April 7, 2016

FOCUSSING ON her newly released Women and Socialism: Class, Race, and Capitalism, author Sharon Smith brought her national speaking tour to Chicago on the eve of a strike and day of action led by the Chicago Teachers Union.

Smith connected the struggle to tax the rich in order to fund the city that working people deserve--an immediate battle that brought at least 15,000 Chicagoans into the streets the following day--with a theoretical perspective that we need just as urgently in order to understand and build the fight for gender justice.

The tour couldn't come at a more important time. Abortion access is under attack all over the country, as state governments race to pass cynical legislation that shutters clinics in the name of "protecting women." Chicago's neighbors in Indiana face one of the most sweeping measures yet--its restrictive provisions single out abortion providers for medically unnecessary regulations, including publishing the names and hospital admitting privileges of all abortion providers, while also requiring patients to undergo ultrasounds and banning abortions of a fetus diagnosed with Downs syndrome or other disabilities.

Sharon Smith speaks at the Socialism conference (WeAreMany.org)

Attacks on transgender people are on the rise, too. As local politicians all over the country pass measures either criminalizing or protecting trans access to public facilities, state lawmakers in North Carolina just struck down local anti-discrimination laws protecting the rights of LGBT people and mandated that trans people must use restrooms that don't conform to their gender identity.

SMITH BEGAN by pointing out some of the many ways that daily life is marred by gender, racial and sexual oppression, from low wages and limited access to child care to vicious discrimination. But rampant sexual assault, homophobia and racism don't arise on their own, she argued--they serve a very profitable purpose.

Even apparently contradictory stereotypes--like expectations that women be both sexually available and most fulfilled when scrubbing toilets for happy husbands and children--underpin a crucial process of social reproduction, Smith argued. Sexual objectification and the mythical bliss of motherhood are two sides of the same coin. In both cases, women's role is cleanly carved out in service of a presumed heterosexual, subservient destiny, ultimately best fulfilled in a nuclear family.

What you can do Catch Sharon Smith's ongoing book tour as she discusses Women and Socialism: Class, Race, and Capitalism: April 12, Chicago, Illinois | April 14, Burlington, Vermont | April 20, Austin, Texas | April 30, Denver, Colorado

Smith deftly described how the rise of the family structure we are encouraged to believe is natural and eternal actually emerged quite recently in human history--alongside systematic slavery. Women's unpaid labor inside the nuclear family provided and continues to provide crucial stability as class society has developed. Not only does "women's work" reproduce labor power from day to day and generation to generation, but it provides a basis for the continued inequality between owners and exploiters to be passed on over time, too.

The centrality of that process to modern capitalism is quantifiable in the trillions of dollars of yearly, unpaid labor that women provide in the home. Propping up the lie that this work doesn't need to be paid for because it is in women's "nature" means punishing all other gender and sexual identities. Smith credited those who have led decades of struggles against homophobia and transphobia for illuminating the common roots of these oppressions in the role of women in the traditional family.

Smith also addressed past and present ways in which racism has painfully shaped Black, Latina and other women of color's experiences of oppression, from widespread sterilization abuse to the use of sexual violence to both inflict and justify white-supremacist terror.

It's an additional crime, Smith noted, that some of the sharpest voices and organized efforts to contest these conditions have been written out of conventional histories of feminist struggle. Barbara Smith, a luminary of Black feminist thought active since the 1960s, deserves to be at least as much of a household name as Betty Friedan, Smith argued.

Since the struggles of the 1960s and '70s, capitalism has bolstered its unjust order by attacking and distorting the gains of social movements. Today, we face the greatest income inequality the United States has seen in 100 years, made possible in part by attacking women's rights and living standards.

But Smith painted an inspiring picture of what the alternative could look like, recounting how the Russian Revolution of 1917 granted legal freedoms to women and took steps to collectivize the drudgery most women face in private households. Such measures were unheard of in their time--and are still unmatched in the most developed capitalist countries today.

THE PRESENTATION opened up a wide-ranging discussion among teachers, midwives, students and activists who attended the forum. People spoke about how Smith's framework brought to light the limits of Hillary Clinton's supposed feminism, which is dedicated to promoting the racist, sexist and war-hungry needs of the wealthy elite.

Others questioned how to bring up feminist perspectives and demands in rising movements today, many of which are being initiated and led by women--from Idle No More, to Black Lives Matter and the Fight for 15.

At the same time, grassroots organizing focused primarily on feminist politics remains small and scattered, hemmed in on one side by liberal organizations tied to Democrats like Clinton and on the other by pessimism about the ability to unite in multiracial, multigender and intersectional solidarity.

We were lucky to have an example to look forward to of exactly what solidarity can look like: The following day's citywide actions were anchored by Chicago teachers, a majority of whom are women, and whose union is led by President Karen Lewis.

The Chicago Tribune resorted to slander, referring to the strike as "tantrum day," desperately hoping to shame teachers into crossing picket lines. But the CTU had already built critical momentum in collaboration with parents, public-sector workers, fast-food workers, and public universities facing closure due to Gov. Bruce Rauner's insistence on a budget that will gut services across the board.

Women and women of color make up disproportionate numbers of affected workers, and the day's agenda explicitly linked the fight for funding with the fight for justice against racism and police brutality.

United action like what unfolded in Chicago on April 1 needs to grow and multiply in cities all over the county. And while the fight to stem the tide of attacks on women's rights remains much smaller, we need the clarity and insight that Smith's book and speaking tour offer to help keep our eyes on the prize.