(The following is an interview with Evelyn Reed, author of Woman's Evolution, an active participant in the women's movement in the United States, and a long-time leader of the Socialist Workers party. It appeared in a slightly abridged form in the June 16 issue of Combate, newspaper of the Liga Comunista (Communist League), a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International in Spain.]
Question. What in your opinion accounts for the rise of the women's liberation movement on such a large scale over the past few years?
Answer. An impressive feature of the women's liberation movement is the speed with which it rose from its tiny beginnings in the United States about seven years ago to its present worldwide scope. Even the United Nations had to take note of this phenomenon in its International Women's Year, which culminated in the celebration of International Women's Day on March 8 this year.
The rapid spread of the women's move. ment around the world is at bottom due to the changing objective situation of women. Because of the needs of the capitalist system in the post-World War II boom period, more women have been able to receive education and jobs outside the home. Scientific advances have made it possible for women to control their reproductive lives-even though in many countries they are denied this right. Thus while women see the increased potential to free themselves from domestic servitude and gain control over their own destiny, they are denied these opportunities because of the institutions and prejudices of class society. This increasingly glaring contradiction between what is possible and what exists is what has fueled the feminist movement internationally.
In a curious dialectic of history, the first explosion of the women's movement occurred in the politically backward United States, sweeping from there to other capitalist nations with mass working-class and socialist parties. The galvanizing force behind this resurgence in the United States was the extended period of radicalization that began at the start of the 1960s with the civil rights and Black liberation struggles and went on to the student revolts and massive anti-Vietnam War protests. At the end of the decade, women raised their own demands, which challenged the modes and morals of an oppressive, racist, sexist, war-making social system.
The feminist movement began in an inconspicuous fashion as small groups of women gathered together in what were called "consciousness-raising" sessions. There they learned-in part through their "speak bitterness" communications and in part throught studying such books as Engels's Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State-that their problems were not individual but social. They discovered they were not "failures" because as individuals they were physically or mentally deficient-rather, women were held back because they had been dispossessed of their rightful place in economic, social, cultural, and political life.
This social consciousness provided a springboard for the awakening of women and pointed a way out of their isolated, guilt-ridden, homebound lives. It gave them new-found confidence in themselves that enabled them to move out of the small groups-the "chrysalis" stage of their development-into large organizations and actions exerting more powerful social leverage. The march of 40,000 women down Fifth Avenue in New York in 1970 was an announcement of this great awakening of the "second sex" and a celebration of their growing solidarity. Since then, feminist ideas have had an impact on all aspects of American life.
The National Organization for Women (NOW), with its liberal leadership and reformist orientation, remains the largest feminist organization; it has chapters in all the major cities of the United States and its members number in the tens of thousands. Two years ago in March 1974 the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) was formed, with 3,200 women fifty-eight international representing at its founding conference in unions Chicago. In March of this year a similar organization of trade union women was launched in Toronto, Canada, called Organized Working Women (OWW).
The women's movement has undertaken a series of actions on a national scale, the most noteworthy being the victorious campaign for legal abortion. Partially as a by-product of the Black struggle of the 1960s, women won a limited right to preferential treatment by employers in hiring and job promotion to make up for past discrimination. An important struggle of women now is to defend these gains—called "affirmative action plans"- in the face of the current layoffs and antilabor offensive. Another major issue is the right to achieve ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which would for the first time declare women the U.S. Constitution.
equal under Women's studies courses have been instituted in many universities to uncover the history of women.
The sweep of these activities has inspired women in other countries to initiate their own movements for liberation. It is significant that the issue of legal abortion has leaped to the forefront as the most imperative demand on a worldwide scale. The reason is obvious. If women are to be able to participate freely in political and intellectual life, they must gain control over their own fertility which up to now has been controlled by church and state.
Q. What in your opinion are the perspectives of the feminist movement? What solutions are presented by the women of the liberation movement?
A. There are various programs and perspectives within the broad feminist movement in the United States, leading to very different solutions. I suppose that similar divergences exist in other coun tries.
For exammie, one group, clarike an
For example,
" are popularly known as "man-haters." To these women it is not the capitalist system but the male sex that is the main enemy of women. They reject the argument that male supremacy is an integral part of the private property system that will be overcome when the class-divided system is abolished. Their remedy for the subjugation of women is not revolutionary social change but the rejection of men. These false ideas have earned them far more media attention than their small numbers deserve.
There is also a reformist current, made up of women tied to the Democratic and Republican parties. They believe or hope that by exerting enough pressure they can win substantial gains and sex equality without challenging the power of the monopolists or altering the capitalist system.
The great majority of feminists are simply fighting for equality. At this point most of them are not revolutionists, but we can expect that many of these students, working women, Black women, and others will be open to considering socialist ideas as it becomes ever more clear to them that the capitalist system runs counter to their needs and demands.
As revolutionary socialists, we in the Socialist Workers party argue that, while it is essential to demand and fight for every improvement that can be wrested from the ruling class, the full liberation of women requires the transformation of society from capitalism to socialism.
Since our members have been active from the first in the feminist movement, these ideas of the SWP are well known to many of its participants. We help build independent mass struggles of women to win such improvements as equality in education, jobs, and pay; for the right to abortion and contraception; for more and improved child-care centers, and maternity benefits. At the same time, we patiently explain our broader perspectives in contrast with other more limited or incorrect ones. The test of events often confirms our program and policies.
Q. There are several parties or organizations that claim to be for socialism. Could you tell us something about their activities in the women's liberation movement? What about the Social Democrats and Stalinists? What are their alternatives?
A. Both the Social Democrats and
Moscow-oriented Stalinists have displayed an indifference to or fear of any autonomous women's movement. It is too hot an issue for them to handle. The reactionary position of the Communist parties on this question is in part due to their embellishment of the situation of women in the Soviet Union. As Stalinists they cannot explain to feminists why male supremacy still prevails there, why the family is glorified, and why Soviet women still occupy an inferior and subordinate position. The Social Democrats are often more involved in the women's movement, but their general perspective in this—as in all other questions—is limited to winning gains by reforming the capitalist system.
In addition there exist numerous Maoist and centrist groups, most of which have one thing in common—a low conception of the importance of the women's liberation struggle and its priority. They try to justify their abstention and negative attitude on the ground that the struggle for socialism is above all a working-class struggle and therefore the "woman question" will be automatically resolved through the coming socialist revolution. They do not see the struggles of the "doubly oppressed" sex for their own specific demands as a significant component of the anticapitalist struggle but rather imply that women will be "given" their just claims after the revolution.
In actuality, since women will play a key role in helping to make the working-class revolution, they will not be "given" their rights; rather they will assume their position as equal partners with the men in the reorganizing work that accompanies so fundamental a social change. Women in fact are most capable of creating those new institutions that will best serve their special needs both as workers and women.
Q. What kind of program and form of organization should be projected for the development of a mass women's liberation movement?
1. That depends upon the specific condi ions and stage of development of both th feminist movement and the organizations of the working-class in each country. In general, women need to organize them-
• to promote their own objectives. selves They will thereby gain the competence and self-confidence they urgently need to carry forward their struggle. "Who would be free themselves must strike the blow." Ai the same time, women need allies, which they can find in the working-class organiza. tions of which they are a part and which can become sympathetic to their aims.
Q. About the Fourth International current; how does it see the women's liberation movement? State some general features.
A. Sections and supporting organizations of the Fourth International have been in the forefront of the current resurgence of the women's struggle in many countries-from the United States and Canada to Australia and New Zealand; from Mexico to France. In particular, Trotskyists have played an important role in the fight for abortion rights.
In 1973 the Fourth International initiated an internal discussion on the worldwide women's liberation movement, and drafted a resolution on this question. The point is on the agenda for the next world congress of the International, scheduled for 1977.
The Fourth International gives full support to the fight of women for liberation. It stands on the perspectives for women's emancipation put forward in the Communist Manifesto and in the writings of Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky. And its tradition is that of the accomplishments of the early Russian revolution and the mass women's struggles led by the early Communist International in China, Germany, and elsewhere.