[Socialist Action newspaper first went to press 30…]

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Socialist Action newspaper first went to press 30 years ago—in December 1983. Since then, we have not missed a month of printing. The vintage photograph above was taken in the old Socialist Action offices and bookstore in San Francisco. In the foreground is Gerry Foley, long-time SA foreign affairs editor, who died in 2012. In the background is Socialist Action Editor Michael Schreiber. As we enter our 31st year of publishing, we continue to depend on our loyal base of supporters, and always welcome new readers to the socialist press. If you would like to become a regular subscriber, please mail the sub blank on page 2 — or pay by credit card at www.socialistaction.com.

SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 2013 11 If you privatize water in Bolivia to lower the social wage, who has to add an hour of unpaid labor to their day to carry it from a greater distance? Women. If you lower the social wage by making it more difficult for old people to get into a hospital, who finds more hours in the day to nurse them at home? Women. When women are forced to do unpaid labor in the home, they are vulnerable to having to take low-paid, part-time, and temporary jobs in the public sphere. When women feel forced to work on low-paying jobs, the bosses can use it to drive down the wages of the whole working class. Women’s subordination is not a fluke of the system. This is the way that capitalism uses gender differentiation to keep the system afloat.

Marxists refer to this crazy Catch 22 for women as the relationship between social reproduction and production. We argue that the capitalist system cre­ ated a new kind of production, based on the horrific logic that corporate profits can only rise as our wages and standard of living go down. And along with that system of production goes a special kind of social re­ production.

In the capitalist system of social reproduction, the feeding, clothing, educating, nursing, and emotional caring for the majority of society—children, the el­ derly, all working people in fact, is thrown onto in­ dividual working-class households in a manner to reinforce elite capitalist rule.

Sometimes the powers that be push women to stay in the home, as they did in the 1950s. Sometimes they make it impossible for a home to survive without two wages, as they began to do in the 1970s, and they privatize some domestic functions such as laundry and fast food. They are flexible. But always, our work arrangements and domestic arrangements—on the broad social plane, of course—are manipulated to in­ crease profit and profitability for the capitalist class. And to enforce these profitable arrangements, they work hard to normalize and stabilize sexualities and gender identities that work with the system.

When you get down to the basics, all the highly prof­ itable cultural degradations that we are enduring at the moment are designed to make it seem natural for women to be at the bottom of the heap. It is not a con­ spiracy per se. It is just that our subordination by the elites gives the green light to media portrayals and sexism in the culture at large.

The reality of our subordination and disparagement on the job, in the community, on the campus, and in the political arena, grows sexism in return. The intro­ duction of anti-abortion laws in the majority of states blasts the message that women are too childlike, too irresponsible, or too evil to control our own bodies. Forcing poor women to get drug testing before ap­ plying for the meager benefits still available to help them raise their children signals that they are unfit mothers.

Federal think-tank pronouncements that blame poverty on non-gendering-conforming households in the Black community pathologize alternatives to the nuclear family. Predatory lending and the resul­ tant foreclosures send the message that Black women cannot manage wealth. Throwing African American and Latino women into prison at the today’s rate—a rise of 747%—says that they are criminals actually unworthy of any of society’s wealth. Throwing people out of hospitals too early, with the expectation that women at home will take up the slack, transmits the notion that we are “naturally” of the disposition to replace the social wage with our compassionate and altruistic natures. Sexism is reinforced at every turn in this system.

The way out of this madness is creating a social or­ der in which the wellbeing of children, the elderly, and, indeed, all working people is the responsibility of society as a whole. The way out of this madness is the creation of a social order in which the wealth we produce in the 40, 50, or 60 hours a week that we work, can go toward the social welfare of all. To cre­ ate a movement that can win such a society, we have to break down the divisions among working people on sexual and gender lines. That means putting the demands not only for equal pay but for affirmative ac­ tion for jobs from which we have been excluded, for full reproductive justice, for “Medicare for all,” and most, importantly for 24-hour child care, at the cen­ ter of our fight.

In our current system, the gap between the hours worked by women in low-wage jobs and the hours of child care available condemns working women to vic­ timization. Infant care can now cost more than send­ ing a child to college. The gap between the hours a child is in school and most parents’ work schedules is around 25 hours a week. This condemns women and those responsbile for domestic labor to unending victimization. There is simply no way to eliminate the economic subordination of women and the victimiza­ tion of all working class family units than demanding a program of full quality childcare.

This type of demand challenges the most basic workings of the capitalist system. But it also speaks directly to the fight to end violence against women. Such violence will not end without creating the con­ ditions in which society as a whole takes responsibil­ ity for relieving the double and triple burden facing working women by making such child care available, and by curtailing the economic disparities that force women into dangerous liaisons, that force women to stay in abusive relationships, that force women into abusive employment situations, and to endure sexual victimization by bosses. There is no other way.

The movement against violence against women has gone through a number of mutations. During the deep social radicalization of the 1960s and 1970s, the rape and domestic violence movements relied on ac­ tivist-volunteers who were acutely aware of the mis­ erable reality of welfare state intervention, cop vio­ lence, employer abuse, and a discriminatory criminal justice system factored into the story. The movement that put tens of thousands of women and their allies in the streets was based on a radical vision in which all the instruments that maintained patriarchy, rac­ ism, and class society would be dismantled.

Sadly, that radicalization waned and U.S. capital­ ism began to experience new international competi­ tion and a falling rate of profit. Those who politically serve the corporations unleashed a concerted attack on working people, dubbed “neoliberal reform.”

It was not all the use of the stick, however. It also involved the use of the carrot. In response to the mass sentiment for women’s equality and safety, the Dem­ ocratic and Republican parties agreed to give support ... Common Core (continued from page 12: “Teachers, parents, students protest Common Core testing”)

school was slated to go to Steve Perry, principle of Capital Preparatory Magnet School, one of the na­ tion’s most outspoken union bashers. Perry sub­ scribes to the “no excuses” philosophy that is so prominent amongst the corporate reformers— all the challenges that children living in poverty face are discounted. Students are expected to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, make the cut or face being pushed out.

Last year, Perry created his own charter school management company, which lists him as the president and sole officer. This sweetheart deal would have also given Perry’s private company control of the magnet school where he is now serving as principal, meaning his company would receive upwards of $15 million per year in state to a system of institutions devoted to ameliorating violence against women. On the one hand, this led to the funding of some things we desperately need. But it came at a great cost because institutional aid to women suffering violence was interwoven into a gen­ eral strengthening of the truly criminal “criminal jus­ tice system.” The Violence Against Women Act, whose provisions tie non-profits and social service agencies deeply into a project that puts a gleam on the most pernicious criminal justice system in the world, is a case in point. For those of you who would like to look at this history more closely, I suggest again Beth Ritchie’s book, which dissects the politics of this pro­ cess with precision.

I want to conclude with the idea, then, that today’s movement against sexual violence can go one of two ways. It can begin to create the kind of broad, mass, militant movement of millions of women and nonconforming gender victims that is necessary to take on the capitalist offensive against women and work­ ing people. This in my mind is the only kind of move­ ment that can win real concessions, all the while building up our independent power for a future as­ sault on the system itself.

Or, we can succumb to the funds and logic of win­ ning our safety through collaboration with the crimi­ nal justice system that is implementing the New Jim Crow, the New Jane Crow, the union-busting, the sur­ veillance of activists, and so on. I think that viewed this way, the answer should be clear. I hope to join you in the streets soon to put the nation on notice that our tolerance for rape culture is at an end and that our eyes are on the prize of an end to patriarchy and the current system that sustains it. n funding for operating the two schools.

The next Board of Education meeting was stand­ ing room only, with over 200 in attendance. Out­ raged parents blasted Perry for his arrogance and bullying tactics. They criticized the board’s lack of transparency, and the whole model of school choice that pits parents against parents.

Later, in a closed-door session, the plan was de­ feated in a 5-4 vote. The following day Perry post­ ed on his Twitter account, “The only way to lose a fight is to stop fighting. All this did was piss me off. It’s so on. Strap up, there will be head injuries.” Several people, including the chair of the Board of Education, are now calling for an investigation into Perry’s behavior.

The movement to defend public education is growing, and each new victory demonstrates that the unity of parents, teachers, and all those op­ posed to corporate hegemony is more powerful than the deep pockets of the 1%. n

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SOCIALIST ACTION Paul Buckowski / Times Union