The woman's liberation movement has had a powerful impact on society. It has transformed the lives and aspirations of millions of women. It has forced governments to introduce laws to promote women's equality. It has made trade union leaders go on demonstrations calling for an end to restrictive abortion laws. Above all it has made men realise that the days of male superiority are numbered. The fight for women's liberation has become a central feature of the class struggle world wide.
In Britain the debates in the women's liberation movement have not been confined to feminist issues. As many feminists realised that women alone could not bring about the massive social changes needed to end their oppression, they began to discuss the relationship between feminism and socialism. Beyond the Fragments — written by Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright, breaks new ground in this discussion by tackling the thorny problem of how to build a movement that integrates the insights of feminism with the experience of organizing for socialism. While the authors have different views on how such a broad socialist movement could be built in Britain today, they share common ground in stressing the positive contributions which have been brought to light by the feminist approach to politics.
Their views have stirred up a hornets' nest both on the left and in the women's movement. The first edition sold out extremely quickly. It became an important focus for debate all over the country. Now a new edition has been produced by Merlin Press which draws on these discussions to clarify the ideas of the authors, both where they agree and where they disagree.
One theme that unites all three authors is a suspicion and even rejection of the Leninist party. Sheila Rowbotham expresses this succinctly: ‘We have shed the lurking assumption that Leninism provides the highest political form of organizing and that other approaches can be dismissed as primitive antecedents or as incorrect theories.' (p. 148.)
What, then, are the alternatives to the Leninist party that Sheila, Lynne and Hilary propose?
Sheila Rowbotham's alternative
Of the three writers Sheila is the clearest in her rejection of Leninism in any form: ‘I have been edged and nuzzled and finally butted towards believing that what we have learned can't be forced into the moulds of Leninism without restricting and cutting its implications short.' (p. 148.) ‘If Stalinism made it impossible to challenge aspects of Leninism, the growth of Trotskyist and neo-Trotskyist groups since 1968 has postponed this by appearing to provide the solution.' (p149) She suggests we need to look elsewhere: ‘to the utopian socialists in the early nineteenth century, or to the Socialist League in the 1880s, or Spanish anarcho-syndicalism.' (p. 147.)
Her alternatives to Leninism are suggested tentatively but she insists strongly on the need for what she calls a ‘post-Leninist revolutionary tradition'. Much of Sheila's disagreement with Leninism has to do with the role of the party as the purveyor of socialist consciousness into the working class movement: ‘For Lenin the lessons of consciousness through struggle remain generally subordinate to the leadership of the party. Here he (Lenin) broke with Marx's view of consciousness and adopted the position of the German social-democrat Kautsky ... (that) ... "modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge." [p. 114.]
In fact, Lenin and Kautsky were not alone in holding the theory that socialist consciousness originates with the intelligentsia and is brought to the working class from outside, whether by a political party or by some other means. Marx himself, the great leader of the First International, held a similar view. In 1870 he wrote that ‘the English possess all the necessary material prerequisites for a social revolution. What they lack is a spirit of generalization and revolutionary passion. That the executive board (of the International) can remedy.' Even Bakunin, the father of anarchism, and Marx's great opponent in the First International, appreciated the role of the intelligentsia and urged ‘the young [illegible] educated classes to preach and lead the revolution'.
Sheila argues that in the late nineteenth century, the working classes were only just being given elementary education. It was only out of this temporary circumstance that Lenin created a ‘law' of all marxist organisation. Sheila casts doubt on the idea that intellectuals can have an understanding superior to others and she cites the women's movement experience over the last decade as an example of the spuriousness of the argument.
Perhaps the best answer to Sheila's argument is provided in an essay entitled ‘Women's Liberation and the New Politics' written in 1969, in which Sheila herself explains the process by which the oppressed come to a more radical consciousness: ‘It is possible to trace a dialectic in the breaking of ... silence. Most important at first have been those among the rulers who cut themselves off from their own kind to take up the cause of the ‘inferior' people in an ideal or moral sense. For instance, the enlightened aristocrats before the French revolution, the intellectuals in the Russian and Chinese revolutions, the white liberals in America. They are able to communicate possibility to the oppressed ... Then there is that section of the subordinated who break away under their encouragement ... Such a dialectic can be seen working in the making of the proletariat, ... in the struggles for national liberation, in the history of the black people of America.' To her list of intellectuals who have historically aided the development of socialist theory we must add... Owen, Bakunin, Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Gramsci, Malcolm X, Trotsky, Lenin and Sheila Rowbotham. The modern women's movement has drawn on these thinkers to develop its own ideas. Of course, with universal education, workers themselves can become intellectuals as Gramsci pointed out. But Sheila plays up the mystique of the ‘party intellectual' in Beyond the Fragments in order to give substance to her suspicion of all forms of political parties, social democratic, Stalinist, or Leninist.
Sheila's strongest political sympathies [illegible] anarcho-syndicalism. Indeed she [illegible] by her association with the [illegible] Socialists (now the SWP) during its [illegible] the idea that revolutionary trade unionism is sufficient to overthrow the bourgeoisie. If a party is needed at all, its main job is not to wage a political struggle for power but to unify the struggles of the oppressed. Sheila cannot understand why the IS ‘ostensibly committed to learning from workers' struggles, the initiator of rank and file groups, opposed to bureaucracy in the labour movement ... balked at extending these ideas into wider issues of everyday life or at applying them within their own organisation.' (p. 35.) Or why the IS ‘which had historically broken both with Stalinism and orthodox Trotskyism on the issue of socialist democracy and workers control [should] be more incapable of digesting not only feminism but issues like gay liberation, radical psychology, struggles around cultural and community life and personal discussion of what it meant to be a socialist.' (p. 35.) Sheila cannot confront this seeming paradox. Nor does she even attempt to explain why the SWP, as it has again become more ‘orthodox' in its politics over the last decade should have started taking questions like sexism and racism more seriously rather than less.
In emphasizing the role of trade union militancy and playing down the importance of issues not immediately relevant to the workplace, it is very unlikely that a syndicalist approach would recognise the importance of a movement like the modern women's movement. The SWP has begun to recognise the importance of feminist issues today at the same time as it has moved away from syndicalist dogmas towards both a more orthodox Marxist analysis of the class struggle (as penetrating all aspects of social relations and not just those of the workplace) and of the role of the Leninist party.
Sheila points to the Spanish anarcho-syndicalists as having a positive alternative to Leninism. However, a study of the record of the anarcho-syndicalists in Spain, where anarcho-syndicalism had its strongest following, reveals the [illegible] weaknesses of the syndicalist movement. The Spanish workers who followed the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) in the 1930s were libertarian communists. Approximately half the Spanish proletariat were supporters of the CNT. As libertarian communists they were opposed to all political parties although they were in favour of an armed insurrection of the working class to overthrow the capitalist state. Between 1917 and 1937, the CNT was involved in as many as a dozen armed uprisings designed to introduce communism.
The intentions of these workers were unquestionably revolutionary. During the revolution of 1936-7, for example, the areas of Spain under CNT control, especially Catalonia and Aragon, witnessed wholesale expropriation of the capitalists. Even small businesses were nationalised. Landowners were driven off, sometimes killed, and their lands re-distributed to anarchist communes and collectives. Churches, which were seen as enemies of the poor, were burnt down and the clergy sometimes killed. The Spanish anarcho-syndicalists hated the ruling class passionately.
Following the butchery that accompanied Franco's uprising in July 1936, the anarcho-syndicalists participated in a red terror during the months of August and September which took the lives of leading bourgeois figures. One of the leaders of the CNT, Durruti, had long been wanted throughout the world for his terrorist ‘crimes' yet enjoyed immense popular support. The anarcho-syndicalists also opposed bureaucracy in the labour movement. There was only one paid secretary in 1936 despite a membership which numbered over one million. They were fiercely critical of Stalinism in Russia; one of the reasons why a number of their leaders were assassinated in 1937 by the Spanish Stalinists.
These workers rejected the idea of building a political party. The radical ideas of anarchism (in the formation of which, incidentally, intellectuals played an important part) reached them largely through their trade union, the CNT, rather than by means of a political party, as happened in other European countries. The principal reason why the workers rejected the idea of a party was because they opposed all forms of government. They thought it would be possible to introduce communism immediately after the overthrow of the state, without passing through a transitional phase of proletarian dictatorship. Why build a political party then, reasoned the workers? It would have nothing to do. Unfortunately, this was to prove an illusory perspective.
In July 1936, the Spanish working class rose in arms against Franco. They took over the factories, the land, the arsenals. The bourgeois state was all but destroyed in large parts of Spain. But the workers parties failed to take over the government, leaving it in Republican hands. ‘We want no more dictatorship' cried Santillan, the anarchist leader. This, however, failed to stop the Republicans continuing with their dictatorship and sabotaging the revolution in the rear — which they did by vacillating in the face of Franco politically and militarily. When the workers leaders finally decided in September to take over the government, they joined a coalition with the bourgeois ministers. A Popular Front government emerged. Two months later, the anarchists who at first refused power, accepted a seat in the government. This government represented the dictatorship, not of the proletariat, but of the bourgeoisie and laid the basis for the counter-revolutionary repression of the workers movement in 1937.
It may be possible in exceptional circumstances for workers to organise an insurrection without a mass revolutionary party. But it has never been possible to carry through a programme of anti-capitalist measures simply from the base up. You must have a strong socialist government to lead from the top as well as self activity at the base.
This is not to say that Leninists should have nothing to do with anarcho-syndicalism. The Third International, in its early days, was eager to enlist the Spanish anarcho-syndicalists. Andres Nin and Joaquin Maurin federated the CNT to the Third International while in Moscow (although they were later repudiated by the CNT after the Kronstadt affair). Syndicalists in other countries, like the Wobblies of the IWW in the United States were also regarded as part of the revolutionary movement by Lenin. The early British syndicalists came together with other revolutionaries to form the British Communist Party. Victor Serge was the Secretary of the Third International when it was formed in 1919.
But despite the subjective intentions of its proponents, syndicalism is inadequate to the tasks of revolution. If the Spanish working class with its massive revolutionary enthusiasm could not make a revolution without a working class party, what chance has the British working class got without one?
Sheila is right to point towards the breadth of ideas that contributed to the formation of Marxism. She is right to highlight the positive experiences of British socialism — the Socialist League, the Chartists, the revolutionary syndicalists of the Miner's Next Step — although it is well to be aware of recurring weaknesses in British Marxism too (economism, chauvinism, academicism).
But Sheila's creative energies, rather than being directed to recreating a mass socialist tradition in Britain through the building of a revolutionary socialist party are concentrated on denying the need for a political party. In so doing, she bends to the ideas of anarcho-syndicalism and fuels the hostility of feminism to parties in general.
Lynne Segal's alternative
If Sheila's contribution bears the imprint of her years in the International Socialists, Lynne's shows the strong influence of her experiences in the Islington Socialist Centre and Big Flame.
Lynne is very critical of the attitude of the ‘traditional left' to feminism. The left, she writes, only responded to feminism when they saw the impressive pro-abortion march against the James White anti-abortion Bill in 1975: ‘They weren't laughing at the ‘women's libbers' any more, though of course they did say we were all middle class, or at least that's what their middle class leaders were saying.' (p. 180.)
Earlier Lynne takes the IMG to task for a different crime — trying to dominate the National Abortion Campaign (NAC). ‘In 1975... many women were suspicious of the national structure (of the NAC), saying that it was not feminist. They saw it as dominated politically by the International Marxist Group (IMG) and objected to its main focus for activities being that of lobbying MP's, seeing this as reformist.' (p. 174)
I would have thought that Lynne would have been more willing to recognise the positive aspects of the work of groups like the IMG in the NAC which has been consistent and has yielded good results overall, especially during the recent campaign against John Corrie's anti-abortion bill. It's a shame that Lynne wants to have it both ways.
Lynne alleges that ‘while the IMG has accepted the organizational autonomy of the women's movement, and indeed have now set up Women's caucuses within their own organization, I don't think that they accept the political autonomy of feminism as adding a new dimension to the nature of class politics.' (p. 186) But what is meant by the political autonomy of feminism? If Lynne believes that arguing for Marxist ideas within the women's movement is tantamount to rejecting its political autonomy then we plead guilty.
The woman's movement is not a ‘feminist' political party. It is a partial movement representing the interests of a particular sex. It has a political programme to win women to its side. But women alone cannot overthrow capitalism. Women need to ally with other groups, particularly the organised labour movement, in order to win concessions now and secure their future liberation. A movement of women that fails to win the support of broad sections of the labour movement, particularly working women will, in the present economic situation, find itself driven towards individualism and elitism and eventually side with the ruling class very much like the right-wing leaders of the suffragette movement did in the First World War. The IMG makes no apology for suggesting that the women's movement should direct its energies towards the mass of women particularly those in the organised labour movement. We reject the idea that women can win their liberation any other way.
Lynne is quite right, however to emphasize the importance of a movement of women existing outside the official structures of the labour movement to take up every aspect of women's oppression, in the home and the community as well as at work. But she downplays the impact that feminism has had on women as trade unionists: ‘women are not strong in trade unions today, and are not getting any stronger, even if their membership is rising numerically'.
How does Lynne explain the number of trade unionists on the anti-Corrie march, the women's groups in white collar unions, the militancy of women at the Meccano factory in occupation in Liverpool? Lynne's stress on community issues blinds her to the impact that feminists are having at the point of production. It also leads her to make exaggerated claims for the role that local groups like the Islington Socialist Centre and the Islington Gutter Press can play in the class struggle. She does, however, admit that organizations claiming to be libertarian can be authoritarian and she sees well enough the dangers of women's centres becoming a focus for ‘unpaid social workers'.
Lynne's main suggestion is that feminists should take up local work, and that the main arena for women is in community issues: ‘More importantly, we also knew that apart from Big Flame, they (the traditional left) did not take seriously our politics, which emphasized local work and attempts to organize on an area basis, and which differed from their focus on industrial activity or particular national campaigns'. (p. 193)
We are in favour of work at a local level. But why must we choose between locally based alliances and building national campaigns? Women in Edinburgh, for example, took the June Greig case, which raised the issue of violence against women, into the local labour movement. But they also demanded that the Domestic Violence Act be extended to Scotland. Why not build a women's movement that takes up women's oppression everywhere? Somehow Lynne seems to imply that being involved in community issues and local campaigns is more [important] than industrial activity and national campaigns. This I would fiercely contest. Why can't we do both?
Lynne explains at the end of her essay why she decided to join Big Flame: ‘a group which in its theory and practice seems to put the class struggle before its own organizational development, which recognizes the need to fully support and help build the autonomous organizations of women and other oppressed groups, and in general strives for a vision of socialism which includes a theory of personal politics.' ‘Women's obligations are those they set for themselves' they argued. Big Flame's critique of Leninism and Trotskyism is that, because of the complexity of late capitalism and the rise of Stalinism, it is not possible to build a party of the Bolshevik type today. It is absurd for small groups of Trotskyists to pretend they have all the answers for every struggle. They argue that revolutionary leadership should come from the struggle itself, from the ‘base up', as it were. While we can agree with some of the criticisms Big Flame make about needing to learn from the self-activity of the masses and not being arrogant, I think that deeper differences lie behind these particular points.
Lynne seems to be torn between arguing for some kind of socialist organization on a national scale and at the same time rejecting such an attitude as sectarian: ‘The fact that some of us may not have joined a revolutionary organization which we feel has not adequately taken up and integrated the insights of feminism does not mean that we are not part of the struggle to build one.' (p. 185). Of course many people outside the far left groups are revolutionaries and are part of the overall struggle for socialism, but this is not the same as actually building a socialist party. A salutory example of the consequences which can follow if you equate the two is provided by the experience of Lotta Continua in Italy.
Lotta Continua combined a certain brand of far left politics with support for Maoist ideas. A lack of understanding of feminism and democracy led in 1975 to the all male stewards of its servizio d'ordine breaking into a women's demonstration against restrictive abortion legislation because they argued that it was an issue for both men and women. Feminists in Lotta Continua and other far left groups began to draw the conclusion that the ‘male left' was not for them.
All the political battles in Italy in the spring of 1976 had been centred around the question of abortion. It even brought about the fall of the Moro Government. The election campaign shifted the terrain of struggle to solutions at the level of government. The women's movement refused to associate itself with the ‘traditional politics' of elections and refused the offer of Proletarian Democracy to run candidates on its slate. Feminists in PDUP refused to campaign for their party. Eventually, they resigned. ‘Women's obligations are those they set for themselves' they argued. Rather than seeing the battle to transform human relations within the framework of a battle for political power, these women saw it as an end in itself. A woman member of the CP in Rinascita, referring to the Italian women's movement, wrote: ‘There are no longer any frontiers to cross. Instead, what we have to do is transform this society — day by day and institution by institution. By transforming society, we will transform daily life and ourselves as well.' Reform not revolution was the order of the day.
At the 1976 conference of Lotta Continua, women, many of whom had actually already left the organization, demanded that they feminise socialism. Workers at the conference were denounced for sexism. The leaders of Lotta Continua who had been manipulative ended up not wanting to give any guidance at all. The conference ended in a shambles of sectional groups arguing with one another. The ‘movements' were allowed their full autonomy, Lotta Continua ceased to exist. Lynne does not in fact fully accept the political autonomy of the women's movement, as Lotta Continua did in the end. She comes down in favour of a national organisation of some kind. Big Flame does have certain political ideas and goals of its own. It does emphasise some forms of work rather than others. It does argue for women to join Big Flame. It supports the right of women to control their own struggles and their own movement, but argues that women can not win alone and that feminism is not separate, autonomous from class politics.
Big Flame supports autonomous movements but believes they should link up with other groups of the oppressed. Its view of the party is similar to that of the IS in its early days: that groups should federate to a national organisation to swap experiences rather than to develop a programme to take power. Because it sees ‘politics' as sectarian it has failed to clarify its strategy for building socialism. Without having a clear view of where you are going you can get muddied on the way. One clear example of Big Flame's confusion is provided by its failure, under the influence of Mao-centrist ideas, to take a position in favour of returning a Labour government in the last election.
The IMG would argue that as long as the left groups are too weak to form a government, given a choice between Labour and Tory, we vote Labour not because we have any expectations that they are ‘a lesser evil' than the Tories but because the Labour Party is tied to the working class through its trade union affiliations. A vote for labour is a class vote against the Tory party, the party of big business. Having Labour in office is preferable to allowing them to pontificate in opposition. It is easier to demonstrate what they really stand for when they govern and easier to explain the need for a Socialist alternative. (4)
Big Flame hides its muddled politics behind a smokescreen of ‘non sectarianism'. If they came out more openly and honestly with their overall ideas it would give women a better opportunity to decide what kind of socialist strategy they wanted to support.
Hilary Wainwright's alternative
Hilary, whose experience of the far left was provided by her years as a member of the IMG, is more willing than either Sheila or Lynne to concede that a mass political party will be vital to building socialism in Britain. ‘The solution', she writes, ‘lies in bringing together all those involved in the different movements and campaigns who agree on a wider programme of socialist change, based on the demands of the different movements in the context of organizing for social ownership and popular political power.' (p. 6). She strongly rejects the idea of trying to reform the Labour Party and explains how the power of the Parliamentary Party, combined with the right wing trade union leaders, has always thwarted left opposition in the Labour Party. She dismisses the Communist Party because it subordinates its own profile to the left trade union and Labour leaders. But Hilary fails to clarify whether she wants to build a new socialist party, a socialist alliance, a trade union type organization, a movement, a one-off united front, or indeed just exactly what she does want. This confusion runs throughout her two essays, and is evident, for example, in her indiscriminate use of the word ‘organization' to describe totally different things.
Hilary does not see the existing far left groups as the basis from which to start the project of building such an ‘organization': ‘the pretensions and disciplines of democratic centralism tend to produce an arrogance and sectarianism which make the Leninist groups unable to contribute to and encourage the many sources of socialist initiative and activity.' (p. 2). Instead, she sets up her own plan for creating a mass popular ‘organization'. Local alliances are to emerge composed of socialist feminists, trades councils, socialist centres, activist Labour Party wards and branches of the Communist Party. It will be through such alliances that socialist consciousness will be raised. The role of the far left groups should be to act as ‘catalysts' in the process. They should not see themselves as the nucleus of a future mass party.
It is true that the far left groups, some of them with less than a hundred members, must not assume that they and they alone have ‘sorted out' all the problems facing the British revolution. It is obvious that they have not. It is also clear, as Hilary says, that there are many sources of socialist initiative today. Because of the weakness of Marxism in Britain and the relatively small size of the far left there are many revolutionaries who are non-aligned and actively engaged in introducing socialist ideas into their women's group, tenants group, trade union. Too few far left groups recognise this. But the whole drift of Beyond the Fragments seems to endorse this situation rather than providing a way out.
It is here that Hilary's lack of distinction between political parties and other forms of working class organization becomes critical. If Hilary's local ‘alliances' actually develop into a nationally organized ‘alliance' without a clarification of the politics involved, what will ensue is a party based on a compromise between reform and revolution. Political parties have different programmes because they offer different solutions at the level of government and the state; they behave differently when in power. The Labour Party, for example, as it has shown each time it has taken office, wants to reform the capitalist system. The far left want to overthrow it. It is not sectarian that these two types of parties do not drop their differences and ‘unite'. It would be dishonest to do so, although many members of the reformist parties can be won to revolutionary ideas.
If a centrist party, like the Independent Labour Party, emerged from debate inside the Labour or Communist Parties then clearly revolutionaries would work hard to win it to revolutionary positions, either by unity in action or possibly by joining its ranks. But that's a different matter from what Hilary suggests: that the far left should be more ‘open' to the many sources of socialist initiative and support the creation of ongoing alliances with the CP, LP and Trades Councils, not just on one particular issue but with a view to forming a joint ‘organization'. Hilary writes: ‘It is as if the different parts of a piece of cloth — a political organization — were being woven creatively and with ad hoc contact between the weavers, but without anyone having a master plan.' (p. 226).
Yet, why is it difficult for socialist centres to do more than discuss socialist issues. Why, despite the claims that Hilary makes for the woman's movement that ‘(it) has taught us how to unite as a movement on the major practical issues of the day while debating and respecting each others political differences ... without jeopardizing the single movement'. (p. 252), have we not had a national conference of the WLM for two years? Why did the experiment in New Left Clubs that developed after the split in the Communist Party in 1956 fail? The answer to these questions is that within movements, locally based alliances, and loose associations there is only a limited basis for unity. Trade unionists unite to wage the economic struggle. A socialist centre involves debates and co-ordination of activities. The women's movement involves unity in action around the oppression of women. A political party, however small, is different. It has an ideology, a revolutionary or reformist ideology. You cannot turn a socialist centre or a women's group into a socialist party without confronting the problem of ideology and of programme, of reform and revolution.
Hilary puts the cart before the horse. Of course, a mass revolutionary party would differ from the IMG, the SWP or the WRP. It would be far more heterogeneous politically. Neither could it demand of thousands of working men and women the same ‘hyperactivity' that is demanded in left groups today (a point that some left groups are beginning to understand). It would have vastly more resources for education. It would be able to force a far wider range of debate in its press. It would be able to initiate festivals, concerts, bookclubs. It would have more intellectuals, more feminists, much more party life. It would be able to launch mass campaigns in the trade unions and Labour Party bodies.
But there are no short cuts to building such a mass party. Hilary's schema is entirely the wrong way round. By giving us false hopes of locally based ‘alliances' now, she diverts us from the task of re-grouping the far left and building a popular revolutionary party to take political power.
Why we are Leninists
We reject the alternatives to Leninism put forward by Sheila, Lynne and Hilary. However tentatively they are put forward, none of them stand up to close examination. All of them — anarcho syndicalism, libertarian communism and a kind of loose centrism — have been tried before and found wanting.
But we do think that many points the authors raise about the problems of organising for socialism in Britain today are important ones. Their ideas reflect the feelings of many non-aligned socialists who were inspired by the political developments in Britain and worldwide in the late sixties and early seventies, and who feel let down by the performance of the far left over the last ten years. The women's movement has given that dismay a particularly critical framework.
Below we explain our conception of Leninism, our ideas about the relationship between Leninism and feminism and our view of how the far left can go beyond the fragments towards the creation of a mass socialist party.
What is Leninism?
Lynne Segal caricatures the Leninist party when she says that Trotskyists ‘see the only way to get power in the class struggle as that of fighting for [more] and more money, through a wages offensive'. (p 168). It may be that sometime someone in a far left group said something like this. Lenin, however, devoted a whole book, What is to be Done, to an attack on ‘economism' — the idea that [higher] consciousness would arise merely by struggling vigorously for higher wages or better working conditions. Lenin was adamant that such consciousness arose only from an understanding of the relations between the social classes and their ramifications at all levels of society — economic, social, cultural — but particularly at the level of the state. One expression of this is the Leninist view that a revolutionary party should centralise the experience of all the partial and fragmented struggles in order to combat the highly centralised bourgeois state, both at the level of ideas and ultimately to confront the ‘armed bodies of men' through leading an insurrection to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. This has little in common with economism.
Lynne's view that Trotskyism is economistic is contradicted by Sheila, who attacks Leninism precisely because of its concentration on seizing power: ‘The weight of Leninist theory (Gramsci apart) and the prevailing historical practice of Leninism is towards seeing the "Party" as the means by which the working class can take power and these "means" have a utilitarian narrowness.' (p. 146). Leninists have indeed stressed the importance of the party in the revolution but Sheila is mistaken in excepting Gramsci. It is true that in 1919 Gramsci tended to see workers councils as a sufficient weapon for taking power out of the hands of the ruling class. For this view he was opposed by Bordiga and other Marxists, and he rapidly adopted the orthodox position: that a socialist revolution could not be completed without the violent overthrow of capitalism and the formation of a workers government, for which the working class needed a political party.
What appears to lie behind Sheila's positions on the Leninist party is a denial of the views of Marx and Lenin on the dictatorship of the proletariat. Sheila writes that she is in favour of overthrowing the state ‘it is evident that the coercive power of the state must be contested'. (p. 137). But she nowhere makes clear what kind of government or what kind of society she expects to see immediately after the bourgeois state has been successfully destroyed. Lenin, following Marx, believed in the necessity of a transitional period during which the state would be the dictatorship of the proletariat, which would begin the work of destroying all relations of oppression and paving the way for a classless society. Sheila however, appears to believe in the possibility of moving immediately to a communist society, without such a transitional phase. By ignoring the need for revolutionary government she arrives at the rejection of parties.
Hilary believes in the need for a revolutionary party, but only in the future when the insurrection is necessary. Yet you cannot put together a revolutionary party at the eleventh hour. People learn fast in times of revolution. But most of the skills and human qualities needed to lead a revolution can only be formed over many years of struggle: they do not miraculously spring into being the night before the revolution. Nor will the working class fight for a party which has no record in the class struggle.
The importance of political parties is fully understood by the ruling class in [this] country. Not only do they have a very conscious representative of the interests of capital, the military, and the church in the form of the Conservative Party, but they also understand the importance of reformist parties of the working class like the Labour Party. Parliament itself is continually used by the ruling class as an avenue to divert the self activity of the masses into ‘safe' and ‘responsible' channels, where antagonisms can be resolved in the most favourable way for the bourgeoisie.
Political parties are not new. Political groupings emerged when large numbers of people first began to exercise some kind of political power. In small village communities and tribal assemblies it was possible for everyone to express an opinion and carry out decisions. In the democracies of antiquity it became necessary to have some kind of structured and coherent options, some kind of political programme, so that people could express a choice. (In many of these societies women were regarded as non-citizens and were not allowed to participate in politics.)
A modern society without political parties or with only one political party (as in many Eastern European states and under fascist dictatorships) reflects a lack of democracy, a lack of choice for the mass of the people even though the Eastern European states guarantee other freedoms that a state like Britain denies, e.g. the right to work.
In Britain working class people welcomed the rise of the [illegible] Party. Having a party to represent labour in parliament was an extension of democracy. Americans have less choice than in Britain because they don't have a party of labour. The first wave of feminism in Britain, and in many other countries, concentrated on winning the vote for women so that they could exercise choice over which party should represent them in parliament and government. Lack of suffrage had to be contested if women were to play a part in determining their fate. This is not [to] suggest that the vote solved the problems of women, but [if] women turn their backs on politics, on questions of government, wars, and revolutions, they have less choice about how they live their lives not more.
After capitalism has been overthrown and the transition to socialism has been completed it will be possible to abolish parties, for social classes will no longer exist and the state, having no interest to defend, will wither away. Politics will disappear. But in a capitalist society or a transitional society like Russia, China or Cuba, political parties remain vital.
Of all the countries in the world, Britain more than any other demands a working class conscious of its power and armed with a programme that breaks completely from gradualism. The working class will not overthrow capitalism in the way the bourgeoisie overthrew feudalism. The bourgeoisie in Britain developed its own economy, its art, its religion, its own schools and its own philosophy before it overthrew feudalism. The working class confronts a much more total social power than the rising industrial and financial bourgeoisie did. A social power that is highly developed at home today, that exports its social relations abroad, and penetrates deep into our personalities (through the family, the media, schools and the church).
Because of this it is impossible for the working class to build its own society, its own culture, within capitalism. It must first seize political power and then enter upon the task of building a socialist economy. There is no other road to socialism. Only a working class schooled in the ideas of revolutionary marxism, practised in fighting the bosses on every aspect of oppression, can have the strength to overthrow the mighty British state.
Sheila disputes whether a Leninist party is adequate for fighting reformism: ‘Let's pretend for a moment that there was a revolutionary party in real life which did bring together all the elements most ‘advanced' or developed in their opposition to capitalist society. Why does it follow from their bringing together in this pretend ideal party that their limitations are transcended rather than partially reflected and reproduced?' (p. 83).
Of course, it isn't possible for individuals in a capitalist society to escape entirely from bourgeois ideas like sexism and racism. As society throws up movements that articulate their oppression more vociferously so a revolutionary party should respond to those developments and help build them. But Sheila avoids explaining the real differences between mass organisations like trade unions and the women's liberation movement on the one hand and political parties on the other. A trade union defends its members' economic interests. The women's liberation movement attempts to advance the interest of women as a sex. A mass political party does not simply exist to swap experiences of the different oppressed groups in society but to develop the consciousness of the working class in relation to socialism and revolution.
Should the women's liberation movement and the trade unions adopt the same goals as a revolutionary party? If they did so they would immediately exclude those who do not at the present time agree with the idea of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism but who do want to fight for their sexual liberation or defend their living standards. The women's movement is a more complex case than that of the trade union, but by its nature and composition the women's movement is a specific and partial movement, unless you believe that [it is] the vanguard force for change as some revolutionary and radical feminists do. The authors of Beyond the Fragments reject this view.
If the overall political role of the party is that it strives to relate the day to day struggles of the oppressed to the goal of transforming society by revolutionary means then such a party is neither economistic nor necessarily at odds with the development of mass movements. Political parties do not exist because they are good things in themselves (although I concede the point that there are some people on the left who think it is wrong to make them as pleasant as possible). They exist because they are necessary.
As Trotsky wrote in Art and Revolution, in a society where there are no classes there will no longer be political struggles and ‘people will stop seeking in Marx's Capital for precepts of their practical activity and Capital will have become a historical document, together with the programme of our party.' Only when socialism is established will parties be abolished. Until then they are an indispensible part of the struggle between classes. In order to abolish parties it is necessary to abolish classes, and this cannot be accomplished without wading in the muddy waters of the class struggle. No-one has ever succeeded in overthrowing capitalism without building a party.
Leninism and feminism
Sheila, Hilary and Lynne argue that feminists have been urging the need for a form of politics which enables people to experience different relationships: ‘A socialist movement must help us find a way to meet person to person — an inward as well as an external equality.' (p. 146-7). The women's liberation movement has indeed considerably widened the scope of politics. In confronting collectively the seemingly individual problems of women it has widened the scope of political action.
Ten years ago abortion and women's sexuality in general, was not something that you would expect to hear discussed in a Labour Party ward or a trade union branch meeting.(6). Neither would it have been possible, for example, to win the support of large sections of the community to give council grants to a Women's Aid refuge for battered wives where the women themselves ran the refuge. Nor did the left expect to learn from a sectional movement about the connections between, for example, sexual and racial oppression and the consequent need to oppose racist population control policies.
The demand for women's caucuses in the IMG was seen by some comrades as outrageously anti-Leninist, particularly the demand for unfettered caucuses (ones that could decide themselves what they discussed and be convened at any time). Hilary writes: ‘one reason why socialism has become so sterile and dead to most working class people in the post-war years is because it has not, until recently, become open to the understandings arrived at through the movements of the oppressed groups and classes'. (p. 7). By entering into areas of life that were previously conceived of as private and personal ‘who does the housework, the way children are brought up, the quality of our friendships, even the way we make love and with whom' (p. 13), the women's movement has shown the left that it has more to learn from the oppressed than it was previously prepared to admit. Women have to challenge male domination in their own lives if they want to be politically active. As a woman you have to fight to be taken seriously at work, in your Labour Party branch, in a far left group. You have to confront sexism within your relationships if you don't want to be trodden on, even though you know it's difficult always to succeed. Sheila Rowbotham quotes Sarah Benton on the importance of living feminism as well as fighting for it: ‘ "It's not enough for the individual woman to ‘know' she is possessed or dominated; in order not to be possessed or dominated, indeed in order not to want to be, there must be an alternative culture in which such values are seen to be dominant and to be practised (in however erratic a way) in relation to which she can see herself'. (p. 129). The women's movement, especially because it was a pioneering movement, gave women that culture, and those values. Sisterhood is powerful.
But does this fly in the face of the Leninist approach to politics? I don't see why it does. The women's movement is beginning to change men's attitudes in society at large. But it would be strange if the parties of the left were unaffected. Men on the left thought they were ‘above' capitalist conditioning about sex roles before they confronted feminism. Women in left groups pointed out that it wasn't enough to have read about the ‘woman question' but that feminism meant challenging assumptions of male superiority, questioning arrogant and dismissive practices, taking the problem of childcare seriously, looking at structures anew to see if they were oppressive — ‘seeing the world through the eyes of women' as Trotsky once said.
The women's movement was a source of strength for women in left groups because it meant that we had a new frame of reference in which to approach Marxism and Marxists. We could define politics much more broadly. We tried to look for the essentials of Marxism and get rid of the ‘holy tablets' approach. Not all women in left groups were necessarily sympathetic to the ‘organised' women's movement but it had a powerful impact on every woman nevertheless.
None of this, however, should lead us to reject left wing parties as such. Of all the institutions in capitalist society, workers' parties will probably prove to be among the least resistant to the feminist critique of social relations. Hilary underestimates the impact of feminism on the parties of the far left. She thinks it has been limited to ‘sectoral' issues and not to the principles of revolutionary politics. I think things have gone further. Feminism has reasserted the importance of not being dogmatic and economistic, faults to which many so-called Leninist parties in Britain have been prone. If you refuse to listen to problems thrown up in a new form in the class struggle — women's oppression, national oppression, nuclear power, the problems of youth, racism, the defence of welfare services — then you are dogmatic. If you refuse to look outside the ‘point of production' and see the importance and validity of politics as a whole, and particularly the role of the modern state, then you are economistic. Feminism has made Marxism in Britain less dogmatic and less economistic — neither of which it should have been in the first place. It has not simply taught Marxism more about women. It has taught Marxism more about oppression.
Rosalind Petchesky puts this well in Dissolving the Hyphen(1). ‘Clearly, forms of organization and protest that arise out of women's ‘reproductive' work and collective consciousness as reproductive workers — like food riots and rent strikes and school sit-ins — are not inherently more or less radical than other forms of struggle like trade-union organizing. In both cases, the extent to which such forms are revolutionary in content and effect will depend upon their historical context, the quality of their leadership, their connection to a mass base, their adoption of a long range strategy for transforming all of society, and so forth.'
Yet the dialogue between Marxism and feminism has not been a one way dialogue. Marxism has had a beneficial effect on the women's movement. Sheila argues that women have come to socialism ‘without, indeed often despite, the intervention of parties.' (p. 117). Of course, women reach socialist consciousness in various ways. Some come into contact with socialist ideas through their feminist activities, without the ‘intervention' of any far left groups. But Sheila's suggestion that the process is a completely spontaneous one is untrue. A comparison between the American and British women's movements shows this clearly.
In the American women's movement there are women who identify with the ideas of socialist feminism (both in and outside NOW — the National Organisation of Women) but the dominant trend within the movement is not as radical as in Britain. Unfortunately, (like the black civil rights movement), the leaders of this movement have adopted a perspective of winning equal rights, not liberation for women, by sponsoring Democratic senators for Congress, supporting a capitalist party and getting co-opted in the process. They have even tried to avoid the problem of lesbian women and the issue of abortion because it might compromise their relationship with the Democratic Party. Nor have they taken up the problems of working class women in a systematic way. The comparative backwardness of the American women's movement is related to the weakness of American Marxism and the political weakness of organised labour in general. In Britain the women's movement has gained strength from marxist ideas.
Marxists reject the view that creating alternative lifestyles is an adequate political practice in itself. Women have every right to live how they choose, with or without men. Women are quite capable of enjoying themselves socially when men are not present. But ‘cultural feminism' cannot be a substitute for attacking the institutions that structure the oppression of women as a group. Only a tiny section of the population can afford to create a totally alternative lifestyle. Most women have to work with, or often ‘under' men. Many women cannot afford not to marry or live with a man, or stay with their parents, even today. While feminism involves challenging our subordination as women, in whatever walk of life we find ourselves, personal solutions alone cannot win liberation. We need to create a new society, a society based on social planning to free women from domestic drudgery, to create the collective structures that are necessary for society as a whole to take the responsibility for childcare.
Many women including the authors of Beyond the Fragments agree with this view of women's liberation. That is why so many of the ‘campaigners' in the women's movement, in the abortion campaign, the cuts campaigns, the Women's Aid Federation, identify themselves as ‘socialist feminists'. Of course, not only socialist feminists involve themselves in campaigns. Radical and revolutionary feminists have, for example, consistently taken up the issue of violence against women. But because of their hostility to working with men [they] downplay issues that force them [into] alliances with the labour movement, such as abortion. This was graphically illustrated by the recent anti-Corrie demonstration where Revolutionary Feminists chanted the slogan ‘Not the unions, not the state, women must decide their fate'.
There is no contradiction between Marxism and feminism if personal changes are placed within a context of fighting for structural changes in society, one complementing rather than contradicting the other.
Conclusion: Going beyond the fragments
The history of the marxist movement is richer and more heterogenous than many marxists believe. Hilary explains this in the introduction to Beyond the Fragments and Sheila refers to the discontinuity that our generation has with the past. The rise of fascism, the domination of the labour movement by Stalinism and the cold war broke into the continuity of the ideas of classical marxism. In re-establishing revolutionary politics as part of the mainstream of socialist tradition it is necessary to look at other brands of socialism and assess the contribution of the revolutionaries.
Sheila, Hilary and Lynne launch a big attack on ‘Leninist' parties. They place them in a completely separate camp, as if they are much more pernicious than parties such as the Labour Party. Many people's idea of a Leninist party is coloured by the Stalinist models of the past, and unfortunately all too many far left groups have imitated these models (the Worker's Revolutionary Party of Gerry Healey is only the most grotesque example). But what Lenin himself argued for was a mass working class party that was internally democratic (though united in action) and possessed of a revolutionary programme.
On the other hand, experience has shown that a democratic and disciplined party regime is almost impossible for parties that are not revolutionary. The Labour Party, for example, is corrupt to the core, a living self-contradiction. It claims to be socialist, yet betrays socialism at every turn. That is why the Labour Party leaders encourage large inactive membership that can be used to support the right wing. And that is why the party is run bureaucratically. Labour MPs are not accountable to the party, nor true to the manifesto on which they are elected. The parliamentary deputies have even formed their own separate party, the PLP, which is beyond the control of the membership of the parent party. Labour MPs and cabinet ministers flagrantly violate every norm of democracy and party discipline. The ‘liberality' of the Labour Party is in reality a cover for rule by a clique of gangsters. Making people feel powerless, stupid and inarticulate is the hallmark of reformist politics. Reformism is elitist to the core.
What made it necessary for revolutionaries to build separate, communist parties was the support that the parties of the Second International gave to the imperialist war. Later, the Third International committed comparable betrayals. All this destroyed the unity of the labour movement. Leninism, in principle, stands for a mass workers party committed to revolutionary politics, to an activist membership, and to internationalism, free debate and united action. All political parties require certain norms. Labour Party members for example are rightly demanding that MPs be subject to re-selection by the party.
In the IMG we demand a greater activist commitment and a more critical membership. But we do not see a Leninist party as an infallible mystic entity as Hilary, Sheila and Lynne seem to suggest. On the contrary, it is because we know that mistakes will be made that we insist that certain democratic rights must be guaranteed within a workers party. Of course, everyone knows ex-IMG members who complain that the model doesn't always correspond to reality. But then neither does the model of sisterhood that the women's movement projects.
Members of a workers party must have the right to debate out any issue they choose at conference. They must have the right to form ideological groupings both on particular issues and to organise to change party leaders if a grouping thinks such a step is necessary. (The IMG respectively uses the terms tendencies and factions for such groupings.) They must have access to bulletins to put forward their views. There must be reports of discussions on the leadership at branch meetings. Minority viewpoints must be represented on leading bodies elected by national conferences. Clear simple structures are necessary where people know who makes what decisions. These facilitate control.
I do not see why, in continuity with classical Marxism, Leninists should not be able to learn from movements of the oppressed, as they did in the nineteenth century. I do not accept the barriers that Sheila puts between ‘Leninism' and the Chartists or the Revolutionary Syndicalists. It is true that the modern far left had no real understanding of the culture of subordination, ‘of the emotional components of consciousness' before the women's movement, and, to an extent, the black movement, brought these issues to the surface.
Feminism was indeed unexplored territory for Marxism, and many Marxists at first refused to set out on the journey. It has taken over a decade for many Marxists to understand that male domination of women is a living relationship and has to be tackled both in everyday life and at the level [of the party]. Feminism has had a more profound impact on the far left than the authors of Beyond the Fragments admit. Few far left groups in Britain today ignore the question of women's oppression although many of them refuse to support the ‘autonomous' movement of women.
The reaction of the left to the woman's movement highlights the problems facing Marxism in Britain. Despite opportunities for growth and collaboration the far left remains small and sectarian. This paralysis, combined with defensiveness about theory, has left the situation open both for ‘workerism' which disregards new movements at one extreme and the ‘abstruse high theory which has become a form of practice among academic Marxists' (p. 32) on the other. Many far left groups in Britain today face problems of competitiveness, dogmatism, factionalism, ridicule, intellectualism, workerism. Partly because they are young organizations, partly because they are so divided, they are not self-conscious enough of these weaknesses.
The IMG is not immune from these pressures. But, the IMG perhaps more than any other far left group, has attempted to confront these problems by its commitment to open debate, unity in action, and revolutionary regroupment, abortion, Ireland, socialist democracy and regroupment, to say nothing of its long-standing participation in the debates in the women's movement. The IMG suffers from other weaknesses. It has a very long way to go in developing Marxist theory in Britain, and more women, black and working class comrades in the IMG as well as many socialists outside the IMG must play their part in this work. Despite all our weaknesses, I would suggest that the democracy of the far left is immeasurably greater and more real than that of the CPGB where the federalism of the intellectuals is contrasted with the centralism of the trade unionists and where the membership has no real influence in deciding party policy.
As Hilary points out, the main problem facing the left is the tremendous staying power of the Labour Party. Even today, after five years of a reactionary Labour government there have been revolutionaries joining the Labour Party seduced by the prospect that perhaps this time it might be possible for the left to win a real victory against the right. At the back of their minds lies the vain hope that the Labour Party can be transformed. The myriad of Trotskyist groups, incapable of containing their differences within the framework of a common party organization, does not enhance the attractiveness of the far left as an alternative to the Labour Party.
The fusion of the two largest far left organisations, the IMG and the SWP, would have a dramatic effect on the evolution of Marxism in this country. It would be a very powerful pole of attraction to feminists. It would have a far wider influence than the sum of the two organisations together because it would challenge the idea that Leninism is monolithic. It would base itself on the idea that parties are not built around this or that tactic, but should group together all those who fight for the interests of the working class, all who defend the politics of revolution not reform, and all those who want to see the working class take power.
We, too want to go beyond the fragments. We want the far left in Britain to gather its fragmented forces and build a socialist party broad enough to link all the revolutionary traditions that the British labour movement has produced, including socialist feminism, with the experience of revolutionaries internationally. This is why we are committed to building a revolutionary international — the Fourth International — at the same time as national parties. We do not think this can be done by dissolving ourselves into the mass movement. We do not think revolutions can be made without parties, or without a programme. We think movements and parties have different jobs to do and both can contribute to the building of socialism if they are prepared to learn from one another.
Footnotes
1. Rosalind Petchesky, ‘Dissolving the hyphen', in Zillah R. Eisenstein (ed.) Capitalist patriarchy and the case for socialist feminism. New York, Monthly Review Press, 1979. p.386.
References to Beyond the fragments throughout the article are to the revised edition: Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright, Beyond the fragments: feminism and the making of socialism. London, Merlin Press, 1979. Revised edition.