About the relation between women's struggle and socialism, two preliminary remarks must be made which will be explained later:

1. We no longer know what "socialism" means, and we must have a clear definition before it can be discussed.
2. "Socialism" is generally equated with "class struggle" and the class struggle itself is equated with the anti-capitalist struggle; finally, the class struggle which is deemed to be the proletariat's struggle, is what leftist organizations are supposedly doing.

       - We agree with none of these points, as will be shown. But, for the time being, we will develop our arguments using the terms in their usual meaning - that is the meaning that we question.

I. In this context, where the class struggle is supposed to be represented by the far left strategies, to ask the question of the relationship between feminism and socialism is generally to put the problem of the autonomy of the women's movement vis-a-vis traditional political groups and parties, the far left included.

• The birth of the french movement de Liberation des femmes originated as a negative answer to these two questions:
• Are the parties interested in women's oppression?
• Can they do anything for women? The MLF was born in reaction to the realization

       that:

•  women cannot expect anything from anyone but themselves
• if traditional political groups and parties cannot deal with women's oppression, it is for structural and not accidental reasons, because they are men's parties, and thus have vested interests in the perpetuation of our oppression.
• The MLF was therefore founded on a basis of ABSOLUTE autonomy
• In relation to this origin, the appearance in the MLF of a "class struggle" current was and is perceived as a setback, a step backwards. This current for the last two years has made appeals for the "construction of an autonomous women's movement", and we are extremely suspicious of this.
• By saying "Let's build the autonomous women's movement" whilst there already exists such a movement, this current shows that it is against the already existing movement. In point of fact, this current vilifies the MLF and calls it "bourgeois" and even "sexist"!
• This turning of the adjective "sexist" against women, e.g. against the victims of sexism, is the trade-mark of our enemies. Here it is women who call themselves feminist who are calling other feminists sexists. Why? Because we don't want to work with the "male comrades".

Therefore, what they deeply question is one of the bases of the movement, e.g. its women-only constitution. - Under these circumstances - i.e. that truly autonomist women are called sexist - it is clear that their demand for "autonomy" must hide something.

• And in fact, what they call "autonomy" is a curbing and destruction of the previous autonomy. What they aim at, and what their male organizations spell out, is for the women's movement - from which the term "liberation" has been dropped - to be an integral part of a wide anti capitalist Front, itself led by the organizations. It is in that sense, as one of the mass movements peripheral to and subjected to the Revolutionary Party, that they see the autonomy of the women's movement.
• Given that goal, this current seeks to minimize the real autonomy of the women's liberation movement. History is rewritten and, for example, this current dates the start of the fight for free abortion, not from the male doctor's action in 1972!

II. This "class struggle" current in the MLF and the leftist organization to which its leaders are affiliated, had to acknowledge, under the pressure of feminism, that women are oppressed qua women.

Our oppression is therefore not that of proletarians. However, they derive even women's oppression from capitalist exploitation. Therefore the specificity of women's oppression, whilst it is given lip service, is denied at the analytical level.

One talks about relating the women's struggle and the class struggle. But for relationship to be possible, two terms are necessary. And the first term is ceaselessly negated. The oppression of women is not seen as a separate term, but as part of the worker's oppression.

The result of this is that any serious analysis of the basis of women's oppression, i.e. an analysis which would proceed from its reality, is precluded because its conclusion is set in advance: capitalism and thus the class struggle.

Thus pseudo-analyses are produced instead of real analyses, and these pseudo-analyses, are, moreover, non-materialistic: they are idealist since they posit that a specific oppression can exist without an equally specific material basis.

We, on the contrary, have sought the foundations of women's specific oppression in the specificity of women's relations to production, i.e. that they give gratuitously and receive only their maintenance.

These relations of production, apply to all women regardless of their husband's class.

These exploitative relations of production are the material basis of the system which oppresses women: patriarchy. Its beneficiaries are men as a social - and not as a biological-group, in the same way as the wage is the material basis of capitalism whose beneficiaries are the social groups of bosses and owners

The class struggle attacks the latter system, not the former.

To pretend that the class struggle, the anti-capitalist struggle, is the primordial struggle for women against their oppression is a mistake, a lie, and a diverting of their energies.

III. Refusal to acknowledge patriarchy as a distinct system, possessing its own material basis, has immediate effects on the concrete struggles of women.

For instance, leftist women, because the only contradiction they see is that between bourgeoisie and proletariat, are unable to analyse Rape in political terms.

• either wishing to make rape a capitalist evil, they say that the entire working class is "raped" by the entire bourgeois class, which is absurd,
• or they say it is due to "the general inhumanity engendered by capitalism" which is equally absurd, for why should only women be immune to the general ideology? For they don't rape.

Therefore this pseudo-marxist argument falls back implicitly - since it does not explain in its own term the different impact of ideology on men and women - upon the naturalistic and biologistic ideology of sexual differences according to which men are endowed with "irrepressible sexual urges".

Or, in rape, they say, the rapists - reputed to be proletarians afflicted with "sexual misery" (which is contrary to all known facts) - are victims as well as the raped women: their "analysis" simply negates the very fact which it deals with: Rape itself.

The leftists are thus incapable of analysing rape in political terms, e.g. in terms of group oppositions. The bourgeois/proletarian opposition which they want to use, cannot account for it, and the only opposition which can account for it, the opposition between men and women, they don't want to use.

This leads them, as we have seen, to reactionary and anti-women positions: for, under the guise of protecting male proletarians, it is rapists whom they excuse.

IV. But whereas their "theories" seem to lead to this practice, we know that it is always practice which determines theory. Therefore the determining element is their practice: which is of protecting men qua men, and this leads to the above mentioned "analyses".

What one can see clearly in the case of rape, is true in general of the whole "class struggle" current of the MLF. Therefore it is not only too bad that a particular woman is misled in that current. The very existence of that current is a threat to the women's movement. What is the practice, what is the result, what is the goal pursued by the obsessional subjection of women's struggle to the class struggle (in reality, to the vision leftist groups have of the anti-capitalist struggle)?

First, they derive from it a minor benefit: the utilization of women as foot soldiers in men's struggles. This is nothing new. The women's liberation movement is thus treated by the far left in the same way traditional parties have always sought to use women.

But the main benefit derived from directing women's struggle against capitalism is not the increase in the numbers of anti-capitalist fighters. In the same moment that women's struggle is directed towards that aim, it is diverted away from its real enemy: patriarchy.

And the same people who put forward the class struggle are also those who benefit from patriarchy.

One may conclude that this second benefit: the diverting of women's anger away from them, and thus the perpetuation of the patriarchal status quo and therefore their own privileges, is much more important than the first. (For example, in the case of rape, they oppose women prosecuting rapists under the pretense that rapists are victims of capitalism: the ban on prosecution results in rape being purely and simply a legitimate act.and maintains for all men the right to rape us.)

Thus the leftist organisations together with their female appendages: the "class struggle" current, are not content with coopting our struggles (to use them for a different objective than their proper one), to use them solely against capitalism. In this respect, they would appear as anti-capitalist organisations, trying to make hay of everything and everybody.

But first and foremost, they divert the women's struggle, and prevent it from attacking its enemy, thereby emptying and nullifying it. By preventing the women's struggle from being anti-patriarchal these organisations appear as primarily anti-feminist, and in this respect must be regarded as other patriarchal institutions of the system.

V. We, feminists, have never denied the existence and legitimacy of the class struggle; our analysis of women's situation takes it into account.

       The reverse is not true: the theory of class struggle not only does not take women's oppression into account but denies it.

VI. Can the Class Struggle Lead to Socialism?

If socialism means a classless society, the answer is obviously no. The class struggle can only lead to a society devoid of capitalist classes, but with patriarchal classes.

In so far as we fight for the abolition of patriarchal classes (men/women) and in so far as we want the abolition of capitalist classes as well, we are socialist.

And we are more socialist than male revolutionaries who want to destroy capitalist classes but to keep patriarchal classes.

Regarding the link between the struggles, it will be possible when and only when:

           - The male left stops putting on us the burden of a one way solidarity with the class struggle. When it stops asking us for proofs of merit, when it accepts the question of solidarity with the victims of patriarchy. They must start by acknowledging the existence of patriarchy. They must acknowledge that they derive benefits, as men, off women's backs and they must renounce them.

This is the minimal basis, the precondition for any alliance or even discussion about a possible alliance.

VII. This is only a beginning. For we question the capacity of the far left to participate in a global struggle, both anti-patriarchal and anti-capitalist, and even to lead the anti-capitalist struggle, for the following reasons:

         - Their analysis of the class struggle is faulty in that it pretends to be a global analysis of society, whereas it cannot be since it ignores part of the social system: patriarchy.

         - A false representation of society can build only faulty strategies.

         - Their analysis of class itself is faulty, since it embodies the negation of patriarchy; as it is now defined, the class struggle cannot

1. be linked to the women's struggle
2. be integrated in a global analytical and strategical scheme

        - Their representation of the working class takes in account only the male part of it: therefore it is

1. inaccurate
2. by excluding women, it excludes precisely the most exploited part of the working class.

The class struggle as now defined is thus the struggle of the aristocracy of labour, against capital but also against the "sous-proletariat" (women, youth, migrant workers).

Finally, we do not know whether there now exists a working class movement which would link to the women's movement.

The C.P. is reformist; and the leftist groups are elitist groups in two respects:

        - up to 99 per cent of their members are petty bourgeois individuals

        - they see themselves as the "avant-garde" and we cannot abide by this vision of how the working class struggle is to be led and directed, by an avant-garde and moreover by a non-proletarian one.

We are waiting for the creation of proletarian groups organized on the same basis as women's groups: authoritarian, and driving their analyses and strategies from the discussion of their actual oppression.

Meanwhile, we think that only women are in the objective situation and have the political potential to lead not only the anti-patriarchal struggle,but since they make up the majority of the "sous-proletariat", to lead the anti capitalist struggle as well.

Des FEMINISTES REVOLUTIONNAIRES Paris - France
Rencontre Internationale d'Amsterdam Ie3 Juin 1977