The following is a second excerpt from the Political Resolution The Way Forward for the iMG, submitt ed by Tendency 'C' to the March 1975 National Conference of the JMG. This resolution in in solidarity with the resolution, The World Poi itical Situation and the Immediate Tasks of the Fourth International. presented by the Leninist-Trotskyist Faction to the 1974 World Congress of the Fourth International the prospects for the socialist revolution.
women as a sex.
The family is a mechanism by which the ruling class throws the responsibility for children onto individual parents rather than on society as a whole. It is a means for passing on property ownership from one generation to the next and so ensuring the inheritance rights of the bourgcoisie. It is a mechanism for the reproduction of human labour power in which women are fundamentally reduced to a reproductive role. It is a mechanism for the super-exploitOne of the clearest symptoms of the worldwide capitalist crisis has been the growing revolt by women against their oppression as a sex in all three sectors of the world revolution. The development of the women's liberation movement today advances the class struggle, strengthens its forces, and enhances The oppression of women has its origins in the passage from pre-class to class society and the development of the patriarchal family. The family is the institution of class society which determines and maintains the specific character of the oppression of Many. Italy, Belgium, Scandinavia, Australia and other countries have shown the potential of the abortion question to bring masses of women into struggle. The repeated attempts the Tull right to choose points out that caly the woman should have the right to choose a movement to demand that the principie of a woman's right to scandal of thousands of back-street abortions. We should call for the extension of the law to give women The slogan 'the right to choose" encansulates the cisence of the struggle for abortion on demand. It whether she has an abortion or not. The state, the church, the medical profession and the male sex have no right whatever to influence or affect her decision. We should build choose he incorporated into legistation concerning abortion. It is such possible to mohilise thousands of women in action around the demand for a woman's right to choose. In this way we would force the reformist leaders of ALRA into the camp aign. The building of a national campaien must be made a priority in the immediate period and the necessary forces must be assigned to carry out this work.
We should seck to take the abor tion campaign into the labour move ment. Working class women are the main victims of the reactionary restTiction on the right to abortion. In the process of lighting for labour support for the abortion campaien. the trade union and Labour Party women & liberation movement ha already helped to undermine the prip of reactionary bourgeois ideu ogy on women and the claw as a whole. Feminist consciousness has grown and is seen as a lorce to be reckoned with by the mass media and the state Resentment agairsi their oppression as women has bec the starling point in the radicalisa ion of large numbers of pelit-hour cois worsen, whose support the w king class cust win.
ROLE OF LEADERSHIP Key to the bunding of a powerl women's movement is the rob of Trotskyist leadership. Because the women's movement is bot dotuna by a reactionary, entrenched bures cracy, it offers us great opportunit to give leadership and recruit wom The Fourth International is in a pa toularly strong position to give leac ship hecause of the international d acter of the oppression of women It is through our method of ste ugline for a series of interlocking immediate, democratic and transit ional demands - including free safe abortion on demand. free safe con raception for every woman: 24 ho free chid care facilities: equal pay for equal work, and equal joh and cducational opportunities-thal It masses of women will come to und stand the intor-relationship of thei oppression as a sex and the need fo a poets Torolon Trotskyists advance proletarian methods of miss mobilisations and acton in order to ain women's de mands, Our class strugele methods are geared to awakening the initiat ives of the masses of women. to b ing them together in action agrinst the state. This will help to destroy their domestic isolation, their lack of confidence in their own abilitics intelligence, independence and strength. We ain to snow that class exploitation is the root of women' oppression and its elimination the only road to liberation. Given the relatively small size of our forces today we should utilise the single issue united-front-type tactic While there as a growing interest in women's liberation. there has been a downturn in aclivity by women and a Tragmentation and dispersal of the women's liheration Torces, This is due in great part to the detault in revolutionary leaderThe Working Women's Charter contains largely correct demands, but it has failed to put the lahour bureaucracy on the spot, because it has allowed them to pass rosolurcons without forcing them into actio in defence of women's rights. The tendency in Charter groups through but the country is for women to eventually select one or two issues for action, Trades Councils have remained relatively inactive. The Trades Union Congress (TUC), under pressure from the Governmen and backward workers, proposes to euminate entirely abortion from its "new" Charter. Our aim must be lo encourage women who have come around the Working Women's Chartor to brild the single-issue abortion campaign It is by implementing the method outlined here that we with and wonen in the struggle for Liberation and win women militants to the ING.