Women and gender: bourgeois feminism versus revolutionary concept
Since the dawn of our species, women have been gaining ground around obstacles and to achieve their multiple skills to demonstrate alongside men. A way reflected misunderstandings and repressions, both society itself and from their immediate environment.
Mired for centuries under the rule of a patriarchal model, women have fought a thousand battles in order to achieve an egalitarian, keeping the same space with the development of society. In the struggle for liberation, they have been involved in emancipatory processes in different realities across the planet.
To do this because they have overcome and conceptualizations point out what is really revolutionary feminism, which antidote to the poison intoxicated with bourgeois feminism. Hence the importance of knowing what really separates the bourgeois view of women’s “emancipation” of that revolutionary, stripped and these defects of the past and impositions of this.
What difference does exist between bourgeois feminism and revolutionary? It is a question more than necessary, vital for women who seek and fight for a different society.
The first deals with the problems of women from the cornerstone of compatibility with capitalism, is aimed at specific demands of women of middle and upper class, it is a pro-institutional feminism and is an expression of bourgeois ideology, in line with which ignores the centrality of the struggles of workers, poor women, workers, indigenous, peasant, etc .; in essence, bourgeois feminism conceives of itself as a way for women are also recognizes the right to profit, exploit and occupy positions.
For the revolutionary feminism, on the contrary, the struggle of women is a constituent and indivisible part of the struggle to the death against the capitalist system, to achieve gender liberation within the framework of social liberation. His critique of patriarchy and machismo is devastating to the extent that it is radical, since far from being adorned with rhetoric and sophistry, goes to the root of the contradictions and is nourished by Marxism.
Clarify this difference in approach leads to consider the fundamental tenets of Marxism. The critical foundation that separates Marxism from all bourgeois thought is its conceptual support that develops on three main areas, namely: the theory of surplus value or exploitation, state theory and the theory of thought.
The theory of surplus value due to an operating structure that works objectively. According to Marx it is the value that the worker above the money that represents your work effort, which is not paid and goes directly into the hands of the capitalist. This appropriation of surplus value (surplus), which is called profit, is the basis of capitalist exploitation. Marxist theory states that exploitation exists due to the presence of a bourgeois state that favors the perpetuation of it.
The second analyzes how the bourgeois state operates in interaction with other forces within it, whether they are religious, the judicial-legal system, the media, the military, and applied systematically repression in its various manifestations for their sustainability, as well as the prevalence of exploitation.
And the theory or way of thinking, understood as the historical and dialectical materialism, poses a different thought the bourgeois in the interpretation of history and idealist method, being decisive when trying to change the world tool.
The importance of this critical basis, from the point of view of women is vital, since these three axes are based on the anthropogony, which necessarily includes reproduction as a species through work. an important fact to address is then derived, or that the woman plays the workforce, and comes to be considered by the bourgeois state as an instrument of production.
This leads to a deeper analysis, which part of the consideration of the existence of a dialectic between production and reproduction, taking into account that the woman is a unique workforce that produces work.
If work in skilled or complex is divided and unskilled, where the first is exhausting psychologically workers, and for which the woman is obliged to compensate for this situation at home, there is a need to organize and fight against this situation of injustice that exceeded. Remember also that women workers generally receive lower wages by 30% compared to average man, ie that is profitable from the point of view of capitalist 30% more than men.
So when the issues that concern women are discussed, it should be from a Marxist analysis to consider integrating elements that have been identified to analyze society and particularly the role, rights and duties of women; diametrically opposite, the bourgeois approach that addresses the issue of gender biased way it does, as unordered set of isolated phenomena, without contradicting the theoretical and ideological scaffolding of the capitalist system.
In the current neoliberal model is class inequality that impacts most strongly on the gender asymmetry, which affected women both in the workplace and at home worsens. In both contexts must resist every day as a worker and as a member of the family, when it is discriminated, beleaguered including sexually, depressed, undervalued in terms of wages and affected by other situations that undermine their psychological stability and dignity as human beings with rights social, economic and political.
Revolutionary feminism therefore not be confused with the bourgeois, which aims desdibujarlo. Hence the role that falls to the revolutionary: to deepen the theoretical study of this psychosocial phenomenon, which impacts on the political projects of transformation of society, and bring together every day more women and men around the liberation struggle.
By Paula Jimenez, member of the Bolivarian Movement
