From: Carrol Cox <cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Feminist Demands. Who divides the Working Class
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 18:22:42 -0600 (CST)


    I have often admired Siddarth's communications, but the issue
of women and working class struggle is not "merely" a theoretical
issue but one that confronts us every day, and the two most serious
threats to working class unity in the United States are and ALWAYS
have been male supremacy (and its ideology sexism) and white
supremacy (and its ideology racism). Racism is probably the
more serious *Immediate* barrier, sexism the more deeply rooted
and in the long run the most serious barrier to socialist
revolution.

    The feminist spooks and fantasies Siddarth dreams up are so
many weak defenses of the male ego that wants to have its marxism
without actually practising working class unity or actually struggling
for the future of the class.

    Almost two years ago a militant communist from Canada disgraced
himself as a comrade by arguing that women ought to give serious
moral consideration to the choice of abortion. Quite a flame war
broke out at that point (one of the few times when Lisa and I saw
eye to eye); Jim (I think that was his name) simply could not see
how oppressive it was to women and how terribly disruptive of class
unity it was to lay that moral trip on pregnant women. (This
constant screaming, especially perhaps by those who call themselves
"pro-choice," about the great moral decision an abortion involves
is a far greater barrier to women's control over their own bodies
than are actual legal impediments.) Jim, I argued at the time, was
a scab and a class traitor for this attempt to control the *real*
and not merely metaphysical choices of women.

    Unless Siddarth can get his contempt for women under control,
he too will become a scab and a class traitor.

    Carrol





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