A woman’s place is her union – but women must be made to feel welcome there

Revisiting the work of Bolshevik revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai HELEN O’CONNOR finds that when genuine efforts are made to involve working-class women into the labour movement, this advances the interests of the entire working class

Alexandra Kollontai

WORKERS are under attack on every level but especially women. Women are more likely to be in part-time, low-paid work because the burden of caring still falls primarily onto our shoulders.

The impact of cuts and privatisation has negatively affected working-class women in terms of employment, where privatisation has cut pay, terms and conditions.

Women are forced to provide the services, particularly caring, that have been deemed unnecessary or unprofitable. As a result too many women are firmly relegated to the ranks of “the working poor” for the entire duration of their lives.

In spite of the fact that rising numbers of trade union members are women, there is still a struggle to consistently engage women in activity in workplaces or within the unions themselves, and we need to honestly reflect on the reasons behind this.

There is tokenism in the trade union movement which is often presented as “progressive.”

Of course we need policies, information and awareness on a whole range of “women’s health, social and domestic issues” but the danger is that this can be seen to be separate and even removed from the need to organise women to agitate and fight for the type of change that challenges the status quo.

Self-organising is a vital and necessary aspect of bringing attention to the struggles of marginalised groups, establishing demands and leading struggles that can be recognised by all workers to build working-class solidarity.

The pay gap between men and women is as bad as it has ever been and it will not be resolved just by requesting that employers publish their data or legal methods, but through the type of co-ordinated and militant struggle organised working-class women took against Glasgow Council.

During this and many other struggles throughout history women have shown themselves to be capable leaders and fighters.

There is no better time to look back on the the work of Alexandra Kollontai, one of the greatest revolutionary organisers, which can provide the modern-day labour movement with guidance, clarity and inspiration.

The work of Kollontai recognises the double and triple oppression of women but it is also uncompromising in defining what is the root cause of all this — class.

Kollontai observed that the pace of events in pre-revolutionary Russia changed consciousness quickly and this led the poorest and the most oppressed women into the vanguard of the class struggle.

She said: “At a time of unrest and strike action the proletarian woman, downtrodden, timid and without rights, suddenly grows and learns to stand tall and straight. The self-centred narrow-minded and backward female becomes an equal, a fighter and a comrade.”

In spite of all of the scientific and technological advantages that the march of time has offered human beings, it remains the case that the social class a women is born into still defines her life and the lives of her children.

Kollontai recognised that women’s oppression is not born out of antagonism between women and men but is firmly rooted in class society.

She saw how employers threatened working-class women with unemployment when they started to get organised and make the most simple demands to have enough food for themselves and their families.

Identity politics without a class analysis, however well-intentioned, can create divisions among working-class people.

Kollontai observed that when women’s organisations were set up with the false claim that they were “above class” they ended up adopting the limited demands of bourgeois women and as a result alienated the working-class women who quickly recognised that their own demands for better living conditions would never be taken up.

Kollontai recognised that working-class women’s demands were first and foremost practical and around work, wages, conditions and childcare.

Kollontai noted that while bourgeois women and working women shared some commonalities, the upper-class women’s demands for equality with men always sat within a framework that supported a political and economic status quo that exploited working-class Russians.

She reached the conclusion that a women’s movement could not indiscriminately embrace all women because that world of women is also divided along class lines.

Advances have been made through self-organising, but not all women have benefited from them. Women are more visible in the leadership teams of large companies and in politics and have a greater chance of accessing traditionally male roles but this has made little material difference to most working-class women.

In spite of all of the gains and the technological and scientific advances made over the last century, increasing numbers of working-class women still have the same need for fair pay, flexible working and affordable childcare as the women of revolutionary Russia.

Working-class women, like cleaners, nurses, care home workers and many others, are being plunged into poverty and they are denied the type of financial and practical support that would enable them to offer their children the best start in life.

If history teaches us anything, it is that women like Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel represent their own class interests and not the interests of working-class women.

The neoliberal cuts and privatisation agenda that strips working-class women of public services and social security is enthusiastically embraced by women occupying seats in the power structures.

In stark contrast with the successful drive to organise working-class women in revolutionary Russia, a modern-day woman’s reproductive function, combined with the necessity for her to work, leads to many experiencing insurmountable barriers to becoming actively involved in a trade union or in political life.

This in turn hampers the overall ability of working-class women to fight for the social and political changes that would enhance their life chances and those of their children.

Kollontai was guided by the principle that working-class women should be able to have children and also participate fully in the class struggle and she went to where the women were, listened carefully to their needs and then both inspired and enabled them to become involved.

Kollontai saw how quickly working-class women moved to the vanguard of the class struggle and she worked tirelessly to build mass solidarity and support for the strikes of women workers in the textile factories and the laundries.

The political conclusions Kollontai drew guided her organisational work and enabled her to bring large numbers of the poorest and most oppressed women into political life.

By 1921 more than three million Russian women, some of whom started out without education or literacy skills, took up the opportunities to develop themselves and they became involved in Russian politics.

They elected their own representatives from the women of the factories, the laundries and the peasantry who would then go onto the committees to push their own demands forward through the Bolshevik party.

The politics of revolutionary Russia was directly relevant to the day-to-day lives of working-class people, nothing was abstract and Bolshevik party policy was formed around women’s needs which included getting control over their fertility and ending their super-exploitation.

Revisiting Kollontai’s work shows that when genuine efforts are made to involve working-class women into the labour movement this advances the interests of the entire working class.

It is important that the labour and the trade union movement redouble our efforts to hear the voices of working-class women and respond to concerns in a respectful and serious way.

Abuse, hostility and the failure to listen risks driving good women out of the movement and towards organisations that are fundamentally opposed to the interests of the working class.

The level of misogyny that still exists in the labour and trade union movement must be opposed by both men and women alike in order to end it for good.

Women are 50 per cent of the population and it remains the case that the majority of working-class women will be found in the lowest-paid jobs while still shouldering the burden of childcare and domestic tasks.

Even in 2022 the lion’s share of the care, support and wellbeing of the next generation still rests with women.

As we enter 2022 and a deepening cost of living crisis, working-class men, women and children will be crushed by capitalism unless we co-ordinate effective resistance.

Even greater numbers of children will grow up in poverty and have their life chances utterly destroyed by the deliberate destruction of the welfare state, the abolition of social housing and the bottomless greed of exploitative employers.

Liberating working-class women will not be achieved by latching onto the latest trends in post-modern ideology that have no material basis.

Liberation for any marginalised group starts with tackling the real material causes of oppression which are always rooted in class antagonisms in spite of false claims that the ideas of Marx and Engels are “outdated” or “irrelevant” in the modern world.

The fight for our own liberation is part of the wider struggle of the entire working class — something recognised not only by Kollontai but by Eleanor Marx and Sylvia Pankhurst too.

In order to advance the interests of our class, it is crucial for women to get more active than ever before in the largest democratic organisations of the working class and to fully utilise our trade unions as a vehicle to fight for society to be changed.

Helen O’Connor is Southern Region organiser for GMB.