International Working Women’s Day

March 8 is International Working Women’s Day. It’s an international holiday that celebrates women and their revolutionary power, and it has strong roots in the communist movement. International Women’s Day first began in New York as “Women’s Day,” organized by the Socialist Party of America. It was celebrated in 1909 as a commemoration of the 1908 strike of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. In the 1910 meeting of communist and socialist leaders from around the world, known as the Second International, women members pushed to establish an International Women’s Day. By 1911, over a million workers around the world were celebrating it. In 1917, striking women workers commemorating this holiday sparked uprisings that led to the Bolshevik Revolution, and the first workers’ state, the Soviet Union. Anti-sexist struggle makes it a historic day for all workers, both women and men!
The Progressive Labor Party continues the revolutionary tradition of International Women’s Day by fighting for true liberation for women, and men: communism. We believe that all women and men of the international working class can do better than settle for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, and can get rid of this whole system and replace it with one where we, the working class, run the world.
Capitalist Response to Crises
Capitalism is based off of making profits, which is money stolen from workers. Bosses need to constantly expand their business and make more profits to stay alive. However, there are limits to how much they can expand. U.S. bosses are reaching those limits and facing competition from Russia and China. That is why they need to wage bigger wars and steal from workers even more. Those are the only two ways they can continue to grow business and make more profits.
Sexism is an important part of how bosses steal from workers, because it allows them to pay women less than men and fire women easily if they don’t fall in line. It also divides men and women workers by convincing them that they are enemies. This allows them to pay men less, too, because they don’t unite with their fellow workers to demand a better life. Sexism also means that working families, and especially mothers, have to worry about childcare and housework, not the bosses.
Women Workers At
Cutting Edge of Capitalist Horror
Trump has eagerly continued Barack Obama’s legacy of racist mass deportations by deporting hundreds of workers only a month into his presidency. He wants to hire 10,000 more immigration police and give them even more powers to target all undocumented workers. Unlike Obama, Trump is not pretending to play nice. He is the ugly, naked, violent face of fascism.
Women workers are one of his primary targets. The women who are deported to Latin America often face, in addition to the sexist exploitation that is key to profitmaking, gang, government physical and sexual violence.
Women workers from Syria face a similar fate. Those who stay in Syria face constant U.S. and Russian-sponsored bombings. They are twice as likely to die from shelling or air strikes as men. Whether they stay or flee, women are at risk of sexual assault or sex trafficking. In refugee camps in countries like Jordan, where women and children comprise more than 80 percent of the population, they are at a high risk of sexual assault. Often they lack basic reproductive and sexual health services, resulting in higher death rates.
The everyday lives of women workers are a nightmare. Women, and especially Black, Latin, and immigrant, are the first to lose their jobs when the bosses need to cut. Wages are falling all over the world and it’s getting harder and harder to pay for food, rent, and other necessities.
History As A Guide And A Weapon
The international working class has faced down dark nights before, and will do so again. The Soviet Union made great progress, where prostitution was eliminated, communal daycares and kitchens flourished, and education was equal for both women and men.
At its height, 60 percent of the Soviet Union’s engineers were women. Women held power across one-sixth of the earth’s surface, and armed women workers played lead roles during World War II, both in the Red Army, and the partisan movement that devastated the Nazi war machine behind enemy lines.
The Soviet Union gives us a glimmer of what life can look like when women and men unite to build a better world.
Working Class Response to Crises
The world situation is intensifying. The bosses may respond to crises by attacking and exploiting women more and stirring up racism. The bosses will also try to lead the working class astray  through feminist and liberal politics that mark working-class men—not ruling-class women and men—as the enemy.
But our class has much to be hopeful for. Millions of people around the world are refusing to fall into the trap of racism and sexism (see page 1,3,5).
When Trump announced his Muslim ban, thousands of workers in cities all over the United States rushed to the airports to demand its downfall. Workers chanted, “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.”
The day after the inauguration, millions of workers around the world went to women’s marches to show that they would not accept the attacks on women.
PLP marched and will continue to march and organize on the campus and on the job with the millions of workers who dare to dream a better world. This International Working Women’s Day, we must mobilize to destroy the whole sexist capitalist system and replace it with communism. Only then will the working class, both men and women, truly be liberated.  The night may be dark, but our revolutionary future is bright!