The working class continues to face an unending barrage of attacks from the bosses. Wars are starting all over, and the cost of living continues going up. Capitalism seems set to continue lording over this morass for the foreseeable future. As we do every Women’s Day, we turn to reflect on the historical example of the women workers of St Petersburg on February 1917, who led the charge on a real challenge to the tyranny of bourgeois rule. Far from being politically motivated by a reified identity, they were knowingly and directly attacking capital, steered by a revolutionary communist consciousness. Today, memories of the Russian Revolution have receded to the annals of history, but the real political lessons, the possibility of a society free from exploitation and misogyny, remain forever with the working class. It is exactly this combativity that needs to be carried to the present day to defeat capital, through the conscious political activity of the class, for the class. The unliteral attack on reproductive rights bears down on women workers as part of a generalized attack on the class. Rather than turning to the left wing of capital, the real answer to it was given by St Petersburg’s workers in 1917, who seized rights themselves under a communist revolution. In order to do this however, workers fight against compromise and reformism, which redirect us back to capitalism. This means no compromises with the capitalist state, refusing alliances with the bourgeoisie, and building combativity through organised communist struggle.

While the Russian Revolution may seem distant, the conditions workers were fighting against remain fundamentally the same, and the heroic example set shows us the real path out of class society. The bourgeoisie then, as now, use the same tools to divide the working class so that we may be better exploited and less organized. The women workers of St Petersburg dismantled Tsarist authority which deprived them of the most basic necessities. However, far from stopping there, those same workers fought against the liberal Provisional Government, which sought to stop the revolution and was making gestures towards abstract rights we’d find familiar today. Women workers, organized as a part of a politically conscious working class, refused the scraps given by Kerensky. During the so-called ‘honeymoon period’ immediately following the October Revolution, abortion and divorce were legalized, and homosexuality was decriminalised through the direct mandate of the workers. Far from being born out of abstract debates on human nature, this was the popular will of a politically conscious working class, which rapidly outpaced every other capitalist ‘liberal’ democracy in women’s franchise. In addition, far from being ‘class reductionist’, it demonstrated that revolutionary consciousness truly represented the most general interest of the class, contrary to the speculation by identitarian leftists we see nowadays. In addition, the revolutionary period demonstrates how when women workers pursue their political interests, they immediately end up running afoul of bourgeois feminists who seek the emancipation of women in the abstract only, i.e. for themselves. The bourgeois feminists then, just those who now support the war against Iran, did not hesitate to join ranks with reactionaries to kill as many workers as possible to preserve their rule when capitalism was threatened. This is after all, why the Suffragettes supported WWI, and was the basis of Sylvia Pankhurst forming the Workers’ Suffrage Federation over this essential divergence of interests. As Alexandra Kollontai sums it up:

The world of women, as the world of men, has divided into two camps: one, in its aims, aspirations and interests, sides with the bourgeois classes, while the other is closely linked to the proletariat… Each of these militant groups unconsciously proceeds on the basis of the interests of its own class, which gives a specific class colouring to its aspirations and objectives... However radical the demands of the feminists may appear… [they] cannot struggle to achieve a fundamental restructuring of the present economic-social structure of society… without this the emancipation of women cannot be complete.

Introduction to the Book The Social Basis of the Woman Question, A. Kollontai, 1908

This essential divergence of interests cuts across all forms of division imposed by capitalism, but it must be fought against by workers in order to pose a real challenge of capital. It must be recognised that struggles for abstract rights can be quickly turned against workers, demonstrated most perfectly in times of war. We are already seeing this with Carney’s declaration that war with Iran is necessary to protect ‘human rights’. It should come as obvious that although the Islamic Republic is objectively repressive and spares no punishment under its reactionary rule, there are no rights to be found and no betterment of conditions for workers in Canada in marching to war - on the battlefield there is only death and destruction. Already now we’ve seen those same groups who protested for women’s rights in Iran years ago turn their heel and call for regime change, even as schoolchildren are being bombed by the US in broad daylight. In the same breath, those who protested against Israel’s slaughter in Palestine now see a righteous cause in the Iranian government, supporting a state which did not fret in killing thousands who protested and went on strike against austerity and repression only a few months ago, a state which is also keen to draw in as many other countries as possible into an all-out war to defend its ruling class. This episode demonstrates to us exactly how ‘progressive’ causes are detached from any class content and serve to reinforce the mandate of this or that bourgeoisie, essentially being opposed to communist politics. The same can be said in Quebec of the struggle for reproductive rights being hijacked for a debate over nationalism, which relegates workers to the ballot box and to the courts, the favoured terrain of the bourgeoisie, rather than the real generalized struggle workers must mount to fight these attacks. The force initiated by the workers of St Petersburg overcame such illusions during the October Revolution, which inspired the Kiel sailors to also raise the banner of internationalist mutiny, effectively ending World War I. Among those workers were droves of disillusioned women workers, who, after decades of struggle within the terrain of feminist politics, realized that the only means of fighting for their specific demands could only come under the banner of communism, through the dictatorship of the proletariat and as part of the general mandate of the working class. It is precisely in the pivotal moment of opposition to war that these politics became their most clear and opened the door to total social emancipation.

This brings us also to the link between the clampdown on rights and the march towards war. Far from being just the policy of this or that nation-state, imperialism is a permanent condition of capital. It is the ever-ready big red button which can be smashed when profits dry up and social tensions can no longer be easily contained to the ballot box. Whether it is the US, Israel, Russia, Iran, China, etc., the working class is constantly being conditioned to march to the front for a grand showdown between the major imperialist blocs. In this standoff, women workers are treated as baby dispensaries at home to reinforce the front, while men are treated as canon fodder through conscription. In this vein, the assault on reproductive rights does not come out of thin air or is the fault of this or that administration solely, but the realization of a sacrifice demanded by the bourgeoisie as a whole. This has also been demonstrated in the umpteenth strike cropping up and being crushed through the active intervention of the government (and sabotage from the unions), once again under the guise of its precious ‘law’. While it is obvious that men and women face particular, though not exclusive hardships (including sexual assault of men and women as has been shown in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar) imperialism results in the general destruction of life irrespective of gender, for which the working class has to pay the largest price. It is for these reasons that we emphasize the need for the class to realize these attacks as part of one generalized offensive for the bourgeoisie, and why an equally generalized response is necessary. Not through the ballot box, not through negotiating the democratic quality of the most basic rights, or by succumbing to the nationalist cry of the defense of states or abstract rights, but through the organized revolutionary consciousness of the class. It is for this reason that we remember the women workers of St Petersburg once more, who not only marched to fight for communism, but were the first to unfurl the banner, stating ‘Down With The War’. It is for this reason that workers must fight against the total war the bourgeoisie want to impose on us. Women workers toppled the Tsar and ended WWI, women workers, lead the way!