In recent years, “Race, Class, and Gender” has become a phrase that is repeatedly heard in educational programs, political events, and organizational meetings of feminist activists and
scholars who am part of the U.S. women’s liberation movement

This growing attention to the combined issues of race, class, and gender is bringing the U.S. feminist movement and other movements for social change to a crucial crossroads. One possibility is that lit phrase “race, class, and gender” — repeated at times in almost ritualistic fashion — will simply become a litany of political correctness that plays only a minimal role in raising people’s consciousness and facilitating the kinds of political analysis and action it implies. The other possibility is that the combined focus on these three forms of oppression — and the current popularity of such an approach-— will open up new and significant opportunities for developing n much stronger analysis of the dynamics of contemporary American society and of the various movements that am challenging its structural arrangements. Such a strengthened analysis could ill turn lay the foundation for genuine solidarity among the diverse and separate struggles that are currently organized around issues of race, gender, and class.

The progress of this discussion is of particular importance to socialists whose goal is to develop a revolutionary movement which links such struggles in an effective challenge to the capitalist system arid which overturns that system and replaces it with a socialist alternative that addresses the needs of all. The purpose of this essay is, first, to strongly urge that socialist thinkers and activists become more consciously engaged in this debate —both learning from and contributing to it — and then to review some of the important insights emerging from the current discussion and to modestly suggest some directions in which it needs to go.

A thorough analysis would need to take a more internationalist approach, but here we will limit our focus to the United States. This is more of a thought piece than a finished presentation. It is intended primarily to motivate and facilitate further discussion and debate in the pages of Bulletin in Defense of Marxism and elsewhere.

 Our Struggles are Different; Our Struggles Must Be Joined

One of the most important insights that the feminist movement in particular has developed out of this new locus on race, class, and gender is an understanding that women are not all the same. Rather, there is a considerable diversity of experience an(l perspective among women in our society depending on their race or ethnicity and their class position. There is a growing recognition in the women’s liberation movement that while we are all op pressed because of our gender, how we experience even specifically gendered forms of oppression — e.g., sexual assault or lack of control over our reproductive lives — varies considerably depending OTT whether we are rich or poor, Black or white, Latin, Asian, or Native American.

Added to this increased awareness of diversity among women, is the understanding that many women experience multiple forms of oppression. In fact, the majority of women in the U.S. daily confront not only sexism but also class oppression. For women of color, there is the added burden of racism.

Because of these realities, women — both in the organized women’s movement and in society at large — have a diversity of needs and priorities for struggle. Sometimes these priorities come into conflict with each other, leading to misunderstandings and distrust. there has historically been a marginalization of the concerns of working class women and women of color in many feminist organizations in the U.S. This has resulted in a replication of the class and racial inequalities of the larger society within the organized women’s movement as well as separate organizing efforts by African American, J.1atina, and Asian women and by working class women of different races and ethnic groups.

Because of their multiple forms of oppression, women also find themselves involved in a number of cross-cutting struggles for change with other women around gender issues, with working class men around labor and class issues, and in the case of women of color, with men of their communities in struggles against racism and for national liberation and self-determination. Although these understandings are fir from unanimous among feminist activists. the recent attention to the interrelations of race, class, and gender has helped to raise awareness about the need not only to “include” the perspectives and issues of working class women and women of color in the feminist movement but to bring such perspectives and issues “into the center” of feminist analysis and struggle.

At the same time, there is increased respect for and sometimes even campaigns of solidarity with all the struggles in which women are engaged— whether specifically around gender questions or around other questions that equally affect many women’s lives.

While the feminist movement has been giving attention to divisions and forms of inequality among women themselves, there have also been new challenges to the labor movement to recognize the particular experiences and demands of women workers and to deal with both racism and sexism within its ranks and in the wider society.

The work of feminists within the Black, Hispanic, Asian American, and Native American communities has likewise significantly heightened an awareness of gender issues in struggles emerging out of those communities, whether these are movements for basic civil rights or for more revolutionary changes. There is growing recognition of an obvious, though often politically hidden fact — that women make up at least half of the U.S. working class.

Women also constitute at least half of all communities of color, which themselves represent a growing and significant proportion of the working class. Thus any struggle for class equality that does not at the same time address questions of gender and racial equality inevitably leaves behind most of the members, and in fact the most oppressed members, of the working class.

This contradiction, as well as the recent focus on “race, class, and gender,” also raises some new theoretical questions concerning the interrelation between class struggle as traditionally defined and the struggles of women and people of color for liberation and basic democratic rights. This then leads to the question of the centrality of any or all of these struggles in the fight against capitalism and the work to create a socialist form of society.

While there is certainly not complete agreement or closure in this debate, must Marxist feminists currently argue that none of these forms of oppression can be reduced to or explained simply by reference to any of the others— that is, each has an independent dynamic and tendency to persist and replicate itself. Thus a socialist movement in the present and a socialist transformation of society in the future must give equal and combined attention to issues of class, race, and gender. Put more bluntly, there can be no socialist revolution that is not feminist at its core and that is not consistently and thoroughly antiracist. In more practical terms, the ending of class oppression and the institution of collective and democratic economic forms will not by themselves end gender or racial oppression. Rather, there will be a need for ongoing and autonomously organized women’s movements and movements of people of color to continue the struggle against sexism and racism and to guarantee full human and democratic rights.

One additional fact that is becoming increasingly clear as the discussion around race, class, and gender unfolds is that there is not a simple division of labor in terms of these three axes of oppression and struggles against them.

I think there has been a common, though often hidden, tendency among many activists to engage in a form of pigeonholing. It is thus assumed that women and men of color are primarily, if not exclusively, concerned with issues of race and with fighting racism. White women in turn are allocated the tasks of analyzing and organizing struggles against sexism and gender oppression. This, of course, leaves the arena of class analysis and struggle — an arena that was historically privileged at least in European and Euro-American circles — to white men. This division of labor will, of course, not result in very adequate analyses or struggles and is, in itself, rather sexist and racist. More importantly it does not represent current reality.

Look, for example, at the three current initiatives for independent political action that have been discussed most frequently in the pages of this magazine — the Ron Daniels Campaign for President/Campaign for a New Tomorrow, (lie 21^st Century Party, and Labor Party Advocates. It is interesting to note that it was the Ron Daniels campaign that not only put forth the strongest program in terms of fighting racism and the struggle for Black self-determination but also developed a working class perspective, including calling for democratic ownership of the economy, and a feminist agenda, including a demand for full reproductive rights and freedom for women. In a similar vein, if one gives even a cursory glance at the contemporary American labor movement, it can be seen that women — Black, Latina, and white — are leading the way on several issues of concern to both employed acid unemployed workers (see article in current issue by Evelyn Sell).

Finally, we need to note the central role that African-American women, both scholars and activists, have played in formulating and furthering the current. debate on the need to look at race, class, and gender in a combined and interactive way. One of these individuals, Patricia Bill Collins, in fact argues that African- American women and other women of color in the U.S. are uniquely positioned to understand and analyze all three of these forms of oppression and their interconnections. 11cr own work and the work of the other Black feminists she cites are good examples of current efforts to do so. (See, for example: Patricia Hill Collins, “The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought,” Signs, vol. 14, no.A, 1989, and Black Feminist Thought; Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment New York: Unwin Hyman, 1990]; also Margaret Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins, eds., Race, Class and Gender: An Anthology [Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 19921.)

 The Need to Go Further

While the insights emerging from the current debate and discussion about race, class, and gender will considerably strengthen short-term struggles for justice as well as the long-term struggle for a socialist future, the analysis of these three forms of oppression and their interconnections needs to go further. I would like to suggest sonic directions in which this debate and discussion could be fruitfully expanded while leaving the fuller development of these points for future work that needs to be widely shared among many of us.

One place to begin is with a clearer and more detailed analysis of what it is that separates and divides working class people in our society while at the same time trying in clarify what bases for solidarity remain in spite of these divisions. My focus here is on racial and gender divisions in the working class, although there are other bases for oppression in working-class communities, such as age and sexual orientation. The recent discussion about class, race, and gender should also lead to increased attention to, and a better understanding of, these additional forms of social division and oppression.

A first step in our analysis is the recognition that while all working people suffer from class oppression and the exploitation of our labor, the specific experiences of this oppression and exploitation may be quite different depending on our gender or race. One obvious example is the issue of housework and child care and its relationship to paid labor. Women and men of the working class have very different experiences in terms of carrying out housework and childcare as well as the social expectations to do so. In particular it is women who find themselves largely responsible for these unpaid, undervalued forms of labor, whether or not they also work outside the home for wages. The double day has thus been primarily an experience of women, not men, workers, and demands for services such as quality day care (including decent pay for childcare workers, again largely women), family leave policies, and flexible working hours have been raised most by women workers.

Historically, there has been another division between Black women and most other groups of women in the U.S. in that Black women were more likely to be engaged in full-time work outside the home throughout their lifetimes, often in performing housework and childcare in someone else’s home. A similar pattern separated poorer working class women of all faces from those who, while perhaps still formally part of the working class, could purchase labor-saving devices or the labor of other women to replace their own. This sometimes led to different reactions to the call put forward by feminists for women to “go out to work,” especially when this demand was not accompanied by measures that would relieve the long hours of work the majority of women perform at home or end the economic and racial inequalities that force some women into performing household services for others.

The consciousness of women and men, and of different groups of women, around issues of work and around various social demands have been differentially shaped by these experiences. What is shared, however, is the continued existence of an unpaid or underpaid sector of work that reproduces the labor force, allowing employers to cut the wages of both men and women, to doubly exploit the labor of women, and to refuse to provide social services and policies such as childcare and family leave that would benefit the working class as a whole.

 Race, Class, and the Struggle for Reproductive Rights

Another example is drawn from the contemporary struggle over reproductive rights and highlights how the failure to acknowledge differences in people’s experiences of a common form of oppression undercuts struggles for change. All women in the U.S. experience serious constraints on our ability to control our own reproductive lives and to make our own choices about sexuality, pregnancy, and childbearing. This is one thing we have in common and an important aspect of gender oppression in our society. However, the situation is quite different for women who have enough money to get around legal and other restrictions to abortion and contraceptive use and those who cannot afford to pay for abortions or contraceptives even where they are legal and available. There is a further difference between the experiences of white women, who are primarily affected by efforts to curtail access to abortion and contraception, and the experiences of women of color, who are affected by these same policies and are differentially subjected to involuntary sterilization, attempts by the courts and welfare agencies to impose new forms of contraception such as Norplant, and measures that criminalize pregnancy leading to women’s imprisonment if they are pregnant and use drugs.

Finally, because of the racial and class dynamics of our society, poor white women and women of color find it harder than do white women in economically secure circumstances to make the choice to have and rear a child in a healthy environment. This disadvantaging begins with lack of access to adequate and supportive prenatal care and continues with differences in the kinds of housing, healthcare, and schools we can provide for our children.

These different experiences lead to different priorities and demands for change. If not acknowledged and given voice, the experiences and thus the priorities of these various groups of women will continue to produce a very fragmented and fractured movement for reproductive rights. If instead, however, these different perspectives are equally listened to and valued — and especially if the concert’s and priorities of poorer women arid women of color are brought more centrally into the reproductive rights agenda — a much stronger and more unified movement could be built

In fact that movement’s very program and vision would be significantly transformed and radicalized. The meaning of reproductive freedom would move far beyond a demand for keeping abortion legal to include demands for free abortion, contraception, and sex education and against the coercive use of sterilization and contraceptives and the criminalization of pregnancy. But even this would be seen as only a small part of the overall struggle for reproductive rights, which would soon be linked to struggle for free quality healthcare, for women’s full economic as well as social emancipation, and for adequate resources to meet community needs, with such resources being under the control of the community itself.

It is, however, only by further specifying the intersections of race, class, and gender that we can become adequately aware of the differences as well as the common links in our experiences.

 Reinforcing Oppressions

An additional question that arises out of the discussion on race, class, and gender is the way in which each of these forms of oppression not only intersect but actually reinforce and perpetuate each other. For example, not only do women of color experience racial as well as gender oppression - — and in most cases class oppression too — but the racial and gender dynamics of our society interact to make the experience of each form of oppression more severe or destructive.

I have thus been told by African American women that young girls in their communities often have a negative self-image. including seeing themselves as ugly, because of the mutual interaction of racist and sexist norms of female beauty. (See the poem by a young African American women in this issue.) It also seems possible that African American boys and young men feel especially frustrated, angry, and alienated because, given the racial barriers in our society, they can never achieve the models of male behavior demanded by our patriarchal culture.

The historical examination of rape and ideas about rape is one area that has contributed to an understanding of the way sexism has been used to reinforce certain forms of racism and vice versa. Rape in most cases is a form of violence by men against women and thus an extreme form of gender-based oppression. Most instances of rape occur within, not across, racial groups. Yet the racism of our society often excuses the rape of Black women, especially by white men, while fears and false accusations of rape of white women were often used of white women were often used as excuses to lynch Black men and thus to terrorize the Black community as a whole. At the same time, myths about interracial rape served to reinforce white women’s subordination to, and essentially ownership by, white men who saw rape as a violation of their family honor and property.

While the tracing out of these kinds of connections is probably easier with historical materials, it is especially important to understand the ways in which race, class, and gender oppression serve to perpetuate and reinforce each other in the contemporary context This is a very complex issue that needs a lot more work, Developing a better understanding of these dynamics is crucial, however, in terms of organizing effective struggles on any one of these fronts.

 Racism and Sexism as Instruments of Capitalist Control

One dimension of this question concerns the ways in which gender and racial oppression is used to perpetuate and reinforce class divisions in our society and to maintain the dominant control of the capitalist class. In broad strokes this is most obvious in terms of race or gender issues that have an economic dimension or that serve to divide the working class and create lines of competition within it. Thus demands for
affirmative action on the basis of both race and gender, or calls for pay equity, arc especially resisted by the capitalist class because they undermine the current situation of separate labor markets and a stratified work force. A more fully integrated labor force would also make it more difficult to main- tam pools of unemployed or underemployed workers who can be alternately pulled into and pushed out of capitalist production as well as used to threaten the jobs and wages of those more comfortably employed.

Various social measures demanded by either women or people of color——for example ,for publicly subsidized child care or a raise in the payments and the level of dignity of the welfare system —. are likewise resisted by the capitalist class not only because they would cost money but because they would undercut the existence of these vulnerable and thus very “flexible’ pools of labor. In contrast, the fostering of various forms of hostility and suspicion between white workers and workers of color or between women and men serves to forestall the establishment of effective lines of solidarity and thus struggles around any of these measures.

Here we can see how racism and sexism serve to perpetuate class oppression even if they have independent dynamics of their own. What is more difficult to understand is the way in which “less economic” aspects of racial and gender oppression reinforce class inequality or benefit the capitalist class. For example, in what ways do forms of violence against women — e.g.. rape and domestic abuse — help maintain the existing class structure? Or what about hate crimes against people of color? Or why are the recent attacks oil abortion rights or attempts to coerce women of color into unwanted sterilizations or use of contraceptives such as Norplant supported by at least certain sectors of the capitalist class? Or why are calls for multicultural education in our public schools so vigorously resisted or undermined?

One answer, of course. lies in the tendencies toward misogyny, ethnocide, and genocide that are more violent aspects of the general dynamics of gender and racial oppression in U.S. society. Another answer may be that not all forms of racism and sexism are of direct benefit to the capitalist class but rather represent contradictions and distortions within the working class itself due to the existence of class stratification and years of experience of class exploitation.

In some cases, however, there are links, complex though they may be, between these more social and psychological forms of oppression and capitalist hegemony. The links need to be drawn out so that the relationship between struggles around these issues and struggles against the continued domination of the capitalist class may be made more transparent. In other words, this kind of analysis will help to more clearly reveal the transitional dynamics of struggles against gender and racial oppression, including those that put forward primarily sexual and cultural demands.

 Gender and Race in Economic Restructuring

One way in which the capitalist class is particularly exploiting these dynamics in the current period is through their manipulation of race and gender, along with class, in various kinds of restructuring of the international economy. It is interesting that these two discussions — about international capitalist restructuring and about the interrelations of race, class, and gender—have gone on side-by-side with some but not adequate cross-fertilization. The analysis seems must fully developed in terms of the gendered character of economic restructuring in so-called Third World countries — iii particular the use of women to create a new low-wage proletariat for assembly line production in export- processing ‘.ones. In places as far-flung as the U.S.-Mexico border and the capital cities of Malaysia and the Philippines, U.S., European, and Japanese corporations have used locally existing concepts of “women’s place” and “women’s work,” as well as manipulated and transformed those conceptualizations to their own ends, to motivate and justify the use of women for low-paid and hazardous factory work.

In some cases, a similar use and manipulation of local racial or ethnic categories has also facilitated the recomposition of the wage-work force. For example, in Malaysia, it is particularly rural Malay women who are drawn into work in multinational factories, rather than their Chinese or Indian counterparts. who were a little more experienced with wage work and the local capitalist sector before the arrival of the multinationals.

A similar recomposition of the working class is occurring in the U.S. as part of the capitalist strategy of industrial restructuring. The use and manipulation of gender and racial oppression frequently seem to play an important role in furthering the process. An example horn the Pittsburgh region illustrates this point. Many of the small towns around Pittsburgh, as well as its urban working class neighborhoods, have ITI the past decade experienced the impact of a dramatic process of deindustrialization, centered around the dismantling of the local steel industry. While at first both women and men in these communities protested these developments, I would suggest that the transition to a lower-wage, service-based economy was facilitated by the role women assumed in providing emotional support for unemployed husbands and families experiencing a severe drop in income as well as by women’s greater willingness over men to go out and take lower- paid jobs “to see the family through.” These low-paying service sector jobs, as well as women’s increased responsibilities at home in “making ends meet,” have now become the norm in this region.

While heavy industrial areas of the U.S. were being turned into a rustbelt, others parts of the country, often known as the sunbelt, were being transformed into industrial parks reminiscent of those in the free trade zones of the Third World. Here there was a manipulation of both gender and race, as a new workforce in electronics and garment factories was built largely out immigrant women from Asia or Latin America.

The most recent wave of industrial restructuring involves the closing down of many of the larger factories involved in light industrial production. They are being replaced by the revival of wage work being done at home and the “putting out” system (employers moving small-scale production into the homes of the workers) as part of a process of decentralizing production and increasing the “casualization” of the labor force. Some of this is also related to new developments in U.S. foreign policy, especially the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

As one might expect, it is women, and particularly immigrant women or women of color, who serve as the home workers, the last and most vulnerable outpost in this reorganized process of production. At the same time, we might find Asian-American or Latino men serving as the intermediaries in the putting out system, while white men remain firmly in control of the top decisions and profits of the firm.

In each of these steps of industrial reorganization, the working class is partially torn down and recomposed. This process is facilitated by the use and manipulation of existing relations of gender and race. At the end, the particular relations between women and men, and between different racial and ethnic groups, may be somewhat shifted and changed without, however, any apparent lessening of the basic dynamics of gender and racial oppression. It is this process and its outcomes that need to be more carefully studied.

 “Race, Class, and Gender” and the Struggle for Socialism

This then leads to some final questions about the relations of class struggle and struggles around issues of gender and race in terms of the development of a socialist movement in the U.S. What seems clearest is the need for revolutionary socialists to become more folly engaged in the current discussion about race, class, and gender. This discussion is occurring in many contexts but of most importance are those that are connected to actual struggles for social change.

It is among people who are already in motion and fighting for their rights that this discussion has the best potential to lead to significant changes in consciousness and forms of action. This is really a discussion about broadening the conception of one’s own rights as well as recognizing the rights of others who are likewise oppressed. And it is only through such changes of consciousness and practice that currently separate movements can come to develop relations of genuine solidarity with each other and thus to effectively join in broader revolutionary struggle.

How to further the discussion of race, class, and gender within existing social movements is, however, not a simple task. It must be done with full recognition of the complexity of the issues involved as well as the strong emotions that result from repeated experiences of racism, sexism, and class insensitivity even within activist circles. We may be active participants in struggles for women’s rights, for Black or Latino liberation, or for union recognition — i.e., struggles explicitly around gender, racial, or class issues. Or our focus of activism may be against U.S.-sponsored wars, for better neighborhoods and schools, for national health care, or against NAFTA. All of these are struggles in which the combined issues of race, class, and gender play a role and thus in which it is important to raise these issues and their interconnections.

Most effective are those situations in which an awareness of race, class, or gender can be raised as part of actual debates or decisions occurring within the struggle itself. Such opportunities need, however, to be looked for and developed more consciously.

Of equal importance for those who are conscious socialists is a serious grappling with the implications of the discussion around race, class, and gender for Marxist theory and our vision of socialism. In this regard, Karen Sacks, an anthropologist and activist, has written a most interesting piece, which not only analyzes the interconnections among race, class, and gender but relates this to the history and theory of Marxism (Karen Sacks, “Toward a Unified Theory of Class, Race, and Gender,” American Ethnologist, vol. 16, no.3,1989). Among other things, she suggests that this discussion challenges Marxists to develop a broader definition of the working class and of class struggle. In particular, this involves a fuller recognition of women and people of color as vital members of the working class, whether or not they are immediately engaged in wage work or as central participants in class struggle. When looked at in this way, we can see that not only the workplace but also the community may be the locus of class struggle, and that issues other than economic demands between worker and employer may be the central issues in those struggles.

What is especially interesting is the way this conceptualization helps to highlight the importance of certain developments in the contemporary U.S. These include die recent growth of unions that are composed largely of women and people of color and which are putting forward an agenda that includes demands for women’s rights, civil rights, and broad changes in social policies as well as more specific workplace issues. There are also new forms of organization in the sunbelt area known as “community-based labor organizations.” These represent efforts by immigrant women and local women of color, many of whom are involved in work at home or the “putting out system,” to organize around an array of economic and social issues, as well as to give attention to international dimensions of their situation.

What Sacks’s perspective and these recent developments in our society suggest is not only the importance of forging links among labor struggles and struggles organized around race or gender issues but also the necessity of recognizing that the latter struggles often have a class dynamic and are thus centrally part of the class struggle itself.

In terms of our vision of socialism and our work toward a future socialist transformation of society, the discussion of race, class, and gender has equally profound implications. have argued above that there can be no socialist revolution that is not consistently feminist and antiracist. But what does this mean? Many would assert that for most of its history, Marxist socialism has given insufficient attention to issues of gender and race and to the need for both women’s liberation and the liberation of oppressed nationalities or racial groups. In recent years, feminism and liberation struggles waged by peoples of color have become more fully recognized as essential components of the socialist struggle and socialist vision. In the U.S. this was largely the result of militant struggles for Black self- determination and for women’s liberation in the l960s and 1970s. In the Trotskyist tradition this resulted in the development of the idea of combined revolution — i.e., a combining of an anticapitalist struggle with liberation struggles of women and peoples of color, the totality representing the development of the American socialist revolution.

Margaret Randall in her new book, Gathering Rage: The Failure of 20^th Century Revolutions to Develop a Feminist Agenda (New York Monthly Review Press, 1992), argues that it is not enough for feminism to be one component in the struggle for socialism. Rather, she says, it must he an integral part of the socialist vision. I would argue the same in terms of the liberation of oppressed racial/ethnic groups.

In other words, both feminism and other forms of liberation consciousness must be integral parts of our vision and practice of socialism. This means not only embracing a commitment to gender and racial equality as part of the socialist transformation of society but also fundamentally transforming the socialist vision and the socialist struggle themselves so that they reflect many of the insights of feminism and the liberation struggles of oppressed nationalities — about gender and racial equality but also about other matters such as community, culture, dignity, power, sexuality, and self-determination, to name a few. This may prove one of our most difficult, though exciting, tasks in the coming period. It raises a number of questions we need to further explore and compels us to look for additional questions that we need to ask. This is one of the most challenging aspects of the current discussion on race, class, and gender.