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This pamphlet consists of a long central article by Mariarosa Dalla Costa, sandwiched between an introduction by Selma James, and an early article by her dating from 1952. Since it is the article by Dalla Costa that expresses the ideas shared by her and James most cogently, it is that on which the discussion is centred. But does a journal like Socialist Woman have a right to run a critical review of this pamphlet, and do I as a woman member of the IMG have a right to write one as part of the Womens Liberation Movement? James and Dalla Costa might dispute it, for the pamphlet contains numbers of attacks on the "straight" left. James compares the marxism of Mandel* unfavourably with that of Marx; Dalla Costa points out that the struggle for womens" liberation has to take place in part against the organisations of the revolutionary left, who accept it in theory but in practice relegate it conveniently to some time after the revolution. Where is the stimulating literature of the womens' movement? Germaine Greer, Shulamith Firestone, Kate Millett, Juliet Mitchell, none of them come from the revolutionary left organisations. I think that some of the criticisms raised against us are true and yet that some of us have a right to feel that we are a real part of the women's movement, and have something to contribute, especially as critics and organisers, and as members of revolutionary organisations.
Women in Revolutionary Groups There is no doubt that the straight left is male dominated, There are more men than women members, and more men still among the leaderships. This is one of the problems that arises from the fact that the members of a revolutionary organisation are still the products of capitalist society and as such reflect many of the ideas transmittee by bourgeois ideology, albeit unwillingly. However, this does not mean that there should not be a continuous struggle within such an organisation against such ideas, both at a theoretical and practical level. This is particularly so in the case of male chauvinism and our struggle must not and is not limited to the male comrades in the revolutionary left but has to include many of the women comrades. But what this means in practice that as members of a revolutionary organisation (and it must be remembered that we are members of such an organisation because we have an understanding of the need to build a revolutionary party and to overthrow capitalism) we have to strike a balance in our work between what we are trying to achieve inside the organisation and what we want to achieve through the organisation. Of course the two things are very much inter-related and it is that inter-relationation which determines what we do at any one time. This is not by any means to counter the two aspects: work within the WLM and work on the question of combatting male chauvinism within the revolutionary organisations. It is by the very existence of such a movement and of us working in it, that can go a long way to dealing with the question of male chauvinism. But the reverse is also true; the members of a revolutionary organisation working within the WLM do have something to contribute, which comes from the great strength of a really revolutionary organisation, namely the ability to find the links between what seem to be isolated struggles, making our understanding part of a total programme and relating organisation and struggle to that programme, with an international perspective. And it is this strength which makes us want to remain in the organised left, to struggle vithin it, and to persuade other women, without illusions, to join it. This strength also gives us perspectives from which we can make a genune constructive criticism of some of the ideas emerging from the centre of the women's movement.
Self organisation of women Dalla Costa's analysis is marxist in conception; it rejects feminism (the theoretical kind that poses the real class struggle as between men and women); it centres on the working class woman; and yet it does not regard production as the main arena of struggle for Women. Dalla Costa argues that in a capitalist society a woman's job is the production of labour power in the home. There, unpaid, in a pre-capitalist economic situation, she produces new workers and reproduces existing ones. Such a situation produces the dependent psychological characteristics which make our strueele so difficult Della Costa analysis is marxist in conception; it rejects feminism (the theoretical kind that poses the real class struggle as between men and women); it centres on the working class woman; and yet it does not regard production as the main arena of struggle for women. Dalla Costa argues that in a capitalist society a woman's job is the production of labour power in the home. There, unpaid, in a pre-capitalist economic situation, she produces new workers and reproduces existing ones. Such a situation produces the dependent psychological characteristics which make our struggle so difficult, and involve men as the agents of our oppression, a situation so intricately bound up that many women in achieving liberation from such servitude becom gay, in order to escape the power relationship inseperable from male female relationships.
1 KNOW ITS YOUR WOMENS LIB NIGHT BUT MY MEETING IS IMPORTANT In producing labour power, Dalla Costa argues, housewives are themselves exploited, surplus value producers, and integral members of the working class. The struggle must be waged against organisations of the working class which divide between those producers employed in the factory and those in the home. Capitalist society is in fact on great social factory. The crucial task for the womens" liberation movement is to start the self organisation of women, whose potential social power can be utilised in community struggles. There is no solution in advocating that women should work, for this involves at best a change in the mode of exploitation, at worst the adoption of a double one. Therefore the womens' movement should organise around demands that women should reject housework; meet their husbands on their own grounds outside the home at factory meetings; rent struggles can be fought on the basis that womens's social production in the home has more than covered the rent; hold neighbourhood meetings, etc. The question of wages for housewives is a difficult one, and Mariarosa doesn't come down clearly on one side or the other, On the one hand it might give the impression that we wanted to *entrench the condition of institutionalised slavery therefore could scarcely operate as a mobilizing goal' - on the other it gives an indication for struggle, a direction in organisational terms in which oppression and exploitation, situation of caste and class, find themselves insolubly linked." (per and 53) The resolution of this contradiction involves the understanding of the nature of demands. For a demand is 'a goal which is not only a thing, but ... essentially a stage of antagonism of a social relation. Whether the canteen or wages we win will be a victory or a defeat depends on the force of our struggle. It is impossible in such a brief summary to capture the power and vitality of the writing that makes this pamphlet no stimulating to read. Yet those very qualities conceal what seem to me to be crucial confusions, leading to the division of a struggle where there should be unity.