[based on the ICWP sexism pamphlet]
Communism will abolish money and markets, buying and selling, including working for wages. When all work is to meet the needs of the masses, the material basis of sexism will disappear. The capitalist distinction between unpaid “housework” and wage labor will no longer exist
Communism unifies the working masses. We will organize production based on solidarity and cooperation of all genders. Arts and culture will promote respect for all. We’ll mobilize masses to criticize and supress dangerously sexist and racist propaganda such as that disseminated by capitalism in movies and music.
We will struggle against sexist attitudes, insults and practices, especially the particularly vicious assaults on women of color. Men as well as women workers have a material need to end sexism, which sustains capitalist wage slavery and divides our class. Sexist violence is an attack on the masses and on the communist society we are fighting to build. Communist masses will treat it as such.
We’ll reorganize work to end the sexist and racist division of labor. Everyone will learn to do various kinds of work. Everyone will share whatever necessary hard work can’t be done by machines. No tasks will be labeled as work for one particular gender or “race.”
Feminism diverts into thinking that sexism is caused by men, and that it can be reformed away. Sexism is caused by class society, specifically today by capitalism, which profits by paying women less than men and having them work for free at home also. Feminism, like sexism, divides men and women workers. Sexism can be ended only through communist revolution and building communism.
When we fight sexism now, we need to show that the only way to send it is to unite against sexist capitalism for a communist world free of wage slavery, sexism and racism.
Communism will give everyone an active role in decision-making and leadership. We don’t aim to break glass ceilings so a few women can join male bosses at the top. We will abolish ceilings. Everyone will work on the floor together, in free association, according to the dedication of each one to the working class.
Today and in the future, communists fight religion’s traditions and capitalist culture that prevent women workers from giving leadership to the whole working class.
Communism will abolish private property.
Households will thrive within much stronger communities. The family will no longer be a legal/economic institution. We will organize the work of feeding, clothing, cleaning and caring for each other collectively. This will end the isolated drudgery of one person doing housework, and the pressure of paying the bills.
Families in some forms have always been vital for human survival. People have organized kinship and childrearing in many different ways. We commit ourselves to struggle for honest, respectful and comradely relationships that promote the full development of all. Masses will learn to struggle in comradely ways to resolve contradictions and encourage development and loyalty to each other and to our international working class, our family.
Help us see how communism can end sexism. Communists in Soviet Russia created day care centers and dining halls in factories to allow women to work in production.
In China’ during the 1960’s young children in day care centers played with blocks that were big enough to need and encourage collective play. “Mine” was replaced with “óurs.”
Communism will end the material basis of sexism — but that won’t be enough. Growing communist ICWP collectives will mobilize mass struggle against sexist ideas, practices and habits left over from capitalism. That must happen from now on, everywhere as part of mass mobilization for communism. That is the only way to end sexism forever.
“. .women are house as well as factory slaves and are forced to bear a double workload.” ~ Clara Zetkin
“The capitalists speculate on the two following factors: the female worker must be paid as poorly as possible and the competition of female labour must be employed to lower the wages of male workers as much as possible.” ~ Clara Zetkin
The extension of women’s rights is the basic principle of all social progress. ~Charles Fourier
“Around me I saw women overworked and underpaid, doing men’s work at half men’s wages, not because their work was inferior, but because they were women.” ~ Anna Howard Shaw
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