BY
PAT BREWER
Is the Democratic Socialist Party a revolutionary feminist party? Not really, according to Alison Thorne, a leading member of the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP). The DSP, Thorne argued in her contribution on the future of the Socialist Alliance (SA) in last week's Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, has no claim to revolutionary feminism because in some way it waters down its support for women's liberation to simply an issue of democratic rights and doesn't allow a women's caucus internally.
Thorne's criticisms of the DSP's approach to the struggle against women's oppression was made within the context of a more general argument as to why left regroupment — the uniting of the socialist left into a single party — is not a possible option for the future development of the SA. Such left regroupment, Thorne argued, is only possible after a “thorough process of discussion around program”.
She cited the question of revolutionary feminism as an example of the programmatic differences that exist between the DSP and the FSP, supposedly precluding these two affiliates of the SA functioning within a single, multi-tendency, socialist party. Instead of regarding the SA as providing a vehicle for left regroupment, Thorne argued that the alliance should be restricted to being an action-based coalition (a “united front”).
This response to Thorne's arguments will only address her accusations
about the DSP's position on women's liberation.
Revolutionary feminism
Given the centrality that Thorne attaches to feminism in assessing the programmatic differences among the SA affiliates, it is quite disappointing that her allegations against the DSP are not backed up with any facts.
For example, Thorne claims that the “DSP focuses narrowly on women's rights, rather than on how feminism is integral to revolutionary struggle”. Is she claiming that the DSP only supports struggles for formal legal rights and is therefore reformist not revolutionary? This is what her allegation implies, but she provides her readers with no evidence from either the DSP's documents or its practice to back it up.
Any examination of the actual practice of the DSP shows we have made the struggle against women's oppression a central aspect of our political activity since our formation in 1972. We have actively participated in the struggle for women's control over their reproduction and fertility. Within the trade union movement, we took up working women's demands through the Working Women's Charter campaign. We have combated sex segregation and discrimination in industry through the Jobs for Women campaign in Wollongong in the 1980s.
We have been central to maintaining and building the International Women's Day rallies and marches — the main annual feminist mobilisation — for more than a decade now.
We continue to struggle to make equal wages a reality not just a formality, while recognising that achieving the formality of equal wages in law was a step forward for women.
At the same time, we have combated the ideological arguments and sexist stereotyping that are used by the capitalist rulers to justify and perpetuate women's oppression.
The DSP's analysis of women's liberation and its relationship to the struggle for socialism is summarised in the slogan “No women's liberation without socialist revolution! No socialist revolution without women's liberation!”
The DSP's program spells out what we mean by this. It states: “The struggle for women's liberation poses the problem of the total reorganisation of society from its smallest repressive unit — the family — to its largest — the state. The liberation of women demands a thoroughgoing restructuring of society's productive and reproductive institutions in order to maximise social welfare and establish a truly human existence for all. Without the socialist revolution, women will not be able to establish the material conditions for their liberation. Without the conscious and equal participation of broad masses of women, the working class will not be able to carry through the socialist revolution.”
If this isn't revolutionary feminism, what does such a term mean?
Women's caucuses
The second accusation Thorne makes against the DSP's revolutionary feminism concerns the question of the right to form a women's caucus within a revolutionary socialist party that is programmatically committed to the struggle for women's liberation.
On this issue, Thorne uses the method of argument of guilt by association, slur and innuendo. She cites the Black Panther Party in the USA and the Workers Revolutionary Party in Britain as being destroyed by “rampant sexism” because, presumably, they did not allow women and other members of specially oppressed groups the right to form caucuses. Since the DSP is opposed to the organisation of such internal caucuses, we too must be sexist. The right to form a women's caucus, Thorne argues, is key to combating sexism.
This confuses two different issues. A socialist party's commitment to the centrality of women's liberation in the struggle for socialism is a political question. The formation of a caucus is an organisational one.
If a party has no commitment to women's liberation in its activities, even if it is programmatically committed to women's liberation, an organisational form such as a women's caucus is not going to address the problem of sexism within its ranks. In fact, many socialist groups and parties with women's caucuses or collectives have encountered deep problems of sexism in their internal life because they have allowed the struggle for women's liberation to be marginal to their activities.
The DSP does not organise its members on the basis of gender, race or any other non-political criteria. We organise our members on the basis of the party's political activity. We organise into working groups (“fractions”) all those party members engaged in a particular area of political work.
We don't think having within the DSP separate and exclusive caucuses based purely on gender will address sexism if it arises within the party nor deal with a lack of commitment to raising the struggle against women's oppression. Such questions are a responsibility for the party as a whole to tackle, not marginalised or swept under the carpet as exclusively “women's business”.
As a party, we seek to create the best possible conditions to help women members become confident leaders of our organisation in all the areas of work it engages in.
This, however, does not mean that we don't support the formation of women's caucuses in other organisations that do not have a practical commitment to women's liberation. But this is not an organisational template to be imposed regardless of the political situation; it is a question of tactics in concrete political situations.
For example, in the trade unions we support the formation of women's caucuses to develop policies to overcome discrimination and the material conditions of oppression as well as the confidence to take these policies into the official union bodies and fight for their inclusion as a central part of the union's aims. But if a union leadership is committed to championing the demands in the interests of all the union's members, which of course include demands in the interests of women workers, then a women's caucus may not be necessary.
The FSP's position of advocating women's caucuses as the means to combat sexism within a revolutionary feminist organisation reflects a real political difference with the DSP. Unfortunately, Thorne did not clearly articulate wherein the difference lies.
From reading the documents of the US FSP it appears that the comrades view the struggle against women's oppression as the central issue in the struggle for socialism. They arrive at this position because they view women as being the most oppressed part of the working class and, therefore, the “most” potentially revolutionary — the implication being that women workers are inherently more capable of struggling for socialism than male workers. This is certainly a view that is not shared by the DSP.
Whether I am misinterpreting FSP views or not is a discussion to pursue at a more leisurely pace while we continue to work together to build the Socialist Alliance. But I would hope that future discussion of our differences will be conducted in a more honest manner than Thorne treated them in her article in GLW.
[Pat Brewer is a member of the national committee of the DSP and has been an active feminist for more than 25 years.]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, February 26, 2003.
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