STATEMENT OF SOLIDARITY- INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 2009
Mary Lou Greenberg
Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA is proud to stand with the determined and fearless women of the March 8 Organization (Iran-Afghanistan) on this International Women's Day 2009. You, who have dared to stand up against both the anti-woman terror and suppression of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the U.S. imperialist terror that masquerades as freedom, are an inspiration for women and men everywhere who long for a radically different and far better world.
In refusing to bow down and accept what is unacceptable - the utter enslavement and suppression of women to patriarchal and theocratic rule - while at the same time rejecting the false "liberation" that the imperialists impose through invasion and occupation, you are helping to shine the way forward for resistance and revolution all over the world. We salute, and deeply appreciate, your courage, determination and vision.
The world cries out for revolutionary change, for socialism and communism. And the fight against the oppression of women, to break the chains of deadly patriarchal control, morality and social relations that suffocate and crush women's lives and dreams, is an indispensable part of the battle for a new world to liberate ALL of humanity - and, make no mistake, that new world will NOT be achieved without it.
Whether feudal or modern in form, the oppression of women has the same essence. The false promises of bourgeois democracy, no less than the woman-hating traditions of Islamist fundamentalist theocracy and those who aim to impose it, are a deadly trap for anyone looking for liberation. In the U.S. and other imperialist countries, women may walk unveiled but are treated and degraded as men's property nonetheless. Women may not fear stoning, but millions live in fear of beatings from their own partners - domestic abuse is the leading cause of injury to women in the U.S., and one woman is raped every three minutes. And women are made to feel guilty and ashamed when they try to control their own reproduction and refuse to have their lives structured by patriarchal tradition.
A world where half of humanity is condemned to being property, to living lives of degradation and abuse, is a world which cannot be tolerated! Women need liberation from thousands of years of tradition's chains, and humanity can never be emancipated as long as women are enslaved. The liberation of women can only come through communist revolution and the emancipation of all humanity. It cannot come through some kind of gradual improvement or reform, but only through the revolutionary transformation of the world in the midst of great turmoil and upheaval.
As the Chairman of our Party, Bob Avakian, has put it so powerfully:
"The whole question of the position and role of women in society is more and more acutely posing itself in today's extreme circumstances....It is not conceivable that all this will find any resolution other than in the most radical terms....The question yet to be determined is: will it be a radical reactionary or a radical revolutionary resolution, will it mean the reinforcing of the chains of enslavement or the shattering of the most decisive links in those chains and the opening up of the possibility of realizing the complete elimination of all forms of such enslavement?"
It is up to all of us to answer that question through seizing the initiative and bringing forward revolutionary consciousness and a revolutionary movement to transform the world. A new stage of communist revolution urgently needs to come forth and flower in the world today!
In service of this, our Party has issued a Manifesto for these times, addressed to all who dare to dream of and fight for a better world. We stand now at the end of the first stage of communist revolution, facing new challenges and new realities, but based on work done by Bob Avakian we have a deepened theoretical framework for the renewed advance of that revolution based on summing up the first stage - its positive and its negative lessons - and raising this to a new and higher level of synthesis. As the Manifesto makes crystal clear: "A whole different way of life is possible in which human beings, individually and above all in their mutual interaction with each other, in all parts of the world, can throw off the heavy chains of tradition and rise to their full height and thrive in ways never before experienced, or even fully imagined." To fight to bring this new world into being, and not to settle for accommodation in any form to the world as it is today - that is the crossroads we are at and the challenge that is before us.
At this time when so much is on the line for the future of humanity, the world's peoples must not be drawn into siding with oppressors of any stripe - neither Capitalism-Imperialism nor Islamic Fundamentalism; both of these historically outmoded forces impose darkness and misery on the world, and they reinforce each other even while opposing each other. Each one falsely claims to be protecting the interests of women - either from stonings and outright suppression of women as human beings; or from the gross commodification and exploitation of women - from billboards to brothels. But siding with either one of these historically outmoded forces only ends up strengthening both. And that we cannot be part of. All who hope for an end to all forms of oppression must put our sights on bringing forward another way, a revolutionary path which forges a road towards the true emancipation of women and of all humanity.
We of the RCP, USA recognize it is U.S. imperialism that poses by far the greatest danger to the people of the world. And we are pouring our hearts into bringing forward the new forces who will build a movement for revolution right here in the stronghold of the international system of exploitation that ensnares the world's people in such suffering and oppression. That is our greatest responsibility. And as part of that responsibility we politically support the struggle of the people of the world against the crimes that the U.S. empire perpetrates - from Iraq to Afghanistan to Gaza and everywhere else. And we politically support all who are standing up and resisting oppression and exploitation and backwardness - in all its forms, both modern and feudal.
The future is not yet written - but it is being forged by what we do today, and it is no exaggeration to say that the stand of the Iranian and Afghani women, joined by women and men of many other nationalities, and their actions in Iran, Afghanistan, Europe, and the U.S., point the way to a future where tradition's chains, on women and all of humanity, have been finally and forever shattered.
Break the chains! Unleash the fury of women as a mighty force for revolution!