References:
MKP: (Maoist Communist Party Of Turkey / North Kurdistan )
PCm:Maoist Communist Party Of Italy
Mfpr: Movimento Femminista Proletario rivoluzionario
The comrades of the Maoist Communist Party Of Italy (PCm) Italia and the Maoist Communist Party Of Turkey / North Kurdistan (MKP Turkey North-Kurdistan) . Both parties are members of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). The mfpr is a mass movement led by PCm in Italy and mobilises proletarian women into struggle.
We publish the report of the important meeting, held the 6 of March in Palermo with the comrade Rosa, tragically murdered by the fascist,, Turkish regime. In the name of Rosa, in spite of her murderer, we will continue this work with other comrades of MKP.
PCm: We strongly wanted this meeting, since several month ago and we are very pleased to hold it. Here are comrades of the Communist Maoist Party; leading comrade s of the Revolutionary Proletarian Feminist Movement (MFPR), organization generated by the Party and, from Palermo, young comrades of the MFPR and the Red Block organism of the Maoist youth.
We wanted to meet the comrades of the Turkish Communist Party inv involved in the women movement, to exchange each other our experiences of struggle, to strengthen the political and ideological unity on the understanding of the role of the women in the people's war and in the Party. In this situation, since we need to know7 other comrades and exchange experiences, we felt very appropriate the form of a meeting, also to organise common demonstration and mass initiatives.
As regards the agenda of the meeting, we propose some topics, but if the comrade has different proposals we will take them in account immediately:- A report about our development inside a brief report on the actual women's condition in our country.- A report on the experience of the Turkish comrades and the situation of the women's Struggle in Turkey.
A discussion of the most properly ideological questions, involved in the struggle to form the women comrades as leaders of the people's war and of the Party.
We want to dedicate this meeting to the Turkish comrade Aycan Tato. killed on 24 may 2003 in a clash with the Turkish army.
PCm: along with the greetings of the comrades here, who every day engaged in the class struggle, we bring the greetings of the working, precarious, unemployed women struggling in Italy against the condition of double exploitation and double oppression.
In Italy, the modern fascist government of Berlusconi, since its birth, tried to make the women's life the most hard. It attacked the worker women denying the right of vv ark, discriminating and sacking them, extending of the age for their pension. It attacked the condition of live, with the high prices of goods, destroying the welfare state and privatizing the social service. It attacked the women's rights, with a criminal law on the assisted fecundation that unavoidably will open the road to erase the abortion right. These attacks went together with the increasing of the rapes, mistreatments, murders of women inside the family. This government wants to push back the women in a modern middle ^e, to make them subaltern before the men, slaves in society and in the family.
This year, assenting at the international strike call launched from Maoist Nepalese comrades, the Party and Mfpr's comrades together with comrades of Slai Cobas for; the class union, an organization led by the Party's comrades organized a national mobilization day in every work place where we are and in several other places. At this mobilization many women will participate taking front against the denying the of work right, the sacking, the sexual violence, the mobbing, the slavery of immigrant women expelled by the racist laws, the high prices, the lacking of welfare state, the attack against abortion right led by the Berlusconi's government, the catholic Church and the most back -v-rd reactionary forces guided by the sexist and the middle aged Ideology, that this society brings about all the time.
This is a very important and historic initiative, it's the very first time that in Italy, worker women have called a strike day. This initiative is against the peaceful and reformist demonstrations organized by the bourgeois feminists sitting in the parliament or in other authorities. According the call of theNepalese comrades, this strike has to be different, has to give a strong meaning to the 8 of March day, that the bourgeoisie made more and more empty, to mobilize the strength of the women, as a powerful force of the Revolution. The'development of the Mfpr has been exciting but, at the same time, tortuous and difficult.
We want to underline that, without the political, ideological, theo- -retical and organizational weapon represented by Mfpr. necessary to unchain the fury of the proletarian women, it couldn't be possible to win them to the Party, to turn them into women leaders. These understanding and process are universal and every new Maoist Party has to take it in account.
Without the Mfpr we would not had so good results in our struggles, where we sow a lot of women participate, like the occupying of institutions buildings or the protests against the attacks of imperialist and capitalist system against women. We said before, that the path of the Mfpr has been exciting and tortuous. Like comrade Parvati says, it is difficult, either outside or inside the Party, to make clear the importance of Mfpr.
PCm: We want to explain better why our Party have generated the mass organization we call Mfpr and what struggle we carried and are carrying forward. We have to begin from a fact: in Italy in the 70s we had big movements of women, particularly the movement to win the right of abortion, a battle that involved many more general aspects concerning the conditions of live of the women. This movement had the merit to mobilize thousands of women, but at its heart and head were petty-bourgeois women, even if they were rebel and revolutionary.
It was and still is necessary a proletarian revolutionary leadership of these struggles, to make the big strength of the women a force of the proletarian revolution and to prevent that these battles are folded inside the limits of the bourgeois democracy and of the parliamentism.
By constituting the Mfpr. in the '94 our pre-party organization, tried to give an answer to this need for the women and particularly for the most oppressed of them, the proletarian women. Why did we call it so? Every word has an object. We say movement because it is not a narrow battle of small revolutionary groups but a movement, that has to involve many women. This movement has its centre in the struggles and not in empty words (meetings, assemblies, forums, are almost the only way of action used in Italy by bourgeois feminists). We say feminist in a sense that goes against all the political understanding and process of the bourgeois feminism. We uphold the contribution of the Peru Communist Party and of its leader Mariategui, who in his pamphlet wrote that we have a bourgeois, a petty-bourgeois and a revolutionary feminism. In this case we say feminist, to take and to give voice to all the rebellions of all the women, which are humiliated, ill-treated and oppressed by the bourgeois system.
We say proletarian because at the base as well at the leadership of the women struggle movement have to be the proletarian women, which are the most exploited and oppressed. They only can lead in a class direction this movement. We say proletarian also because within the women struggles we have to organize, our contingent of proletarian women which has a double oppression to break. Finally, we say revolutionary to make clear that the only road for the freedom and the emancipation of the women is the revolution, the people's war to overthrow the bourgeois system and to build a socialist society.
The Mfpr is an urgent need if you do not want to let the bourgeois and at petty-bourgeois forces leading the energy of the women struggles, above all in an imperialist country as Italy, where on one hand the bourgeoisie try to push back the women in a new middle age of brutal oppression, and on other hand the imperialism makes to appear a false emancipation. To strengthen this idea of women's war as powerful force of the revolution it was necessary to organize this strength, and it is still so.
Those who speak about the just women's struggles while they do not organize them in order to make explode these struggles, do not re ally want the revolution. Since 1994-95 we brought this battle inside the women struggle, we brought the class struggle in the existing women movements, as well as we launched struggles by ourselves. We will give to the comrade a summing-up of the most important struggles we have done: for the right to work, against the war and the repression, etc. But can give just an idea of the work we have done during these years.
Among the worker women we stated the necessity that they not only struggle directly against their exploitation but also against the attacks on all the women, above all the proletarian women. Along with the strong criticism of the double oppression, we also exposed the role of the bourgeois family. We did so also because during the recent years, under the fascist government of Berlusconi, the bourgeoisie tried to restore the traditional understanding of the family to use it as the most ambiguous weapon to oppress women. For instance, in the movement against the imperialist war we strongly argued that that women are not all equal, because often during the war in the Balkans, or in Iraq, women ministers, or prominent representatives of left parties, were leading and support the war policy. It is not a gender struggle of the pacifist women against the war, we said, it is a class struggle. We strongly struggled against the bourgeois pacifist women movement, which oppose the brutality of the war by raising pacifism and me not violent character of the women. We said that women are and must be violent, they must oppose the reactionary violence of ths bourgeoisie their own revolutionary armed violence in the people's war. It had been shown in the struggle against the repression. After the Genoa battle (G8 2001) a lot of women, many comrades, most of them young, have been doubly repressed when they were detained, because police attacked and hit them because they "were woman''. When we say that the centre of the women's struggle is in the proletarian women struggle, we do not say just words but we organize worker and proletarian women, everywhere we are. Here in Palermo, we had the strongest example of organization of proletarian women, which not only are strongly struggling for the right to have work, but are also involved in many other fields of struggle: the abortion right, the sexual violence, etc. The Mfpr worked hard and since its formation it took part in the internationalist arena, because we learned a lot from the comrades from Pern, Nepal, Turkey which even gave their live for the revolutionary struggle, and also because we think that the task to realize the slogan "unchain the fury of the women as powerful force of the revolution" and to improve The leading role of the women in the Party, is important for the Communist Party as a whole. For this reason I once more want to stress the need of this meeting. For us it is important to have direct relationship with other worn-' en's organizations and exchange experience of struggle, but it is also important to establish that today the women can and must be part of the people's war and of the struggle to build communists and Maoist parties.
MKP: Are all the women members of the Party members of the Mfpr?
PCm: The Mfpr is a generated mass organization, larger than theParty. Women from outside of the Party also join it. The Party comrades lead the Mfpr. To lead it does not mean just to give orders,but to work actively inside it.
MKP: Does the organization of strike for the 8th of March involve all the Italian women?
PCm: The call has been launched on a national scale, wherever we are active (a number of cities and towns in the North and the South of the country) as well as where we are not yet organized. We have worked to realize it concretely in several work places: in Palermo -schools, hospitals, municipality; in Taranto: — cleaner workers etc. Elsewhere we will have meetings, platforms, delegation, etc. to better prepare it for the future.
MKP: I'm very honoured to participate at this meeting and to listen the contributions that you are giving to women struggle. I'm very honoured by the dedication to the martyr comrade. I want to .inform you about the struggle of women in my country and about my party's policy to develop the women's struggle. At our First Congress, where it was debated the man-woman con tradition, the women's condition, we perceived that there was a big hole, that we did not really engage ourselves into some of the women issues. There was a contradiction in this, because women were really present in the Party and in its battles, they were present in the armed struggle, for many year- the majority of combatants were women.
But it could not be said that they had given an ideological contributes to the Party, indeed they were jus: combatants. In the history of our Party, it has be seen, that without women is not possible to develop the revolution and that we need the revolution for a true liberation of the women. In the Part} so far it was not taken any real .initiative. Now we're thinking to change our intervention on the women issues to make grow them. During our Congress we spoke about the male-chauvinism and also about the opportunity to create a specific organization.
I agree that the role of women is very important to develop the revolution, and women have to contribute to the revolution. The question of women is ideological, i* has to be treated both inside and outside the party, in the society, because this contradiction was born from the class division, from private property, but the man-woman contradiction will still exist also in a socialist society, like the class contradictions.
The first contradiction born with the origin of the private properties and will be the last to disappear with the communism. The contradiction will be solved first with the revolution and then with many cultural revolutions, until the communism. The man-woman contradiction will transform on a natural sphere the sex difference through the closing of the circle in the proletarian Cultural revolution. It will be impossible speak about a real victory of the communism in a world scale as long as the relation owner-slave will exist, as long as the last contradiction man-woman will be swept. Our congress look at the Maoists women as leaders in the party and guides of Revolution as decisive /actor to unchain the strength of the women, breaking the chains, o advance in mass struggles through the "democratic women's movement", mass organization formed by party's women and other.
In the specific stage of the new democratic revolution that is the specific organization for this object. That is a mass movement, an oppressed women's struggle movement, and lead by the Maoist women. Turkey is a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country. The conditions of the women are difficult, often they have not any democratic right..,. The oppression of the women is not a specific condition of our country, but generally of the capitalist and imperialist system. There are specifics ways to oppress depending on the reality of a country. In some case women have not even the right to live. There are differences from imperialist countries and the others. Regarding the imperialist countries you spoke about a few rights recognized, like the right to the vote, but a false emancipation. Regarding the oppressed countries, I take the example of a recent case of a woman killed by her relatives after she was kidnapped and raped, according the feudal tradition of Islamism. The woman cannot decide who marry and she is sold as wife very young. Because of the Islamic feudal system in Turkish and North Kurdistan a lot of girls don't go to school. In these years, the party has made efforts to promote campaigns against violence on women caused by the feudal and religious tradition of the country. These campaigns go on also against the practice of stoning. If a woman survives a stoning and goes to hospital, she will be killed there. The kill of the woman is decided by the men and sometimes also the oldest women of her family. If we look at the state laws and penalties, they are not equal, they discriminate the women, in the name of the "honour's crimes".
There has not been a democratic revolution, yet. When the family decide, the decision is carried out by youngest relatives which cannot be punished (this happens in particularly in,-the Northern Kurdistan, where the feudal system is more rooted and oppressive). I can make another recent example: a woman minister, who declared to the TV she is virgin. You will find many problems to get married if you are not virgin. Women cannot even make decisions on their own life. On the paper, the laws say that men and women are equals, but in the practice they are applied according the sexist and the feudal ideology. There has not been a democratic revolution and the women participating the government are more reactionary and aggressive than men. Some years ago, when the Turkish premier was a woman, was one the bloodiest period. A woman can ascend the power only if she repudiates her being a woman.
Whatever class she comes from, in our country she has not got rights, she is not a human being.
The campaigns that the party makes are necessary to "pull away" the women from houses and make?, them active. Through-the ''democratic women's movement" the Party wants involve women in the struggle. In this society the majority of the women have not the courage to speak, to express their opinion in the family. In Turkey the women are oppressed by many .chains: the state, the religion, the family. There is not a double oppression, but a triple one. Kurdish women suffer also the national oppression. During the fifteen years of civil war (84-99) waged by the PKK, women were involved in the tight. This national liberation's struggle helped to politicize the women and they were involved-in this war. The majority of women who fought and are fighting, are Kurdish. Today these women are at the centre of politic life, but they are led by nationalists, their strength is distorted and channelled by the bourgeois nationalists, The bourgeois feminism is not strong and it is influenced by the big Kurdish women movement, led by the nationalists. When they shopped the war, the Kurdish women coming from these movements decided to integrate themselves in the state and to collaborate with imperialism. Yesterday Kurdish women were fighters, today they are a symbol of e peace. We have the problem to transform this movement in a proletarian women movement. The bourgeoisie uses the strength of women energy at its own advantage. We need to wind this strength that proofed to be very important in the national liberation war. We need to show to the women in my country how they can free themselves from the chains going over the bourgeois outlook, struggling for revolution.
To unmask the bourgeois democracy is very important. While we are fighting for democratic rights we need to show that we must go over such rights in order to really free ourselves. The most dangerous enemy now is the bourgeois pacifism, not only in my country only, but all around world. The imperialism has made its last war in the name of the exporting the democracy with the bombs. Their propaganda shows veiled women and claims they are doing so to free them. The invasions of the Afghanistan, of Iraq, showed what kind of democracy the imperialists want.
It is necessary to fight against imperialism and capitalism,
against bourgeois democracy. In the work of propaganda we make among the immigrated women in the imperialists countries, we have a problem, because they answer with sufficiency, they don't keep our message because they yet feel themselves free, with more rights. This euro-centric outlook is very strong in the women movement, but it will collapse with the growth of the crisis, the increasing attacks to the right of work, the unemployment, also in the imperialist countries. This pacifist Eurocentric outlook is particularly strong within the women movement in the cities. In the rural areas the situation is different, above all where there are guerrilla's forces. Here the women partiipate the guerrilla. The problem in the rural areas is the ideological education of the women. In these areas were women are very active and, on the other hand, against them there is high level of violence. For example, a comrade was arrested and detained in an army camp where all the troops there raped her, 200 or 300 men. A lot of women get pregnant because of these rapes. It happened also in Istanbul: political women activists, members of legal democratic organizations, were arrested and raped by the policemen. So, the important tasks of the women democratic organization are: to fight against the violence in every form, to fight against the imperialism, to fight against the repressive and fascist ideology of the country, the fight against the reactionary tradition, family, religion.
Women organized initiatives in protest and solidarity. An initiative of democratic women organizations had as main slogan "do not send your sons to wage war against other sons". The Party works joint with other organization. In Istanbul the Party has a large base and many democratic women join its platform. Within this wide movement the comrades support the revolutionary violence. Like the party stated in its Congress, we have in districts, areas and
cities we must build committees to promote campaigns. In the rural areas controlled by state, where the guerrilla is active, prostitution developed, the army brings there women from other areas to prostitute, it is a real state prostitution. The democratic women organization took contacts with the prostitutes and promoted campaigns against this phenomenon.
Regarding the program of democratic movement of women: the perspective is the communism, but it is not imposed, we apply the Maoist mass line: women have to express themselves freely. Democracy is a problem of the revolution. In the new democracy revolution is very important the role of the women front, the communist comrades of the party wage the people's war, while the front is not a party, it is a mass movement that expresses a political line. In the new democratic revolution it is mean through which the1 women contribute to the revolution, a weapon to ideologically transform them and to involve them in the party. It is not a communist movement, communists comrades of the Party are inside it, some of them have the task to organize the movement but not all comrades of the Party are members of this movement, though they all share its ideological aspect.
Mfpr: It has been told that women in ihc government have an attitude worse than men. How do the men in bourgeois government treat them?
MKP : In a feudal country women are isolated in the social life. The trade unions simply ignore the women, to not say of the leadership. If a woman makes career they looked at her as a bad woman, a bad mother. She is strongly psychologically pressed. Also in the revolutionary army women fighters stay apart, even if they are ideologically strong, generally they do not dare to speak publicly.
Mfpr: Is the leadership of the democratic women movement exclusively handled by the Party?
MKP: It is a generated organization of Party, the heart of this organization is formed by the comrades of the Party. The more it will develop the more it will be part of the revolutionary process and then the organization will elect its leaders. This yet happens in the liberated zone. In Europe there is a big movement, where the leaders are elected by the movement itself and among them are the Party comrades.
PCm: I want to speak more about the women condition in an imperialist country like ours. After having pushed the women in to the production, imperialism tries to push the backward, into the houses. Their attacks against the rights the women won are huger than usual. Many women are dismissed because they are pregnant, and generally they are marginalised in the most precarious and worse paid jobs. For instance, this is a point of the 8 of march strike. On the ideological aspects, the attack of the bourgeoisie is even heavier, we speak about a new middle age, particularly regarding the new laws made by this government: on the assisted fecundation the laws established that the women life is less important than embryonic life, than a cell. They offer money to the women do not make abortion..,, All this is reflected also in the cultural aspects and the mass understanding: the image of the woman shown by the mass media, is that of a sexual pleasure object, or who must not think anything but the children and the house. This develops again the sexist ideas that in past years had been weakened by the women struggle. Men, also among the proletarians, fee3 more and more legitimated to hold the women as their properties. Last year there about 100 women have been murdered by their relatives or partners. This shows how in our advanced capitalist society they are introducing feudal and patriarchal aspects. When the imperialism justifies its intervention in the name of the women freedom, in the practice it carries out the cruellest oppression. Like the well known Afghan journalist and actress Pzira said: "'we, which hate so much the burka, will not permit the occidental imperialism take it off, It should be like a rape". We can see this also in the initiative of the French government concerning the veil in the public places: in the name of the freedom they really repress. Also in Italy, when the imperialism tries to show itself on the side of women emancipation, it really aims impose its sexist and reactionary principles: for example, while they allow the women enter the'- army they aim those women uphold a fascist, nationalist, sexist to oppose their real emancipation. After the 70's we had not a so strong and organized women movement, even if a lot of girls and women struggled in the mass movements, particularly against the war. We, through the Mfpr want to organize all these forces starting from proletarian women. In Italy we had two great experiences of armed struggle of the women:
The most important, in communist area, was the Antifascist Resistance, in which many women played a support role but also a lot of them were fighters and leader.
The other one, during the '70's was amongst the fighting organizations, first of all the RB. These comrades, some of which are still in prison and other died in the armed clashes, had the merit to establish with their struggle that women are not pacifist, but they must and can lead the armed struggle. But this experience, lacking the leadership of a communist Party is lost, it ended. Today we, our Party, want to revive the experience of these women and make it win the leadership of people's war.
Let's go to the second point of our agenda. The problem of the * leadership role of women in the Party has been, since the beginning, a key question for our organization. Also on the base of critic summing up of the past experiences of the revolutionary organization as well as of the Marxist-Leninist parties, where the women issues were very badly handled. For example, the PCI constrained the force the women had expressed during the Resistance in the "female commissions" whose purpose was only the reforms, the rights in the frame of bourgeois democracy. The women members of the revolutionary organizations, even if often they were a great number, limited their activity in the giving a practice support. And also the Marxist-Leninist parties, on the base of a mechanical materialism could not understand the importance of women question for the party and the revolution. They pointed out that the socialist revolution itself mechanically will solve the problems of the women emancipation.
The new organization has been to affirm in its Base Document in 1984, that we also need to create the ideological, politics and organizational conditions to develop the women revolutionary militancy and their role of leader. In our thesis, principle base of the foundation of our Party, in 2000, we stated that the result of the revolution depends on the participation grade of the women and the leading role in it as well in the Party played by the most advanced sectors of the proletarian women. Since then we state that the question is not only to win the participation, but to affirm the need of a leadership role of the women in the party. We start from the analysis that the role of women is a richness for all the party and the revolutionary struggle, because the radicalism of women, that depends on their double oppression, make them to bring a revolution in the revolution, yet in the Party. We fully agree what the comrade said, that the Revolution cannot be stopped at its socialist stage, but it will be necessary to make others cultural revolutions, as Mao and Chiang Ching taught us. We think that in the Party the theory and praxis of the revolution in the revolution has to be applied since its' birth.
In thesis of our party we established that the party is built and it can advance in its character of revolutionary Maoist party, only it internally consistently exercises the active ideological struggle. The active ideological struggle the necessary mean to build a new type of Maoist party, whose members continuously transform themselves to put their life thoroughly at the service of the revolution. This goes through a permanent effort to destroy each and any form of bourgeois ideology existing inside the Party. One aspect of this of this bourgeois ideology is the sexism, and without a permanent struggle against it reproduces itself. This battle, we repeat, does not develop spontaneously. The fact that the Party is communist is not a warranty, it needs a continuous struggle. The role of the women comrades role is essential, also in the struggle with themselves, because to take a leading role in the people's war is difficult. To simply participate can be easier. Nevertheless we need to struggle for a leading role of the women in the people's war and in the party to fully develop all their revolutionary to give shape and strength to a new type of Maoist Party, that overcomes the past experience.
In our process we went through several moments of strong active ideological struggle inside the Party versus the organization as a whole and the comrades who recognized in the principles the role of leadership of the women but in the practice rejected it. This struggle has been hard but we won: the 50% of the leading organ of the Party is formed by women.
Another battle was against the women comrades, who because their petty bourgeois origin misused the unselfish party's struggle for the women leadership, for themselves, for their own role. Instead of to affirm the need of the women role to serve the party and the revolution, they tried to do so for themselves. Other comrades expressed their petty bourgeois understanding stepping back ward when the party asked an higher responsibility. We are dialectic materialists, we know that party is not on a desert island and that the classes are also within the party, and for this reason we need a continuous active ideological struggle and attention of the comrades against every bourgeois ideological reflect amongst them and the other comrades.
Recently we have struggled.against another counterrevolutionar y aspect, that have entered the party and that now has been expelled, that denied the Mfpr, its reasons and the double oppression of women. This understanding we expelled had affirmed that the communist Party is "pure" and its leaders cannot have a sexist ideology, denying the need that the Party create the ideological, political and organizational conditions to affirm the role of women. These elements were trying to preserve in the party their intellectual monopoly on women comrades. These male "comrades" argued that in the proletarian family women are not doubly oppressed, and in the name of the class analysis they denied the oppressive conditions of the women. Without many revolutions the proletarians cannot free themselves from ruling bourgeois ideology influencing them. An important contribution in this struggle came from the writings of the comrade Parvati, leader of the CPN(M). She is carrying for-' ward in the PCN a battle against the sexist understanding amongst the male Nepalese comrades. We think that this battle is necessary in every party, because the role of women people's war is indispensable, and it is a dividing line and strategic point to build a new type of Maoist communist Party. We are very interested in having relationship with other comrades of other parties.
PCm: Regarding the problem of women's role in the Party, I want read some sentences by Parvati "The question of the women leadership cannot be left at the case, they need to be consciously fed, educated, safeguarded. .. So, the struggle of the women is doubly complex and ask them to be doubly revolutionary. .. Their double oppression and the continuous and false promise of equality made them by the dominant classes, make them attentive to discover each and every act counterrevolutionar y or revisionist. "
MKP: In the essence, on the base of what we have said, we can say we have a common Maoist understanding. I stress the importance, of the Maoism and of the Great Cultural Proletarian Revolution and their achievement in the philosophic field to better understand how to treat the contradictions. With this understanding we can solve the contradiction man-woman. When correctly analyze this contradiction, we see that in a class society is the bourgeois ideology that rules, therefore the ideological struggle inside the party is ;, central and important. In our Party since the begin of its history these questions were in its principles. But how to translate it into the practice? To understand is not enough. It needs to find the way to carry out it. That is the ability to apply the Maoism. This is part of the two lines struggle.
The feminist movement on one hand is part of the bourgeois democratic revolution, on the other reduce the question of the women as a sexual problem. This problem is difficult to treat, because of the brutality of the oppression that makes appear the sexual oppression as the centre.
Fighting comrades, after they entered the party feel themselves free; they think they already solved the problem of the man-woman contradiction. Enter the party is just the first step to be active part in the real life. When this illusion to be free just because entered the party is combined with the sexism of the comrades, the whole wrong positions get stronger, because the comrades are satisfied by the status quo and they feel themselves winners". This wrong position turns into a wrong practice among the masses. Maoists must have a Maoist line, they cannot limit themselves to correct and criticizes the economism and the reformism, they must go beyond struggling against the wrong mechanic view that the socialist revolution will solve everything. In every step of our struggle we must have the reference of the cultural proletarian revolution, every step forward we make must revolutionarize our minds, our achievements must be the base for new and higher transformations. The women's democratic movement on one hand transforms the consciousness with the Cultural Revolution, on the other hand gives answers to the democratic coming from its ranks. An important aspect is to correctly act for women's independence, because often the women comrades when start to raise their consciousness, start to copy male comrades. There are two type of women comrades:
Those who continue to depend from their husband, or those who have reached an independence but act like men. We must act as Maoists, but not like "pure Maoists" who grow in a continuous cultural revolution. The essence of the understanding of the struggle for the power is the ability to apply it, to control it, in this sense. The cultural revolution is a guide for the exercise of the power. When the proletariat seizes the political power, it establishes the proletarian dictatorship and start the process of extinction of the state, because the purpose of the seizure of the power is not to reinforce the dictatorship but to extinguish the power and to destroy the classes. A not very different thing happens with the women question. Man identifies himself with the politic power, the will to posses is something that belongs to the man, to posses a woman is a power proof. This attitude is very common. In the revolutionary army, for example, men often have a paternalistic and protective attitude toward the women fighters; men feel themselves as big trees that protects the small flowers. On the other side, for many women to know that someone thinks about and in stead of them is convenient. And many women commandant in revolutionary army leader give orders like the men. There is a part of man-woman contradiction that is woman-woman, too,. There is competition, rivalry also between women, often women do not accept to be lead by another woman, while they do not rebel if are led by a man. In the two lines struggle, the main task for the solution is on the Maoist women comrades. They, have to change themselves with the strength of the ideology. To prepare the ideological and political conditions is not enough, we need to learn to treat this contradiction at higher level, through unity, struggle, unity. The movement of the women has to strengthen the general movement, and not divide it. Therefore, is important to draw a line between little bourgeois feminism and democratic women's movement. We don't use the word "feminism", because it is related with the bourgeois feminism. We use the terms proletarian women's movement or liberation women's front. The ideological essence is Maoist, nor feminist or sexist, but Maoist that solve step by step every contradiction. The solving with the Maoism the contradictions, leads us to the liberation of the women and the humanity. Marx say that the contradiction man-woman is the essence of general contradiction. The women liberation progressively frees men and women up to the final stage, the liberation of the humanity; that is why the women liberation movement is essential and indispensable for the revolution.
The women movement has to be developed and organized at the ideological level as well as in the practice application. So the women become a determined power, able to solve the problems and a force for the political power. The reach of a solution cannot be delayed to the future, but must be done now: We must organize the Maoists women in the party and some of them organize the democratic women.
The struggle is also among the oppressed masses. While they have a common struggle to win, among them is also the man-woman contradiction. In our Congress we paid a particular attention on the questions of the family, the marriage, etc. Communists say that the family and the marriage are bourgeois base of the society. The bourgeois marriage and family reflect also among the ranks of the proletariat and the comrades, even in a couple of comrades, both professional revolutionaries, between them the bourgeois human relationship reproduces.
One of the points of the party program is about the women. The women must be supported to join their independent democratic mass organizations to fight against patriarchal and feudal principles, to participate at international activities.
Mfpr: We bring the greeting of the young Red Block girls and of Mfpr. Our objective: the emancipation of the women and girls through a programmed work carried out according the line our Party. The oppression that young girls suffer under this society, sources first in the family, that is their daily battle field of the struggle to break the chains .that bound them at the bourgeois type of family. The family look at women and girls like objects to safeguard does not recognize them the ability to oppose the existing state of the things and perpetuates the ruling system. For us the essential point is to overthrow the current state of things through class struggle that involve all the fields. As Red Block, we have contributed to open an infant school abandoned by urban district, and managed to give back to the people in that quarter what was in their right.
We have to continue to struggle for a different society where women will have their full emancipation.
Red Block: I want to speak about Red Block activity, our theoretical and practical work, and our paper. Red Block is a youth organization generated by the party. The young comrades grow in the fire of class struggle fire and through the ideological struggle among comrades, men and women, they grow up to leap or enter the party. Red Block is lead by a group of young Maoists. The women comrades of Red Block analyze the conditions of the young women. We need to struggle against the fact that today young women' in our country feel themselves really independent; we denounce the false emancipation, that identifies the sexual emancipation as a real emancipation.
We think that a genuine young girl's movement has to start from a consciousness growth, the understanding that actually there's not a real emancipation and we cannot resign or accept the actual situation. Our work is toward the young women, to make the conscious that their rebellion has to serve the revolution and aims to a real emancipation of the women.
PCm: I'm very pleased about our substantial ideological unity about the women questions. It is a unity based on the Maoism, to be • grasped as the main weapon to treat the contradictions. We found along our process several of things said by the comrade. If we stand looking at the steps at our back, after a time, such red aspects can turn into black.
We saw it in the struggle of the women inside the party. The strong battle of our party to strengthen, and make the women comrades protagonists was just, but this step forward brought with itself the contradiction between a revolutionary and a bourgeois line. We had to struggle again in order to fight the black aspect protagonism of the women for themselves, that is the petty bourgeois selfishness and to focus the question of the revolutionary militancy serving the party and the masses. We correctly made this struggle and today the need of a further leap is before us. We also saw the phenomenon of the fighting women that when they are involved in the people's war feel themselves free- as the comrade said. We saw it in the experience of the Red Brigades and the other fighting organizations during the 70s. This Experience makes us attentive because here can be a sort of competition with the leading man comrade, according the bourgeois ideology. We once more repeat why we use the words " feminist proletarian revolutionary movement". Why have we raised the feminism?
Because the movement of the Women, in which the proletarian women are organized as first, must be able to pick up all the issues of the women, who are attacked, repressed and humiliated. In this general movement, the front of the proletarian women has ~ to develop its battle to lead it with a revolutionary class line. If we want to make a revolution of all the oppressed women and give an answer at all the attacks of bourgeoisie we must to be able to unit also the petty bourgeois women-and girls, who want to fight. In doing we show to be the vanguard. Applying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, we have found the formula MFPR.
We discussed whether we had to say just revolutionary proletarian movement. But these terms could not indicate the way by which the proletarian women have to lead the wider strata of the women to the revolutionary struggle.
Maoism is the weapon through which we can analyze the contradictions and give concrete answers. While the bourgeoisie calls"feminism "whatever is rebellion of the women and the feministshave rejected the feminism, it is right that we raise the issues of allthe women.
To understand is not enough, we must make a real answer to the real contradiction, that leads us forward. The sexual contradiction, within the man-woman contradiction is not a monopoly of the petty bourgeoisie. Like Bebel taught us, proletarian women are those who every day suffer more than others for the sexual oppression. The Maoist communists are those who have to lead the front of struggle to destroy everything oppresses the women and they make the sexual contradiction a powerful lever for the revolution. This is what we discussed in our seminary in'97.
MKP: I think this discussion on the feminism is very important.
We also organize young Maoists, a well distinct social stratus, and then they organize a wider movement. But the women are not a distinct social stratus. A woman has on her the mark other class. The sexual contradiction exists in every social stratum, but in different forms, for instance also amongst the bourgeois women exist the sexual oppression, too. Every class organize itself and we, the communist proletarians, organize ourselves in the Maoist party. Our young Maoists have their own central committee, dependent on Party's Central Committee.
Women are members of the party, noun a separate organization. It is not an organizational problem, but ideological, to be treated within the Party. In the two line struggle women are the vanguards. The democratic women organizations art a wide vehicle to unite oppressed women and men in the struggle, to organize more and more women in the party and to advance toward the revolution. The danger of using the word feminism use is a wrong approach that divides rather than unites the oppressed women and men. In Italy it could be a flag. But from on ideological point of view, I think that we always must keep in mind that our goal is to unite men and women.
In the democratic women movement program at a certain point is said that it is open to the petty bourgeois feminists. The democratic women movement is anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, anti-fascist and trough the role of the Maoist womeen it helps to organize other women.
Meeting as that we hold today as well as others we will have, are very important for the entire women movement. I'm very pleased to have had this meeting and for the experience I learned from you. It is useful for the women who live in oppressed countries to know about the women in the imperialist countries, because it helps to unmask the false dream of the bourgeois democracy.
PCm; the discussion we began with this meeting and exchanging our experiences is very important. .We hope we will have other discussions and meetings, also in the form of a mass conference, in the future. We think it is and will be very important also at an international level, inside our Maoist movement. I propose to issue a joint communiqué to inform about this meeting the other parties of our movement.
JOINT Communiqué
The 6th of March in Palermo, 2 days before the 8th of March, international struggling day of the proletarian and communist women, an important meeting took place between a Turkish comrade of the MKP, leader of the generated organisation by the Party, the Turkish Women Democratic Liberation Movement and the comrades of PCm, leaders of the Revolutionary Proletarian Feminist Movement, generated organisation by the Party. '
The meeting has been dedicated to Aycan Tato, fighter woman of the MKP fallen the 24th of March 2003 during an clash against the Turkish reactionary army.
This meeting was important, for the direct information about the conditions of the women in the two countries:
the first one, the Turkey, with its big feudal heritage, hugely Oppressing the life of the women; which is denied the-same right to the live the second one, Italy, an imperialist country that in the conditions of the proletarian women shows its putrescence, combining a false emancipation with the coming back of a "modern middle age".
Strongly and livingly exposing the conditions of live of the women, the exploitation and oppression experienced by the women, imposed them by the states and governments, also through the religious, fascist and male-chauvinist forces and ideologies; sharing the experiences of struggles arid the work carried forward by means the mass organisations; we felt ourselves part of a single struggle front against the imperialist system, its states and governments.
. '*.
Grasping the Maoism and the great experience of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, we affirmed the need and truth of the fight for the "revolution in the revolution": the sexual contradiction, born by class division and the private property, was the first and will be the last to die; the proletarian revolution must be followed by many revolutions until the complete wiping-out each and any ideology and practice oppressing women.
The second part of the meeting has been the most important, from the point of view of the battle inside the Communists Parties: the front-line of the ideological struggle to make the women not only participating, but leading the people's wars and the Maoist Communist Parties, carrying forward a struggle/criticism in the ideological, political and practical spheres, within the parties themselves, against the persisting male-chauvinist ideologies and the resistances that spontaneously settle and reproduce themselves.
We affirmed that the radicalism of the women, fruit of their struggling against a double oppression, is a strength and a richness for the Party as a whole.
Without the strength and role of the women, we will have not proletarian revolution, without proletarian revolution, we will have not women's liberation.
During the meeting emerged the unity in the understanding, in the planning of the battles, in the consciousness that the problems within the parties, concerning the leading role of the women comrades, must be handled by all our Parties. We also looked at the different problems and levels of such struggle. We affirmed the need to grasp the Maoism and the lessons of the GPRC, particularly concerning the centrality of the ideological struggle on this strategic field of the struggle to build the Communist Parties.
This meeting opened an important discussion on these matters, for the MLM movement as a whole, and along with the aspects of unity emerged elements to be discussed and deepened in the struggle.
The meeting ended with the mutual commitment:
to spread amongst the female masses the reality of the women in our countries, particularly the struggles they carry forward, also planning public conferences in the future;
to go on the discussion and the deepening the experiences, the political, theoretical and ideological battle to make our ideology stronger and sharper;
to make the women able to bring a leading contribution to the building of the Maoist communist" parties and the struggle for a society without exploitation and oppression, the communism.
Palermo Italy-8.3.04
The comrades of PCm and MKP
Contact us:
Material! CP 2290 TA/5 74100 Taranto, Italy
Further contact
http://www.prolcom.altervista.org/mfpr.htm#
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MKP: (Maoist Communist Party Of Turkey / North Kurdistan )
PCm:Maoist Communist Party Of Italy
Mfpr: Movimento Femminista Proletario rivoluzionario
The comrades of the Maoist Communist Party Of Italy (PCm) Italia and the Maoist Communist Party Of Turkey / North Kurdistan (MKP Turkey North-Kurdistan) . Both parties are members of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). The mfpr is a mass movement led by PCm in Italy and mobilises proletarian women into struggle.
We publish the report of the important meeting, held the 6 of March in Palermo with the comrade Rosa, tragically murdered by the fascist,, Turkish regime. In the name of Rosa, in spite of her murderer, we will continue this work with other comrades of MKP.
PCm: We strongly wanted this meeting, since several month ago and we are very pleased to hold it. Here are comrades of the Communist Maoist Party; leading comrade s of the Revolutionary Proletarian Feminist Movement (MFPR), organization generated by the Party and, from Palermo, young comrades of the MFPR and the Red Block organism of the Maoist youth.
We wanted to meet the comrades of the Turkish Communist Party inv involved in the women movement, to exchange each other our experiences of struggle, to strengthen the political and ideological unity on the understanding of the role of the women in the people's war and in the Party. In this situation, since we need to know7 other comrades and exchange experiences, we felt very appropriate the form of a meeting, also to organise common demonstration and mass initiatives.
As regards the agenda of the meeting, we propose some topics, but if the comrade has different proposals we will take them in account immediately:- A report about our development inside a brief report on the actual women's condition in our country.- A report on the experience of the Turkish comrades and the situation of the women's Struggle in Turkey.
A discussion of the most properly ideological questions, involved in the struggle to form the women comrades as leaders of the people's war and of the Party.
We want to dedicate this meeting to the Turkish comrade Aycan Tato. killed on 24 may 2003 in a clash with the Turkish army.
PCm: along with the greetings of the comrades here, who every day engaged in the class struggle, we bring the greetings of the working, precarious, unemployed women struggling in Italy against the condition of double exploitation and double oppression.
In Italy, the modern fascist government of Berlusconi, since its birth, tried to make the women's life the most hard. It attacked the worker women denying the right of vv ark, discriminating and sacking them, extending of the age for their pension. It attacked the condition of live, with the high prices of goods, destroying the welfare state and privatizing the social service. It attacked the women's rights, with a criminal law on the assisted fecundation that unavoidably will open the road to erase the abortion right. These attacks went together with the increasing of the rapes, mistreatments, murders of women inside the family. This government wants to push back the women in a modern middle ^e, to make them subaltern before the men, slaves in society and in the family.
This year, assenting at the international strike call launched from Maoist Nepalese comrades, the Party and Mfpr's comrades together with comrades of Slai Cobas for; the class union, an organization led by the Party's comrades organized a national mobilization day in every work place where we are and in several other places. At this mobilization many women will participate taking front against the denying the of work right, the sacking, the sexual violence, the mobbing, the slavery of immigrant women expelled by the racist laws, the high prices, the lacking of welfare state, the attack against abortion right led by the Berlusconi's government, the catholic Church and the most back -v-rd reactionary forces guided by the sexist and the middle aged Ideology, that this society brings about all the time.
This is a very important and historic initiative, it's the very first time that in Italy, worker women have called a strike day. This initiative is against the peaceful and reformist demonstrations organized by the bourgeois feminists sitting in the parliament or in other authorities. According the call of theNepalese comrades, this strike has to be different, has to give a strong meaning to the 8 of March day, that the bourgeoisie made more and more empty, to mobilize the strength of the women, as a powerful force of the Revolution. The'development of the Mfpr has been exciting but, at the same time, tortuous and difficult.
We want to underline that, without the political, ideological, theo- -retical and organizational weapon represented by Mfpr. necessary to unchain the fury of the proletarian women, it couldn't be possible to win them to the Party, to turn them into women leaders. These understanding and process are universal and every new Maoist Party has to take it in account.
Without the Mfpr we would not had so good results in our struggles, where we sow a lot of women participate, like the occupying of institutions buildings or the protests against the attacks of imperialist and capitalist system against women. We said before, that the path of the Mfpr has been exciting and tortuous. Like comrade Parvati says, it is difficult, either outside or inside the Party, to make clear the importance of Mfpr.
PCm: We want to explain better why our Party have generated the mass organization we call Mfpr and what struggle we carried and are carrying forward. We have to begin from a fact: in Italy in the 70s we had big movements of women, particularly the movement to win the right of abortion, a battle that involved many more general aspects concerning the conditions of live of the women. This movement had the merit to mobilize thousands of women, but at its heart and head were petty-bourgeois women, even if they were rebel and revolutionary.
It was and still is necessary a proletarian revolutionary leadership of these struggles, to make the big strength of the women a force of the proletarian revolution and to prevent that these battles are folded inside the limits of the bourgeois democracy and of the parliamentism.
By constituting the Mfpr. in the '94 our pre-party organization, tried to give an answer to this need for the women and particularly for the most oppressed of them, the proletarian women. Why did we call it so? Every word has an object. We say movement because it is not a narrow battle of small revolutionary groups but a movement, that has to involve many women. This movement has its centre in the struggles and not in empty words (meetings, assemblies, forums, are almost the only way of action used in Italy by bourgeois feminists). We say feminist in a sense that goes against all the political understanding and process of the bourgeois feminism. We uphold the contribution of the Peru Communist Party and of its leader Mariategui, who in his pamphlet wrote that we have a bourgeois, a petty-bourgeois and a revolutionary feminism. In this case we say feminist, to take and to give voice to all the rebellions of all the women, which are humiliated, ill-treated and oppressed by the bourgeois system.
We say proletarian because at the base as well at the leadership of the women struggle movement have to be the proletarian women, which are the most exploited and oppressed. They only can lead in a class direction this movement. We say proletarian also because within the women struggles we have to organize, our contingent of proletarian women which has a double oppression to break. Finally, we say revolutionary to make clear that the only road for the freedom and the emancipation of the women is the revolution, the people's war to overthrow the bourgeois system and to build a socialist society.
The Mfpr is an urgent need if you do not want to let the bourgeois and at petty-bourgeois forces leading the energy of the women struggles, above all in an imperialist country as Italy, where on one hand the bourgeoisie try to push back the women in a new middle age of brutal oppression, and on other hand the imperialism makes to appear a false emancipation. To strengthen this idea of women's war as powerful force of the revolution it was necessary to organize this strength, and it is still so.
Those who speak about the just women's struggles while they do not organize them in order to make explode these struggles, do not re ally want the revolution. Since 1994-95 we brought this battle inside the women struggle, we brought the class struggle in the existing women movements, as well as we launched struggles by ourselves. We will give to the comrade a summing-up of the most important struggles we have done: for the right to work, against the war and the repression, etc. But can give just an idea of the work we have done during these years.
Among the worker women we stated the necessity that they not only struggle directly against their exploitation but also against the attacks on all the women, above all the proletarian women. Along with the strong criticism of the double oppression, we also exposed the role of the bourgeois family. We did so also because during the recent years, under the fascist government of Berlusconi, the bourgeoisie tried to restore the traditional understanding of the family to use it as the most ambiguous weapon to oppress women. For instance, in the movement against the imperialist war we strongly argued that that women are not all equal, because often during the war in the Balkans, or in Iraq, women ministers, or prominent representatives of left parties, were leading and support the war policy. It is not a gender struggle of the pacifist women against the war, we said, it is a class struggle. We strongly struggled against the bourgeois pacifist women movement, which oppose the brutality of the war by raising pacifism and me not violent character of the women. We said that women are and must be violent, they must oppose the reactionary violence of ths bourgeoisie their own revolutionary armed violence in the people's war. It had been shown in the struggle against the repression. After the Genoa battle (G8 2001) a lot of women, many comrades, most of them young, have been doubly repressed when they were detained, because police attacked and hit them because they "were woman''. When we say that the centre of the women's struggle is in the proletarian women struggle, we do not say just words but we organize worker and proletarian women, everywhere we are. Here in Palermo, we had the strongest example of organization of proletarian women, which not only are strongly struggling for the right to have work, but are also involved in many other fields of struggle: the abortion right, the sexual violence, etc. The Mfpr worked hard and since its formation it took part in the internationalist arena, because we learned a lot from the comrades from Pern, Nepal, Turkey which even gave their live for the revolutionary struggle, and also because we think that the task to realize the slogan "unchain the fury of the women as powerful force of the revolution" and to improve The leading role of the women in the Party, is important for the Communist Party as a whole. For this reason I once more want to stress the need of this meeting. For us it is important to have direct relationship with other worn-' en's organizations and exchange experience of struggle, but it is also important to establish that today the women can and must be part of the people's war and of the struggle to build communists and Maoist parties.
MKP: Are all the women members of the Party members of the Mfpr?
PCm: The Mfpr is a generated mass organization, larger than theParty. Women from outside of the Party also join it. The Party comrades lead the Mfpr. To lead it does not mean just to give orders,but to work actively inside it.
MKP: Does the organization of strike for the 8th of March involve all the Italian women?
PCm: The call has been launched on a national scale, wherever we are active (a number of cities and towns in the North and the South of the country) as well as where we are not yet organized. We have worked to realize it concretely in several work places: in Palermo -schools, hospitals, municipality; in Taranto: — cleaner workers etc. Elsewhere we will have meetings, platforms, delegation, etc. to better prepare it for the future.
MKP: I'm very honoured to participate at this meeting and to listen the contributions that you are giving to women struggle. I'm very honoured by the dedication to the martyr comrade. I want to .inform you about the struggle of women in my country and about my party's policy to develop the women's struggle. At our First Congress, where it was debated the man-woman con tradition, the women's condition, we perceived that there was a big hole, that we did not really engage ourselves into some of the women issues. There was a contradiction in this, because women were really present in the Party and in its battles, they were present in the armed struggle, for many year- the majority of combatants were women.
But it could not be said that they had given an ideological contributes to the Party, indeed they were jus: combatants. In the history of our Party, it has be seen, that without women is not possible to develop the revolution and that we need the revolution for a true liberation of the women. In the Part} so far it was not taken any real .initiative. Now we're thinking to change our intervention on the women issues to make grow them. During our Congress we spoke about the male-chauvinism and also about the opportunity to create a specific organization.
I agree that the role of women is very important to develop the revolution, and women have to contribute to the revolution. The question of women is ideological, i* has to be treated both inside and outside the party, in the society, because this contradiction was born from the class division, from private property, but the man-woman contradiction will still exist also in a socialist society, like the class contradictions.
The first contradiction born with the origin of the private properties and will be the last to disappear with the communism. The contradiction will be solved first with the revolution and then with many cultural revolutions, until the communism. The man-woman contradiction will transform on a natural sphere the sex difference through the closing of the circle in the proletarian Cultural revolution. It will be impossible speak about a real victory of the communism in a world scale as long as the relation owner-slave will exist, as long as the last contradiction man-woman will be swept. Our congress look at the Maoists women as leaders in the party and guides of Revolution as decisive /actor to unchain the strength of the women, breaking the chains, o advance in mass struggles through the "democratic women's movement", mass organization formed by party's women and other.
In the specific stage of the new democratic revolution that is the specific organization for this object. That is a mass movement, an oppressed women's struggle movement, and lead by the Maoist women. Turkey is a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country. The conditions of the women are difficult, often they have not any democratic right..,. The oppression of the women is not a specific condition of our country, but generally of the capitalist and imperialist system. There are specifics ways to oppress depending on the reality of a country. In some case women have not even the right to live. There are differences from imperialist countries and the others. Regarding the imperialist countries you spoke about a few rights recognized, like the right to the vote, but a false emancipation. Regarding the oppressed countries, I take the example of a recent case of a woman killed by her relatives after she was kidnapped and raped, according the feudal tradition of Islamism. The woman cannot decide who marry and she is sold as wife very young. Because of the Islamic feudal system in Turkish and North Kurdistan a lot of girls don't go to school. In these years, the party has made efforts to promote campaigns against violence on women caused by the feudal and religious tradition of the country. These campaigns go on also against the practice of stoning. If a woman survives a stoning and goes to hospital, she will be killed there. The kill of the woman is decided by the men and sometimes also the oldest women of her family. If we look at the state laws and penalties, they are not equal, they discriminate the women, in the name of the "honour's crimes".
There has not been a democratic revolution, yet. When the family decide, the decision is carried out by youngest relatives which cannot be punished (this happens in particularly in,-the Northern Kurdistan, where the feudal system is more rooted and oppressive). I can make another recent example: a woman minister, who declared to the TV she is virgin. You will find many problems to get married if you are not virgin. Women cannot even make decisions on their own life. On the paper, the laws say that men and women are equals, but in the practice they are applied according the sexist and the feudal ideology. There has not been a democratic revolution and the women participating the government are more reactionary and aggressive than men. Some years ago, when the Turkish premier was a woman, was one the bloodiest period. A woman can ascend the power only if she repudiates her being a woman.
Whatever class she comes from, in our country she has not got rights, she is not a human being.
The campaigns that the party makes are necessary to "pull away" the women from houses and make?, them active. Through-the ''democratic women's movement" the Party wants involve women in the struggle. In this society the majority of the women have not the courage to speak, to express their opinion in the family. In Turkey the women are oppressed by many .chains: the state, the religion, the family. There is not a double oppression, but a triple one. Kurdish women suffer also the national oppression. During the fifteen years of civil war (84-99) waged by the PKK, women were involved in the tight. This national liberation's struggle helped to politicize the women and they were involved-in this war. The majority of women who fought and are fighting, are Kurdish. Today these women are at the centre of politic life, but they are led by nationalists, their strength is distorted and channelled by the bourgeois nationalists, The bourgeois feminism is not strong and it is influenced by the big Kurdish women movement, led by the nationalists. When they shopped the war, the Kurdish women coming from these movements decided to integrate themselves in the state and to collaborate with imperialism. Yesterday Kurdish women were fighters, today they are a symbol of e peace. We have the problem to transform this movement in a proletarian women movement. The bourgeoisie uses the strength of women energy at its own advantage. We need to wind this strength that proofed to be very important in the national liberation war. We need to show to the women in my country how they can free themselves from the chains going over the bourgeois outlook, struggling for revolution.
To unmask the bourgeois democracy is very important. While we are fighting for democratic rights we need to show that we must go over such rights in order to really free ourselves. The most dangerous enemy now is the bourgeois pacifism, not only in my country only, but all around world. The imperialism has made its last war in the name of the exporting the democracy with the bombs. Their propaganda shows veiled women and claims they are doing so to free them. The invasions of the Afghanistan, of Iraq, showed what kind of democracy the imperialists want.
It is necessary to fight against imperialism and capitalism,
against bourgeois democracy. In the work of propaganda we make among the immigrated women in the imperialists countries, we have a problem, because they answer with sufficiency, they don't keep our message because they yet feel themselves free, with more rights. This euro-centric outlook is very strong in the women movement, but it will collapse with the growth of the crisis, the increasing attacks to the right of work, the unemployment, also in the imperialist countries. This pacifist Eurocentric outlook is particularly strong within the women movement in the cities. In the rural areas the situation is different, above all where there are guerrilla's forces. Here the women partiipate the guerrilla. The problem in the rural areas is the ideological education of the women. In these areas were women are very active and, on the other hand, against them there is high level of violence. For example, a comrade was arrested and detained in an army camp where all the troops there raped her, 200 or 300 men. A lot of women get pregnant because of these rapes. It happened also in Istanbul: political women activists, members of legal democratic organizations, were arrested and raped by the policemen. So, the important tasks of the women democratic organization are: to fight against the violence in every form, to fight against the imperialism, to fight against the repressive and fascist ideology of the country, the fight against the reactionary tradition, family, religion.
Women organized initiatives in protest and solidarity. An initiative of democratic women organizations had as main slogan "do not send your sons to wage war against other sons". The Party works joint with other organization. In Istanbul the Party has a large base and many democratic women join its platform. Within this wide movement the comrades support the revolutionary violence. Like the party stated in its Congress, we have in districts, areas and
cities we must build committees to promote campaigns. In the rural areas controlled by state, where the guerrilla is active, prostitution developed, the army brings there women from other areas to prostitute, it is a real state prostitution. The democratic women organization took contacts with the prostitutes and promoted campaigns against this phenomenon.
Regarding the program of democratic movement of women: the perspective is the communism, but it is not imposed, we apply the Maoist mass line: women have to express themselves freely. Democracy is a problem of the revolution. In the new democracy revolution is very important the role of the women front, the communist comrades of the party wage the people's war, while the front is not a party, it is a mass movement that expresses a political line. In the new democratic revolution it is mean through which the1 women contribute to the revolution, a weapon to ideologically transform them and to involve them in the party. It is not a communist movement, communists comrades of the Party are inside it, some of them have the task to organize the movement but not all comrades of the Party are members of this movement, though they all share its ideological aspect.
Mfpr: It has been told that women in ihc government have an attitude worse than men. How do the men in bourgeois government treat them?
MKP : In a feudal country women are isolated in the social life. The trade unions simply ignore the women, to not say of the leadership. If a woman makes career they looked at her as a bad woman, a bad mother. She is strongly psychologically pressed. Also in the revolutionary army women fighters stay apart, even if they are ideologically strong, generally they do not dare to speak publicly.
Mfpr: Is the leadership of the democratic women movement exclusively handled by the Party?
MKP: It is a generated organization of Party, the heart of this organization is formed by the comrades of the Party. The more it will develop the more it will be part of the revolutionary process and then the organization will elect its leaders. This yet happens in the liberated zone. In Europe there is a big movement, where the leaders are elected by the movement itself and among them are the Party comrades.
PCm: I want to speak more about the women condition in an imperialist country like ours. After having pushed the women in to the production, imperialism tries to push the backward, into the houses. Their attacks against the rights the women won are huger than usual. Many women are dismissed because they are pregnant, and generally they are marginalised in the most precarious and worse paid jobs. For instance, this is a point of the 8 of march strike. On the ideological aspects, the attack of the bourgeoisie is even heavier, we speak about a new middle age, particularly regarding the new laws made by this government: on the assisted fecundation the laws established that the women life is less important than embryonic life, than a cell. They offer money to the women do not make abortion..,, All this is reflected also in the cultural aspects and the mass understanding: the image of the woman shown by the mass media, is that of a sexual pleasure object, or who must not think anything but the children and the house. This develops again the sexist ideas that in past years had been weakened by the women struggle. Men, also among the proletarians, fee3 more and more legitimated to hold the women as their properties. Last year there about 100 women have been murdered by their relatives or partners. This shows how in our advanced capitalist society they are introducing feudal and patriarchal aspects. When the imperialism justifies its intervention in the name of the women freedom, in the practice it carries out the cruellest oppression. Like the well known Afghan journalist and actress Pzira said: "'we, which hate so much the burka, will not permit the occidental imperialism take it off, It should be like a rape". We can see this also in the initiative of the French government concerning the veil in the public places: in the name of the freedom they really repress. Also in Italy, when the imperialism tries to show itself on the side of women emancipation, it really aims impose its sexist and reactionary principles: for example, while they allow the women enter the'- army they aim those women uphold a fascist, nationalist, sexist to oppose their real emancipation. After the 70's we had not a so strong and organized women movement, even if a lot of girls and women struggled in the mass movements, particularly against the war. We, through the Mfpr want to organize all these forces starting from proletarian women. In Italy we had two great experiences of armed struggle of the women:
The most important, in communist area, was the Antifascist Resistance, in which many women played a support role but also a lot of them were fighters and leader.
The other one, during the '70's was amongst the fighting organizations, first of all the RB. These comrades, some of which are still in prison and other died in the armed clashes, had the merit to establish with their struggle that women are not pacifist, but they must and can lead the armed struggle. But this experience, lacking the leadership of a communist Party is lost, it ended. Today we, our Party, want to revive the experience of these women and make it win the leadership of people's war.
Let's go to the second point of our agenda. The problem of the * leadership role of women in the Party has been, since the beginning, a key question for our organization. Also on the base of critic summing up of the past experiences of the revolutionary organization as well as of the Marxist-Leninist parties, where the women issues were very badly handled. For example, the PCI constrained the force the women had expressed during the Resistance in the "female commissions" whose purpose was only the reforms, the rights in the frame of bourgeois democracy. The women members of the revolutionary organizations, even if often they were a great number, limited their activity in the giving a practice support. And also the Marxist-Leninist parties, on the base of a mechanical materialism could not understand the importance of women question for the party and the revolution. They pointed out that the socialist revolution itself mechanically will solve the problems of the women emancipation.
The new organization has been to affirm in its Base Document in 1984, that we also need to create the ideological, politics and organizational conditions to develop the women revolutionary militancy and their role of leader. In our thesis, principle base of the foundation of our Party, in 2000, we stated that the result of the revolution depends on the participation grade of the women and the leading role in it as well in the Party played by the most advanced sectors of the proletarian women. Since then we state that the question is not only to win the participation, but to affirm the need of a leadership role of the women in the party. We start from the analysis that the role of women is a richness for all the party and the revolutionary struggle, because the radicalism of women, that depends on their double oppression, make them to bring a revolution in the revolution, yet in the Party. We fully agree what the comrade said, that the Revolution cannot be stopped at its socialist stage, but it will be necessary to make others cultural revolutions, as Mao and Chiang Ching taught us. We think that in the Party the theory and praxis of the revolution in the revolution has to be applied since its' birth.
In thesis of our party we established that the party is built and it can advance in its character of revolutionary Maoist party, only it internally consistently exercises the active ideological struggle. The active ideological struggle the necessary mean to build a new type of Maoist party, whose members continuously transform themselves to put their life thoroughly at the service of the revolution. This goes through a permanent effort to destroy each and any form of bourgeois ideology existing inside the Party. One aspect of this of this bourgeois ideology is the sexism, and without a permanent struggle against it reproduces itself. This battle, we repeat, does not develop spontaneously. The fact that the Party is communist is not a warranty, it needs a continuous struggle. The role of the women comrades role is essential, also in the struggle with themselves, because to take a leading role in the people's war is difficult. To simply participate can be easier. Nevertheless we need to struggle for a leading role of the women in the people's war and in the party to fully develop all their revolutionary to give shape and strength to a new type of Maoist Party, that overcomes the past experience.
In our process we went through several moments of strong active ideological struggle inside the Party versus the organization as a whole and the comrades who recognized in the principles the role of leadership of the women but in the practice rejected it. This struggle has been hard but we won: the 50% of the leading organ of the Party is formed by women.
Another battle was against the women comrades, who because their petty bourgeois origin misused the unselfish party's struggle for the women leadership, for themselves, for their own role. Instead of to affirm the need of the women role to serve the party and the revolution, they tried to do so for themselves. Other comrades expressed their petty bourgeois understanding stepping back ward when the party asked an higher responsibility. We are dialectic materialists, we know that party is not on a desert island and that the classes are also within the party, and for this reason we need a continuous active ideological struggle and attention of the comrades against every bourgeois ideological reflect amongst them and the other comrades.
Recently we have struggled.against another counterrevolutionar y aspect, that have entered the party and that now has been expelled, that denied the Mfpr, its reasons and the double oppression of women. This understanding we expelled had affirmed that the communist Party is "pure" and its leaders cannot have a sexist ideology, denying the need that the Party create the ideological, political and organizational conditions to affirm the role of women. These elements were trying to preserve in the party their intellectual monopoly on women comrades. These male "comrades" argued that in the proletarian family women are not doubly oppressed, and in the name of the class analysis they denied the oppressive conditions of the women. Without many revolutions the proletarians cannot free themselves from ruling bourgeois ideology influencing them. An important contribution in this struggle came from the writings of the comrade Parvati, leader of the CPN(M). She is carrying for-' ward in the PCN a battle against the sexist understanding amongst the male Nepalese comrades. We think that this battle is necessary in every party, because the role of women people's war is indispensable, and it is a dividing line and strategic point to build a new type of Maoist communist Party. We are very interested in having relationship with other comrades of other parties.
PCm: Regarding the problem of women's role in the Party, I want read some sentences by Parvati "The question of the women leadership cannot be left at the case, they need to be consciously fed, educated, safeguarded. .. So, the struggle of the women is doubly complex and ask them to be doubly revolutionary. .. Their double oppression and the continuous and false promise of equality made them by the dominant classes, make them attentive to discover each and every act counterrevolutionar y or revisionist. "
MKP: In the essence, on the base of what we have said, we can say we have a common Maoist understanding. I stress the importance, of the Maoism and of the Great Cultural Proletarian Revolution and their achievement in the philosophic field to better understand how to treat the contradictions. With this understanding we can solve the contradiction man-woman. When correctly analyze this contradiction, we see that in a class society is the bourgeois ideology that rules, therefore the ideological struggle inside the party is ;, central and important. In our Party since the begin of its history these questions were in its principles. But how to translate it into the practice? To understand is not enough. It needs to find the way to carry out it. That is the ability to apply the Maoism. This is part of the two lines struggle.
The feminist movement on one hand is part of the bourgeois democratic revolution, on the other reduce the question of the women as a sexual problem. This problem is difficult to treat, because of the brutality of the oppression that makes appear the sexual oppression as the centre.
Fighting comrades, after they entered the party feel themselves free; they think they already solved the problem of the man-woman contradiction. Enter the party is just the first step to be active part in the real life. When this illusion to be free just because entered the party is combined with the sexism of the comrades, the whole wrong positions get stronger, because the comrades are satisfied by the status quo and they feel themselves winners". This wrong position turns into a wrong practice among the masses. Maoists must have a Maoist line, they cannot limit themselves to correct and criticizes the economism and the reformism, they must go beyond struggling against the wrong mechanic view that the socialist revolution will solve everything. In every step of our struggle we must have the reference of the cultural proletarian revolution, every step forward we make must revolutionarize our minds, our achievements must be the base for new and higher transformations. The women's democratic movement on one hand transforms the consciousness with the Cultural Revolution, on the other hand gives answers to the democratic coming from its ranks. An important aspect is to correctly act for women's independence, because often the women comrades when start to raise their consciousness, start to copy male comrades. There are two type of women comrades:
Those who continue to depend from their husband, or those who have reached an independence but act like men. We must act as Maoists, but not like "pure Maoists" who grow in a continuous cultural revolution. The essence of the understanding of the struggle for the power is the ability to apply it, to control it, in this sense. The cultural revolution is a guide for the exercise of the power. When the proletariat seizes the political power, it establishes the proletarian dictatorship and start the process of extinction of the state, because the purpose of the seizure of the power is not to reinforce the dictatorship but to extinguish the power and to destroy the classes. A not very different thing happens with the women question. Man identifies himself with the politic power, the will to posses is something that belongs to the man, to posses a woman is a power proof. This attitude is very common. In the revolutionary army, for example, men often have a paternalistic and protective attitude toward the women fighters; men feel themselves as big trees that protects the small flowers. On the other side, for many women to know that someone thinks about and in stead of them is convenient. And many women commandant in revolutionary army leader give orders like the men. There is a part of man-woman contradiction that is woman-woman, too,. There is competition, rivalry also between women, often women do not accept to be lead by another woman, while they do not rebel if are led by a man. In the two lines struggle, the main task for the solution is on the Maoist women comrades. They, have to change themselves with the strength of the ideology. To prepare the ideological and political conditions is not enough, we need to learn to treat this contradiction at higher level, through unity, struggle, unity. The movement of the women has to strengthen the general movement, and not divide it. Therefore, is important to draw a line between little bourgeois feminism and democratic women's movement. We don't use the word "feminism", because it is related with the bourgeois feminism. We use the terms proletarian women's movement or liberation women's front. The ideological essence is Maoist, nor feminist or sexist, but Maoist that solve step by step every contradiction. The solving with the Maoism the contradictions, leads us to the liberation of the women and the humanity. Marx say that the contradiction man-woman is the essence of general contradiction. The women liberation progressively frees men and women up to the final stage, the liberation of the humanity; that is why the women liberation movement is essential and indispensable for the revolution.
The women movement has to be developed and organized at the ideological level as well as in the practice application. So the women become a determined power, able to solve the problems and a force for the political power. The reach of a solution cannot be delayed to the future, but must be done now: We must organize the Maoists women in the party and some of them organize the democratic women.
The struggle is also among the oppressed masses. While they have a common struggle to win, among them is also the man-woman contradiction. In our Congress we paid a particular attention on the questions of the family, the marriage, etc. Communists say that the family and the marriage are bourgeois base of the society. The bourgeois marriage and family reflect also among the ranks of the proletariat and the comrades, even in a couple of comrades, both professional revolutionaries, between them the bourgeois human relationship reproduces.
One of the points of the party program is about the women. The women must be supported to join their independent democratic mass organizations to fight against patriarchal and feudal principles, to participate at international activities.
Mfpr: We bring the greeting of the young Red Block girls and of Mfpr. Our objective: the emancipation of the women and girls through a programmed work carried out according the line our Party. The oppression that young girls suffer under this society, sources first in the family, that is their daily battle field of the struggle to break the chains .that bound them at the bourgeois type of family. The family look at women and girls like objects to safeguard does not recognize them the ability to oppose the existing state of the things and perpetuates the ruling system. For us the essential point is to overthrow the current state of things through class struggle that involve all the fields. As Red Block, we have contributed to open an infant school abandoned by urban district, and managed to give back to the people in that quarter what was in their right.
We have to continue to struggle for a different society where women will have their full emancipation.
Red Block: I want to speak about Red Block activity, our theoretical and practical work, and our paper. Red Block is a youth organization generated by the party. The young comrades grow in the fire of class struggle fire and through the ideological struggle among comrades, men and women, they grow up to leap or enter the party. Red Block is lead by a group of young Maoists. The women comrades of Red Block analyze the conditions of the young women. We need to struggle against the fact that today young women' in our country feel themselves really independent; we denounce the false emancipation, that identifies the sexual emancipation as a real emancipation.
We think that a genuine young girl's movement has to start from a consciousness growth, the understanding that actually there's not a real emancipation and we cannot resign or accept the actual situation. Our work is toward the young women, to make the conscious that their rebellion has to serve the revolution and aims to a real emancipation of the women.
PCm: I'm very pleased about our substantial ideological unity about the women questions. It is a unity based on the Maoism, to be • grasped as the main weapon to treat the contradictions. We found along our process several of things said by the comrade. If we stand looking at the steps at our back, after a time, such red aspects can turn into black.
We saw it in the struggle of the women inside the party. The strong battle of our party to strengthen, and make the women comrades protagonists was just, but this step forward brought with itself the contradiction between a revolutionary and a bourgeois line. We had to struggle again in order to fight the black aspect protagonism of the women for themselves, that is the petty bourgeois selfishness and to focus the question of the revolutionary militancy serving the party and the masses. We correctly made this struggle and today the need of a further leap is before us. We also saw the phenomenon of the fighting women that when they are involved in the people's war feel themselves free- as the comrade said. We saw it in the experience of the Red Brigades and the other fighting organizations during the 70s. This Experience makes us attentive because here can be a sort of competition with the leading man comrade, according the bourgeois ideology. We once more repeat why we use the words " feminist proletarian revolutionary movement". Why have we raised the feminism?
Because the movement of the Women, in which the proletarian women are organized as first, must be able to pick up all the issues of the women, who are attacked, repressed and humiliated. In this general movement, the front of the proletarian women has ~ to develop its battle to lead it with a revolutionary class line. If we want to make a revolution of all the oppressed women and give an answer at all the attacks of bourgeoisie we must to be able to unit also the petty bourgeois women-and girls, who want to fight. In doing we show to be the vanguard. Applying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, we have found the formula MFPR.
We discussed whether we had to say just revolutionary proletarian movement. But these terms could not indicate the way by which the proletarian women have to lead the wider strata of the women to the revolutionary struggle.
Maoism is the weapon through which we can analyze the contradictions and give concrete answers. While the bourgeoisie calls"feminism "whatever is rebellion of the women and the feministshave rejected the feminism, it is right that we raise the issues of allthe women.
To understand is not enough, we must make a real answer to the real contradiction, that leads us forward. The sexual contradiction, within the man-woman contradiction is not a monopoly of the petty bourgeoisie. Like Bebel taught us, proletarian women are those who every day suffer more than others for the sexual oppression. The Maoist communists are those who have to lead the front of struggle to destroy everything oppresses the women and they make the sexual contradiction a powerful lever for the revolution. This is what we discussed in our seminary in'97.
MKP: I think this discussion on the feminism is very important.
We also organize young Maoists, a well distinct social stratus, and then they organize a wider movement. But the women are not a distinct social stratus. A woman has on her the mark other class. The sexual contradiction exists in every social stratum, but in different forms, for instance also amongst the bourgeois women exist the sexual oppression, too. Every class organize itself and we, the communist proletarians, organize ourselves in the Maoist party. Our young Maoists have their own central committee, dependent on Party's Central Committee.
Women are members of the party, noun a separate organization. It is not an organizational problem, but ideological, to be treated within the Party. In the two line struggle women are the vanguards. The democratic women organizations art a wide vehicle to unite oppressed women and men in the struggle, to organize more and more women in the party and to advance toward the revolution. The danger of using the word feminism use is a wrong approach that divides rather than unites the oppressed women and men. In Italy it could be a flag. But from on ideological point of view, I think that we always must keep in mind that our goal is to unite men and women.
In the democratic women movement program at a certain point is said that it is open to the petty bourgeois feminists. The democratic women movement is anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, anti-fascist and trough the role of the Maoist womeen it helps to organize other women.
Meeting as that we hold today as well as others we will have, are very important for the entire women movement. I'm very pleased to have had this meeting and for the experience I learned from you. It is useful for the women who live in oppressed countries to know about the women in the imperialist countries, because it helps to unmask the false dream of the bourgeois democracy.
PCm; the discussion we began with this meeting and exchanging our experiences is very important. .We hope we will have other discussions and meetings, also in the form of a mass conference, in the future. We think it is and will be very important also at an international level, inside our Maoist movement. I propose to issue a joint communiqué to inform about this meeting the other parties of our movement.
JOINT Communiqué
The 6th of March in Palermo, 2 days before the 8th of March, international struggling day of the proletarian and communist women, an important meeting took place between a Turkish comrade of the MKP, leader of the generated organisation by the Party, the Turkish Women Democratic Liberation Movement and the comrades of PCm, leaders of the Revolutionary Proletarian Feminist Movement, generated organisation by the Party. '
The meeting has been dedicated to Aycan Tato, fighter woman of the MKP fallen the 24th of March 2003 during an clash against the Turkish reactionary army.
This meeting was important, for the direct information about the conditions of the women in the two countries:
the first one, the Turkey, with its big feudal heritage, hugely Oppressing the life of the women; which is denied the-same right to the live the second one, Italy, an imperialist country that in the conditions of the proletarian women shows its putrescence, combining a false emancipation with the coming back of a "modern middle age".
Strongly and livingly exposing the conditions of live of the women, the exploitation and oppression experienced by the women, imposed them by the states and governments, also through the religious, fascist and male-chauvinist forces and ideologies; sharing the experiences of struggles arid the work carried forward by means the mass organisations; we felt ourselves part of a single struggle front against the imperialist system, its states and governments.
. '*.
Grasping the Maoism and the great experience of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, we affirmed the need and truth of the fight for the "revolution in the revolution": the sexual contradiction, born by class division and the private property, was the first and will be the last to die; the proletarian revolution must be followed by many revolutions until the complete wiping-out each and any ideology and practice oppressing women.
The second part of the meeting has been the most important, from the point of view of the battle inside the Communists Parties: the front-line of the ideological struggle to make the women not only participating, but leading the people's wars and the Maoist Communist Parties, carrying forward a struggle/criticism in the ideological, political and practical spheres, within the parties themselves, against the persisting male-chauvinist ideologies and the resistances that spontaneously settle and reproduce themselves.
We affirmed that the radicalism of the women, fruit of their struggling against a double oppression, is a strength and a richness for the Party as a whole.
Without the strength and role of the women, we will have not proletarian revolution, without proletarian revolution, we will have not women's liberation.
During the meeting emerged the unity in the understanding, in the planning of the battles, in the consciousness that the problems within the parties, concerning the leading role of the women comrades, must be handled by all our Parties. We also looked at the different problems and levels of such struggle. We affirmed the need to grasp the Maoism and the lessons of the GPRC, particularly concerning the centrality of the ideological struggle on this strategic field of the struggle to build the Communist Parties.
This meeting opened an important discussion on these matters, for the MLM movement as a whole, and along with the aspects of unity emerged elements to be discussed and deepened in the struggle.
The meeting ended with the mutual commitment:
to spread amongst the female masses the reality of the women in our countries, particularly the struggles they carry forward, also planning public conferences in the future;
to go on the discussion and the deepening the experiences, the political, theoretical and ideological battle to make our ideology stronger and sharper;
to make the women able to bring a leading contribution to the building of the Maoist communist" parties and the struggle for a society without exploitation and oppression, the communism.
Palermo Italy-8.3.04
The comrades of PCm and MKP
Contact us:
Material! CP 2290 TA/5 74100 Taranto, Italy
Further contact
http://www.prolcom.altervista.org/mfpr.htm#
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