. A new society must reach such a level of productivity that it all socializes both the functions of human reproduction  (housework, childcare and care of the elderly, etc.), as well as the private property over the personal consumption products that form the basis of the accumulation of personal property within the family. Until this level is reached with the conquest of all means, the society in which the woman is the second sex continues. After women profoundly change their own situation by breaking the patriarchal capitalist order, they are in the position to continue this revolutionary attack for bringing a new society forward.

Therefore, during, before, and after the social revolution, which combines the fate of the oppressed sex with the oppressed class, the need for a concrete sexual policy and organizational line emerges, which leads to completely different socio-political tasks and organizational forms.

Compared to today, the social revolution that leads to socialism will undoubtedly have an incomparably progressive level, even with all its first gains. It will not bring about absolute liberation, but it will pave the way to it. Therefore it is important in the flattening of this path, how much proportion women have in the power within the new social order, in which sovereignty of human over human is not yet abolished. This means that the women's own autonomous organization on the basis of their gender consciousness is a must (or, when we speak of a huge new social order, it is more appropriate to speak of innumerable types of autonomous organizations) so that they take part in the party, in the state, in the military and in the law and so on, both with the requisite level of quantity, and participates with its own sexual quality as a collective, social force. How much proportion one will have in the established power depends on the participation in each area of revolution as it depends on the organized production of one's material existence (that is, whether one meets the requirements for development into a leading force).

Moreover, women must take their place in this social order not only for the material guarantee of their own freedom in an organized manner, but also for the guarantee of the existence of the whole order, because women are one of the most progressive dynamics of this order, perhaps even the most progressive dynamic. For this reason, it is not sufficient for the termination of sexual exploitation that private ownership of the means of production with the capitalist exploitation conditions is abolished. For women's freedom, they must also lift private property over consumer goods. Women are one of the dynamics that has the greatest interest in the progression of the revolution, even in socialism, and, as part of its gender identity, is most likely to become conscious of this interest on its own obtained. In other words, women are one of the most advanced revolutionary dynamics that lead socialism to communism, and the women's revolution is conducted on that basis.

 

The Allies of the Women's Revolution

 

The basic strategic issue of political programs comes up. To simplify the topic, we again pose the question with the perspective of the freedom of the female sex: with which social forces women have to unite, which one do they have to back up?

In the center of the alliance question lays this question of comparing evolutionary and revolutionary programs: "Is it a revolutionary strategy that seeks to destroy, dismember, and liquidate the material foundations of patriarchy, or an evolutionary strategy that does not touch those foundations?"

In politics, one must answer force with/by force. As you seek to destroy the material rule of patriarchy, the size and quality of the forces you need and target is different. Conversely, the question of forces will be different again if you oppose patriarchy, object, change, and defend your opposition.

If your answer is the former, then the question that answers the social forces of this revolution is not "who is sexually repressed?". The question is, "Who else has an interest in liquidating the material foundations of patriarchy (these and those concrete pillars)?" If so, the revolutionary path of women's freedom will invite a part of the men, which are in an antagonistic opposition to private property and the bourgeois political structure that protects and maintains private property, into an alliance.

If your answer is the second, following an evolutionary strategy, then the question "who is sexually repressed?" is asked. In the former case, the fundamental question will be "how to liberate", in the second case, "how to defend".

This is how women position themselves in the social revolution as the half of the revolution, according to the revolutionary strategy both as part of class and strata, and also as a gender, which has an interest in this revolution, as its own social dynamics, in the name of gender.

From the point of view of the proletarian class, the situation is as follows: the proletarian woman is part of the revolution both as part of the proletariat itself in the struggle for the liberation of its class and as its representative, but also as as a gender it is an ally of the proletarian man.

This policy does not foresee social peace or sexual reconciliation between women and men, between the proletarian woman and the proletarian man, but a fighting community and a revolutionary alliance. For that reason, this does not mean that the communist woman doesn't make man a problem, just as the sexual struggle within that alliance leads from time to time to ideological struggles and from time to time to political struggles.

Even only from the perspective of the liberation of the women gender, bourgeois women are not part of the social base of the female subject, just as they are not fundamental allies, although they are also affected by sexual oppression. The basic allies are the proletarian men. But this preference does not mean that they turn their backs on their sisters, their gender sisters. In reality, this attitude means that feminism does not embark on a destructive sacrifice demanding struggle for its own sisters. Thus it prefers to stay within the limits of the bourgeois order and reconciles itself for this reason with the bourgeois man and bears thereby not even a trace of their guilt.

The other strategic allies of the women's revolution are the classes and strata allied to the social revolution.

Undoubtedly, the struggle connects to this revolutionary strategy can enter into tactical alliances with bourgeois women and political subjects represented by them in various periods, agendas and themes. If the woman represents those parts of society that have an interest in the social revolution or those, who are a potential reserve, countless tactical alliances can be entered into with political subjects representing feminist programs of evolutionary or reformist quality if we take the level of political forces (communists, feminists, different reformist structures) from the level of social forces (social classes and strata, genders and other parts)  into account. In concrete terms, feminist political subjects can become main partners of tactical alliances, even for a longer term. Moreover, some of the feminist political subjects can take a revolutionary stance within the evolving social revolutionary process, maintaining their own  political existence and embarking on strategic alliances. But in the end, nothing changes in the social forces of the social revolution to which the women's revolution actually belongs.

When the social revolution has fulfilled its first and fundamental tasks, thus erects socialism, the order of social forces and the roles will change again. When the exploiting classes are liquidated and the class divisions within the female sex change, including the women alienated from their gender,  the participants of these covenants and also the content of the covenants have to be rearranged.

The dual nature of the relationship between the oppressed gender and the oppressed class, as well as the being-allied and simultaneously being-part-of-it relationship, being part of a precursory social dynamic and, as a social dynamic, interacting with this dynamic, first of all expresses itself in the communist party.

Of course, this dual character will not be outweighed by the scattered women individuals participating in the revolutionary ranks. This would correspond to the line of "programlessness" within the working left in relation to the women's liberation issue. In order to produce the true revolutionary potential of the women's own political demands and her battle line, she must organizationally assure her own collective existence between being an alliance and being itself part of the class, in the organization of political subjects, in the party organizations within the communist party, in her own organization as half of the communist party and the autonomous organization. Just as other means of political struggle (clubs, trade unions, fronts, action alignments, etc.) must be disseminated, a similar answer must be given to the revolution which will be found after the social revolution. In addition, the recent struggles for women's own gender-specific demands have created and will continue to create a number of women's independent mass organizations.

 

The Role of Violence in the Women's Revolution

 

In the previous forms of society or in its form within the capitalist order, the patriarchal order is an order of oppression and, like all orders of suppression, it can only survive by force of arms. Only a social revolution that destroys this order of oppression will pave the way for this armed violence by force and will answer the violence of the rulers by means of force. It is equally necessary to crush the ruling class until the material foundations of this relationship are completely removed, so that new counterrevolutionary attacks are repulsed.

The women's revolution must lead to a struggle that takes on armed forms against the patriarchal order.

The reality that the women's revolution evolves as a founder of a social revolution that shatters the capitalist order and class order can not lead to the generalization that women's participation in the mechanisms of social revolution would be sufficient.

If women relate with the means of violence in a way, that her own sexual liberation will become possible, first and foremost they have to become an active subject to ensure the overall success of the social revolution. This relationship, as well as explained above,as an involvement as a single woman, will facilitate the social revolution and objectively bring the liberation of women closer. But that's not enough. For the social revolution, in all struggles, woman must build relationship with the means of violence, an action that we call subjectification, with her collective identity. So she has to participate in armed struggles with her gender organization, politics and perspective. That means not to remain in the battles as a quantity of isolated women, but to contribute quality as a social force and, as a gender, sharing the obtainments of the gains of those struggles. Secondly, and perhaps until today the part where women were the most inadequate in armed forms of struggle are those actions concerned with their own organized appropriation and use of violent means in direct, woman-specific, political issues. In other words, sexual rights, violence against women, sexual assaults, and various forms of rape must become the subject of the armed forms of the women's freedom struggle, regardless of whether they are supported by patriarchal social institutions (the patriarchal, bourgeois state and the apparatus around it), or extended arms of these patriarchal apparatuses, or civil-armed guards and reproducers of the patriarchal order.

 

Women's Leaderization

 

The double revolution against double exploitation naturally requires a double organization and a dual development as a leader.

The question of women's leaderization is in essence and summarized also the question of the emergence of a leadership of the women's revolution. In the wake of the social revolution, and because of the dual role of women in this revolution, one can discuss the question of women's leaderization and the emergence of leadership in the women's revolution in two interconnected levels: the question of women gender's leaderization in the social revolution and the emergence of a leadership of women's struggle.

The dual character of this development as a leadership can be formulated as the "leadership of women's struggles" and "the women's leadership of social struggles". Women's leaderization must take shape in the vanguard / leading organizations and in the vanguard / leading women in the union of these two lines.

The extent of the women's leaderization requires that the emergence of the organizational and political leadership of the women's revolution, the emergence of revolutionary analysis and of such a program, as well as the ideological framework of all, at least among the main forces of the women's revolution and its most important alliance partners.

This leads to the conclusion that the woman gender must become the leader in the freedom struggle of all humanity and that means that the forces of the women's freedom struggle represent the demands and aspirations of the oppressed and exploited class and strata in the most advanced way and that she develops lively political relationships with all the issues of the social struggle.

The historical accumulations of a political-organizational-ideological leadership and its means, include various forms of organizations, various means from the quota system to equal representation, as well as the life practice and contributions of individual women leaders. The current formation of the women's leaderization will also move forward with these gains.

Women's leaderization can only be realized as a collective act of subjectification and on the basis of a collective gender consciousness. Of course, this practice of leadership will also concertize with individuals. The female sex has already produced leaders and will continue to produce them.

But that will not cast a shadow over the collective quality of leadership. If the woman does not become a leader as a female gender, then as an individual she does not become a leader on the basis of her own identity and, on top of that, a leadership practice which does not rely on one's own social basis can not spread. Of course, although the leadership practice of individual women, while developing as isolated actions of individuals, is undoubtedly an achievement on behalf of all women, developing a woman into a leader in this way is in reality similar to "the effort to change the system by keeping a good position in the system". There will be a lack of continuity and system.

Women's leaderization, like every leadership practice, develops the struggle they want to lead. Individual leaders, as well as organized leaders, must focus on the development of women's organization, the women's liberation struggle and their policies, and not on their own development, including the leading of her own revolutionary development.

Women's leaderization involves the appreciation and defense of the positions gained on behalf of the women. For this reason, participation in the practice of women's leadership must also be concreted in the appreciation of one's own leadership practices (the practice as an individual, organization, or as a specific group) and in their political defense action.

 

The Struggle For Reform and the Political Mass Movement

 

The women's revolution is half of the social revolution. As such, it must identify itself within the current struggles as a political mass movement and achieve the completeness and continuity of the unity of organization and politics.

This political continuity includes the mobilization of women on various issues of social struggles, the mobilization of women for the struggle of their own gender demands and issues, as well as the social confrontation and mobilization of the dynamics of a social revolution, as well as the progressive forces of society for gender topics and political struggles.

If the fight against patriarchy is postponed to the revolution or into an indefinite future, and a woman has a sense of freedom that is detached from daily politics, neither the gender consciousness of individual women nor the collective identity of women and their social action can develop.

Because of the dual character of the revolution, the political mass movement of women must necessarily develop bilaterally. That means the collective participation of women (and not the mass participation of individual women) in the entire social struggles as a social force, as a gender. Then there is the struggle of women against the various excesses of oppression and humiliation suffered by their gender. It is important to spread this struggle within all social and militant dynamics.

The various issues and questions of women's freedom must become the daily theme of all struggles. The struggles of women for various economic, political and social reforms must be tied to a revolutionary program, but this revolutionary program, including the struggles for reform, has to  be concreted into daily political struggles and political tactics. The very different topics and problems of women's freedom must become a daily struggle issue.

These struggles for reform, above all else, allow women to form a collective consciousness in these struggles and the ability to take action together and gain political struggle experience. Gained reforms provide more suitable political conditions for the organization and politicization of women and their participation in social life and struggles. In fact, patriarchy is beaten back, patriarchy loses its legal, political and ideological status and space through lost reforms. In the end, the subjectification of women in social struggles becomes possible.

The masses of women can only come together with their own vanguard within these struggles, and the liberation struggle thus brings forth its own leadership.

 

 

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The Patriarchal Order of Capital

 

We will not go into the historical background of this topic. The story is already known. Through the emergence of private property, women's slavery has begun, and in every form of class society, it has merged with the respective social form, materializing itself in the institutions of the respective ruling class and thus continued …

In capitalism, unlike the previous class societies, the following conditions finally arose in connection with social gender, patriarchy and women's liberation:

1) In capitalism, production has become socialized, and without exception, all social relations between the various classes and strata have been built up according to a socialized scale. This also means that the male power of disposition in the capitalist order socializes over the work and body of the woman, no matter what class and social strata she belongs to.

Besides the rule of man, which is institutionalized on the basis of the bourgeois family, in capitalism women are both a 'worker' commodity, as well as sexual object. Just as the woman is suppressed as a laboring housewife, the woman's body became a commodity and a general capital investment area. Not only the body of this particular woman of that particular class is commercialized, the female body became a common capital investment area.

The male sex suppresses the female sex on a social scale. In other words, all men oppress all women. That this ratio of oppression and being oppressed between the sexes is fully realized in a socialized way does not mean that the oppressed men, who are exploited by the capitalist order, are not or can not be part of the patriarchal order, and that women who belong to the ruling class in the capitalist order, are not sexually repressed.

2) Just as in the previous class societies, patriarchy in capitalism was taken over by the previous social order and merged with the capitalist order and its institutions. But unlike the previous forms, this unity is contradictory from the beginning.

Like the previous class societies, the economic, political and military institutions (family, school, judiciary, bureaucracy, military, monopoly, corporation, etc.) are at the same time the institutions of patriarchy. Patriarchy is maintained with the help of these institutions. On the other hand, the fundamental contradiction of capitalism also continues with the social gender division.

This fundamental contradiction is the contradiction between the social character of production and the private character of property, and while the one end of this contradiction constantly pushes the woman as producer, consumer, and commodity into social life, the other end pulls her constantly out of the social Life, into the house. While bourgeoisie, on the one hand, maintains domestic dependence and even refrains from strengthening it, on the other hand, it pulls the woman out of the house as a worker or as a result of physical exploitation. Overall, this situation leads to strengthening the objective and subjective conditions for the abolition of patriarchy.

3) In contrast to the previous class societies, it happened that women, not all at once, but in the course of capitalism and because of the great pressure of women's struggle for freedom, no longer "belong" to a class, they became "members" of it. Even the wives of kings and sultans in slavery and feudal society, like the women of the ruling class as a whole, were not class members; they belonged to the class. They did not enjoy the privileges of the ruling class as part of the ruling class, but as the goods belonging to them.

So they could not lead independent existence for themselves. The participation in the production of the proletarian woman, who sells her labor as an individual, the changes in hereditary and property laws for the bourgeois woman and the totality of the conditions for all women have meant that they no longer belong to a class but became members of a class. This basis has turned women into female individuals and created the conditions for gaining a collective existence based on gender consciousness.

4) This direct form of class differences within the female gender leads to the emergence of new alliances and  alliance possibilities, new antagonisms and non-antagonistic contradictions between the oppressive and oppressed sex, as well as the exploitative and exploited class.

This special form of class division in the oppressed gender and gender division in the class on the one hand divides the female and male gender like the bourgeoisie and proletariat politically, but on another hand it forces them to political unification.

The parts of the women's gender who acquire private property and become part of the bourgeois class behave no differently than the bourgeois man. The woman has no "natural spirit," no barrier, or anything else that could stop her from that. Finally, the woman who owns private property  alienates from her own gender and becomes part of the patriarchal, capitalist order.

Also the male gender is not homogeneous. The fate of a part of men unites with the freedom struggle of the women, who are sexually suppressed by him, on the basis of class brotherliness or as an alliance force (and because the oppressed man alienates and antagonizes on a class basis to the rulers with his same sex).

 

Patriarchy As the Material Power of Men

 

The patriarchy is not only a mentality that opposes the political struggles of women and the individual liberation actions of women. It opposes them as a concrete material power. It is not devoid of a body, a form, an institution, an organization or any material existence. It is material, it has a form, like in any system of rule, the first thing to destroy is that element.

Bourgeois rule is a patriarchal rule and today's patriarchal rule is a bourgeois rule. Since the freedom of women is not a formless substance in the universe, it will destroy patriarchy in its present form and that will inevitably lead to the destruction of bourgeois rule. All forms of sexual oppression and exploitation of women in capitalist society are embodied in the following material social existence: in the waged slavery of the woman outside and inside the house, in unpaid slavery inside and outside of the house, or in the fact that she becomes property and is turned into a commodity.

Both her work and all other forms of man's power over her body, all her manifestations, are embodied in the material existence of patriarchy, the men's economy, political rule, and bourgeois institutions, which are realized with the help of them. These appearances also include the exploitation of the housework of women by patriarchy, whether by the man or the bourgeoisie, as well as the appropriation of the female body by individual men or capital, or the exploitation of women as cheap labor in social production and the force which is used (violence, enslavement through sexual and physical attacks, the suppression of individual and organized/social liberation struggles).

Of course, the individual reactionary actions of the men and the oppression and domination over the woman belong to the material existence of the patriarchy. Also the relations of domination which the men of the oppressed class build with the woman, the violence and the reactionary compulsion they inflict on them as soon as this rule is threatened, belong to the patriarchal order and are just as material. To put it briefly, the bourgeois family, the husband and father's institutions are among the institutional structures of patriarchy. If the individual actions of men were not part of the total rule of man and also not supported by their power institutions; if the state apparatus were not institutionalized as police, army, justice system and even ideological apparatus; if military apparatuses and justice system as protector of reactionary male violence were not stood up against all the individual or organized resistances of women, then the material basis of individual men's actions to maintain this rule would be absent, and we would only need to fight for the mentality. As long as these institutional foundations are in place, they support the individual male actions and male domination with marriage, divorce, violence and sexual assault.

As long as the material foundations of patriarchy have not been abolished, no sexless society can arise (let us speak of sexless in a biological or political sense).

For this reason, the women's struggle for freedom must plunge itself onto the social material foundations of patriarchy. The struggle for the destruction of a material power has to be also equally material with its organization, its politics, the mass force and the mass line. The weakening of the patriarchal mentality, the change of social norms and similar goals can only be realized with such a material struggle. Unless it is combined with such a material struggle, nothing is achieved but empty phrases.

Now that the material rule of patriarchy has merged with bourgeois rule, even the struggle, which itself is only in search for a genderless society without gender discrimination and only in search of women's liberation (and LGBTI liberation), overlaps with the revolutionary path of the proletariat.

 

The Extent of Social Gender Politics

 

The extent of a policy of social gender contradiction thematically influences (by altering, deepening or weakening, reversing it, etc.) on the relationship between the oppressed-directed woman and the oppressor-director man.

The program of patriarchy searches naturally a most profitable and painless way to maintain this relationship between oppressing and being oppressed. In the various nuanced programs of patriarchy (imperialist globalization, various nationalist-anti-globalist programs, political-Islamic or fascist programs, etc.), its relation to social gender contradiction comes up with this content. The place the woman takes in the laws, marriage, divorce and population policy, housework, exploitation of women in various fields, the power of disposition over the woman's body, and other issues are based on this foundation.

The women's liberation programs can basically be divided into two.

Evolutionary programs seek to facilitate this relationship, to gain positions for women, to create various living spaces and political spaces for women. With these acquired positions they try to dampen the patriarchy in different variations strike by strike. The main representatives of this policy, with all their currents are the feminists.

A revolutionary program pursues to abolish the relation of repressing and being suppressed, ruling and being ruled between women and men, on the shortest path. The representatives of this program are the communists.

The gender struggles are conducted individually, locally, generally, consciously, spontaneously etc. in countless forms and locations around these programs.

 

The Patriarchal Critique of Feminism

 

A lot has been said about the differences in women's liberation of feminists and communists, from both sides and also from uninvolved third parties.

For dozens of years the working left parties worldwide, especially those who have a Marxist claim, have said on average, or rather memorized the following about the fundamental differences between feminists and communists: "Feminists do not see the problem in the classes, they see the problem in the man".

So if the feminists already see the problem in the man, then you have to accept that they have recognized the problem correctly. If the feminists see the problem in the man, but the communists can not recognize this, that means that the communists do not see the problem.

There is an exploitative and repressive mechanism you call patriarchy, but the problem shall not be the man!? This theory is like a dry film that just stops at the most exciting point, without clearing up the matter! According to this thesis, the problem in theory is the man, but in practice it should be a "out-of-genders" "capital order", which is not embodied in the sexes. So, according to your idea, there should be a social order in which men are not men, but the capital order is. But the women should remain women, moreover they are obliged to organize their gender to fight. The concrete women are, according to this definition, women and are problems, but concrete men are neither men nor problems!

This idealistic definition of maleness, according to which the man is "another spirit than his matter," is still sold as the most materialistic of all theories.

It is just as if you tell the proletariat that "the problem is not the bourgeoisie, the bosses in particular, the problem is class society and private property." It is also like preventing the proletariat from fighting against individual bosses, against the economic and political institutional structures of the bourgeoisie and thereby separating them from daily political and economic struggles, leaving them without tactics and politics, without action, and like to mobilize for a revolution, which should be realized sometime unclear in any form.

Here the "social" definition of the problem, instead of the biological, is not given the women as a weapon but the man as a defense shield. As a result, the woman faces the patriarchy in a hostile and unarmed manner. Instead she is de-facto invited to fight the enemy of men with the weapons of men.

What convinced the communist women about that? What has brought the communists as a whole, dozens of years, to repeat this empty phrase by heart? Of course, this is a patriarchal definition of feminism and the revelation of a patriarchal understanding in the communist ranks. But in addition to the male communists who claim this, one must also target the communist women who "manage" to be convinced and reproduce it. The subjects should understand their subjectivity. In short, the communists have to make a revolutionary criticism of the theory and practice of their own attitude.

Of course the man is the problem! The problem of patriarchal order is manhood. When the abolition of social gender equality was formulated as a "women's issue" at that time, it has been a progressive policy and has served to see the unseen. To apply this formulation today and to stick it for 150 years after it has already fulfilled its revolutionary function is torture! After 150 years, still not reaching the point of "the problem of patriarchy is manhood" is nothing more than the courageous resistance (!) of the men in the revolutionary ranks for every patch of ground under their feet, or not? Is it anything else than the consequence of women's indecision to go their own way?

There can not be a women's liberation program without  problematizing men. This eclectic approach makes communist women embarrassed and uncertain about feminism and communism.

Yes, it is nothing but an eclectic approach and empty chatter. Politically, it leads to nothing other than that the communist women remain disorganized and that women's liberation program remains without politics.

The communist women's freedom program and its perspective problematizes individual men, group by group, strata by strata, class by class, including the male gender, as well as manhood, and the material social existence of patriarchy, as well as its institutional structure (on what basis with which of these problematized material forces to relate is discussed below). In theory and in the accumulated practical experiences, there is countless evidence, presuppositions of this very reality of communism, but this heritage was not valued productively. These were not used but instead framed and hung on the wall. Therefore, the communists couldn’t deepen and evaluate their own revolutionary potential.

The fact that feminists do not look at the problem from the class perspective is equally empty chatter. Many feminist currents that look at the problem from the class perspective have not gone beyond the practice of those parts that are not class based, and that's not really what matters. What matters is what expectation in the name of the class on what basis is imposed on the feminists. Feminists see their own reason of existence in women's liberation and accusing them that they are not going beyond it, is to fool around. Just as one can not base revolutionary criticism on national liberation organizations on whether they are Marxists or not. As well as the futile efforts to claim to have a more advanced program for the class without developing an even more advanced practice and an even more advanced revolutionary program for the nation. Especially because the gender issue is much older than the national question. On top of that, since the gender issue is both older and longer living, it is more comparable to the class struggle rather than the national struggle. From that perspective, using this method is all the more ridiculous and meaningless for the gender issue.

If we compare these two women's liberation programs and from this comparison hope for meaningful political outcomes, the question is which of these two programs is capable and appropriate for the goal of women's liberation. It is pointless to condemn the women's liberation program of feminists for its ability of class liberation. Putting the communist women's liberation program ahead of it regarding their class struggle abilities is equally pointless.

Otherwise, the consciousness of the communist women and all communists, just like the content of what the communists tell the masses, turns in practice to this absurd crooked result (or the perspective summarized above would leave the following traces in the consciousness of the vanguard and the masses):

Actually, feminism is capable of women's liberation. But for the class, for the liberation of the class, we will renounce the benefits of feminism.

Communism would be a minus quality from the point of view of the women's liberation struggle with this equation. But that's not right. A woman who is not at least as angry with the innumerable manifestations of patriarchy as feminists must question her gender consciousness as well as her communism.

The criticism of communism in feminism must not focus on the fact that it brings no liberation of the class, but not achieve the liberation of women and in the alliance policy with feminist currents, the ideological struggle must be based on this.

If feminism problematizes men, but communism does not, if gender in feminism were the two poles that the class represents in communism, then to be honest, one would have to ask communist women what exactly they are looking for in the ranks of communists. If you're already suppressed with your two identities, why are you preferring one of the others!? If communism is not a more advanced (and realistic!) women's liberation program than feminism and can not present it, and, moreover, if communism were not the only revolutionary program for the liberation of women, why should women join the ranks of communism? Why should she prefer oppression as a class of sexual oppression? And why should daily rape be less important than daily poverty?

Such a comparison between communism and feminism does not go beyond the horizon of the "sad marriage between Marxism and feminism" appropriately described by Hartmann. This wrong and eclectic definition of patriarchy, in which communist women fall between two stools, will not clear the way for communist women but will blur it. In the first place, it will not even produce a continuous, political struggle, or political tactics to a minimum. Because of this expression of the bourgeois understanding that tears women apart between social production and domestic slavery, women are forced to an artificial choice in the conflict between class and gender, that is to say, the pressure of representing a schizophrenic ideological position and damages political productivity as well as the legitimacy consciousness.

The obvious reason why the arguments of women's liberation in theory, in which men and patriarchal understanding dominate, remain so withered and limited to feminism, is the right and revolutionary effort to convince women, rather than feminism, of communism, but to call them at the same time under the guidance of the men, which thereby becomes blurry and out of focus. If you can not build up the resources of women's leaderization, this meeting will be realized in practiced, with all its retrogressive manifestations, understanding problems, and weaknesses in action under the leadership of men.

 

Revolutionary critique of feminism(s)

 

Innumerable currents of feminism have various social analyzes and statements regarding the "root cause of the problem". Of course, these analyzes produce various political programs, current struggles, tactics, and forms of organization. To take each one individually would not fulfill the purpose of this text. That is why we will be content with a rough summary.

We can divide feminist programs into three groups: reformist programs, utopian programs, and program criticism / programlessness.

Feminism, which has developed as a political women's mass movement (in the first wave predominantly demands in the fight for the right to vote, in the second wave to the policy of abortion and the body) has fulfilled part of these reform struggles. The women of the propertyless class were not able to benefit from one part of this successes, but some part of it were. But the totality of these struggles meant important political and ideological positions for the female sex and for all women.

The problem is that feminism couldn’t connect all these successful or unsuccessful reform battles to a revolutionary program that ends patriarchy. In times in which it develops as a political mass movement, it can not build any relationship to simultaneously occurring revolutionary struggles. As a result, feminism has become more and more detached from politics and developed from reformist programs (and non-revolutionary politics) to utopian programs (and non-political revolutions).

This slippage and utopia was inevitable, because with the new gains in the bourgeois order,  liberation of the women within the bourgeois order comes to its limits and the bourgeois program for the liberation of women ended, so did the women's policy that did not want to destroy the bourgeois order. Utopias have taken the place of current politics.

The utopian feminism has emerged with some tendencies (in many situations it has included them all). The anarchist versions of feminism (or the feminist versions of anarchy) have the perspective of communities without society in form of ideological-intellectual working groups that have broken away from the political mass movement of women. Within utopian orientations, the most likely program to consider are programs that seek to neutralize or annihilate the biological sex. This program was the logical conclusion of feminism and the closest to a revolutionary feminist program, as well as to a realistic feminist program. But this perspective does not manage to clarify how the rule of science and technology can be taken away from men or socialized in such a way that not only a privileged section of women, but all women can benefit from it. It does not find no echo in the form of a current political movement. Not even intellectually could it free itself from being evolutionary.

While utopian programs correspond to being without politics all by itself, postmodern feminists have emerged in many forms that have fallen even deeper than the utopia of the program, standing for complete programlessness, denying the need for the program, and praising programlessness in overwhelming numbers. These currents do not have the claim of a material revolution anyway, but they have found a basis of politicization as a new intellectual and activist dynamic of gender struggle, with the LGBTI movement as their means, which emerged as a fresh social force. With this it can play a concrete practical, progressive role.

The most progressive programmatic formulation of feminism is the women's revolution that emerged in the period when feminism was the most politicized and reached its own masses the most. But the material way, against whom, with whom and with what means this women's revolution can be realized, was not cleared up and that was not seen as a problem either. For this reason, both women's revolution and patriarchy were again used only in an idealistic way and in abstract expressions as a "spirit out of matter".

Just as the patriarchal line of criticism described above separates patriarchy from men and "men's matter", feminism equally separates patriarchy from its structural-institutional existence, its "ruling-matter",  abstracts and spiritualizes it. The lack of politics in the women's question of freedom  becomes the common base that brings the two opposing approaches together in the final analysis.

Even the most destructive criticisms of manhood and patriarchy will lose its ability to bleed the patriarchy's nose, if it does not merge with the “criticism of weapons”, if one loses the will to join the masses of women which are the social basis of the patriarchal attacks, if an abstract "opposition of power" is developed instead of a power-destroying struggle, if one falls in the state of becoming reserve for the continuation of the men's rule through identifying power with "manhood" and theorizing powerlessness of the woman; in short, if the women liberation is getting detached from its own mass basis which has a concrete existence, from the goal of destroying the material existence of male rule, and from their alliance potentials which are also material existences, if it is degraded to a war of mentality without having neither determined forces nor determined goals, it will lose even its ability to bleed the patriarchy's nose. The entire destructive accumulation of feminist criticism of men can only become a weapon without blanks in the hands of the communists.

For this reason, communists have some differences in the definition of the "problem" with each of these feminist currents. With some, on the other hand, there is no very essential distinction from this point of view. The most fundamental difference between communists and feminists does not lay in the definition of the "problem" but in the definition of the "solution".

The essential difference between the communist and feminist programs lies not in the problematization of the man, not even in the struggle against men and patriarchy, but in the quality of the struggle against men and patriarchy.

The women's freedom program of the feminists is evolutionary with all its currents (from socialist feminists to political lesbians) and with all its political orientations. It does not seek a struggle that attacks the material rule of patriarchy. Any fight experience of the feminists, including the struggles in which individual men were targeted, can be appropriated  and practiced by the communists. Almost every attack against this or that institution of patriarchy can be appropriated. Any change they demand in the patriarchal laws can play a progressive role. The main frame of what they have stated in the critique of manhood, the ideological arguments they are leading in the struggle against manhood and men, can be shared by the communists. But none of the feminist currents and feminism as a whole will lead all these actions to the goal of a social revolution that overrides the material rule of patriarchy.

Feminism does not take women as social revolutionary dynamics, not as a social subject, but ultimately as an object of society. The woman is not the subject of active action, struggle and destruction (since it does not destroy, it does not build), but the opposition (in return for the action of the active subject of domination) and the protection.

 

Women's Revolution

 

The women's revolution as half of the social revolution, is the revolutionary program of liberation of women.

As we have already explained, the abolition of patriarchy means, first of all includes the destruction, dismemberment, and abolition of their fundamental material, social supports. These are the private ownership of the means of production and the political-economic structure that is based on it.

For this reason, the liquidation of the material foundation of patriarchy and the abolition of its institutional structure inevitably means the dismemberment of the bourgeois state and the liquidation of private ownership over the means of production. The women's revolution inevitably overlaps with a social revolution for the construction of socialism and socialism itself. This adventure ends only in communism. It forms itself as its fundamental element.

In other words, even if we have only the perspective of the liberation of the female sex in mind, even if all our happiness depends on the liberation of the female sex, this path leads to a social revolution, which will destroy the capitalist order and all societies with private property.

The oppressed women gender prepares and realizes its own revolution within the social revolution of the oppressed class. In that case, this means for the social revolution of the oppressed class, that it must deliberately contain the women's revolution in order to gain power and dynamics in the fight against all remnants of private property.

But such a social revolution and the accompanying socialism do not remove the objective basis for gender differences. A new society must reach such a level of productivity that it all socializes both the functions of human reproduction  (housework, childcare and care of the elderly, etc.), as well as the private property over the personal consumption products that form the basis of the accumulation of personal property within the family. Until this level is reached with the conquest of all means, the society in which the woman is the second sex continues. After women profoundly change their own situation by breaking the patriarchal capitalist order, they are in the position to continue this revolutionary attack for bringing a new society forward.

Therefore, during, before, and after the social revolution, which combines the fate of the oppressed sex with the oppressed class, the need for a concrete sexual policy and organizational line emerges, which leads to completely different socio-political tasks and organizational forms.

Compared to today, the social revolution that leads to socialism will undoubtedly have an incomparably progressive level, even with all its first gains. It will not bring about absolute liberation, but it will pave the way to it. Therefore it is important in the flattening of this path, how much proportion women have in the power within the new social order, in which sovereignty of human over human is not yet abolished. This means that the women's own autonomous organization on the basis of their gender consciousness is a must (or, when we speak of a huge new social order, it is more appropriate to speak of innumerable types of autonomous organizations) so that they take part in the party, in the state, in the military and in the law and so on, both with the requisite level of quantity, and participates with its own sexual quality as a collective, social force. How much proportion one will have in the established power depends on the participation in each area of revolution as it depends on the organized production of one's material existence (that is, whether one meets the requirements for development into a leading force).

Moreover, women must take their place in this social order not only for the material guarantee of their own freedom in an organized manner, but also for the guarantee of the existence of the whole order, because women are one of the most progressive dynamics of this order, perhaps even the most progressive dynamic. For this reason, it is not sufficient for the termination of sexual exploitation that private ownership of the means of production with the capitalist exploitation conditions is abolished. For women's freedom, they must also lift private property over consumer goods. Women are one of the dynamics that has the greatest interest in the progression of the revolution, even in socialism, and, as part of its gender identity, is most likely to become conscious of this interest on its own obtained. In other words, women are one of the most advanced revolutionary dynamics that lead socialism to communism, and the women's revolution is conducted on that basis.

 

The Allies of the Women's Revolution

 

The basic strategic issue of political programs comes up. To simplify the topic, we again pose the question with the perspective of the freedom of the female sex: with which social forces women have to unite, which one do they have to back up?

In the center of the alliance question lays this question of comparing evolutionary and revolutionary programs: "Is it a revolutionary strategy that seeks to destroy, dismember, and liquidate the material foundations of patriarchy, or an evolutionary strategy that does not touch those foundations?"

In politics, one must answer force with/by force. As you seek to destroy the material rule of patriarchy, the size and quality of the forces you need and target is different. Conversely, the question of forces will be different again if you oppose patriarchy, object, change, and defend your opposition.

If your answer is the former, then the question that answers the social forces of this revolution is not "who is sexually repressed?". The question is, "Who else has an interest in liquidating the material foundations of patriarchy (these and those concrete pillars)?" If so, the revolutionary path of women's freedom will invite a part of the men, which are in an antagonistic opposition to private property and the bourgeois political structure that protects and maintains private property, into an alliance.

If your answer is the second, following an evolutionary strategy, then the question "who is sexually repressed?" is asked. In the former case, the fundamental question will be "how to liberate", in the second case, "how to defend".

This is how women position themselves in the social revolution as the half of the revolution, according to the revolutionary strategy both as part of class and strata, and also as a gender, which has an interest in this revolution, as its own social dynamics, in the name of gender.

From the point of view of the proletarian class, the situation is as follows: the proletarian woman is part of the revolution both as part of the proletariat itself in the struggle for the liberation of its class and as its representative, but also as as a gender it is an ally of the proletarian man.

This policy does not foresee social peace or sexual reconciliation between women and men, between the proletarian woman and the proletarian man, but a fighting community and a revolutionary alliance. For that reason, this does not mean that the communist woman doesn't make man a problem, just as the sexual struggle within that alliance leads from time to time to ideological struggles and from time to time to political struggles.

Even only from the perspective of the liberation of the women gender, bourgeois women are not part of the social base of the female subject, just as they are not fundamental allies, although they are also affected by sexual oppression. The basic allies are the proletarian men. But this preference does not mean that they turn their backs on their sisters, their gender sisters. In reality, this attitude means that feminism does not embark on a destructive sacrifice demanding struggle for its own sisters. Thus it prefers to stay within the limits of the bourgeois order and reconciles itself for this reason with the bourgeois man and bears thereby not even a trace of their guilt.

The other strategic allies of the women's revolution are the classes and strata allied to the social revolution.

Undoubtedly, the struggle connects to this revolutionary strategy can enter into tactical alliances with bourgeois women and political subjects represented by them in various periods, agendas and themes. If the woman represents those parts of society that have an interest in the social revolution or those, who are a potential reserve, countless tactical alliances can be entered into with political subjects representing feminist programs of evolutionary or reformist quality if we take the level of political forces (communists, feminists, different reformist structures) from the level of social forces (social classes and strata, genders and other parts)  into account. In concrete terms, feminist political subjects can become main partners of tactical alliances, even for a longer term. Moreover, some of the feminist political subjects can take a revolutionary stance within the evolving social revolutionary process, maintaining their own  political existence and embarking on strategic alliances. But in the end, nothing changes in the social forces of the social revolution to which the women's revolution actually belongs.

When the social revolution has fulfilled its first and fundamental tasks, thus erects socialism, the order of social forces and the roles will change again. When the exploiting classes are liquidated and the class divisions within the female sex change, including the women alienated from their gender,  the participants of these covenants and also the content of the covenants have to be rearranged.

The dual nature of the relationship between the oppressed gender and the oppressed class, as well as the being-allied and simultaneously being-part-of-it relationship, being part of a precursory social dynamic and, as a social dynamic, interacting with this dynamic, first of all expresses itself in the communist party.

Of course, this dual character will not be outweighed by the scattered women individuals participating in the revolutionary ranks. This would correspond to the line of "programlessness" within the working left in relation to the women's liberation issue. In order to produce the true revolutionary potential of the women's own political demands and her battle line, she must organizationally assure her own collective existence between being an alliance and being itself part of the class, in the organization of political subjects, in the party organizations within the communist party, in her own organization as half of the communist party and the autonomous organization. Just as other means of political struggle (clubs, trade unions, fronts, action alignments, etc.) must be disseminated, a similar answer must be given to the revolution which will be found after the social revolution. In addition, the recent struggles for women's own gender-specific demands have created and will continue to create a number of women's independent mass organizations.

 

The Role of Violence in the Women's Revolution

 

In the previous forms of society or in its form within the capitalist order, the patriarchal order is an order of oppression and, like all orders of suppression, it can only survive by force of arms. Only a social revolution that destroys this order of oppression will pave the way for this armed violence by force and will answer the violence of the rulers by means of force. It is equally necessary to crush the ruling class until the material foundations of this relationship are completely removed, so that new counterrevolutionary attacks are repulsed.

The women's revolution must lead to a struggle that takes on armed forms against the patriarchal order.

The reality that the women's revolution evolves as a founder of a social revolution that shatters the capitalist order and class order can not lead to the generalization that women's participation in the mechanisms of social revolution would be sufficient.

If women relate with the means of violence in a way, that her own sexual liberation will become possible, first and foremost they have to become an active subject to ensure the overall success of the social revolution. This relationship, as well as explained above,as an involvement as a single woman, will facilitate the social revolution and objectively bring the liberation of women closer. But that's not enough. For the social revolution, in all struggles, woman must build relationship with the means of violence, an action that we call subjectification, with her collective identity. So she has to participate in armed struggles with her gender organization, politics and perspective. That means not to remain in the battles as a quantity of isolated women, but to contribute quality as a social force and, as a gender, sharing the obtainments of the gains of those struggles. Secondly, and perhaps until today the part where women were the most inadequate in armed forms of struggle are those actions concerned with their own organized appropriation and use of violent means in direct, woman-specific, political issues. In other words, sexual rights, violence against women, sexual assaults, and various forms of rape must become the subject of the armed forms of the women's freedom struggle, regardless of whether they are supported by patriarchal social institutions (the patriarchal, bourgeois state and the apparatus around it), or extended arms of these patriarchal apparatuses, or civil-armed guards and reproducers of the patriarchal order.

 

Women's Leaderization

 

The double revolution against double exploitation naturally requires a double organization and a dual development as a leader.

The question of women's leaderization is in essence and summarized also the question of the emergence of a leadership of the women's revolution. In the wake of the social revolution, and because of the dual role of women in this revolution, one can discuss the question of women's leaderization and the emergence of leadership in the women's revolution in two interconnected levels: the question of women gender's leaderization in the social revolution and the emergence of a leadership of women's struggle.

The dual character of this development as a leadership can be formulated as the "leadership of women's struggles" and "the women's leadership of social struggles". Women's leaderization must take shape in the vanguard / leading organizations and in the vanguard / leading women in the union of these two lines.

The extent of the women's leaderization requires that the emergence of the organizational and political leadership of the women's revolution, the emergence of revolutionary analysis and of such a program, as well as the ideological framework of all, at least among the main forces of the women's revolution and its most important alliance partners.

This leads to the conclusion that the woman gender must become the leader in the freedom struggle of all humanity and that means that the forces of the women's freedom struggle represent the demands and aspirations of the oppressed and exploited class and strata in the most advanced way and that she develops lively political relationships with all the issues of the social struggle.

The historical accumulations of a political-organizational-ideological leadership and its means, include various forms of organizations, various means from the quota system to equal representation, as well as the life practice and contributions of individual women leaders. The current formation of the women's leaderization will also move forward with these gains.

Women's leaderization can only be realized as a collective act of subjectification and on the basis of a collective gender consciousness. Of course, this practice of leadership will also concertize with individuals. The female sex has already produced leaders and will continue to produce them.

But that will not cast a shadow over the collective quality of leadership. If the woman does not become a leader as a female gender, then as an individual she does not become a leader on the basis of her own identity and, on top of that, a leadership practice which does not rely on one's own social basis can not spread. Of course, although the leadership practice of individual women, while developing as isolated actions of individuals, is undoubtedly an achievement on behalf of all women, developing a woman into a leader in this way is in reality similar to "the effort to change the system by keeping a good position in the system". There will be a lack of continuity and system.

Women's leaderization, like every leadership practice, develops the struggle they want to lead. Individual leaders, as well as organized leaders, must focus on the development of women's organization, the women's liberation struggle and their policies, and not on their own development, including the leading of her own revolutionary development.

Women's leaderization involves the appreciation and defense of the positions gained on behalf of the women. For this reason, participation in the practice of women's leadership must also be concreted in the appreciation of one's own leadership practices (the practice as an individual, organization, or as a specific group) and in their political defense action.

 

The Struggle For Reform and the Political Mass Movement

 

The women's revolution is half of the social revolution. As such, it must identify itself within the current struggles as a political mass movement and achieve the completeness and continuity of the unity of organization and politics.

This political continuity includes the mobilization of women on various issues of social struggles, the mobilization of women for the struggle of their own gender demands and issues, as well as the social confrontation and mobilization of the dynamics of a social revolution, as well as the progressive forces of society for gender topics and political struggles.

If the fight against patriarchy is postponed to the revolution or into an indefinite future, and a woman has a sense of freedom that is detached from daily politics, neither the gender consciousness of individual women nor the collective identity of women and their social action can develop.

Because of the dual character of the revolution, the political mass movement of women must necessarily develop bilaterally. That means the collective participation of women (and not the mass participation of individual women) in the entire social struggles as a social force, as a gender. Then there is the struggle of women against the various excesses of oppression and humiliation suffered by their gender. It is important to spread this struggle within all social and militant dynamics.

The various issues and questions of women's freedom must become the daily theme of all struggles. The struggles of women for various economic, political and social reforms must be tied to a revolutionary program, but this revolutionary program, including the struggles for reform, has to  be concreted into daily political struggles and political tactics. The very different topics and problems of women's freedom must become a daily struggle issue.

These struggles for reform, above all else, allow women to form a collective consciousness in these struggles and the ability to take action together and gain political struggle experience. Gained reforms provide more suitable political conditions for the organization and politicization of women and their participation in social life and struggles. In fact, patriarchy is beaten back, patriarchy loses its legal, political and ideological status and space through lost reforms. In the end, the subjectification of women in social struggles becomes possible.

The masses of women can only come together with their own vanguard within these struggles, and the liberation struggle thus brings forth its own leadership.