Struggle to liberate women

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COLIN FOSTER, step towards their own no- LUCIANIVI TERRY SMITH, Islington. eration ever accomplished amn aland at chelters (for a fictionalised the London bon DAVE SPENCER and Les Hearn November • 26, January 7) have raised a question over Marxism's contribution to the theoretical understanding of women's oppression.

The question is misconceived: for the issue before us is not simply the elaboration of texts but the lifting of the material burden of oppression thrust upon women both by capitalism in decay and by Stalinist bureaucracy. In this struggle Marxists have a solid record of achievement.

Marx and Engels fought to develop a materialist analysis of the ideological and institutional foundations of women's oppression under capitalism. Such analysis - like any scientific analysis - has required to be developed in the light of fresh knowledge, but stands as a major starting point.

It was Marxists in the socialist movement who pioneered the development of special forms of work to mobilise doubly oppressed proletarian women, recognising the inevitable limitations of bourgeois feminism.

It was the Bolsheviks who, with the active involvement of Lenin, took the initiative in organising women in Russia to bring about the biggest single step towards their own liberation ever accomplished shelters (for a fictionalised - the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a workers' state.

It was the Bolshevik government which - despite colossal objective economic difficulties took immediate measures to lift women's oppression, changing the laws on marriage, divorce, abortion and sexuality, and beginning the communal provision of catering, laundry facilities and housing.

It was those who fought for the continuity of Marxism - Trotsky and the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union and internationally - who opposed the moves by the Stalinist bureaucracy to reverse these gains and re-establish the nuclear family unit as a foundation of authoritarian rule and focus of oppression of both women and youth.

And to this day it is only Marxists who can offer women who struggle for their rights an understanding of the conservative, sexist labour bureaucracy, and a perspective to challenge their control.

In the fight against women's oppression it is not only Marxists who must learn from the women's movement: rather it through grasping the gains of the Marxist movement that feminists can best organise to carry through the struggle for women's liberation.

TERRY SMITH, Banbury. the London bomb would