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March. this area of work. The Party held separate meetings and educationals for women, formed intermediary organisations for them etc. In general it was held the responsibility of women comrades to draw the Party's attention to the interests of women workers. In this way the sexual division of labour operating outside the Party came to be reflected within it, and what appeared at first sight to be purely technical decisions dictated by the realities of the social situation of women, turned out to separate off "women's work' and leave it to women comrades. The question of women's liberation became a matter of on the one hand a series of economic and bourgeois-democratic demands and on the other a vision for the distant future.
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Faced with the persistence of male chauvinism inside the revolutionary organisations, the radical feminist solution is to build an "autonomous' movement of women. As we tried to show elsewhere!, this is an incorrect solution.
We have also argued that to expect the revolutionary organisation to be totally free of male chauvinism is to fail to understand the material roots of this ideology. But this does not mean that one accepts this male chauvinism. On the contrary, it is necessary to wage a perpetual struggle to make the revolutionary organisation of the working class into an effective instrument for combatting male chauvinism both within its own ranks and within the working class, through conscious efforts and continous education of its cadres.
The position of women in the countries where capitalism has been overthrown can be analysed within the theoretical framework we have tried to sketch above. WLM literature, when discussing the reasons for the relatively limited political advance made by women in non-capitalist societies, has tended to concentrate on two levels: the economic and cultural underdevelopment of the countries where therevolution has been successful (often coupled with direct imperialist counter-offensive) and the inadequacy of classical Marxism in relation to the complex nature of women's oppression. However, while these factors have certainly played a fundamental role, they are not sufficient to explain the present position of women in these countries. In order to understand what went wrong' one needs to understand not only the nature of the contradictions found in societies in transition from capitalism to socialism but also the role of the subjective factor-the revolutionary party- in overcoming these contradictions. Thus the bureaucratisation and the subsequent degeneration of the Russian Communist Party was a determining factor in the progressive degeneration of the first Soviet state -a degeneration which was by no means inevitable. The repeal in the thirties and forties of much of the Bolshevik legislation that had, after October, laid a foundation for the legal, social and political equality ABORTION STRUGGLE IN FRANCE The present abortion law in France was passed in 1920: now the Government is considering a new law and all the women's groups are actively campaigning for abortion to be completely legalised. The law proposed by the Government, however, will allow abortion only in cases of rape, incest and mental or physical illness. Only a tiny number of women would be affected by this. The rest will continue to go to back street abortionists, or if they can afford it, to more "liberal" countries. of women, was an integral part of the Stalinist counterrevolution. Any scientific discussion of the position of women in transitional societies can only be carried out within this double theoretical framework: the general problematic of transitional societies (ruled by the fundamental contradiction between the social ownership of the means of production and the bourgeois mode of distribution and the historical origins and mechanism of the degeneration of the workers' states) One of the great contributions of Trotsky to revolutionary Marxism was to provide a coherent theory of the degeneration, against which he fought from the beginning with the founding of the Left Opposition fifty years ago.
The Fourth International of today bases itsell on the historical heritage of the Left Opposition's struggle against the Stalinist counter-revolution (one of whose essential features was the rehabilitation of the bourgeois family). In keeping with that heritage the F.l. places a great emphasis on internal democracy and the revolutionary consciousness of its members. These are intimately linked to a struggle, outside and inside its own ranks against male chauvinism and all the ideological and material factors that keep women in chains.
The struggle for women's liberation is part of the struggle to break out of the ideological, cultural and social straight jackets of class society-the struggle for a human society. It cannot be seen as 'autonomous from the revolutionary struggle against capitalism but rather must be seen as integral to it.
This requires both a struggle against the spontaniest 'new' politics of radical feminism in the WLM and a struggle for a consistent position on women's oppression in the revolutionary organisations. It is out of such struggles for revolutionary political theory that the Leninist party can be constructed.
Leonora Lloyd & Laurie White 1. See Tessa van Gelderen's article, pó 10,000 doctors have signed a protest against even the tiny advance proposed by the Government! The powerful catholic lobby has been propagandising very successfully in a group called "Let them Live'. The punishment at the moment for breaking the law is very harsh: 1-5 years for the abortionist; if a Doctor is involved he/she is off the medical register for 2-6 years; the woman herself will be fined 2000-5000 francs. If the new law was passed, many doctors and nurses would refuse to perform abortions, leaving the field wide open for the private sharks.
The demands of the pro-abortion movement are:
"Yes" to free contraception and abortion! "No" to doctors telling woman what to do! "No" to being refused contraceptives!
On June 15 and 16 there were two days of action against the "let them Live" campaign and the 10,000 doctors who signed the petition. This was organised by MLAC-the movement for liberty of abortion and contraception-and actively supported by the Ligue Communiste (French Section of the Fourth International). Information from 'Rouge', paper of Ligue Communiste.
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