First Published: The Call, Vol. 6, No. 9, March 7, 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
International Women’s Day is a working-class holiday which for decades has mobilized both men and women to fight back against the oppression of women. Its history is one of sharp struggle against imperialism and its agents within the women’s movement.
The history of IWD goes back to March 8, 1908, when thousands of women garment workers marched in the streets of New York against inhuman sweatshop conditions, child labor and for the right to vote.
This demonstration was hailed by communists and working-class fighters through-out the world. Clara Zetkin, a German communist leader, proposed in 1910 that every March 8 should be celebrated as International Women’s Day in commemoration of the heroic garment workers. The purpose of this holiday was to bring the masses of women, as well as men, into militant struggle against the system of capitalism which lies at the root of women’s oppression.
For many years following the initiation of this holiday, International Women’s Day was celebrated by thousands of workers and progressive people throughout the United States. Under the leadership of the then-revolutionary Communist Party USA, IWD was a battle-cry against the dangers of fascism and war, against capitalist exploitation, national oppression and all other forms of imperialist oppression which have their particular devastating effects on the masses of working and oppressed women.
With the degeneration of the CPUSA into a revisionist party in the 1950s, the heroic tradition of IWD was thrown by the wayside. The modern revisionists who seized control of the party abandoned the revolutionary struggle of women as part of their betrayal of the working-class aims of socialism and the proletarian dictatorship. Nestling in the ranks of the women’s movement and wearing a “socialist“ disguise, the CP began to preach that women could win liberation under capitalism by fighting for reforms, relying on electoral struggle and on the liberal imperialists to “grant” them equality.
Since the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and the rise of this once-socialist country as one of the two main enemies of the world’s peoples, the CP has also become the open defender and agent of this imperialist superpower within the women’s movement. To their list of reformist solutions to women’s oppression, they have added phony superpower “detente“ schemes as the road to peace and development.
The betrayal by the modern revisionists of the fight for women’s liberation was a blow to the anti-imperialist movement. But the subsequent struggle against their line has served to clarify the road to emancipation for the masses of women and strengthen the movement to rebuild a genuine mass women’s movement under revolutionary leadership.
This struggle has resulted in a split with the revisionists, who along with the bourgeois feminists and Democratic Party politicians, united to peddle their own phony brand of “women’s liberation.”
Internationally, this same split has manifested itself at such important forums as the 1975 UN International Women’s Year Conference in Mexico City. At that conference, the representatives from both the U.S. and the USSR tried unsuccessfully to get their view adopted that overpopulation was to blame for all the starvation, wars, sickness and poverty in the world and that “detente” would create the conditions for women to be “granted” equality.
In contrast, the views of the masses of exploited and oppressed women of the world were best summed up at the conference by the Chinese delegate. She pointed out: “Clearly, the primary task at present , in the struggle for women’s emancipation is to fight imperialism, colonialism and particularly the hegemonism of the two super-powers. Only when this struggle is carried out successfully, while giving due attention to and solving the special demands and problems of women, can the cause for women’s emancipation be pushed ahead steadily ... ”
The same year, here in the U.S., the struggle for a revolutionary line on the woman question became a testing ground between genuine Marxist-Leninists and petty-bourgeois centrists who refused to make a break with revisionism. Communists and anti-imperialists in New York had called for a demonstration to celebrate IWD under the slogan of “Imperialism, not overpopulation, is the cause of hunger, unemployment and women’s inequality.”
In response, the CPUSA pulled IWD out of the closet for the first time in many years. Blocking with some Democratic Party liberals and bourgeois feminists, they called for an opposing demonstration under the slogan “Peace, equality and development.”
The genuine Marxist-Leninists, led by the October League, stood firmly on the principle of “no united action with revisionism.” They pointed out that the revisionists are not allies in the struggle for women’s liberation, but are representatives of the imperialists inside the working-class and women’s movements. A separate demonstration under anti-imperialist slogans brought the stand of “no united action with revisionism” before the masses of people.
Some forces who call themselves Marxist-Leninists, most notably the Guardian newspaper, chose to give the revisionists a “left” cover by marching under their leadership. Under the pretext of joining the “larger” march, these centrists revealed their own revisionist line on the woman question and on the whole struggle to build a new communist party.
Even though the 1975 anti-imperialist demonstration was smaller than the revisionist-led march, it represented the aims and interests of women and men in the U.S. and around the world to defeat imperialism. The revisionist-led march was just the opposite. It was an attempt to divert the masses from targeting their real enemy.
While the revisionists made abstract calls for “peace,” the anti-imperialists pointed out that war is the product of the imperialist system and can only be ended with its defeat. The revisionists preached that equality for women was possible through progressive legislation and reliance on the liberal bourgeoisie.
The anti-imperialists, on the other hand, condemned the system itself as the oppressor of women and called for reliance on the masses of people under working-class leadership to overthrow it.
While the revisionists prattled about “detente” and “peaceful transition” as the road to peace and development, the anti-imperialists said that the working class must get prepared for war between the superpowers arid lend support to the armed liberation struggles of the third world peoples.
This struggle drew clear lines of demarcation between Marxism and revisionism on the woman question, helping to assure that the new party would be founded on a correct footing.
Starting out small in 1975, the anti-imperialist demonstrations have continued to grow stronger each year. On the other hand, the revisionists had to call off their 1976 demonstration for lack of support. This year, they have barely said a word about IWD!
While the revisionists today continue to remain a dangerous enemy to the workers’ and women’s movements, the example of the struggles on IWD show that the anti-imperialist movement aimed at both super-powers and their agents is gaining broader support every year.
Forced to retreat, the revisionists and centrists have once again relegated International Women’s Day to the “closet.” While in the future they may pull it out again, it will not be easy to fool people who have summed up the lessons of their betrayal.