[page 22]
phlet is that Sabina Roberts seems confused about at whom it is aimed. On the one hand, she gives us an account of the issues of women's oppression, apparently designed for a new comer to the movement. Certainly, anyone already in women's liberation will have read it all before. She largely ignores the current debates taking place over the connection between production and the reproduction of labour power. The reason for this is that, in her account of the women's movement, she also totally ignores the devclopment of the socialist current, the place where this debate has been developed.
But the nes comer to the movement would be somewhat mystified by many aspects of the pamphlet, especially in the way in which it deals with groups in the left. Whilst condemning them all as sectarian she falls into the classic sectarian habit of dismissing other groups with one all-embracing adjective - in the case of the IMG and the International Socialists-as super - proletarians'. No where does she attempt to justify or even explain the basis of this description.
### COUNTERPOSING
Sabina Roberts condemns the IMG for "counterposing" the Working Women's Charter Campaign to the women's movement, but fails to mention that women's conferences and groups have been active in taking up the campaign and working around it. Whether she likes it or not.
the campaign extends well beyond the International Marxist Group.
It is proposed in this pamphlet that the way to build the women's move ment is through a 'single-issue campaign' -such as abortion and contraception.
In this proposal two things are ignoredFirst, the experiences of the American women's movement, where hundreds of thousands of women were pulled into such a campaign, inly to disappear when their objective was gained. The campaign was not such as to convince millions of women of the need for total emancipation.
Second, the development of theory by the women's movement (even as outlined in the pamphlet) have shown us the total inter-relationship of all aspects of women's oppression. We shall be doing women a disservice if we rely on campaigns that ignore that totality. -by Leonora Lloyd Status of Women sabal analysis of the family in the light of the vigorous and wide-ranging debate that the women's movement has thrown up internationally.
uncovering the economic basis of womof the deterioration of the position of onomic determinism.
ustrial revolution and the dynamics ustry-and the reproduction of labour fully the concept of femininity comes closer to that of servitude!" historically.
10p Isabel Larguia's pamphlet makes a serious attempt to extend the Communist Party's However, her serious approach to en's oppression belies a partial and therefore misleading analysis, Her discussions women in the wake of the industrial rerolution-and more seriously, of women and socialism-smack dangerously of coIn considering the effects of the indof a capitalist economy she looks at the split between social reproduction - in indpower-in the family. She shows how this split reicgates women primarily to a servicing role and to giving birth to the next generation of workers. As she states useECONOMIC BASIS The title of the pamphlet suggests that Larguia is most interested in tracing the changing economic basis of women's labour, However, her failure even to indicate the response of either the working class or the socialist movement makes the changes seem like a plot of the ruling class which everyone else simply acquiesed to Into disarray with its theoretical equipment sadly lacking. Although some sections of the socialist movement defended the right of women to work, they did not link this to practical demands of the position of women in the family.
IMPERSONAL It is when Larguia considers women and socialist that the flaws in her method and analysis become most apparent. To put it bluntly, when she talks about the tendencies in the deveiopment of socialism as an impersonal economic development she is absolving the Communist Party in the Soviet Union from the 1930s onwards.
She is overlooking its failures to put its measures on the family and women in the context of the struggle for women's liberation. For there is no such inevitable and secure march in the USSR or any other worker's state towards women's liberation, as Larguia suggests.
In the "30s, legal abortion was abolished, divorce made more difficult and homosexuality outlawed. In fact, many of the gains made after the revolution were completely overturned. The women's organisation within the CP that had been key in educating both men and women in the ideas and demands of women's liberation was disbanded in the period preceding these measures.
Although some ground was won back in the 50s after the Stalin era, they were made in the context of making the strains of the Russian family more tolerable to women, and not in the context of sexual SOPHISTICATION Despite the sophistication of Largusa s analysis, she basically rationalises these developments For example, she accepts the orthodox view of the family. Although we may attempt to excuse her and suggest that she has a very broad conception of the tamily to include all inter-human relations the reality is that she supports the idea of a liberated' nuclear family.
Unfortunately, the effect of this pamphlet will be, 1 fear, to place the existing practice of the Communist Party on a mer more theoretically accepted basis, rather than to extend the activities of the CP to support the women's movement or the gay movement.
-by Ann Foreman
[page 23]
Wedlocked Woman by Lee Comer, Feminist Press, £1.50 "This books lays no claims to analysing the oppression of women. But I have tried with the help and understanding of the women's liberation movement to describe the subjection of women, particularly as they experience it in the family, in their roles as housewives and mothers.
So begins Wedlocked Woman by Lee Comer. It is in the power of this des. cription that the strength of the book lies-but it is in its lack of analysis that the account falls down.
Lee Comer attempts to tear away the stone which covers the position of women in the capitalist society. She takes a microscope to the many ongoing aspects of women's existance, which permeates the darkest corners' of her life as a housewife and mother.
We have exposed to us the "self-fulfilling prophesy by which girls -through identification and approval-acknowledge their "destiny" as passive rearers of children, and loving, sexually attractive wives to men.
The oppressive tedious housework, the isolation of the housewife and the time-consuming tensions of caring for young children without support are legitimised by the supposed natural affinity of women for childcare and domesticity and her alleged inferiority in 'affairs of the mind'.
Comer uncovers all these aspects in a sensitive and often illuminating way. She explores what she describes at the mystique of motherhood' -referring to a spate of recent biol ogical and psychological material on the question of motherhood.
She shows where societies" strict commitment to this ideal has left babies to be battered in homes of women who have rejected their role and abandoned them; how women are being beaten and they have no alternative to the marriage trap: where monogamy becomes a safety net for loneliness".
This account could be recommended as an easily readable introduction to some of the ideas of the women's movement for women beginning to search for an independent life, free from the oppression of the monogamous family described in the end of Comer's book.
However, for women in the movement seeking answers to questions about the reasons and nature of our opcan achieve liberation, and the relatsay.
an adequate analysis of women's op exaggerated, abstract and simplistic. sumptions like:
on the small privatised nuclear family a halt.
that the monogomous marriage serves flict.
side the home.
In another section the nuclear family serves as a safety valve not for the conflict of women against male power and dominance but against the opposition of men (as hus band and breadwinner) to the employer, through strikes and lays the basis for a mobile and docile workforce. Here she seems unable to decide as to whether the family is primarily a safety valve against a sex ses the importance of the family as a consumer of commodities.
*If the cars, lawn mowers, telephone, etc. were shared amongst several families, the market for capitalist over-production would crumble around its monstrous head." pression in capitalist society; how we ionship of the struggle to the class battles in the near future of the working class as a whole, the book has little to Lee Comer acknowledges this-but unfortuantely overlooks that a lack of pression and their position in the family severly distorts the impact of much of the description which at times seems IMPLICIT In fact, Comer does have an implicit analysis of women's oppression, but this is either in the background without being coherently and consistently verbalised, or else appears in sweeping generalisations and unsubstantiated as "Society depends for its life-blood "Capitalism needs to enforce a vicelike hold on the nuclear family. Without it, the system will simply grind to though useful in its detail, contains at times an inconsistent assessment of the primfry functions of the family in cap italist society. In one section, it appears to swallow up the social conflict between women and men, where marriage is a private saftey valve for public con*Perhaps the most basic struggle (in the family) is over power, for it is here that marriage serves socsety most usefully. Magically the power that is vested in the man in all spheres of life is somehow sup posed to be neutralised in marriage, thereby justifying its legitimacy outIn yet another section, she stres This wrongly analyses the cconomic significance of the family, For al though commodity consumption in the home is important it is being overtaken in monopoly capitalism by the expansion of the market for capital equipment as a means of accumulating profit.
Without pursuing this point in detail, it does serve to illustrate a fundamental weakness in Lee Comer's approach. By isolating the family as a unit of analysis and using this as a starting point for the study of women's oppression, she fails to come to terms with the relationship between the family and the capital/labour relationship in the cconomy-showing how the particular form of the family in our society and the oppression of women within it is structured by the former.
But perhaps the most serious weakness of Lee Comer's book is the strategy offered for fighting against the oppression which is so vividly described. She argues that the fight against the material basis goes hand in hand with a radical overhaul of the ideology... which now seperates women from men and women from themsElves".
### SOPHIST
In itself, this statement is not incorrect but we must determine what the material conditions are. For Comer, they appear to be located primarily in the family -and when she considers the class structure of society, this is seen as just one of many loc ations. The implications of this for her political strategy are profound:
Until the doors of every family are opened, until the inner conflicts played out in each one and exposed for joint examination, the barriers between the sexes and the classes will not be torn But the only example of such a strategy in practice is to 'subvert the family ideology' through communes and community forms of living. Because in her analysis she isolates the family from class society (looking at the family and class society as seperate entities rather than the relation between the two). She implies an isolation of the struggle against family relations from the struggle against class relations. Although she mentions the necessity for revolutionary changes in society, she nowhere shows exactly how she understands the relationship between the liberation of women and the seizure of state power.
[page 24]
FOURTH PUBLIC MEETING Friday Fich 28 7,30pm Commay Hall.
Red Lie UNITE WHENS LIBERTIEN From 7 CALEDONIAN FI ONDON DAY Available for 20p inctuding postage, or 12p each if 10 or mor are ordered. Orders for Socialist Woman, and posters to:
sex.
Cheques and money orders made out to "Socialist Woman"
donian Road, London NI.
21 High View Court, College Road, Harrow Weald, MiddleAvailable from Red Books for 15p each, including postage. 97 Calesays...
bulk.
NAME ADDRESS THERE WILL BE NO WOMENS LIBERATION WITHOUT REVOLUTION THERE WILL BE NO REVOLUTION WITHOUT WOMENS LIBERATION SPECIAL NOTICE Anyone selling socialist papers
----- pull-quotes -----
to over RED BOOKS
CRED WEEKLY