Lessons from the struggle against gendered oppression
We are anarchists who seek to fight sexism within society, our unions, and movements. So, our feminist organising should be anarchist, and our anarchist organising, feminist. This article addresses three questions arising in response to this goal. First, what common ground does anarcho-feminism share with other strands of socialist feminism? Second, how is it different, and how does feminism contribute to anarchist theory, which in itself advocates for the abolition of all hierarchies? Third, how does anarchism equip our feminist organising?
Capitalism and Sexism
Socialist feminists believe that the creation of gendered social relations was fundamental to the development of capitalism, and that capitalism continues to govern the form and function of sexism today.
Marx’s theory of ‘primitive accumulation’ argues that capitalism could not have developed without a prior concentration of capital and labour, which occurred by capitalists forcibly separating workers from the means of production and forcing them to work as wage labourers. Marxist feminist scholars argue that capitalism’s development also required the accumulation of divisions within the working class and hierarchies built upon gender, race, and other axes of oppression. For example, the state weaponised the female body as an instrument for labour’s reproduction through abortion laws. It banned women from paid work, forced them into economic subservience to a husband, and rendered invisible their reproductive work within the family unit. Capitalism’s development required the state to control women’s bodies to ensure the reproduction of labour and to look after male workers and children for free, creating a gender hierarchy within the working class.
Today, care work remains undervalued and feminised even when it is performed as wage labour, as seen in Australia’s early childhood education ‘crisis’. Internationally, abortion laws control women’s reproduction. Women are overwhelmingly the victims of rape and sexual assault. Gender divisions and misogyny divide the working class and suppress organised opposition to capital. In so many ways, the gender hierarchy within the working class continues to sustain capitalism.
Feminism’s Contribution to Anarchism
While socialist feminists can agree on the relationship between capitalism and sexism, most anarcha-feminist strategies are informed by the anarchist principle of ‘means and ends’ – that is, that socialism can only be achieved through the activities of non-hierarchical egalitarian movements, because these activities will develop people who can self-direct their lives and participate in their communities equally, as required in a socialist society. In line with this, anarcho-communist and anarcho-syndicalist women argued that social movements had to prefigure the non-oppressive interpersonal relationships that we want during communism.
The Mujeres Libres, an autonomous anarchist organisation founded in 1936 by anarchist women in Madrid and Barcelona, is one historical example of anarcho-communist women who advocated for such a prefiguration through their publication of the same name, often in opposition to male comrades. They positioned themselves against the feminist movement which sought “equality of women within an existing system of privileges”, and instead organised to improve their representation in the broader anarchist and trade union movements.
Some anarchists objected to the Mujeres Libres’ existence because they believed that female emancipation should not be separated from class struggle, and that an autonomous organisation undermined the working-class movement’s unity. These objections overlooked that sexism was what was in fact undermining the working class’s unity, resulting in sexist attitudes within anarchist organisations that discouraged women’s participation. The Mujeres Libres organisers recalled that male comrades often put down or talked over them during meetings. Azecena Fernandez Barba, an organiser from Barcelona, famously described how the men “struggled, they went out on strike, etc. but inside the house, worse than nothing. I think we should have set an example with our own lives, lived differently in accordance with what we said we wanted. but no. [for them], the struggle was outside. Inside the home [women’s desires] were purely utopian.”
Other anarchists argued that women had to improve their own self-esteem, which was what prevented their participation in anarchist movements. While the Mujeres Libres acknowledged that women internalised patriarchal norms, they advocated that women’s participation in direct action for their own emancipation would best transform them into individuals who could participate equally with men. The group organised basic educational programs for all workers, including literacy classes, technical courses and apprenticeships, as well as ‘social formation’ classes focusing on how women could act independently of men in their lives. During the Civil War, the organisation served as a home for women who wished to support the anti-fascist movement, orchestrating talks in collectivised workplaces, rallies in liberated territories, and health clinics in both cities and rural towns. The Mujeres Libres developed the kinds of capacities needed in women to act independently and freely, under capitalism and socialism, rather than wishing for gender equality once socialism had arrived.
It should be noted that the group was quite stridently opposed to sex work and sex workers, a legacy which the Spanish anarchist movement has inherited to a worrying degree. This legacy is not solely the responsibility of the Mujeres Libres, though, and in other respects they were the most radical and principled wing of the movement. They opposed the collaboration of the CNT officials with the Republican bourgeoisie towards the end of the war, and worked to suppress attempts to racialise the conflict. Their example is one which still inspires and empowers many working women and anarchists generally, and we argue it should be celebrated as a crucial example of women’s independent organising within mass movements for gender emancipation.
What Does This Mean for Feminist Organising?
It is inadequate for anarchist movements or organisations to adopt consensus decision making and non-hierarchical structures. We must also be alive to oppressive interpersonal relations, or else sexism will take on a new form under socialism.
This principle importantly informs how anarchist organisations and movements should address sexual violence, both within our organisations and in society at-large. While a liberal framing of gendered violence treats sexual violence largely as isolated incidents which require accountability processes that address individual behaviour, often through legal frameworks, anarchists know that we have to collectively address the root causes which are based in coercive, gendered hierarchies prevalent throughout society. However, people who raise allegations of sexual violence in left-wing organisations are often accused of being ‘informants’ and ‘undermining the unity of the organisation’. Such claims not only dismiss allegations and calls for accountability, but demonise feminism and counterpose it to class struggle.
As anarchist women have argued for decades, it is in fact the gender hierarchy within the working class itself that undermines class struggle, and the tolerance of sexism within our organisations which hinders revolutionary capacity. Infamously, the Socialist Workers’ Party in the United Kingdom split in 2013 over how the central committee handled rape allegations made by a 19-year-old member against a senior party member. Those who left the party noted that party members had raised concerns for years regarding the leadership’s use of ‘feminism’ as a ‘swear word’ against anybody who seemed ‘too concerned’ about gender issues.
Anarcha-feminism is also resolutely abolitionist, identifying the capitalist state and the injustice system as causing, rather than mitigating or preventing, social harm. For example, anarcha-feminists have a long history of supporting the decriminalisation and industrial organisation of sex work. Louise Michel from the Paris Commune and Itō Noe from Japan argued that since poverty drove people to sex work, it was necessary to abolish poverty through social revolution. Sex workers themselves should be the key agents in this change. This can be compared to the calls for expanded police powers by sex worker-exclusionary radical and carceral “feminists”, despite the obvious threat that would pose predominantly for sex workers and other minority groups, with flow on effects for broader society. This position may also be contrasted with the antagonistic orientation of most Sydney socialist organisations against sex work decriminalisation. These organisations have a long-established commitment to opposing or, at the very least, abstaining from sex worker liberation efforts, a stance which hinders the self-organisation of some of the most severely exploited feminised workers.
We should not reject all the principles of feminism simply because we oppose the bourgeois manifestations of this movement. By understanding how capitalism sustains sexism in its current form we can organise against both exploitation and oppression at the same time. By responding to sexism, misogyny and sexual violence in a principled manner in our own movements, anarchists can begin the fight for a world free from capitalism, the state, and patriarchy.