Below is my 15 minute contribution to a panel discussion given on May 22, 2021 on zoom in La Grande Transition, a post-capitalist international conference. My talk is based on an article — A Socialist Woman’s Experience in the Socialist Movement — published in March-April 2021 in a socialist magazine, Against the Current.
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Like all women, I have coped with the threat of sexual and physical assault and harassment. For women, this threat is omnipresent. It was a constant hazard of my younger years. Later, the danger of sexual attack shaped decisions of where I lived and with whom, where I worked and whether I felt able to speak and act freely. All told I suffered more than a dozen threatened sexual assaults. I suspect that this count is not unusual.
When I joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) USA in 1959, at the age of 18, anxiety of sexual assault was an obstacle to my participation in political activity. The threat could come from a stranger or from an intimate friend.
I fell victim to this threat in the dormitory of a socialist conference. It was evening, and an intimate friend flew into a rage. He bellowed and whacked me, with furniture and props flying around. It was behind closed doors, but the uproar was heard outside the room, and the assault left visible marks on my face. Yet the next day, socialist friends averted their eyes and showed no concern.
A couple of years later, I suffered another such attack, but this time it drew attention, and helped push the organization to come to a decision. The party declared it would not tolerate violence by its members against women, whatever the circumstances.
How strictly was this enforced? No reports were given, but I know of two cases where prominent male members were expelled for intimidating conduct.
On one occasion, I experienced an attempted sexual assault from a fellow party member. I repelled the attacker and made no report. I felt I had taught the guy a lesson and he was unlikely to try again.
I know of a few other such violations that were not acted on.
So, the party’s policy of no violence was not so easy to enforce. We needed a “Me Too” movement – but that was many years in coming.
All in all, the no-violence code in the party had an impact. The young women leaders who pressed for it were reflecting a new understanding in society as a whole. That is what made this norm effective.
When I came to socialism, the Socialist Workers’ Party USA was a small group, mostly male: a problematic milieu for young women seeking to be heard.
In fact, it was hard to get a word in edgewise. I could only deduce that my voice was ignored because I was a woman and I was young.
I was indignant, but the situation only reflected the “male” character of society as a whole.
I stuck around because the party’s view of politics spoke to my heart and explained the world. In addition, it was for equal rights for women. We studied the works of Frederick Engels and his vision of women’s full liberation through socialism.
Curiously, we paid no attention to what Engels’ said about violence against women. In class-divided society, Engels says, “…[The wife] is delivered over unconditionally into the power of the husband; if he kills her, he is only exercising his rights.” The importance of this passage, became clear to me much later, as we entered the “me too” era.[1]
Engels explained that for most of human existence women have been equals of men and have played a leading role. Women’s subjugation came with the rise of private property and the state – that is, along with the burden of class oppression, of being the second sex.
Only with the advent of socialist revolution would women finally begin to be recognized as equal partners.
I decided to dedicate my life to fighting for a new society based not on profits but on human needs.
Even so, although we were all for women’s equality, it seemed to be only an idea, discussed but not translated into action. No one knew how to include women and make them feel welcome and appreciated for their potential and for what they could contribute.
Women, although few in the party ranks, were relatively more numerous than in mainstream political life. They made a great organizational contribution.
The women, much older than me, were tough, experienced, and strong-willed. Yes, they tended to do “women’s tasks,” but they did so as socialists, not as “wives,” and as independent fighters.
Few women, however, were represented on the party’s policy-making bodies.
In the mid-1960s, many young women from the universities joined our movement. The proportion of women among new recruits was much higher than among older members.
The young women members were in the forefront of the mass radical struggles. They took the party by storm and changed it profoundly. They insisted that more women be recognized and elected to the National Committee, a policy-making body. They demanded that the party’s commitment to women’s equality now be translated into action. The transformation was embraced with joy especially by the veteran women members.
The young women members were also leaders in the women’s liberation movement for birth control, and control of our own body; choice on abortion; freedom in sexual relations; child care; and equal opportunity.
The feminist radicalization also inspired many working-class women to seek jobs in “non-traditional” lines of work, that is, higher-paying fields previously closed to them: in law, medicine, and other professions, and also in industrial jobs with equal pay. I took part in this effort, first in the party’s printshop in New York, and later in oil refineries in Louisiana and Virginia.
The mass women’s movement was deeply influenced by the African-American struggle for “freedom now.” The term “women’s liberation” was itself inspired by demands for “Black liberation.”
Marxists had long recognized women as “doubly-exploited”; as a sex, and as workers. We also explained that women of color are triply oppressed.
We understood that women’s oppression prevailed before capitalism; it’s deeper than capitalism, and will outlive it – we called it the Patriarchy.
Just as Blacks are an oppressed nationality; women are an oppressed sex. Women, like Blacks, have allies in their struggles whose help is essential to women’s victories. Today, we call that “intersectionality.”
The party took the issues of discrimination and equal opportunity to heart and encouraged Blacks and women to come into the leadership in the party.
A network of assertive women members created a culture of debate on women’s oppression and related issues that embraced the entire organization.
The party showed it could learn from the mass movement.
We in the SWP viewed the revolutionary struggle as a “combined” process, in which workers’ resistance to capitalist exploitation overlapped with, and was reinforced by other struggles against other forms of oppression.
So, the working class; the Black resistance; Women’s rights all have their own struggle for democratic rights and are part and parcel of the working-class struggle and rely on each other for support.
Later, the broad movement declined and the party turned away from it, and forgot the many lessons learned from the living movements. Nonetheless, its record in my youth showed what can be achieved and how to achieve it.
In the 1980s and after, the party retreated from this understanding and reverted to what Marxists call a “workerist” approach, that is, seeing all struggles as expressions of the antagonism between workers and employers.
Today, the challenge of women’s liberation remains a troubled issue for many socialist groups and they often lag behind the spirit of women’s radicalism in social movements. Despite all the progress of recent decades, in my experience, many women continue to be alienated regarding participation in Marxist organizations.
All too often, conversations on Marxist strategy and tactics are not linked to the experience and wisdom gained in living social and political movements. This tends to repel women and other disadvantaged social layers.
Although the Marxist program affirms the goal of women’s liberation, this is undercut by the reality of practice — day-to-day chauvinist culture. Women, generally, are still slow to intervene in discussions concentrated on Marxist theory and strategy. Yet, in the mass movements, women play an equal role among the organizers and spokespersons and often predominate.
The struggle for our rights has shown that women’s oppression will be abolished not by women alone but by alliances with every section of the exploited and oppressed, including males who seek to eradicate the patriarchy and capitalism — the systems that shackles and imprisons us all.
[1].For Engels quote see Marxists Internet Archive in Frederick Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Chapter 2, Section 3 (“The Pairing Family”); see also Sharon Smith, Women and Socialism: Class, Race, and Capital, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015, Chapter 2.