The inability of the Weatherman proposal to include an organic an*lysis
of male supremacy stems from weaknesses in the basic an*lysis. Nowhere
does the paper confront head on how we specifically determine who in the
mother country (although it deals with the colonies) are our friends and
enemies, or how we might affect which side they come down on. The
section on cla** an*lysis says there is an upper and lower strata of the
working cla** and a middle strata, none of whom own or control any of
the means of production, and who are differentiated on the basis of
differing amounts of "privileges (i.e., benefits)" which they acquire
partly as a result of the imperialist pillage of the colonies' labor and
natural resources. This gives us some beginning way of judging the
material basis for the existence of "racism and loyalty to the system."
But it certainly does not help us solve the immediate task of
determining the cutting-edge element of consciousness which will
determine which loyalty in fact will develop and prevail in sectors of
working-cla** youth, and how we can specifically affect that development.
Young people can be most easily won to a revolutionary perspective
precisely because they are most affected by the progressive aspects of
contradictions. We can say to working-cla** youth who have few material
benefits that the privilege of access to protection by the ruling cla**
that is held out to them is a shuck because that same ruling cla** will
nonetheless increasingly exploit and oppress them. We can point to the
schools, courts, pigs, jobs to concretize that. We can build struggles
which focus on these forms of oppression and exploitation, and the
specific aspects of these forms of oppression which try to win
allegiance to the oppressor.
A close look at the condition of women will help clarify these things
because women are affected by these contradictions, not in a different
way from or additional way than men, but in a sharper, more extreme, way
than men.
Where the noose is getting tighter it is especially tight around the
necks of women. Most women identify primarily with the home and the
family. In their roles as provider, wife, and mother they are pushed by
even more forces than men to ally with the oppressors. They feel more
immediately the need to maintain stability so as to keep stomachs full,
children clothed; they feel the threat to the stability of their
position even more acutely. Secondly, having been taught to feel pa**ive
and defenseless, especially in physical ways, they are more threatened
by the spectre of black struggles as defined by the ma** media, the
ruling cla** through the PTA, women's magazines, etc.
On the other hand, it is women's jobs that are disappearing fastest.
Textile mills, for instance, were originally concentrated in New
England, exploiting the labor of immigrant European women. Then, as
working people in New England gained minimum protection from slavish
working conditions, the mills moved to the South, where women were in
plentiful supply as unorganized, unprotected cheap labor. Now these
mills are being moved to colonies to use the labor of colonized women.
The move of small parts a**embly plants to Third World nations is
another example. As unemployment, job instability, and working
conditions worsen, they deteriorate fastest for women.
Also, women's family roles as wives and mothers force them to rely much
more than men on social services, such as schools, hospitals,
transportation, welfare, etc. As these public services are less and less
able to meet the material needs of the people, women are most affected.
They are the most conscious of the real increase in their oppression. As
the family is defined more and more on bourgeois values, and serves more
and more a pig function in relation to kids, young girls are the hardest
hit.
In these ways, the forces which push working-cla** people toward
allegiance with the ruling cla** are less strong on young women than on
men, and yet those forces which point out the necessity of allying with
Third World struggles are clearer and more compelling.
It must therefore be clear that "women's issues" cannot be considered or
dealt with separately from an understanding and strategy of the way the
major contradictions affect the whole proletariat of the mother country.
Attacks on male supremacy must be a major focus of all our work. When we
talk to young working people in the shops, in the schools, or on the
streets, it is one of the first notions we raise, and we begin very
quickly to stress the importance of changing the practice of male
supremacy into more communist forms of relationships. Because male
supremacy is one of the major ways, along with racism, that the ruling
cla** wins allegiance, we must break down the practice in order to
destroy the material basis for that allegiance.
Further, male supremacy as an ideology is one of the most important ways
that the Man defines individuals and societies in such a way that it
makes it difficult to understand how socialism and communism could work,
let alone how the forces of people struggling to win these ends could
ever be successful. It demoralizes the people, and is a critical force
in promoting bourgeois individualism through false separation of men
from women, preventing collective practice. All of this discourages the
people from allying with the struggles of the international proletariat
and encourages them to be cynical and thus to ally with the ruling cla**
to try to maintain as much stability and access as possible.
Within the Movement it is crucial that men and women both begin to fight
against the vestiges of bourgeois ideology within themselves, to break
down existing forms of social relationships. Only by developing forms in
which we can express love in non-exploitative and non-competitive ways
will men and women develop their full human and revolutionary potential
for struggle.
Men who claim to be fighting imperialism in any form must fight against
their own supremacist practices and notions. Not to do so undercuts
their own legitimacy as revolutionaries. We have just expelled PL and
WSA from our organization because we could not tolerate within our
organization people who in practice worked against that struggle to
which we are trying to win people. In regional and local struggles we
must begin to take the same attitude toward those who comply with male
supremacy.
Program
This basic an*lysis of the function and manifestations of male supremacy
leads us in certain strategic directions. First, we must concentrate
much more heavily on winning more women to the fight against
imperialism. Second, we must initiate an attack on male supremacy as an
essential part of our attack on those forces which push mother country
working people to ally with the ruling cla**.
We have failed badly in the first task in the last year because of our
mistaken notion that there were somehow an*logous or equivalent "issues"
around which to organize women to those laid out in the entirely
male-oriented RYM paper. We now understand that we cannot organize
separately around "women's issues"—unless it is a tactic (e.g., equal
wages for black and brown women) within a larger strategy for
liberation. Men, and especially women, must focus the work on winning
women to all of our struggles. By explaining the material basis of male
supremacy and the way the ideology is used to promote allegiance to the
ruling cla**, women will be able to understand more clearly the nature
and cause of their oppression, and will be won to fighting. We must go
into training schools for women, e.g. nursing, beauty, and secretarial.
In the schools we must focus on the especially high rate of dropouts
among women. We can expose the way young women are tracked into the most
oppressive jobs, trained to function as a reserve labor force, prepared
for exploitative family roles. We will attack the ideology of
consumerism as the false front of the unreal myth of upward mobility.
As we win more and more women into the fight against imperialism through
an understanding of their real position in society, we must form women's
caucuses within each struggle. We must see these caucuses as fighting
groups to push the theoretical understanding of male supremacy. They can
also devise ways for ensuring individual and collective improvements in
practice among the progressive forces.
Clearly these two fronts of struggle must be waged simultaneously. In
high schools, for instance, we must organize girls to fight along with
men against the tracking system in general, as well as the way it
affects girls in particular. Girls will also struggle against pigs and
against the war. At the same time we can form women's militias of high
school girls which directly attack male supremacy and the broader set of
bourgeois values upon which it rests. We have seen that one of the
greatest oppressions of young working-cla** women is the restriction and
surveillance of parents. "The family" is constantly trying to define
their identity as submissive, mateable, and sk**ed in family tasks.
Most girls have repressive restrictions on how late they can stay out
and must report where they are at all times. Further, if the parents
disapprove of the guy they are going out with they will impose even more
restrictions and hara** the girl continually at home. Militias can band
girls together to fight collectively for collective freedom; they can,
for example, confront the parents of each girl from the basis of power.
These militias can also serve an educational and agitational role in the
community as a whole. These girls could easily relate to friends who
were working in plants or service industries and bring these young women
into the struggle against imperialism.
Thus, women are not in particular demanding equality with men under the
current conditions, but are demanding a whole new set of
values—socialist values—by which people relate to each other in all
forms of individual and collective relationships. It is true that while
we fight these battles for socialist practices, we can't be clear as to
the exact content of the demand. These struggles must be seen as the
beginning of a long, protracted struggle for socialism, and we will only
gradually be able to perceive the positive content of the demands.
But, it is also clear that there are real dangers and problems with
struggles which focus only on the principle of equality within the
mother country. White women workers who voted for Wallace could easily
wage a national chauvinist struggle for equal wages with men, without
understanding the relationship between their oppression and the
oppression of Third World people, and therefore without understanding
the relationship between their struggle and the struggles for national
self-determination. Further, unless women are brought into a movement
that is, in practice, fighting male supremacy, they will be prevented,
by their oppressive obligations, from playing a large or important role
in struggles.