A small bit of history first. Feminism in Holland started again in 1968 with a organization called Man-vrouw maatschappij (man-woman and society), a group mainly consisting of bourgeois women; which to us does not mean that MVM has not done and still does very necessary work on the level of influencing public opinion, workshops on sexism in textbooks, on sexism in advertising, on the working conditions of administrative workers etc. In opposition to MVM, in 1969 during upheavals in the student movement, Dolle Mina was started. From the start Dolle Mina saw itself as part of the left. The spokespeople from Dolle Mina were mostly heavily affiliated with one or the other leftist tendency in Holland. It was a mixed group, men were a very small but very loud and dominating minority - what else can one expect.
In the beginning Dolle Mina attracted hundreds of women of different ages, working class as well as middle class women. The enthusiasm of the beginning years waned when more and more the people from the leftist groups took over the discussions. A lot of women got a suspicious feeling that the "leaders" in Dolle Mina saw the organization as a kind of Kindergarten for the "real" struggle, THE class-struggle, which according to the spokespeople did not take place within the women's movement but only in the labour movement organizations like the Unions and the C.P. More and more women began to leave. Some of them felt that within Dolle Mina there was no room for any kind of idea or experience that did not fit into pre-conceived Marxist ideology. The leaders said things in Dolle Mina were going wrong because there was not enough unity, because there was not a clear political program and started to make one. There was a conference in which two days were spent on voting on whether the program should say women's oppression was caused by capitalism or was also caused by capitalism.
The group who said also won but meanwhile so many women were so fed up that Dolle Mina split up entirely, leaving some small groups, reading Marx, intact. The rest left to the C.P, went into consciousness raising groups or just disappeared. For several years afterwards nothing was going on that could be called feminism-socialism. There was a standstill until more and more women had participated in the new wave of consciousness raising groups and slowly a new kind of feminism-socialism began to emerge that has now changed into a lively and productive, almost anarchistically structured, loose organization of many autonomous "femsoc" groups.
Our experiences with Dolle Mina have been very important to us. From the first mistakes we have learned at least a few things:
- there is nothing so disrupting as to force from above an artificial unity on women at this stage of the women's movement, instead of finding unity where it already exists.
- when organizing women we have to start from their experiences of the totality of their lives as women and not only from what has already been acknowledged by the leftist movement as "politically relevant"!
The new feminist-socialist movement started from a different beginning. To start with, our own experiences as oppressed people are more important than any kind of theory. Starting with ourselves we found that we had to redefine the whole old notion of what is political and what is not if we want to fit in so many of the experiences that we found most oppressing, i.e. sexuality, relations outside of the workplace, the family, all that was previously called "private life". From that point we started to see the links with the patriarchal and capitalist society as a whole. We found that marxist theory as it stands is valid and helpful but that it leaves out too much. For instance, we found that at the same time that the contradiction between wage labor and capitalism appeared, the split within labor between domestic labor and wage labor also occurred. We found that the one could not be understood without the other and that the dialectic relation between domestic labor and wage labor is more important than the details of what oppression is like in one or the other. It also means we cannot just use old leftist analysis and stick on bits of feminism with glue or add a few notes saying that with labor we also mean domestic labor. We have to redefine what we call political, what we call class position and class consciousness and class-struggle.
We have reasons for calling ourselves feminist-socialists, not just feminist or socialist women.
We have reasons to believe that feminism alone does not get us far enough, although starting from the position of women is important and we don't feel in Holland that we have to fight radical-feminism, radical lesbianism or even bourgeois-femmism We have to work together and talk together and we do.
We have won the battle on abortion because we have not allowed ourselves to split up along the lines of socialist definitions although there has been an effort to conquer and divide. But feminism alone is not everything. We also see clearly that there are class differences between women although women also have a lot in common with all other women. If we think about the preconditions that we need to liberate women we can see that it cannot, be done under capitalism. Socialism is a precondition for women's liberation. Therefore if we have to think about anti-capitalist strategy, we do that because—starting from the position of women- we have to, not because the left tells us to. And it does not mean that as feminists we just join the left movement or even that we take over their ideas about organizing because they were developed from the position of wage labour, which is only part of our position. Socialism is a precondition but it is not enough, it is not a guarantee for women's liberation.
It shows in the way leftist groups work, the same hierarchical structures with women at the bottom; it shows in absence of profound theoretical thinking about the position of women apart from some rechewing of Engels. It also shows that wherever socialist revolutions appear women have to organize as women unless they want to be pushed back into their old position as housewives in practice and as afterthoughts in theory.
Women do not need slogans on the class-struggle, they need ways to organize themselves around their needs. Some of those needs, for instance, equal pay or better working conditions in their wage labour are more or less the same as socialist groups have already called politically relevant. Therefore, it is more or less possible though still difficult to work as women's groups within the unions. But other needs are not seen as politically relevant, for instance the possibility of defending oneself against rape or battering or male-defined sex. Even though it might be more difficult to see an anti-rape centre as part of the anti-capitalistic strategy, that does not make it less important for women. Obviously the abortion struggle is not going to get capitalism on its knees since obviously it is possible, as in Holland, to liberalize birth control and abortion and leave capitalism intact. But as long as women are physically oppressed, as long as they need their husband's permission to leave the house, as long as they can be battered or raped, as long as they are conditioned to take care of other people without expecting care in return women are egoless.
The control over our own bodies, our own emotions and relations are a precondition to any kind of political struggle, no matter whether it leads directly to an overthrow of capitalism or only indirectly via women getting stronger and more independent. We cannot choose between fighting patriarchy or capitalism since we have no choice in how we are oppressed. Obviously patriarchy and capitalism are linked but they are linked in very complicated ways which we have just started to analyze. Nobody but women themselves can decide where their priorities lie, which needs for them are most important. As we can see now, women are organizing themselves on very different levels in many different ways. There is not one way of forming a feminist-socialist strategy. In the feminist-socialist platform which is open to all women who define themselves as feminists and socialists we have been able to include many women who come from different feminist or socialist groups or are as yet unaffiliated.
One of the questions that we discuss is how the feminist-socialist movement relates to the class-struggle organizations, but it is only one of the questions which arise, especially for the women who work with women in wage labour and therefore have to decide how to or not to work within the unions. We no longer say it is necessary to be in one of the acknowledged leftist groups to be a socialist: we are socialists.
Of course there is a lot more to say about these points. What we have worked on in practice and in theory for years cannot be put in a short paper. We want to give an impression of where we stand at this moment. We would like to discuss with groups in other countries what they are doing, what kind of strategies they are developing, what kind of theory. Also we are very interested to find out how the different forms the women's movement takes in different countries link together with the different positions of women there or a different political climate.
Lida van de Broek
Carolien Heikens
Olga Kloet
Marijke Karl
Anja Meulenbelt
Jophien van Vaalen
THE NETHERLANDS: How Does the Feminist Socialist Movement Conceive Itself Within the Entire Left Movement?
In this paper we want to present some thoughts about how feminism-socialism relates to the left movement and to the socialist struggle. We think that it is interesting and valuable to discuss this topic with women in other countries because there might be common problems and ideas as well as differences due to our specific situation.
In comparing our situation we could come to a better understanding about how to fight and how to fight together.
First it is necessary to give a brief description of the feminist movement in the Netherlands.
The Feminist Movement in the Netherlands
Some historical facts about the movement have already been presented in the "where we stand" paper. Here we want to tell you something about the women in the movement and the activities we employ.
The women in the movement are generally the younger and better educated women. We include mainly housewives (all of us), teachers, nurses, students, social workers, artists, journalists and the like. This doesn't mean that non-educated or so-called working-class women are not interested in feminism. On "open evenings" all kinds of women come together to discuss and also a lot of women work in small groups (i.e. education groups) in communities but are not frequently seen in women's centers or at demonstrations. The women who are the most active in the feminist movement are either "non committed", that is to say they don't belong to any formal organization, or women who are also organized within political parties, women's organizations or unions.
A lot of long-term projects are going on: fem-soc study groups, theatre groups, yoga, radical therapy, committees on issues (like abortion), publishing companies, bookshops, film groups, community work, educational projects, university groups, self-help, women and media, women's newspaper, women in the menopause, rape-crisis groups, battered women's group, migrant workers women's groups, third world women's groups, women and social work, women's studies.
Maybe we forgot a few, there are so many. Of course there exists a variety of ideas as to how we should fight for our liberation. These ideas range from "emancipation" (women should run a little bit faster to overtake men) to the hopes for rebirth of a matriarchal society. There is a lot of interest in the idea of women's culture that is promoted by lesbian nation but not only by them. And of course there are the feminist-socialist women who see the overthrow of capitalism as a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for our liberation.
The movement has survived quite a few ideological battles in the past: to include men or not, to change mentality or structures, to be political or feminist, to have organization or no organization.
The outcome of all these discussions has fortunately not led to a split in the movement. Several tendencies exist next to each other and women work happily together on issues. Therefore it is difficult to say what the main tendency is. The feminist-socialists are quite numerous (about 1600 have a subscription to the newsletter) but there are quite a number among them who for example support the idea of lesbianism as a political choice.
At present the discussion within the fem-soc movement is about organization, as will always be the case when we are confronted with new ideas and circumstances. The question is whether we should have a stronger organization (more structured) or continue as we do: a loose kind of organization where women spontaneously form groups for actions and the like. But all women support some form of organization, simply because we could not even meet if we didn't organize. The basis of the movement is still the small group: consciousness-raising groups, study groups etc.
Picture of the "Left"
We define "left" here as: groups, organizations and individuals who consider themselves left-wing. These include social democrats, official communist party, marxist leninist groups, troskyists and non-organized leftist people (students, representatives of third-world committees, people who run left-wing bookshops etc.)
Among the parliamentary parties we have: Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, labour party), Pacifistisch Socialistische Partij (PSP, pacifist-socialist party), Communistische Partij van Nederland (CPN, communist party). Progressive partij Radicalen (PPR, progressive radical party).
Extra parliamentary parties and groups are:
Socialistische Patrij (SP, socialist party). Bond van
Nederlands Marxisten-Leninisten (BNML, union of Dutch marxist-leninists), Kommunistische Eenheidsbeweging Nederland (KEN, communist unity movement of the Netherlands), International Kommunisten Bond (1KB, international communist union), Groep Marxisten Leninisten (GML, marxist-leninist group) Vrije Socialisten (VS, free socialists), Kommunistische Arbeiders Organizatie (KAO, communist workers organization), Kommunistische Kring Breda (KKB, communist Circle Breda).
Again: we may forget a few, there are so many.
From the above listing it is easy to conclude that the left is split in Holland, like everywhere.
Women and the Left
One reason for the leaving of the left was our experience in left groups. On the one hand we learned that people could organize to fight capitalism and imperialism, on the other hand we didn't find a place as women in those groups. Frequently the statement of feminist goals raised aggression in our male comrades. The traditional marxist theory was forced upon us to prove that women's liberation would come after the revolution and that women for the time being should work in the class-struggle. Usually this meant that we had to organize the male part of the working class. Situations existed where women worked with "working youth" but they were only thinking of the male part of it while there are more females in this group. When parties were aware of the specific situation of women they tended to form separate women's branches. But this usually meant that we had to organize women to teach them the correct party-line. The oppression of women as a group was completely denied. It was therefore extremely difficult for women to develop a consciousness about their own oppression within the left movement.
When men (and often also women) did not have a theory to show us that our ideas were "premature" they had other means for not raising the women's question. The women's organization that developed by the end of the sixties was ridiculed and left isolated. The same kinds of jokes and criticism came from "progressive" as well as "conservative" people. It was not taken seriously in spite of the fact that the movement attracted thousands of women from all backgrounds. Reactions concentrated on the sexual demands, leaving out the demands for free daycare etc.
The left-wingers as well as the left wing press lost their interest after the first upheavals of female consciousness. In the 1971 election struggle many parties, including the religious ones, had topics on women's demands but that was pure opportunism. Few things were done in practice. During the fading public interest the movement began to grow and found ways to organize in different ways than were found in socialist groups.
It was important for us to realize that we had to fight two enemies: patriarchism that was found in both right and left-wing groups and capitalism. And it was important for us to realize there is a material basis for the oppression of women in capitalism: the use of women as reserve labour force and the unpaid domestic work.
Gradually we came to discover that the women's movement was not "just" a mass movement but that it created the consciousness that was necessary to change socialist theory and perspective. More than daycare centers and women in the work force are necessary in socialism. The entire division between private life and public life should be questioned by the socialist movement. We do not know whether it is because of these ideas that women became stronger and started to be an important factor within political parties. The fact is that the last couple of years have shown an increasing public interest in feminism and many women who organized in political parties. We see a kind of come back of women to the left groups where they were first almost outlawed. It looks as if women (that is to say "political" women) first ran away from the left and came back after the experience in the women's movement with a new socialist consciousness. Useless to say that these women still face many difficulties.
In the first place they are in general more radical than the men in their party even on non-feminist issues. There are for example women in the social democratic party who see as one of their tasks to break the whole bureaucratic structure of the party and the government by acting as the enemy-within.
Frequently the activities of women are boycotted by the party officials. Issues that are raised are not taken up or are taken up in a distorted way. Sometimes the demands of women are a separate issue in a special chapter of a party program, while feminist issues should influence a program on almost every point. And feminists are still ridiculed for the things they raise with the well-known argument that you cannot speak for women only, that you should speak for everyone. Also some tension exists between feminists in parties and women who have worked their way up in the party hierarchy and who are not feminists ("Look at me, I've become city council representative as a woman. It all depends on your own efforts" etc.)
Women criticize the way party politics are practiced, the style of discussion and the patriarchal attitudes of their male members. They no longer try to deal with men on their terms but on their own terms (to make more room for personal relationships for example).
What was just said about the relationship between women and political parties does not hold entirely for women in the official communist party. There exists a separate women's organization following the party-line. Those women have become more active on women's issues under the influence of the feminist movement but they are in general anti-feminist: fighting what they call bourgeois feminism but meaning all feminists. How they relate to the party from a feminist point of view is not known since they don't talk about it.
We can safely assume that women are tolerated within parties as long as they don't demand too much and if they don't get too much power and if what they want suits the party. This happens for example in the election struggle: "look how progressive we are, we have women organized!" But the demand for a 25 per cent quota of women in legislative and decision-making bodies is not supported by the party itself. We are forced back when our demands are too threatening. It is clear that the fight against patriarchal attitudes still has to continue for a long time. The cultural revolution does not come after socialist revolution. The two have to be fought for at the same time.
Looking at Marxist-leninist and trotskyist groups we see a strange picture. Some groups openly defend a little bit the feminist cause but women are not, have not separately organized themselves within those groups. Also we see that sometimes separate women's groups are formed but according to the old recipe of "women in the class-struggle". This happened in one of the Dutch groups where a women's group was formed "because working class women were oppressed". The group's existence ended however when the party changed to the 20th new line. In a number of groups there is a growing interest in the situation of women due to the influence of the fem-soc movement. Even the die-hards are beginning to understand that a real socialist society cannot be realized without the women's struggle but in general there are still many blind spots as to what feminism-socialism is about. Some groups do support the abortion struggle now but it took them some time to discover that it was important. Probably this is due to the fact that they cannot tell us any more that we don't reach working-class women since we have organized on a mass basis to fight. Some women in the fem-soc movement see the dangers of being taken over by these "interested" groups and therefore they are not in favor of a very structured organization.
When we realize that our analysis is closer to Marxism than to social-democracy, when we realize that our practice is far more radical than those of the parliamentary parties, it is very strange that groups who consider themselves the most progressive are the least interested in feminism. It could be worthwhile to organize massively as women in those parties but usually they are so small that you would not have much of a women's group.
It is still difficult to explain to Marxist-leninists that mere organization of women doesn't mean feminism. They keep saying: "But we do organize women. Look at our action for cleaning people, women also were taking part". That might be true but they look only at women as far as they are part of the work-force and the question of double burden is not raised at all(of course not: they only look at society from their own stand in public life). And to organize women does not necessarily mean that you fight sexism in your own group. So we still see large pictures of Mao: Mao with the workers, Mao with the farmers, Mao with the artists, Mao with the students, but no woman to be seen.
It could be worthwhile to discuss why the left has kept our issues back. Because we only raised middle class issues? Because we didn't fit into a theory? Because we were "reformist" or "bourgeois feminist"? Or was it simply all these things together with at the base their own fear of being threatened as men?
New problems between women and the left arose, when women started to show themselves in areas that were traditionally dominated by men, like science, art and literature. Lots of conflicts arise between feminists and left-wing publishers if they want to have their books published. Last year we had a small action against the unlawful firing of a woman in a left bookstore. Immediate reactions came in the press saying that we took the wrong side, that we should not try to kill left-wing institutions, that we were left-radicalists, that we should show solidarity, etc. A similar conflict arose among the editors of a left-wing magazine. The conflict did not start out as an anti-feminist conflict but it was made one to make It easier to blame the women in the group.
Also as soon as women made propaganda for fighting sexism in science, scientists hurriedly tried to prove that this was "unscientific". These kinds of experiences drive us back again to our own organizations, i.e. publishing companies, bookstores etc. We do not always choose to have separate organizations, we are often forced into them. (And later men say that we isolate ourselves from the left).
The Autonomous Fem-Soc Movement in the Socialist Struggle
We sometimes get tired from explaining why we need an autonomous movement. Sometimes it seems that being a feminist-socialist means to explain....and explain.... and explain. But we don't care so much anymore what the opinion of the left is. Much more important is to find out how we are part of the socialist struggle and what we do as an autonomous fem-soc movement.
Objectively speaking the feminist movement is part of the anti-capitalist struggle because our demands and ideas challenge the existing structures capitalism is based on: the family, the use of women as reserve labour force, the unpaid labour in domestic work and the manipulation of women as consumers. Our demand for example of collectivization of domestic work requires a fundamental change in the mode of production.
With the development of capitalist industrialization there are less and less reasons why there should be a division of tasks between the two sexes. There are almost no biological reasons why women shouldn't do the same work as men and vice versa (in fact the men who rule us are the ones who use the least physical power to do their work). But women are kept in a continuing state of economic and psychological dependence. Capitalism has not created these inequalities between men and women but has "used" an already existing form of oppression, patriarchy, to shape it to its ends. Every kind of inequality between people supports the divide-and-rule policy of capitalism, a policy that is needed to weaken the struggle of the people, to dominate them and to present these inequalities as "natural", as God given. The relationship between patriarchy and capitalism manifests itself clearly in the family structure of our society. Although women are often part of the work force their main work place is still the home: the care of children and husband. They are the ones who restore the labour power of men who are exploited outside the family. And they do it for free because it is not considered work but the "natural" task. It is very important to keep women believing in those natural tasks because the whole structure of the society would fall apart if we did not perform them any more. Therefore a strong belief has to be maintained among the people that women are naturally the inferior of men.
Psychological oppression and the exploitation of our bodies by individual men (in marriage in return for "protection", in prostitution for money) are not necessary in a strictly economic way. But since they support the idea that women are no good except for children and sex these ideas implicitly maintain the family structure.
Sometimes a shift in attitudes is noticed: when women are needed in the labour force, capitalists suddenly become "progressive" but we all know that women are the last to be hired and the first to be fired. We also see that work for women outside their homes is just an extension of their reproductive functions: restaurants, medical field, social work, are places that have taken over the traditional tasks of the household. The relationship between capitalism and patriarchy has up till now never been of concern to the left movement. What feminism-socialism changes in the struggle for socialism is the recognition that the oppression of women has a material basis in capitalism, and is supported by a capitalist ideology.
We don't fight socialism, we develop socialist theory and practice to areas that have always been left out: personal life, socialization of children, domestic work. Our struggle is not a struggle apart from the left but a socialist struggle in itself.
In practice we see that women have organized themselves in the sphere of reproduction as well as production. But the former is more developed. We constantly have to be aware that our oppression is not one-dimensional. We are oppressed in an economic, cultural and psychological way and therefore our struggle should be a struggle against the totality of our oppression. The struggle for free abortion is a fight against patriarchal attitudes but in itself won't change the capitalist system. This happens only when we connect the abortion struggle with other demands in the reproductive sphere. If we fight against women's unemployment we also fight against male chauvinist attitudes within the unions. We have to be aware that fighting against unemployment has to go together with the struggle for collectivization of domestic work. Feminists socialists take up this fight on different levels at the same time and constantly check short-term solutions against long-term goals. If we demand part-time work we have to realize that part-time work still means that people have to perform tasks that should be collectively organized and that women's position in the labour force will be weakened. Partial solutions keep women back from real solutions and leave our role intact. The same holds for daycare: if daycare is organized by factories it binds women to a specific work place.
But knowing all this is not enough for developing a fem-soc strategy. We have a theory about our specific oppression and we do work on demands but we don't have a clear idea (yet) about where to go to, what methods we have to develop. We are faced with the problem that, unlike a workers' organization housewives cannot easily strike because they immediately turn their family members against them. (It would be very demonstrative if we did strike as women did in Iceland. It would be wonderful if men couldn't go to work because they had to take care of the kids). Strikes might be effective but also very difficult to organize. We have to develop other ways to attain our ends. What those other ways are is difficult to say. The fact is that women destroy the system from within: they organize in existing institutions and force them to change. This is true for women in political parties as well as for housewives who get together to discuss their situation. We do not fight capitalism directly as workers do but more Indirectly by attacking the state and its institutions.
This means fighting against closing down of hospitals, against cuts in daycare and child allowances, for better social security, etc.
The problem in the discussion around strategy is the fear that a discussion about what a fem-soc practice is would split the movement. We all have different ideas about what socialism is and we are influenced by different conceptions of socialist struggle. We have never discussed, for example, the relationship between struggle in parliamentary parties and grass-root organizations. The strategy question is also complicated because there are different ways women work. Women who have a field of work within institutions do not have the need to develop fem-soc to a well-oiled organization where an autonomous fem-soc practice will be developed. But all women feel the need for discussion and .emotional support within the movement and this is very often difficult to get, especially for new women. Also many women feel that they have to learn from other experiences and they see that the different groups make the same mistakes over and over again. If you are part of a fem-soc group with no organizational ties to whatever practice, it is easy to feel isolated from the larger movement. This becomes a problem when the movement grows and grows and when there are conferences with hundreds of women.
Also women feel that a loose organization as it exists now won't be able to act effectively in case direct action is needed. We've seen for example in the action for Claudia Caputi that women who happen to be part of the secretariat of the movement have to do all the work because no one feels responsible for what we do as a group.
The question of strategy then can only be really taken up when we want a strategy on a mass basis, not when we decide that every woman should develop her own strategy.
The strategy of fem-soc should always be the choice for the position of women and not for some party discipline. As feminist-socialists we have to stay autonomous and try to make our influence within the left as big as possible as well as trying actively to reach other women who are not organized in existing groups. We want to be Influential in the parliament by means of a party membership. We are part of an ML-movement as a way to start a discussion about women's struggle. But this won't be easy since responsibility towards a party is always officially organized while towards feminism it is only "personal" responsibility. Between the left and the women's movement there will be a lot of tension for the next years. We still think in terms of "their"struggle and "our" struggle while we recognize that it should be one struggle. The left has always asked us to build the class struggle. Now we have answered that we rather throw the bricks ourselves and they sometimes get hurt too.
Els de Groot
Petra de Vries