[page 22]
Revolutionary Dynamics of Women's Liberation by Sabina Roberts, League for Socialist Action pamphlet, 15p.
The problem in reviewing this pamphlet is that Sabina Roberts seems confused about at whom it is aimed. On the one hand, she gives us an account of the issues of women's oppression, apparently designed for a new comer to the movement. Certainly, anyone already in women's liberation will have read it all before. She largely ignores the current debates taking place over the connection between production and the reproduction of labour power. The reason for this is that, in her account of the women's movement, she also totally ignores the development of the socialist current, the place where this debate has been developed.
But the newcomer to the movement would be somewhat mystified by many aspects of the pamphlet, especially in the way in which it deals with groups in the left. Whilst condemning them all as 'sectarian' she falls into the classic sectarian habit of dismissing other groups with one all-embracing adjective —in the case of the IMG and the International Socialists—as 'super - proletarians'. No where does she attempt to justify or even explain the basis of this description.
COUNTERPOSING
Sabina Roberts condemns the IMG for 'counterposing' the Working Women's Charter Campaign to the women's movement, but fails to mention that women's conferences and groups have been active in taking up the campaign and working around it. Whether she likes it or not. the campaign extends well beyond the International Marxist Group.
It is proposed in this pamphlet that the way to build the women's movement is through a 'single-issue campaign' —such as abortion and contraception. In this proposal two things are ignored- First, the experiences of the American women's movement, where hundreds of thousands of women were pulled into such a campaign, only to disappear when their objective was gained. The campaign was not such as to convince millions of women of the need for total emancipation.
Second, the development of theory by the women's movement (even as outlined in the pamphlet) have shown us the total inter-relationship of all aspects of women's oppression. We shall be doing women a disservice if we rely on campaigns that ignore that totality. —by Leonora Lloyd