Yannick Vanonckelen | Communist Party of Belgium
Comrades,
First of all, I would like to thank the World Anti-imperialist Platform for this initiative and tell you that I am happy and honored to represent the PCB-CPB in the World Anti-imperialist Platform women’s organization here in Caracas!
We are gathered here today to talk about women. But not just women as an isolated subject. We are here to talk about women in their concrete reality: that of work, precariousness, exploitation, invisibility. Because the condition of women cannot be understood outside of the class struggle.
Being a woman in a capitalist society means suffering a double penalty: economic exploitation as a worker and patriarchal oppression as a woman. And for working-class women, it is often a triple penalty: worker, woman, and poor.
For too long, feminism has been presented as a battle “between the sexes,” a war against men. But that is not our fight. Our struggle is against the system that divides in order to rule. A system that pits women against each other, women against men, male workers against female workers, and masks the root of injustice: capitalist exploitation.
It is no coincidence that it is working women who suffer the worst working conditions. It is no coincidence that they are the ones on the front lines in so-called “essential” jobs―nurses, nursing assistants, cashiers, cleaning ladies―but always the least recognized, the lowest paid, the most despised.
Patriarchy, far from receding, has infiltrated feminist movements, disguised as activists who claim to be progressive without questioning the relations of domination.
Defend women, YES! Create another box dividing our class, NO.
So, comrades, let’s be clear: the emancipation of women will not happen without the emancipation of the entire working class. And conversely, a labor movement that ignores women, that marginalizes them, will never be revolutionary.
What we want is not for a few women to reach the top of the system. What we want is to change the system so that no one is crushed anymore. Not women. Not men. Not the poor. Not the exploited.
Because working-class men, too, are victims of a destructive model of masculinity. They are taught to dominate instead of cooperate. To remain silent instead of speaking out. To control instead of understand. They also suffer, and they too need this human revolution.
Our struggle is not between men and women. It is the people united against all forms of domination.
And in this fight, women are not passive victims. They are fighters, resisters, workers, laborers, activists. From Rosa LUXEMBURG to Lyudmila PAVLICHENKO, from Argelia LAYA to today’s undocumented workers, the history of communism is also the history of women in struggle.
So let us join forces. Let us reject divisions. For until all women are free, none of us will be free.
Women of the people, men of the people: our future is shared, our struggle is shared, and our victory will be shared.
THANK YOU, COMRADES!
● Rosa LUXEMBURG
Internationalist, Marxist theorist, co-founder of the Spartacist movement and later of the Communist Party of Germany. Assassinated on January 15, 1919 (two weeks after the party’s founding) in order to crush the Spartacist revolt during the German Revolution.
● Lyudmila PAVLICHENKO
A sniper in the Red Army, she killed 309 Nazis during World War II on the Eastern Front in Odessa/Sevastopol. Among other things, she is remembered for her famous speech to Roosevelt: “I wear a uniform, I have killed fascists. And you, what have you done?” She remains an emblematic figure of the Soviet resistance and an icon of the role of women in combat.
● Argelia LAYA
A feminist figure in the PCV, a teacher, and a former member of the armed struggle, here is a quote from her autobiographical book “Nuestra causa” when she was drawing attention to herself within the Communist Party of Venezuela.
Machismo reduces women to an inferior status; it is the legitimate offspring of the exploitation of man by man, capitalism’s best ally. Men and women of the exploited classes, activists who defend machismo and practice it in their families and in their relations with society, serve as instruments of their oppressors because, consciously or unconsciously, they marginalize women in the class struggle.