Porco, Sydney
A recent letter1 published in Partisan lamented the reformist character of the ‘stop killing women!’ protests. This letter characterised the demands of the protest as fundamentally “passive,” and lacking “political coherence”.
This is true. However, this letter neglected to recognise that this critique applies to most Marxist sects. It is a reality that most activism in Australia amounts to shallow calls for reform; even socialist organisations succumb to this.
My experience of the protest I attended in Sydney was that there was a sincere urge to move away from “NGO” and “Influencer” feminism. These protests happened in fourteen cities around the country. This is an incredibly heartening accomplishment which got no mention in the letter, no indication that this movement had any room to grow or any politics worth engaging with at all.
A slightly less distasteful piece in Partisan from earlier last week: We need a communist women’s movement argued that “the misleadership of the women’s movement has meant that the vast masses of working women have not been politicised or drawn into revolutionary activity.” This is also true.
Truth doesn’t matter as much as we would like. At least truth separate from the political organisation of the working class.
It may be true that communist revolution is the historical destiny of the working class. It may also be true that capitalist civilisation has and will continue to develop the conditions for this proletarian takeover. But from a practical point of view, what do these articles provide?
The initial letter I’m responding to falls into one style of Marxist writing I will call finger wagging.
In its best form finger wagging serves as a critical clarification of the divisions between political tendencies. Think Lenin discussing anarchists in state and revolution, or Marx discussing utopian socialists in the communist manifesto.
In its worst form finger wagging becomes a belittling and self congratulatory exercise. Essentially finger wagging is a form of scolding another political organisation, tendency or individual for not correctly “understanding” the present political situation. This article itself is a form of finger wagging.
This writing inevitably signals towards a tradition and a historical period that has evaporated. Marx and Lenin were writing finger wagging pieces in response to very real political tendencies that existed alongside and in discussion with their own. How much discussion have grassroots feminist organisations had with the RCO at all?
If the lack of political coherence, and the passive, abstracted politics of the developing anti-femicide rallies must be critiqued as not “communist enough,” we must then be ready to critique ourselves for not being appealing enough. Which brings me back to the idea of the necessity of a women’s revolution. It must happen. But how?
What I saw at the rally I attended was an authentic expression of how many “women” feel in this country. Scared, beaten down, demobilised, alienated from their male partners or friends and uncertain about their safety, their jobs or their future.
The currently abstract ideal of a proletarian revolution does not provide certainty to any of these individual women. This protest did for a brief moment. It was a certainty in a shared struggle. One which I think we must radically support rather than critique before it even develops.
Which leads me back to the other article. Calling for a communist women’s movement is necessary. However the article suffers from the other Marxist tendency that I call shouting from the rafters.
Shouting from the rafters often sounds very concrete, and very clear. At the right moment, in the correct context with enough primed ears, it can be a match that lights the flame of proletarian political fervour and revolutionary action.
Yet it suffers from the same problem as the boy who cried wolf. People find demands to be empty and abstract when they are simply repeated year after year in newspaper after newspaper. I believe that the socialist left uses this style to hone its rhetorical verbiage and agitational prowess. This is necessary. However, shouting from the rafters reveals our political powerlessness when contrasted with the actual reality of socialist sectarianism. Which is usually characterised by non-socialists as cliquey, aesthetics obsessed and constantly at its own throat. This characterisation is true as well.
Both of these articles attempted to clarify and sharpen something. But they fell flat against the reality of the almost non existent women’s movement in this country. A movement which I believe may just be beginning to be built with these anti femicide rallies. I for one do not intend to critique them yet. Rather I intend to show up and support them to grow.
It will be through their grief that these particular women are radicalised. For others it will be for their love of a partner who is killed in a war or a work accident. For some women they will just be radicalised because of the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism.
Some women will find solace in the ideas of gender abolition. Others will become revolutionaries because they want women to have guns. There are many roads to the same place and finger wagging will not bring anyone any quicker. In fact it may slow them down. Only once they are in the one place will shouting from the rafters do anything to unite them.
The problem with Marxist finger wagging, and more generally radical “shouting from the rafters” (which is far less specific to Marxism) is they cannot achieve what they set out to in a context of a severely depoliticised working class society. We have no audience yet. The majority of people who slave away day after day in this continent are either completely apolitical, or they lean right wing.
This isn’t to say they don’t often have a keen awareness that they are being exploited, or taken advantage of. But when Marxism, socialism or god forbid communism is brought up, we are still most likely going to be faced with an incredulous and suspicious population. “What have the communists ever done for me?” They will ask.
They have a point.
In my view the Marxist sects are the point of contention for the RCO. Because they have needlessly disempowered themselves. Spontaneous appearances of new, creative and desperate protests that are not communist in their politics only reflect OUR failure. It is not the fault of the rally’s organisers that they are “politically compromising” or not mentioning the family form.
It is our fault. It is the fault of socialists, the communists of the past, many of whom alienated an entire generation of women with their class reductionism (not to mention blatant sexism) and finger wagging. We should know better now.
These articles are for a later date comrades. When there is a communist movement. The movement will not be accelerated by attempting to drown seeds in fertilizer or extreme UV light. The movement of history should be cultivated by communists. It will not be hastened by clever critique or sloganeering, only by real people engaging in practical activities to further the consciousness of the class.
I believe that these rallies were a first step towards a women’s movement on the continent.
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