Originally published in the newspaper Democracia Obrera No. 16, July 2006

Reform vs. Revolution: The program of Marxism against the triple exploitation of working women

The woman of the working class, in the first row of combat of the exploited in Palestine, Bolivia, Argentina, Iraq...

OPEN THE ROAD TO THE WORKING WOMAN!
The revolutionary Marxism and the rights of working women in the imperialist era

PART I

The working woman -as the most exploited sector of the working class- has played through history of the struggle of the working class, and particularly in the revolutionary struggles of the first five years of the XXI Century. Precisely for this role, the treacherous leaderships -and the counterrevolutionary international that groups them, the World Social Forum- pay particular attention to the working women.

As part of their policy of class collaboration, these leaderships have set up institutions (meetings, forums, etc.) to try to subordinate the working women to the program and policies of the bourgeoisie; namely bourgeois and petty-bourgeois feminism, by telling them that the oppression they suffer in capitalist society does not originate in a class problem, but in a "gender" problem. Therefore, the World Social Forum defines that there is a problem of "oppression of women", regardless of what class they belong to: to the bourgeoisie, or the proletariat. This is why WSF’s feminist movement’s slogan is "gender unites us, class divides us".

We, the Trotskyists, affirm against this -and we will prove in this series of articles that we begin today- that bourgeois women have no problem, do not suffer any "oppression" for being women; on the contrary, as bourgeoisie, they exploit female and male workers. We will show then that the only oppressed and triply exploited people in capitalist society are working women and the exploited class women. Against the WSF policy that leads workers to class collaboration with the bourgeoisie by feeling "united by gender" to bourgeois women, the Trotskyists reaffirm the program of revolutionary Marxism in the imperialist era, established by the III Revolutionary International, which says: "The Third Congress of the Communist International confirms the fundamental principles of revolutionary Marxism, according to which there are no 'specifically feminine' problems; any relation of the worker with bourgeois feminism, as well as any support provided by it to the tactic of intermediate measures and the outright betrayal of the partisans of class alliances and opportunists, only weakens the forces of the proletariat and, slowing the social revolution, at the same time preventing the realization of communism, that is, the liberation of women. We will not reach communism except by the union in struggle of all the exploited and not by the union of the feminine forces of two opposing classes." (Thesis for propaganda among women, Third Congress of the Third International, June 1921).

We will begin this series then, re-building the principles of revolutionary Marxism on the question of the working woman. It was brilliantly defined by that school of revolutionary strategy called “Third International”. These principles were later bastardized, revised and destroyed by Stalinism, and also by the liquidators of Trotskyism who, going openly to of class collaboration policy, have become part of the ranks of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois feminism, poisoning the consciousness of women of the working class.

The liberation of working women will only be possible by overthrowing capitalism

The revolutionary program before the working woman is, in the first place, the program of struggle for the triumphant socialist revolution, the seizure of power and the imposition of the dictatorship of the proletariat, without it the working class -of which the working woman is part- cannot be liberated. Because as the Revolutionary III International said, "As long as there is domination of capital and private property, the liberation of women will not be possible (...) The non-formal, but real equality of women is only possible under a regime where the woman of the working class will be the owner of its instruments of production and distribution, taking part in its administration and having the obligation of work under the same conditions as all members of the working society; in other words, this equality is only realizable after the destruction of the capitalist system and its replacement by the communist economic forms.

"Only communism will create a state of affairs in which the natural function of women, motherhood, will not be in conflict with social obligations and will not prevent further productive work for the good of the community. But communism is, at the same time, the ultimate goal of the entire proletariat. Consequently, the struggle of the male and female workers for this common purpose, must be directed inseparably to the interest of both. (idem)

Even women’s most basic democratic rights -such as the right to abortion, to divorce, to vote, to the free choice of their sexual preference, etc.- can only be conquered in fully and effectively if they are taken by the firm hands of the working class, as part of its struggle and its program.

This is the first thing that the reformists deny. By saying this is a gender problem, they want to make the working woman believe that she can achieve her liberation as a woman within the capitalist system, fighting for the formal equality of rights. In pursuit of this goal, they tell the working woman that the struggle is for democratic rights by reforming this system, hiding the class character of their oppression, and also the class character of their struggle and demands, even the most basic ones, as making the employer pays her the same salary as the male workers gets for the same job. They want to make the working women believe that wage equality is a "democratic demand", when it is a class demand that means facing together, male and female workers, the bourgeoisie. That is, a class versus class struggle against the bourgeois of both sexes. That is why reformists can never explain why -even in countries where women have the right to vote, divorce, abortion, etc., that is, formal equality of rights with men- always the working woman, who does the same job than a male worker, gets a lower salary.

They do not do it because answering that question means unveiling the mechanism of class oppression of women, which the bourgeoisie, its institutions and its servants of treacherous leaders hide as the best kept secret.

Working women’s triple exploitation in capitalist society

The "secret" that explains the salary difference is very simple; the working class woman, besides being exploited in factories like the male workers, has a particularity: she carries out additional work, such as housework and raising children. And that work is not paid. That is, she performs a supplementary free work. Therefore, working women are subject to triple exploitation in the capitalist system. Let's see.

First of all, as it happens to the male workers, the working woman is forced to sell her labour force to the boss in the factories, in exchange for a salary. That is to say, female and male workers are exploited by the bourgeoisie, which extracts surplus value from them. This is why it is one and the same struggle of the workers -male and female- against the bourgeoisie, for the revolution and the seizure of power.

In the capitalist system, employers buy workers’ labour force. The labour force is then another commodity. Thus, like every good, its value is given by the labour time socially necessary to produce it, in this case, to reproduce. Therefore, the salary that the employer pays to the worker corresponds, on average, to the minimum amount of food, clothing, etc., necessary for the worker to reproduce their labour force, to sell it back to the employer the following day; and so that it reproduces the working class, that is, that they can feed and raise their children who will be in the future workers exploited by the bosses.

Then once the workday is over workers must feed themselves to recover their energies, have a bath, change clothes, sleep, etc., in order to return the following day to sell their labour force.

This means carrying out housework that falls mostly on the working woman hands. Going shopping, cooking, doing laundry, cleaning the house, ironing, etc.; that is to say all the indispensable work -so that the worker the next day can sell his work force again- is a socially necessary job carried out by the a woman of the working class that neither the bosses nor the bourgeois state pay: it is unpaid work, that is, free of charge.

This is why, the working woman is doubly exploited: in the factory as well as her male partner, and for domestic work -socially necessary work- that the employer does not pay her.
But in addition, nature has given women the role of being the one who gestates the children in their womb. In capitalist society, the working woman gestates and raises her children, that is, the future workers that the employers will exploit in the next generation. The work of raising the children until they reach the age to be exploited by the employer is also a socially necessary work that the working woman does without charging for it; it is unpaid work. This completes the triple exploitation of working women in capitalist society: as a worker, as a housewife and as a mother.

Only from this Marxist explanation can be unveiled the secret of why the working woman receives less salary than her male partner for the same work: because the employer knows that the working woman does free of charge supplementary work, and that depreciates, devalues the female workforce. That is the explanation that the reformists of the World Social Forum do not want to give, because it would be revealed that the bourgeoisie -of which the treacherous leaderships are agents within the working class- steals the domestic work and the upbringing of the children of the working woman

Let's take an example: in Argentina, the INDEC (National Statistics and Census Institute) evaluated that the unpaid domestic work done by the working women in a year represents a value of... sixteen billion dollars! And this, taking into account that the calculation was made based on what might cost to pay that job to the value of a salary that is very low in dollars in Argentina. Sixteen billion dollars per year: that is what the bosses save, only in Argentina! That is, what they steal and keep in their pockets, at the expense of the triple exploitation of working women!

Therefore, it is not a “gender” question, but a class one. The "machismo" is the ideology that bourgeoisie imposes to keep this theft of working women’s work, making the exploited masses believe that domestic work and the upbringing of children are tasks that are given to women in a "naturally" -that is, biologically conditioned. The Church, school, family itself, are the institutions responsible for reproducing and transmitting this ideology, to guarantee that this triple exploitation of working women continues.

Working women are united by the interests of the working class.
Everything separates us from bourgeois women: the struggle is class against class


Unveiled the "secret" of the triple exploitation, also collapses like a house of cards the affirmation of the reformists of all kind, where the problem is about "gender" and not about class.

The bourgeois women are not at all subjected to this triple exploitation. Let's see. It is not exploited in the factory by any employer, but she is a boss. She does not perform domestic tasks, even if she does not work activities outside the home: firstly, because she has available all the latest technology in household appliances. But mainly because as a boss, she enslaves other women as servants to clean, cook, do laundry, etc. The same happens when it comes to raising of children: the bourgeois woman, since pregnancy, has the best medical care and once the child -the future heir of bourgeois private property- is born, he/she has his disposition and the woman can pay the best nannies, kindergartens, schools, universities, etc., and everything necessary for their child to grow up with all they need, and without meaning any work for her.

The bourgeois woman then has no problem: the only one who is triply exploited is the woman of the working class. Therefore, against the policy of the reformist currents which tell workers that "gender unites us and class divides us", we, Trotskyists, affirm: there is nothing that unites the working women to bourgeois women, everything separates them. We have nothing in common or anything that unites us with Amalita Fortabat, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Bachelet, Margaret Thatcher, Cristina Kirchner, Lilita Carrio, etc. Our task is to fight side by side with our fellow male workers, as a working class, for the overthrowing of the bourgeoisie and its expropriation, for the imposition of the dictatorship of the proletariat -our own power-, the only way to advance in the liberation of the woman of any kind of exploitation and oppression.

Notes of the revolutionary Marxist program for working women

Precisely because the triple exploitation of working women is a class problem, and can only be solved through the overthrowing of the bourgeois regime and the imposition of socialism, there is no program different and separate for the working woman, from the revolutionary program, but the demands of the working woman are part of the program of the working class. The duty of the revolutionaries is to fight for the entire working class to take them as part of their program of struggle.

The central axis of these demands is to end the unpaid work of the working woman: for that reason, the struggle is for the employer -and the bourgeois State- to pay for that socially necessary work. And for that work to be taken as responsibility by the society as a whole, a question that, we insist, can only be made reality through the triumph of the proletarian revolution and in the socialist society

Therefore, it is necessary for the working class to include in its list of demands. Firstly, the demand of equal pay for equal work, and benefits for the working woman. And also, a salary for every child that the working class woman raises as a future worker. For the working class woman who decides to work in raising their children and in their homes, we fight for the employer and the state to pay a minimum wage equal to the cost of the family basket, with all rights (retirement, bonus, paid vacations, social contributions, etc.).

A working woman, to be able to go to work or carry out any activity, is often forced to leave her children alone, or to spend a large part of her miserable salary to pay for nannies or nurseries to take care of them. Therefore, we fight for two-year maternity leave, paid by the employers and the state; and by free nurseries, with qualified and professional staff, guaranteed by the state and under workers’ control, open 24-7, so that the working class woman can work, study, play sports, have fun, knowing that their children are well and safe. This fight is inseparable from the struggle for free public systems of health and education of high quality, based on ending subsidies to private education, the expropriation of all private educational establishments, sanatoriums and clinics, and imposing progressive taxes to the great fortunes, and in the semi-colonial countries on the basis of breaking with imperialism, not paying the external debt, etc.

While cynically engaged in preaching the "defense of the family," the bourgeoisie and its institutions destroy the working class family. Not only the bourgeoisie pays miserable wages and imposes strenuous working hours to the workers. Also, once they get to their homes, the workers -and above all, the working women- have to devote their time to go shopping, cook, do laundry, etc. The women of the working class and the workers have the right to rest, to play sports, to play with their children, to dedicate "free" time to their family: workers want free restaurants, open 24 hours a day, paid by the bosses and the state and working under workers’ control, and with the best food so that our children eat well! We want community laundries equipped with the best technology and paid by the state, under the control of the workers!

These that we propose here are just some of the demands of struggle for the rights of working women that, together with democratic demands such as the right to free and gratuitous abortion, must be taken as their own by the whole working class as a matter of first order, since, as the Revolutionary III International said in 1921, "both the conquest of power by the proletariat and the construction of communism in countries that have already overthrown bourgeois oppression cannot be fulfilled without the active support of the feminine proletarian or semi-proletarian masses ". (idem).

LOI(CI) – Democracia Obrera