Background: This piece was written and approved at the Workers’ Voice/ La Voz de l@s Trabajadores 2018 Congress. We have congresses every 2-3 years, and following the Marxist and Leninist/Trotskyist tradition, they are our highest decision making & most democratic body. Our congress documents are written and approved after months of collective and deep discussions and debates and are a good reflection of our organizational politics/program.

Our Marxist Approach to Combating Women’s Oppression in Working Class Organizations

 

• The State of the Matter and Some Political Parameters
• The Fight Against Oppression in the Socialist Program
• Identifying Internalized Manifestations of Oppression
• Political Guidelines to Actively Combat Sexist Behaviors in Organizing Meetings and Developing Women’s Leadership
• Political Guidelines Regarding Cases of Sexual Harassment, Assault and Violence
• Developing Marxist Criteria to Assess and Deliberate on These Matters.
  

1. Political Context

 
A Resurgence of Oppression. Despite a vibrant legacy of mass movements and sociopolitical reforms achieved by the revolutionary Left, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia and other forms of oppression are actively present and growing in our class. How many union or student spaces have been directly destroyed because of cases of sexual harassment or assault? How many women, LGBT people, immigrants, and Black and Brown people have left organizing spaces because they felt either actively discriminated against, physically endangered or harshly excluded from the political conversations and ongoing organizing?
Similarly, how many political organizations have exploded or lost their credibility and capacity to lead the class struggle because they failed to provide a clear answer to questions of sexual harassment and assault in their own ranks? Many, starting with the epic internal crisis of the Socialist Workers Party of the U.K. for covering up rape allegations of leadership cadre in 2013. The ongoing refusal of the SWP leadership to openly and democratically discuss the case, to recognize its initial mistakes in handling it, led to a collapse of a party (initially 2,000 members strong). During this crisis the party saw a significant principled split on this issue (160 members formed Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century) which tried to uphold a revolutionary and principled position on confronting oppression. However, hundreds of members left the party frustrated and demoralized. The SWP retains just a few hundred members. When one working-class party or organization is compromised due to failure to address sexual harassment, we are all diminished. It is all of our struggle and all of our duty to combat sexual harassment and all forms of gender oppression in our working-class movements.
More recently the MTS (Movimiento de los Trabajadores Socialistas; sister party of the Argentinian PTS in Mexico) entered into a crisis because of a sexual abuse allegation, issued by fellow party activists, against one of their members. Instead of constituting an independent commission to investigate the facts, the party unconditionally backed the accused comrade, who responded to these charges by countering that their accusers were slanderers and reactionaries.^[1] This crisis led to a serious loss of confidence in the MTS and its capacity to lead among key working class sectors.
Left organizations often do not grant the same attention and resources to the active struggle against all forms of oppression (and the need to provide clear and strong political leadership when cases of oppression surface within the organization) as they do towards other activities, such as membership recruitment. This is a failure to our class and our legacy. When cases of oppression surface within organizations, these moments represent a critical opportunity to develop political leadership, build trust, strengthen a socialist program, and hone Marxist methodology. We must not avoid, evade,  remain silent or expect others to solve cases.
Gender oppression is a necessary part of imperialist capitalism; thus, as long as capitalism grows so will gender oppression. Both rely on the same logic – domination, shallow competition, conquest, intimidation, and a “survival of the fittest” mentality where the loudest and most able (according to capitalism’s definition of “able” i.e. able to access the highest paying job in a capitalist economy) maintain power and attention. Gender oppression divides, disorganizes, and demoralizes the entire working-class by draining energy and resources from our collective project of building an equitable economy and society. Overcoming gender oppression is one of the major challenges in achieving unity and liberation of the working class. This document will explore the specific nature of gender oppression’s relationship with capitalism and class division. We then explore ways to achieve our liberation from capitalism and gender oppression together.
 
The Challenges in Our IWL Parties and International. Our international began seriously addressing these problems internally in 2008 and has deepened and developed a still ongoing struggle against sexism in our own ranks and in the movement spaces where we intervene. We are not immune to this problem; quite the opposite. Cases of leadership comrades accused of very severe allegations, like abuse and harassment, prompted the IWL-FI to take a strong position on this matter. Those comrades who refused a party investigation on the matters were expelled. This contributed to the loss of the majority of our Bolivian section in 2008, when comrades leaders who were accused of domestic abuse and who refused to respond to these allegations and be accountable in front of the International Moral Commission (the Moral Commission existed prior to 2008; this was the first instance of domestic abuse taken to the Moral Commission). Fortunately, since the party began tackling internal questions of sexism and other oppression in the ranks, the majority of comrades accepted and applied the sanctions voted by the Control or Moral Commissions of the respective parties. Cases of harassment, assault or abuse by leadership members were to be investigated and decided upon by commissions independent form the leadership and sanctions should be harsher for members in leadership positions.
 
The Balance in Our Own Party. The last nine years have seen our own party, La Voz de los Trabajadores/Workers’ Voice, face challenging and formative experiences combatting sexism in the worker and student movements in which we are most active. We have also had three cases of gender oppression emerge within our national organization. Some of which have led to the destruction of our entire Los Angeles branch over the course of four years, losing in total nine members (two members were charged with a range of sexist behaviors including treating women comrades as sexual objects and sexist behaviours in meetings). We have also been confronted with at least one case in the last year (2017) in the social spaces in which we have intervened (unions, student groups). The balance for our party is mixed – while we have struggled to correctly and promptly address the problems that confronted us, the results have been quite devastating in some cases (Los Angeles being one). Our small group was not able to quickly and correctly assess the realities of sexism in the  L.A. branch. This was first due to the relative political inexperience of our young leadership, especially the male cadre, who were put in leadership positions before first having been tested in the class struggle, and tested especially on this issue of women’s oppression. Like other parties, we found ourselves in a situation where the male members of the leadership in L.A. formally vouched to combat sexism and support women’s liberation, but in their concrete life and their practical interactions with women comrades and activists did the opposite. Secondly, we lacked a  developed position on women’s oppression in the class struggle as well as a clear, agreed upon protocol for addressing specific incidents. The repeated cases of oppression even led in one case to the development of fractional tendencies.
The value of these experiences is indispensable towards the process of formulating correct strategy and tactics for the fight for women’s liberation.  They confirm that the fight against the oppression of women, starting with, and especially against, sexism in the movement and organizing spaces, is a task of the first order for the revolutionary class struggle. Without engaging and winning this fight we are doomed to repeat our mistakes and inadvertently fuel capitalism’s expansion.
 
The Goals and Scope of this Document. This document will focus especially on the concrete manifestations of the oppression of women and LGBT people in organizing spaces, but the same concern and methodology should be applied and developed to tackle the other forms of oppression using a Marxist and revolutionary approach. If we want to be able to confront the marginalization and oppression of women in society and be credible when fighting for women’s liberation, we need to be able to do so concretely in the working class organizations, by being aware and responsive of practices and behaviors, attitudes and relationships that discourage women from participation, inhibit or minimize their voice and opinions or threaten women militants. Our goal as Marxists is to build inclusive spaces where working class men/women (both cis and trans*)/queer folks can trust each other by sharing anti-oppression values and practices as well as shared program to combat oppression and mechanisms deal with concrete cases of gender oppression when they arise.
As Marxists, we should develop a methodology to deal with these cases that a) politically educates our class on the need to combat oppression, the roots of oppression, and its connection to capitalism, b) develops the confidence, agency and leadership of the oppressed sectors (e.g., working class women, queer people) and c) develops the power and strength of working class organizations, by practically demonstrating that the proletariat offers processes and solutions to address gender oppression superior to the individuated, isolated processes and solutions offered by the bourgeois state and non-profit organizations.
In the remaining of this document we will use “women” (and “men”), which are the binary sexual constructs of all bourgeois societies, in a non-exclusionary way. By “women” we mean both cis women and trans women, and the same thing goes with “men,” acknowledging that trans men may experience the tropes, characteristics, and privileges of bourgeois masculinity differently than cis men. Though this document will primarily focus on the oppression those identified under the social construct of “women”, we know that our queer/LGBTQI communities are  impacted in similar ways by the same dynamics of sexist and misogynistic oppression Some members of our queer/LGBTQI communities do identify as women, and feel excluded by a hierarchical and binary sexual construct that puts a version of masculinity at the top and a version of femininity at the bottom. An addendum of the document discusses the unique circumstances of LGBT/queer oppression.
 
A Note on “Identity Politics”. Since the 1980’s, the Republican Party has led the trend to belittle demands around oppression and discrimination. They minimized the legacy of the women’s rights, gay and civil rights movements by claiming these movements focused on mere “identity politics”. Republican Party hawks maintained that “identity politics” were not “real” politics, but rather a distraction and deviation of important matters, mainly the economy and wages. The Republican Party used this phrase to avoid a political program and solution to questions of oppression and to de-legitimize these demands in the public discourse by reducing them back to the private, individual, domestic arena. It was a way to undermine the tremendous effort of key social movements in the 1960s and 1970s that demanded systematic relations of oppression be dealt with through public policy solutions. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, aimed to rebuild its electoral base among oppressed sectors, mainly women, and Black and Latino communities. It became a defender of “identity politics” for electoral purposes.
For Marxists, it is important to understand that electoral and public discourse of the bipartisan system pushed crucial matters of oppression under the umbrella of “identity politics” in order to benefit the bipartisan system, obscuring the roots of these oppressions. The fact that both bourgeois parties have framed questions of systematic oppression in terms of “identity” (a very personal and individual term), and later in terms of “privilege” (“white privilege,” “male privilege”) is telling of their superficial conception of systematic oppressions. The problem of the “identity politics” framework is that it can ultra-personalize cases of oppression (which have, of course, an obvious personal dimension). It moves away from making the struggle against oppression a collective one with clear political goals, because it erases the role of the state and its many public institutions and the role of the economic system.
Alternatively, a Marxist analysis of oppression shows how imbalances of material power create group-differentiated discrimination (as well as individual), and at the same time it analyzes the role of the State and its institutions (from the judiciary to the education and prison systems) in shaping these collective identities, and more fundamentally the the role of capitalism in perpetuating them. What distinguishes the Marxist approach from other critiques of patriarchy and sexism is its attention to the ways in which relations of oppression are articulated through relations of exploitation, by analyzing the material roots and effects of oppression. It makes clear that the working class cannot become a revolutionary class unless it has managed to begin actively combatting all forms of oppression and integrating its various struggles. This task makes a revolutionary party even more necessary for the social liberation from sexism.
 
Safe Spaces. A contemporary demand of many oppressed sectors – one that socialists should actively approach – is the demand to create “safe spaces.”  Safe spaces are usually meant to be completely free of any form of oppression, and are contrasted to merely “inclusive spaces”.. Often when students demand “safe spaces” of university administration, for example, they are strategically calling out the unjust, uneven distribution of power in the university system, where administrators make unilateral decisions about the institution’s academic, financial, and political life. As socialists, this is obviously  is a goal we do share, but it is also our role to warn against idealism of the possibility of constituting a pure safe space to fight within our organizing spaces, which would be absolutely free of any from of oppression. Some oppressed sectors of our class, such as undocumented people, may never accept any overtures of a space being “safe” so long as the state exists in its current repressive form and it is potentially short-sighted to call our spaces “safe” until such time as we all truly are safe from imperialist capitalist surveillance and violence. We think it is better to identify and agree upon mechanisms to deal with oppression and actively educate working class people, transforming those spaces together by establishing shared rules and processes, rather than declaring our ultimate goal of a fully oppression-free society as a prerequisite rule, and then expel from these spaces everyone that does not live up to the standards. If we believe that we cannot completely eliminate oppression until capitalism is destroyed, it means that we will not be able to have purely safe spaces until then.
Yet our answer to the legitimate demand of “safe spaces” cannot be to tell oppressed sectors that total safety is impossible under capitalism and that they have to suck it up. That would be reactionary and demoralizing. We must rather argue that the best safety mechanism is in our conscious, collective organizing for liberation. Our attitude should be to show that our party is fully committed to fight for spaces that actively combat all forms of oppression, that we believe we can build spaces where trust is developed between men, women and queer people to jointly combat oppression and be united in the struggle. In the course of this daily struggle, we also need to point out that the only way to uproot, in any durable way, the contemporary institutions that perpetuate oppression, and have shaped individual people to behave in oppressive ways, is to organize a collective struggle of all sectors of the working class to destroy capitalism.
 
2) The Fight Against Oppression in the Socialist Program
 
            The Transitional Program Framework.  The main accomplishment of the transitional program, created by Trotsky in 1938, is to develop a method to formulate political demands (or a program) that bridges the “minimum program which limited itself to reforms within the framework of bourgeois society,” with the “maximum program which promised substitution of socialism for capitalism in the indefinite future”.^[2]
The Transitional Program which was the founding political program of the Fourth International and the Trotskyist movement, made a point of integrating the fight for liberation of all oppressed sectors to the fight for socialism, following the legacy of the first years of the Communist International. This was a clear break with the Stalinist counter-revolution that betrayed the struggles for liberation and attacked many key gains of the Russian Revolution in this domain. In the United States, the Socialist Workers Party developed these struggles first with struggle for Black liberation and in the 1960’s and 1970s with the women’s liberation movement and the gay rights (LGBT) movement. Our strategic goal is to bring the working class to power to destroy capitalism, and in order to do that we need to transform the working class from an exploited and oppressed social subject into a conscious and organized political one, with a class consciousness that includes explicitly the demands of liberation struggles.
 
The Role of Oppression in Capitalist Society. Marxists have a particular understanding of the systematic relations of oppression which distinguishes us from other political currents. We have a materialist analysis of the relation between oppression and exploitation in capitalist society. Under capitalism, oppression is systematically combined with exploitation, in a hierarchical way. Oppression generates specific forms of exploitation (ongoing forms of slavery such as sex trafficking, unpaid household labor, etc.), and adds to the dominant form of exploitation (capitalist exploitation based on the wage system) for certain groups of people (women, LGBTQI, Black, Brown, immigrant, etc.), which combined constitute the vast majority of the working class. Relations of oppression are subordinated to the goals of capitalist exploitation: the increase of corporate profits by increasing the rate of exploitation of the oppressed sectors, or extracting free labor from them. It also has the advantage of perpetuating systematic divisions and hierarchies between different sectors of the working class to prevent the emergence of solidarity and joint organization. In some cases, certain forms of oppression have been lowered or diminished (but never totally abandoned) for a period of time, as was the case for women in Western countries after the major social struggles in the 20th century, for the fight for equality grew to the point that it managed to mobilize large sectors of society which could have put the capitalist system altogether at risk. Today, following the neoliberal offensive of the 2008 economic crisis, these rights are again questioned and taken away.
As Marxists, we see that the dominant relation that structures society is the exploitation of labor, which  generates surplus-value, and all of the various types of oppression support this extraction of surplus labor to increase profits in the productive sphere. It does not mean that oppression doesn’t have extra-economic dimensions of great impact and relevance. Oppression manifests itself in oppressed sectors through political discrimination, physical violence, and psychological and emotional trauma. However, the roots of oppression do not always overlap with its devastating effects on human beings. At a social level, if we look beyond the individual, relations of oppression are not rooted in an evil psychology that defines humanity (or the male sex, for example). They are social constructs that have a material base rooted in capitalism, which means that unless the liberation movement confronts and dismantles this core material root, all forms of oppression will continue to survive by adapting or mutating to the demands of the evolving capitalist drive for profits.
 
Strategic Implications for Liberation. Only the working class as a whole, with the leadership of a revolutionary party, can not only end exploitation, but also all forms of oppression. This strategy for liberation, which puts the class at the center of the project of liberation, is the strategic conclusion of the former analysis of how oppression and exploitation are intertwined. This means that for example we do not think that working class women alone, or even all women, can achieve the long-lasting liberation of all women, because that will entail being able to dismantle capitalism. We think only the working class united can have a chance to defeat capitalism, and we strongly believe that women and other oppressed sectors will play a key role in the revolutionary process, with their own separate class organizations if they are needed, and with the leadership of a revolutionary party which they’re a part of.
The Stalinist and many castro-chavistas currents, and well as workerist currents, continue to insist on the reactionary idea that oppression is just a “reflection” of exploitation, that, therefore, it does not need to be specifically discussed and concretely combated in the class or the party. Even worse, some “Marxist” or “socialist” currents continue to label concerns about sexual liberation, gender identity or simply women’s oppression as “petty bourgeois”. They argue that it’s dangerous to politically focus on these issues because it divides our class and derails us from combatting capitalism. We could not disagree more: our class is already divided, and will continue to be even further divided unless we actively intervene to address oppression, with a Marxist perspective, everywhere we are. Furthermore, there is not a chance of successfully combating capitalism when a vast majority of our class is unable to organize politically because it is overexploited, physically endangered and humiliated daily through the multiple layers of oppression. The question is not “if” we should pay a great deal of attention to the struggles for liberation, but rather “how” we do it: from a class perspective, inside our unions and class organizations, in our workplaces and neighborhoods etc.
On the other hand, the are “anti-capitalist feminist” currents and other radicalized forms of black nationalism that see the combination between oppression and exploitation the other way around: for them the dominant relation that structures society is a relation of oppression (racial or gender), and capitalist exploitation is a way to perpetuate an ancestral form of oppression which is rooted in an ideology or human nature (like the so-called “natural” sexual division of labor) which cannot be eliminated. Some of them locate the origin of oppression with the emergence of the State, but precisely they do not link the State with the emergence of class society like Marxists do. For these political currents, even if they agree that capitalism needs to be eventually destroyed, they do not see the working class as the revolutionary subject that will eliminate oppression and exploitation. They argue, like many nationalists, that the social subject that will manage to achieve liberation is the oppressed one (women, blacks, LGBT communities etc). Therefore, they argue that the social subject of liberation is comprised of the oppressed portion of the working class that can identify with a particular oppression alone. They do not think we need multi-racial and gender inclusive class organization, or that we should make a priority to turn the ones we have into such kinds of organizations. They believe in creating permanent separate organizations of oppressed sectors of the class which will fight on their own.
 
Democratic and Transitional Demands in the Struggle for Women’s Liberation. It’s critical for the mass political struggle for women’s liberation to raise demands on the government and employers that are specific to working-class women, and simultaneously to spread revolutionary propaganda on the liberation of working class women under capitalism.
The transitional program method proposes to divide demands in two kinds: democratic demands (reforms we can achieve within capitalism, which have to do with either legal rights and protection or a redistribution of wealth, a reallocation of resources), and transitional demands, or demands that require the elimination of capitalist exploitation, and the abolishment of the bourgeois state. Transitional demands are those that will only be able to be fully implemented under a workers government and with the establishment of socialism.
In relation to women’s liberation, we believe that most of the tasks are democratic tasks (equal pay for equal work, free abortion on demand, right to vote and right to divorce, real protections against sexual harassment and violence, expanded maternity and paternity leave etc). These rights, which were won in many countries decades ago, are under attack today. Yet there is a set of demands which have to do with the material base of oppression, the reproductive labor performed by women in the household and family, that can only be addressed with a workers government that will socialize reproductive labor (free childcare centers, community laundromats and restaurants, communal kitchens etc). These are transitional demands.
In all our intervention in working class organizations (unions, workers council’s community assemblies etc.) we should seek whenever possible to:
 

• Integrate into the existing program both the democratic and transitional demands for women’s and LGBTQI liberation
• Do education around those demands among our working class base
• Put a special emphasis on the transitional demands which are the ones that help us connect the struggle for liberation with the struggle for socialism

 
One of our goals for the next period is to develop a national political program that includes the major demands that will help us mobilize today to fight for women’s liberation, building on the initial programmatic formulations already done by the IWL-FI and adapting them to the national situation in the United States.
 
Promoting Women’s Participation and Leadership. A central part of our conception of the working class movement is for women to participate and conduct the class struggle against exploitation and oppression, & to lead the movements against the bosses and government alongside other working class people. The idea that working class women should only deal with the struggles that confront them specifically and only as women not only ignores their reality and struggles as workers, but also immediately reinforces the already existing division that men should deal with politics while, at best, women can engage in some type of “women’s work.”
In our work overall, one of our central tasks is to raise the participation and develop the leadership of women in the struggle. This requires an active and proactive campaign against sexism and the creation of organizing spaces that challenge sexist acts and the men who perpetrate them. When men inside the movement engage in oppressive practices, whether it be in the organizing spaces themselves or in their “personal” activities, they become an obstacle for women’s participation in the movement. Similarly, the fact that reproductive labor still falls on the shoulders of women, for the most part, is a concrete and material obstacle for women’s participation in the struggle and in the party.
Our party must champion the fight for working class women to participate in movement and organizing spaces, and develop their leadership in the party and the movement. In order to do that we propose the following guidelines:
 

• Our party will propose to organize among activists and comrades free childcare in our movement, union, and party events so all women can participate. Whenever possible we will pay for this labor.
• Our party will make a conscious effort to develop the visibility of our own female and LGBT comrades that play a leading role in the struggle. In general we should support the work of women who play an important role in working class struggles, so that they’re publicly acknowledged and named at each opportunity.
• When we are making a balance in the party to elect someone for a local or leadership position, we should take into account that if a man and a woman have an equal balance, it was harder for the woman to get there because of systematic oppression. Therefore we should “add a half a point” to their balance.

 
Combating All Concrete Manifestations of Sexism and Other Oppressions. The fight against women’s and LGBT oppression cannot just be a fight of political demands, agitation and theoretical education. Sexism,homophobia, and transphobia are constant threats to the development and survival of more than half the working class. This is why as a revolutionary party we need to develop (for ourselves and for all our class organizations) methods to combat the concrete manifestations of sexism, while  also foregrounding revolutionary ethics and values.
We must unite the class on clear anti-oppressive principles and practices that recognize and correct problematic behaviors instead of hiding or minimizing their destructive effect in our party and class organizations. The fight against sexist and other oppressive practics needs to be done by everyone, men and women and everyone in between and beyond. The expectation of our society is that each oppressed group must carry – alone and isolated –  the fight against their own oppressions. We are opposed to this restrictive view, and we see the struggle for women’s liberation as being one that needs to be taken up by working class men too, with women and LGBTQI communities at the vanguard. We propose the following guidelines:
 

• All working class people take up the fight against sexism, homophobia, and transphobia together. This is especially important of all party comrades.
• While our strategy is to build inclusive all-gender class organizations, we argue for the need to develop within these organizations women and LGBTQI caucuses to carry on the fight for liberation and against oppression both internally and in wider society. We should propose their creation when there is a base and conditions for their development. In very special cases and under certain conditions we can tactically recognize the need and importance of organizing working class women separately outside of those organizations, if it is not possible to organize women and other sectors inside the unions and other class formations. Our strategy should be to create and defend all-gender inclusive working class organizations, and reform the existing organizations so the concrete fight for liberation and against sexism in integrated and carried forward.
• When cases of oppression occur, we need to make sure that the women comrades and activists should not feel that it’s all on them to address it, or even worse, that in order to do so, they need to compromise their own feelings of safety. We need to prioritize as a basic prerequisite for this work ensuring the safety and emotional well-being of women in the party, and the working class movement. Men cadre of the party have to take up the task of educating men and winning them to fight women’s oppression.

 
3) Identifying Internalized Manifestation of Oppression
 
Here we focus on identifying the the most widespread and recurrent manifestations of women’s oppression in our organizing spaces. In the second section we propose ways to address them. We are defining the following forms of oppression as “internalized” because more often than not, men do not think they are being explicitly oppressive. Rather, they think they are just “acting as dudes do” or even think that they acting in a comradely way and “helping” women and LGBTQI collaborators. The problem is that our society reduces women’s oppression to openly explicit harassing, offensive or aggressive language and behavior, equating oppression with physical and sexual assault and violence. However, oppression operates in a deeper and more subtle way, expressing itself constantly in our meetings and organizing activities through such daily activities as use of language, distribution of speaking time, division of labor, etc.. We know that most men are socialized into certain roles and types of masculinity. Our goal is to point out the internalized behaviors that inhibit, limitate and minimize women’s participation on our struggles and organizations. We believe all committed working class fighters can change those behaviors if they are pointed out to them and they understand their consequences. We think the revolutionary party, and in particular the men in the party, have a key role to play by leading by example.
Cases of harassment and physical violence will be dealt with the fifth section. They demand a particular protocol, since they present an immediate threat to the livelihood of our class.
Luckily, in identifying oppressive behaviors, we are not starting from scratch. We are building on the extraordinary work initiated by the Women’s Commission of the Brazilian PSTU, which established the guidelines adapted at the XII Congress of the IWL-FI in 2016. We believe these guidelines can be can be adapted to different forms oppression. Because of the interlocking nature of oppression (race/ethnicity, nationality, gender identity, age) these guidelines around sexism will help us address other manifestations of oppression in our party and in wider society.
 
 

1. a) The Invisibility of Women as Political Leaders

 
Women are often ignored, underestimated and undervalued as political participants in organizing spaces. This is reflected in the percentage of women in the leadership structures, which is generally low in working class and political organizations, starting with our own. In the IWL-FI leadership bodies women are still a low percentage because our international party has only begun to tackle this problem, and is realizing its deep roots and implications. The way women are invisibilized in the movement is the result of a patriarchal and bourgeois vision of the division of labor in society that has influenced our organizations. A male comrade can walk into an organizing space for the first time and feel more confident in participating than a woman who has organized in that space for a month. Why might this be? Men are expected to be active in the public sphere, which is branded as the political sphere, the domain of language and ideas, and women are expected to remain in the private sphere, that of domestic labor, and is considered to be the domain of the family, feelings and emotions. Even though mass social movements and working class struggles have questioned (and sometimes even succeeded in partially modifying) this binary division of social roles, it is still the dominant one in capitalist society. Capitalism inherited and transformed the pre-existing patriarchal institution of the family and the exclusion of women from the political sphere, deepening the oppression of working class women.
The result of this is that in our own organizing spaces, our internalized behaviors often push women to speak less in meetings, and for men to stop paying attention when women speak. For example, when women speak, male comrades may “take a break” in their concentration, informally talk among themselves, look at their phones to check messages. Male comrades may sometimes interrupt women comrades to correct, direct-respond, or  change the topic of conversations. Men may repeat women’s ideas or proposals as if they have not heard or valued their women comrades contributions to the discussion. When women make concrete proposals, these are not taken into account, be it written on the board or put to a vote, especially if they have not been validated and re-articulated by male comrades. Our practices of soliciting participation in discussion can privilege those who feel most confident (usually men). Worst of all, when women clearly constitute a large majority of activists in a space, when they are the ones who make sure tasks are completed and collective decisions are carried out even though they did not have equal say in making these decisions, their organizing efforts are very rarely recognized. It happens often that the credit of the organizing goes to the guy who “had the idea”, and not to those who implemented it successfully, involving many times (although not always) a majority of women. It also happens that actually a woman came up with the idea on the first place, but it was appropriated by a man who took credit for it.
 

1. b) Regarding Female Comrades/Activists As Sexual Objects

 
Capitalist society stimulates the vision of women as sexual objects, as bodies at the disposal of men’s sexual desires and not as political subjects. Women activists and comrades are often not regarded by men as militants, but rather as a new possibility of sexual relation. When women perceive or fear that such is the main reason why male organizers are “paying attention” and realize they actually have other intentions, they get really hurt and feel considered as sexual objects. In those instances, their own confidence as political leaders is deeply eroded. Likewise, the political development of male organizers is stilted. There are many “wait a minute” moments, when women thought a party comrade or a union organizer was really engaging them on the topic or campaign at matter and they suddenly realize this was about something else. This is demoralizing and disgusting, and women often react by politically disengaging and leaving the organizing space. They also come to the conclusion that organizing spaces are rotten with the same dynamics of sexual predation operating in public and work spaces.
A distinct but related dynamic is when women organizers’ political interventions and confidence are sexualized, i.e., as invitation for flirtation or sexual advance. This dynamic shows up in male organizers deeming political competency and confidence as “sexy” or alluring, and not as politically important for the movement and worthy of respect regardless of a person’s sexual identity. One is not competent “for a woman”. One is competent as a comrade and militant. Here we must also speak to the double-bind faced by women – particularly femme-presenting women – in our organizing spaces. If a woman does exhibit stereotypical tropes of femininity (i.e. considered pretty, feminine, beautiful) she is sexualized. If she does not, she is considered ugly and then invisibilized. In either scenario, a woman’s appearance – and not her political development or contribution – is what is seen and valued. As a result women  might be very reticent to get involved again, even if in a different space. Politics cannot be reduced to a medium to meet women or sexual partners.
 

1. c) Sexist “Jokes” and Disrespectful and Aggressive Behaviors

 
Disrespectful and aggressive behaviours at meetings and in organizing spaces are also a problem, as are sexist or homophobic “jokes”. In general, when an organizing or political discussion entails a yelling contest, and an hypermasculinized atmosphere is deployed, women and LGBTQI comrades may  feel less comfortable and safe to intervene in the debates. Many “tense” meetings, when key decisions are to be made, end up being polarized between key male cadre of the party or key male activists of the movement, where the political arguments are increasingly conflicted with other uncomradely tactics to win the debate: speaking loudly, reacting aggressively, adopting a threatening attitude and body language, leaving the room, interrupting, personalizing the differences and launching nasty invectives, etc. We all have been in a demoralizing  meeting where we felt there was little chance for us to even say our word.
Aggressive disagreements may mean that women do not intervene to express their point of view, or will tend to silently agree with those voices and bodies that are the most intimidating. This is not because women cannot “handle” conflict or that they fear it, but rather that there are more severe, negative consequences when they participate in open conflict. For example, they may be labeled difficult, “bitchy”, hysterical, needy, or overly-emotional; male comrades may discourage others from working with these women, may openly belittle them in meetings, or may even use physical violence to “teach them a lesson” or “put them their place”. Related to the example above, assertive women may be seen as seeking sexual attention (rather political leadership) and may be subjected to greater harassment. This has a special impact on  working class sectors that are already oppressed in society. Of course not all women and LGBTQI activists react the same way, but in general women are socialized and educated to obey, to defer to  male authority and not to raise their tone of voice. If when we are debating key matters of the working class, of our struggles and political matters we adopt a tone and form of discussion that actively discourages and intimidates women and LGBTQI, we are deeply undermining our collective capacity to come up with the best outcome, and one that is really agreed upon by all after a fair and comradely debate.
The same happens with the recurrent sexist, homophobic and transphobic “jokes,” which of course according to the comrades that make them, they are very rarely “ill-intentioned” – yet they still have a chilling, hurtful and humiliating effect for our working class brothers and sisters who are targeted by them. Humour needs to be shared for jokes to be truly funny. Until this trust is built and affirmed among all participants any jokes regarding gender identity and sexuality have the strong risk of being perceived insulting and offensive by the groups who are referenced in them, regardless of the intentions of those who tell them.
 

1. d) The Division of Labor in the Organizing Spaces

 
Division of labor is arguably the most internalized form of gender oppression in our organizing spaces. Most of the time it appears to be as a“natural” division. But there is nothing natural in the fact that men are the ones expected to come up with “the plan”, the political arguments, the demands, the theoretically grounded considerations, basically the bulk of intellectual labor, while women are expected to be good at logistics and manual labor (preparing food, making photocopies, cleaning and arranging things after the events, making banners and art, organizing childcare etc). These expectations having nothing of a “natural” or “spontaneous” arrangement, they are exactly the social, gendered construct of bourgeois society that is designed to keep women outside the political sphere.
Compounded with this division between intellectual and manual labor which most often occurs along gender lines, there is also a division between the use of public and private spaces. It is true that sometimes women will challenge these established roles, but precisely because they are challenging a hegemonic rule, they will be judged more harshly: were they articulated enough when they spoke at the rally? Were they able to galvanize the crowd and energize everyone? Or were they yelling too much like hysterical women? Are they able to ground their arguments in theory or were they just controlled by their emotions? This is just a sample of the sexist comments we still hear when finally a woman dares to take the public stand. The key public figures of social movements, the ones that speak at rallies or are interviewed, who are sent as delegates and representatives of the movement to conferences, who are the candidates that run for offices etc, are often men, while women are expected to play the supporting role in the private or not public sphere of organizing that contributed to the success of the male public figure.
Finally, women are expected to deal with what we call emotional labor, which entails assisting and supporting organizers and activists who are going through personal crisis (depression, anxiety, break-up etc.) in order to ensure they stay active in the movement; mediating conflicts and carrying the burden to alleviate existing interpersonal tensions between cocky male leaders; comforting insecure organizers about their great political capacities, developing their confidence to lead and help them prepare, etc. These are extremely draining activities that fall on women individually while they should be a group responsibility where everyone intervenes and helps to find a solution.
All of the roles outlined above correspond very clearly to the gendered division of labor enforced by capitalist society. The problem is that organizing spaces should be able to consciously discuss these matters, reject this pre-established division of labor, and propose a new and liberatory one based on equality and justice.
 

1. e) Women’s Responsibility for the Housework/ Reproductive Labor

 
As Marxists, what differentiates our program for liberation from others, even the most radical ones, is that we want to tackle the material root of women’s oppression, which is a form of exploited labor that women do for free which keeps capitalist society functioning: reproductive labor.
The fact that still today the vast bulk of household and reproductive labor fall on women, that is to say on 50% of the working class, is a material obstacle for the political mobilization of women, and the development of women party cadre. It is a matter of time and money, like everything in bourgeois society: if women need to clean, buy and make food and take care of the children, they cannot be at the political or union meeting.
Lenin asserted that a revolutionary party had to do ample work of education among proletarian men; that the revolutionary party had to seek ways of fighting against this ideology in the party and also in the class in concrete terms. He strongly criticized male comrades who minimized the fight against seixsm and for women’s liberation and organization in the struggle: “Unfortunately, it is still true to say of many of our comrades, ‘scratch a communist and find a philistine’. Of course, you must scratch the sensitive spot, their mentality in regard to women. Could there be a more damning proof of this than the calm acquiescence of men who see how women grow worn out In petty, monotonous household work, their strength and time dissipated and wasted, their minds growing narrow and stale, their hearts beating slowly, their will weakened! Of course, I am not speaking of the ladies of the bourgeoisie who shove on to servants the responsibility for all household work, including the care of children.”^[3]
Party cadres ought to have a completely different relation with housework than men of the masses have, but this is not what our internal reports are showing. Comrades often relegate such tasks onto their female partners with the excuse that they’ve got other political tasks to do. Therefore, we enter in the following regressive dynamic: the more men are active in the class struggle, the more they put on their female partners’ shoulders all the reproductive labor. When a couple of cadres has a child, the woman is expected to restrict her militancy, reduce the number of activities in which she participates, regulate the time tables of the meetings and very often give up militancy. Men, however, continue organizing normally, relegating all the responsibilities onto their female partners, reinforcing in practice this ideology and creating more difficulties for their partners to develop and progress.
 
4) Political Guidelines to Actively Combat Sexist Behaviors in Organizing Meetings and Developing Women’s Leadership
 
We propose the following intervention guidelines to deal with the problems identified in part 3.

1. a) Develop the Visibility, Participation and Leadership of Women

 
The way to combat the institutionalized invisibility of women and develop their active participation and leadership is to collectively implement conscious practical measures:

• In organizing meetings we need to ensure the conversations are not dominated by men, and when this is the case, we need to propose progressive stack (either to privilege those who have not spoken, or to intervene to analyze the gender dynamics and specifically say that women and LGBTQI will be moved up in stack.
• We should make sure that no comrade interrupts any women when they speak, or checks out when women are speaking, and if other men in the space do that consistently we should have a separate conversation with them.
• When women comrades or workers make proposals in meetings, or make comments, we need to make sure they are validated and receive equal attention to men’s comments and proposals.

 

1. b) Regarding Primarily as Political Subjects

 
The question here is not to prohibit dating or romantic relationships between activists or comrades, for we are neither Stalinist nor fundamentalists of any religion. We believe in people’s freedom to develop the kinds of sentimental and sexual relations they wish (as long as they are not hurting anyone), and our goal is never to regulate that sphere of personal activity. Yet, what needs to be clear is that people do not join organizing spaces or the party with the primary goal of meeting or dating people, because this leads to considering the women active in those spaces primarily or exclusively as potential sexual partners, and that objectification is really damaging for women. It’s not that we want to avoid relationships from developing, but rather, for women in the movement and in the party to not feel that they are being seen by their peers as sexual objects. In this matter we propose the following guidelines:

• If we have evidence that some male comrades or activists are using the organizing spaces as a way to find sexual partners, and thus are making advances to women activists/comrades, we should immediately have a conversation with them about this. This is especially important if we identify activists that behave like sexual predators. We should aim to build the kind of trust where women in the party and the movement feel comfortable talking to us about these things so we decide together how to intervene. Especially, if a male comrade dates/meets sexual partners exclusively from small, close knit organizing circles the burden of proof must shift from assuming the relationships are comradely and needing the exploitation/essentialization to be proven to the other way around: we should operate from a position of assuming the relationship arose in an un-comradely way and need proof of its comradely nature.
• When we are doing recruitment work for the party or a union (or any organizing space) we all should refrain from sending mixed messages to new people who are getting politically involved with us. Political and organizing discussions and meetings should be clearly just that, at least for the first meetings, until women and LGBTQI comrades have already joined the organizing space and feel comfortable and validated as political subjects.
• If comrades or activists start dating or break up, we usually leave to their good judgement to be able to separate their romantic and their political relation. There is absolutely no reason for any political organization to have a say in this for in our tradition we respect the private life of our comrades. Yet if in the party (or sometimes in the movement) we see that the personal or romantic relation is an obstacle to the political development of women comrades, we should find a way to address it. These matters are the most delicate to deal with and we should only intervene if we have a pre-established relation of trust, but we need to pay attention to this too as a party, especially with cadre.

 

1. c) Actively Building Anti-Oppressive Organizing Spaces

 
Some will call the following feminists practices, other will call them socialist, and others will call them simply “common sense.” More than agreeing on the labels, we want to agree on the content of the practices which we would like to enact in our meetings:

• Comrades of the party of all genders should not raise their voices or get angry in debates, nor should they personalize political differences. Yet because men tend to do so, it is especially important that men do their best not to do it. It is ok to be angry (emotion), it is not ok to take your anger on a comrade, even less to become aggressive in a meeting (behavior). It is always a good idea for comrades who feel angry to request a break to step out of the room to cool down.
• If comrades of all genders feel personally attacked in a discussion, they should point that out, and with the help of other comrades, we should make sure that we are able to conduct political discussions and organizing without them getting personal.
• All comrades should refrain as much as possible from using insults, slurs and vulgar language which often is loaded with sexist and homophobic meaning. The same goes with sexualized language and so-called “jokes.” Again we are not language police, but we need to know that different social and class sectors will react differently to different language, and in some cases it is inhibiting and offensive.
• If openly sexist, homophobic, or transphobic remarks or comments are made in any meeting we must either immediately stop the meeting to signal them and demand a retraction and apology, or put that question on the agenda for the next meeting and prepare for that conversation.
• The same goes if we experience that some meetings became very tense, go out of control and women are completely silent, we need to intervene and address these situations. Our goal is not to single out the guilty parties to punish them, our goal is to concretely point out the behaviors we should not tolerate and collectively agree on the kind of space we want to build, winning the majority of participants to agree on those rules that will de facto coerce the behavior of the rowdy minority. We need to be patient and firm with these matters. Changing these behaviours is a hard task, because working class men are socialized into developing toxic forms of masculinity, but there is no reason why they will not be able to change if it is asked from them with clear political reasons.

 

1. d) Proactively Contesting the Existing Gendered Division of Labor and Building for Equality

 
In the matter of the division of labor in the movement and the party, this should be an open topic of conversation before we assign tasks, especially in the party where we expect comrades to agree that the bourgeois gendered division is unacceptable and needs to be reversed in practice in the party work. In general:

• We should ensure that all the logistical and practical tasks do not fall on women, by making an open and explicit call to men to take on those tasks. Our male comrades of the party should take the lead in the party and in the movement to take on those tasks and lead by example. It is helpful to outline the tasks that are expected to be done, so that they do not fall on women’ shoulders who might tend to do them if they see they are not being done. For example if it is agreed that a committee will deal with food, housing, cleaning, printing etc, it is important to set clear goals.
• We should make special efforts for women to be public figures and seen as leaders and representatives of the movement. This needs to be an open conversation, and it will require us to explain many times the leadership capacities some key women organizers have already shown, to stabilize both their work and politics, and argue for them to be elected to leadership positions or speak at rallies etc. This applies equally inside the party and the movement.
• The emotional labor women do individually needs to be brought to the collective space and discussed together. If some assistance is required for some members or activists, or some interpersonal mediation is needed, these should be tasks we assign to ad-hoc coed committees.

 

1. e) Towards an Equal Division of Household Labor Among Comrades

 
As socialists we demand the socialization of all reproductive labor. Yet until we get to socialism, the male comrades and activists need to take on their share of these tasks.  Obviously, our struggle is not for the division in equal parts of housework in the private sphere, but for the complete withdrawal of these tasks from the private scope and the socialization of reproductive labor. In the meantime, however, we cannot reproduce the status quo. In the party we need to demand that male comrades do their share of work, which is different from “helping at home:”

• All male comrades are encouraged to openly discuss reproductive labor with their partners and come up with an agreed division of labor that approaches as much as possible a fair distribution. We are not proposing that the party monitor and exerts control on this domain of comrades’ private life, but we are proposing to be able to at least openly discuss these issues among us.
• We also think it is important that women cadre can bring issues of division of reproductive labor at home to their branch meetings when they feel their private life situation is an obstacle to their own political development. While branches can only make recommendations and have educational conversations, we think these are still qualitative steps.
• When comrades go to the homes of other comrades, social activists or contacts they need to ensure they are not increasing the household labor of their hosts. This means helping to cook and clean if food is entailed, rearrange the space used etc. Everything should be left as found, and it is very important that our male comrades take a leadership role in carrying out these tasks.
• When a couple of comrades has kids, the branch needs to be there to support the question of childcare if the comrades cannot afford it. If childcare is not an option, then the best recommendation is that both comrades take turns in taking on this task, and when possible meetings are held in spaces where kids can be brought. Again we are only making recommendations in this domain, but we do think that those decisions carry political implications.

 
5) Political Guidelines Regarding Cases of Sexual Harassment, Assault and Violence
 
By far the most difficult and pressing situations, the ones that requires immediate attention and a solution by the party or through the party, are the cases of sexual harassment, assault and violence in the movement and in the party. Most of the time these cases are “deal breakers” because in our opinion they have a moral component. Because these behaviors entail the physical and emotional endangerment of our women and LGBTQI comrades, and they are a threat to their bodies and psychological integrity, they break the necessary trust we need to organize together in a common space and project. Those cases have a traumatic and very damaging impact on the survivors, and the rest of women who can feel re-traumatized. By making our political spaces explicitly unsafe, they break the basic conditions we need to organize together. For these reasons we need to take them very seriously and address them accordingly without exception.
Furthermore, capitalist society has created a situation in which women and children facing sexual and abusive oppression have no recourse, no resources, and are thoroughly marginalized and atomized. The capitalist state has failed to meet any of the “privatized” needs of the family, women and children, and the very meager existing public social services do not offer proper, sensitive and sustainable attention and support to survivors. The only option left is the police and the court system, which are inherently biased against women, and also against black and brown working class people.
This means that our party (and the rest of revolutionary socialist organizations) need to propose forms and methods that are necessary and appropriate to address these cases, starting from those which emerge in our own ranks. As we said, no organization is immune to this, the more a party is being organically tied to the mass struggle and the working class, the more it needs to do education on these issues with new comrades, and expect to have to deal with these unpleasant cases. Our goal when dealing with particular and personal cases is to to transform “personal” trauma and difficult collective experiences into a process that develops confidence and political confidence and clarity. This can only bring a sense of fulfillment to a party that aspires to be the vanguard of the oppressed. Showing leadership in these situations is also a way to build the party and its political influence, for this has to do with the concrete application of an entire part of our revolutionary program: women’s liberation with a working class and revolutionary perspective.
 

1. The Fight Against Manifestations of Oppression is a Principled and Not a Tactical Question

 
What do we do when a case of oppression with such a strong moral component comes up: How should we react when a victim/survivor comes forward or someone has evidence of an act of oppression of this kind? First we need to discuss and vote in the party the need to make this a priority and develop a specific protocol of intervention, because of the moral character and gravity of those actions, that go way beyond the internalized forms of oppression we patiently address in all instances. Cases of harassment, assault and violence require for organizations to stop and set aside specifically time and resources to address them, they need to become a top priority competing with the many priorities any organizing space has.
When this is an internal case in our party, we need to refer it to our Accountability Commission and notify the leadership, for our organization is already equipped with mechanisms to deal with these delicate, sensitive and important questions. When it occurs in our unions or in our intervention spaces (united fronts, community groups, student groups), we need to figure out with our allies which accountability process will make more sense to ensure the question gets properly addressed in its beginnings.
As revolutionary militants, we must express our principled support to the survivors  and consult with them in order to deal with the case, and design a process which will be discussed and acted upon through the broadest existing democratic space. To consult with the survivor implies to make clear to them that their identity can and should be protected in the course of this process to the majority of the members of the organizing space. We can provide several options and see with which one they are comfortable. Our primary goal is that the question gets addressed by the organization in a principled manner.
Usually the first political fight we have to make as a party is to convince our fellow union members or student activists that dealing with these moral cases of oppression (instead of ignoring them) is an utmost necessity for our collective struggle. We need to patiently explain that what is often perceived as a “distraction” or “an obstacle” to develop the real struggle is in fact a condition to be able to fight in the first place. The struggle against all forms of oppression and their more hideous manifestations is inseparable from our struggle as a class.
We have heard, and will continue to hear any kind of arguments to prevent this: that addressing the cases of oppression and violence are a too sensitive matter, that doing so will divide us, that it can be used against us by our class or political enemies in the movement etc. We have already explained in our articles why this is a total fallacy. The fear and reluctance expressed by our companions in the struggle is just an expression of the existing generalized oppression and the ideologies that justify and condone it. We argue that it is precisely covering up cases of violence, harassment and oppression what actually makes us weak, not addressing and combating them.
To refuse or delay dealing with a case of oppression is not only wrong because it is unfair for the survivor, or for the oppressed group that is indirectly targeted. It further damages any collective project to improve our lives, our work and study conditions, our wages and our civil and political rights. It is a way of reinforcing the lines of oppression that divide us in our struggle. It is a longstanding injury to our shared project of emancipation. As revolutionary socialists we need to make clear that it must be a moral and political principle to combat all these cases where we intervene.
It also has to be clear that if/when differences emerge regarding whether or not those cases are worth addressing, we will always try to win a political majority and force a vote on this issue so the lines are clearly drawn. Even if we lose the vote and the survivors want to move forward with an accountability process, we will continue to work with those who agree what something needs to be done (even if we disagree on what and how) and have a constant and non sectarian campaign to invite the resisting members or activists to join this important political process.
 

1. Our Scope: Cases We Have the Obligation to Address and Cases Were We Can Support from the Outside

 
While we must conduct a principled struggle against all forms of oppression, we must clearly demarcate ourselves from a service-oriented organization (in the sense of social work) that will be the receptacle of all possible cases of abuse and violence. First, because it is practically impossible for us to carry out this work in a mass way, second, because it will also undermine our functioning as a revolutionary combat party. Our strategy is not to focus on putting bandaids on a structurally broken society, doing the job the state is supposed to do. We want to organize our class to fix the root cause of these problems. The primary relation we want to develop with the class is that of providing political leadership by transforming working people’s consciousness, power and confidence, not to be a “service” that comes from the outside to fix its problems. We do the latter when it is at the service of the first goal.
As socialists, our strategy is to destroy capitalism, not only because it will eliminate the exploitation of human labor, but because it will eliminate the material base that has justified and sustained all kinds of oppression for centuries. This will free the material conditions to socialize domestic labor and redevelop the forces of production. Our socialist strategy has concrete repercussions in our political axis of intervention and in our tactics. While we consider that we cannot neglect nor minimize any case of oppression in the spaces where we intervene, we also cannot make our strategy to address all the moral cases of oppression that inevitably emerge in such a degraded society.
If we are a combat party for the class struggle, a party of intervention and not simply for propaganda, we do have a particular strategy, and this differentiates us from a movement platform and from an NGO. This is why we say that to uphold the socialist strategy for liberation is concretely incompatible with making the fight against all existing cases of oppression our permanent strategy, which is more of what a nonprofit or NGO type of organization tends to do.
We must combat all cases of oppression in the party internally and where the party intervenes.  And we always fight to do so in a principled way, refusing to ignore these ugly issues or run away from them.
We believe, like Marx, that “the emancipation of the working class will be the work of the working class itself,” so our goal is primarily to organize politically the working class from within its own organizations, not to “help” or “assist” it from outside. We think we as a party can only begin to properly address that daily violence the capitalist system does to our class and provide a liberatory political transformation of those spaces if we have set roots in a site of class struggle (a school, a workplace, a union or a neighborhood). Only in places where we have established relationships and a political presence do we have a chance to tackle these problems with a working-class perspective, so that each time we address a case of oppression we can have as a realistic goal to expand the political consciousness of our class, to implant the demands of working class liberation and to build the necessary tools for our collective emancipation: democratic unions, councils and the revolutionary party.
To sum up, this is why we say that while we must address all the cases that arise where we are and have political influence or reach, but we cannot, unfortunately, address all cases in society (not even in a State, city, neighborhood or area) and transform the party into an “emergency response team” for such outrageous situations. Of course if people come to us about cases in other spaces we will share our methodology, advice and all the resources we have. However, we cannot take a leadership role in addressing them, we can only support and mentor from the outside when we are invited to do so.
 

1. c) When There is no Consensus, We Need to Create an Independent Commission

 
The first question that emerges when we are dealing with these cases is the credibility of the survivor which is immediately questioned. The fact that the first thing that comes to mind to many is that it is possible or likely that “the woman is lying” is just another expression of the systematic oppression women face. Let’s then review the facts. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, the majority of sexual assaults, an estimated 63 percent, are never reported to the police.^[4] Furthermore, different studies show that the cases of false reporting are extremely low: between 2.1% and 7.1%.^[5] These facts quickly undo the mythologies about false reporting.
This tells us that actually we only hear at best about half of the cases of harassment, assault and violence that are actually already occurring in our own organizing spaces, because it is really hard for survivors to come forward. And that the vast majority of cases when allegations are made by the survivors are true. This is because the process of coming forward requires a lot of strength and courage, for the first psychological response is to feel guilty, ashamed and responsible for the attack. On top of that comes the fear of retaliation, and further social humiliation, like the disgusting victim-blaming and “slut-shaming” many men, and some women, engage in. These facts alone should be a reason for us to be 100% supportive of every woman that comes forward. As a rule in our party we need to make it clear that we believe survivors who come forward and we we need to explain that this is a political matter and share the facts above. However, we know that in most cases this is not enough to convince the membership of our unions, community and student organizations.
Most of the time, the perpetrator denies the accusations and immediately seeks the complicity of all or a group of men. When the perpetrator recognizes the wrong-doing, we think he should address the entire membership, make a statement admitting what happened, and then let the membership deliberate on the case. This happens very rarely, unfortunately. Usually there is no consensus about what happened, and everything turns into the “he said-she said” charade, which only serves to decredibilize the testimony of the survivor and break of trust in the group along gender lines. In those cases we need to propose to create an ad-hoc independent commission to investigate the facts.
The need to have an independent commission is not about investigating or doubting the survivor. It flows from our strategy: the need to educate our class politically and elevate our class consciousness by discussing the need to combat oppression through proletarian methods. This is how we must present and explain the kind of commission we want.
For us the role of an independent commission is not to be a tribunal that judges or deliberates on the facts, but a commission that investigates (conducting interviews, gather evidences, producing facts), and can make a depersonalized report of what has happened to a general democratic body. The ad-hoc independent commission must be made of people everyone trusts so their findings and report cannot be questioned. Its goal is to be able to bring to the general membership of a class organization or a movement what is known about the case, summarize the facts, so the case of oppression gets depersonalized in an emancipatory way for the survivor, and so the collective body can deliberate democratically upon a sanction.
The goal of this process is to avoid survivors having to hide in shame or be repeatedly exposed, questioned, doubted and interrogated publicly so the general body can act. It’s also not useful for different groups of individuals with particular affinities to start their own investigations, so that several versions of the facts circulate among the membership. Without a solid plan everyone can trust, the case most likely will not get addressed.  Additionally, it is very likely for the organizing space to fall apart or end up divided and debilitated. This is why we must show leadership and be clear politically on what the goal is of an investigation commission. Once this step is reached and there is a public space to deliberate, then the party can intervene with our policy of zero tolerance, with our explanation of the root causes of oppression, on the need to be firm and be united etc; and it can publicly combat prejudices and reactionary ideas and attitudes that reinforce oppression.
We do not want to individualize cases, make them about the personal word or trustability of such and such person. Rather we want to make the cases the moment of political education in our sites of struggle and organization, so not only the perpetrator gets sanctioned and rules are established, but that everyone in the space or organization understands that a collective struggle is needed to tackle the root causes of oppression, and hopefully political consciousness is built.
 

1. d) The Problem of Ultra-Left/Vanguardist Tactics in These Matters

 
It is the attempt to elevate the collective consciousness in relation to the struggle against racism, sexism, homophobia etc. as a principled and anti-capitalist one that makes our intervention, as a party unique. Our intervention as a revolutionary party aims to make a qualitative difference by bringing to the conversations the difficult discussions bourgeois individualism rejects. In those difficult moments, our political intervention cannot stem from a gut and spontaneous reaction to events, we are all disgusted by these facts.
The vanguardist impulse to “take justice into our hands” might be very fulfilling for a minority, but can lead to strategic disasters when it does not have the support of the majority. We want each sexism case we address to strengthen all of the women of our class and not only one. And we do not hide our intentions, rather, we want to win all of our fellow workers to this conception.
We have had and will continue to have a strong political fight with those who have claimed that “we cannot afford to bring those cases to the union as a whole” or the “student assembly” or the “Occupy assembly” because this will mean being a minority or being put in a minority and losing the vote, leaving the perpetrator unsanctioned. Some have even claimed that to bring moral cases, after an investigation is conducted, to a democratic space is a recipe for failure. They think it will jeopardize the chances to get any process of “justice” or “accountability”. What they do instead is deal with the cases with a pre-selected and “screened” group of individuals, or “affinity group” in a secret and separate fashion. We think this vanguardism stems out of a political capitulation and the internalization of a defeat: that we cannot convince the majority to combat oppression, that the working class is “backwards”, that people are reactionary and sexist etc. All of this are excuses not to try to win over a majority and provide convincing answers to difficult questions. As a revolutionary party, our reason of existence is based upon the opposite premise: that we can convince a majority to fight oppression and exploitation, to the concrete fight against the manifestations of sexism.
The vanguardist attitude of not involving the rank and file in these matters, alleging that workers are “backward,” is politically inconsequent, as no radical vanguard can destroy capitalism or let alone institutionalized sexism and patriarchal ideology. It is also a political limit to what can be done against the perpetrator: besides collective intimidation, slander and pressure, little can be achieved. It would be very different if one got a whole organizing body to act upon such a case.
We argue that by reducing to a minimum the number of persons who are going to confront the perpetrator, that is, by organizing only with those few who are already educated on these matters, and keeping potential and necessary allies in the dark, we increase our chances of losing. By openly discussing the matter within our organizing space we have more chances of increasing our ranks to win the fight against sexism. As revolutionaries, we want to pick the winning strategy, the one that will make us stronger, which can never be the one of fearing a public political debate. Our tradition and our party is not short of arguments to wage such a fight, on the contrary, we will show that in those crucial moments that we are among the best prepared.
 

1. e) The Investigation Commission Needs to be Independent and with a Working Class Composition and Orientation

 
We should clarify that by independent we never mean independent from our class or movement, far from that, we mean independent from the people involved in the case, so the process cannot be questioned. The main problem with the recent MTS case in Mexico is that the MTS comrades created a commission to investigate the accusations which was only composed of members of their own party, and thus did not have the support and trust of the organizing space and the university where the perpetrator teaches, for there is a legitimate concern that the party will cover it up. Second the MTS did not make the conclusions of their investigation public to the rest of the university community, which can only increase the distrust against the MTS and the rest of the revolutionary Left.^[6] This is why we argue for an independent commission.  Here we mean independent from the party, but composed by trusted working class members in the struggle that have no personal stake in either defending or smearing the organization. The second thing is that, of course, the organization should recognize the results of such an investigation.
Another important criteria is for the commission to be composed of working class members with experience and a strong ethical standing in the movement, and not by professionals. It needs to have a clear working class composition and orientation. We are generally opposed to bring “outside” groups of professional experts to help us with those cases.   These groups are usually NGO types composed of professionals and experts that do not have a revolutionary nor a Marxist criterion, but rather a liberal or progressive one. We generally combat the established bureaucratic reflex to bring professionals from outside the class to “train” and “educate” workers in our unions and spaces. We think we can do a better job and one does not need a Ph.D.  or a $100k+/year salary to be able to solve workers problems. In general, this organizing culture in the US constantly undermines the political confidence we want to build inside our class. That said, if we do not have enough resources or support to form and lead ourselves these commissions with workers, we can solicit the support of other sister unions or class organizations that are ahead of us in implementing these methodologies.
We also believe part of the goal to develop these commissions and discuss the process is to educate all members of the organizing space on why and how to carry forward these matters. The intervention of outside groups in the most sensitive matters of our unions and organizations undermines the internal democratic process, and democratic control of our internal procedures by the rank and file. Finally, by referring to outside groups and experts we send  a demoralizing political message to our class: that in our working class tradition and history we do not have the experiences to deal with that, so we need the assistance of another class (the bourgeoisie or the petty bourgeoisie) or of a particular social layer (the professional, the expert, the scientific) to help us. However, there are more examples and lessons to learn from our own history of struggle than from a workshop, training session or skill sharing activity organized by a depoliticized NGO or non-profit.
 
6) Developing Marxist Criteria to Assess and Deliberate on These Matters
 
It is not enough to propose addressing these cases collectively in our organizations, as revolutionary socialists we also need to also propose some political criteria to evaluate them that distinguish us from other currents, especially conservatives, liberals, and anarchists. The following three points below are intended to begin this process of developing clear political criteria for evaluating each particular case.
We do not think a pre-made code that assigns a definite sanction to each particular behavior is the best way to go, since in each case there are important particularities we need to take into account. Our goal is to discuss with the rank-and-file members the political implications of the case, so that together we can advance the process of education and consciousness raising.
 

1. Highlighting the Class Dynamics in All Instances of Oppression

 
When we are dealing with cases of oppression in our workplace and in the social movement we need to take into account the class dynamics of the situation. It matters if the alleged perpetrator of sexual misconduct or violence has a supervisor position over the survivor (from direct boss, manager etc), or has a material privilege (tenured professor and dissertation advisor, writers or journalists with high social status, prestigious union leader or activists in leadership positions). Men of the ruling class are socialized to think they should have free direct sexual access to the women they employ and perceive to be “below them.” The dynamics of power in the workplace, which are unfortunately replicated in bureaucratic organizations, aggravate oppression. They help enable sexual predators by giving them a sense of impunity based on their superior position in the scale of power.
While it is equally serious and despicable when this violence occurs whether it’s between workers of the same rank or between management and workers, the way we propose to address the situation varies tremendously. Workers lose their jobs immediately when allegations of sexual misconduct are made, most often without a real independent investigation. Bosses and privileged professionals who have personel under them keep their jobs despite the many cases of harassment, including serious cases of sexual assault.
When we are dealing with a worker, we think it is important to go through a real and firm internal process of accountability among peers. We do not think this is really possible when we are dealing with a perpetrator that does not belong to our class organization (managers, CEOs, executives etc). In this latter case, we should organize all workers to demand the immediate suspension or firing of these figures and issue a public statement explaining the facts. When we are dealing with accusations against leaders of working class organizations, we need to demand that these leaders lead by example: that they temporarily step down from office and organizing spaces, and fully collaborate with the internal process of investigation.
Finally, if we believe some workers are being falsely accused of sexual misconduct by their managers or class supervisors, we should demand an independent investigation where their class peers can participate. We need to make clear to all workers that while will never compromise on these issues, that we need to be able to defend our class from dirty maneuvers from management (or even sometimes the labor bureaucracy) against its working class opponents.
 

1. Class Independence and the Relation with the Bourgeois Courts and the Prison System

 
One of our core political principles is class independence, which means not only independence from the bosses and their parties (Democratic and Republican Parties) but also its state institutions. We usually avoid resorting to the courts to solve our problems, and we are opposed to the judicial system interfering in the internal affairs of our class organizations, including our party, to regulate our activities etc.
Furthermore, it is clear that the courts and the prison system are designed to surveil, divide, and disorganize the poor. In particular, these systems of the carceral state actively contribute to the resegregation of the Black population through hyper-incarceration and policing of poor, marginalized, and ghettoized communities. This is why as a rule we never cooperate with the police nor assist in their investigations.
Our political tradition deeply distrusts the courts and our policy is in general to develop the independent power of our class. We must avoid this power being channeled into lengthy legal processes that lessen working-class participation and momentum. That said, we can sometimes use the courts to protect our class as a temporary measure, while we set the foundations of a new society which will allow us to deal with the root problems of oppression and exploitation. This happens when we can use the courts against our class enemies: corrupt politicians, police officers that kill our brothers and sisters, military and government officials accused of war crimes, etc. This can can also be be applied to serial rapists or members of our class that act as our class enemies through perpetual violence.
This is why, if survivors want to press charges, we should support them. Our position is that the courts usually do not charge those who attack our class, do not believe survivors, and often retraumatize them. Therefore, we have no political trust in the judicial system, nor in the capacity of the prison system to rehabilitate offenders. But we support the process of pressing charges if that is the desire of the survivor, and we should be ready to testify in court if needed. While we do recognize that incarceration today in the U.S. is an evil, it is a lesser evil compared with the impact of sexual predators and abusers who are let loose in our class. Our party cannot commit to prevent some people from continued harm or rehabilitate all offenders, we have very limited capacities and we can only develop accountability processes for some cases when we have the full collaboration of the perpetrator. Until we are able to propose a superior system to the existing prison system of mass incarceration, we need to understand that incarceration can prevent harm and make people safer, especially those in our class impacted by crimes of rape, sexual assault, and physical violence, especially considering that some offenders are unrepentant and recidivist.
 

1. Develop a Class-Centered Process Coherent with Our Strategy for Liberation

 
It is important to have some clear criteria to manage this whole accountability process and to respond to understandable pressures that might emerge from many sides. In general, we believe it is important to keep in mind the following points which tie our concrete response to moral cases to our strategy for ultimate emancipation:

• The Wellbeing of Survivors and Oppressed Groups Is Our Priority. When those cases surface, they are not only devastating for the survivors but for all women in the organizing space. This is why our first political priority is to ensure the physical and psychological well-being of the sector of the working class that is under attack by sexist violence and harassment. That means the temporary or definitive removal of the perpetrator from the organizing space, and if necessary of the workplace. This measure of separation sometimes needs to be extended to those who actively support the perpetrator and adopt aggressive attitudes that make the organizing space explicitly unsafe. If necessary we should use organized force to enforce those basic protection measures.
• Defending and Developing All-gender Inclusive Class Organizations. Sometimes, out of very serious cases, separatist positions emerge when some women demand a permanent exclusion of men, or a group of men from organizing spaces. This expresses the distrust of some sectors who believe that “all men are the same” and will never change. We believe that because masculinity is a social construct, it can be changed and men can develop open feminist and socialist practices. While permanent separation or gender segregation is in general a very bad outcome, we might be sometimes forced to temporarily support this demand while we rebuild trust and find a durable solution.
• Enforce a Class-centered Process. We want to make sure these issues are first addressed in the working class organizations (not outside of them) and that they are solved within them. The best practice is to avoid collusion with employers or outside forces trying to solve cases of sexism. We can end up collectively making demands on the employers, managers, security services or the courts, but this should be the result of a conscious collective deliberation and not our immediate reflex.

 

1. Some Criteria to Make Decisions on Sanctions: the Tensions Between Safe Spaces, Rehabilitation and Unity of our Class

 
We are outlining below some political criteria regarding how to deliberate on sanctions. When such serious cases of oppression occur, one of our major guiding principles is to make sure the needs of survivors are a priority in the organizing space: women should feel safe coming to meetings and continue the organizing, there is no question about that.
Sometimes, however, an immediate expulsion of the perpetrator emerges as the only possible solution. We are not saying that we will never expel someone, or that we will make that our permanent rule. Yet we want to point out another important consideration for our strategic orientation that we need to take into account: the possibility to rehabilitate and reintegrate comrades that have made mistakes, who acknowledge them and are fully committed to go through an accountability process. Because these are existing tensions alive in our class we are not always going to be able to come up with a sanction that satisfies everyone. The important thing is the process of political education and democratic decision-making that will lead to define a sanction so that it can be supported and respected by everyone.
We propose the following, while understanding the implications of different sanctions:

• Permanent Expulsion. Expulsion from the organization is the harshest sanction, and also a definitive ruling. It means that according to the space the person is expelled from, there is no hope in changing or holding the person accountable. We think all perpetrators who refuse to be part of an internal investigation and accountability process should be expelled. We also think all perpetrators who refuse to follow or stop following the totality or parts of the accountability process should be expelled. We also think that there are actions and behaviors that given their own gravity and severity deserve an immediate expulsion. This is also the case for comrades who are repeat offenders. We think that when we expel someone for these reasons we should make a public statement and let our working class allies know the facts of what happened. We also think that if we consider the perpetrator to be dangerous and toxic in the workplace where things occur, we need to ask or force him to get another job. Yet we need to be clear that for us expulsion is the worst and most demoralizing of all outcomes. Especially when it results from a lack of cooperation, it sets a horrible example for the rest of male comrades (that you can do whatever you want and have little consequences, you can go to another space and do the same). It is also extremely demoralizing for women (that men will never change, that they cannot be held accountable etc).
• Temporary Separation from the Organization and Conditions for Return. This is a common sanction we apply, because it allows for a real break from the organizing space while it establishes a clear protocol for accountability. A temporary separation from an organizing space or the party can last for months or several years, it depends on the gravity of the actions, and the necessary steps to deal with accountability and a real personal transformation. For example when aggressive behaviors are linked to substance abuse, it is important to allow the necessary time for a real recovery and establish sobriety. Other requirements can require therapy, actual proof of changed behavior, attendance of specific workshops, etc. Also to return one needs to be conditioned to real changes, measurable by the accountability commission.
• Limited Organizing Work, and Loss of Political Rights. In some cases sanctions can entail a limitation on the kind of work the member can do in the organization (not allowed to be a public figure or represent the organization in any capacity, not allowed to do new organizing work, etc.); being confined to a particular kind of work (confinement to administrative work in the office or internal tasks etc.) and/or a temporary or permanent deprivation of political rights (inability to vote in the meetings, inability to get elected for any positions). Furthermore, the sanction can specify that for a period of time the person needs to inform the organizing spaces it intervenes in of the ongoing sanction.

Internal Education and Reflective Statement. All sanctions that do not lead to expulsion should have a strong educational and reflective component. The goal is to make comrades really understand the true roots of their behavior by doing readings and discussing them with the accountability commission. Comrades should always be asked to write a reflective statement where they analyze and reflect on the deep implications of the behavior and the damage they have caused both to the individuals and to the group.
 
Conclusion
 
In conclusion, we need to continue developing stronger methods to fight oppression through theory and experience. It will be very important to make careful balances of our experiences, raise the debate and further our study to keep updating and improving our document. The participation and leadership of women, especially women of color is a central task of our daily organizing. There are no doubt that sexism inside the movement and our party must be challenged. But fighting individual sexist behaviors is insufficient force to wage the political fight against women’s oppression. We must also raise demands against the capitalists in the interests of working class women. That fight, which must be carried on by men with women, is part of the fight of all people that are oppressed by capitalism.
^[1] https://litci.org/es/menu/mundo/latinoamerica/mexico/que-metodo-y-que-moral-defienden-el-mts-mexicano-el-pts-argentino-y-el-movimiento-feminista-pan-y-rosas/
^[2] Therefore, “insofar as the old, partial, “minimal” demands of the masses clash with the destructive and degrading tendencies of decadent capitalism – and this occurs at each step – the Fourth International advances a system of transitional demands, the essence of which is contained in the fact that ever more openly and decisively they will be directed against the very bases of the bourgeois regime. The old “minimal program” is superseded by the transitional program, the task of which lies in systematic mobilization of the masses for the proletarian revolution.”
^[3] Clara Zetkin. Lenin on the Women’s Question.
^[4] https://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/Publications_NSVRC_Overview_False-Reporting.pdf
^[5]  https://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/Publications_NSVRC_Overview_False-Reporting.pdf
^[6] https://litci.org/en/what-methods-and-morals-do-the-mexican-mts-argentine-pts-and-feminist-movement-pan-rosas-defend/