On March 8 this year
we witnessed the reconfirmation of the strike of women in our
country, in unity/connection with a broad range of many countries in
the world in which the strike has spread, has become the watchword
and a practice of millions of women, has reached extraordinary peaks,
as in Spain, and where the International Women’s Day was
enlightened by the light of the revolutionary struggle of many women,
both in Europe and in most of the countries of Latin America from
Brazil to Peru, Chile, etc., as well as in U.S., Canada, India,
Turkey, Philippines, etc.
The women’s
strike, in the current increasingly reactionary conditions of
advancing modern fascism, raises more vigorously the issue of the
double oppression, class and gender oppression, that in this society
weighs on the majority of women, workers, precarious, unemployed
women, girls, students, housewives, immigrants ... Since the
beginning of this year already too many and hideous femicides took
place in Italy, femicides that are the most rotten and hateful fruit
of this capitalist society; as there have been layoffs,
discrimination related to motherhood, new attacks on the right to
abortion, etc.
The Women's strike
is a weapon in this phase, because it affects all aspects of women's
oppression: job, family, sexual, cultural, ideological speres.
Therefore, the strike embodies in itself, the whole revolutionary
potential of the struggle of women who, to achieve a true
emancipation and liberation, are called to fight to overthrow of this
society in which we have nothing to lose but all the chains and to
construct a new world, the socialist society, towards communism.
The bourgeois
reforms can not change the lives of women, so we can not and do not
want to rely on the parties in the bourgeois parliament, or delegate
the defense our lives to a State that with all its apparatuses
(judicial, military, repressive, media etc.) every day tries to
impose social more control on the lives of women. For this capitalist
system, the majority of women must be exploited in the jobs for the
profit of the masters, they are the first to be fired, increasingly
precarious, the first to pay the cost of "their crises",
and at the same time they must provide the reproductive and care work
to give the world new arms and take care of them to be put at the
service of the system of capitalist exploitation.
On March 8th in the
demonstrations in many cities of our country, in the many initiatives
put in place this year, the denunciation of all the social issues, of
the working and living conditions of the working women, of the most
exploited and oppressed proletarian women, has advanced; this year in
amidst the electoral campaign, the women's movement has said a clear
NO to the electoral manipulation, because we do not want small
reforms but a radical transformation of society and the overthrow of
power relationships; this year the girls, young comrades were at the
front row in the and anti-fascist and anti-racist demonstrations and
struggles, they brought their anger and determination to fight,
leading to the healthy kicking-out of the demonstrations of members
of parties such as the Lega, as happened for example in Bologna. All
this has added a new important element to the path of struggle of
women in our country.
Important signals
came from the workers and precarious women. Again it was in the
sectors in which women have actually striked, deserted the workplace,
as education, some branches of the third sector, services, commerce,
public employment, that we had the highest and wider participation,
from the North to the South, to the strike. But the significant fact
has been the strike of factory workers, the heart of the class of
exploited and oppressed proletarian women. Beside the good and
positive confirmation of factories where already in the previous
years the workers had defied blackmails, threats, official unions
boycotts - and nothing and no one can stop them - this year other
workers have gone on strike for the first time, as the immigrant
workers in Montello, a large factory for waste treatment near
Bergamo. The workers' strike, even if it is still a minority, is
strategic because it brings the class perspective inside the women's
strike.
Of course, the path
is still long and open. Several positions, views and practices must
change, and revolutionary proletarian feminism has still to advance.
Women's strike is an
important weapon, we do not want to make it a routine once a year,
with the risk of becoming crystallized. If this is enough for the
feminists of the petty and middle-bourgeoisie, it is definitely not
so for the majority of women who every day are under attack in their
work and life conditions. The class and revolutionary line and
practice can not wait for the next 8th
of March, but it must transform the needs and dreams expressed by
women in their strike into a struggle, a daily rebellion. These needs
and dreams are not a "platform" of requests for reforms
made in round-tables and submitted to the government, to the
ministries, increasingly imbued with fascism-populism, but are "war
weapons" of women against the government, institutions, masters.
This year thee
understanding of the value of women's strikes has spread to a large
part of the revolutionary, communist organizations in many countries.
However, this understanding has also to lead to overcome an only
propaganda way to state the importance of women's struggle, as well
as it must overcome an old and stereotypical view of contradictions.
There is a great
revolutionary perspective ahead, and the battle of women brings the
"extra gear" to the whole of the struggle movement.
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