Feminism, Women, and Class Struggle¹

Miguel Alonso

March 11, 2019

There is an intentional insistence on presenting “feminism” as a transversal element (interclassist) and therefore not ideological. This is evidently false.

Not only is it false, but it also goes against the true and serious understanding of history and the diverse social frameworks that women have lived and live in.

The official discourse defines feminism as “the equality between men and women,” pretending to emphasize sexual “gender,” attributing it to all the oppression of women, as opposed to other struggles. For petty-bourgeois feminism, the main thing is the struggle between Man/Woman.

Taking up a position implies an ideological and political act, and to ignore that we live in a capitalist mode of production, in an imperialist phase, to make abstraction of it, is philosophically pure idealism that tries to hide the fact that the principal contradiction of these capitalist societies is the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It is taking sides with capitalism, but feminist, of course. Something similar to the “pink capitalism” of the LGBT community.

The feminist philosophical current with its conceptual university body, based on multiple tendencies, ranging from cultural, anarchist, socialist, liberal, radical, revisionist, to the extreme of lesbian homophobic separatism. All of them, united by the struggle against patriarchy, ideological center of religions, which is the basis of bourgeois thought.

In this we see the positive side of these movements, as an erosion of the dominant bourgeois ideology and the expression of discomfort in the face of the oppressive social roles assigned to women.

The question of magical thinking is a burden that has oppressed women and men since ancient times.

That vision of the world and society, dominated by dark forces, punishing gods, heavens and hells, which philosophical idealism, metaphysics, is based upon, has been the excuse for all kinds of repression; sexual, political, or scientific, and permeates the superstructure of domination within the various modes of production, with the common thread of serving the exploiters.

It is fundamental for the proletariat to continue the struggle against religions, whatever they may be, with denunciation. It is also fundamental to dismantle their oppressive farce in service of those in power.

Now, it is evident that the ideological direction of this current feminist movement is bourgeois or radicalized petty-bourgeois, when we see the mass-media of the bourgeoisie, the bourgeois institutions, even the repressive ones, such as the Civil Guard (It is time for women) celebrating and encouraging their participation, even to participate in the “women’s strike.” When we see how to intentionally replace and hide the class character of International Working Women’s Day by the eclectic transversal-feminism, of “glass ceilings” and “beings of light.” Let us remember the Yankee feminists supporting the candidacy of the war criminal Hillary Clinton or the feminist director of the IMF,² Lagarde³ or the Spanish Ana Patricia Botín.⁴

The position of communists, men and women, for which we fight, is for a new revolutionary society, free of any kind of oppression, whether of class, sex or race. Reaffirming our position, that only in the Proletarian Revolution, can the working woman be free and take, together with her comrades, life in her hands; “without Caesar, nor bourgeois nor God…” in the words of The Internationale.