"We enclose an article which was a review of a pamphlet written by Audrey Wise for the Institute of Workers’ Control "Women and the Struggle for Workers' Control" (Spokesman pamphlet No 33). Although the pamphlet was published some time ago (in the early 1970’s), it covered many of the issues, arguments and omissions which are current in the movement today. While many of the figures and examples are quite dated, the issues raised and the Marxist analyses in reply are relevant to this day".
The 12 demands put forward by Audrey Wise and especially the comments on the male prejudice in the Labour Movement flow from a false method and are themselves incorrect. Even the demands which could be formally supported by Marxists are posed in an incorrect manner, not as transitional demands.
They are formulated from an idealist and reformist point of view, not from a materialist and Marxist position. This is why the pamphlet contains no strategy, and why it does not deal at all with the question of “workers' control” mentioned in the title.
In her pamphlet Audrey Wise says "What happens to women workers and what action women themselves take is also central to what happens to the capitalist system and what happens to the socialist movement" (1.4). Audrey Wise's perspectives for developments and the way in which socialism will be achieved are never clearly spelt out. She hints that the struggle of women has an importance which has so far gone unrecognised by socialists, and which requires previous perspectives to be thoroughly revised. But nowhere does Audrey Wise offer a concrete critique of others' perspectives or clearly formulate one of her own.
What is the relation of the women's struggle to the struggle
for Socialism? This is the key question.
Marxism starts out from the position that it is the proletariat, the industrial working class, that is the key to the transformation of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. The decisive role of the working class is determined by the economic conditions and mode of life of the workers under capitalism. The fundamental antagonism of the working class to the capitalist class and its more or less conscious strivings for a new society are expressed in the industrial and political organisations of the class created in the course of struggle. Marxism is the conscious expression of the position of the workers in capitalist society and at the same time a scientific guide to action for the advanced guard of the workers to intervene in the struggle and provide wider layers with strategy and tactics. This is A B C, but these fundamentals have to be consistently applied to all the complicated problems that arise.
The struggle of women has to be seen in relation to this fundamental perspective; women will undoubtedly play an important part in the struggle for socialism. Recent struggles of women, are of great symptomatic importance. They indicate both the growing difficulties of capitalism, the erosion of an hitherto workers' struggle, strengthening the ranks of the labour movement. But it is not women in general who are involved but working women. Women will play an important part in the struggle above all because of the increased proportion who have been drawn out of the home and into work in the post war period. The change in the economic position of women has inevitably resulted in a change in attitudes as well, especially among young women.
Going out to work has widened the horizons of millions of women, breaking down, at least partially, the prejudice and narrowness fostered by isolation in the home. Women's earnings have also been an important factor in increasing workers' living standards, a factor of great importance as far as the broadening of the workers' outlook generally is concerned. But while changed attitudes play a part, it is the increased involvement of women in struggle in the factories, shops and offices etc that is the decisive factor. The greatly increased organisation of women workers is the decisive indicator as far as this is concerned.
The movement of middle class and student women is a reflection of those underlying changes among strata intellectually more sensitive to them than the mass of working women. Because of the remoteness of this strata from the workers' actual struggles and their lack of Marxist understanding, they have not adopted a working class perspective but embraced a myriad of confused ideas currently going under the name of ‘Women's Liberation'. Perspectives for women's struggle must be formulated from the point of view of working women and not some vague notion of “oppressed women in general”.
What is the position of the pamphlet? Audrey Wise says “Women are slightly more than half of the population. They are 38% of the employed workforce and almost 100% of the domestic workforce. They are largely responsible for the early education of children. They play a key role in the consumption process in this society. They are central - not peripheral” (p 3).
As a general statement about the situation which exists in society one cannot but agree with these sentences. Even so, this description of the position of women in general fails to draw attention to the marked differences between working class and middle class and bourgeois women. But what Audrey Wise is doing is advancing deceptively simple. as it were self-evident truths, and using them as premises for false conclusions which do not at all follow from those simple statements. Audrey Wise's method reminds one of the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen"; "Men” (read "women") "are born and remain free and equal in rights”.
“They (women) are central - not peripheral”. What does this mean? Audrey Wise is substituting numerical proportions, the allocation of functions that must be carried out in every society in one way or another, for a class analysis. The "importance" of different sections of society cannot be defined for all time according to some abstract criteria. In our society it is defined by the needs of capitalism itself. The working class is "central” because it is the source of surplus value, the profit of the capitalists. The species must be propagated, society needs people, but there is a population deficiency (labour shortage) or over-population (reserve of labour) according to the needs of the capitalist economy.
Children have to be reared in every society, but the fact that the main burden of this under capitalism falls on women, resulting in additional oppression, does not make them "central". In fact, the most oppressed sections of society are by no means guaranteed to be the most revolutionary. This idea has been put forward, in one form or another, many times. Experience, however, bears out the position of Marxism. Slaves, for example, the most exploited section of ancient society, occasionally rose in revolt against the slave owners. But their conditions of life, their lack of economic power, their lack of cohesion as a class, rendered them incapable of transforming society. In the USA about 14 million people depend on welfare payments for survival (Wall Street Journal 27.3.72).
These pauperised sections of society, although capable of being drawn into struggle by the organised workers could not be considered “central" because although amongst the most oppressed in society, they lack cohesion and organised power precisely because they are pauperised.
The other side to the importance of the working class to capitalism is, of course, the power which the workers can bring to bear against the capitalist class. Women will be a force against capitalism, not according to the degree to which they are oppressed, but to the extent that women are involved in the struggle of the working class in a struggle on class issues. Surely it cannot be that bourgeois, or even middle class, women have a “central" role in the struggle for socialism?
Audrey Wise, of course, does not say that they do. But nowhere does she mention the class distinctions which divide women every bit as much as they divide men. She even throws in the observation that "only 35% of the members of the Institute of Directors are women", commenting that capitalist power is in male hands" (p 3). What follows from this? Would women run the capitalist system better from the workers' point of view? Is the fair sharing of capitalist power among men and women bourgeois a precondition for socialism?
Certainly the discrimination against women in bourgeois families and in capitalist bodies is a symptom of the backwardness of the system. But does it follow that the wife of a capitalist with plenty of money, a big house, a car, servants, is as oppressed as a worker's wife (or the worker himself, for that matter) because she is tied to the family over which her "male chauvinist” husband rules, and is denied a ‘fair chance’ of entering the Stock Exchange, being called to the Bar, or joining exclusive West End Clubs?
Certainly workers have no interest in preventing bourgeois women from gaining “equal rights" in so far as this is possible. Socialists have always fought for legal and civil rights for all women, recognising that the attainment of such rights are a lever for advancing the struggle of working women. Marxists recognise, however, that under the economic conditions of capitalism most legal “rights" remain more or less unrealisable for working class women. For the great majority of women the struggle for “equal rights” is inevitably an economic, social, working class struggle. They have no common interest with bourgeois women in fighting for “equal rights", If bourgeois or petty bourgeois women reject capitalist conditions and genuinely want reconstructed personal relations then they must consciously throw in their lot with the working class in fighting for a new society.
Would working women benefit from 50% of the Institute of Directors being women, or 50% of the swindles on the Stock Exchange being handled by women? Would capitalism be any the less capitalism? Has the working woman more in common with her boss's wife (or a woman boss) than with her husband? Posed in this way the question is grotesquely rhetorical.
Audrey Wise would not answer “yes". At the same time, however, Audrey Wise's comments about "male-dominated" capitalism are another indication that she has not clarified in her own mind the relation between the “sex war” and the class struggle. In class divided society there are inevitably a thousand and one sources of conflict between the sexes which abstractly appear to affect everyone, regardless of class or status (just as emotions such as love and hate are common to all humanity), but which in reality are conditioned by material factors which determine the form they take concretely, making the class differences overriding. It is the class struggle which is decisive; not a struggle between the sexes, and perspectives for the emancipation of women are inseparable from perspectives for workers' power.
In her pamphlet Audrey Wise gives a number of crucial figures about the economic position of women. She correctly points out that they occupy vastly disproportionate number of jobs considered inferior, semi-skilled, reflected in the key fact that full-time women manual workers' earnings average only 55.6% of the average weekly earnings of male manual workers.
But, again, from these correct figures Audrey Wise draws false conclusions about the economic relation of women workers to capitalism.
"It is clear, she writes (p 4), "that if a real push ahead was made in women's wages, this would mean an immense attack on profit margins. Exploitation of women is of enormous importance to the capitalist system. It is now (as it was in the early days of the industrial revolution) central to the maintenance of the capitalist system."
Thus: “... what happens to women workers and what action women themselves take is also central to what happens to the capitalist system and what happens to the socialist movement" (p 4).
The logic of the argument appears to be this: an important part of the capitalists' profits are derived from women workers: the capitalist class's profits are under severe pressure because of growing economic difficulties; a sharp increase in the level of women's earnings {through equal pay} would mean a disastrous reduction in profits: therefore the struggle of women for equal pay is of decisive, "central" importance.
Such an argument, however, is based on an abstract, "logical' analysis of the situation, not a Marxist analysis. Women workers constitute an effective force against capital to the extent that they are drawn into the workforce and, especially, into the ranks of organised labour. Working class housewives are in general by no means demoralised (although they are dependent on their husbands or the state or both) and because of their closeness to the workers and the fact that they share the common problems of the class will be drawn into struggle. We have seen already how housewives have been drawn into struggle on the issue of rents. As the struggle develops wider and wider sections of working class housewives will be aroused, and the workers' organisations will have to organise agitation on rents, prices, nurseries, community facilities, etc. linking it to the explanation of the need for a socialist programme, as a vitally necessary part of their work.
Audrey Wise "logically” draws false conclusions from an analysis of the position of women. This is shown by the fact that in her hands the demand for equal pay remains a reformist demand, and is not advanced in a revolutionary manner. It is true that in the present period of decline capitalism cannot afford to grant equal pay to women workers. (Although it is not true that they cannot afford to grant concessions) and in any case capitalism is capable of granting economically damaging concessions for a period in order to try to secure its strategic interests. But it follows from this that the demand for equal pay must be advanced as a transitional demand clearly linked to a socialist programme.
From the fact that capitalism cannot afford to grant equal pay, Audrey Wise draws the conclusion that women are therefore "central". Posed in a Marxist manner, however, the real conclusion is that only the socialist transformation of society can guarantee equal pay. From a Marxist point of view, the demand for equal pay is a means of mobilising women, of demonstrating their common interest with the class generally of drawing them into a struggle for socialism. Audrey Wise (as we shall see) advances the demand for equal pay not as a transitional demand, but from the point of view of the abstract "right" of women to equal pay. This is the inevitable outcome of confused perspectives.
Audrey Wise is fond of numerical proportions: “... one half of the human race cannot go socialist on its own (especially not one half of each and every family)”. What does this mean? Audrey Wise is trying to turn the fact that approximately half the human race is female (again, there is no mention of class divisions) into a premise for her false conclusions.
In the advanced capitalist countries the working class makes up the overwhelming majority of the population. But it is not their numerical superiority that is the key to the workers' role, but their economic conditions of life and their strivings as a class which flow from those conditions. Of course their numerical superiority is an inevitable outcome of capitalist development and an enormous source of power. But from the point of view of Marxism, the working class is also the key force in backward countries where it is a minority of the population. The fact that women are approximately half the population does not in itself make them into a force for socialism. They are a force only in so far as they are drawn into a working class struggle against the system. This is a vitally important task but it will not be accomplished on the basis of Audrey Wise's false perspectives.
"One half of the human race cannot go socialist on its own (especially not one half of each and every family)": what does this imply?
If Audrey Wise's last point is taken to mean: "There cannot be real progress towards a socialist (or better still truly communist) society with a planned economy, a democratic workers' state in the process of withering away, and a general raising up of the cultural level of society as a whole, without the rapid abolition of the economic, social, and cultural subjection of women", then it is absolutely correct. But, if, on the other hand, it means: "the working class will not be able to establish workers' democracy, collectivise the economy as the basis of socialist development, until the economic, social, cultural subjection of women is abolished", then it is completely incorrect. Unfortunately, the political implications of the vague formulations used (such as the ones quoted above) are not spelt out. At many points, however, the pamphlet implies the second, false interpretation.
What is the position of Marxism on this question? Frederick Engels attached great importance to the idea of the utopian socialist, Charles Fourier: "that in any given society the degree of women's emancipation is the natural measure of the general emancipation" (Socialism: Utopian and Scientific). It is clear from Engels' pamphlet (and from any other writings) what his meaning was. But Engels’ words have recently been given a new twist by some of the protagonists of women's liberation. "Social progress operates through the progress of women towards liberation". They have taken this utopian formulation of Fourier and, because Engels agreed with much of his social criticism, attributed to Engels ideas which would have surprised him.
For Fourier there was little difference between "measured by” and "operates through". Like other utopians of the time, Fourier's thinking contained a contradiction: he understood that material conditions determine social existence; but at the same time he considered that "opinions ruled the world". If new social arrangements were "discovered" and people educated to accept them, society could be transformed. Thus Fourier considered that since the most important measure of social progress was the progress of women, social progress could therefore be considered to operate through the progress of women towards liberty, as any change in the position of women through the adoption of new, progressive ideas would constitute a vital social change. This was an idealist conception of social change, from which Marx and Engels, who considered the development of productive forces and the class struggle to be the motive power of history, were at pains to differentiate themselves.
In this new "interpretation" of Engels (which is one of many attempts to accommodate Marxist to feminist ideas) it is implied that he held the view that the progress of women towards liberation (social emancipation) was not simply the measure of social change, but itself the agency of social change. We know, however, that Engels firmly opposed the utopian experiments inspired by early socialists like Fourier, Owen and Saint Simon, as attempts "to change society behind society's back", in other words as attempts to evade the fact that only the workers acting as a class could overthrow capitalism and establish the conditions for the development of a socialist society, with freer personal relations and cultural development.
Similarly false interpretations have been hung on the passage from "The German Ideology" where Marx and Engels say: " ... marriage, property, the family ... are the practical basis on which the bourgeoisie has erected its domination ... " (pp. 192-193). Do Marx and Engels mean that the bourgeoisie built up their own form of the family and following from that, by that means, brought into being capitalist production and the capitalist state? Are they saying that the workers must break down the structure of the bourgeois family and then as a result capitalist domination will crumble? Such an interpretation would be absurd. It is clear from "The German Ideology" (especially Part I, but also the pages referred to here) that they considered the bourgeois family (and they are referring to relations among the bourgeois themselves, not the workers) followed from the development of the division of labour in society, the concentration of production in the hands of the capitalists and the division of society into opposing classes. The context makes it clear that when the say "marriage, property, the family ... are the practical bases on which the bourgeoisie has erected its domination" they mean the family was the way in which the capitalist class organised its existence, its mode of existence as a property owning class, an integral part of the relations flowing from capitalist production, but not its cause.
The bourgeois family could not be ended by breaking away from the norms of bourgeois morality and personal relations, (Marx and Engels point out that this is always happening in any case) which "has been necessary by its connection with the mode of production that exists independently of the will of bourgeois society" (p. 193) but by the working class transforming society and organising a new socialist mode of production, which would be the basis of new and better relations between men and women.
From the “Origins of the Family" it is clear that Engels considered that the raising up of women from a position of subjugation, the development of relations between men and women on a higher and freer level, would be one of the most important measures of advance under socialism. But it is also clear that he saw the main task of socialists under capitalism as one of building a tool for the transformation of society, and not attempts to create the embryo of a new society, a futile task under capitalism.
In the sense of the establishment of a workers' state, we will inevitably have to go socialist in a male dominated society, because the conditions, primarily economic conditions, for ending the subjugation of women can only be created when power is in the workers hands. As far as the capitalist class is concerned, the workers have no particular interest in abolishing male domination within its ranks. As far as the lives of the exploited classes are concerned, “male domination", which is rooted in capitalist conditions, will not be abolished until capitalist conditions are changed, though many women will be raised up by participation in the struggle.
Audrey Wise correctly draws attention to that fact that more than 1 in 4 of trade unionists are women (p.4). This is a real measure of the advances made by women from a class point of view, and reflects an enormous strengthening of the working class in the past period. But again, numerical proportions are not the decisive factor. All sections of the working class do not have equal weight from the point of view of the class struggle. The enormous increase of trade union organisation among white collar, semi-professional workers, is an important addition to the strength of the working class, but this does not mean that the clerks, although from a technical point of view can hold up production, have the same weight as the "big battalions" of the movement, engineering workers, construction and transport workers, and miners. And among the "big battalions” women are still quite a small minority. This is not to belittle the role of women, while the complete social emancipation of women depends on the socialist transformation of society, to carry that through it is essential to win the active support of many millions of working class women. It would be a disservice to working class women (and women generally, for that matter) from the point of view of perspectives for their involvement in the struggle, to allow our ideas on the relation between women's struggle and the struggle of the class as a whole to be confused by emotional attitudes or feminist ideas.
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