We Need a Communist Women’s Front

Olga Konstantinovna explains the necessity of a militant Communist Women’s Front.

As women in this modern world, we find ourselves in a most precarious position. On one hand, Capital wishes to exploit our historical unwaged domestic labour and reap from it the benefits of an ever-expanding class of wage-slaves. Yet, Capital cannot deny the profits that are able to be materialised from women’s inclusion into the work force. Thus, the modern woman finds herself on the edge of being quartered, tethered to expectations and contradictions that threaten to destroy her.

From these contradictions arises a need for the Communist Women’s Front. Whilst not a new concept, we find it becoming increasingly imperative that we resurrect it from the dustbins of history. In absence of a Communist party, we must turn to other means of organisation of the working class. For us, the Front provides this means, opening up the ability to engage in educational, propagandistic and agitational activities within specifically female layers of the class. We see this task as particularly pertinent in an age where feminist consciousness is at an all-time low.

Liberal or bourgeois feminism has run rampant through the 20th and 21st centuries and acts as a veil that clouds the vision of true emancipation, replacing it with superficial goals and aims that keep women firmly pinned under the thumb of Capital. If we are to ‘stand up’, women of the world must educate themselves and educate each other on the importance of radical and revolutionary feminism as the only way forwards. The United Front provides this structure by weaving together the many threads of women into a strong fabric, and from this fabric we may cut and sew the revolution, as without women at the forefront, there can be no true liberation.

The first step in the formation of the Women’s United Front, is the formation of intermediate agitating organisations. As Communists, we cannot rely only on the efforts of our own organisations – fragmented as they are into sects organised on the basis of dogmatic theoretical unity. We cannot hope to succeed by ‘going straight to the masses’, in this case the female masses, and competing directly with each other. We must instead cooperate with one another on the explicit basis that we are socialists and we are feminists. We must agitate, together, among the newly radicalising social layers, regardless of our disagreements. Our work must be targeted. We must not do this as fragments competing with one another for loyal recruits in the waves of struggle that arise among the masses, but work together to build the struggle openly as socialists.

The RCO’s Women’s Caucus has already begun to weave this tapestry through its meeting with Radical Women (RW). For readers not aware, Radical Women is a wing of the broader women’s movement that works specifically in the interests of the working class from a Marxist perspective (as many of us do). Through this meeting we explored the mechanics of a common front and it provided a unique insight into perspectives other than our own, which is something we always cherish and value. However, the RCO stands firmly on its belief that we must adopt a partyist perspective if we are to achieve our shared goal. We believe that the Communist Party is a necessity because of the strength and organisation of its main opponent – the Bourgeoisie. Further, we cannot kid ourselves, the working class shall not organise itself ‘on its own’, as no movement in history has done.

We must use the Communist party to educate, harden and unify. And, as covered above, in lieu of the Communist party we must take baby steps to form it, and those steps are in the shape of a Women’s Front.