A history of fighting for women's freedom
The libertarian socialist (anarcho-syndicalist) movement long
fought against women's oppression. And many prominent figures in the
women's movement were anarcho-syndicalists. This article gives some
examples, but many more could be found.
BAKUNIN
Mikhail Bakunin, the founder of anarcho-syndicalism, was a fighter
for women's freedom. "In the eyes of the law", Bakunin noted, "even
the best educated, talented, intelligent woman is inferior to even
the most ignorant man".
For the poor underprivileged women, said Bakunin, there is the
threat of "hunger and cold", and the threat of sexual assault and
prostitution.
Even within the family, women are too often the "slaves of their
husbands", and their children are "deprived of a decent education,
condemned to a brutish life of servitude and degradation". Instead
of this, "equal rights must belong to both men and women" (Bakunin).
Women must be economically independent, "free to forge their own way
of life".
This requires united workers struggle against the bosses. As
Bakunin put it: "Oppressed women! Your cause is indissolubly tied to
the common cause of all the exploited workers --- men and women! "
LUCY PARSONS
Lucy Parsons, the Black woman anarcho-syndicalist militant, fought
for the rights of workers, Blacks and women in the USA.
In her speech to the founding conference of the revolutionary
trade union- the Industrial Workers of the World - in 1905 Lucy
Parsons paid close attention to the oppression of working class
women. She noted how that oppression was used by the bosses to reduce
the wages of the entire working class: "We, the women of this
country, have no ballot even if we wished to use it ... but we have
our labour ... Whenever wages are to be reduced, the capitalist class
uses women to reduce them."
At a time when the left tended to ignore the plight of
prostitutes, Lucy Parsons told the conference that she also spoke for
"my sisters whom I can see in the night when I go out in Chicago".
EMMA GOLDMAN
Emma Goldman was another US anarcho-syndicalist militant. She was
born in a Jewish ghetto in Russia, and left for the USA in the 1880s
where she was textile worker
Working in the factories as a seamstress, she became a militant
agitator and speaker after the hanging of comrades in Chicago in
1886.
Emma was repeatedly imprisoned: for calling on the unemployed to
organise to demand bread; for distributing information on birth
control; and for organising against World War One.
She was deported in 1919 and was active in both the Russian
(1917-21) and Spanish Revolutions (1936-7).
Emma Goldman believed in revolutionary trade unionism. Emma
Goldman stood for the rights of women.
She rejected male domination in the family and called for equality
between men and women. She opposed capitalism, which reduces women to
cheap labour and sex objects.
Emma criticised the middle-class reformist feminists of her time
for being detached from the economic realities of working class
women.
ARGENTINE
In Argentine, women anarcho-syndicalists set up the revolutionary
The Voice of the Woman newspaper in the 1890s. This was one of the
"first ... instances in Latin America of the fusion of feminist ideas
with a revolutionary and working- class orientation and differs from
the feminism found elsewhere in Latin America ... which centred on
educated middle- class women and ... reflected their specific
concerns".
The same study continues: "The distinctiveness of The Voice of the
Woman as an Anarchist paper lay in its recognition of the specificity
of women's oppression. It called on women to mobilise against their
oppression both as women and as workers" (Maxine Molyneux, Latin
American Perspectives, 13 (1), 1986).
CHINA
In China, the anarcho-syndicalist movement pioneered a distinct
anarchist position on women's liberation. In contrast to the Chinese
nationalists, who wanted women's liberation only as a way of
"building the nation", women comrades like He Zhen argued for class
struggle and the right of women to determine their own lives.
He Zhen linked women's rights to the call for a complete social
revolution; she knew the "the oppression of women to be linked to
modern class divisions and economic exploitation as well as
traditional culture" (Peter Zarrow, The Journal of Asian Studies,
47(4), 1988).
SPANISH REVOLUTION
In Spain in 1936, the working class organised a revolution for
libertarian socialism (anarcho-syndicalism). Workers seized the land
and factories and organised a workers army.
Women also made gains. Women played a full part in the
revolutionary struggle. Women were everywhere - Women were active in
the workers collectives, and workers army where they fought alongside
the men as equals. Women were taking up the fight against the sexist
attitudes of the past which have no place in any real revolution.
The anarcho-syndicalist women's organisation, Mujeres Libres (Free
Women) had 30,000 members. Mujeres Libres organised working-class
women. It stood for class struggle. It worked closely with the
anarcho-syndicalist youth and trade unions.
Before the revolution, Mujeres Libres had organised women workers
and distributed information on contraception. During the revolution
abortion was legalised in the revolutionary zone. Centres were opened
for women, including unmarried mothers and prostitutes.
Although the revolution was lost, we can learn a clear lesson-
when people begin to throw off the old ideas and start creating a new
society their views on many things change. Women's freedom becomes a
real possibility. This is our fighting tradition- women's liberation
through workers revolution!
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