A-Infos (en) Poland, ZSP** on Women's Day Marches

Members of ZSP from Warsaw, Olsztyn and Wroclaw took part in women's day marches (called 
Manifa in Poland) on March 7. In Wroclaw and Warsaw there were radical blocks organized. 
In Wroclaw, people had a banner with a scale stating that "women's work does not pay", in 
reference to both wage differences between men and women and the fact that in many 
low-paid service sectors and "feminized" professions, women are stuck doing hard jobs for 
little money. Many of the slogans chanted there were responses to the liberal feminists on 
the march who want a certain liberal feminist leader to become president. They chanted "No 
patriarchy, no capitalism" and "We don't want parity, we want revolution", among other 
things. ---- In Warsaw ZSP marched for the third year in a row with WRS, this year calling 
itself "the revolutionary block".

The Warsaw demonstration, unlike the Wroclaw one, had some union delegations and the 
revolutionary block was joined part of the way by the teachers' union ZNP. The attempt to 
make a more pro-social demo however seems to have alientated many marches; the 
demonstration was less than half the size (perhaps a third of the size) of last year.

The march in Warsaw was also met by fascists of different sorts, notably the Falanga and 
all-Polish youth and the traditional exchange of curses with anarchists.

The following is part of the text of a critical leaflet handed out in Warsaw:

Solidarity in Stuggle? But for what and against what?

The slogan of this year's Manifa "In Solidarity in the Crisis, In Solidarity in the 
Struggle" is meant to be a clear reference to the labour strugle and an allusion to the 
history of the Women's Day march. As participants of this march who have each year come to 
the demonstration calling for women's greater participation in workplace organizing and 
anticapitalist social movements, it would seem we should be delighted that such a slogan 
would appear this year.

Unfortunately we are faced with a different reality when coming to the Manifa and that is 
that large parts of the dominant figures in the feminist movement are in fact in 
solidarity with the neoliberal project or reformist social democracy which in fact is just 
a dangerous distraction from the real struggle: the struggle for building a grassroots 
social and labour movement, independent of the bosses and politicians. Only such a 
movement can start to break free from their agenda and threaten to topple their power.

Besides holding the occasional one-off lecture at some university on "women's role in 
labour", we wonder what the mainstream of the women's movement has been doing to show 
working class women that they are in solidarity with them. Surely not continuing with 
insisting that neoliberal women like Henryka Bochniarz*  are somehow in the same struggle 
as "women in general". The voices of feminists who claim no support for the neoliberal 
agenda are drowned by the chorus of moderate conformists who insist that women don't push 
such "divisive" issues as the class struggle.

(*head of a powerful business lobby and CEO of Boeing in Poland which sold F-16s to the 
government)

Another project which has been one of the main activities of the feminist movement, but is 
surely a diversion, is the call to introduce parity on electoral lists. At a time when 
working women are facing increasing hardship and need to organize effective, fighting 
social movements, the project of political parity is an astounding waste of reousces and 
activist time. We do not believe that gender determines the political line of women and 
the existence of powerful women in government or political life is no consolation to us. 
The fate of the Thatchers, Albrights and Rices of the world should be the same as the 
Berlusconis, Sarkozies and Obamas.

The political project of parity in Poland, at very best, can only guarantee us more HGWs, 
Anna Sobieskas and Nelly Rokitas, if not a string of female party hopefuls a la Aneta 
Krawczyk. (*)

(* HGW - hardline neoliberal President of Warsaw, Anna Sobieska - ultra-conservative 
parliamentarian, Nelly Rokita, parliamentarian who became famous as the wife of another 
politician, Aneta Krawczyk, women who wanted to run for political office and wound up 
sexually molested and raped by multiple party leaders for a few years.)


There is no getting around it: women are part of the oppressive system, even if to a 
lesser degree than men. If one recognizes the postulates of capitalism to be the main 
factor in the dire situation of working women, changing over from capitalist   bastards to 
capitalist bitches is no progress. Selling it as so is just another liberal diversion to 
keep people from getting to the root of the problems or wahing any struggle which may 
threaten what the system really must maintain: not the patriarchy, but capitalism and 
political power over the people.

Much as we are opposed to sexism in all its aspects, the patriarchy can be significantly 
topples and still leave the system of exploitation and slavery in tact. Fighting the 
patriarchy is simply not enough.

Although we can support goals to change the politics of single issues (for example, 
eliminating laws that interfer with women's reproductive choices), a women's movement 
which stops at any issue wich may not be to the liking of the bourgeois, statist or 
neoliberal feminists does not excite us. For this reason, we do not go to your 
"breakthrough congresses" dominated by elites, or vote for the "Women's Party" or stand on 
corners collecting signatures for parity, but call for women to be more active in the 
grassroots social revolutionary struggle.

For a world without bosses or masters, without bureaucrats or patriarchs.

Solidarity... in the class struggle.

http://zsp-iwa.blogspot.com/
=======================
* An antiauthoritarian anticapitalist syndicate
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