From a reader:
With the September 1 Texas law outlawing all abortions after six weeks being given the green light by the U.S. Supreme Court, many are in a state of shock and anger. People who have not been paying attention—or who have been lulled into faith that this system would protect the right to abortion—are being jolted awake to the reality that the Christian fascists, at all levels of government, have now scored a horrible victory. Many are asking, “What the fuck is going on in this country?!” and “What kind of system are we living in where a fundamental aspect of women’s lives can be legally taken over by a bunch of right wing Christian fascists!!”
But what more people need to be asking is: what would it be like if we lived in a society that did not allow shit like this to happen, and instead was dedicated to ending the patriarchal domination and oppression of women?
Well, the work on this has been done. The society envisioned in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian, puts this straight up as a matter of law and policy.
This is a Constitution for a whole different way society would be oriented and organized, a socialist state that would embody, institutionalize and promote... radically different relations and values among people with the final goal of emancipation of humanity as a whole, a communist society.
Look at what the Constitution says in the Preamble about the goals of this society, speaking specifically to the oppression of women:
The oppression of women arose together with the emergence of exploitative class divisions among human beings thousands of years ago, has been carried forward and become deeply entrenched in all societies ruled by exploiting classes, and was a marked feature of the imperialist United States of America and its domination and influence in the world. Abolishing and uprooting all this is one of the most important objectives of the New Socialist Republic in North America. This is expressed not only in full legal equality between women and men, but beyond that in the declared orientation and policy of this Republic to overcome all “tradition’s chains” embodied in traditional gender roles and divisions, and all the oppressive relations bound up with this, in every sphere of society, and to enable women, as fully as men, to take part in and contribute to every aspect of the struggle to transform society, and the world, in order to uproot and abolish all relations of oppression and exploitation and emancipate humanity as a whole.
Nowhere else will you find a constitution that has this as one of its most important objectives!!!
Right in the Constitution, as fundamental orientation and a matter of law, Article III, Section 3, Eradicating the Oppression of Women states:
[T]he struggle to finally and fully uproot the oppression of women is of profound importance and will be a decisive driving force in carrying forward the revolution toward the final goal of communism, and the eradication of all exploitation and oppression, throughout the world.
And as part of that, the Constitution says straight up:
[T]he New Socialist Republic in North America gives the highest priority not only to establishing and giving practical effect to full legal equality for women—and to basic rights and liberties that are essential for the emancipation of women, such as reproductive freedom, including the right to abortion as well as birth control—but also to the increasing, and increasingly unfettered, involvement of women, equally with men, in every sphere of society, and to propagating and popularizing the need for and importance of uprooting and overcoming all remaining expressions and manifestations of patriarchy and male supremacy, in the economic and social relations and in the realms of politics, ideology and culture, and to promote the objective of fully emancipating women and the pivotal role of the struggle for this emancipation in the overall transformation of this society and the world as a whole.
In simple language, it says right in the Constitution that all women will have the laws and backing of the state to be able to choose and decide matters of if and when to have a child, and not be enslaved to the biology, of having sexual relations turn them into an incubator for society.
All of this is clearly stated as part of increasing the involvement of women equally with men, in every sphere of society, and for uprooting all manifestations and expressions of patriarchy and male supremacy, all “tradition’s chains” embodied in traditional gender roles and divisions in society.
And:
This orientation, and policies and laws flowing from it, shall be applied, promoted, encouraged and supported with the full political, legal and moral force, authority and influence of the government, at all levels, in the New Socialist Republic in North America.
This is the kind of society we not only should want to live in, but is the one we need to be fighting to bring into being with revolution, nothing less.
