Why we Must View Women’s Liberation in the UK Through a Class Lens - Kyril Whittacker

Why we Must View Women’s Liberation in the UK Through a Class Lens

 - Kyril Whittacker, member of the Communist Party of Britain and a writer who lived in Vietnam

  
   It is quite often heard in the United Kingdom that women are liberated, they are free. No longer are women forced by a patriarchal society to take this or that job, no longer are women expected to remain in the home, and some observers state almost as if to seem degrading in their analysis women are free because ‘Even a woman can be prime minister’ as some conservative feminists have put forth. This is bourgeois feminism, feminism in name only and this can be seen reflected in recent events in Europe.
 
   In the recent Italian elections for example, when Georgia Meloni was elected Prime Minister of Italy, many newspapers instead of opting to describe the fascist nature of her party and the certain horrific conditions to come for the oppressed in Italy, many newspapers instead used headlines such as ‘Georgia Meloni: Italy’s First Female Prime Minister’.
 
   In the UK we have had to listen to years to a Conservative Party which on debates involving women, constantly bring up the fact that they are the only party in the UK to have elected female Prime Ministers. Yet even on a shallow observation of these basic arguments one can see that it is obvious that these actions are not liberation at all, at best they serve to give an illusion of freedom to the working masses, and at worst they act as the cruellest and shallowest form of bourgeois propaganda that seeks to increase oppression. The female Prime Ministers in the UK are not representative of the masses of women in the UK, instead of furthering mass programs which benefit women, these politicians have perpetuated the most reactionary and acidic attitudes towards the working class and women in general.
 
   Margaret Thatcher the infamous union crusher whom perpetuated backwards viewpoints concerning the family and the LGBTQ+ community, supported apartheid and was pals with Pinochet. Theresa May, who continued David Cameron’s legacy of increased foodbanks, increased child poverty and homelessness. Lastly and most recently the laughing stock that was Liz Truss, a Prime Minister so catastrophically bad she only lasted 45 days in office, who stood on a platform of crushing the unions. stripping away the right to protest and who sent the economy into freefall. This electing of women of bourgeois families to the highest offices, who support in every possible way the capitalist class is the freedom of bourgeois society, and as such is therefore not freedom at all, but deceit and oppression. It is obvious that from only this small analysis that bourgeois society is not giving freedom to women, instead exactly the opposite, this is why we must analyse the question of women’s liberation from a class standpoint, only then will we be able to fully break the foundations of women’s oppression in society, whether that be in the United Kingdom or anywhere else.
 

CLOAKS OF DECEPTION

 

“Capitalist ‘Democracies’ often claim to give women and girls freedom, the freedom to education, the freedom to vote, the freedom to work, but are women really free in these so called ‘democracies’ to partake in these actions? Engels stated that a fundamental aspect of the bourgeoisie when it argues about the ‘freedom’ of the worker to work ignores one fundamental aspect of the contract, namely the class dynamics between the one and the other, and therefore the power exerted on the one by the other when signing an employment contract.”

   In a similar way bourgeois ‘democracy’ too cloaks all of it’s so called democratic aspects with a veneer of freedom which completely ignores the material reality of society in an effort to mask exploitation and detract from any criticism of its system. This applies especially to women’s liberation. In these ‘democracies’ it is often argued that women are afforded the right to work in capitalist society, but is this really true when capitalist society pays women less than men for the same job? Does it offer freedom when it ignores women’s reproductive issues as if they are irrelevant to the workplace? Does it when women are objectified and sexually harassed by ‘company culture’ (as has happened numerous times in the video game industry), and the harassers are not brought to justice precisely because of their class position, and are instead moved to a different department or worse, do not receive any type of action whatsoever. This is not liberation in work, for work is not guaranteed, it is not free of exploitation and in fact is a horrific environment for women workers.
 
   We can also see a similar hypocrisy with the right to education as another example, in the United Kingdom we are told that education is free for all up to university level. Yet this ignores again the material reality of the situation. As someone who has been both a poor student from a working class family and a teacher I have seen this first hand in the United Kingdom. Uniforms are expensive, classroom equipment is expensive, schools fail to be able to deal sufficiently with student problems due to woeful underfunding by the government, large class sizes and long hours with miniscule pay for teaching staff. The fact is if you are a student from a working class family in a British school you will struggle, and for many things. you will have to rely on the kindness of your underpaid and over exploited teachers to help you navigate the mess that is this so called education system of ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’. Consider now on top of this the problems young girls have to struggle with in their education, with backwards attitudes towards them present in every school with the pressures of reproductive health and access to the required materials to deal with these issues in an underfunded school. On top of this in the UK there has also been a depressing trend of students being forced into prostitution to pay for their day to day lives and their tuition in universities, which has even been encouraged by some educational institutions. The results of all this are not only depressing, they are catastrophic.
 
   Here the capitalist system in covering up its exploitation of the working class and women keeps working class students from getting a decent education, the one thing the UK’s so called ‘meritocratic system’ is meant to grant everyone regardless of class, race or sex. When this gets to the university level, with requirements such as textbooks, laptops, transportation, accommodation, food etc. it is no surprise that many working class students do not go on to further education or feel forced into prostitution.
 

EXPLOITATION

 
   Even when we ignore all of this false ‘freedom’ (and this is without mentioning issues such as the two party dictatorship, and the consistent placing into power of unelected figures in the UK) we still cannot confront the issue of women’s liberation or in fact the liberation of any oppressed group of we do not look at the root of this oppression, the inherent exploitative nature of the capitalist system. The capitalist system based on the accumulation of wealth and in its pursuit of this increasing exploitation of resources and labour. In Labour this is manifested through lax working conditions, crushing trade unions, low pay and most significantly tied to all of these the extraction of more and more surplus from the worker, that is, that they give significantly and increasingly more than they receive in the labour process.
 
   To analyse this we can look at Marx who presented us with the description on this extraction of surplus as follows:
 

“If our spinner, for example, by his daily labour of six hours, added three shillings value to the cotton, a value forming an exact equivalent to his wages, he will in twelve hours, add six shillings worth to the cotton, and produce a proportional surplus of yarn. As he has sold his labouring power to the capitalist, the whole value of produce created by him belongs the capitalist, the owner pro tem of his labouring power. By advancing three shillings, the capitalist will therefore, realize a value of six shillings, because, advancng a value in which six hours of labour are crystallised, he will receive in return a value in which twelve hours of labour are crystallised.”

 
   In this explanation Marx highlights that from what we discussed earlier concerning the unequal power relationship conferred by class in the signing of a work contract the capitalist is free through his ownership of the means of production, his power and wealth to reap profit from the workers labour. If we compare this spinner to a modern day fast food worker we can see that a worker whom works a 12 hour shift at minimum wage will earn around £118 with all the food they have cooked, assembled and packaged generating far much more money than their wage. Even when we incorporate the cost of materials such as the beef, potatoes, cutlery etc. we can see there would still be a significant margin of profit there, profit which, does not get given to the worker, nor covers the costs of the business in acquiring materials.
 
   This surplus instead gets extracted from the workers efforts and is placed directly in the hands of the capitalist whom enriches his or herself of the hard work of their employees. Employees whom in the UK are increasingly having to resort to food banks to feed their children.skipping meals, and forfeiting the use of electricity in their homes.
 
   In the United Kingdom the excessive extraction of surplus is clear in many areas, for example the recent heightened attempts to crush the ever-growing trade union movement by passing draconian bills to make protest illegal, by keeping wages significantly below inflation for almost a decade, and in many large enterprises, láx health and safety implementation in the workplace and attempts to make workers work for the longest time they can get away with fue take what was said above.com cermine the extractionoi surplus we can clearly see how exactly then whilst workers in the UK are struggling to even afford food for their children some companies are making record profits.

   Applying all of this to the question of women’s liberation in the UK we can see that women will never be free until capitalism is smashed. A system predicated on the exploitation can never exist if we are pursuing liberation. As Lenin stated:
 

“The real emancipation of women, real communism, will begin only where and when an all-out struggle begins (Led by the proletariat wielding state power) against this petty housekeeping, or rather when its wholesale transformation into large-scale socialist economy begins.” 

 
   Lenin then, recognises that the oppression inherent in the capitalist system in all its forms is a road clock to the emancipation of women and as such only when this system is destroyed and replaced with socialism and communism can progress be made the liberation of women. Because capitalism seeks to present backwards attitudes in relation to women, because it seeks to treat them as an expendable work force, because it seeks to exploit them as much as possible, because it seeks to use them as mere objects for the creation of capital, no concrete liberation can be achieved for women without the complete eradication of the capitalist system and its wholesale replacement with a system of real democracy, real freedom and real equality.
 

APPROPRIATION OF RADICAL STRUGGLES

 

“Lenin stated in the State and Revolution that Capitalism seeks to blunt the revolutionary force of great thinkers by converting them into ‘harmless icons’, blunting the revolutionary essence of their message and vulgarising it. Capitalism does this method today with the revolutionary women of the past. Figures such as Alexandra Kollontai, Frida Kahlo, Nadezhda Krupskaya, have their massive contributions to the emancipation of women vulgarised or blunted because of their class analysis.”

 
   Either that or these women’s contributions are buried and ignored, instead with capitalist society, (if it discusses these women at all) giving them mere derogatory titles, instead or revolutionaries, political philosophers, theorists, politicians they are seen as somebodies wife, or as someone who possessed ‘left wing views’.
 
   In the UK the struggle for women’s emancipation is fought against by liberals who view the victory of capitalism as a victory for women, when as a matter of fact the victory of capitalism here is of course a detriment to the majority of women whom are working class and in today’s United Kingdom find themselves on the receiving end of some of the harshest economic times in the country’s history. When a woman like Liz Truss becomes Prime Minister of the UK for only 45 days, in this time plunging the economy to its weakest state in decades, attempting to enact draconian bills against trade unions and protesters, giving businesses tax cuts when foodbanks are rising, child poverty is rising homelessness, and fuel poverty are rising, we can see that having a woman prime minister is of little benent to womenin the UK because they serve the interests of the bourgeoisie.
 
   As for Rishi Sunak, a Prime Minister who will continue the long line of dracoclan policles of his predecessors and seeks to make it lacriminal offence to ‘vilify Great Britain’ we che guarantee that things will not get any better. We can seewith Smak too though, just as liberals rejoice in female prime ministers sueco they reloce in Sumak being ‘the first Hindu Prime Minister’ or the first PM from an Indian family. Liberals then even in comparison to their radical predecessors serve to blunt the revolutionary force of the movement for women’s emancipation in the UK and Europe, by not paying attention to the question of class they have sold out their freedom wholesale to an exploitative system that will only reward them as long as they are members of the exploiting class. In the United Kingdom then, we must fight back against this liberal wave of the assumption that first the emancipation of women can be a separate question from the class question, because as we have seen the former has its foundations in the latter. We must be on guard as to not have capitalist propaganda make the movement for women’s emancipation be blunted and vulgarised. Without a class analysis we will be going in circles.
 

A POSITIVE OUTLOOK: THE CONCLUSION

 
   Women’s exploitation and its roots in capitalism is a lengthy subject and as such I cannot do this full justice in this short article, nor can I fully do justice the explana tion of the material reality of the movement in the United Kingdom, it is and of course as a male I am more ignorant of women’s issues than my women comrades. Nevertheless I hope my article has added something of worth to the discussion. I would suggest that we all (men and women) must improve our engagement with the question of women’s emancipation, and furthermore we must investi gate the progressive socialist states both past and present have made in this area. from the progressive views of the family in the former GDR to the amazing rights afforded to women workers in the Soviet Union, which provided equal pay for equal work, the massive state programmes for crèches, nurseries, communal kitchens, the legalisation of abortion and many more rights decades before capitalist states.
 
   In the modern day states like Vietnam for example have highly progressive labour legislation for women, which includes but is not limited to: companies who employ over a certain number of people must have adequate breast milk pumping and storage facilities, women having to be a part of decisions made in the workplace, women who menstruate being entitled to fully paid leave, or alternatively extra pay if they decide to work alongside longer breaks, and much, much more. It also has a strong women’s union which has great influence on women’s legislation and women’s everyday lives in the country through its various programmes and its political power. Recently we have also seen in Cuba highly progressive legisla tion in the form of the new family bill, which codifies into it’s constitution the equality of men and women, and the recognition of various types of family, alongside other progressive legislation for same sex couples, the elderly and children. This essential piece of legcomplexislation was voted on by the Cuban people, it was not decided by a bunch of politicians whom only serve the interests of themselves or capital, but by a party and people determined to make progressive change and to improve the conditions of the masses. These are just two examples of legislative change which was enacted by the masses for the masses and is just one of the many achievements in the construction of socialism in Cuba and Vietnam, Mary Davis and Angus Reid rightly point out that such legis lation as the Family Code in Cuba greatly contrasts to the ‘rights’ of capitalist states whom as Engels alluded to earlier provide a false freedom for the working class, and withdraw rights as soon as they are seemingly given.
 

“This comprehensive settlement contrasts sharply with the piecemeal and oppor tunistic way such rights are given (and taken away) in capitalist democracies.”

 

   We should learn from and be inspired by these socialist states and their massive progress, and should note that it is by recognising the class basis of women’s emancipation that these societies have progressed so much. To make significant emancipatory progress in the United Kingdom for women then, we must too recognise the class basis of women’s oppression. We must in a phrase, break free of the chains of capital and emancipate the masses for the progression of society.

Source: The International, 26th Issue, November 2022

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