SPECIAL WOMEN'S ISSUE

Inside This Issue: *A SELF-CRITICISM OF THE JUCHE CONFERENCE - page 3 *fflSTORICAL AND ECONOMIC BASIS OF +LABOR ORGANIZING AND AFFIRMATIVE WOMEN'S OPPRESSION - page A AC TION - page 16 * THIRD WORLD WOMEN - page 5 m *PAnTy BUILDING, OUR PRIMARY TASK- page C *HISTORy OF THE EARLY WOMEN'S THE BLACK COLONY- MOVEMENT - page 9 A PROGRAM FOR LIBERATION * THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT TODAY -pg 13 part 2 - page 2 MST ID im maartM or ALL m mmaa or im taoumxm UD cnraocmw n JUCHE! VITB THE ACTOll OCWHOW AT HOW." . - - m» tl diversity as exists in the cal factor here. Throughout history, the ple within the U.S. and U.S. imperialism. lives of our people. imperialist forces(cultural, economic, po• The contradiction between Black labor and More specifically, we have seen many litical and military) of the U.S. have been capitalism and the class contradictions be• serious Black organizations fail because of struggling with their opposite, the colon• tween different classes of Black people are the following four critical errors: ized peoples of the U.S. This country's en• serious contradictions that must be resol• 1, Trying to do too many things and con• tire history is shaped at every turn by its ved in favor of the Black masses. However sequently doing none well and burning relations with Blacks, Native Americans, the principal contradiction is the contra• out cadre. Latino and Asian peoples. Within this con• diction that Influences the development of 2, Focusing narrowly on one task and tradiction the relationship between Blacks all other contradictions. Accordingly, it losing all flexibility, and imperialism has been the critical fac• is the one that must be first studied and 3, Not understanding which force is the tor. Slave labor provided the economic su• grasped. primary force for Black Liberation. per-profits necessary for capitalist expan• Once the principal contradiction is 4, Not understanding which struggle, is• sion and the strengthening of U.S. imperi• grasped, it is crucial that we determine sue, etc. is the essential one at a alism. Black slavery provided the naterial the main strategic force for resolving this particular time. base for the ideology of racism that has contradiction. Not understanding this ques• All of these errors flow from not having a dominated ideological development within tion has caused nearly as much harm as not scientific analysis of the Black Liberation the U.S. for the past 300 years. During the correctly understanding what the principal Struggle. Key to understanding the Struggle Civil War, the greatest general strike in contradiction is. The early Panther Party is the analytical tool of dialectical and U.S. history(carried on by Black slaves), for instance correctly grasped what the historical materialism. This tool is being principal contradiction is within U.S. soc• applied through out the Black Liberation iety and for Black people. Unfortunately Movemont, The Black Liberation Army among not understanding what the main strategic others has called on Black revolutionaries force for resolving these contradictions to utilize this tested tool. It is the ana• led to the destruction of the party. Even lytical tool that has proved successful in when the main force is recognized, the main tKe numerous national liberation struggles reserve(ally) is not recognized. These ques• and socialist revolutions o£ this century. tions we will now attempt to clarify. In analytically studying our struggle it is THE MAIN STRATEGIC FORCE AND THE MAIN oecesMry for us to understand what the STRATEGIC RESERVE principal contradiction is within the Unit• We have to determine what Is the key ed States, what the principal contradiction force when we devise strategies to resolve is for Black people, what the main strate- contradictions in favor of the people. gic force is for Black peoplQ and what the Within the context of the Black Liberation central task is for Black revolutionaries. Movement there are many different economic This article will conclude the series of classes. Classes are defined here in the articles in Vol IT of "SST" on Black work• scientific sense; that is in relation to ers and the Black Liberation Struggle and production. There is a working class who a program for struggle. Based on the above sell their labor, a petty bourgeoisie who considerations we will attempt to develop sell specialize skills and retail goods the ideological principles necessary to (small businessmen), a bourgeoisie who own guide our struggle. the means of production(land, money, ma• THE PRINCIPAL COMTRADICTIOM chinery) and buy labor, and other classes. In trying to apply revolutionary science Vague terms such as"middle class" are use• to our struggle, we must study and under• less and often confusing. Each class at stand the theory of contradiction. This sometime has been thought to be the key thQory is the basis of the philosophical numerous slave revolts, the thousands of heroic class/sector to lead our people to freedom. part of revolutionary science. It says that Black soldiers in the Union Army and the It is true that this group has led Black within any process or object there are two numerous attempts to form free Black states people to significant victories during this forces that struggle for dominance. In a in the South, all bear out the fact that century. However this class has character• complex process such as the Black libera• Blacks won the Civil War for Northern cap• istic weaknesses that have always crippled tion movement, there may be many contradic- italists. Throughout history the superex- our movement and prevented it from gaining tions(or forces struggling). There is the ploitation of Black labor and necessary freedom. From the time of Garvey and DuBois struggle(contradiction) between Black work• ideological(racist), cultural and social to that of Dr. King, there is a pattern of ers and the white ruling class, the contra• super-structure shaped and influenced all our movement moving into massive struggle diction between Black workers and white aspects of the developemnt of this country. and its leadership "all of a sudden" becom• workers. There are contradictions between Other colonized peoples within the US, par• ing very shaky. Under the prodding of Black different segments of the Black liberation ticularly Native Americans, similarly in• workers, the Garvey movement began making movement. In any process there is always fluenced the development of the vilest im• real demands on U.S. imperialism. But in• one contradiction or struggle that is the perialist power in the history of the world. creased repression from the state made Gar• key contradiction. By correctly identify• Combined, it cannot be disputed that the vey decide to liquidate the struggle for ing theis contradiction, the task of anal• principal contradiction has been the con• day to day Black rights and begin making yzing a process(in our case, the Black lib• tradiction between U.S. imperialism and the alliances with such reactionary forces as eration struggle) is amazingly easier and colonized peoples within its present terri• the KKK. Mass support dwindled to the point more accurate. This key, most important tories , where his enemies were able to Isolate and contradiction is called the principal con• The principal contradiction for Black destroy him. Similarly as the Civil Rights tradiction . people is also easily identifiable. Through Movement entered the middle 60's it became Mao Tse-tung stated that, "There are out our history in this country our exploi• clear that Black workers and youth were many contradictions in the process of de• tation has been economic in motivation. As dissatisfied with the token victories that velopment a cpmplex things and one o£ George Jackson stated we have done the work had been won. The key turning point was the them is necessarily the principal contra• of the greatest slave state in history. March on Washington. Grass roots organizers diction whose existence and development de• However if the economic exploitation of our from throughout the U.S. had the sincere termine or influence the existence and de• people was the principal contradiction fac• and realistic goal of having Black people velopment Of all Other contradictions." ing our people, members of the Black bour• shut down Washington D.C. Under pressure Further. "Therefore, in studying any con- geoisie and petty bourgeoisie would not from the Black masses and the white bour• plex process in which there are two or more suffer any exploitation different in degree geoisie, the petty bourgeois leadership of contradictions, we must devote every effort from their white counterparts. Similarly the movement faced a grave crisis, Their to finding its principal contradiction. and more importantly Black workers would decision to liquidate the struggle aspect Once this principal contradiction is grasp• occupy the same economic position as white of the March and sellout is famous. Al• ed, all problems can be readily solved. " workers. Yet, as many Black activists have though massive, the March became a shameful Since our struggle takes place within clearly demonstrated, this is not the case. liberal picnic. After the March, the lead• the context of U.S. society, we must grasp White high school dropouts earn more during ership of Malcolm X and other grassroots the principal contradiction within this their life than Black college graduates. organizers became decisive, and the mass country. However as a distinct colonized The degree of oppression of Black workers aspect of the Civil Rights Movement began npnnlp wf> must also crasn the nrlncinal "^-v -; o r^-p a rJi f •f£»•ror»^ natnrp than CONT. ON PAGE 4 SELF-CRITICISM OF THE JUCHE CONFERENCE

•JUCHE MEANS HOLDING FAST TO THE PRIN• for the discussion of specifics. It allows CIPLE OF SOLVING FOR ONESELF ALL THE PRO• us and our comrades to identify our basis BLEMS OF THE REVOLUTION AND CONSTRUCTION of unity for criticism/self criticism and IN CONFORMITY WITH THE ACTUAL CONDITIONS political struggle. Two, we need to clearly XT HOME" KIM IL SUNS (DRK) focus on a single main issue at a time. We can't accomplish everything at once. Even This is a summation and self criticism though there are many contradictions on the by the white staff of STT, of the JUCHE white left, we can only try to resolve one conference, held in 5an Jose, California at a time. The question of party building in December; 1975. The conference, attend• in the context of mass organizing Is^ cen• ed by about 180 white revolutionaries, was tral to forward progress- but we can't ap• two days long. It focugQd on tbrQQ spQciric proach it without a basis of unity in re• questions in the context of the white rev• gards to national liberation/international• olutionary movoment... l)National libQra- ism (among other things). Three, we need to tion/lnternationallsm, 2)Collectives/Mass organize open and participatory forums for organizing, and 3)Criticism/self criticism. ier issues of the paper, the addition of struggle, for give and take. Political The central area of political struggle the section PROM THE SISTERS, the focus struggle requires communication, not a one sided statement but an exchange of ideas at the JUCHE Conference was national liber• of the coming issue on womens' oppression, and response. Fourth, and perhaps most im• ation/internationalism. The staff of STT the agendizing of men's and wcmens' caucus• portant, we need to grasp firmly the tool and others, including some members of es at the JUCHE Conference, and the panel of criticism/self criticism. Our weakness Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, advanced presentation on organizing working class here is the key to our failings in organ• the position put forward in the pages of women in the Collectives/mass organizing izing political struggle-and this Is com• STT for the past two yeare on the following panel. mon to the whole white left. There are too Points: One, the existence of imperialist The speaker on organizing women made it relations and an oppressor nation within many groups too certain of their own in• clear that she disagreed with STT's po• fallibility to engage in honest struggle. the US; two, the uneven impact of the cri• sition on the need to build collectives, sis of imperialism in these conditions,- On the other hand there are too many acti• and on the necessity for autonomous de• vists and organizations that fail to take three, the impact of these facts on the velopment of national cadre organizations. character of the white working class and responsabillty for their own politics. This led to confusion about STT's position SUMMATION the white left; and four, the implications on the main thrust of her speech on women of the above on our strategy for building and organization. In this area as in some Through re-evaluating the structure unity at the mass and cadre levels between others at the conference, our ability to of the conference we see that the choice nationalities. We called for a single fed• arrive at clarity in struggle was hamper• and presentation of questions the white erated structure of national parties and ed by STT's failure to take a clear, con- staff made represented and put us for• a mostly white cadre organization as a sisitent position. We'll talk about this ward as a cadre organization. step which could lead to still closer long more under the subject of political strug• The discussion areas put forth ques• range unity among communists. We called gle. tions that are key in the formation or upon white activists to bring white workers The criticism was raised that STT did expansion of a cadre organization. The to an explicitly anti-white supremacist not deal with gay oppression in the paper, white staff did not plan the Juche conf• stance as a precondition to an internation• nor seem to attach much importance to it erence to form or expand a cadre organi• al mass alliance. in the conference. STT white staff accept• zation around our line. At present the Opposing arguments came from some other ed the criticism and admitted that they white staff has no cadre organization. PFOC members, and from independant indivi• had no clear position or unity on the cen• Therefore, the structure of the confer- •ence should have been one of more open duals and study groups. Their arguments tral staff in this area.A committment was and participatory type of struggle. included that there is a single working made to correct this. class in the US, defined by the borders In placing ourselves, objectively, in of the US state; that overall class strug• the position of cadre leadership of a POLITICAL STRUGGLE: A SELF CRITICISM gle is primary over national forms of stru• nonexistant organization, we downplayed The purpose of the conference was to ggle; that the economic crisis reduced the the necessity of seeing party building promote political struggle. The main str• material basis for contradictions within as a central task. ength was that it did that, in the midst the "multinational" class; and that it is The process of party building requires Df a white left characterized by terrible not correct, necessary, or possible to the development of scientific political liberalism in this regard. The main fail• bring white workers to an anti-white supre• line, practical inplementation, and des- ings, and the main lessons to be learned macist stance. It was advanced that for simination. Viewing party building as a by the white staff, were also in this area: whites to support the formation of national central task would have meant for the con• how do we organize political struggle? forms of organization among TW peoples was ference more open struggle for clarifica• to violate the right of TW poeples to de• The practice of the white staff, and tion of political line and exchange of cide for themselves what forms of organ• later of the conference coordinating com• practice rather than discussing organi• ization they need. mittee was characterized by a non-struggle zational forms. attitude, and.an inability to effectively Since the conference we have made sev• As stated above, PFOC came down on both organize political struggle in the pre- eral decisions in an effort to rectify sides of the question. At the time of the conference planning coiranittees, in the serious errors on the part of the white JUCHE Conference, PFOC had not taken an agenda and execution of the conference, staff: 1) we are in the process of devel• organizational position on this debate. and in the criticism/self-criticism at the oping principles of unity, 2) further we The Weather Underground Organization appe• end of the conference. ared to be moving to the position in oppo• intend to use these principles of unity The preconference planning was charact• as a basis for joining primary collectives, sition to that advanced by STT, and nation• erized by a top down approach by the white al leadership in PFOC was advancing a line 3) we are attempting to struggle over the staff and later the coordinating committee. relationships between the white and Third and pursuing a strategy also based on the Organizing committees were set up in each latter arguments. World staffs to make them more systema• city, but in a bureaucratic centralist tic and structured. There were several areas where our pre• manner. The dialectic of .this problem was sentations were unclear, such as: What is very frustrating- the staff wanted other A LUTA CONTINUA; the aristocracy of labor in the US? Do all people to take responsabillty, in fact they white staff/Seize the Time white workers have "relative privilege, or pleaded with them to do so,- but they didn't just some? Do we uphold autonomous cadre know how to organize it. They wound up ABOUT THIS ISSUE organization as an absolute principle in holding onto the reins, until other people itself, as a strategic necessity for this made strong criticisms. The main reason This issue was written by the staff of STT and period, or as a right oppressor nation for this problem was the absence of clear a women's study group (see "Who We Are" on communists must uphold? principles of unity. page 8.) In order to clarify which group One question which became central in The conference aganda did not permit wrote which articles, below is a list: the debate concerned the existence of an enough discussion time. While the mens' Women's Study Group: oppressor nation in the US which does net workshop and the discussions of practice Who We Are, page 8; History of the Early include oppressed nationalities, which is were very good, the amount of time for the Women's Movement, page 9; Women: the defined not by race relations but by poli• workshops as a whole should have been shor• Family and the Revolution, page 10; Analysis tical, economic, ana cultural relations o£ ter, collectives/mass organizing and cri- imperialism, opposing views Included that tioism/self criticism presentations should of the Lesbian Movement, page 10; Historical the oppressor nation did not include the have been left off the agenda. and Economic Basis of Women's Oppression, white working class, but only the ruling The attitude of the white staff in re• page A; Party Building—Our Primary Task, class; that there is no oppressor nation sponse to criticism was too often defen• page C; Btrategy for Organizing, page 13, at all; or that this question has no real sive. The white staff felt insecure in the Women's Movement Today, page 13. impact on the conditions or on our strate• the out front position they had assiimedi STT Staff gy. and this was reflected in an unwilling• The Black Colony (TW staff), page 2; A •rne second and third areas of discuBsior; ness to do sincere self criticism. were not so successful. The presentations On the other hand, the JUCHE Conference Self-Criticism of the Juche Conference(ViTiite on party building and mass organization was an honest effort to organize political staff), page 3; Third World Women (TW staff), evoked little otrugglc. People were not yet struggle, while It could have been done page 5; Angola, Support the MPLA, page 10; ready to move into this area. Time requi• more effectively, the conference was able Labor Organizing and Affirmative Action, red that the Criticism/self criticism pre• to define the main contradiction faced by page 16; CETA Organizing, page IS; Hard sentation be removed from the agenda, to the white left. Times Conference, page 17. allow space for criticism/self criticism. This experience teaches us four main Other STT was criticized for failure to deal things V7bic.h we need to engage in political Women in Prison was donated by a women's with the oppression of women. The staff Struggle: one, we need a clear, precise pointed out the puDllcatlon of such a self- statement of where we stand- where we are prison project; Palestinian Women waa criticism a year earlier concerning earl• clear and unclear. This provides a context donated by the Palestinian Support Committee. am. mm taci : •e«t of cm vwvl* ttill vvfft fev • to decline. Bu—Her over • period of three ymmrm - ae aaceer hem •••jer. A p«f«Ur TTie uaverlng nature of the Black petty (*;69-1972)» thi« adveacnt waa cruabed. Ot- -volotioo Boat be ballc on that ban . .» bourgeoisie is typical of its counterparts ternally vlcic>ue attacks by th« police and «aa the baa« the Peathera failed to aebil- in Africa(read Cabral's Return to the its agents murdered many of its best lead- ize. By buildins their baae oe the "Itaipea" Source) and throughout the world. Many of ers(Fred Hampton, Bunchy Carter, etc.). In• the Panthers in aany areas were onable to the finest leaders of a revolution or lib• ternally street gang mentality, adventurism mobilize the vast aasses of working Black eration struggle come from this class(che, and other lumpen weaknesses were dissolving people. The West Coast revisionist Panthers cabralj NUrumah, Ho, Mao, Lenin, DuBolSj both organisations and the mass movetpent , followed this trend evaa a«r« by building Dr. King). But the class as a whole is too Inside the BPP criticism/self-criticism and their organisation on the much store power• indecisive for leadship. Caught between the democratic centralism were destroyed. less petty bourgeoisie. The vanguard class. riak of losing their bourgeois-granted re• We believe that the movement of street the main strategic force for Black revolu' lative privilege and a real longing to be youth and lumpen, that was organlzarionally tlon, must be the class that can fulfil part of^their people's liberation struggle, represented by the BPP and had its mass as• these criteria: they usually sell out, hold back or do no• pect in the urban rebellions, proved to the 1. Must be committed to struggle for thing. When Che struggle gets heavy they US that this sector of our people has a freedom without vacillation. are usually the first to abandon it. Con• vast revolutionary potential. Harrassed and 2. Their demands speak to the needs of versely they are usually the last ones to attacked daily on the streets and in the the masses of Black people. join a movement or struggle. schools, this class has a profound disre• 3. Have the discipline and organization• Another fatal error in relying on the gard for the system which exploits them. al experience to carry out the demands of a petty bourgeoisie for political leadership Underemployed, underpaid, often on some complex liberation struggle. is that like any other class they will form of welfare, this sector of our people 4. Have the power to break the back of fight for the demands of their own class. is as oppressed as any sector of people in U.S. imperialism and seize power for the Petty bourgeois-led struggles typically are the U.S. Black masses. for integrated housing, the right to attend However, selecting this sector as the History has proved that no one class can Harvard J Yale or UCLA and more positions in vanguard class led to many critical prob• win a struggle alone. Further, in the begln- management. Mass oriented Black struggles lems. First there is a definitional prob• ing stages our revolution is at, no one make demands for decent low cost housing lem. Classically the "lumpen-proletariat" class fulfills all these criteria well. How• and health care, relevant, non-racist pub• is defined as the pimps, pushers and rack• ever the class that fits these criteria lic schooling, safe workplaces and equal eteers that survive by exploiting the mas• best and is the main strategic force for pay for workers. When the Black masses be• ses of our people - a "lower" or "illegal" Black liberation is the Black working class, gan to realize that civil rights leaders bourgeoisie. While many of our people hus• were no longer pushing demands that changed tle to survive, there is a monumental dif• BLACK WORKERS: THE MAIN STRATEGIC FORCE the quality of most people's lives, they ference between the worker who sell a few The Black working class has several began to search for new methods of strug• bags of weed to his partners, the welfare qualities which make it the primary sector gle. mother who sells food stamps and the "macks, for consideration as the main strategic Two main criteria(not the only ones) for superflies and rip-off artists" who destroy force. It also has one serious weakness. deciding which sector of our people consti• our youth and women and help the pigs make First, it is the largest class of Black tutes the main force are: our lives miserable. By lumping the degen• people. Depending on the area, between 50 1. Do the demands of this class quali- erate "superflies" with sisters and bro• and 80% of our people work for a living. tively better the lives of the masses of thers who are unemployed and underemployed, Consequently, any program built around the our people? we are making a big mistake. The under and demands of the class would necessarily in• 2, Is this class capable of waging unre• unemployed sector of our people is large volve most of our people. lenting struggle til final victory? and sometimes the majority in bad times(and Secondly, Black workers are extremely The Black petty bourgeoisie has fulfilled times are getting worse). This class, the concentrated in certain fields. As George neither of these criteria. reserve unemployed army(during an eocnomic Jackson states, "The principal reservoir of boom it is employed, during recessions and revolutionary potential in Amerika lies in BOURGEOISIE AND LUMPEN depressions it is unemployed), has vast re• wait inside the Black Colony. Its sheer At various times the Black bourgeoisie, volutionary poetential and has played a re• numerical strength, its desperate histori• through its lackeys(Jackson in Atlanta, volutionary role in our recent past. The cal relation to the violence of the produc• Vernon Jordan, Roy Wilkins, etc.), has been true "lumpen-proletariat", those who make tive system, and the fact of its present represented as the only valid leadership of their living off of us, are relatively few status in the creation of wealth force the the Black Liberation Movement. Contrary to of our people. This class is mainly hostile the black stratum at the base of the whole the belief of many white radicals there is to the goals of Black liberation and has class structure into the forefront of any a I" ie. Concentrated in Atlan• supplied the police force with many of its revolutionary scheme. Thirty percent of all ta -aem cities, it is in• best informers. By confusing this class industrial workers are black. Close to 40 volved in insurance, banking and land. It with the reserve unemployed army(who are percent of all industrial support roles are owns almost no large production units(min- essentially workers), we allow such bad filled by blacks. Blacks are still doing ing, manufacturing). Like any colonized traits in our ranks as lack of discipline, the work of the greatest slave state in bourgeoisie, it is much weaker and to some disrespect for women and opportunism. history. The terms of our servitude are all degree dependent on the imperialist bour• Though the reserve unemployed army has that have altered." In addition Blacks are geoisie. They owe their existence to Rock• much revolutionary potential, the 60's also heavily concentrated in the fields of efeller, Ford(Henry), etc. But its weakness taught us that this class has one major transportation(urban bus lines and long• does not mean it does not exist. weakness as a vanguard class. The basic shoremen especially), health care and cler• In most colonial situations there are power of this class is the power to des• ical work. This concentration at the point two branches of the "native" bourgeoisie. troy. In the 60's this power was sufficient of production gives the Black working class One is the comprador bourgeoisie which is to seriously disrupt the functioning of tremendous potential power. Black labor built this country, and Labor could bring an enemy of the liberation movement. There this country and win some reforms. The pow• this country's ruling class to its knees. is also what is called the "national bour• er to destroy was not sufficient to lead us Black labor could fatally cripple such key geoisie". The national bourgeoisie is the to freedom. Our struggle in the 60's lacked industries as auto and steel. This Black young and weak capitalist class that wants three key elements: worker power makes the Black working class to fully develop. They want independence 1. The ability to involve the Black mas• because it will free them from the direct the most powerful class within the Black ses in the day to day struggle for freedom. Colony. competition of the much stronger imperial• 2. The mass and cadre organizational ists. However they do not want liberation forms necessary for revolution. Thirdly, the Black working class has a for the masses of people because they ex• 3. The ability to seize power for Black strong history of organization. It has had ploit the labor of the people just as any people so that we can determine our own fu• organizations of its own, from the Colored other capitalist class. This class will ture and arrange it to benefit ourselves. National Labor Union of the 1800's to Uni• usually fight(to some small degree) for in• ted Black Workers and the League of Revolu• dependence but will also fight to the death Street youth, welfare mothers, etc. are a substantial part of our people. However tionary Black Workers. In the past, it has against a complete revolution. participated very strongly in multination• However Black finance and bureaucratic al radical labor organisations such as the capitallsts(Bradley in L.A., etc. who de• Knights of Labor of the late 1800's and the rive their ppwer from their position in Communist Party during the 1930's. The 5overnment) have been long espoaed. For Black working class was the backbone. If sometime now the Black masses have known not the leadership, of both the Garvey that this class does not represent their movement and the Civil Rights movement. Be• interests, The finance capitalists are com• sides these organizations the Black working pletely against the BLM because it will class has had a long history of participa• mean cutting profits, their primary inter• ting in the labor unions of this country. est . This tradition o£ organization makes the Black working class the class most able to After the Civil Rights movement began to adopt to the procedures and discipline of wind down, many Black activists identified revolutionary organisations at both the street youth and the lumpen proletariat as mass and cadre level. ths vanguard force for Black revolution. Stating that "they had nothing to lose but Lastly, we must consider the conscious• their chains", organizations such as the ness of the Black working class. Most re• EPF and many activista based their work on fuse to analyze the Black working class street youth and lumpen• Under the leader- .dialectically(looking at both the bad and ohip of the BPF and similar organizations, the good), and state that either the Black this sector of our people carried Black re• working class is a completely revolutionary volution to its greates heights in recent class or that the class is a purely react• times. The Civil Rights struggle now became ionary class'. Like anything else the Black a struggle for Human Rights. Under this working class has both its positive and ne• leadership Black masses began to deal with The Black Panther Party was the first gative points. As a class it is more pro• self-determination and scientific socialism attempt at a Black Revolutionary Social• gressive than many in the BU4 would wish to for the first time since the 30's. Armed ist Party, We must learn from its heroic admit. Even the most superficial analysis struggle and revolutionary organization be• successes and its failures. of its history shows that this class has came issues that many Black people began to GONT. ON NEXT PAGE THIRD WORLD WOMEN Triple jeopardy - that's the name of a Because of these differences, this ar• Both the government and U.S. capitalism in Third World poor and working women's news• ticle will deal specifically with the general see the TW family as a unit of paper. It describes the situation most TW struggles of TW women. TW women have fought social organiaation that passes on values women find ourselves in. We are threatened for the liberation of women. Most often our and culture different and most often act• as working and poor people in a capitalist struggles have been in the context of en - ively opposed to Puritanism, capitalism, society. We are threatened as TW national• abling us to contribute even more to the competition, individualism and white su• ities In a racist, imperialist society. We liberation of our entire people, to the premacy. are threatened ae women in a se«ist soeie- liberation of working people, to the ulti• This is not to deny that TW women are mate end of all forms of hierarchy and op• oppressed by certain aspects of tradition• Because of our triple oppression, TW pression. al culture and by their people's reaction women have been prominent in leading and We will look at TW women's oppression to colonization. We all know how TW men, supporting struggles and In Joining organ• and potential for revolution as TW people, faced with powerlessness on the job and in izations emphasizing the liberation of as workers and as women in U.S. society. the streets, turn around and assert a mis• working people and of TW people from op• In Part II we will then look at the organ• placed sense of dorainace over their wives pression. However, TW women have not par• izations and contributions of TW women to and lovers. ticipated in the independent women's lib• the struggle. Lastly we will look at the Sisters are part of the problem too. In eration movement in significant numbers. problems faced by TW women in the struggle an effort not to act "like white women" we This is because the politics of the wo• and present some solutions and principles don't speak up and contribute our ideas and men's movement have been dominated by suggested by sisters to advance our liber• criticism. Sometimes we get so involved white upper and middle class women, as it ation as TW people, workers and women. with religion and mysticism that we don't has many times in American history. Any struggle for justice in the present. Black woman who has studied her people's NATIONAL LIBERATION But in general TW women have provided history must have some misgivings about In the past ten years, two movements much support and leadership to their na• the consistency of support that the wo• have formed the basis for revolutionary tional struggles. Most politically active men's rights movement has given Black Lib• consciousness and organization within the sisters have chosen to involve rather than eration. In 1869 white feminists opposed U.S. One was support for the national lib• separate ourselves from the organizations the 14th and 15th Amendments(equal rights eration war of the Indochinese people. of our people's struggles. The great major• for Black people) because they didn't give They have been victorious in expelling the ity of TW women are concerned with the women the vote. U.S.-puppet regime. The other movement is daily life of their families and with earn• One of the clearest examples of how TW the struggle for self-determination by TW ing or hustling enough to survive. Activist women's struggles differ from the women's peoples within the U.S. Our struggles are sisters understand that in order to improve movement demands is the issue of abortion still in their infancy despite long his• the lives of TW women as women, it is es• on demand. This is put forth as an impor• tories of resistance. sential to end their oppression as TW peo• tant part of a woman's right to control we as TW women are an integral part of ple. her own body. Yet for TW women the greater our people's struggles. We are mothers, So much of the sexual and class oppres• threat to that principle is forced steril• wives, sisters, daughters, lovers and pro• sion suffered by TW women is integrated ization A forcibly sterilized woman can't viders. Women who interpret liberation as with racial oppression. For instance, not have the freedom to decide if she wants a individualism will object to these titles only are most domestic workers women, they child or not ever again. Furthermore in as being too family(male) oriented. How• are 2/3 TW and the lowest paid of any oc• this racist society, forced sterilization ever those who understand liberation in cupation. In metropolitian areas, telephone is more than a violation of an individual terms of collectivity will also understand operators are some of the worst paid, most woman's rights. It is also an attack a- that in the U.S., TW families have been abused clerical workers. They are mostly TW gainst her whole people. In Puerto Rico systematically attacked and torn apart. (ie. in New York, 957„ Black and Latino). nearly 1/3 of child-bearing age women have Their immediate supervisors are mostly been sterilized, mostly without their white women. Meanwhile the phone union knowledge or under threats by welfare bureaucrats pay more attention to the de• agencies and hospitals. At an Indian hos• sires of relatively well paid, less mili• pital in Oklahoma, 52 Native women were tant technicians(installers, lineworkers) sterilized in just one month(July '74), - mostly white and recently a few TW men. mmtmm^^^^^^^^ HEW. At Duke (iniversity County Another example is some of our men's Hospital in North Carolina(which serves chauvinism. The mistaken idea that some mainly unemployed Blacks), welfare women Black men hold of Black women "castrating" or unwed mothers who come to give birth Black manhood is a colonized mentality are threatened in vicious ways to make fostered by slavery's forced breakup of them sign "consent forms" for steriliza• families for breeding and sale, by Jim tion. Either the doctor will hold the new• Crow's forced unemployment of Black men born by the feet over the floor and threa• ten to drop her/him unless the woman signs, and by racist "entertainment" portraying or during a difficult labor, personnel the bossy Black mammy and her dumb, lazy will refuse to help the woman unless she and/or intimidated man/son. This is one signs(source: Triple Jeopardy News). In example of how ending our oppression as this context a TW woman may ask, "What TW people will go a long way toward solving does abortion on demand mean when the the problems that arise between TW men and children I have are taken from me by the women. GONT. ON NEXT PAGE courts, when they are murdered in a thou• sand ways by this racist, dog-eat-dog so• ciety?" ELLEN MOVES CAMP, AN OGLALA SIOUX, EXPLAINS THE TAKEOVER AT AN INTERVIEW INSIDE WOUNDED ******* KNEE(1973). credit : LNS

been deeply involved in Black liberation solve the contradiction between the oppres• League of Revolutionary Black Workers, Dif• for the past one hundred years. In modern sed Black colony and U.S. imperialism. ferent elements inside the League saw dif• times despite the prevailing myths, the There has not been any revolution in his• ferent priorities. Some saw the expansion the Black working class was one of the mo• tory where the main revolutionary force has of the League, first in Detroit and then tive forces of the urban rebellions. Sur• won without many allies. It should be obvi• throughout the country as the primary task. veys show that the people who were rebel• ous that as strong as the Black working This group pushed projects such as taking ling in the streets were mostly workers. class is, it alone cannot defeat the beast. over the Wayne State newspaper, producing During the 60's Black workers fought to From our above analysis, it is clear that "Finally Got the News" and organizing the gain entrance in the racist trade unions the reserve unemployed army is the main Black Workers' Congress, The other group and participated in all aspects of the ally of the Black working class in the saw the central task as expanding and deep• Black liberation struggle. Black liberation struggle, In addition ening the plant(factory) work. This group Like all people raised In the U3, the there will be strong support from some ele• wanted to strengthen and commit more re• Black working class has strong negative ments of the petty bourgeoisie. Indirectly sources to the individual Revolutionary traits of artificial consumerism(wanting the peoples of other oppressed nationali- Union Movements(DRUM, ELRUM, UPRUM, etc.) what wc don't need), individualism, ego• ties(Latino, Native American, Asian) are The struggle over what should be the cen• tism, sexism among men, etc. Unlike the proving increasingly valuable allies in our tral task shattered the organization. If reserve unemployed army, many Black work• common struggles for self-determination, anything the Black Panther Party was even ers have gained some material benefits. socialism and liberation. In general, be• more confused on what its central task was. These meager benefits(TVs, stereos, decent cause of racism and relative privilege Some chapters pushed selling the newspaper, cars, etc.) do make it harder to organize white workers tend to see themselves more some aided political prisoners, others were Blaek workers. Some definitely feel that as our enemies than our allies in common building community coalitions, others sur• they have something to lose by struggling struggle against the ruling class. vival programs and other self-defense work. for their rights. However history, includ• This confusion led to a great uneveness in ing the 60's shows that the vast majority THE CENTRAL TASK political work of the Party, In one city* s of Black workers can be won over to the We have identified both the principal subbranch the standard garb was traditional liberation struggle. With close relatives contradiction and the main strategic force African clothes while another office in the m prison or strung out on drugs, economic for resolving this contradiction. Now it is same city had banned all African clothing. conditions rapidly worsening and affirma• necessary to define the one central task Stalin sums up, (we must), "locate at any tive action hiring and training programs Chat facilitates all our other tasks, we given moment the particular link in the being thrown out the window in the name of have all seen the spectacle of organiza• chain of processes which, if grasped, will "senority"; Black workers only need to be tion and individuals that burn themselves enable us to keep hold of the whole chain convinced that we will win our liberation out by trying to do too many things, The and to prepare the conditions for achieving struggle to become the awesome revolution• vsual result is th^t no single task is done strategic success .... ary force we really are. The Black working well. This problem was one of the flaws The point here is to single out from all class is the main strategic force to re- that led to the disintegration of the CONT. ON PAGE 14 THIRD WORLD WOMEN I ON THE JOB A NUMBERS VIEW OF THIRD WORLD WORKING WOMEN TW women also occupy the bottom of the American working class. The American work• In general TW women are more likely to be working, more likely to be working ing class is not an integrated workforce. wives and mothers and more likely to be in low wage occupations. These figures are Rather it is highly stratified(like having U.S. Census Bureau/Labor Department figures. While they show a bad situation, the higher and lower classes within the working real one is worse because many TW women do not report they are working. They will elasg) . Even on the same assemblyline or in lose welfare or social security pay or get turned into immigration police. Under the same office, the kind of Jobs, the pay these conditions, they receive few or no benefits and accept lOWer pay. Another and treatment of TW people and women most problem with U.S. government figures is that they hava been counting Latino women often differs greatly from those of white as white. people and men. TW women are the lowest paid, least secure workers(even though they OVER ALL THIRD WORLD WOMEN have been working longer and in greater 49X of all 18-64 yr old women work 60% of Black women theae ages work percentagee than white women). TU women do 397. of married women work ...... 507;, of Black married women work the most dreary, least creative jobs in 35 million working women in U.S 4.5 million TW working women(not counting fields with the lowest growth and training Latino women) = 137o of total opportunities. They dominate domestic labor WHITE WORKING WOMEN (including institutional housekeeping), 37% have children under 5 yr old 51% of Black working women have children textiles(Farah, Levi-Strauss, Oneita), under 5 yr old clerical work and harvesting and processing 1968 INCOME COMPARISION food. They are also heavily employed in For every $100 the average white worklngman earned; the average Black workingman electronics and other light assembly work. earned $68,60 - the average white workingwoman earned $58,20 and the average Black TW women under these conditions are both worklngwoman earned/'$45.00/. Every gap is widening, not equalizing. In 1969 half of presently and potentially some of the most all employed Black women had incomes of $3,000 or less per year. militant, determined and conscious worker- activists. Their extreme concentration in 1969 UNEMPLOYMENT RATES(those who are actively seeking work or just lost jobs) specific industries and the worst type of White men 1,9% White Women 3,4% Things are much worse now with a higher over jobs makes for intense struggles. The Black men 3.7% Black Women/6.0%/ all unemployment rate. Again, the gaps have strikers at Farah garments shop fought for widened with time, not closed. and won union recognition after 22 months CLERICAL of struggle and organizing a nationwide 34.9% of all working women are clerical workers: typists, clerks of all kinds, recep• boycott educating the public about the tionists, office machine operators, telephone operators, tellers, cashiers, steno• triple oppression of the Chicana workers at graphers, secretaries and bookkeepers, etc. Farah, Telephone workers show other people They are 36, % white, 20,7% Black, and 30,0% Latino. how the Phone Co. rips off both workers and A little less than 1/4 of all Third World working women are clerical workers. customers. Hospital workers demand afford• able, decent health care, an end to genoci- SERVICE(fastest growing category of women workers and workers in general) dal treatment of TW people by the medical 16.6% of all working women are service workers: food service, health attendents and empire as well as decent work conditions nurses, laundry, beauty and hairdressers, housekeeping & cleaning(outside of and wages. At the Onelta Knitting Mills, homes), stewardesses, etc, Black women led an alliance of Black and A little more than 1/4 of all TW working women are service workers. White women to win a 6 month strike, over• coming the biggest problem facing activists FACTORY in the U.S. - white racism. 13,9% of all working women are in factories; textile, garments, food processing, electronics and other light assembly. 16% of Black women workers are in factory jobs. 23.7% of Latino women workers are in factory jobs. The textile/garment industry is the largest employer of Puerto Rican women in New York and Chinese women in San Francisco. Textile workers are the lowest paid indus• trial workers in the U.S. Levi-Strauss has 5 plants in New Mexico(Chicanas) and one in Georgia(Black women), Oneita is in South Carolina(85% women, 75% Black), and Farah is in El Paso, Texas(85%, women, 98% Chicano),

DOMESTICS Half of all workers in this job(and 97% of these workers are women) earn leas than $1,400 a year for working 50-52 hours each week. More than 2/3 of these workers are Third World, Half of all domestic workers live and work in the Southeast. nition, he sent around a letter to all are often much poorer than whites, they en Black workers, mostly maintenance, hospital, not legally obtain these goods. Sometimes switchboard and clerical workers, saying they can't even afford necessities. So th'y that unions were an enemy of Black people. shoplift, write bad checks, try to ripoff The union was eventually voted in and has welfare or turn to prostitution(and drugs won several racial discrimination cases a- - and get busted. The racism of police ana gainst the university. courts adds greatly to this likihood. Most Recently the struggles of TW people and of the women in jail are Third World, and women have met around Affirmative Action most are there for these "crimes". programs. One would think TW women workers, All women are also subjected to myths the worst off, would benefit both as women of glamor, becoming an actress, model or and as TW people. Management could fill two entertainer by being beautiful and develop- quotas with one bodyl But this has not been your natural talent. Yet for TW women, this the case. Upper and middle class white wo• was one of the few ways out of the ghetto/ men just entering the job market are count• barrio. The professionalism of a college Oneita strikers celebrate their victory, July 1973— ed as "discriminated minorities" and given degree cost too much, and anyway women, es• jobs, training and advancement over TW men pecially non-white women, were not supposed We can not leave out the struggles of and especially TW women. This kind of tac• to be Intellectual. Also, for both Black welfare mothers. Welfare was one of the tic on the part of management can success• and Latino people, musicians and singers rights won by the struggles of unemployed fully turn TW women and men against (white) were special. They created and passed on workers during the Great Depression of the "women's rights", unless women organizers cultures which otherwise would have been '30's. The government and business has steadfastly and actively support TW peo• repressed out of existence. They sang and turned it around to be the lowest, most de• ple's demands. played mostly for their own people and grading form of wages a woman can earn for helped them to endure another day. the Job of raising the next generation. WOMEN/SISTERS But making it big as an entertainer is Yet TW women workers can be hard to or• The third part of our oppression is as just like playing the numbers. Millions of ganise. Some reasons are standard ones that women. Again we face all the abuses white women spend money they hardly have to buy apply to all women workers in the U.S. women face as women. In recent years, since the clothes, the look, and endure the greed These were noted as early as 1888 by a wo• we've won a few victories in pride for our and filth of club owners, promoters and man worker-organiser in the Knights of La• people's own kind of beauty, we've even agents, but only a few make it. Even those bor. Leonora Barry: submlsslveness, pessi• been subjected to the false pedestal of that did keep paying. The great Lady Day mism, those with better jobs not joining sex "goddess" and ultrafeminity besides our (Billie Holiday) made a monumental contri• those with worse, and most important, the usual role as exotic port of call by ad bution to jaEZ and world art, yet saw her dream of getting a man who will make them agencies and entertainment media. We don't husband lynched and died of heroin. One of a happy housewife in the home. have to look like white women anymore to the founding Supreraes reached the height of But there are other reasons that apply worry about being impossibly perfect women. popular fame, yet died in her 30's of a specifically to Third World women. Some• We can even buy black dolls for our girl heart attack, trying to support her two times traditional culture, particularly for children and black makeup for ourselves ~ daughters and mother on welfare. Asian and Latino sisters, reinforces sub- at three times the price. Yet being oppressed as TW women and be• iBissi\7eness/non-involvement, Sometimes "na- The traditional forms of sexual oppres• ing responsible for our families means that tionalisiti"^l>ourgeoiB) is opposed to allying sion still go on too. Because of the inter• we can be organized not only around what with white women and men even to gain much play of racial and class oppression, the reforms the capitalists are willing to make needed rights and reforms on the job. Most sexual oppression of TW women takes speci• today, but also the whole nature of the aften the source of this brand of "nation- fic forms that most white women don't com• society our children will grow up in the «li«" is 1W agents in the pay of manage- monly face. All women are subjected to con• future. Some of the narrowness of the labor •ent. One blatant example involved a sumerism - buy this to make yourself and movement In limiting struggles to wages and Bl^oU man xA\a worUod as a fundraiser(low your home beautiful, that to please your working conditions, of the women's movement level enec) for a University-med school husband and more to see your children grow in focusing on women's rights and even of complex. During a struggle for union recog• Up right. Yet for TW women, because they CONT. ON NEXT PAGE the more petty bourgeois part of the na- PROBLEMS IN THE STRUGGLE prison work or running a health clinic with• tional movements in seeking merely equality Unfortunately our role in forming the in an organization. The role of men in these can be overcome through the organization underlying politics and strategy to guide groups should be consciously decided by the and struggles of TW women. We are concerned the entire thrust of these organizations organization and the people in the programs. not just with the injustices committed a- for liberation has been much smaller. The Lastly TW women activists should organ• gainst us(which are many), but also with uneven division of community practice and ize groups to protect and advance women the future of our people which lies in the political theory between men and women ser• within occupations and unions that are ex• hands of our children. iously harms the ability of both men and tremely sexist/sex typed. For instance, women to contribute towards the liberation telephone operators, clerical workers, can• of our peoples as a whole. nery workers, textile workers, rank and Sisters in a program often are not in• file women in AFL-CIO unions, etc. These volved in the political process of choosing can take the form of caucuses like the Tel• What the organization's overall goalg, why ephone Operator caucuses that have formed a particular program is chosen to awaken in many cities. people's consciousness and organize their ability to fight and how that program im• plements the overall goals. Often an organ• ization will not educate or encourage sis• ters to put together their experience with the program, and the actions a^d attitudes of people involved to constructively criti• cize the success of that program in imple• menting revolutionary theory. If sisters do not understand the political purpose of a program deeply, they won't be able to see where the program is failing. It will just become a matter of doing something for peo• ple rather than with people to develop th their understanding and abilities. Many of the Serve the People programs of the early 70's had these weaknesses. Instead of in• spiring revolutionary consciousness and ac• NATIVE FAMILY AT PARK RALLY SUPPORTING tion, many of these programs became another THE AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT (1974) ** CHILDCARE DEMO BLOCKS BRIDGE IN NEW YORK volunteer social service charity(which is (1973) credit: LNS a "women's" role) , PART II Organizational forms are only part of ORGANIZATION AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF TW WOMEN programs became another volunteer social the solution. We must change the relation• IN THE STRUGGLE service charity(which is a "women's role"). ships between people and how people think TW sisters have used many forms of or• Sisters have also tried to constructive• as well. We have to overcome two kinds of ganization to build that better world, ly criticize political line and programs. obstacles in our work. One is Internal - reach other TW women and overcome the chau• Too often the leadership of the organiza• our own self-doubts and lack of political vinism of TW men. These forms have not been tions, many times men, will fail to take education. This is not to say that women to the exclusion of national or class forms. the sisters' criticisms seriously. On the are the source of these problems. UcS„ soc- Some are women's caucuses within community other hand, many men in leadership have elty bombards us from birth with the ideo• organizations like teatro Chicano and the much criticism of sisters' practice and logy of women's guilt, submlsslveness and Young Lords Party(early seventies) to deal little understanding of the double burden inferiority. However, we are to blame if we specifically with male chauvinism and wo• of home and family and work. Not only does recognize the problems yet don't attempt men's submlsslveness and lack of study with this isolate the leadership from the real any solutions. The other obstacle is exter• in the organization. Women who have been in effect of their ideas, it also has contrib• nal - the mistaken ideas of TW men, their these groups say that care must be taken to uted to a number of sisters dropping out of lack of participation in the "dirty" work make sure this does not end up becoming a organizations and even the movement itself. of daily political duties, home and family, gripe session, dividing rather than aiding They perceive TW male revolutionaries as and the restrictions and lack of support TW men and women. people who trip off the importance of their they have for sisters trying to contribute Other groups were committees or allian• own ideas to the extent of clinging to in the struggle. ces set up by political organizations to false fantasies while putting the physical To overcome the internal obstacles, ev• organize women generally such as SNCC's work(be at the center at 9am, answer the ery organization has to set up education Black Women's Liberation Committee which phones, etc) and the blame for failure on programs to encourage the development of eventually became the TW Women's Alliance, others, mainly gullible women. This kind of sisters. They will also serve to teach Some groups put out regular information impression is not limited to the women in brothers about the contributions of TW mainly on TW women's issues. Triple Jeopar- organizations. Many ordinary TW people see women and the importance of what sisters dj^(published by the TW Women's Alliance) revolutionaries as men who make speeches, do now. Study should also include the de• and Asian Women's Journal are examples, A lead demonstrations and wave around guns - union rank and file paper called W.A.G.E. velopment and role of the family and marri• not as people deeply concerned with the age in human society. Too often study pro• (Women's Alliance to Gain Equality) is condition of their people, helping them to significantly TW and deals with some of the grams in the past have totally Ignored gain control over their own lives, consid• these institutions even though they are the neglect and even hostility white male union erate of their opinions and desires. bureaucrats and management have for TW most important ones influencing the status Uneven division of theory and practice of women in different kinds of societies. working women. There are also education, can be found in any organization, small, childcare and health care groups that are Study of course is not enough. The only way large, men and women and all women's organ• all or mostly TW women. Sometimes these to overcome self-doubts is to participate izations. There are TW women who exhibit groups are consciously all women such as in leadership, forming theories and making all the negative characteristics of arro• the San Francisco Asian Women's Health Col• constructive criticism/self-criticism, and gant leadership. However, this article fo• lective was. This group dealt with the mis• encouraging other sisters to do the same. cuses on what is usually the case, U.S. information given to women about their bo• Part of changing the way men act and society assigns positions of superiority dies and the specific kind of oppression TW think is encouraging them to help women and inferiority to men and women. That women face from hospitals, doctors and pub• with their family and housework. This is lic health. Most often, however, this kind ideology affects the work of TW organiza• important in changing the way the next gen• of group has been unconsciously mostly wo• tions for liberation negatively and must be eration of men ajid women act towards each men because women in the general society consciously corrected, other and in freeing women to be more ac• have the main responsibility for educating SOLUTIONS IN THE STRUGGLE tive politically. A woman loaded with re• and caring for younger children. The Black TW women must continue to organize and sponsibility for children, housework and a Panther school(late CD's til '71) was main• struggle on all fronts despite the problems. regular job is less willing to become poli• ly the responsibility of Black women cadre, We want to end all forms of oppression. We tically active. This doesn't mean men and must work within TW national movements women must do half the work each. It de• gome of whom had been school teachers. But united with TW men. Most of our people have pends on the household. But often if men on the other hand, political education of been or are involved in some way in the become aware of how their personal habits the Party cadre was mainly in the hands of struggle to end national oppression - rac• and schedule affect the menial work women male cadre. This division reflected the ial discrimination, police and vigilante do, they can change things dramatically spilt between "lower"(women school teachers) attacks, suppression of our culture and with a relatively small effort(errands, and "higher"(male college professors) edu• history, etc. National oppression intensi• putting things away properly, etc,). This cation that exists in US society. fies and changes the form of our oppression awareness also applies to the detail work Lastly, welfare and certain union and as women and workers. of an organization. rank and file groups are overwhelmingly Yet at the same time, TW women activists Men in leadership have a special respon• women and TW - the welfare Rights organi• should focus on organizing women in areas sibility to listen and implement the ideas zation, the calirornla Homemakers' Associ- that especially concern women in this soci• and criticisms of women, in the organiza• tion(domestic workers) and garment workers' ety - welfare, childcare, healthcare for tion, in the programs and in the community. locals. The struggles of these groups have women, etc. These groups, while having a They serve as examples to all men(and wo• been in the vanguard of working class and while having a specific function, should men) in the organization, programs and com• social welfare struggles because of the be organised within the over-all structure munity. Men in leadership should also par• oppression, consistent militancy and con• of at least a community group and if possi- ticipate in the physical work of the organ• nection to community/national struggles ble^ a national liberation organizatlon(if isation and at least visit its programs of TW poor and working women. none exists then TW women activists have and be acquainted with the people involved. Third World women have also been the just as much responsibility to build as To sum up, TW women activists place backbone of the detail, daily comrnvnity men). That way neither becomes narrowly fo• first importance on the struggles of their and propaganda work of TW national organl- cused on just reforming the daily existence people as a whole but must be vigilant a- aatiWhite supremacy is the major division against such contradictions as white women The women who wrote the majority of articles in the working class. Its material basis struggling for birth control with Third World in this paper came together to struggle out a is a system of relative privileges. This and poor white women suffering forced steril• needs to be a major priority in our work. position and to clarify differsneee on the Ub- ization. Discussions on the family pointed 4. Male supremacy also dividee the working oration of won-en and our strategic importance out the historical differences between white class. Its material basis is relative in the revolutionary process. We live and and TW fanrllies. Our study of the present privilege of men (male supremacy)..Imper• work in the San Francisco Bay Area. We ialism oppresses women both through the women's movement pointed out weaknessea have been or are involved in child care work ripoff of our unpaid labor in reproducing in our understanding of national oppression. (some as mothers), clerical work, education, and maintaining labor power and through different areas of the women's movenrient, the our super-exploitation at the workplace. We came to the beginning of a class analysis anti-imperialist movement, the civil rights A Strong movement for women's liberation that helped clarify the strategic im.portance is an essential part of the revolutionary movement and the labor movement. We came of white working class women: in that we are movement in this country. to the group with different levels of political women, we are oppressed by imperialism. 5. The oppression of lesbian women is development and with different backgrounds. based on the need to contain women in a In that we are white, we benefit from imper• All the women in the group were white, and traditional role to maintain male supre• ialism relative to and because of the oppression therefore saw our audience primiarily as other macy. The struggle against the oppression of TW people. Which is the rising aspect of white women. There was not unity on all the of lesbians is therefore integral to the that benefit/oppression contradiction? Our politics represented in STT; we were unified struggle for women's liberation. conclusion was that (a) the primary contra• by the need to develop a scientific analysis of 6. White working class women are the weak diction is between oppressed and oppressor link in the chains of privilege which women's oppression and liberation. .After nations and this contradiction leads to inequal• have bound white workers to the bourgeoisie three months, we developed principles of unity ity in the working class (b) the leading force in this country. Because of our economic as points we wasted Xq make to the readers, and social position, we can lead advanced in class struggle is the liberation movements nx>re than as criteria to judge the political and middle white workers to be on the side of TW people (c) the white women's movement Un»' ' r^'-'sented in all the articles. We are of anti-imperialism. must fall on the side of the oppressed, rather >tr. aI about that process. Had we de• 7. A white working class women's movement than the oppressor peoples—they are our true fined Lbe political unity of the group in the has the potential to lead the struggle allies. Further, we concluded that white women against white supremacy and male supre• twginning, political struggle during our three must take a firm stand against white supremacy macy. While the struggle against male moatfas of study would have been sharpened. in order to forge that alliance and as a partial supremacy can unite women of all classes As it was, differences didn't surface until the against imperialism, the women's movement basis for struggling against male supremacy. end and we didn't have the time to clarify must root itself in the working class to those differences. However, wom.en in the build strength and to make possible the Male supremacy and white supremacy have group who were involved in common political goal of the dictatorship of the proletar• some of the same ideological foundation: the work outside the group found that the political iat. right of the strong to control and exploit the 8. We need a communist party, and we need struggle that did^ take place was helpful la weak. We have a basis for struggling against mass organizations. We disagree on how clarifying their differences. white supremacy as well as male supremacy. these needs interact; on which is primary in this period. We are on the bottom of the white working PRINCIPLES OF UNITY class; of all the white working people we have 1. The enemy is imperialism; monopoly WHY THESE PRINCIPLES? the least to lose. Our struggle against male capitalism. The primary contradiction is supremacy can lead us to an understanding of between oppressor and oppressed nations. In studying the history of the women's move• imperialism. We see that our interests in 2. Under Imperialism, the leading force in ment in the U.S., we saw that the turning class struggle is Third World peoples point toward economism came with the racist continued on p 14 struggle inside and outside the US.

WOMEN IN ar.d poor people go to prison for when they control of outsiders coming in. As a re• have no or little resources. Approximately sult, it is next to impossible for outsi• PRISON 19% of the women in CIW are in for "homi• ders to get in, and scheduled events have cide". Of this 19%, most women are con• been cancelled. victed of second degree murder and kill There are other actions being taken someone in their family, often a husband against the women which need immediate or lover, sometimes a child. These women protest. There has recently been insti• tend to be older than the average prisoner tuted an Alternative Program Unit (APU) and generally they used a household item as which, according to the administration, a weapon. They often report their motive is supposed to "provide more structure, to be a spontaneous response to long periods control, and special program attention for of abuse. those residents, who have difficulty ad• Ethnic categories (as determined by the justing to the general r\iles, guidelines, State) are broken down as follows: "White"- and expectations of CIW. The program will 56.7^, "White, Mexican Descent" — 9.6%, be designed primarily to accomodate resi• On an average daily basis there are 1.5 "Black" ~ 30.9^, and "Other" — 2.8%. dents who represent a threat to the safety million people locked up in the United The liberal explanation given for the high security, and good order of the Institu• States. This does not take into accotint percentage of ethnic minorities in prison tion, if left in the general pop\ilation." millions more in mental "hospitals," nor is the acknowledgement that they are forced This program plans to identify women con• those on probation or parole. into the lower sectors of the economy. sidered to be disruptive (i.e. , overtly There are literally thousands of women However, there is no evidence that ethnic or covertly disciplinary problems, refus• in jails and prisons in the State Of Cal• minorities commit a greater number of crimes ing to report for work assignment, escape ifornia under the aegis of the California than poor whites. The evidence shows, rath• risks, negative influence on cottage res• Department of Corrections. The Calirornla er, that like U.S. society in general, the idents , etc.) Institute for Women (CIW) holds approxim• Criminal Justice System conoistently dis• ately 750 women; another 200 are at Cali• criminates against ethnic minorities. fornia Rehabilitation Center (CRC), and Third World people are more likely to be Sybil Brand, the Los Angeles County Jail, stopped on the streets, axrested, ar• will hold as many as 1,000 women at a time. raigned, prosecuted, found guilty, convic• ThCBC women share many thinss in common: ted and sentenced to an institution. poverty, se.!tual eind raciaa oppression, and The plans for implementation are: "The Inside the Walls resident behavior is to be evaluated by the What happens in CIW has not gone unnot• now the nain of separation from their fam• Cottage Team. If the Team decides that the ilies and communities., iced and the women incareerated tnere have resident in question needs to be housed in The Women's Prison been supported. At Christmas time there APU, the Correctional Counselor I, is to CIW Is located in Frontera, about 50 •was a spontaneous riot in which 300 women get approval from the Program Administrator, miles east of Los Angeles. It iS sur• participated. They set fires and broke and move the resident to APU immediately." rounded by cattle ranches, flat land,and windows. There are reports that the reas• The repressive intentions of this unit hot and smoggy weather. CIW is the liberal on for the outbreak was that their visits speaJc for themselves. dream of a "rehabilitative" institution. with families had been cancelled. Firteen The reality of life in APU is that half Th« cells are called cottages, inmates of those women were put into solitary lock of the time women do not receive their meals are Called residents or "girls", and guards up and accused of being the leaders of that (the other half of that time the meals are are called correctional officers._ One will riot, even though all of the women agreed cold); male staff show absolutely no repect find a swimming pool, guards wl inmates that there were no real leaders. This is for the women inmates; women are even har• drcBBsd in street clothes, and small red a typical move by prison authorities to by• assed by the staff when taking shower; brick tuildings which are supposed to look pass the real issues, and divide the prison visitation is limited to one hour per week, llKe and arc called rseidenoe halls. po-Duiation by putting the blame on a few. and family and friends are harassed during giu ie -the largest state prison for Lately there have been a number of re- the process; the women can only shop once women in the nation. Approximately 2tf, stric-tions placed On QUtslde groups gaining a week; they are not allowed any phone are imprisoned for "narcotics". AbOUt IT^ access to the prison ~ these groups had calls; they are allowed three sets of are imprisoned under tUS cateKory of "For• pOSitiTC and conotmctive communication clothing, three pairs Of pants and only gery and oheoks". This includes the act with the inmates. During the administration soft-soled shoes, and there are no rel• or writing a checli on insufficient funds in of Virginia Carlson the prison was Opened up igious services. your own account. This is an act that to more outside groups, but since she left people with money pay a bank charge for two years ago, there has been much tighter THESE WOMEN NEED OUR SUPPORT WHO W cont. from pg8 We have enormous tasks ahead of us—we must community Issues (health, child care, educar- contend for political leadership of a working tion, housing, all traditionally "women's class women's movement, v^ich, In turn, Is Issues") and Affirmative Action on the job are capable of giving leadership to the strugjgles allied with the interests of TW people. of all white workers. However history shows that the existence of an objective basis for unity doesn't necessarily This issue of the paper represents our efforts lead to an anti-racist white women's movement. to help us move in that direction. Three months On the contrary, the white women's movement is a very short time to struggle out a line has, for the most part, maintained the position theoretically, much less test it in practtce^. of whit© women over TW people while struggling Toward the end of our diaousslons It became against male supremacy. clear that there were some strong differences In the group. Since our purpose as a group That Is partly because of the white blind spot was to put out a paper and not to build an on• that comes from the relative privilege of white going organization, we felt that it was correct pepple. It la partly because of a strraig petit that we let the differences stand and try to rep• bourgeois tendency in the women's movement. resent both sides in the paper. This is done in the two articles on strategy and part-building. The women's movement has the potential to We hope that we have, at least, raised some of Ijecome a working class women's movement. the correct questions and have, at best, Re^^olutionary women are locating themselves begun to answer them. We also hope that in all different areas of working class life. our sisters will take this effort as seriously as Working class women who used to view "women's we did and will respond to it and criticize the lib" as a threat are organizing women's caucuses articles in the paper. We eagerly look forward in labor unions and forming women's organiza• to that response, both to help us come to a correct tions in their communities. Much of this activity political analysis and to build ties between our• has been around health care and child care. selves and other women. pg 1

"The revolutionary war is a war of the masses. It can only be waged by mobilizing the masses and relying on them." Mao Tsetung

This insert is a continuation of THE CENTRAL TASK: The Black Vanguard Party: PRINC IPLES A Program for Liberation OF UNITY (Part 2)

sale at higher prices). Our labor is super We must have ideological clarity and exploited, and contradictions between the unity if we are to build a revolutionary ruling class and white workers are exported Black vanguard party. Consequently we are to our community. The economic conditions presenting a short outline of the ideolog• of all non-ruling class people is worsening, ical principles necessary for unity. We but the relative gap between white and present this short outline in the spirit of black'VOrkers is widening. In addition unity-criticism-unity and invi-te comrades Black people have often struggled for sec- to study, discuss and criticize them so cession in the South both during the Civil that we all can move our ideological under- War and Reconstruction. These efforts were Standing forward. smashed by the imperialist armed forces(the Union army). Today self-determination is 1. Self-determination for Black and all still fought for by the Black masses. In colonized peoples. the South there have been successful ef• forts to seize control of local communities Black people within the U„S. were brought and regions. The Republic of New Africa has over as slaves and have been laboring for been holding successful plebescites in Mis- U.S. imperialism ever since. The relations sisippi. Efforts for community control in between the state and our people are the the North are a different form of the same same as those between an imperilaist and a struggle. Consequently we do not only be• colony. We provide an extra market for the lieve that Black people are a colonized imperialists to dump surplus junk material people, but that in the South we form a (food that is too rotten to sell in white nation. Consequently we believe that our stores is shipped to our communities for struggle is an anti-colonial struggle with pg2

^he right to self-determination and secces- ginated in Europe should not hinder us in sion. Our national homeland is in the South, the least, and we should be grateful that and Black people outside the South have the it did not hinder such Third World comrades right to participate in the development of as Mao, Ho, Kim II Sung, Che, Nkrumah, Ca- the national homeland or Struggle for region• bral and George Jackson. We must embrace al and local autonomy where they are. The this tool, study it conscientiously and issue of seccession of the national home• apply it creatively to own own unique land is an issue for the Black masses to de• struggle. The two fundamental tenets of cide. Malcola pointed out that land is key this science are that in analyzing any sit• •ay MtiofMl struggle. In addition, both uation, we must start from the concrete rto RlcAns And Native Americans have the analysis of concrete conditions and that it right of self-determination and seccession. is right to rebel. Both tenets fit well in• We have not studied the struggle of other to the philosophical orientation of the colonized j^eoples enough to take a position. Black Liberation Struggle.

2. Our struggle is also a struggle for soci• 4. The Masses are decisive in Revolution: alism. Build the Black United Front,

The majority of Black people work for a History has repeatedly proven that the living or are trying to. All of our people power of the masses is the force that suffer from the effects of racism. Social• breaks the back of the ruling class and im• ism is the only system that puts political perialists. Liberation has never been won power and the wealth of the land into the by small groups of conspirators isolated hands of working people. Socialism is also from the masses. Further, our own struggle the only system that eliminates the materi• and the struggles of our comrades through• al base(the power to affect ys) o£ racism. out the world show that wisdom comes from As Malcolm said you can't have capitalism the masses of people. Activists have been without racism, and every successful nation• forced to change because the people clearly al liberation struggle has instituted some realized that civil rights struggle was too form of socialism for its people. Since limited. Every successful revolutionary most of our people are workers and not pea• party has had to learn the art of learning sants , we must struggle directly for soci• from the people. Conversely it has been alism within whatever context we choose. proven that unless the masses are involved Since In any class society there is the in the day to day activity of revolution, dictatorship of one class over another(we liberation will not be gained. In the U5SR live under the dictatorahip of the bour• the soviets(councils of workers, soldiers geoisie), the correct form of socialism is and peasants) were the vehicle that involv• the dictatorship of the proletariat. In ed the masses in revolution. However in this form working and poor people hold pow• every national liberation struggle in Afri• er in their hands and the former oppressor ca and Asia, the national united front in• is prvented by this power from ever return• volved all segments of the masses struggl• ing to power. ing to gain liberation and became the basis of the government of the people. At the 3. Scientific Socialism is our Ideology. mass level our primary task must be to builu the national united front. Every national liberation struggle throughout the world has successfully ap• 5. The five elements of Liberation, plied revolutionary science to its own par• ticular struggle. The tool of dialectical Mao Tse-tung states that the three ele• and historical materialism is one of the ments necessary to a successful liberation fiercest weapons in the revolutionary's ar• struggle are a people's army and a national senal. It is the only analytical tool ex• united front, both led by a revolutionary pressly designed inthe interest of the op• vanguard party. This is no less true within pressed masses. The fact that it was ori• the U.S. History and every successful re• volutionary leader emphasize that the op• pressor class can only be overthrown by pg3

force. George Jackson also shows us that if work: military, diplomacy, cadre and party revolutionaries are not prepared with some building and leadership. Given that Black level of counter-violence at every stage, women constitute over half of our popula• they will be eliminated. Finally, Mao says tion it is key that comrades grasp this that history proves armed struggle to be point. Women constitute over half our re• the highest stage of political struggle sources. Black women workers are the most during a liberation struggle. Not to adopt oppressed workers within the U.S., and our this stance is to abandon the people to the #omen must suffer the added abuses of rape, wolves of imperialism. Violence is common forced sterilization and the welfare system. in everyday Black life. We must convince Since the 50's the main genocidal attacks the masses of Black people that they can on our people have come through our women. protect their own lives and their programs. We must fight both against the vicious at• Black people will not support a liberation tacks by the imperialist on our women and struggle unless they believe it will be the sexist attitudes that Black men have successful. If we cannot defend ourselves learned within this society. In Mozambique and meet and attack the violence of the and Guine-Bissau, FRELIMO and the PAIGC, reactionaries, Black people know we will encouraged the formation of women's organ• not be successful. We must realize that our izations within the national liberation liberation struggle is in its infancy. The front to struggle for the rights of women key need at this point in time is organized and correct ideas among men. We should en• leadership. Without this our struggle will courage the same organizations in our front. remain isolated, confused and spontaneous. Josina Machel of FRELIMO, Madame Binh of Our second priority is building the nation• Vietnam, Chiang of China, and Harriet Tub• al united front. Only by involving the mas• man all prove the correctness of Kwame ses in the day to day struggle for libera• Nkrumah's statement, "The degree of a coun• tion and learning the need for revolution try's revolutionary awareness may be mea• through their own experience can we lay the sured by the political maturity of its wo• groundwork for success. Our third priority men." is building the military arm of our strug• 7. internationalism within the U.5. and or- gle. When we outline our priorities we, ganizatinnal forms. unlike many others, do not mean that we We recognize that the destruction of US should neglect any of the above areas of imperialism will only be accomplished by a work. All three elements are sciences that coordinated effort of all oppressed people have to be studied, refined and implemented. within the US. Ideally one organi2ation(a Otherwise we are in danger of either isola• communist party) could lead this struggle. ting ourselves from the masses or of not However this flies in the face of material being prepared for violent attacks from conditions, history and the present dynam• reactionaries. Also we do not make artifi• ics of struggle. Concretely white revolu• cial distinctions from legal and illegal tionaries and their organizations are still work. Armed preparation is not "illegal" riddled by opportunism, lack of discipline while party work is "legal". The experi• a nd racism, On organizational level, white ence of the Panthers should teach us that revolutionaries have proved unable to over• come their shortcomings. This is shown in all liberation is illegal. There are legal practice by the increasingly fascist and forms of work that can be accomplished in racist movement of white workers. This fur• each of the three areas. Undoubtedly some• ther move to the right is confirmed by our one could find illegal work to accomplish in own experience in the workplace, Boston, the same three areas. The key word is clan• and the strong support for Jackson, Carter destine. If we are to be successful our and Wallace, The material basis for a revo• apparatus and organizations cannot be com• lutionary communist party does not present• pletely open for hostile scrutiny and must ly exist. Further, history has shown us that be prepared to defend them from attack, every time Black people have liquidated our 6, Women hold up half the sky. own organizational structures, our national Every sucessful liberation struggle has rights have been abandoned. Ho Chi Minh fully incorporated women in all phases of once said that the Vietnamese could not pg4

wait for the French to get it together be• ism is the main danger in the world today fore they initiated their liberation strug• because it has not been thoroughly exposed gle. Thisis in essence our attitude. The and is the hungry, stronger imperialist demands of Black Liberation confront us power. Malcolm X recognized in the early now. We cannot wait to move our struggle 60's that capitalism had been restored forward. On the other hand we see the need within the Soviet Union. In addition the to cooperate with other revolutionaries, USSR has had a hi.'-tory of suberting liber• particularly Third World comrades, where it ation movements within Africa(check out furthers the tactical and strategic goals Zimbabwe and the Middle East) and aiding ot national liberation, socialism and the reactionary forces on the continent. Racism destruction of US imperialism. We recognize and sexism are rampant inside the USSR. both our responsibility to provide leader• The contention between the Soviet Union and ship by example and through struggle to the U.S. for control of the world has led to a entire revolutionary movement and for close very dangerous arms race that nas heighten• (where possible) organizational coordina• ed the danger of world war. The Chinese tion. In this period we see the building of slogan of "War will give rise to revolu• strong socialist organizations among the tion, or revolution will prevent war, " is different peoples as being primary. If t fundamentally correct. Revolution is still trust can be built up, we should be able to the main treand in the world today. When build councils of coordination, a domestic analyzing the world situation we must re• Comintern(where nationalist parties would main dialectical and realize that unlike meet on equal terras and make decisions in many we cannot have uncritical support for a democratic centralist way concerning any country, party or individual. This is strategy,) and possibly eventually a com• not the revolutionary method of analysis munist party. However we would note that of thought as taught by Mao and other com• our struggle is very possibly one for sec• rades. For example China has been a great cession, that white workers have not aban• rear base for revolution after revolution doned either racism or their fascist tenden- in Africa and Asia(Vietnam, Mozambique, ciQs. Consequently in the first two steps, Tanzania, etc.), but its policy for what• Black people vrould(must) retain their or- ever reasons is incorrect concerning Angola ganl2atlonal independence. We may never and Chile. Recognizing that South Africa is reach the level of a communist party. Two the main obstacle to revolution in Africa, of the main keys are the success that white not the USSR in this specific instance, we revolutionaries h^ve in organising the must as Black revolutionaries support the white masses for revolution and the atti• People's Republic of Angola while at the tude of Blacte, Native Americans and Latinos same time calling for superpowers out of have toward secession, Angola, On the international level we must 8. Revolution is the main trend in the put forward the BLA's proposal of building world today. principled support for the Black liberation WG recognize that the Black liberation movement. This country has often provided struggle is an intergral part of the world a refuge for political fugitives from the struggle against imperialism. We stand in liberation struggles of Africa. It is well firm solidarity with the peoples of the past time that we seriously dealt with the world in our joint struggles for freedom. progressive governments of Africa and se• Comrades throughout Africa, Vietnam, China cured for us a secure political haven. Ev• and Chile give us inspiration and renewed ery other liberation struggle has secured determination for us to wage our struggle this right. This issue should be key when within the belly of the beast. We recognize dealing with the progressive governments of two forms of imperialism; the imperialism the world. As with all liberation struggles of the U.S. and its lackeys, and the social we should rely on our own efforts for free• imperialism of the USSR. We believe that dom, but the international situation and U.S. imperialism is the main enemy in the international support for the Black libera• world todayj it oppresses more people than tion struggle are key issues that should be any other form. But soviet social imperial• studied carefully and put into practice. HISTORY OF THE EARL WOMEN S MOVEMENT Tbe Women's Movement and Labor The early women's movement was orga• white women to insure a white American In 1920, women finally von the vote. nized around a broad spectrum of demands, born majority at the polls. It was, in But by that time, the campaign had be• most of which reflected the middle-class part, that white supremacist attitude come so narrow that tne victory all tut bias of the movement, and the moralistic that caused the Equal Rights Assoc. to ended the women's movement. To win the approach of the women involved. The fall apart in 1869, ending the alliance vote, leaders pushed for the lowest poli• Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 passed between the abolition and women's movemts. tical unity that white, middle-class 11 rQsolutions including religious free• 14th and 15th Amendments women could unite around (meaning unity dom, equality in marriage, the right to During the Civil War» female reformers that did not challenge their priviledged testify, to own property, equal education, threw their energies into the war effort, position. ) Nat\irally, their class inter• equal guardianship of children, and the bringing a halt to the women's movement. ests Qonflioted with those of the thous• iright to vote. For thQ thousands of im• The National Women's Loyal League, inclu• ands of poor, largely immigrant women who migrant women wh« entered the work forcG ding Stanton,Anthony and Lucy Stone in the made up the bulk of the female work force. in the early 1840's, these demands meant leadership, collected 400,000 signatures At the turn of the century one of the little. They had no property or leisure in Qupport of the 13th (abolition) amendment argiunsnts the 9uffragists used most ef• to attend school. Even the resolutiong and passed a resolution calling for equal fectively was that women's primary duty that dealt with labor; equal pay for rights for women and Blacks. The femin• was to the heeulth of her children and equal work, the right to any job they ists, having struggled hard for emancipation to the cleanliness of her home. To do were qualified for, and the right to expected to be rewarded for their labor by her duty effectively, she needed the control her own wages applied primarily being included in suffrage legislation. vote. The fulfillment of her responsa- to educated, professional women. But the 14th Amendment, proposed in 1866, bilities depended on sanitation policies, In spite of the class bias of the early was explicitly limited to male citizens. housing standards, etc. Thus they count• women's movement, it was tremendously im• ered the allegation that suffragists portant. Allied with the abolition move• sought to destroy the home. ment, it challenged the bourgeois ideas That women's duty was to cleanliness that were the foundation of society. of the home was the same argument employ• Women were, in many ways, the property ers used to oppress women workers. Women of their husbands, and did not have did not belong in the workforce- there• any of the rights that the Seneca Falls for It -was alright to pay them $3-50 a Convention called for. week for 12 hours of work a day. Where After 1848 many feminists were active the early women's movement had at least in abolition. Among abolitionists they challenged the sexist ideas that led to found male support for their cause. At the oppression of women workers, suffra• the same time, leaders of the abolition gists at the turn of the century supported movement supported women's rights because those ideas. the women brought energy and strength In 1903, the Women's Trade Union League to their cause. (WTUL) was established by a coalition of Black Abolitionists and Women's Rights settlement house workers and labor offic• Some of the strongest advocates of women's ials "to assist in the organization of rights were Black abolitionists. Leaders Women workers into trade unions." In such as Frederick Douglas, souiourner Truth Its early years, the WTUL honestly attemp• and Harriet Tubman pushed Black Societies to ted to follow the lead of working women. pass resolutions supporting women's rights. But the 'JTUL was not exempt from the Most active Black women were involved in forces around them. The League was split abolition rather than women's rights strug• ways in From a poster about the which women between the reformers who sought legis• gles because abolition meant survival, aided the Union army. lation and encouraged rich sympathizers to whereas women's rights meant political join the League, and the mionlsts, who equality. Black women who supported those felt emphasis shoiild be placed on organ• rights did so primarily because l)they izing the workers into unions. The un• wanted the right to attend and speak at Feminists were horrified by the blatant ionists saw that the influence of the anti-slavery meetings and 2)they desired ignoring of their rights. Black Abolition• their full share of political rights. ists and their allies urged the feminists socialites (the wives of the bosses) in It was a Black women, Maria W. Stewart to support the Amendment because it had the the League would compromise them politi• who was the first native born American possibility of ending the intense repres• cally. woman to speak in public. She did so on sion directed against former slaves. Re• History proved them to be correct. The the issue of slavery. In 1851, Soujourner publican Party beaurocrats urged the fern— reformists position won out; the League Truth saved a women's rights convention inists to support it to keep the party to• turned increasingly toward legislative from being taken over by antagonistic male gether. There were signs of a split in reform and the spiritual uplifting of fac• hecklers. The middle-class white women, the north and the Party wanted the southern tory workers. Their membership fell and timid about speaking in public, were unable Black vote to insure their majority in by 1930 WTUL's budget was less than $10,000 to answer the arguments that they were un• Congress. They saw no advantage for them• and they had no full time organizers. fit for equal rights. Soujourner got up selves in white women getting the vote. and attacked the charge that women were weak To them, women's suffrage was merely a con• Conclusion with her famous speech. "Look at my arm! troversial, radical issue which angered From the beginning of the women's move• I have ploughed and planted and gathered their conservative male members. ment, the majority of female social ref• into barns, and no man could lead me - and The 15th Amendment outlawed racial dis• ormers were white, middle-class women. ain't I a woman?" crimination at the polls. Stanton summed Their position gave them the leisure to Originally, some white women at that up their position against that amendment: work for change, it also blinded them to convention had asked the president not to "...are you willing to have the colored man the true forces of change. They under• allow her to speak because they didn't enfranchised before the women; I say no; stood that they were oppressed but didn't want their cause to be associated with I would not trust him with my rights; de• connect that oppression with the class "abolition and niggers". The racist atti• graded, oppressed himself; he would be more structure of their society or understand tude of those women was typical of non- despotic with the governing power than ever that their liberation lay in its destruc• abolitionist women in the movement. Even our Saxon rulers are...If women are still tion. Rather, they fought for the right among abolitionist women there was little to be represented by men, then I say let to take part in the existing society. Hav• understanding of or attention paid to only the highest type of manhood stand at ing no clear idea of who their enemy was, slave women,as women. There was a tendency the helm of State." . they had no concept of who their allies to eguate the status of white women with Narrowing the Vision were. that of a slave. There were white women who understood In studying the errors of the early wo• The lack of unilerstanaing of the dif• the amendments represented survival to men's movement we must keep in mind that ference in their oppression showed the Blacks, especially in the South, and they they come from the material forces that inability of the white abolition and wo• campaigned for them. Among them was Lucy gave rise to it, not from character flaws ^ men's movements to deal with racist ide• Stone, one of the fQiandcrs of the AWBA. in the women involved. They went as far ology. While the two movements supported The fact that the women who formed the as that period of history allowed. They each other for almost a quarter of a cen• AW5A had correctly allied themselves with supported abolition because it was morally tury, the alliance was based almost totally former slaves did not mean they were poli• right, and later, because the abolition• on mutual aid. They had no sense of strug• tically more conscious. On the contrary, ists supported them. But there is no gling against a common enemy. When ex• many were just as racist as the NWSA wo• evidence that the white suffragists saw pediency called for it, they did not hesi• men but were easily "bullied" into putting any real connection between the liberation tate to sell each other out. their cause second because they did not of Black people and themselves. After the Civil War, feminism split into believe women should be treated equally Their class bias kept them from seeing two campsj the Mierican Women's Suffrage in anything tut the vote. They supported the strengths that the thousands of working AoDooiation (NWSf^) which was oonoernod suffrage in lars"? part because Qf wcmen's •women could have brought to the women's almost entirely with the ballot, and the moral uprightness and the need for reform. movement. Their priviledged position Nat'l woman's suffrage ASSOC. (NWSA) which While the NWSA emphasized the inalien• depended on the oppression of working -wo• worked for far-reaching institutional able rights of females as individuals, men as well as slaves so they made little Changes for women. the Struggle for women's suffrage, in op• attempt to include working women in their The split occurred over the question of position to the ikth and 15th amendments, demands. When they did support workers' support for the 14th and 15th amendments. nad rorcea tne radical feminists to soften struggles it was usually to teach the ig• The bulk of the women who joined NWSA, which tnelr position on social and sexual free• norant masses their "superior" moral values. was led by Susan Anthony and Eliz. Stanton, dom in order to gain allies. The political Today's women's movement, coming out of camDaignea against the amendmente beoauee Climate, in ure-civll war days favorable present material conditions has the basis they aid not include women. In fact, the to their cause, turned increasingly hos• to (-but no guarantee that it will) over• 14th amendment introduced the word "male" tile. Faced with this hostility, the NWSA come the racism and class bias of our early into the conotitution. narr'?v«d its foous more and more to suf• sisters. While imderstanding the different The campaign those women waged against frage and in 1890 merged with AWSA, there conditions we are working in, vc can still the amendments became increasingly white being little difference between the two draw lessons from them ana struggle against supremacist, arguing for the vote for by that point. making the same deadly errors. SEIZE THE TIME P 10 "important" things happen. Society doesn't Rallied to defend their homes and chil• value her unwaged labor. She is invisible dren against "niggers", white working class WOMEN: the family & and forced to live inside herself. families nave stoned Black children in an effort to keep them out of white (working Capitalism and the Family revolution class) schools. Third World people have The family under capitalism is an in• been forcibly kept out of white (working For many women the following descriptions dividual economic unit whose functions per• class) neighborhoods to protect whites' of family life are accurate. formed by women have included maintenence, homes (private property.) reproduction, and sooialization of future A woman with two children struggles daily Women's Unwaged Labor to attend job training while maintaining her generations, of the workforce. It has household. Most likely her day starts also seryed as a buffer against the out• Another aspect of the monogamous struct• somewhere around 6-6:30am. She gets out of side pressures of society. ure of the family has been the priviledges bed, wakes the children and gets them, The family has also been an institution that men have enjoyed at the expense of women's oppression. T5«aditianally, "all dressed, then she gets ready. If breairast to oontrol the sexuality or Individuals. One is provided elsewhere then this task is of the primary fSmtions of the family is housework is women's work", a woman's place foregone. Changes of clothes, bottles, reproduction, thus male/female relationships is in the home taking care of the children books, and chldren, are all gathered up and have been the backbone of the family (the average father spends 37.7 minutes hustled to the car. structure. By institutionalizing this dally with his children). The man is the boss, if he says jump, you jump. His wife Everyone in the family may have separate structure for both the family and personal is the object that he orders around at will destinations. By midmorning each family relationships, gay women and men have been often unconsciously and often in response member has been into their own day for socially exculed from having children, being to frustrations built-up on the job. several hours. parents, and f;rom the model family unit. As imperialism has developed several 5-6pm finds the family coming back to• changes have ocurred in the family. First gether. Dinner, baths, household chores, the family as an economic unit performs tension and bedtime make short work of a most of the functions that it did Linder family's time spent together. This takesi capitalism, but it has become under place five days a week. Some days imperialism a comsumption unit as well. are better; others worse. The weekend brings hope of a break in Rather than producing our own goods, we are forced to buy these things. This consu• the chaos, yet is often filled with catch• mption role of the family is integral to ing up on household duties and the children. imperialist economy. Yet the chain food After a hard week a mother is lucky if she Restaurants and 25 different types of has some spare time to relax. anti-perspirants that exist right along family The way the is supposed to be side of people who don't have enough and the reality of the family are actually food, all testify to the waste and chaos different. We are constantly con• quite of imperialism. fronted through the mass media with a picture of the ideal family. It is a The family as a primary center of soc• nice white family with a beautiful sub• ialization is changing also. Public educa• tion, day care centers, and television are urban house and a petit bourgeois mor• all exerting an Influence over the develop• ality Which serves to justify these ideals, and tries to convince us that ment of our children's values at earlier eventually things always work out. and earlier ages. Although the family still exerts quite a bit of control over children, Another picture might look' something like it doesn't compare with 30 years ago. this: a woman with three children, her only The family unit is finding it harder and skills are housekeeping and child raising. harder to act as a buffer against outside She faces the same chores, the same problems Those that argue that the family as it pressiires. As the hard times get worse and the same four walls, the chilren, and poss• presently exists is a "great proletarian as more women question their lives, the ibly a man day in and day out. institution" have only to look at Boston family Is affected.Relationships become in• She wonders alot why she feels depressed, for examples of the reactionary character tolerable and divorce rates soar. Families unmotivated and tired. More asd more she the family can exhibit in the white work• with' two parents are not the rule anymore, realizes that she's in a tiny box - isol- ing class. in some communities they are the exception. ifi frcT: the "real" world where the continued on pa 11 analysis on ^ Homosexual relationships are a rebutt• we know we have to nourish the people's cult• the Lesbian Movement al to the historically oppressive ideology of ure. Women's culture is important to women' sexuality being based on reproduction and the s power and lesbians are forefront in the stru• institutionalization of marriage. Lesbianism ggle to create a new understanding of women We feel it is our responsibility to under• challenges the "natural" sexual division of to challenge on every level the behaviour and stand all aspects of the women's movement so labor which is the ideology behind the approp• self-conception of emotional and psychologic• that we can know what forces we have to fight riation of women's invisible labor in the nucl• al dependance and self hatred we have been with. This article is an analsis of some aspe• ear family. Lesbians are proving that women taught and are teaching us to be strong in and cts of the position of our sisters who are lesb• do not have to be dependent on either a man or outside ourselves. ians. We are straight women and thus there the state and are breaking down stereotypical Lesbians contribute to the women's mov- are severe limitations on our writing this art• sex roles. Because lesbians are challenging ment important new role models for strength icle - most of our ideas come from readings these props that allow the bourgeoisie to secu• and independence. They are often in the lead and talking with friends and comrades who are re profits through the exploitation of both wa• in getting skills and knowledge men have con• lesbians rather than from our own lives or po• ged and unwaged women workers, it is in the trolled. Because they have rejected men's litical work with the gay movement. Because interests of the bourgeoisie to oppress lesbia• definitions and standards of women and ther• of our position we are unable to write about ns. efore having no stake in men's approval or in the personal oppression of being a lesbian and In contemporary society repressing gay oppressive subservient behaviour they are this limits the depth of the article. But a the• people is part of the systematic divisions cre• more committed to fighting sexism and sex oretical analysis of lesbianism is crucial for ated by the bourgeoisie to maintain super pro• role behaviour. As women we need to develop understanding the position that society places fits. Employers and landlords use this divisi• our leadership skills, and lesbians are pushi• lesbians in and this article is our contribution on in the same way as the lack of a "green ng us forward in this way. to that task. card" or white skin is the basis for low wages As part of the revolutionary process in The Material Basis of Lesbians' Oppression. and increased exploitation at work and in the this country, we need a cultural revolution ar• We think that there Is a material basis community. ound sexism and heterosexism. We have to all for the oppression of lesbians. The history of Confrontation With The State. struggle against bourgeois notions of attracti• the oppression of gay people is based on the The superexploitation of gay women mea- on and develop politics as a basis for relating need of the ruling classes to control people -s she becomes proletarianized and through to each other. Many feminists have found a and property. this process acquires the possibility of a new new sexuality with other women through their "As people began to develop technology world outlook. The repression that the state political work with them. and to accumulate suipluses, it became nece• dishes out to lesbians enables them to see the Struggles Within The Left. ssary to establish clear lines of male inherit• capitalist system for what it is and provides Tn addition to racism and sexism, anti- ance. I^eproduction thus came to be institutio• the basis for understanding why there are ro• homosexuality is part of the false consciousn• nalized with the development of private prope• les and institutions to maintain control over ess that divides the working class. Unfortuna• rty, the first class relationships, and the ins• the masses. They come mtu eonlrontaticn tely this has not been struggled with by many titution of marriage. Thus, formalized relati• with the state and through struggles such as people who consider themselves communists, onships developed not out of the necessity of fighting the state for worker control of gay eUher in their political work or amongst them• insuring reproduction (which was being taken V.D. clinics they have the possibility of deve• selves. It is necessary to draw a clear line care of well enough) but out of the need to con• loping a mass gay anti-imperialist movement. between the people, gay or straight, and the trol it and to control people and their relations Culture. ruling class. Communists have reacted negat• to the means of production. These instititions The reshaping of our lives involves more ively to lesbians and gay men for two main re- served to curb people's expressions ol sexua• than destroying society. It involves creating aeons. One is the subjective reaction of having lity by penalizing reproduction outside of mar• a new vision of ourselves as beautifui. Impe• to face one's own sexual identity and prejudice- riage which would threaten the transmission rialism oppresses the culture of colonized S when confronted with a choice. The other of property and property relationships." countries, and inside the belly of the beast reaction has been based on seeing gay struggl- continued on pg 11 Women; the Family and Revolution not the internal relationships of family from pg continued 10 mgrnberSj forms the basis fOr WOfflen'S ocntiaus and the change in the family under Lesbian women are demanding that they be oppression. The family as a potential socialism will give these ties a more allowed tne right to raise their children source of strength, learning, and love human content. without state interference. Children go is very necessary and desireable. through crisis after crisis because of Children,like old people are valued material conditions because the ideology little by capitalism. Too young to produce that they learn in schools is not the same surplus value by their labor, they are con• as what they experience on the streets and tained and "educated" until they are able at horns. to do so. School, television, racist and Children live in a society that does sexist ideology all cooperate to st\int the not value its future generations as human development of creativity, self-awareness, beings in their own right. In fact, the and human values in our children. The actual care and nurture of children is years when an individual most needs to seen as an individual responsibility, not build a sense of cooperation, trust, and a community one. The state Is only Interest• repect for themaelves and others become ed in making sure that children learn the the times filled with the most pain. right rules so they will be able to fit The problem In children's development properly into their class position. does not lie in the shortcomings of their adult models. The problem comes from a Th6 Family and Revolution society that de-emphasizes human values. The family as an individual economic unit The creation of revolutionary values is a waste of full productive protentlal. and culture is vital for our movement. The hours each family must spend washing Engels wrote that "As soon as the means Children and their growth is a collec• dishes, shopping and preparing food, and the of production pass into common ownership, tive responsibility. Their development need for each woman, in the family to repeat the individual family will cease to be the is our future. The ability of our move• these tasks over and over while her neigh• economic unit of society. The domestic ment to develop these values lies in see• bor is doing the same thing, is an unnecess• economy will be converted into a social ing children and families as an exciting ary duplication of labor. Each family matter as well as the care and education of and collective element to our movement. instead of being a social grouping of prim• children." The character of family life is not ary relationships is a domestic work unit. This change will directly affect the revolutionary in and of itself. It is for These domestic workshops are not recognized degree of women's oppression. As the hours this reason and others that it must be as part of the labor force, although it is of domestic labor diminish, women would be viewed as an important aspect of our revol• only through the extraction of women's free to actively participate in the utionary work. The initiation of struggles unwaged labor in maintaining and reproducing socialized workforce to a greater extent around such areas as education, day care, the workforce that surplus value is created than we do now. For those of us caught in social services and medical care as well by waged working men. the "second shift" between work and home as the development of the role of children It Is this very fact that women's labor we will be freed from the double work load and the family in the revolutionary move• is channeled into the home and ripped off and exDloitive conditions we face in the ment are necessary. that makes the family's present character workplace. When this happens, the division exploitive for women and not the fact that of labor according to sex will lose its Collective solutions to the difflciilties the family is a source of primary relation• material basis. This will greatly advance are the solution- not less children. Com• ships and attachments. our road to liberation. munity controlled day care and struggles Many of us have questioned the family, Correspondingly, changes inside the for meaningful education for all children the personal relationships inside it and family will occur. Collectivizing the way are some demands people can and are being it's relations to women's oppression. lator power is maintained will allow the mobilized around. Some state that the family as a structure creative and emotional characteristics of By Integrating the family into revolu• must be abolished In order to end women's family life to become the primary reason tionary work, the movement to build a oppression. We would argue against this. for their existance. Comraderie and spiri• society with values based on f\ilfilling Instead, we would put forward that It Is tual growth will be the family's functions. the needs of oppressed people and not the economic function of the family as an This also means that changed relationships profits will flourish. Here our revolu• individual work unit which we must reform. between children and adults will necessar• tionary concepts will take hold and Because women's unwaged labor has been ily take place. But biological ties bet• flower amongst the futiire generations— institutionalized in the family it, and ween parents and their offspring will the builders of socialism.

HARD TIMES Continued from page 17 C^' . .I/WUCM OF THE leadership at the conference, and this leadership and the issues it raised were seriously dealt with. We believe that all honest conference participants learned much about the problems of coalition work and particularily the problem of racism. On Sunday, the conference particiapants dealt with a high level of political struggle and perhaps reached a high enough level of unity to continue in the future. The success of criticism/self-criticism at all levels, the proposals the National Board puts forward for dealing with the errors of the conference, and clarificat• ion of the National Action PKoposal will determine the future success of the Hard Times Movement. We believe that confer• ence participants should struggle hard for correct political line over the next few months in order to win the movement away from the racists and the rightist. If this struggle within the Hard Times Move• ment is won, then the movement can become a vehicle of the masses to combat the Hard Times and give the Hard Times back to the ruling class. An Analysis on the Lesbian Movement continued from pg 10 erstanding and strategy. Too often lesbian act• ivists are seperatists and do not support Cuba heterosexual biases and a lack of women ident• es as bourgeois and not part of revolutionary and other socialist countries which have anti- ity are part of the unacceptable anti-gay oppre• anti-imperialist struggles. Because lesbianism gay laws. Thig is both not recognising the con• ssion by communists. is in contradiction to much of bourgeois ideolo• ditions and consciousness of other countries, Conclusion. gy and its intitutions, and because of the prole- thus being a form of cultural chauvinism, but There is a whole olttier realm to understan• tar ianiztion of many lesbians, when working ding society than a formal theorectical class is also placing sexual oppression as primarp Glass polities and leadership are developed its analysis. Communists have to understand the over class struggle, leading to isolation revolutionary character will gain force. To concrete forms our struggle needs to take in While the oppression of being gay may be prim• some extent working class leadership does ex• our lives such as our sexuality and personal ary in a person's life it is important to objectiv• ist and there have been more confrontations politics in order to appeal to the masses of peo• ely see that sepaiatismas a strategy is counter• about class bias in the lesbian movement then ple and we need to show leadership in these productive and that this oppression can only be in the women's movement as a whole, ended by a total restructuring of society, and struggles. We need to support our sisters who Tondeneies in the Gay Movement that Need to m the very definition of themselves confront that is why a scientific socialist approach to be Struggled Against. the bourgeois ideology which upholds the divis• gay struggles is necessary. Lesbianism in itself is not a revolutionary ion of labor which oppresses all women. All As straight women we must begin to under• etratogy. There must be communist leadership stand what we need to change In ourselves to forces are interdependent, and we need to dev• its f©r the gay moromont to develop perspecti• prevent the contradictions between us and our elop a stategy that defines and connects all ve. It is important for lesbians to view their sisters who identify as lesbians from continuing revolutionary forces. oppression as coming from the dictatorship of to be antagonistic. The bourgeois ideology of the bourgeoisie and to develop a scientific und- unemployed people. STRATEGY FOR R VOLUTION Without the money to afford the kinds of commodities that the bourgeois ideol• INTRODUCTION WORKING WOMEN Imperialism means the oppression of ogy taught them was the road to happiness The organization of working women be• but with the expectations that their ed• nations whereby the monopoly capitalist comes of primary strategic importance class Of the imperialist country super- ucation fostered, they are key in that because their working two jobs, their loc• they are ready to find new solutions and exploits the labor of Third World peoples. ation in the waged labor force, and how The State, which is the special repres• ways to live. Their location in the ec• these first two reasons link them with onomy enables them to see through commod• sive force of this class, uses its mili• Third World women. They are located stra• tary and economic power to maintain this ity fetishism. Unemployed people have tegically as the weakest link in the chain come together spontaneously, with time on oppression. We need to understand the of relative privilege. relationship of the white working class their hands as their most valuable re• The growth of clerical work that started within the US to this system of US int• source, to find collective solutions to with the development of monopoly capital- ernational exploitation in order to dev• their needs. The People's Food System igm continues to become a crucial part of elop a Strategy and to smash it. is an example of this. its workings. Paper work employs as many ALTERNATIVE INSTITUTIONS slavery and the creation o£ the Black people as production. 70% of clerical work colony in the US was the institutionali• We must find collective solutions to is done by women. The other major area zation of imperialism in the US and laid the problems of food, housing, healthcare, that employs women is the service sector the basis for white supremacy. This div• childcare, education, energy, transporta• with 12 million women employees. ision in the working class was and still tion and culture. Working collectively Working women's desparate need for soc• is absolutely necessary to the ruling means having control over knowledge. It ial services confronts head-on the sexual class in its need to realise the super• directly challenges the way monopoly cap• division of labor and they become vanguard profits extracted from the Third World italism has self-consciously broken work in seeing the need to socialise "women's by creating a market for those goods. down into its separate parts through the work" or domestic labor. They also see After the second world war the State ex• introduction of machinery, how it has in• that doing this means a total reorgani• panded the role of the white working stitutionalised the specialization of work sation of labor generally and that the class as such a market largely through and the resulting creation of a group of drive for profit prevents it. Their double the housing policies it developed which managers outside the working class who oppression, at home and at the workplace, forced white workers to live in the sub• take control of knowledge through the "sci- leads them to be the spearhead in the urbs and buy their own homes through ence"of scientific management. movement to fight imperialist organisation the tightly controlled system of credit. Working collectively means making dec• of labor that forces them into this role. Relative privilege meant higher wages isions around what you produce and how you Thus it becomes crucial to organise with which to but the increased amount produce it. In health for example, it means childcare as by doing this we are chal• of commodities necessary in the new, deciding which areas of health are primary lenging the sexual division of labor (par• lifeless communities in the suburbs. to work in, what kind of education to pro• ticularly when the degradation of labor The consumer economy is the key to mote or which treatment to use; it means means the unemployment of men and how they opening a dialogue with the community to understanding the role of the white work• begin working in childcare centers) freeing ing class in imperialism. The consumer find out what people's needs are. It means women to fight in the community and the recognizing that different sectors of the economy devalued domestic labor in the workplace. At this stage, childcare in home, and families were weighed down by population have different health care needs the community Is the key to organising and making decisions around that. debts; this forced women into the labor working class women. market where they were drawn into the Through collective practice people be• growing clerical. State and service sec• gin to create solutions that make clear how tors as cheap labor. .imperialism oppresses us in its inability As imperialism destroyed the natural to serve our needs. For instance, we learn economies of Third World countries this how preventative medicine needs more em• gave rise to national liberation strug• phasis than cure. gles that we now see as the leading The international basis of imperialism force of class struggle today. The vic• becomes clear too through this practice. tories of these struggles began to cut E.g.,people working in community food stores away at the superprofits o£ US capital begin to understand and address the contra• which meant increased military spending dictions of stocking cheap bananas to serve in an attempt to defend US capital over• the people on the one hand, while on the seas, and increasing exploitation of the other learning that the reason thay are so vhite Morking class. cheap is due to the superexploitation of This increased exploitation took the labor in the distorted mono-crop economies form of employing large numbers of women of the Third World. We must unite with anti- to do the work that, because of the dev• imperialist groups to develop propoganda elopment of technology, no longer required around these issues and to support national highly skilled workers. The degradation liberation struggles in our community work. of labor throws many white men out of We see then how alternative institutions their jobs; it also generally separates teach us concretely about imperialism at working people from the knowledge of the the same time as giving us a way to find production process. This knowledge or Childcare is the key to organizing women new, alternative ways to live. By sharing skill is incorporated into the machines the details of our daily lives we begin which are controlled by a small section to understand that what we considered to Working women play a critical role in be our personal problems are our experience of white men who occupy managerial posi• combatting white supremacy, the major div• tions and whose intrests, along with of an oppressive system. ision in the working class. This is because The breakup of the community by the those of the trade union bureaucrats, of the way white women have been drawn become more and more closely identified forces of consumerism and advertising is into the labor force in such huge numbers slowly replaced by a revolutionary culture. with those of the ruling class. in the last twenty years has diimped on There are two ways that 'the high un• A new revolutionary culture links us with them the same double workload that Third the revolutionary culture of our history employment of the working class is hid• World women have carried for centuries. den. The State greatly expanded higher and of liberation struggles around the world. White and Third World women now have a This is the culture of collectivity which education to provide the skilled workers basis to build a concrete and practical needed by imperialism, but in its dec• teaches us the process of criticism-self unity that did not exist prior to this criticism so that we can forge our collec• line it no longer has a place for them,- time; the quality of their superexploita• the schools become swollen with young tive strength and struggle against individ• tion at the workplace and their crying ualism. Above all it is about creating a people, mostly white, who cannot find need for social services due to male sup• jobs. The other way the State has hiddfen new way to work together and learning to remacy which has prevented the socializ• struggle to support each other. We have to unemployment has been by drafting young ation of domestic labor, unites them in men to fight in its imperialist wars. learn to live collectively and create new the fight against capital. It is through families that can survive the crisis and Imperialism has meant the expansion this strategic unity that we can attack of the State; it grows militarily to win the hard struggle for liberation by the racism of the white working class. linking our needs and resources to develop protect its interests overseas, and sub• However, while we understand and work for sidises industry while at the same time quality survival commodities and services this unity we must not let it obscure the in our communities while fighting against acting as a huge market for it. It cre• real material differences that exist be• ated jobs on the one hand while expand• the degradation of life within the belly tween white and Third World women. Rather, of the monster. ing social services; it attempts to pro• we must strengthen our unity and solidarity vide education for the labor force and LINKING TME WORKPLACE WITH COMMUNITY STRUGGLES by supporting the special struggles of Our strategy for socialist revolution now unemployment, welfare, health pro• Third World women. grams and so on to maintain this labor in the US is to organize the strategic sec• force and prop up the failing system of tors of the working class to provide bases from which to build a people's army to Imperialism. However, as superprofits THE UNEMPLOYED seize control of the means of production, get cut away the State becomes less and The strategic quality of unemployed less able to hide the job crisis or pro• people la that in working colleatively we which means seizing state power. vide the services needed by the working can have control over our labor and collec• Organizing for revolution in the work• class. tively appropriate the fruits of that lab• place has encountered two main obstacles; or. Survival becomes a strategy for living. a)Economism with its ultimate expression We see then two sectors as being stra• The vdiole organisation of labor is breaking as reactionary trade unions that collude tegic to organize in the white working down and confronting imperialism. The pro• with monopoly capital to police the labor <^laes. These are working women and the cess of replacing men with machines without force and, b)Ultra-leftism where progressive unaployed. The State's increasing ina• the new fields of investment that creates struggles are entered into before theife bility to support these two sectors and additional jobs means a tremendous growth is enough broad based support to win and tiWlr Atap^r»t6 need to survive throws of the unemployed. In addition, the fact thus they are easily smashed. We need there• thca into the forefront of the white that there are no jobs for people coming fore to go to the community where the con• working class in the struogle against out of the greatly expanded school system tradictions of working mothers and the un- iapmxiMlUm. leaves a great many younq. educated and r.nnfiniipH nn nasre 19 cheap labor fores for th$ owocrs, but they were not a drain on agricultural development HISTORICAL AND in a labor-scarce society. These young women usually worked for several years prior to ECONOMIC BASIS marriage, when they returned to the farms. Farmers' daughters were soon replaced by an even cheaper source of labor: immigrants. OF WOMEN'S The huge numbers of Irish immigrants who began to come to the U.S. in the late I830's OPPRESSION became the new industrial work force. During the rest of the century they were succeeded by waves of immigrants from Germany, and, finally, from eastern and southern Europe, providing a constantly growing, cheap, unskilled lalxjr force. Native-born white North Ameri• cans had access to the cheap and fertile lands of the constantly moving frontier. Immigrants rarely had the means to buy the land or the tools necessary for farming. They were forced to settle in eastern and mid-western cities and to work at whatever jobs were available. The labor of immigrant women, men, and children supplied most industrial needs.

Although bitterly exploited themselves, the Eurpeaa immigrants soon found that North- american racism could be turned to their own short-term advantage. Each wave of immigration drove black workers out of the CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT AND THE of goods for her family to a consumer of those skilled or semi-skilled jobs they had, and OPPRESSION OF WOMEN goods, dependent on her husband's wages. She between 1881—1900, over 50 strikes occurred no longer plays a central productive role for in which white workers protested the employ• Although the oppression of women predates her family. Not only Is Gertie unable to deal ment of blacks. capitalism, capitalist development has drastic• with her increasing uselessness and dependency, ally changed its forms. Today, ImperiaUsm but the entire family goes throught severe The situation of black women under slavery exploits women through both our unwaged shocks. The children are unable to "adjust" to differed from the patterns that characterized labor in the home and our superexplQitation in the city; one runs away and another is killed the white working clasaAs slaves, black the work force. Women's unviaged labor in the by a train. Gertie and Clovis grow further women and men suffered equally in the home reproducee and maintains the labor force, apart. Gertie has wo.cked on carving a head exploitation of their labor and through racial materially as well as ideologically. Women of Christ for years; she finally gives up this oppression. But black women also reproduced are also primary consumers of the goods and last creative use of her energy. What happens the slave labor force and served as sexual services produced by the system. At the same to Gertie in the course of a few months is the objects for their white owners. In raiding time, huge numbers of women have been drawn same thing that has happened to women more their children, black women also developed into the labor force. We work in the worst- slowly over the past two hundred years. The the resistance of the slave community, paid and least skilled jobs, which ie justified development of capitalism, dispossession by teaching them how to do the least work on the ideological grounds that woman's place from the land, industrialization, and forced possible, how to keep from punishment and how is in the home and that our work force partic• urbanization changed women from producers to survive and rebel. After the abolition of ipation is marginal. This is a myth and a of sustenance for our families to consumers slavery, while many black women continued falsehood. The growth of corporations and of goods, bought mainly with our husbands' to do agricultural labor, many others got jobs the state have led.to new areas of work which wages. Women changed from producers to as domestics or factory operatives. Since the have become sexually segregated, especially consumers and were made more dependent on late I9th century, a higher proportion of black clerical and service work. Women are super- mai. than white women have been in the labor force exploited in the work place precisely because out of economic necessity. When black men of the dual economic function we fulfill in The Novel's life in Kentucky is similar to the were unable to obtain jobs, black women working a double shift. majority of white people in colonial North supported their families through the lowest America. On the farm there was an age and paid and worst jobs. The Dollmaker, a novel by Harriette Arnow, sex division of labor. Men worked in the illustrates sharply the changes in women's fields, and with livestock, while women grew All women were affected by the process of oppression brought by capitalism. Gertie gardens, raised poultry, took care of the industrialization. Machines and unskilled Nevels, the dollmaker, is a Kentucky moun• dairy, spun, wove, and made clothes, in labor produced more cheaply and efficiently tain woman in the I940's who, along with her addition to caring for the house and the chil• the goods which women had formerly made at children, supplies most of her family's needs dren. Children learned sex roles early by home, such as textiles, clothing, and processed by working the land, raising vegetables, actually mgaguig in work. Fathers were thus and preserved foods. City families had chickens, hogs, making their clothing, and responsible for part of the socialization of no access to the space or tools necessary to carving tools and utensils. The Nevels are their sons. In the towns, families engaged produce these igoods. Most women slowly removed from a wage and money economy. in a variety of trades and crafts. Women and ceased being producers and became consumers. Gertie's husband, Clovis, does odd jobs as a children took part in the work, and widows Their work in the home, rearing children and mechanic and hauler, but hates the mountains frequently succeeded their husbands as shop caring for the family's needs, became invisible and is fascinated by the city. When Clovis heads. Although women had an inferior because it was subordinate to the new means receives a notice for a draft physical and status to men, they were respected for their of life—wages. leaves, Gertie uses her lifetime store of crucial role in making a living. Colonial secret savings to buy a small farm so that the white women had some civil and political rights, At the same time, a class and race-biased family will no longer have to work shares. such as the right to vote, which they lost after ideology of the true woman was developing. Just as she completes this transaction, she the revolutionary period. The purity, piety, and domesticity of lily- finally hears from Clovis, who has been re• white womanhood was used as a rationale for jected by the draft, but has gotten a job at On the farm, work was life. Industrialization slavery and lynching, as well as for the high wages in the defense industry in Detroit. separated the two. Rather than producing exploitation of white women as servants and Community pressure forces Gertie and the their means of sitisistence, families began to factory operatives. The ideal of the woman of children to give up their farm and join Clovis rely on wages earned by fathers and older leisure, perched on a pedestal, was held up in Detroit. There, they live in crackerbox children to consume the goods and services as a model for all, but was only attainable by housing, hastily built for defense workers. necessary for survival. Family members women whose families had enough wealth to Clovis, proud of his high wagca, buys store no longer worked as a collective unit. Home release them from productive work. food, fashiionable clothing, a stove, refrigera• and workplace were separated. As money came tor, and rac^io. Gertie not only does not want to be the measure of all things, the work that Beginning with the abolitionist movement of the these consumer goods, but she does not know women did in the home was increasingly I830's, white petit bourgeois women began to how to use them. She comes home from the sooialiy degraded. organize around women's rights. This move• grocery stoce time after time with rancid meat; ment, which culminated with the winning of ehc knows how to birth, nurse, grow, slaughter, In the late I8th and early 19th centuries, young suffrage in 1920, was a movement for bourgeois and cure a hog, but not how to buy meat. •women and children were the principal indus• democratic rights: the right to education, to Clovis cannot understand why Gertie is not grate• trial work force. Young New England farm own property, to divorce, and finally the right ful for the new riches that he is providing. women, not urgently needed by the family to vote. The needs of working class women on subsistence unity, moved to mill towns to work the job. Such as better wages and working Overnight, Gertie is changed from a producer in textile production. They were not only a conditions, were addressed by some social continued on p.b SEIZE THE TIME PAGE B Agricultural employment declined, while HISTORICAL BASIS cont. manufacUirlng employment remahied steady— most new jobs were in finance, transportation, reformers in tlie early 20th century, and some retail sales, public utilities, and services. protective legislation was passed. In general, A new domestic labor force had to be found however, the women's rights movement did that could be exploited more easily than the not speak to the most pressing needs of poor, existing white male working class, whose Third World, and working women. increasing militance and organization presented a definite threat to "business prosperity. " As wage laborers, women were rarely organized To move Third World people and white working into trade unions. Succesful unions existed class women into the gap, imperialism updated mostly in the skilled trades dominated by and solidified systems of white and male native-born white men. These men made few supremacy that offered material benefits to attempts to organize the priedominately white working class men if they would side immigrant and black unskilled female work with the exploiters and not the most oppressed. force. Unskilled men workers, who Although these systems of white and male were struggling to found unions for themselves privilege weakened the working class in its also feared tiie competition of cheaper women struggle against capital, they did offer real payoffs to whites and men in the short run. In July 1973, 700 textile workers, most of them workers. Women began to organize in the women, won their six month strike against Oneita I830's, but it was not until the 20th century Knitting Mills in South Carolina. In addition to that powerful unions developed in any industry White men held the better-paid factory jobs, with a large concentration of women. and became the foremen, supervisors, and a consumer economy resting on the consump• managers in industry, finance, and the tion of "consumer durables, " To ward off the Family At Table—An Italian woman witti tears running down her cheek said; "All the family work the whole week government bureaucracy. Dependmg on the spectre of another disastrous post-war for so little we almost starve. All the week stick the pins in region of the country, Black men or Asians thQ cards, but more curses than pins go in the cards." depression, the ruling class steered toward or Mexicans were hired for the dirtiest and the creation of a consumer economy by promoting most dangerous industrial work or as unskilled the construction of suburban single-family day laborers and farmworkers or as service homes rather than apartments or public workers such as janitors and orderlies. White housing. The lay-out of the new suburbs women from the just-proletarianized petit- ensured that every family would need to buy bourgeoisie and the upper sections of the working its own home, cars, and a set of major class were allowed into the growing semi- appliances. The domestic economy was professions that grew out of the state's gesture imperlalized to create new markets and new toward organizing the human services that women investment outlets that could keep the rate of wage workers could no longer do at home— profit up. teaching, nursing, social work. Black and other TW women were servants of the white For the ruling class, this strategy was very professionals, as cleaning women in their profitable; for white working class women, homes, or as aides and paraprofessionals on it turned the world upside down. The household the job. TW women also worked in the most was now completely transformed into a unit exploited manufacturing jobs- -textiles, garments, of consumption. To help the family purchase the food processing. Working class white women expensive new necessities and pay off the filled the rapidly increasing clerical and sales THE RISE OF IMPERIALISM mortgage, more and more wives and mothers jobs. Badly paid and increasingly organized were drawn into wage labor. to resemble assembly -line labor, these jobs After the decisive victory of the Northern were glamorized by the white male supremacist capitalists in the Civil War, the I870's was a Today more than half of all women 18 to 65 image of the All-american (i.e. white) decade of tremendous monopolization. The years old work for wages; more than 40% of office girl with her J. C. Penny wardrobe -inks of the white working class swelled as married women living with their husbands also and her Colgate smile. As Third World women .oos of family farmers and small business• have paid jobs. More than 40% of women flood into the clerical paper factories, the men were driven out of business by the monop• with school age children are in the wage labor image wears increasingly thin: during the force, four times the 1940 figure. olies. These new city dwellers competed for last 20 years the clerical sector has been the jobs against the immigrants and the blacks. fastest-growing employer of Black women. The family structures that make sense when They could not grow their own food or chop women work full-time in the home cannot their own firewood; they had been pushed into THE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN WOMEN'S endure when women work two jobs. Almost the orbit of the capitalist market. Even the WAGED AND UNWAGED LABOR 40% of marriages end in divorce; a fifth of home labor of preserving food and making U. S. families are headed by a woman (more clothes became an industry. The hours of At the beginning of this century, most women than double the 1940 figure.) unpaid labor of women in the home using crude were exploited primarily through the rip-off household tools was devalued by the efficiency of our unwaged labor in the home reproducing White working class women are the weak link of the cannery and the sweatshop. The home and maintaining the workforce. Only about a in the chain of privilege that bind the white producer became as obsolete as the master fifth of white women (mostly young, single, working class to the bourgeoisie. Subject to weaver or the blacksmith; technological immigrants or the daughters of immigrants) male supremacy as well as to class exploit• unemployment became a household reality. and a third of Black women worked for wages; ation, we get relatively little of the benefits of be less than 5% of married white \vomen also being white. At work or at the welfare office, During the I880's and 90's, the U.S. economy worked outside the home. All of this was we find ourselves on the bottom of the heap, took on the classic features of imperialism, changed by maturing imperialism. close to Black and other Third World women complete with the economic penetration and men. These conditions give the material and military occupation of Third World nations, After World War n, the U. S. became the basis for a political alliance between white whoBc workers, raw materials, and markets leading force in the world capitalist economy. working class women and the leading struggles were subordinated to the needs of the rising This position of power rested on three pillars: of Third World peoples. imperialist power. Domestically, the period (1) investment outside the U. S, and war between 1890 and World War I defined the production Inside the S, to reinforce it; basic pattern of employment of the U.S. labor (2) governn:ient spending on highways and If we live with a white working class man, he force, which persists to this day with only education in the U, S,; and (3) the creation of sees the cost of male supremacy every payday. minor changes. If he sees that male supremacy costs the family more than he gains as a relatively privileged worker, he has the real basis to join the fight against inequalities in the class and the imperialist system.

Imperialism has made use of the historical oppression of women to maintain its profits and power. By pulling us into wage labor for theimperialistswe have been brought Itlto the arena of the struggles for national liberation and against class exploitation. Whether we fight our fellow workers for crumbs of privilege from the imperialist table or work to build an alliance against imperialist dom• ination is a question of political leadership. Communists shoitd see our task as providing leadership in the struggle to build a revolutionary alliance between white workers Japanese Women Sugar Plantation Laborers, Hawaii, 1918 and the oppressed TMacd Wbrld people. SEIZE THE TIME PAGE C

PARTY BUILDING -OUR PRIMARY TASK

Party-Building is Our Primary Task side this country. A real communist par• says we do this by winning advanced workers ty never softens its support for national to communism. The process has three key Under the blows of the oppressed na• liberation struggles, never gives in to parts! tions and the workers, imperialism is the opportunistic desire to appeal to the sickening to death before our eyes. Yet more privileged sectors of the workers. First we need to create a workers' we know that socialist revolution is not Finally, a truly communist party In communism, a body of theory that includes inevitable. In the advanced capitalist this country must hold and implement the a) a tested strategy for revolution in this countries, including the USA, even the line that the revolution in the United country. A strategy is an analysis of fiercest waves of class struggle have States is a one-stage revolution for the what forces should unite around what pro• been channelled into reformism. As we direct establishment of socialism, which gram in what general sequence to build a analyze world history, we see that it re• means that masses of people must be educa• force that can establish a workers state. quires a truly revolutionary communist ted to understand and want revolution. We Strategy comes from our class analysis: party to organize the working class for reject the revisionist practice of econo• who are the leading forces, the intermed• the seizure of state power and the estab• mist anti-monopoly reformism for the mas• iate forces, the vacillating forces, and lishment of a workers' state. ses, political training only for the hand• who is the enemy? What are the aspira• So in an age of revolution, party- ful of advanced workers who are individual• tions and demands of each friendly force building is an immediate task. It is ly chosen for situations where they can and how can they be combined? What are all the more urgent because at present develop politically. Our leadership of the contradictions within and among the the imperialists seem to be pushing their mass struggles must put forth propaganda forces and how can they be resolved? Our crisis onto the backs of the workers and and forms of struggle that confront the theory must also include b) political lines the oppressed nationalities* in this coun• question of power, advancing the workers' that have shown in practice that they can try. Within the next few years we can awareness of our historic role—to become address the problems posed in the struggle expect a mass upsurge of resistance like a new ruling class that will reorganize and lead the movement toward revolution. the 30's or 50's. Will the conscious el• society for the benefit of •'he working pe• By political line we mean answers to par• ements be prepared to lead this mass explo• ople of the world. ticular questions like: "What are the cor• sion? Will we have consolidated the es• We must reject the long tradition of rect slogans for a working class women's sential elements of strategy and political populist and economist trade union organ• movement?" "Should we uphold the right of line m a communist organization that can izing in this country with its emphasis on secession for the Mexicano people?" direct spontaneous resistance toward revo• narrow self-interest issues. Self-interest Second, we need to win advanced work• lution? organizing only leads white workers to rise ers to this communism. Advanced workers As Marsist-Leninists, we see party- to the poison bale that the ruling class are the most politically progressive peo• building as our primary task. All our has dangled before us throughout U.S. his• ple who emerge in struggles, who have work must be subordinated to this task, tory. The bait Is a system of relative earned the respect of co-workers and actu• and we must understand how every effort benefits—better jobs, housing, schools, ally exercise leadership. An advanced wor• fits Into a concrete plan for party- etc.—-that are offered white workers If ker is not just the person who responds bullding. Does our work advance the pro• we side with the white ruling class against fastest to left propoganda. cess of building toward the party? This Third World people. The poison is the Communists win the respect of advanced is the final test. divisions inside the working class that workers through our participation in real Party-building is both an urgent and dooms all the workers to continued wage struggles. We must contend for political a protracted task. We disagree with those slavery. leadership of spontaneous struggles, seeking groups which think that the forces are now to demonstrate that our theory can solve prepared to establish a new communist par• Democratic centralism the problems as they arise. Based on the ty. The merger between communist theory political agreement and trust built up with and the advanced workers, the necessary The party will be democratic central• advanced workers, we can then consolidate condition for the formation of the party, ist, not bureaucratic centralist like into higher organizational forms. Recrui• will take years to accomplish. But it is most Of the present would-be party groups ting advanced workers will change the class high time to specify the nature of the par• on the North American left. Rank and file base of the white left, still dispropor• ty we are building. party members must develop rigorously as tionately young people with some college the theoretical and practical leadership education, many of us having come through of the class, trained in critical think• the civil rights and anti-war and women's Nature of the Party ing by an inner Party life of vigorous movements of the 60's. debate on all the questions before the Third, we need to build oolitical By Studying revolutionary theory, movement. Unless party members at all unity and clarity on the left, always our movement has some clarity about the levels are armed with revolutionary the• attempting to isolate chauvinist and revi• general nature of the Marxist-Leninist ory, there is the danger that the party sionist lines. We need unity between party. The party is the highest form of white and Third World communist organi• organization of the proletariat, bringing will not find and correct its errors, or zations and among white organizations and together the most advanced fighters in the that a bureaucracy will entrench itself individuals, winning anti-imperialists, class around the most developed revolution• and try to become a new ruling minority feminists and Independent socialists to ary theory; it is a party whose purpose la after the revolution. the party-building process. to organize the class for socialist revolu• tion, so it is a party that leads not only Self-Determination To summarize our views on party- politically but also militarily, an organ• building, we quote Le Duan: "A wise ization that is capable of carrying out Our revolutionary vanguard organiza• political line is the pre-condition for both open and secret work and of exercising tion will reflect the history and composi• the existence of good cadres and good military discipline around its political tion of the USA as an imperialist state organizational work." line. Its line must be anti-revisionist, with several oppressed nationalities within its borders. Oppressor nation communists its organization democratic centralist, Continued on page D and its national composition subject to support the self-determination of organiza• self-determination. tional forms by the revolutionary leader- •ship of oppressed nations. For now, the Antl-reviaionism leadership of each nationality may best develop in autonomous communist organiza• Once we understand that the state is tions. Joint practice and ideological always the instrument for the forcible dom• struggle between Third World and predom• ination of one class by another, we under• inantly white organizations should be a stand that there can be no peaceful road very high priority, leading to the clo• to socialism, there can be no lasting rev• sest organizational ties that can be ach• olution without the arming of the workers ieved. and the suppression of the newly defeated As white communists our task is to bourgeoisie. The lessons of Marx and Lenin organise white workers to refuse the poi• were written in workers' blood in Chile: son bait of privilege and join Third World to get to a classless society, we must go workers in the struggle for socialism. As through a period of the dictatorship of white communist women, our special role is the working class, the domination of the to organise white working class women to vast majority of people over the exploiting reject the divisions of male supremacy as few. weil as white supremacy. A communist organization wins the An flntl-revislonist party's line ack• title of "vanguard party" only after nowledges that monopoly capitalism reor• years of actually leading the workers' ganizes the world into a system of op• struggle in- a revolutionary direction. pressed and oppressor nations. The party Even though the RU, CLP, etc., may try, must recognize the leading role o£ Third a Marxist-Leninist organization does not World Struggles within and without Che become the vanguard party by self- borders of the united States, and organ• proclamation. ize white workers to uphold the right to secession for the oppressed nations in- The Process of Party Building *Since our group did not study the national Ths struggle for revolution merges question, we use the word nationality in a communist theory with the practical strug• purposefully vague way, not to imply a po• gles of the workers and oppressed national• sition about which oppressed groups are ities. The Leninist theory of organization nations and which are national minorities. SEIZE THE TIME PAGE D

desire for socialism. To preserve Imperialist super-profits, emphasizes PARTY BUILDING cont. tactical unity the question of the white guilt politics and calls for acts of individual renunciation by white working from page c party is deferred and organizational debate on Marxism-Leninism and the long- class people. White workers are left Contending Lines on Party- Building range questions of strategy are ruled off with the role of cheerleaders for Third ^\ the table. World struggles. To sharpen the debate on party- We insist that theory and practice Our position is that equality within building, we contrast our views with other can advance only in a close dialectical the working class is the essential condi• positions. One debate concerns the rela• relationship. Correct theory can only be tion for a unified struggle against the tion between theory and practice in the worked out through constant testing in imperialists. Every struggle must both process of party-building. There is both practice; but theory Is primary until the take up issues of the whole proletariat a "left" and a right error on this question. present task of party-building, develop• against the ruling class, and must also The "left" dogmatic position puts theory ing strategy and political line—has been directly attack the systems of white and primary but severs it from practice. This significantly advanced. male supremacy that deal out unequal tendency holds that it is wrong for commu• hands to Third World and white women wor• nists to contend for leadership of mass A second area of debate concerns how kers. To attack the inequalities in the struggles before we have a party, because we work to unify the working class in class, our program must emphasize the without a party mass work will inevitably this country. What are the contending demands of the most oppressed. For ex• degenerate into reformism. But Marxism- Irines on how to unite the working class ample, the demand of "jobs or income now" Leninism is not a static body of answers across the national, racial, sexual, and is in the interest of the whole class. In that can be learned from books and intra- other divisions that splinter it? our opinion, however, no jobs campaign left debates; it is precisely the science The right opportunist error on this would be correct unless it spoke directly of applying theory to the analysis of con• question denies the long and bitter history to the ways unemployment comes down har• crete conditions. The "left" dogmatists of divisions inside the US working class, dest on Third World people and on white are unable to say how they will identify and fails to see the systems of relative working class women. So a jobs program and draw in advanced workers, except by privilege that provide the material basis would include such demands as ending conversations at the workplace. This line for white and male supremacy. The program deportations of undocumented workers, of "develop Marxist-Leninists first, mass that flows from this analysis emphasizes blocking daycare cutbacks that force work later," often put forward by revolu• only those issues which preserve inequal• mothers out of the waged workforce and tionaries who have stayed in graduate ity for Third World paople and white daycare workers into the unemployment school too longj holds back both theoreti• women. For instance, a right opportunist lines, A united struggle against the cal work and mass practice. program would call for percentage rather imperialists, certainly; but only on the The right error also severs theory than across-the-board raises, would soft- basis of full equality. from practice but puts practice primary. pedal issues like Affirmative Action, an This line is put forward by advocates o£ end to imperialist wars, and self-deter• mass intermediate socialist organizations mination for oppressed peoples—all issues (miso's) like the Northern California that directly challenge the inequalities Parts of this article were influenced by the Alliance in San Francisco. Their tailist inside the class; party-building perspective put forward by the analysis says we need a mass movement for The "left" error Is much less of a Philadelphia Workers Organizing Comimittee, danger because it has been discredited for socialism first, and then a communist Box 11768, Phila. , Pa. 19101. Also see articles years. This position flows from the in• party. To build this mass movement, they on Intornationalismi, and Collectives and Mass call for socialist organizations that are correct analysis that the entire white united around little more than a common working class has been bought off by Organizing in back issues of STT.

READING LIS

For fuither reading on some of the topics B. Focus on Third World Women covered in this issue we suggest the materials •Battle Acts, Special Issue by and about TW below. women. YAWF Women, 46 W. 2lst St, NY lOOlO. WOMEN * The Black Scholar, Special Issue on the A. History and Political Economy Black Woman, Vol. 6, No. 6, PO Box 908, *Edith Hoshino Altbach, From Feminism to Sausalito, CA 94965. Includes Angela Davis Liberation , pbk. Includes several important on "The Black Woman in the Community of articles: Mary Jo Buhle,"Women and the Slaves." Socialist Party, 1901-14," Juliet Mitchell, *Toni Cade, ed. The Black Woman: An Anthol• "Women the Longest Revolution, " Margaret ogy, NAL pbk. Benston, "The Political Economy of Women's •Gerda Lerner, Black Women in White America, Liberation." a Documentary History, Vintage pbk. *Braverman, Harry, Labor and Monopoly *TW Women's Alliance, Triple Jeopardy , Capital, Monthly Review Press. Important journal from 26 W 20th St., 3rd Floor, NY lOOll. theory on the proletarianization of otfice work. C. Women's Literature *William Chafe, The American Woman: Her •Harriet Arnow', The Dollmaker, Avon pbk. Changing Social, Economic, and Political *Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle, Daughters Inc Role, 1920-70. Oxford Press, pbk. Liberal •Toni Cade, Gorilla, My Love perspective, but good information •Tillie Olson, Tell Me a Riddle , Yonnonido , *Maria Rosa Dalla Costa, The Power of Women Dell, pbks. and the Subversion of the Community, Falling *Marge Piercy, Small Changes, Fawcett. WaH Press, pbk. Although we don't agree *Agnes Smedley, Daughter of Earth, Feminist Pr. with all of It, this was one of the first serious D. Women in Prison analyses of women's unwaged work in the home. •Kathryn Burkhart, Women in Prison *Marlene Dixon, article in Canadian Dimension, •Jessica Mitford, Kind and Usual Punishment June 1375. M-L perspective on the women's •Univ. CaUBerk.School of Criminology, Crime nnovement. and Social Justice •Alison Edwards, "Rape, Racism, and the *Lori Helmbold, et al, "Loom, Broom, and •Eric Wright, Politics of Punishm-ent VMiite Women's Movement," pamphlet from Womb, " to be published soon. Write STT Sojourner Truth Organization, PO Box 8493, for info. Chicago, ILL. 60680. Best piece yet on pro• * Modern Times Bookstore, "Women and Blackstruggles in the US, a beginning list gram for the white women's movement. their work, an annotated bibliography, " •Robert and Pam Allen, Reluctant Reformers: •Mickey Elllnger, "We Can't Go Home Again: I7th St. and Sanchez, SF. Racism and Social Reform Movements in the US Working Women and the Family in the Age of *NACLA, two srftCial women's issues, for Doubleday Anchor, pbk. Imperialism," excellent pamphlet available info write 2490 Channing Way, Borkel^y, CA, ^Harold Baron, The Demand for Black Labor : from STT. '•'Sheila Rowbotham, Women, Resistance, and Ijigtory and Political Economy of Racism , •Eleaoor Flexner, Century of Struggle, Revolution: A History of Women and Revolution NEFP, 60 Union Sq., Somerville, MA 02143 Atheneum ftk. Ltb^r&l. but good basic history. in the JModem world. Random, pbk. Also *Lerone Bennett, The Shaping of Black America *Aileea Kraditor, I'p from the Pedestal: Woman's Consciousness, Man's World, Penguin, •W.E.B. DuBolg. Black Reconstruction in &cl»Ct«d ^'rittagg gtory of American pbk. America, Atheneum, pbk. •Mickey Rowntree, "More on th© Political ^Sojourner Truth Organization, White Suprem• •Uiuaaiir npers No. 2, "Lesbiantsm and Economy of Women's Liberation," a critique acy: A Collection, PO Box 8493, Chicago, 111, 9oeiall»-,- irw^^'* of Baiston. United Front Press. 60680, pamphlet, 75^. THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT TODAY The 1960's saw a tremendous upsurge The primary struggles that have devel• In women's consciousness and the develop• oped around women's right to self defense ment of a women's movement which catalyzed have involved Third World women. Many Incredible changes in women's perceptions white women have become involved in the of themselves, their relationships with mobilization of support for such women Others, and to society as a whole. The as Ines Garcia, Joanne Little, Yvonne energies unleashed by this movement were Wanrow and, more recently, Cheryl Todd directed in many different ways with and Desi X Woods, on trial in rural varying political perspectives. In this Georgia for defending themselves against a rapist. These struggles have enabled article we would like to explore the dif• ment to menial tasks rather than leader• many white women to understand more ferent forces of the women's movement as ship positions began to be seen as more deeply the extent to which racism, as it exists today. than just a simple division of labor. well as sexism, pervades our system of Women began to realize that they were "justice". Bourgeois Feminism being put into these roles because of For many women the capitalist system male supremist ideas of "women's natural The Lesbian Movement remains viable. It is a system to which inferiority." Women turned more and more As the women's movement developed a they are bound by aspiration. Comprised to each other in an attempt to understand deeper understanding of the oppression primarily of women who are professionals, their oppression. of women, many women became totally wives of middle management, etc, bourgeois One of the first forms to develop in "women Identified", choosing to devote feminism attacks sexist ideology, seeing an attempt to deal with sexism was the every aspect of themselves to women. it as the main enemy; as just a faulty consciousness raising group. These Because the article on Lesbian Oppres• aspect of a "workable system". groups were originally developed by sion deals with the Lesbian Movement The system's structures generally work women who had studied the "speak bitter• more extensively, we will not attempt to their advantage, but the ideology of ness" sessions of China, a tactic devel• to do so here. sexism presents an obstacle to advance• oped by the Chinese Communist Party to ment within the system, and is a constant encourage peasants to voice their ex• source of moral outrage. Institutional periences of brutality and oppression sexism is perceived to be rooted in ideas. at the hands of the landlord class. This In attacking sexism from this perspec• enabled many peasants to get in touch tive, the bourgeois feminist movement can with their rage, lose their fear of their go no further than reformism. In fact, historic oppressors, and greatly moved eexiat ideas have been challenged by the revolutionary process forward. The their struggles, but with ideas as the consciousness raising groups served a enemy reforms become goals, in and o£ similar purpose in the women's liberation themselves, movement. Thousands of women came to Those reforms generally reflect the understand that the pain and humiliation interests of white, educated, "upper- they faced was not unique, but rather was middle class" women. The ERA campaign, the result of a system which institution• much of the abortion movement, in elec• alized male supremacy. toral politics, etc.; bourgeois feminists The response of the male left to this have sought paper solutions to a form of growing women's movement was one of oppression which their class bias prevents contempt. Women were laughed at, ridi• them from understanding. culed and ignored. This treatment Bourgeois feminists have viewed the became unbearable, and many women left oppression of Third World people in much mixed organizations to form autonomous the same ways that they view their own women's organizations. The autonomous oppression. As opportunities denied, and women's movement developed new forms of w'ew York, June 30,197^ a moral outrage, rather than as wealth, organization, some of which we will look International Women's Day Gay Pride March culture, and lives stolen and destroyed, at in the following sections. and as an integral function of US Imperialism. Women's Culture Alternative Institutions As women became more aware of the Women's growing understanding of the Roots of the Women's Movement dominance of the male supremist point institutionalized nature of sexism led The upsurge of women's consciousness of view that pervades "culture" in our to building alternative or counter insti• which gave rise to the women's movement society, they saw the need to develop tutions. These institutions provide can be linked directly to the struggles cultural forms that would speak to services which meet the survival needs of the 1960's; the Civil Rights Movement, women's needs as well as celebrate her of many women. Health collectives, birth the free speech movement, and the anti• strength and resistance. This movement centers, referral and counseling programs, war movement. The resurging open rebel• has created many breakthroughs in poetry, legal aid projects and child care centers lion of Third World people with in the US music, films and art depicting the joyous all grew as women sought to provide col• made the oppressive and destructive na• side of women's experiences as well as lective solutions to their own needs. ture of Imperialism very visible to white the daily oppression which she must en• They provide women with a sense of control students. dure. Much of the theme in women's cul• over their own lives, and an alternative Struggles around racism and discrimin• ture is devoted to celebrating the new to the hierarchial forms which exist in ation developed across the country, and strength which women have found in lear• all of the institutions of capitalist student support for the Civil Rights ning to love one another. society. Movement developed organizational forms. Women artists, for the most part, work Unfortunately, one of the main draw• These organizations provided an essential in collective fashion and try to break backs of alternative institutions tends education, and spurred the reshaping of down the elitist separation between audi• to be the utopianism of the people for• progressive forces within the white left. ence and "star" which occurs in mainstream ming them. It is sometimes felt that wo• As Third World national forms of organi• culture. Because of the tight control men's needs can be met successfully out• sation developed, the focus of the white which monopolistic firms hold over "cul• side the system if we all "boycott" the left shifted from the Civil Rights Move• ture" in our society, these new art forms system and build our own. There is little ment to the free speech movement and the have not had wide distribution. Women's understanding of the fact that the imper• Vietnam War. culture is too threatening to the male ialist system pervades every aspect of supremist underpinnings of the multi-mil- women's lives, especially the lives of llon dollar music, film, and art Industry. Third World and working class women, and must be overthrown in order to create Women's Right to Self Defense humane institutions which meet the needs As the women's movement grew and as of all women. However, alternative in• more and more women began to redefine stitutions can be strategic when they in• themselves, the right of women to defend volve and serve a community of oppressed themselves against attack from men emerged people, are linked to a concrete strategy, as an important concept. Women organized and tied with a conscious group of revo• anti-rape groups, self defense classes, lutionaries . and political defense committees in sup• port of women under attack by the law for Socialist Feminism exerci.sing this right. Their work has The first major theoretical work on socialist feminism;"Socialist Feminism, done a great deal to bring a better under• a Strategy for the Women's Movement" standing of the most vicious aspects of (Hyde Park, Chicago Women's Lib 'n Union) scxlara, and a more sympathetic attitude amongst the people toward rape victims. called for the development of "mass so• Third world and working class women cialist feminist organizations" which have had to develop independence and would prepare the ground for the develop- determination simply in order to survive, iment of one national socialist feminist but for most of the white women's move• organization, Women's march on the Pentagon, f+ZiO/a ment, the passive and docile female has Socialist feminist unions were con• been the of ceived of aa an "intermediate strategy" The Women's "Libet-ation Movement: always upheld as "Ideal" society. White women's rebellion against -- a strategy for consolidating the The treatment which women were recei• political development and energies which ving from men on the left; their exploi• this image was greatly strengthened by the examples of our Third World sisters. the women's movement had unleashed. tation as sexual objects and their assign• continued on page 19 PAGE 14 basis of our only hope. There will be edu• organizational experience, discipline, com• THE VANGUARD PARTY cating, no consciousness, no revolutionary mitment to criticism/self-criticism and the absence of racism and national chauvinism CONT. FROM PAGE 5 culture, no forward movement, without these three elements working with the har• do not exist in sufficient degree among the mony of a healthy organism...To sum up, the white left at this time to provide a basis tasks confronting the party the particular existence of a political vanguard precedes for a multinational communist organization. insnediate task, the fulfilment of which the existence of any of the other elements Our practice with dedicated Third World com• constitutes the central point, and the ac• of a truly revolutionary culture," (Empha• rades convinces us that the rising trend is complishment of which ensures the success• sis added.) the building of anti-imperialist national ful of the other immediate tasks." movements within the U.S. At this early What is this task? We can see in our stage of revolution within the U.S. the The question now becomes what type of loeal araaGj liatenlng to the censored news dynamics of revolution are still very un• revolutionary party we should build. Some and talking to comrades throughout the clear. Blacks, Native Americans and Puerto comrades believe that we should build a re- country that the Blask Liberation Movement Rleans are all building antl-eolontal na• v^lutlonaify Pan-Afrleanist Partyj and othu continues to struggle everywhere. Struggles tional liberation movements. These move• ers a multinational communist party. As against police brutality, against job dis• ments all need socialist organizations to Lenin states the essence of revolutionary crimination, against racism in education provide leadership. History has taught us and for community control occur daily. Our science "is the concrete analysis of con• Struggle is as rich now as it was during crete conditions." The first type of com• that when there is not a Black socialist the turbulent 60's. However there is a rades believe that we should build a party organization to lead our struggle, the qualitive difference between our struggle based on self-determination, and coordina• national question is liquidated(eliminated) now and then. Struggles reach a certain tion of the struggle of African people and the right to self-determination for point and then fade away, are defeated or throughout the world. We believe that our Black people is sold down the river. Many are taken over by opportunists. They are organization should be Black. Black revo• of us feel that in the future a multinatixi- usually local in scope instead of national lutionaries from Malcolm X to George Jack• al communist party would be the ideal or• and are often isolated and uncoordinated son talk aboutthe need for us to self-re• ganizational form for revolution; articles from each other. This isolation means that liant and to take responsibility for our on councils of coordination and a domestic the same mistakes are being made over and own struggle, Inaddition, our struggle is communist international(comintern, vol. I over, and that news of successful techni• an anti-colonial one against imperialism, #5) hint at how we feel one might be built. ques and important lessons are not shared. and any revolutionary party must be pre• However we all feel that the material basis Further, the isolation and localism of the pared to lead our people in seccesslon if for such a party does not presently exist struggle means that the news of victories the people so choose. Yet, we must be real• among either the white left or masses. In elsewhere cannot boost our morale as it did istic when devising strategy for revolution. addition, the Third World national movements during the last decade. Finally, localism The struggle of African people throughout primary organizational need at this time means that the enemy can concentrate a the world for land, socialism and libera• is for socialist leadership based on nation• vastly superior force on our weaker forces tion is an integral part of the world front al forms of organization. We can only point because his network is not just local, against imperialism. Because of our heri• to recent history which shows that when tage, we have a special responsibility to such forms of organization exist( the BPP Obviously we must find a way to coordin• learn from and support these struggles. We is the leading example), both the national ate our forces and breakthrough the enemy have gained much encouragement from the movements and the revolution as a whole are imposed isolation. For a time organizations struggles of our African comrades through• qualitatively advanced. When organizations such as the BFF, SNCC and the Black Workers' out the world. However if we look at our such as this exist we have the most advan• Congress were able to provide leadership struggle in a hardheaded way, we will see ced and widest multinational unity based and coordinate our struggle. Many Black re• that materially our closest allies are not firmly on the principle of self-determina• volutionaries recognize that our central the sisters and brothers thousands of miles tion. can task is to build the organization that away but our Third World brothers andsis- Our central task is the building of a provide the necessary leadership and coord• ters who share the same oppression that we Black vanguard fighting party whose ideo• ination. This fact is not widely disputed do. We must have a Pan-Afrlclanist perspec• logy is scientific socialism. To help clar• among Black revolutionaries. However there tive when we analyse the world but we must ify this task we will briefly discuss the are disputes about what type of organiza• also realize that the defeat o£ U.S. imper• nature of such a party. We will attack four tion to build. Our comrades in the BLA call ialism from within will do more to liberate questions; for the building of a Black United Front. the African continent and the Caribbean Many call for the building of a Black Pan- than any other single factor. In addition 1. When is a vanguard party needed? Africanist Party and other see our central many comrades who call for a revolutionary 2. What are its tasks? task as building a multinational coamunist Pan-Africanist Party reject scientific soc• 3. What are the traits of a vanguard pvirtT. We believe that all of the above ialism. We must emphasize as George Jackson party? proposals speak to some aspect of Black and our comrades in the Black Liberation 4. Who belongs, and how is recruiting people's oppression and we understand where done? they are coming from. However we believe that the correct central task for Black re• volutionaries is the building of a Black Revolutionary Party whose ideology is sci• entific socialism. Let's examine the above proposals care• fully. We have many areas of unity with the BLA's "Message to the Black Liberation Move• ment." However our major area of disagree• ment is around their call for the building of a national united front. United fronts are mass revolutionary organizations, drawn from all revolutionary classes, pulled to• gether in one coordinated anti-imperialist front. Workers', women's, youth, student and other organizations comprise the front. The people's revolutionary army is also an integral and indispensable part of the front. we do not disagree with the building of the Black United Front. Infact we consi• der it the number one priority on the mass level. However since it is a mass front of all classes, many reactionary tendencies will be present in the front, especially in the early stages of a liberation strug• gle. What is needed is a thoroughly corn- Bitted, disciplined, experienced revolu• tionary core to build and give leadership to the mass struggle and build the United Front. In eveiy country where there was a profusion of different classes, both a r^ volutionary party and a national united front were necessary. For this large, com• plex country we believe that the Vietnamese model of a strong socialist party leading the national united front(which must truly involve the entire people), and the peoples liberation army is correct. Both our Viet• Army have repeatedly said that every suc• Grace and James Boggs deal with these sub• namese and Chinese comrades repeatedly cessful liberation struggle in the world jects extensively in their pamphlet, "The state that of these three areas, the revo• since the early 1900*3 has adopted scienti• Awesome Responsibility of Revolutionary lutionary party must be built first. As fic aociallom aa ita ideology. The analyti• Leadership". George Jackson states, "The psychological cal tool of dialectical and historical ma• When is a vanguard Party needed? It is effect of our secret army, the real deotruc terialism is one of the greatest weapons in needed when the contradictions within the tive effect it can have; and increasingly the arsenal of revolutionaries. We and our society have reached a point where only re• pcrYOolvc underground press with new empha• party must embrace this tool. volution will free an oppressed people. It sis 60 a 'aass style'; the popularization Finally there are the comrades that see is needed when the scope of a movement be• of me revolutionary culture and then the the building of a multinational communist comes so vast that spontaneity and wide elevating of it; both under the direction party as being our primary task. Again we mass organizations are no longer sufficient of an oltra^aggresslve political party— do not believe that this stand is based for coordination and leadership. Tn the th— thr*«, with no «le»eat nisslng, con- upon the concrete analysis of concrete con• —cf< CO tW rMllatic iasuea fora tbe ditions. Extensive practice with white re- volutlooariea has convinced us that the CONT. ON PAGE 18 SEIZE THE TIME p. 15

were created, women led the way in PALESTINIAN WOMEN the forming of organizations to en• The participation of women in the sure survial. They included. The struggle for the National Liberation of Arab Child Welfare House, The Arab WORLD Palestine has a long history. They Women~'s Association, The Arab wo• stood with Palestinian men in resist• men's Union of Lebanon, The Red Cre• ing the British Mandate in 1920. In scent Society and the Association for REVOLUTION 1929, a convocation of a 300 member wo• the Support of Wounded Militants. men's conference in Jeraealum was call• During the period of 1948 to 1967, ed to demand the repeal of the Balfour Palestinian women in occupied Palestine, Declaration and the termination of the like other non-Jews were not allowed to Zionist immigration. The conference form any kind of independent political gave birth to the Palestine Arab's organizations. Most joined the Israeli Womens Union, which chose as one o£ Communist Party, and during this period its primary tasks the care of the child• played a prominent role in the clandes• tine organization Al-Ard. Palestinian ren of political prisoners and of those enable them to participate in all areas women joined the ranks of the pan-Arab who had died in the struggle. During of social, political and economic life. political parties, including Baath and the rebellion and strike of 1936, wo• In addition to its educational work, the Arab Nationalist movement. Their men smuggled guns to the guerilla for• the GUPW places special emphasis on mil• efforts were directed toward the broad• ces, as well as participating in pub• itary activity, having started its first er Arab National Liberation struggle lic strikes and demonstrations women's military training camp in Syria against colonialism and imperialism as "Sahrat Al-Ughuwan" (The Daisy) was in late 1969. Training camps for well as for Arab unity, as a step to formed in Jagga in 1948, This org• the liberation of Palestine. female militia units include women from anization of women carried food, guns, the age of 6 to over 50. and ammunition to the rebels, as well In 1967, with the defeat of the reg• Women have created mass popular as digging trenches, erecting barricad• ular Arab armies, a drastic change took social organizations for the provision es and taking responsibility for the place. Hope for the liberation of of material support for the revolution, medical services. During the 1967 Palestine shifted to the Palestinian providing support for the families of War, organized units of women militia commando organizations. Simultaneous• those who have been killed or captured were involved in military activity ly, Palestinian women became active in and to develop and preserve the rich equal to men. the Palestinian resistance to Israeli Palestinian folkloric heritage. After the war of 1967 and in the occupation. The practice and experience of the wake of the eviction of more than a On the social plane, the General Women of Palestine, shows us what is million Palestinians from their homes, Union of Palestinian Women, formed in true of the women's movement in all Palestinian women found themselves, in 1965, is the most active. Affiliated oppressed nations: it is directly tied most cases for the first time in need with the PLO, the GUPW contributes ef• to and develops out of the overall of employment in order for their fam- fectively to the development and rais• struggle for the National Liberation ilies to survive. As more refugees ing of women ' s consciousness to better of their peoples. The Popular Movement for the Liberation ANGOLA:SUPPORT THE MPLA maxn danger today. They are a young, strong (as compared to the declining power of the of Angola(MPLA) has recently won a civil Portuguese, a national unity government was U.S.) expanding power. They are particular• war in Angola. Their war against the Na• formed between the three movements. At this ly dangerous because they hide under the tional Liberation Front of Angola(FLNA), point the Soviet Union greatly increased sheep skin of socialism. Capitalism has the Union for the Total Independence of the supply and quality of weapons to the been fully restored inside the USSR. Its Angola(UNlTA)J South African regulars and MPLAJ and the civil war started. The USSR economy has become the most militarized in Euro/u.S. mercenaries. Soviet advisors and supplied extremely sophisticated weapons the world. Along with the U.S. the Soviet Cuban regulars fought on the side of the such as tanks, helicopters and rocket Union makes 607o of all the arms sales in MPLA, This war was an exceedingly vicious launchers which had never been supplied to the world. Like any other capitalist power one that caused the deaths of more Angolan liberation force during the war against the the USSR must become an imperialist power. people than the entire liberation war a- Portuguese. South Africa invaded on the Its economy is expanding rapidly as the gainst the Portuguese government. For a side of the FLNA and UNITA, Cuban troops Soviet Union is building military bases time this war deeply divided Africa, and Intervened on the side of the MPLA, and thrdughout the world to protect its inter• much of the progressive forces of the world. the civil war reached full scale. Eventu• ests. It dictates such items as what price Now, much of the world recognises and sup• ally the MPLA and Cuban forces defeated a potential colony may sell its crop to the ports the People's Republic of Angola. both UNITA and FLNA, The mercenary South Soviet Union(this happened with Egypt's Within the U.S. the left is still split on African troops fled to just short of their cotton crop) and broke the Arab oil boy• the question of whether or not to support border. The MPLA consolidated state power cott. Part of the USSR's retreat to capit• the MPLA and the People's Republic. There in the People's Republic of Angola. are essentially two positions: alism is the liquidation of class struggle First we must understand who is the 1,Support the MPLA because: within the USSR and abroad. Its policy of main enemy of the Angolan and African mas• not relying on the armed might of the peo• a. The USSR is a socialist country and is ses and what is the main danger to the An• helping to advance world revolution through ple led directly to the overthrow of pro• golan people. The main enemy of the African gressive governments of Portugal and Chile its intervention in Angola. people, the power that oppresses most Afri• b. The USSR is an imperialist power but where the main forces were Moscow domina• can people is U.S, imperialism and its ra• ted Communist Parties. In addition the the MPLA is the best hope of the Angolan cist allies, the governments of Zimbabwe people presently. USSR has proved that it is no friend of the (Rhodesia) and Azania(South Africa). South African people. It refused to help Tanzania 2.Do not support the MPLA because: Africa, a neo-imperialist power like U.S. build the Tanzam railway(China did), it has a. The USSR is an imperialist power and clients Israel, Chile, Brazil and Iran, is aided reactionary governments in Africa the MPLA is probably its puppet. the main obstacle to the liberation of the while subverting the revolutionary forces b. The MPLA is a communist movement and remainder of South Africa. In so much as of ZANU in Zimbabwe. It is also building so are its allies and communist ideology the existence of the apartheid regime of military bases in East Africa . is bad for Africa. South Africa threatens the existence of Since our ideology is Scientific Social• every liberation movement and progressive Because of the nature of the USSR, many ism, we must reject the last position(2b) government in southern Africa and is devel• groups within the U.S. refuse to support out of hand. Nkrumah, Cabral, FRELIMO, ZANIJ oping nuclear weapons, it is the main dan• the MPLA. We believe that this is an incor• etc. are all socialist individuals and ger to the people of Africa. rect stance. First of all the MPLA has con• tinually stated that it is an independent movements. In analyzing Angola we must an• Recognizing that the government of South movement that will allow no foreign mili• alyze from the viewpoint of what position Africa is the main danger to the African tary bases on its soil. Anti-revisionist is in the interests of the masses of peo• masses we cannot support any liberation revolutionary forces such as ZANU and ple. The Angolan masses are the ones who movement that cooperates with them. Conse• FRELIMO in Africa and North Korea in Asia have suffered over the past several months quently we cannot support either UNITA or recognize the People's Republic of Angola, of superpower inspired civil war. the FLNA, From the beginning the FLNA has China is the only progressive govurnmenl in All three movements claimed to best re• been one of the most reactionary forces on the world that does not support the MPLA. present the Angolan people. All claimed the continent. However many felt that UNITA It is clear that the best hope for the peo• decisive roles in the liberation war that was a progressive organization which was ple of Angola presently lies with the MPLA. was begun by the MPLA. In fact only UNITA non-aligned and deserved support. The Afri• The MPLA will provide a secure western and MPLA fought the Portuguese. The MPLA can Liberation Support Committee even with• flank for the struggle of African libera• bore the brunt of the fighting during the drew support for the MPLA and gave support tion movements against the apartheid regimes liberation war. The FLNA was founded by to UNITA. However Savimbi's past associa• of southern Africa. Instead of artificially Roberto Holden, brother-in-law to Mobutu, tions with western interests and the FLNA isolating the MPLA and thus driving them president of Zaire and murderer of Congo appear shaky. Whatever UNITA's background, into the arms of the Soviets(Julius Nyerere patriot Patrice Lumiimba . Both Holden and its alliance with the FLNA and South Africa already has said that the best way to in• his brother-in-law have been on the CIA wrecked all possibility of a national unity sure that the PRA becomes a Soviet colony payroll for years. The FINA has received government. As Samora Machel of Mozambique is to isolate them from support), we should many millions of dollars from the CIA over stated J there can be no unity with traitors. support the people of Angola in their strug• the past several years. It is rabidly anti- The remaining question la whether we gle against all forms of imperialism. We communist and has only fought the social• should support the MPLA and the People's should most strongly condemn the USSR's po• ist, people's oriented MPLA. Savimbi, the Republic of Angola, Just because we do not licy of stirring up troubles between liber• head of UNITA, left the FLNA denouncing support the other two movements does not ation groups and subversion throughout Afri• Holden as a CIA tool. The OAU withdrew all mean that we give our support to the MPLA ca. But we must also reject the Chinese po• support for the FLNA in 1968, UNITA'a ideo• automatically. The main issue of whether licy of not relying on the Angolan people logical stance is all things to all people. to support the MPLA lies around their rela• to guard themselves from imperialist dogs When appealing to western powers they take tionship with the USSR. Some believe that of oil stripes and in effect, trying to a militantly anti-communist line. When the USSR is a socialist country and their isolate the Angolan people from the support talking to U.S. leftists they become fer• relation with the MFLA should be welcomed, they need to fight imperialism. vent Maoists, In reality Savimbl has ttas Others bellsve that the soviet union is an to both the rightwing elements in Portu• imperialist country which is up to no good We must support the People's Republic of gal and the CIA. wherever it is in the world. We believe Angola and fight all imperialist attempts After the liberation war against the that in the world, the Soviet Union is the to turn Angola back into a colony I filing suit to maintain affirmative action achieve and maintain equal employment for in layoffs while another group is on the them. other side fighting to maintain seniority 6. Older workers too are systematically in layoffs. CLASS discriminated against in employment. They We have had some practice in this area have perhaps the hardest time getting recently in several places, and would like trained for new jobs as they open yet STRUGGLE to share some general concepts: there are usually no affirmative action provisions to help them. Because of their 1. Identify demands that unite rather than experience they are valuable participants divide, usually the majority of workers in in the workplace struggle if we pay at• lower paying jobs and with low seniority tention to their special demends. are women an<3/or third world, kut there are also some white men. Institutionalised Realistically, the only way to build a racism and sexism affects the whole group, militant mass movement to fight against such as no training programs or departmen• layoffs and cutbacks is to isolate and tal seniority lists. Demand no layoffs; de• expose the racist and sexist backward ele• mand training programs open to everyone. ments in union leadership and among the rank and file. Our experience is that TW 2. The principle of seniority cannot be leadership is key and non-racist white abandoned. Many TW workers and white women support and leadership is necessary to have gained seniority, though in the worst insure success. The factors missing are jobs. The use of seniority is a victory usually respect for third world leadership won by workers after long years of hard and non-racist white leadership. If we struggle. The principle is important in don't start fighting this battle in a non- providing job security and taking arbi• liberal way we might well be faced with the trary power away from management. In one prospect of many more Bostons, and a repeat LABOR ORGANIZING union, the demand was made to promote wo• of the working class race riots of the ear• men and non-whites to jobs deficient in ly twentieth century. and Affirmative Action those groups on the basis of seniority. Even where there is no serious threat of with this economic crisis affirmative 3. Focus the blame on management, and make layoff this issue can tear a union or a action versus seniority has become an them pay the price. Though white workers workplace apart. If handled correctly, it explosive issue in the workplace. Compe• and men have received preferential treat• can unite a significant percentage of tition among workers has intensified as ment, the guilty parties are the employers, white men with women, older workers, and promotions are choked off and layoffs the government, and the corrupted union TW workers in demands that explicitly increase. The recent small gains in em• bureaucrats. reject white and male supremacy. Threats ployment by women and third world people Of layoffs must be rejected, and met with are swiftly melting away. Those white men 4. We cannot sacrifice the gains of the a radical critclsm and radical alternative. in the lower paying jobs feel that their late 60's and early 70's. This must be an Socialized industry, a government guaran• own future is hopeless and too often blame uncompromisable position. We must always tee of decent work for all at union wages, the TW and women vTorlcers . struggle primarily around the demands of and redirecting the economy— as the cri• the most oppressed, and organize workers sis hits home more and more workers are In many instances dedicated workplace act• under less intense attack to do the same. ready to demand these things, if the or• ivists have fought against racist program ganizers can provide the strategy to un• and personnel cutbacks. In response, sly 5. Third world women must be seen as ite and the tools to act. bosses and managers say gleefully, "OK, you doubly penalized. White women and TW men tell us. Do we lay off the white male work• as well as white men have too often dis• STT / A LUTA CONTINUA! ers with twenty years seniority or the new• regarded these sisters. We should demand ly hired Black (Latino, women) youth from that in setting affirmative action goals the inner city?" The resulting bitter stru• and priorities these workers be placed in , ggle between the different sectors of work• a special catagory, that their status not ers much amuses the bosses. At one GM plant be disguised by merging them with another on the west coast, one set of "radicals" is group, and that a committment be made to

of regular civil service workers. Increa• THE ADDRESSES FOR THE NATIONAL CETA ORGAN• singly, the Ford Administration, private IZING COMMITTEE ARE C/0: CETA Organizing industry, and unions such as the UAW are -CETA WORKERS' ACTION COMMITTEE directing funds to private industry- pro• BOX 231, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, 11224 viding another bonanza for this sector. The Comprehensive Employment and Train• -CETA STEWARD COUNCIL In the public sector, CETA workers are ing Act (CETA) is a federal program sup• 715 N 1st St, San Jose Ca 95112 often placed in the same status as extra posedly intended to provide jobs for un• help workers. In all areas, CETA workers employed workers and training for the dis• TASKS FACING CETA ORGANIZERS are often placed in a lower status thro• advantaged. The 800,000 workers hired un• Final decisions about the future of ugh a phoney 'work experience' or trainee der CETA are at the center of the crisis CETA and federal employment programs in designation, denied union representation of the urban poor, the crisis of unemploy• general will be made in late fall of this and equal pay. This is nothing but union ment, the crisis of public sector cutbacks year - just before the November elections busting, pure and simple. Both of these and layoffs, and the crisis of US imperi• - at a time when massive demonstrations practices are violations of the CETA law. alism as it collapses on the backs of US are anticipated. We have the time and the Furthermore, when non-CETA workers are workers. CETA workers are a vital link to basis of make the abstract demand for jobs laid off. Department of Labor regs direct bridge the false separation that today ex• into a living force by that time, to focus that they bump CETA co-workers into un- ' ists between labor and community organ• on the inadequacies of the CETA program, employment and assume the CETA jobs them• izing. They are among the most oppressed to build very strategic working class selves. New York CETA organizers are pur• public sector workers - and the public alliances of diverse groups with sim• suing a suit against this regulation. In sector is exploding with rank and file ilar interests, and to lay the foun• simmiation, CETA does not provide more jobs activism. dations for a nation wide caucus of or new services - as a rule it is a cover In many cities across the US CETA both CETA and other public sector wor• for a real attack on the pay, benefits, workers are organizing themselves - us• kers. We must begin now. Some necess• rights, union power, and unity of the work• ually against the union bureaucrats as ary steps are: force . well as against the employers. They are 1) Build local and regional CETA organ• CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN CETA WORKERS AND fighting for union representation, for izations around action, that ties local NOM-CETA CO-WORKERS equal pay and rights with other workers problems Into a broad focus on a new Non-CETA workers feel threatened alrea• doing similar work, and against layoffs. full public employment program. Local dy by layoffs; when a CETA workers fills C'snmunity crganiaations such as unions, organiaera should pay attention to CETA a vacancy they had hoped to promote into, health centers, co-ops, tenants' unions, workers in the public sector, the pri• etc are organizing to demand CETA posi• or scabs on a strike because the union vate non-profit service sector, in pri• tions. CETA worXers are organizing re• fails to organize and represent them, then vate industry, to unemployed workers, cipients of public services to fight some real antagonisms surface. Because the and also to community organiztions cutbacks in childcare, education, etc. CETA workforce has more than twice as many which can be organized to demand CETA Unemployed workers are organizing to oppressed nationality workers- non white jobs. All organizers should make efforts demand CETA jobs. More and more atten• workers- as the rest of the workforce, and to break out of a narrow, small area tion is being focused on the national In some cities more women than men, these mentality, to adopt the overall perspect• arena, where final decisions will be made tendencies are linked to white and male ives and build the broad alliances needed late this year on the Status o£ jobs pro• supremacist attitudes and championed by to produce a truly powerful mass movement. grams through September, 1977. A National the backward sisrasnts m tne union. 2) Link up CETA organizations in differ• Ceta Organizing committee was formed Jan. The task of the organizer is to unite ent regions. Build the National CETA Org• 31, 1976, at the National Hard Times Con• the more progressive elements to win over anizing Committee with common demands, ference by CETA and unemployed groups the majority, to defeat these backward co-ordinated timetables for action, etc. ideas. There are fundamentally common in• from New York, San Francisco, Oakland, 3) Focus on issues that build solidarity terests between CETA workers and their and San Jose. A national communications between nationalities - such as defense co-workers- but the basis for organizing network is quickly growing, coordinated of the immigrant worker. The prospects unity between CETA workers and related froa the two coasts. for success in this campaign will not be CBTA is firs^ and £oniost a sham. To non-CETA workers is mainly anti—seifism and good unleaa white organicera take reapon- make.it into a "TIPA for the 70s" would internationalism. Practice has shown that sability for the consolidation of a truly be to turn it into its opposite. The mon• •the majority can be organized to this internationaliat force inside the white ey is now being used aainly by local gov- Stance- including very significant numbers working class. eri—nts to stvpleaant their own tight of higher paid workers, "professional" budgets. CBth worlters are used in place workers, and white men in general. STT/ And the struggle continues! HARD TIMES CONFERENCE ^BEHIND THE LINES^ article). At the same time they ignored Soviet support of the Lon Nol regime in A Hard Times National conference was Cambodia and the economic colonialism that held in Chicago during the end of January. the Soviet Union is establishing through• The call came from Prarie Fire Organizing out the African continent. CominittQe (PFOC) a white anti-imperialist BLACK CAUCUS organization with its roots in the anti• By far the most serious error was the war and women's movements. The purpose racism that was present in the conference, of the conference was to bring together particluarly regarding the Black Liberation mass activists from throughout the U.S. struggle. While there was space provided to discuss,programs and tactics to com• within the schedule to deal with Native bat the bourgeoisie imposed hard times. American, Puerto Rican and Chicano strug• It was organized by a"Hard Times Nat• gles, there was absolutely no space ional Board, composed of PFOC cadre, re• provided to deal with the Black Liber• presentatives from national Third World ation Struggle. At every point the key organizations such as CASA (General Bro• role of Black leadership, in labor, ed• therhood of Workers), Puerto Rican Social• ucation, health care, tenant and com• ist Party, AIM, Republic of New Africa munity struggles was ignored. The lack and local groups such as United Black of Black participation was a clear sign Workers. Communist organizations such as of the lack of serious effort to involve the Independent Federation of Marxist- Black organizations in the organizaing Leninists were also represented. The process and the serious divisions in board put forward three demands for the additonal meetings. Otherwise excellent many local areas between Black and white conference. 1) Jobs or Income for All, at leadership was impaired by being tired. Hard Times leadership. An example of the a living wage, under safe conditions, with• The discussion of the Bill of Rights all tone was the failure to address the need out discrimination in hiring, with free day Saturday stood in the way of talking to defend Third World communities from child care on demand and equal pay for equal about problems of practice and of draw• racist, fascist attacks-an issue which is work. 2) Stop Picking Our Pockets, Roll ing general lessons that would be useful often primary in the communities of all back and freeze prices, put a moratorium in forming campaigns to fight hard times. oppressed nationalities. In short, the on debts for the unemployed. 3) Adequate It was not until Sunday that workshops conference had what was come to be called were able to deal with racism or with Social Services for Our Communities, Stop a "white perspective" -it had a white nat• the cutbacks, respect our right to good the broader question of how concretely to ional chauvinist perspecitve. health care; daycare, schools, clean nei• connect the class and national questions. ghborhoods, and adequate welfare. Security was also a problem, whether In response. Black delegates to the conference formed a Black caucus that The conference was supported by a it was in the plenary sessions, workshops struggled over what correct political line large number of mass groups including or caucus meetings, disruptions were ser• welfare, tenant and labor union caucuses. ious. The disrupters fell into two main to take in response to the conference. The caucus was handicapped by the lack of In addition many Third World organizations groups. One seemed to be conscious ag• supported the conference. ents whose comments were designed to des• participation of Black National Board HARD TTME2 Blt-L OP RIGHTS troy principled political struggle. Many members who were attempting to deal with Prior to the conference, a committee of this group were probably police agents. racism of the National Board at the same of the National Board issued a Hard Times The second group belong to trotskyite time. After much political struggle, the Bill o£ Rights, This dooument was to set organisations. Their rufusal to recongniae Caucus presented three resolutions to the the political tone for the meeting and the progressive content o£ nationalist conference: 1) A call to support a Black delineate which areas the workshops were consciousness, whether in Vietnam or China workers Conference. 2) A call on the Hard to cover. Many activists and organisa• or within the U.S. seriously disruptecl the Times Conference to support the struggle tions who had been working to build the conference. When a women was doing food for independence in the Cush District conference saw this document as a step service organizing in the Southwest re• of Mississippi as led by the Provisional backwards. It failed to see the economic quested guidance on how to connect nat• Government of the Republic of New Africa. ^.crisis as an imperialist crisis that waa ional and class considerations. Trots told 3) A criticism of the Hard Times Bill of not temporary and to expose corrupt trade her that the only course was instant rev• Rights lack of attention to the racism of union bureaucrats as absolutely necessary olution. It would seem that the con• U.S. imperialism and a call for the in• crime partners of the bourgeoisie. It did ference leaders would have learned the clusion of "the right of self-determina• not see the staite as a ruling class tool lessons of the last few years, would have tion for Black People, the right to con- designed to intensify the Hard Times for banned Trots on both ideological and prac• stituteourselves as a separate people to poor and woriking people. The most ser• tical grounds, and would have made ser• control our own lives and destiny. Only ious errors of this document were its ious efforts to contain the other dis• when this right is won can there be dev• racism and sexism. The fact that the rupters. eloped a lasting unity of Black and White, crisis hits Third World people and work• and only upon the uncompromising recogni• ing women hardest was not brought out.- POLITICAL STRUGGLE tion of this right can a present unity in Although it mentioned the struggles of These logistical problems could have struggle be consituted." handicapped people, it did not have sec• been tolerated if a spirit of nonracist FUTURE OF THE HARD TIMES MOVEMENT tions that dealt with the struggles of political stnuggle had existed at the The future of the Hard Times movement oppressed nationalities or women. No• conference. Unfortunately the right er• rests with how effectively the local com• where was the demand for self-determina-^ rors that existed in the Bill of Rights mittees and the National Board can elim• tion of oppressed internal colonies raised. were carried over into the conference. inate right errors, racism and opportunism, Local Hard Times Committees and IPhird Just as the struggles of women were to- and initiate criticism and self-criticism World people raised these objections to kenly recongized in the Bill of Rights, In particular, revolutionaries, communists women were not given space in the con• and their organizations must study what the national board in an extremely ser• ference schedule to deal with their st• role they should play in united front and ious way. They were told that the sect• ruggles, resulting in the formation of a coalition work. PFOC'S positon to liquid• ions on women and oppressed nationalities women's caucus. On the first night, the ate its role as an organization in the would be rewritten before the conference. otherwise excellent Tribunal section did Between seventeen and twenty-two hun• conference was an extremely serious error. not focus on the oppression of women. It created a partial vacumn among the dred people came to the conference. Most Lack of the analysis of the state as a of these were poor^and working class mass white activists at the conference and help• tool of class oppression caused the con-- ed righist elements to successfuly put activists. Over five hundred people part• ference to not take up the issue of re• icipated in the labor workshops alone. racist and sexist proposals forward. It pression and political prisoners as a was in itself an organizational position Latinos were fairly well represented at whole. As often happens in the left, the conference (due to the efforts of not to organize. Since the conference was white activists tended to ignore the CASA and the PSP), but Blacks and Asians in a sense an expression of PFOC's basic question of political prisoners, despite were seriously underrepresented. The lack strategy, we hope that the events of the the call by Third World speaker after of Black participation was particularly conference have helped PFOC do a criticism disturbing as the meeting was held with• speaker demanding that the issue be de• of that strategy. in a short distance of two of the largest alt with. Simllarily the conference did Despite the several errors of the con• Black concentrations withing the U.S., not deal with repressive leglislation like ference, there is grounds for unity and the South and West sides of Chicago, the Rodino Bill or SB 1 (despite the fact implementation of the action proposals. whioh have long histories o£ militant, that SB 1 would outlaw everything from The majority of the delegates came to the strikes, dessent, freedom of speech and conference for the sole purpose of develop• grassroQt struggle. Despite the lack of conferences such as this one). Generally ing serious stategies t

Membership

Lastly we have to deal with the member• ship o£ the vanguard party. We have made it clear that the success and effectiveness of the vanguard party rests on the capability and discipline of its membership. It has been repeatedly said that militants within the party must be committed veterans of the Black liberation movement who have been tested in struggle, they must be complete• ly commietted to the political line of the party, and they must be committed to un• ceasing struggle with themselves and each other. Otherwise the necessary discipline (voluntary unity of will) would not be pre• sent. The Boggses elaborate on this point, "The fact is that, ever since the emergence Molcolm X addressing Harlem rally in June 1963. Spread of his naHonalist ideas was significant factor in civil rights victories of the Black Power stage in 1966, serious of 1960s. political differences over the meaning of Black power have been inevitable. Because these differences have not been clarified politically, they have tended to appear personal, and the movement has declined ac• early 70's many felt that the African Lib• command." We have all seen the confusion, cordingly ,,, ,What the black movement has eration Support Committee would be able to isolation and weaknesses of our movement not understood is that the clarification eventually provide coordinated anti-imperi• when this leadership is not prsent. of political differences through ideologi• alist leadership to the Black ^.iberation Secondly the party must be able to train cal struggle by no means implies there Movement, It soon became clear that ALSC its successors to its leadership, There are should be disunity of action..,,The crea• had too many diverse ideological influences many casualties in a liberation movement. tion or encouragement of a United Front or an<3 was too clumsy organizationally to pro• The Panthers have vividly shown us what Fronts to implement this unity in action vide that leadership. At this point our happens to an organization which has not and the development of the proper relations struggle needs a tightly disciplined ideo• conscientiously trained its lower and mid• between the revolutionary party and the logically unified core to provide leader• dle range leadership to take over if the United Front are critical to the success ship. As the Boegses state. "Today black top level leade ship becomes incapable of of any revolution. But the first step in revolutionaries are confronted with a con• leading. The organization shatters and the ereating correct relations is a clear dis• tradiction very similar to that faced by_ leadership of the movementdisintegrates. tinction between the purposes and organiza• Lenin when he first began to lay the foun• Many organizations recognize this need ab• tion of the venguard party and the purposes dations Of the vanguard party. Ever since stractly but fail to train their membership and organization of the United Front, 1964 the black masses in every Northern for leadership until it is too late. 'We must first divide and then unite' city have been either in or on the verge Lastly a revolutionary vanguard party Lenin kept saying. 'Better, fewer but bet• of spontaneous eruption. Every year mil- must be prepared to seize power. The main ter'. A revolutionary party cannot be built lior "ick people, and particulariv differences in fighting for revolution and on the quicksand of ideological confusion,. , _ Blac- , areiBade ready for anyti . fighting for reforms is that in revolution It is better to start a vanguard party from by the worsening conditions in every black you fight for the seizure of power. This scratch with the serious few who are com• community, the obvious inability of white flows from an understanding that only by mitted to the perspective of making the re• power to cope with the critical social pro• fighting for power are people placed in a volution that is necessary to meet the blems of an advancing technology, the mush• position to decide for themselves how to needs of the deepest layers of the Black rooming of white counter-revolutionary order and better their lives. This is an community than with many assorted persons groupings and the growing division among especially critical task for a Black van• who are all going in different directions whites and with the ruling class. guard party to grasp because of the real and who are therefore bound to split at the possibility that our people might choose Which course to pursue to overcome the moment of crisis, just when the need is for crisis? As in Lenin's day(and in his own seccesslon. maximum organizational strength and unity. words), 'the movement has already produced This does not mean that those who cannot or enormous numbers of people...who desire to Characteristics will not accept the ideology and discipline protest, who are ready to render all the of the vanguard party cannot play a role in assistance they can in the fight against The traits of a revolutionary vanguard the movement or in concrete struggles for absolutism....At the same time we have no party have been often discussed. We will liberation that will culminate in the tak• people, because we have no leadera..no ta• briefly discuss them here. First as Mao and ing of power. But their place is in the lented organizer capable of organizing ex• the Vietnamese often say, "the political various organizations of mass struggle, not tensive and at the same time uniform and line of the party is most important," If the vanguard party," harmonious work that would give employment the party is not ideologically correct, it to all forces(WHAT IS TO BE DONE?) The has no chance of success. Secondly, the We present these viewpoints in the scope of spontaneous activity among the party must have its roots deep among the spirit of unity-criticism-unity, Let us black masses has been growing far beyond people. As every revolutionary from Lenin come together on the basis of firm ideo• the capacity of the black movement to pro• to Cabral has commented that if you isolate logical unity and criticism/self-criticism. vide revolutionary political leadership." yourself from the masses, you set yourself It is the historical obligation of our gen• up for destruction and more importantly are eration of Black people to finally come to• completely incapable of determining politi• How is such a party built? "...that a gether so that we can build a better life cal line and providing leadership. As Mao revolutionary party can only be built by a) for ourselves and children. As the comrades says, the correctness of a political line uncQasliig ideological struggle, b) strict In the Black Liberation Army say, "The is determined primarily through its accep• discipline, c) organized activity of every sooner begun, the sooner done" I tance by the masses and its effectiveness. member, and d) merciless sol£-critidsm," A Luta Continua Thirdly the party must have freedom of dis• The last point is extremely Important and BUILD THE BLACK REVOLUTIONARY PARTY! often ignored. While trying to build a new cussion, and iron discipline in practice, society for Black people we must ruthlessly These are accomplished by having thorough• purge ourselves of the bad tendencies and ly committed members who are well tested in political Ideas that we all have inherited the struggles of Black people. Internally from being raised in a decadent bourgeois, the methods of criticism/self-criticism and racist and sexist society. Only through democratic centralism arc the mechanisms conscientious criticism and self-criticism for accomplishing discipline through dis- can we repudiate our harmful traits and cu9Slon, Democratic centralism aates that at all times the minority is subordinate build an ever strengthening and correct Please see insert for The Central Task: political line. to the majority, lower bodies to higher bodies and the organization to the central committee. This allows majority rule and Tasks centralized leadership. Practically this A vanguard revolutionary party has es- works by having the fullest and most re• Principles of Unity, sentially three tasks. One, it must be able lentless ideological struggle before deci• to give leadership to all segments o£ the sions are made. Then when the decision is movement including the people's army and made, a completely unified front is put the national united front. The party is into action. Decisions are binding on all the conclusion of this article the cement of the revolution that keeps all members. This type of discipline is only segments and activities coordinated and in possible through free will. The only way in phase. The party is the organizational ma• which individuals will submit themselves to nifestation of Mao's slogan, "politics in this discipline is by full committment to SEIZE THE TIME p. 19 that sees the mass organisations such as STRATEGY Continued from page 12 the farmers, womens and youth associations Criticism of the Strategy for empioyed can begin to be resolved through as being the bridge that links the Party building mass bases. with the masses of people. Concretely this Revolution article— from Community childcare organisations be• means that it is the mass organizations come the basis whereby we bring working that draw in ths advanced masses and "back• SEIZE THE TIME women together through fighting for their bone" elements and the most active, dedi• The staff is self-critical of the pro• right to childcare, consciousness raising cated and selfless of these people become cess through which this article came to groups and concrete mutual aid projects cadre of the party and lead the work of be printed in the paper. We did not put to see the commoness of their oppression the mass organizations. politics firmly in command from the beg• and begin to find ways to fight against the task o£ the communist party is to unify inning . When we issued a general invita• it. Once their primary problems of chlld- the struggles o£ the mass organizations tion for women to work on the issue,we eare and housework begin to be resolved, and through a theoretical understanding did not define a basis of political unity workplace demands become more central In of imperialism develop a concrete strategy for the group. When the group got together their lives. They then have the support to lead the masses to revolution. However, the staff women working m It did not of their community organiaatians led b^ it is only through practice that we can push £or the group to de-velop principles communists (and later the support of the 1)accumulate the data necessary to develop of unity. We worked under tKe assumption people's army) when they organize at the a strategy and 2)implement this strategy. that most of the woemn had basic politi• workplace. In linking the two struggles This happens largely through the work of cal unity with Seize the Time because they nave the basis to fight beyond narrow cadre within mass organization; they pro• they said that they did. Had we tried to economist demands to revolutionary demands vide revolutionary leadership by being im• define that agreement in the beginning, around concretely seizing the means of pro• mersed in the struggles of the masses. our study together could have been more duction in order to serve the people. We must find ways to bring the cadre focused on the areas of disagreement. Of the different sectors in the econ• together who are presently developing in We disagree with the following posi• omy, service sectors are strategic because mass organizations to unite our struggles tions in the article: that imperialism of the way their work "serving the people" and together take our understanding to a exists only outside the US borders; that directly contradicts the way they are or• higher level, develop a strategy and take the divisions in the working class and ganized for profits. on the task of building a party that has unemployment come principally out of In the workplace we must organize around its roots in the masses. We must look to the use of machinery, that economism and working conditions and the quality of goods mass organizations in order to build the ultra-leftism are a problem only in the or services produced. This links up with communist party for it is here that revo• workplace and come out of the conditions the way community institutions serve the lutionaries are, and whiere they are al• of employment rather than political line; people. We can see how this works using ready being thrown into leadership positions that collectivity is developed primarily health as an example. As our community health and developing a firm working class anti- through alternative institutions; and care services grow, as more and more people imperialist line. that the primary aspect of the relation• become involved in our mass health educa• It is communists who must lead the ship between Third World and white working tion programs, preventative health screening struggle to unite the community and work• class women is their common economic need. programs and so on, we begin to see how place and who must make tactical decisions This position ignores, for example, the we need to have control over highly devel• as to how our mass organizations attack way in which white women are being used oped medical equipment and services only the State. We must lead the defense of our to undermine affirmative action programs available in hospitals. We see how we have community organizations when they are th for Third world people. to unite with hospital workers to fight threatened by the State, as they will be, While we agree that women and margin• for community control of hospitals. On the and and eventually lead the armed support ally unemployed people (although we don't Other hand. In tnelr struggles around better of the workplace struggles. It is in this include in this their analysis of unem• movement that the embryo of a peoples army staffing and patient care hospital workers ployed petit-bourgeois students),are leading must unite with community health organiza• can develop. forces in the white working class^ the tions as we understand how the issues o£ As our practice grows, so will our lead• transition in the article from that pos• staffing and patient care can only be spoken ership. It is important to begin to form ition to those forces leading the seizure to by a radical reorganization of the way cadre groups that cross different areas of state power ignores the leading role health care ie dele\rered. of practice. We also need to recognize dif• Of Third world workers, we strongly dis• THE COMMUNIST PRRTV ferent levels of leadership within those agree with the article's position on par• We need to build a communist party of groups and develop leadership groups tha1^ ty building, particularly bsoauss it sub• practical revolutionaricQ. We must follow maintain strong ties with their original stitutes immersion in mass struggle for the lead of the Vietnamese Workers Party collectives to begin to form a democratic developing political line. centralist organization. We agree with the need to organize The Women's Movement Today around childcare, to fight for social services which meet people's needs (food, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13 healthcare, etc.) and the need to organ• not really been reached by our efforts. Socialist feminists committed themselves ize in the community as well as the work• This includes Third World communists as to working with and among women for an place. We also agree that unity between well as some feminists." "The problem end to the oppression of women, and see recipients and workers in those services of who we reach is connected to what we the struggle for socialism as central to is key to organizing in that area. want these people to do. We have never that. The "Strategy" article is the only ar• been particularly clear on this."(Berk• ticle in this paper which deals with a In the summer of 1975 a national social• ley Oakland Women's Union, West Coast program for organizing women. The crit• ist feminist conference was held to try to Soc/fem Gonf.) further solidify socialist feminism as a icisms we have of it need to be developed strategy. It was there put forward as A strategy must provide an analysis in a future article with an opposing pos• "the strategy for revolution." of what stage of revolution we are in, ition on program. We understand that the The socialist feminist unions have what the primary area of struggle for political unity in the women's study group involved many women in trying to develop this period must be, and what role each was not such that we could have done such analysis and strategy. They have strug• of the forces must play. We need an an article. The women on the staff hope gled to build a class analysis of women's overall understanding of our forces, as to continue to work with some of the wo• oppression, and to develop a revolution• well as of principle areas of strength men from the group and will try to develop ary form of women's organization. This and weakness. that article for the next issue. Finally, we,particularly the staff wo• struggle has also played an essential Largely due to the countless times men who worked in the group, want to com• role in pushing the left to deal with that the left has used the concepts of mend our sisters who worked on this issue, the opprcBQion of women, in practice and "primary and secondary contradictions" who taught us and learned from us. We feel in theory. Ae an overall strategy, how• against the women's movement and as a that, overall, this issue and the women ever, socialist feminism la not adequate, means of negating the importance of wo• who worked on it have helped to set us nor are some of its basic presumptions men's struggles, there has been a strong on the correct path in developing a pos• correct. tendency for socialist feminists to view all contradictions as equal. Socialist ition on the liberation of women. The socialist feminist women's unions feminist strategy, therefore, has been have tried to organize "mass socialist unable to define any more than a broad feminist organizations". In a period Even though the women's movement has general Concept} that of building "the when there is no socialist base among the consisted largely of women from petit- basis for a mass revolutionary socialist working class', this mass socialist form bourgeois backgrounds, the recognition feminist organization that can seriously of organization is incorrect. In practice of the systemic oppression of women threaten the capitalist structure." dbld) it has led co a superriclal level of po• under capitalism has led many women litical unity which has furthered the to reject that system. In doing so, COMCLUSIOM lack of political clarity and perpetu• these women have also rejected the ated much isolation in practice. The women*s movement has made far class position of the petit bourgeoisie. In principles of unity and in political rearcliiiig changes in the lives of all The women's movement has provided a work the socialist feminist unions have women. Its challenge to male supremacy vehicle for many women to develop a more tried to address the needs of Third World has had a sharp impact on bourgeois proletarian class outlook. women, and they have gonerally stated society) and on the left, It has ra• At this point it is essential that we support for Third World people's struggles dicalized and transformed the lives of clarify the weaknesses which have led to ijlthin the US. However, their £ocus and thousands of women, many of whom a,re now our inability to base our movement among their base remains among white women of committed to organising for the libera• the masses of working class women. We "middle-class" backgrounds. Membership tion of all women. However, this move• need to develop a clear understanding of is dwindling, and oonoreta direction is ment has reached a turning point in its the questions before us in order to lacking. development. Organiaationally it does develop strategy and organization. Many socialist feminists acknowlege not seem to be growing, and it is not any These are especially important steps in these weaknesses. "We have not been very closer to organising working class the building of a party, Without the successful in reaching a broad base of women. It is important for women to Vision of communism and the leadership women outside of the Union. People who organize around women's demands as of communist women to move women forward, do not define themselves as leftists or anti-imperialist and class demands as the movement will probably remain at its who do not identify with the left have well. present impass. SEUE TME TIME P20 CULTURAL REVOLUTION

A Work of Artifice The Black Latin & ths Mexican Indian The bonsai tree Whgn 7 grew up on New York streets And we both learned how to lie and steal and in the attractive pot And fought my way tfiru knee deep garbage fight could have grown eighty feet tall My Mama sewed stars on Amenkkkan flags Some call it survival on the side of a mountain At the Brooklyn Navy Yard I coll it loneliness till split by lightning. Like all the other Mamas But, one day the smog lifted But Q gardener And I was lonely The city and the eountry smiled at each other carefully pruned it. Wken you grew up in California fields And so did we It is nine inches high. Every day as fie And listened to the fai greasy patrones The Mariachi met the Mambo call vour Papa Greuscr whittles back the branches a Weitiack And 30 did wc ruur the gardener croons. Mamu wurhcd in the packing houses And I'lUe the frozen snow in Spring WorkHil for oenniKS-so thai white ladies could We melted It is your nature to be small and. cozy, wear silh stouhlngo And like the warm winds of Summer domestic and weak; Paid for with your daily liunger We were gentle how JucUy, Jittle tree, Were you lonely too? Afid no motier how the rain falls to have a pot to grow in. And time stops dead in its track tomorrow While you grew callouses on your hands if With living creatures I will praise the Gods for your existence I grew a callous on my heart one must begin very early 1 will donee to your rhythms And. somewhere, we lost what little laughter to dwarf their growth: Even OS the sun grows cojd we'd known the bound feet, And I'm not lonely anymore And the loneliness grew the crippled brain, the hair in curlers, While you picked tomatoes the hands you / picked pockets love to touch. Avotcja Marge Piercy

Unlearning to Not Speak

Blizzards of paper in slow motion sift through her. In nightmares she suddenly recalls a class she signed up for but forgot to attend. A History of Lesbianism Now it is too late. Now it is time for finals: How they came into the world, they mode love to eacli other losers will be .shot. the women-loving-women the best they knew how Phrases of men who lectured her came in three by three and for the best reasons. and four by four drift and rustle in piles: How they went out of the world, Why don't you speak up? the women-loving-women the women-loving-women Why are you shouting? came in fen by ten went out one by one and ten by ten again You have the wrong answer, having withstood greater and lesser wrong line, wrong face. until there were more than you could count trials, and much hatred They tell her she is womb-man, from other people, they went out bflbymachine, mirror image, toy, they took care of each other one by one, each having tried earth mother and penie-poor, the best they knew how in her own way to overthrow a dish of synthetic strawberry icecream and of each other's phildren, the rule of men over women, rapidly melting. if they hod any. they fried it one by one 5hc srunls to a halt. How they lived in the world, ond hundred by hundred, She must learn again to speak the untiJ each came in her own way starting with I women-loving-women learned as much as they were allowed to the end of her life starting with We and died. starting as the infant does and walked and wore their clothes the way they liked The-sufc;ecf of lesbianism with her own true hunger whatever is very ordinary; it's the question and pleasure whenever they could. They did and rage. they knew to be happy or free of male domination that makes everybody and worked and worked and worked. angry. Marge Piercy The women-loving-women In America were called dykes and some liked it and some did not. Judy Grahn

from Letter to a Sister Underground

Our smiles and glances, the ways we walk, sit, laugh, the games we must play with men and even oh my Ancient Mother God the gomes wc must play among oursclvcs-thcse are the ways we pos.s

unnoticed, by the Conquerors. Mountain Moving Day from IVlonster Poem They're always watching, inviailily eleclroded In our brains, The mountain moving day is coming Oh mother, I am tired and sicl<. to bo certain we implode our rage against f say so yet others doubt it One sister, new to this pain called feminist eoch other Only u while the mountain sleeps consciousness and not etiplod^ it against them; In the past all mountains moved in fire for want of a scream to name it, asked me last the times we rip and twin week tear at the Yet you moy believe if not 'But how do you stop from going crazyi"' . . . for what we have intricately defended in O man this alone believe oij rselves; All sleeping women now awake and move And I will speak less and less and less to you the mimicry of male hierarchy, male ego, All sleeping women now awake and move and more and more in crazy gibberish you male possessiveness, leader/follower, cannot understand: doer/thinker, butch/femme Yosano Akiko, 1911 witches' incantations, poetry, old women's yes also when we finally learn to love each mutterings, other physically. schizophrenic code, accents, keening, firebombs, Holes to survive a death-in-life utitil poison, knivoSj huUots, and whatever else that kind of life becomes worthless enough Will Invent this freedom. . . . to risk losing even precious ft. May we go mod togefhe."-, my sisters. Our subterranean grapevine, which men, like May our labor agony in bringing forth this revolution fools, call gossip, be the death of all pain. has alivays been efficient. We look forward to receiving feedback and has May we comprehend that we cannot be stopped. Our sabotage ranged from witches' oritioisms of this issue. Contact STT with research comments or requests for subscription May f learn how to survive until my part is into herbal poisons to secretaries' spilling finished. cofTee on the pies information at: May 1 realize that 1 to hnuQeu/ives' paesive ro.cietnnee nm n in front of (heir soap-opera screens ^ SEIZETHETIME ^ monste.r. 1 am (o housemaids' accidentally breaking china a to mothQK tenc/iing their children to love monster. them PO BOX 4064 I am 0 monster. o little bit better than their fathers. And I am proud. And more. Mtn.View,CA 94040 Robin Morgan Robin Morgan